Where do they get these barmy ideas?

I have just read a curious post on Defend Marriage in Scotland concerning the Scottish Young People's Commissioner who wants boys to be allowed to wear skirts to school. What's the problem? I hear you ask. Scotsmen are different. Wearing what- to the rest of us- look like skirts is what they do. Nor do they look any the less manly for it- at least I don't think so. It is not, however, an appeal to the nation's cultural heritage which was the occasion of the commissioner's utterance. He is evidently concerned about those children who suffer on account of their belief in having been "born in the wrong body".

Now in case anyone should think that I am picking on a uniquely Scottish foible I must mention that there was an item on the Midlands television news recently about a child in Worcester suffering from- and clearly indulged in- the same delusion.

I wonder that noone has troubled to ask just one or two obvious questions. Firstly, if indeed it is the wrong body, how did you get into it? And, second, if it is the wrong body, how can surgically- and chemically- produced alterations to that same body make it the right body?

It also seems to me that those medical professionals who carry out such operations are profoundly dishonest. Will a man, who has had "gender reassignment treatment" ever conceive, carry a pregnancy and give birth? At the skeletal level men and women are different. Watch any of the archaeology programmes on television and when bones are discovered an osteo-archaeologist will confidently determine sex on the basis of obvious features. The pelvis, although not exclusively so, is kind of crucial here with the female pelvis being being wonderfully wrought to both cradle the developing baby and allow his/her passage into the outside world. Then there is the question of genes- or chromosomes. Will a man have all his Y chromosomes replaced with X-s? Who knows? Perhaps he will lose the ability to park a car!

That adults should be indulged in such absurd behaviour is bad enough but to encourage it in children is surely one of the worst kinds of abuse.