Gender dysphoria

Escape into fantasy: My Heavenly Favourite, by Lucas Rijneveld, reviewed

When Marieke Lucas Rijneveld won the International Booker Prize in 2020 for The Discomfort of Evening, a novel set in the Netherlands about the daughter of a dairy farmer growing up in a strict Christian household in the wake of the tragic death of her brother, the earthy, uncompromising voice was striking. The book was disturbing in its subject matter (the parents, blinded by grief, allow their remaining children to become semi-feral, experimenting with sex and death) and its visceral animal similes: bloody birth, brutal mating, culls for foot-and-mouth disease, slaughter. The ten-year-old girl protagonist had a lot in common with the author; and so it is again in My

Why we need an inquiry into gender treatment for children

Sajid Javid is right to worry about the way the NHS has treated children who identify as transgender. The Health Secretary is reported to be preparing an urgent inquiry into the issue, and planning an overhaul of how the health service treats young people with gender dysphoria. He is the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, so it is his job to be concerned. But for too long ministers have shied away from what future generations may consider to be a scandal of epic proportions. In England, children presenting with gender dysphoria are referred to a single NHS provider – the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) operated by