rls started spending most of their time on their computers. We didn’t know that gender identity ideology was all over TikTok and YouTube, and of course the algorithms sucked them in deeper and deeper.”
Esther and Chris agreed to the school’s advice that the girls be known by their new names at school, having previously changed their pronouns at school without their parents’ knowledge. Esther explains: “The transgender guidance promotes the affirmation model, so we reluctantly went along with it.” Desperate, they sought help from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), only to find themselves reported to social workers for “unintentional emotional abuse” because they refused to affirm their daughter’s change of identity by using her chosen pronouns at home.
After a seven-month wait, social workers decided Esther and Chris had no case to answer, and suggested that the family be referred to CAMHS for support. “I laughed,” says Esther.
Five years after their oldest daughter started exploring her gender identity, Esther says she and her husband are now taking a “watchful waiting” approach. “We have spent time trying to reconnect with them to get our family unit back together … It is important to stay close. But they are thoroughly entrenched in the ideology they see online, which only presents a positive picture and none of the reality or risk.
“They are an idealistic generation; they don’t want to have a male–female divide. Anyone can be anything. As JK Rowling said in her tweet, ‘dress however you please …’ But this is different. By telling kids it is possible to change sex, it has confused everyone, and it is damaging. I see the whole world affirming my children — school, doctors, opticians, everywhere they go, all in the guise of ‘be kind’. It’s a dystopian nightmare. And if we speak out, as parents, we get lambasted or sent to social services. But everyone is affirming a delusion.”
Esther says her only hope now is time. “If we can keep them as far away as possible from testosterone and surgery as their brain matures, we hope by the time they reach the ‘magical’ age of 25, they will be comfortable in their bodies.”
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