A disgruntled comment on YouTube under my latest talk, during which I said very plainly that transgender children do not exist, contained this supposed gotcha:
"The idea that transgender children do not exist flies in the face of reality, since we know that transgender adults do exist.
How do we then explain their existence?"
Simple. Transgender adults don't exist either. At least not in the sense that would require the existence of transgender children.
There are many adults alive today who make sense of their lives through the political label of transgender.
They may be autogynephilic men aroused by the fantasy of being women, who prefer the label transgender because it allows them to hide their erotic motivations.
They may be transvestites, aroused simply by wearing women's clothing.
They may be extremely gender-nonconforming homosexuals who medicalise as a way to blend in and be invisible.
Or they may fall into that broad category who adopt the currently fashionable label of trans because it makes sense of their struggles and offers them a medical solution.
Clearly, not one of those categories could ever be applied to children.
The reply actually makes clear the danger of pretending that trans is a healthy, innate variation of human existence rather than rooted in paraphilic desires and mental disorder.
So I stand by my statement: There is no such thing as a transgender child. I will die on this hill.