'Every parent needs to read this' Helen Joyce


Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria - severe
discomfort in one's biological sex - was vanishingly rare. It was typically
found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood,
and afflicted males almost exclusively.





But today whole groups of female friends in colleges and schools
across the world are coming out as 'transgender'. These are girls who had never
experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a
coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet
community of trans 'influencers'.


Unsuspecting parents now find their daughters in thrall to
YouTube stars and 'gender-affirming' educators and therapists, who push
life-changing interventions on young girls - including medically unnecessary
double mastectomies, and hormone treatments that can cause permanent infertility.



Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal,
has talked to the girls, their agonised parents, and the therapists and doctors
who enable gender transitions, as well as to 'detransitioners' - young women
who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves. Coming out as
transgender immediately boosts these girls' social status, Shrier finds, but
once they take the first steps of transition, it is not easy to walk back.