Society’s rush to embrace transsexualism is a result of our self-absorbed culture, a sociologist has warned.
Dr Stuart Waiton also criticised transgender activists who simply pursue male and female stereotypes by pushing children to ‘change sex’.
He was responding to the launch of the Scottish Government’s transsexualism consultation.
‘Radical’
Writing in The Times, Dr Waiton stated that political and cultural leaders “think that they are being radical and enlightened” by backing transsexual rights.
“‘Don’t like all things pink and frilly? That must mean you’re a boy. Don’t like football and fighting? You must be a girl.’”
But he warned that this is the result of society facing an “ever-fragmenting world of identities”.
Citing widespread disallusion with politics and traditional institutions, Dr Waiton continued: “Having abandoned the outside world we have turned in on ourselves and into our bodies, as the final site of experimentation and liberation”.
Caricature
But the sociologist noted: “Of course, one of the ironies of transgenderism is that rather than liberating gender, it is a caricature of it.
“‘Don’t like all things pink and frilly? That must mean you’re a boy. Don’t like football and fighting? You must be a girl.’”
Dr Waiton, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Abertay, Dundee, warned that teachers and politicians are abandoning children, encouraging them to look “inside their bodies for meaning, identity and liberation”. “This is truly Scotland’s shame.”
Sidelining parents
Earlier this month, the Scottish Government announced it was consulting on making it easier to legally ‘change sex’. Similar plans are being mooted at Westminster.
The Scottish Government is also backing new guidance, produced by LGBT Youth Scotland, which instructs schools to accommodate transsexual young people in every circumstance – even at the expense of the safety of other pupils.
It states that a child who feels “uncomfortable” about sharing facilities with a member of the opposite sex should use another private facility, or wait until “the trans young person is done”.