Sep 18, 2018

The BBC and transgender children

by Sarah Cooksley, via Liverpool Resisters, August 16, 2018

Over the past few years, many parents have begun to take note that the BBC is becoming ever more blatant with publicising and encouraging the transgender ideology amongst children. Where has this come from, and why?

In January 2012, the BBC funded a Trans Camp, directed by All About Trans. There was considerable input from the CEO of Mermaids, Susie Green.

In 2013, All About Trans met with the BBC Editorial Policy Department. These meetings were described as “interactions” and the result has been several programmes specifically geared towards young people.

All About Trans has several aims as a professional media organisation, but the first and foremost is to increase the public’s awareness of the existence of trans children.

A year after these “interactions”, CBBC produced a TV series entitled “My Life: I am Leo”. Leo, aged 13, “always knew I was really a boy” because girls wear dresses and have long hair, whereas boys wear different things and have short hair.

CBBC is a BBC channel aimed at children aged 6-12 years old. The documentary has been shown several times since it first aired in November 2014.

There is a distinct bias in this programme, as outlined in the link above. The programme offers very little evidence to show that there are other options for children who feel “different” from other children of their sex. Gender questioning or gender non-conforming children come away from watching this documentary thinking they “must” be transgender, too. It explains gender norms as true and immutable, rather than stereotypes and social constructs that have no basis in biology and scientific fact.

Also in 2014, BBC Radio 4 produced “Just a Girl”. Mark Davies Markham acted as stenographer for Susie Green and Mermaids. The programme encourages the use of puberty blocking drugs, which are always used off-label without any clinical evidence of efficacy. This, clearly, is a dangerously biased opinion being presented as fact.

Another Leo, aged 10, was interviewed by BBC Radio 4 in 2016. The programme highlights a family that – over the course of a few short months – helped their child “transition” from female to male. The child is described as having interests outside of society’s gender expectations for girls: not liking princesses, not playing with dolls, had more male friends and role models. Leo doesn’t have any strong dysphoric feelings about his body, but his parents are putting him onto a medical pathway anyway.

Also in 2016, Victoria Derbyshire presented a programme entitled “I don’t want to grow a beard”. It is uncritical in its approach to investigating the dramatic rise of transgender children under the age of 10. Why are these young children unhappy with their bodies?

In 2017, BBC Look North featured an 8 year old boy who is confused about his sex. He thinks he has to choose between being a boy and loving dancing. He is quoted as saying:

My mind pulls me to one side and my other mind is pulling me to one side. The one on the left is saying be a boy and the other one is saying be a girl. I don’t know which one to pick.

November 2017 saw an episode presented by Louis Theroux entitled Transgender Kids. The claim: “pioneering medical professionals help children who say they were born in the wrong body” in order to transition “at ever younger ages”.

It would appear, from these productions, that the BBC is glamourising transgenderism for children – telling them that any confusion can be easily swept away with the magic of changing clothing and hairstyles, using different pronouns and taking a few pills.

Research shows that approximately 80% of gender non-conforming children will grow out of it before puberty. The programmes mentioned above rely on gender stereotypes that somehow “prove” that they are transgender. They minimise the harms of transitioning and peddle the ideology of being “born in the wrong body” which has no basis in fact. The stark realities of transitioning such as amputation of healthy body parts, sterility and loss of sexual function have no mention.

Of course, when reading about the negative sides of transitioning, one might think, “Hang on, these programmes were for and about children, weren’t they? Discussing surgical procedures and sexual function wouldn’t be appropriate!” And I would agree. But if the truth is inappropriate to bring up in a children’s programme, is it acceptable instead to peddle comfortable lies? Of course not!

The BBC’s Children in Need funds many different projects. The following table shows the amount given to various projects last year:

There is obviously a significant amount of money being funnelled into pushing the transgender agenda into public consciousness via children’s charities.

The message to teenagers, on radio and online, is similarly on-script:

iPlayer radio Advice

Newsbeat: transgender terminology

BBC Taster: Transgender

These sites link to sites such as Mermaids and GIRES to go to for more information and support, and in return Mermaids recommends BBC programmes such as ‘I am Leo’ to the young people consulting their site. It’s all very cosy and circular. Teenagers get enough encouragement and support for trans identities from social media today without having the BBC reinforcing it too. The BBC should be aware of the impact of social contagion. 1

Parents who question the transgender ideology are told they are wrong, backwards, bigoted and even abusive. Children and teenagers are increasingly dependent on the internet for their emotional support, and are told by strangers to eschew parental influence and turn to their “rainbow family” for support instead.

Children in Need supports Allsorts Youth Project, whose Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit states, “Pupils and students have the right to access the toilet that corresponds to their gender identity” and “no pupil or student should be required to use [single stall toilets]” thus disregarding the need for female students to have access to single sex facilities in school. This guidance completely flies in the face of recent investigations by the BBC itself:

“In September 2015, a BBC investigation revealed there were 5,500 sexual offences recorded in UK schools between 2011 and 2014. Among these were nearly 4,000 alleged physical sexual assaults and more than 600 rapes, figures from Freedom of Information requests showed.”

The BBC’s Children in Need financially supports other organisations such as Gendered Intelligence, whose sexual health booklet for transgender teens states “A woman is still a woman, even if she enjoys getting blow jobs. A man is still a man, even if he likes getting penetrated vaginally.”

Educate and Celebrate, an organisation that trains schools on becoming LGBT+ friendly, provide resources that introduce the idea to very young children that they may need to medically alter their bodies to “match” their personalities. Educate and Celebrate is funded by BBC’s Children in Need:

What is the basic message being told to gender questioning and non-conforming children? They are told they have been born in the wrong bodies. We are our bodies. Our brains, our limbs, our skeletons, our endocrine systems, our reproductive systems, and so on and so on – all of these join together to form our selves. If we are telling our children that their bodies are “wrong”, we are telling them that they are wrong. In any other context, this would be classed as emotional abuse.

Parents of children with gender dysphoria want to help their children, but they often don’t agree that medicalisation is the answer. A “watchful waiting” approach has traditionally been the solution to helping children through turbulent teen years, but current thinking is now comparing that to “conversion therapy.”

Why is the BBC complicit in this one-sided representation of transgender children? Why is there no discussion of the reality of medical transition and the impacts this will have on young people? The real discussions are not taking place.

The BBC has a responsibility to report the full breadth and scope of the transgender issue, but is instead sugar-coating it to make it palatable for parents and children alike.

Perhaps this bias comes from the fact that 2% of BBC employees are transgender themselves – more than four times the national average.

There is a clear trend in the BBC, with an undoubtable focus on transgender issues and as shown here, in transgender children.

Children deserve to be loved and cared for regardless of their so-called gender identity. They don’t need to be told they are wrong for liking different toys or wearing different clothes to the ones society imposes upon them. Gender expectations constantly change over time and space. There is no scientific reasoning behind being “born in the wrong body”.

Our children deserve better than what the BBC is telling them.