Beauty

An eleven year old asks the question nobody can answer

Dr Helen Webberley on Heretics: the gender debate, with Andrew Gold, Heretics

What people think

Trans children must be able to explain and justify their gender in a way that satisfies adults before anyone takes them seriously. If they cannot produce a clear reason, the feeling cannot be real.

What is actually true

An eleven-year-old boy turned my question back on me, and I had no better answer than he did. I just know I'm a woman. I feel it. I couldn't prove it to a committee either. That moment changed how I think about all of this: we do not ask other children to justify who they are, and the fact that a trans child struggles to put it into words is not a gap in the evidence. It is what knowing feels like.