The transgendering of children: Gender eugenics

SynopsisThis article argues that the emerging practice of transgendering children should be seen as a form of gender eugenics which has similarities with the practice of sexual surgeries carried out as a result of eugenics ideas in the early twentieth century. In the earlier period those suffering severe poverty, homosexuals, criminals, people with mental health problems and disabilities, and gypsies were sterilized. Presently, in Australia, children as young as 10 who are identified as suffering from ‘gender identity disorder’ are, with the connivance of the Family Court, placed on puberty delaying drugs. These drugs, if they are followed at age 16 with cross-sex hormones, sterilize the children. The similarities between earlier eugenics practices and the transgenderism of the present include the origin of the practices in the ideas of sex scientists, psychiatrists, biologists and endocrinologists, one of the target groups, lesbians and gays, support by ‘progressive’ sections of society, including some on the Left and some feminists.