JAMES ESSES: There is no longer any escape from the insanity of gender identity ideology – it undermines free speech, destroys careers and tears families apart. It is time for the silent majority to take a stand

You might think the debate is nonsense and it has nothing to do with you. While politicians and broadcasters are tying themselves in knots trying to define ‘what a woman is’, you keep your own grip on reality. You know the biological difference between men and women is obvious and fundamental.

And you’re completely right … except there is no longer any escape from the insanity. Gender identity ideology is now embedded so deeply that it poses a significant risk to countless children and teenagers.

It is undermining the right to free speech, destroying careers and tearing families apart, as well as distorting every institution from the NHS to the police and schools to private businesses, and wiping out the hard-won rights of gay men and women.

This pernicious ideology devastated my own life when, three years into a five-year university masters course as a trainee psychotherapist, I was expelled from the Metanoia Institute where I was studying.

Trans Rights counter demo at Let Women Speak event in Liverpool on October 8, 2023

My offence was this: I raised concerns about the dangers of giving harmful and irreversible puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to vulnerable children for what may be a mental health condition. And I wrote a petition to the Government asking them to safeguard explorative therapy, which considers the reasons why someone may feel ill at ease in their body.

I could no longer stay silent.

This mass delusion, that biological sex is a matter of choice, poses a danger to young people on an unprecedented scale. In nursery schools, under-fives are made to listen to stories about transgender toddlers, read to them by men in sexualised drag costumes.

Confused teenagers and their parents are being taught that it is possible to be born in the wrong body and are encouraged to believe that the best response to disliking their body is to have irreversible chemical and surgical treatment.

The harm this is doing to our society is immeasurable. With individuals who self-identify as women increasingly being given unfettered access to female-only spaces, women are being stripped of their rights to safe havens, such as public changing rooms, lavatories and rape crisis centres.

Trans Rights counter demo at Let Women Speak event in Liverpool on October 8, 2023

The lunacy is so rampant that, in some parts of Britain, men accused of rape have claimed they ‘identify’ as women and have been treated as such by the police and courts. In sports such as cycling and swimming, mediocre male athletes have robbed women of the opportunity to win medals or set records.

Gay men and lesbians are labelled bigots for being attracted to the same sex and children who would otherwise grow up to be healthy, gay adults are told they are ‘trapped in the wrong body’.

JAMES ESSES: There is no longer any escape from the insanity of gender identity ideology – it undermines free speech, destroys careers and tears families apart. It is time for the silent majority to take a stand

READ MORE: Stop telling children they can be born in the wrong body and end the ‘demonstrable attack on biological reality’ by the trans lobby, demand coalition of politicians, campaigners and celebrities