Show Notes
Maryann's 15-year-old daughter is currently deep in the grip of a delusion that she is a boy. She, along with some of her friends, has been like that for two years already, but Maryann, a no-nonsense mother from working-class Dublin, has made absolutely clear to her little girl that she was having none of it - no binders, no hormones, no fake names. She was the second Irish woman I had met who had a daughter in this situation (the other mother's child desisted, thankfully) and I think her testimony is useful for others who are perhaps under the impression that the ROGD phenomenon is not affecting Irish kids. Maryann agreed to talk to me because she is starting to feel really desperate. She has lost some of the fear that speaking out would alienate her daughter and make the situation worse (you hear about this ever-present fear often from women in the same situation). She said something during our interview that I really hadn't considered before: I assumed that the biggest threat to these girls (and, less obviously, boys) was that as they approach 18, they would be scheming and planning to procure hormones and surgeries for the moment they are beyond the legal guardianship of their parents (they "hit the ground running," as I've heard Stella O'Malley describe it). And yes, that danger is very real; there is an Irish Facebook group for dysphoric girls and it is full of "trans mascs" and "non-binary" girls arranging for the day they turn 18 and can start shopping for GPs, endocrinologists and psychiatrists who will grant them their diagnoses and T shots. One of the most popular discussions revolves around plans to fly abroad, most often to Spain, Poland, Greece and Lithuania, to get their breasts removed. Madrid is home to the most popular (read: cheapest, closest, and least scrupulous) plastic surgeon, Dr Jesus Lago, who will operate on young women without a psychiatric diagnosis. Dr Lago and his "informed consent" grift is such a hit among Irish trans youth that someone even set up a separate Facebook group called "Dr Jesus Lago's Disciples", where you can learn all about the procedure and recovery, and check out all the gruesome healing scars and choose which "style" of nipple placement is your fave. You can also find out where to get a decent Air BnB, and all about the public transport and sightseeing options near the clinic. Dr Lago does a roaring trade among young autistic Irish lesbians. Not dystopian at all. Irish patients often discuss paying for these procedures with financial help from the cross-border directive, an EU-derived law that allows patients to claim insurance reimbursement for surgical procedures not available at home, whether because they are not carried out or because the waiting list is too long. There are indeed surgeons who will carry out mastectomies on young Irish women convinced they are men, but they seem to require a doctor's sign-off, according to the members in the Facebook group. But Maryann's daughter is only 15, so all of that is a long way off, surely. There are a whole three years left for her to snap back to reality, saving her from Dr Lago's butchering block - a promising potential luxury that mothers of 17-year-olds don't have. Surely, then, there's nothing immediate to worry about? But what does it do to a child, during one of the most important stages of her brain and identity development, to be plugged into a deep-set delusion - for years - that she is the opposite sex? To be convinced that she is moving through the world in the incorrect body, and that her parents are evil for not seeing it, for not accepting it, and for not making an effort to help her "fix" nature's error? This is what scares Maryann, and it's what reduces her to tears. What state will her little girl's mental health be in if and when she crashes? What is happening inside her poor, confused, vulnerable brain? Why is her school, the state, the media, corporations, the entire non-profit sector colluding to
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