Babies should not be assigned the label ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ when they are born, a controversial GP and ‘Gender Specialist’ has said.
Dr Helen Webberley claims that a person’s gender is “not determined by their chromosomes, genetic make-up or genitals”.
The doctor is currently being investigated by the General Medical Council, after claims that she prescribed cross-sex hormones to children as young as twelve.
Criticism
Webberley told The Independent: “Although most people with what we perceive to be male genitals, identify as male, there are many people with those genitals who identify very strongly as female, and vice versa and all along the spectrum between male and female.”
She added: “Maybe we don’t even need to set a gender identity at all – in the same way we don’t have to declare our religion, our colour, our sexuality, our intellect – why does it matter where on the gender spectrum we sit?”
Her comments were heavily criticised on the newspaper’s website.
One reader wrote: “I resent The Independent running piece after piece with entirely anti-science perspectives”.
’Attacking human life’
Another said: “If you want to go along with the charade that we are not born a boy or a girl, then you are asking for your own children to be hurt.”
And one reader commented: “Childhood is not just a game, it is the place where human beings are formed, where boys grow up to be fit fathers, husbands and men, and where girls grow up to be fit mothers, wives and women.”
Dr Helen Webberley has been halted from seeing transsexual patients unsupervised as a result of an investigation by the General Medical Council – the doctors’ disciplinary body.
Proposals
She ran a private gender clinic from her home where it is alleged that she prescribed powerful cross-sex hormones to a number of children.
NHS guidelines do not allow children to be given such drugs because they cause significant body changes and infertility.
The doctor, who charges up to £150 an hour for her services, claims the investigation is not due to any fault on her part.