by Joanna Williams, Spectator
‘Better a live daughter than a dead son.’ For years, this brutal phrase was delivered to the parents of gender-confused children by therapists, campaigners and supporters of charities like Mermaids. The uncompromising message was that if mum and dad did not wholeheartedly affirm their child’s new gender identity, they ran the risk of their child taking their own life.
The connection between refusing to accept a transgender child and the likelihood of them suffering mental health problems, including, at worst, committing suicide, was so entrenched that it made it to prime-time television. ‘I want a happy daughter, not a dead son,’ said the mother played by Anna Friel in the 2018 ITV drama Butterfly.
To be clear, the argument being promoted was not that gender-confused children are also likely to suffer from a range of other mental health issues and that wanting to transition could, indeed, be a symptom of underlying problems. Instead, parents were hearing that their otherwise perfectly happy children would struggle only if their desire to live as the opposite sex was thwarted. Transition, in other words, was literally ‘life saving’.
Read also: New study: gender reassignment fails adolescents, Christian Concern