This year alone, I’ve written a half dozen stories about how trans activists have successfully fought to cut parents out of conversations with their own children about gender and changing sexes. We covered the story of medical professionals being trained to have conversations with children while parents are out of the room, and the story of how it has become standard practice in the Canadian public school system to withhold information from parents when their children decide (or are persuaded) to identify as a different gender, with students being warned not to tell parents about their classmates’ identity.
The Daily Mail has just published a report describing similar practices in the United Kingdom, a story that has become common wherever gender ideology takes root. It describes a Swindon mother, Patricia Chalmers, checking for unwashed sports clothes in her 14-year-old daughter Esme’s school bag, and finding a teacher’s letter addressed to Lex. Confused, the mother called the school.
“Esme had been dressing differently for months, no longer wearing the skirts or dresses she’d loved when she was younger and was instead wearing baggy hoodies and jeans,” she told the Mail. “She’d chopped off her long hair into a short crop. I was absolutely fine with it. She’s a teenager. She can dress how she wants. But I’d also discovered she was ordering chest binders (which flatten the breasts) and I was worried she’d hurt herself. I’d read up on gender identity and reassured her she could be as gender non-conforming as she wanted, but I wasn’t going to let her harm her body. She was still developing. So, I wondered if the change of name was connected to this.”
But when she phoned the school, the receptionist told her that the name change “must be a mistake.” Patricia followed up with an email to be sure, iterating that the school should be using her daughter’s name and not a different one. In response to that email, the school told her the truth:
They took a day to respond but eventually replied saying that in keeping with their Equality, Inclusion and Diversity policy, they had “socially transitioned” [when you refer to someone by different names and pronouns to match their gender identity] my daughter and were referring to her with the gender-neutral name Lex and they/them pronouns. I burst into tears. Esme had not mentioned anything to me, but I knew social transition could harm her mental health. She is on the autistic spectrum and has suffered with anxiety and depression. Changing her identity to one thing at school and being something else at home could make things even more difficult for her. I couldn’t believe the school had done this behind my back. How dare they? I was livid.
