Why do so many girls in Blackpool want to become boys?

In this run-down, working class seaside resort, rife with child abuse and poverty, referrals to gender clinics are almost four times higher than the national average. Why?

When Janice*, a schoolteacher in Blackpool, first encountered transgender ideology it was from a group of 11-year-old girls.

‘My class was lovely,’ she says. ‘The girls were straight from primary school, and not bothered as yet about their appearances or interested in boys. But even before they reached puberty, some of them started going on about how they weren’t girls and that they wanted to be called ‘Ben’ or Luke’ or whatever.’

Janice was told that one of the girls claiming to be trans had looked online and found one of the several charities in Blackpool that claim to support ‘trans-children’ as young as ten. The charities are local to Lancashire, and rely on funding from the Lottery Fund, and local and national government. Some will have contact with schools, and will provide advice to teachers regarding ‘trans students’.

There are many wonderful things about Blackpool, such as the party atmosphere, its mile long golden beach, and the iconic Ballroom, celebrated every year in a dedicated episode of Strictly Come Dancing.

But it is also a town mired in deep problems. It is one of the poorest in England. It has three times the national average of children-in-care. And, in a way that I believe is linked, it is home to well over 800 high-risk convicted sex offenders. It was from Blackpool, too, that the highest number of sexual offences were referred to the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales last year.

There is another statistic – again not unrelated to some of the above, I believe – that makes Blackpool stand out from similar sized towns elsewhere in the UK. The number of referrals - from Blackpool GPs and local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services - to the Gender Identity Clinic based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, and with a satellite branch in Leeds, is almost four times higher than the national average.

GIDS has been beset with problems since it began to be scrutinised by parents and campaigners that were concerned about its practice of ‘instant affirmation’ of children presenting to them with unease about their bodies. An independent review concluded that the service be closed by Spring 2023 and replaced with regional services. The treatment of gender dysphoric children will be integrated within other paediatric mental health services to ensure the same standards of care as for any other child accessing mental health care services. The separation of gender dysphoria into a specialist area has led to the profound failings of a service which has replaced normal levels of care with a fast-track medical transition service for ‘trans kids.’

The number of girls wishing to become boys is particularly high.

In the last 10 years gender clinics in the U.K. have seen a 4,400% increase in teen girls presenting as transgender. Prior to about 2006, most adolescents presenting with gender dysphoria were males.

This might come as a surprise to those with a passing interest in this subject. After all, the voices we usually hear on the trans issue belong to upper- and middle-class kids raised in liberal families.

But these figures are not surprising to those of us who follow the pattern of child referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). In 2010/11, 16 referrals were recorded in the North West. But a year later that figure had rocketed to 78.

Curious to see why this crumbling seaside town appears set to become the trans-child capital of Britain, I travel to Blackpool to meet with professionals and activists that might be able to shed a light.

One of the first things I note is that there appears to be a very receptive local press in Blackpool when it comes to reporting on trans issues, in particular children who seek to change sex.

In 2021, the Blackpool Gazette ran a story on Jacob, 30, and his ten-year wait for hormone treatment on the NHS. Jacob, who had ‘come to terms with his transgender identity when he was just 12-years-old, but hid the truth from his family and friends due to fear of rejection and violence’, had lived as male for nearly a decade and changed his name by deed poll in 2016.

Then in May 2022, the paper featured 22-year-old Colby who ‘came out’ as trans aged 16. Colby was crowdfunding £3,500 in order to pay for a double mastectomy in Turkey, having been on the NHS waiting list for this ‘treatment’ for five years.

‘Top surgery is a type of gender-affirming reconstructive surgery to remove breast tissue. It is available on the NHS, however waiting lists extend for up to two years for some surgeons,’ reads the article in the Blackpool Gazette.

Within weeks, Colby had reached their target with one supporter writing on the page: ‘So many people are so incredibly proud of you and we are with you every step of this journey. Keep being the positive inspiration that you are Colby!!! YEEEEET THE TITTTTTS!! Xx”, which means the removal of Colby’s breasts.

In July 2022, another story appeared in Gazette about a crowdfunding appeal for Perry, who had ‘come out’ as a trans boy aged 14 to raise £9,000 for a double mastectomy. Notably, all of the above are girls transitioning to boys.

Nic, a 17 year old from Blackpool, tried transitioning when she was 15 years old.' I was unhappy at home, I hated myself, I was being bullied both in the house and at school, and wanted to runaway. Instead, I decided to create a completely new persona for myself, and decided to start dressing as a boy, and demanded that the teachers and oh the students referred to me as' Lucas'. It didn't last very long because it was obvious I wasn't serious, but the teachers all ran around after me as though I was something special. It felt nice for awhile.'

What is it about Blackpool that has led to such a spike in referrals of girls wishing to transition? Could it be that many of these girls have been subject to sexual violence and exploitation. It is a very grim thought, but could the sex offending rates here mean girls are choosing literally to erase their sex in order to get away from a pervasive culture of abuse?

Until recently, Barbara* worked as a paediatric nurse in Blackpool. ‘In the past two or three years, I came across at least one girl who was saying she was either trans or non-binary during every shift,’ she says. ‘And all of them had been abused or mistreated is some way.’

Barbara calls their desire to transition from girl to boy a form of ‘abandoning’ their bodies. The tragedy is that the current fashion for quickly ‘affirming’ children’s apparent desire to transition means we are failing to look for the real reasons for it.

‘The more commonplace it is, the less compassion and empathy there will be for these girls,’ says Barbara. ‘As identifying as transgender becomes as common as a broken bone, medical professions will be less likely to see it as anything significant, or to look for the underlying causes of girls wishing to abandon their own bodies.’

Barbara tells me about one patient, a 14-year-old girl who ‘100 per cent had been sexually abused’. Barbara says: ‘She had self-harming scars, refused to take her hoodie off, and crossed her arms over her chest to hide her breasts. She demanded to be referred to as “they/them”.’

Another girl, aged 15, was suicidal and had been admitted after she had overdosed. ‘She was threatening to jump out of the window, and had a male name which she insisted we use. This was a damaged child, but no-one examined what was going on for her that meant she wanted to become a boy,’ says Barbara.

‘It’s a real warning sign when girls hate their bodies so much that they want to have healthy body parts removed.’

The latest data on sexual violence and exploitation in Blackpool makes for seriously sober reading. Research by Victim Support Lancashire shows that, in 2021-22, the number of sexual violence referrals increased by 27 per cent to 2,685 – the highest number since the service began in 2017. Of those, 521 referrals were for young victims of sexual abuse.

My theory is that girls want to opt out of being female in order to escape all this. It sounds like something out of a dystopian novel – a state of affairs so cruel and wicked it couldn’t possibly be true - but the clues are all there if only we’d look for them.

For example, two thirds of referrals to the three gender clinics that cater to children in the UK (aside from GIDS in Leeds and London there is also the Sandyford Clinic in Glasgow) are from teenage girls with no history of gender dysphoria – that is, feeling as though their body does not reflect who they are – before puberty. This is a fact noted by the campaigning group Transgender Trend, whose membership comprises British parents, professionals and academics who are concerned about the current fashion to diagnose children as transgender.

And yet we are often told that boys who want to be girls have had this ‘feeling’ since birth. Why should it be different for girls?

Not everyone agrees with my theory. Carolyn Mercer is a 75-year-old transwoman who was Chair of Lancashire LGBT, and one of the original members of the Stonewall Trans Advisory Group. Mercer is a retired secondary school teacher who has identified as a woman since 2002. I ask him what he thinks about the Blackpool referral figures to GIDS, and tell him my theory about high levels of sexual abuse and poverty being drivers for girls wanting to opt out of being female.

‘Is it possible that some girls in those circumstances are encouraged, enticed internally to feel it might be safer to live as boys? Probably yes. Is it the case for all girls? No.’

We talk over fish and chips with the sound of gulls permeating our conversation.

‘Going through any kind of gender reassignment surgery is lengthy, traumatic, can be painful, stigmatised, all of those things,’ says Mercer. ‘So we know that girls aren’t going to choose this unless they really mean it.’

Yet only a tiny percentage go through surgical intervention, opting instead for puberty blockers which inevitably, in almost all cases, lead to them taking cross-sex hormones such as testosterone, a powerful drug with irreversible effects, such as a gruff voice, beard, vaginal atrophy (thinning, drying and inflammation of the vaginal wall) and infertility.

In 2012, GIDS took the decision to prescribe them to children as young as 10 (down from 15) presenting with ‘gender dysphoria’, although, with the closure announced and the service winding down its practice, it is thought to be unlikely any children are currently being started on such a course of action.

I think it is also highly relevant that children in care are over-represented at GIDS, and that many of them have complex mental health histories prior to referral, and many have been in and out of the care system. These girls will be in contact with social workers – one of the groups of professionals that, according to evidence, is enraptured by transgender ideology.

‘I never came into contact with any girls who wished to become boys until the past three or four years,’ says Audrey*, a senior social worker in Blackpool who has worked with ‘dozens’ of under 18-year-olds in local authority care.

‘But recently, I have been inundated with girl after girl telling me they are boys and insisting I say “he”. Every single one of these girls has been sexually exploited. Most have been brought up in chaos. There has to be a connection.’

‘This town is a hotbed of child sexual abuse and violence,’ says Audrey. ‘But we have more training on trans stuff, such as the language to use, and how we should never question anyone who is demanding to be addressed as the opposite sex, but rather just go along with it.’

Audrey tells me she is ‘upset’ that more time and effort appears to be put into what language should be used about trans people than how to identify sexual predators, and other pressing matters when it comes to child protection.

‘In my view, this is a disgrace of epic proportion. We are sacrificing the safety and well-being of our most vulnerable children at the altar of extreme trans activism.’

*Some names have been changed