The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) claims to be a non-profit, interdisciplinary professional and educational organisation devoted to transgender health. It is seemingly credible, and UK clinicians — both NHS and private — proudly trumpet their links to it.
Mermaids is arguably the most influential charity focusing on transgender rights in the UK. It claims to have been supporting transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse children, young people, and their families since 1995, and has been at the forefront of key policy changes affecting transgender people in this country. Today, however, the charity is distinctly evangelistic.
On Wednesday night [21 November 2018], Channel 4 broadcast a much-debated documentary examining the staggering rise in children being referred for consultation on gender re-assignment. In the last nine years, referrals for children to the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service have risen some 2500 per cent.
Debbie Hayton