Warning: This SNP government is harmful to young people

Before I could explain the facts of life, the venue doors opened and we spent the next hour learning how smoke bombs work and other scientific truths. But my granddaughter’s assertion that boys can give birth, if they so choose, has bothered me ever since. Where did she pick up such a ridiculous notion?

Two days ago, I found out. I was sent photographs from a concerned parent at a large state primary school in Edinburgh which show how deeply gender identity theory – which argues that humans can change sex – is embedded in our schools. A gallery of photographs, entitled ‘Inclusive and Positive’, showed the teaching team with their pronouns proudly on display.

On another wall was a trio of ‘inspirational’ quotes. One from Elliot Page, the Hollywood actor who four years ago had a double mastectomy and declared she was a he. Another from Chaz Bono, whose mother is Cher, the world-famous singer. Like Page, Bono underwent medical procedures to change their female body so they could declare they were male. And a third anodyne, inoffensive quote from Cassandra Duffy, a writer who explores sexual themes in her work. A blurb for her book of short stories promises tales of “voyeurism, mind-control, domination/submission… a taste for every palette and kink”. Hardly Enid Blyton, yet it seems Duffy is considered a suitable role model for primary school children.

‘Manipulative’

Ask any parent, and most will have a tale to tell of how their child’s school normalises the theory that humans can change their sex under the guise of being inclusive. Some schools even encourage children to socially transition – ie, change their name and pronouns – without informing their parents. And the charity, LGBT Youth Scotland (LGBTYS), which promotes trans ideology with substantial funding from the Scottish government, has a presence in more than half of Scotland’s secondary schools and dozens of primary schools.

Its annual report states proudly that it “monitors” how teachers and school staff create “inclusive environments”. Respected educational psychologist Carolyn Brown warned only last week that LGBTYS guides, available to schools across the country, are “manipulative”. She said: “These guides are unbalanced, unequivocal and clearly not written by any expert. They simply should not be accessible to our schoolchildren.”

Male hormones on prescription

The charity’s influence in our schools has mushroomed over the last decade. At the same time, testosterone prescriptions for young women in their 20s have jumped almost 50 times, from 47 in 2013 to 2,194 in 2023. During the same decade, there has been a ten-fold increase in the number of girls under the age of 19 receiving hormone treatment, from 47 to 484.

Little wonder that a group of GPs wrote to MSPs earlier this week expressing their concern about the lack of safeguarding for young people who are currently prescribed cross-sex hormones. Dr Anne Williams, one of the letter’s signatories, was blunt in her criticism. She said: “We are experimenting with our young people, which is dangerous…”

Egg donation campaign

The Scottish Government is not only an enthusiastic enabler of gender identity theory being promoted in our schools. It is the first national government in the world to run an advertising campaign to encourage women, as young as 18, to donate their eggs for use in IVF and surrogacy.

Egg retrieval is nowhere near as straightforward as sperm donation, since it involves an intrusive medical procedure which can cause ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), a potentially fatal side-effect where a woman’s ovaries swell to ten times their normal size and trigger life-threatening blood clots.

At least one woman in the UK has died from OHSS and singer Kesha almost died during egg retrieval last year. A recent freedom of information request by campaign group Surrogacy Concern revealed that the Scottish Government has not commissioned any reserach into the health risks of egg donation on young women.

As Julie McGee, founder of Scottish Women’s Coalition on Surrogacy, told a meeting in Glasgow last weekend, young women’s bodies are not “public resources to be mined for the benefit of older, wealthier couples”. Yet that is exactly what the Scottish Government advertising campaign suggests when it tells young women that their egg donation has “the power to give the gift of becoming parents”.

Slavish adherence to ‘inclusion’

The Scottish Government should come with a health warning: “Harmful to our young people.” Primary school children are encouraged to believe that they can change sex. Secondary schools cheerfully enable vulnerable adolescents to be targeted by the zealous supporters of a disputed ideology. And our national health service promotes potentially dangerous medical procedures to teenage girls under the cover of ‘kindness’.

In recent years, the guiding principle of the Scottish Government has been inclusion. “It encapsulates what we stand for as a party,” Nicola Sturgeon told an SNP conference in 2016. Neither Humza Yousaf nor John Swinney have demurred since. What Sturgeon didn’t say was that a slavish adherence to ‘inclusion’ comes at a cost. And it is our children and young people who are paying the price.