If the purpose of the UK government website, ‘Apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate’ is to put people off by its complexity, it will have succeeded. It starts with an ‘Overview’ where one is informed: Apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate if you want your affirmed gender (sometimes called an ‘acquired gender’) to be legally recognised in [...]
In the application form for a British passport you’re asked to state your gender by putting a cross in one of two boxes. These are labeled ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ so that’s clear enough. ‘Gender’ here is a synonym or euphemism for sex, otherwise it could lead to misunderstanding. Sex? Yes please! Or it might bring to mind [...]
Confused about your gender? Then you will need specialised gender care! Consider this scenario. A young boy wants to dress in girls’ clothes, play with girls’ toys, and expresses a liking for the colour pink. He says he is or wishes he could be a girl. His concerned parents wonder whether he has ‘gender dysphoria’ and take him [...]
When I was a medical student one of the subjects we had to become familiar with was called minor surgery. This meant learning how to sew up cuts, operate for ingrowing toenails, remove small skin cysts, and deal with similar problems. But it was impressed upon us that there is no such thing as minor surgery; there are [...]
Just when I thought the ‘transitioning’ mania couldn’t get any worse, it has. As it is only to be expected, there are not a few people who, having undergone ‘transitioning’ to try to change their outward appearance to resemble that of the opposite sex, subsequently regret doing this. They are known as ‘detransitioners’. And some of these, we [...]
Early in my career for a time I worked for a doctor who was also a keen gardener, who gave me some sage advice about putting oneself in the patient’s shoes: ‘Never go to a doctor whose plants are dying!’ I’ll come back to that later. I like to think that I am an open minded person – [...]
Today I’m going to take a look at NHS England’s Interim Specialist Service for Children and Young People with Gender Incongruence, published 9 June 2023. In the very title we have a problem. What do they mean, ‘with’ gender incongruence? If they were writing about, say, children and young people with diabetes or appendicitis it would be perfectly [...]
There are three main actors in this truly shocking story: Jazz Jennings, the boy who was brought up as a girl; Jeanette Jennings, his mother who earned millions through pushing Jazz to ‘transition’; and Dr Jess Ting, the surgeon who allegedly ‘made it up as he went along’ in attempting to change Jazz’s genital anatomy from male to [...]
These days there seems to be a proliferation of organisations involved in the curious business of transgenderism. One I came across recently is called Genspect. Since it’s based in Ireland it’s not surprising that the people who devised the content of their website appear to have kissed the Blarney Stone. This is what they say about themselves (paraphrased), [...]
Everything should be made as simple as possible – but no simpler. Albert Einstein I am a man and have never had any doubt about this fact, but I would find it very difficult to say what it feels like to be a man. I would have to compare it to some other state of being, such as [...]