To. Transgenders therapy for children of all ages is gaining popularity at a cost make speed all over the world are a 1st to fix what nature apparently got wrong justified especially at such a tender age or our putting our young in danger well well talk about that was a man who is fighting for his son to remain a boy and sociologist frank furedi. Your boy. Girl who told you your girl molly gender identity is something children as young as 3 are unlikely to have heard of it seems. A clear understanding of who they want to be. In the biz across fire of debate about whether a sex change there at the should be available to the young and vulnerable while celebrities office a poet in the forefront calling it necessary treatment experts argue about whether such progress really will improve thousands of peoples lives or represents a dangerous trend for humanity. Jeff younger a father of the 70 year old james jeff welcome to the show its great to have you with us thanks for agreeing to talk to us thank you for youre welcome thank you for having me on so your story has sparked a huge debate all around walt at the very beginning when your son james 1st told you that he was a girl what was your reaction i mean where you taken aback did you take it seriously i took it very seriously because i had to some information what i was still living with with and George Wallace my my exwife had been putting him into timeouts and saying things like the monsters only eat boys ready and some odd things like that so when i heard this i took it very seriously he said mommy tells me im a girl. And i would ask him you know do you look like a girl and say no but mommy tells me im a girl you know hes never presented himself as a girl to me ever and he factor with me he violently rejects any female identity he wont wear female clothes he wont even wear boys brief underwear because he says its too much like girls underwear so hes basically leaving the bipolar life right now hes a boy when hes with you and hes what forced to dress like a girl or does he dress like a girl but my his own will when hes with a mom i believe he dresses by his own will when hes with his mother i just dont think he believes that shell love him if hes a boy. But he dresses as a boy in her house as well does she somehow tell him not to dress as a boy if you want to dress a boy. Ive only been in public with him as a girl or twice and on both cases when i brought boys clothes his mother was extremely disapproving and in one case. Hole to mount of my arms and i had to let him go so they wouldnt get her so that he wouldnt be allowed to put on boys clothes seguins told you know that she disapproves of it strongly james told you that his mother dresses him and girls closing uses hair clips puts nail polish on him was that was my Immediate Reaction would be to get in touch with his mom and ask why you do that why i was what was an explanation did you have to talk about it well 1st of all i just wanted to verify and i sent her a text and you know are you actually telling james that hes a girl and shes just replied simply yes and then refused to talk to me about it. Then the next time that it became an issue was when when he had his sort of coming out party she took him to his 5th Birthday Party an address she just essentially wouldnt speak to me about it but is it normal that because you are just as much a parent as she is is it normal that yes as an answer and off for for your son to be heading towards a gender change. No its absolutely not normal im a joint managing conservatory in texas and that means that we share parental rights but there was one key parental right that the court did not if me and it was the right to consent to psychiatric and psychological treatment and thats kind of how shes gotten around shes saying that this is psychiatric treatment and so i have no rights in that regarding this issue with my son. So james being dressed as a girl his name was changed to lou now he is hands to girls bathroom at school so if everything goes ahead like jamess mother wants your 7 year old boy it will be given puberty blocking hormones and in a couple of years will undergo sex change surgery. I mean its kind of hard to ask but how does it make you feel look i consider this to be child abuse and the sexual mutilation of children on a on an industrial scale so it makes me feel terrible i cant believe that a mother would do this to her son and i cannot believe that the state of texas would allow it and sanction but we have clinics right here in texas the do sex changes on children all the time so your exwife is accusing you of child abuse towards james what exactly is she implying by abuse. Shes saying that its psychologically abusive to james i will not affirm his fake female identity and she has gone to court and file that whats called a motion to modify its a thinly veiled parental termination request saying that i have to go to a transgender education class if i dont attend the class or achieve satisfactory marks then i can be jailed for contempt i can be jailed if i use male pronouns for james or show him in public as a boy or if i cut his hair in a boys hairstyle. And if all those things if i do any of those things she wants them to essentially allow no overnight stays only a few days a month saying my son she wants to remove all and my influence from his life but youre saying that when hes with you he never ever wants to dress like a girl or are like act like a girl could he be that when hes with you hes afraid to be a girl like youre saying hes afraid to be a boy with his mom well you know ive had people ask me this but heres heres a good way to understand how that couldnt be true james dresses as a boy at his mothers house when i go to pick him up from his mothers house he comes out of the house and Boys Clothing so hes comfortable wearing boys clothes at his mothers house and at my house hes just uncomfortable being a girl in front of his father and i would just say well red blooded texan boy wouldnt be uncomfortable doing that. So james has a twin brother did it ever occur to you why and who is a pet attrition sorry treating only one of the boys like a girl she has a certain parenting pattern which i probably cant go into well talk about it at trial but she tends to pick a loser child in a winter child and james is the one who got the attention i mean she was reading him books on transgender kids when he was really young and setting them up as heroes for him as as young as 2 of the below but how are the boys communicating with each other. They become extremely adept at knowing what pronouns to use and what home although i have i have had interesting problems you know were at the docks christians and my son jude has a lot of trouble understanding why he has to lie at his mothers home because we were commanded not to lie and we were out with im teaching my sons how to track animals like i learned when i was a boy so were were tracking rabbits and we get pretty dirty out by the creek were taking a shower and the boys are good men and just points down at james and says look at these and hes not a girl hes a boy why do after column a girl and under my car under the current orders i am under from the court i actually can answer that question im im legally prohibited from trying to convince james that hes a girl i mean a boy but have you and so i didnt answer the question have you ever asked cindy do you want to be a girl have you ever posed a question to him. And he says no he likes me in a boy and all of his best friends are boys there their favorite activity is wrestling so if thats what he says in court why is court so adamant citing the mom well what he actually thats a great question so one of what is actually told the court so the court. Asked us to take them to social services and let the boys express their preferences and what james said was he wants to be a girl his moms home and avoid his dads home. So years we want both his parents to love him. You know badly in court for full custody over james but as of now you cant call james by his name cant dress him with male pronouns cant share your thoughts with a how do you to communicate. So the temporary orders that im under before you go to final trial actually do allow me to address them as james and his male pronouns but i cannot do that in front of 3rd parties who know him as a girl so basically i cant go to school i keep them away from any friends he might have at school that know him as a girl and in my home hes known as james and i use male pronouns what im prohibited from doing right now is trying to convince him that hes actually a boy. Thats thats prevented me from teaching him traditional Orthodox Christian teachings on sexuality and gender i can let him go to sunday school at my church st john the Baptist Church and you busy texas and you know im even a little trepidation about reading from the book of genesis you know as we go through our bible readings after pasco so ive had a lot of trouble communicating with him on religious issues and on basic things that you would expect you know you do have to teach boys issues around selfcontrol how they should deal with women older women being respectful to females of their peer group you know its very difficult for me to figure out how to do this without violating that order but you were able to do that with your other son right yes yes so thank goodness james models a lot of his brother so and theyre very close right oh very close very very close from what i understand your x. Spouse on has got the school and doctors on her side who supports you you have so one of the one of the issues is that many of the christian foundations you know we talk to allies defending freedom for example theyre the ones who defended the baker of colorado. They really dont get involved in family law cases because family courts are basically lawless they just dont fall statutes theyre willing to help us when we get to the appeals level well we have done is we have found experts in the canal adjusts a pediatric endocrinologist psychologists who have a deep understanding of what the actual Transgender Research shows and theyre prepared to testify that the basic claims that and George Wallace is making about my son are false. How far are you ready to go to fight for james being a boy there are no limits to a show go to protect my son one of the one of the big problems that that im going to face eventually is in the state of taxes right now the courts position is that all of this is medical Child Support so i have to pay for him to go to you know a therapist whos teaching him that hes a girl i have to pay for the hormone suppression of puberty which actually chemically castrate boys and prevents the growth of their sexual organs and if he goes to a surgical transition that would be medical Child Support as well id have to pay for that and the simple fact of the matter is you know parents over their children at a very minimum not to harm them and im not paying for any of this im not going to participate in abuse my son anyway. I mean i dont know how it works in america exactly bikini theorically take it to the Supreme Court well everyone ive talked to fully expects that this case will go to the texas Supreme Court i would not be surprised if after that it goes into the federal court and could make its way up there everyone ive talked to including people at the Attorney Generals Office says that they fully expect it will go to the texas Supreme Court i can assure you that whoever wins on october 15th whoever wins that trial it will be appealed and whoever wins the appeal it will be appealed to the Supreme Court of texas theres no question about it. One of the reasons this case is so interesting to a lot of the legal authorities is my son does not present exclusively as one gender hicks he has a normal gender self identity with me and he has an abnormal so gender self identity with his mother and so its the question here is how do the courts decide how or how should the law decide what should be the role of the courts in deciding how the parents work through a disagreement about that. Well jeff i wish it courage and from the bottom of my heart i wish for the outcome to be the best possible for your kids thank you for sharing your story and if you were to have mercy talking to jeff younger who is struggling to keep his 70 or james a boy after they break well discuss sex change their opinion for children with sociologist frank furedi stay with us. This is a story about what happens auster a stray bullet kills a young girl in the streets. What happens to have daughters in florida you know the mother daughter is buried in a cemetery. What happens to the community the public was screaming for a scapegoat the Police Needed a scapegoat so why not choose a 19 year old black kid with a criminal record who better to than him and what happens in court be. Shocked shocked as far. As i feel. We dont know still just brutal. End of this unfortunately you. Still love no chill just. Join me every thursday on the all excitement and ill be speaking to us of the world of politics sports business im show business. And were back in the studio discussing gender reassignment therapy for children before the break we were talking to jeff younger who is fighting to keep his 7 year old son a boy and now were joined by sociologist frank full ready to discuss the ongoing debate on whether Young Children should be subject to a sex change treatment frank furedi welcome to the show really really great to have you with us now ive just interviewed a man who is 77 year old son identifies as a girl when with his mother and the boy with his father how often do children get confused by their own parents when it comes to the issue of gender identity. I mean kids are always confused about who they are even at the best of times. I think what what has happened is that because of a very powerful culture of. Gender identification which encourages people i think to be confused about who they are. As men are that children very often. React very differently between who they are for example if you chart if you if you think your mother. Is so open minded that doesnt care whether you are as a boy you remain a boy that you might play up to that and you kind of play the role of somebody whos very confused about their identity if youve got a father whos fairly clear that his son whos born biologically is a boy is a boy then the boy will behave differently with him because a lot of the time that the cop on the signals that parents give them that youve been saying that parents who avoid assigning a biological gender to their children are irresponsible because they make it even more difficult for their kids to identify themselves with a certain gender what should parents do i mean where is the balance between guiding children and developing their gender identification and imposing gender roles on them. Well i think that theres a very big difference between children sex children are born either boys or as girls in almost every single instance i think that parents said that point need to bring them up as either boys or as girls. And see how things evolve i think its wrong for parents to become preoccupied by gender identity its not something that the vast majority were children. Ever think about very much its not something that they experiment with to begin with i think that the danger today is is that we have a very Strong Political and cultural pressure on the part of parents to be much more relaxed about the boundaries that used to exist between boys and girls and as the boundaries are questioned so a lot of parents get confused and i think the job apparently is to wait and see and if it is it is the case that when a girl or a boy decide to 14 or 15 that maybe do something or other. Than the biology dictates then the parents can make a judgment call that its a different judgment call in every case and theres no formulaic way of dealing with this that parents are transgender children often explain that at the age of 2 or 3 their children clearly say that they are the opposite sex can you really take what a 3 year old kid tells you for at proclamation of gender identity. Well there if youre sensible i think as i dont lets me know that children see a lot of things that are or. Just momentarily illusions idea 2 or 3 obviously have to listen to them but we dont know that 2 or 3 year olds dictate to us how their child is going to evolve and how this should be treated by adults i think very often what a lot of parents get confused by is that both boys and girls very often. Want to be maybe one to one to play different kind of roles for example i know my own son when he was 3 for love ballets and dressed up in pink and even insisted that we get him at all these days if a teacher or and i both sees that they might draw the conclusion that my son was actually. Gender wise a girl a potential woman whereas in fact he was just merely experiment think very much in the way that a lot of young girls are tomboys and they like playing and pretending that theyre boys thats the normal way that children are a wall of and its very important that we dont rush and make premature judgements about those things well yeah because i mean if a kid announces that theyre a lizard or a cat or i dont know i poke him on does that mean that the parents will have to like support their childs freedom of expression and will have to like treated accordingly its absurd. It is a very i think that. Parents should have the freedom to make judgment calls us to what they do very often you dont necessarily want to thwart a childs aspiration of death at all possible but if you think that the particular demand that they put upon you if they want to play in a particular kind of way is not something you think is good for them then you as a parent are totally entitled just to say no because youre now gold or alternately responsible for the male being of that child you its your duty to make sure that they go in the right kind of direction and at the moment unfortunately a lot of parents are encouraged to avoid taking responsibility. Assuming a duty for the well throw the children and hand it over to all kinds of professionals and this is i think one of the reasons why transcultural is flourishing so much in the western world so being different has always been like a cult thing among people you know someone attention other kids its just a form of protest against any authority let it be school or parents and as trance culture increasingly gains ground as questioning gender just become a new ways so to speak or breaking the system for some kids you know i think youre right i remember when i was doing some lectures in the united states. Im not i met mary i met parents who were very proud of the fact that they were trans killer a transgender and what they were really proud about was that they thought this was really cool this is very edgy the children werent being conformist they made their own way they decided who they wanted to be and for them this was a really wonderful really Wonderful Development and i think in many respects they were complicit in creating a context in a situation where the children got a child is almost incentivized to identify in this particular way to gain attention and validation and recognition. So you think critical of schools in scotland for keeping parents out of the loop if their child was hinted at willingness to change sex however there are some families where children are suppressed by their parents for a multitude of reasons can you really blame any school for stepping in if they fear for the child wanting to sort of very important question because. You know mothers and fathers have got some very difficult judgments to make very often they do thing is. Children and i did think its in the kids best interests. That a lot of people might not approve of and one of the problems that we have is at the moment parents are being continually surveyed did being judged. And people overlook the fact that most of the 99100 the mother and the father knows far better whats in the real interest of a child than anybody else i think that to understand a child you have to a relationship with that child you got to live with that child and thats what parents do and what im really worried about is that this intimate important relationship between 2 generations gets to some extent undermined and destroyed when teachers or other professionals see a month or 2 that somebodys a margin that they know better than the parent what the kid needs and i think if you go down that road then the very fabric of the family will be seriously weakened and diminished so in some schools children are obliged to wear gender neutral uniforms like in france they switched out mom and dad for parent 1. 00 and 2. 00 so that their peers with same sex parents done still discriminated. Modern society is promoting freedom of expression all over the place but is this freedom ending up suppressed at they asked of Political Correctness and gender equality. Well its very paradoxical because. Despite all the claims that we support the freedom of expression we are really saying that some forms of expression are supported freely others are closed down and for example there are many people with religious convictions whose ability to express their religion freely started to speak when they try to bring up their children in accordance with their religious beliefs are prevented from doing so so for example in england. Jewish people and muslim people have been told that theyre not allowed to segregate goes from boys or keep them in a different part of class so thats not allowed but other forms of expression are and to me what we are really doing here is kind of creating a double standard whereby its perfectly ok for you to sort of be gender neutral and to celebrate gender neutrality but if you actually believe that theres a fundamental difference between boys and girls or at least an important difference between boys and girls and you want your boy to be a boy and a girl to be a girl and not neutral thats frowned upon and thats kind of criticized and in some cases it is criminalized so i think theres a double standard here and i for one im of the belief that at the end of the day gender neutrality can be a very dangerous idiology because it basically destroys the particularity of human being is the difference between you and me or important and to eradicate that and just to say well its the same thing thats of this neutral approach to human life actually destroys the wonderful element of difference that part thats part and parcel of our humanity. Saying here is so much for this wonderful inside where were talking. Own going to bay whether young kids should be subject to gender reassignment therapy with sociologist frank furedi and jeff younger who knows the problem firsthand was his 70 year old son facing such therapy thats it for this edition of sophie and cohen ill see you next time. Someone else seems wrong. Just dont call. Any of these yet to shape our disdain become educated and gain treatment equals betrayal. When so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. Join me every week on the daleks so im unsure when ill be speaking to the world of politics or. Im sure ill see you then. Let her me