By Emma Ireland Transgender children are mentioned in the press 23 times as common in 2018-2019 compared 2012. There’s an ever-growing obsession in the UK press with the rhetoric that children are being indoctrinated by transgender culture. Misleading titles and authors who know nothing about transgender people are causing this hysteria in the press.

The Daily Mail would have you believing that doctors are performing non-consensual gender-changing surgeries on children. In one article titled, “Pink-haired Portland surgeon who performs sex-change surgery on trans CHILDREN admits they face lifetime of infertility, incontinence and sexual dissatisfaction, in now-deleted video” the author attaches a picture of Frankenstein. Comparing gender-affirming surgery to the creation of a monster is entirely transphobic. The title alone is completely misleading. Genital surgeries are rare in teenagers so the drastic increase in articles about genital surgeries on children makes no sense. These ‘sex-change’ surgeries that cause the alleged problems are not happening in the way the Daily Mail wants you to believe.

In contrast to the past article, the Daily Mail reported on a very tragic story of a young trans boy who sadly ended his life. The Daily Mail pushes the idea that trans-affirming surgery and access to support for minors is entirely unacceptable, but that kind of support could have prevented what has happened to Onyx as well as so many other transgender kids. Mortality rates, especially suicide, are much higher for transgender people, and refusing care like the Daily Mail wants, is dangerous. The Times continues the ideology that young people who are transgender must be wrong. They report on cases of minors de-transitioning as it pushes the narrative they want, that they’re making a mistake. The percentage of de-stransitioners is much lower than transgender people, so why don’t regular transgender people get a platform to tell their stories? The editor of The Themes claims “there is no trans bias” but that is not true when all the stories related are negative, such as “Trans rules flushing away woman’s rights”.