What is the West doing to its children?

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) ran its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in England and Wales through the London-based mental health facility Tavistock Clinic. Over more than a decade, the clinic treated thousands of children for gender dysphoria. (Representational photo: Alexander Grey via Pexels)

Even we in India, who live thousands of miles away, should be concerned about how the West is treating its children. Indian society, especially the English-educated so-called elite, usually follows Western trends. In this case, it could be disastrous. In the last two years, the UK has been rocked by the “Tavistock scandal”. The National Health Service (NHS) ran its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in England and Wales through the London-based mental health facility Tavistock Clinic. Over more than a decade, the clinic treated thousands of children, including even four-year-olds, for gender dysphoria—unease about a mismatch between biological sex and self-perceived gender identity.

What was going on inside the clinic is horrifying. Many children were placed on medication after just one face-to-face assessment despite obvious mental health or family issues. More than a third of the young people referred to the service had moderate to severe autistic traits. Medication included gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues (GnRHa), puberty-blocking drugs that may have serious negative side-effects on bone density (which could lead to osteoporosis at an early age), kidneys, eyesight, sexual function and the ability to ever have an orgasm. Simply put, a government programme may have been neutering and sterilising children for life.

In the aftermath of the revelations and a public outcry, the NHS has shut down GIDS. It will soon be replaced by a new initiative. But the NHS’ beliefs about how to deal with gender dysphoria are unlikely to change.

Across the West, an ever-increasing number of parents, often ill-informed or overawed by incessant media hectoring, or simply desirous of being seen as “progressive”, are bringing their children to “gender affirmation” therapists and doctors to undergo irreversible treatments.

In the US, many schoolteachers have been accused of sowing doubts about gender identity in the minds of even kindergarten children and apparently encouraging some to change their gender, while keeping parents in the dark.

Last month in California, two middle school teachers filed a federal lawsuit against school administrators in Escondido district and the California State Board of Education over policies that they allege required them to deceive parents about their children's gender identity. The plaintiffs claim that the school district mandates teachers to accept a child's transgender or gender-diverse identity unquestioningly and actively hide this from families. When encountering “a suspicious parent”, teachers are instructed to reply that they are allowed only to discuss “information regarding the student’s behaviour as it relates to school, class rules, assignments, etc”.

Children are also being introduced to sexually explicit content as early as in elementary school. Several Republican-run states are now removing such books from school libraries. Left liberals see this as censorship.

Some days ago, Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Bill and Hillary, tweeted the link to an nbcnews.com report on the matter and commented: “Over 50% of the attempted book bans last year involved books with LGBTQ+ characters & themes. Books are a vital way that children, adolescents and adults learn about themselves and our world. Bans such as these are nothing but harmful.”

The nbcnews.com article carries a photograph that shows a dozen or so of the “banned” books. These include books with explicit illustrations of sex acts, including pedophilia and incest, a book about 10-year-old boys having sex, one about a man raping and isolating a 12-year-old girl and another about a teen girl who seduces a man who kidnaps her.

And these books have not even been banned; they will just no longer be allowed in schools. If parents want their children to read them, they can easily buy them and give them to the kids.

The extent of the rot is visible more than anything else in the attempts to normalize pedophilia. The arguments are often couched in social justice rhetoric. Since the word “pedophile” has negative connotations, the new term being pushed is “minor-attracted person”. Also, the theory that pedophilia is not a mental disorder, as all medical research till now has concluded, but a “sexual orientation” like heterosexuality or homosexuality. Therefore, society should embrace them as normal people.

Twenty-seven Democrats in the Colorado House of Representatives voted last week against making indecent exposure to minors a Class 6 felony. Class 6 felonies are the least serious crimes under US law, and those found guilty are quite often let off by courts with a rap on their knuckles. But even this was not acceptable to these legislators. Apparently, the bill was against “equity”. In other words, a perverted adult who traumatizes an innocent child should have the same rights and protections as any child is guaranteed.

None of these people, from the Tavistock doctors to teachers to woke politicians seem to realize—or don’t care—that their ideas and actions threaten to destroy childhood. Every child has the inalienable right to enjoy their years of innocence—to look at the world with wonder and trust and without fear, to be loved and protected. Of course, they will eventually have to face all the troubles and injustices of the world. But to encourage six-year-olds to “discover their sexuality”, to expose them to graphic sexual material, is to force them into a grown-up world much before their minds are ready for it. Why not let them figure it all out for themselves as they have done for thousands of years, and let them make their own informed choices based on their life experiences?

Paradoxically, the same people who are trying to thrust children into premature adulthood also fiercely promote the delaying of puberty, a natural biological process that is physically and psychologically crucial in a human being’s life journey. This imprisons an adolescent and young-adult mind in a body that remains that of a pre-pubescent child. All of it is both idiotically illogical and mind-bogglingly cruel.

What drives this super-aggressive movement to sexualize all human thought and activity? Perhaps next week, I’ll write about these dangerous ideologies.

But why should Indian parents be worried? Let the Americans sort out their weird problems, who cares? No. Because the hazard is closer to home than most of us may realize. Last fortnight, a glossy periodical that describes itself as “India’s premier couture, luxury and bridal magazine”, posted two “covers” on its website, featuring a thickly bearded and very hirsute Indian-American “non-binary trans activist” called Alok Vaid-Menon dressed in traditional bridal costume—saree and lehnga choli. It is of course entirely the magazine’s editor’s prerogative to have whatever she wants to on the cover, but Vaid-Menon has some deeply problematic views about children.

A few years ago, Vaid-Menon had posted a long social media comment, saying that the generally accepted view about child abuse “relies on…two things: the construction of morally abhorrent perpetrators/scapegoats and the production of pure, innocent victims… But we…need to seriously overhaul the idea that there is a perfect victim anywhere.” Little girls can be kinky, he/she/they chortled: “Your kids aren’t as straight and narrow as you think they are. Like everybody else, I’ve been a cute little girl.”

It is a matter of shame for every one of us that even today, all over the world, pleas of women who are sexually assaulted are often dismissed with “she must have asked for it”. This Vaid-Menon now wants to say the same for molested children. How sick can you get? This creature has already got some adulatory media coverage in India. Yes, we should be deeply worried.