The kids aren’t ‘trans’ – they just don’t want to grow up

If we rule out the notion that people have ‘gendered souls’ at odds with their biological sex – and we do, absolutely, rule that out – then there still has to be some explanation for the unstoppable rise in the numbers of young people who call themselves trans. A survey of secondary school teachers in England has found that nearly 75 per cent say they now have at least one trans pupil. What’s behind it?

Well here, to celebrate Pride month, is my theory. I’ve spent many terrible rubber-necking evenings in the online trans world and my strong impression is that the whole phenomenon is (amongst other things) a desperate desire to remain childlike. We’ve scared the kids so much with talk of fascism, racism and the planet’s imminent demise that they just don’t fancy growing up. The eternal puberty of transition, painful as it is, offers them a way out, a way to be looked after for ever.

I owe this thought to Dylan Mulvaney, the social media celeb. Dylan is the trans woman (i.e. man) who was paid to promote Bud Light in what might well be recorded as the most disastrous publicity stunt in marketing history and lost Bud Light 60 per cent of their sales in a week. He made his name documenting his transition on TikTok, under the brilliantly aggravating title ‘Days of Girlhood’. He poses in ladies’ pants and has real skill with a brow pencil, so it makes perfect sense that he has also been called in to the White House to meet Joe Biden. ‘I feel very very strongly,’ the President told him, ‘that you should have every single solitary right including use of your gender identity bathrooms in public.