Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body

This book is a collection of essays about the current theory and practice of transgendering children. Essays are written against the grain of the popularised medical definition of ‘the transgender child’ as a young person whose ‘true’ gender lies in the brain, or pre-social ‘identity’. Contributors contest this diagnosis from a range of perspectives, including as social theorists, psychotherapists, persons living as transgender, individuals who have de-transitioned, and parents of adolescents identifying as transgender. They argue that medicine, social policy and the law build ideas about ‘the transgender child’, and contend that it is politics, not science, which accounts for the exponential rise in the number of children diagnosed as transgender by gender identity clinics. They conclude that today’s medical and social trend for transgendering children is not liberal and progressive, but politically reactionary, physically and psychologically dangerous and abusive.


Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans is a social theorist and philosopher with an interest in the work of Michel Foucault and in feminist philosophy and politics of the body. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at Kings College London. Having been an academic for nearly three decades, she now also works on national and international political agendas driving the rights of women and children. She is a Trustee of the charity FiLia, and co-ordinator of its Stop Violence against Women and Girls section. She is a commentator on TV and radio. Her latest book is The Sexualized Body and the Medical Authority of Pornography: Performing Sexual Liberation (2016).

Professor Michele Moore is Editor of the world-leading journal Disability & Society and an expert in the field of Inclusive Education. She works on developing inclusion in communities at local, regional, national and international levels. She leads consultative participatory human rights projects across the world to support children, their families and those who work with them. She has published widely on education, childhood and family life, disability and inclusion.

"The editors of this groundbreaking book, Helen Brunskell-Evans and Michele Moore, deserve both our congratulations and our gratitude for compiling such a comprehensive selection of arguments, which together provide an analysis of the complex phenomenon that falls under the term ‘trans’, an analysis that is very different from the narrative currently capturing the minds of young people and professionals alike."

(Melissa Midgen, Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 2018)

"This is a radical book, a courageous book, a necessary book and one that raises many uncomfortable questions about transgenderism and how society has responded to it, specifically with reference to children and young people. The authors have been prepared to put their careers and reputations on the line in the service of opening for discussion the points of view and experience of people who insist on thinking critically and voicing views and experiences that are extremely challenging to those promoting a ‘one size fits all’ approach to transgenderism."

(James Caspian, The Journal of Analytical Psychology 63/4 (2018))

"I recommend this book to anyone involved or interested in the current state of gender identity politics and policies. Teaching a chapter or two of this book would doubtlessly enliven gender classroom discussions."

(Leonore Tiefer, Psychology of Women Quarterly 42/3 (2018))

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-5275-0398-4

ISBN13: 978-1-5275-0398-4

Release Date: 9th November 2017

Pages: 244

Price: £61.99

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ISBN: 1-5275-0930-3

ISBN13: 978-1-5275-0930-6

Release Date: 22nd May 2018

Pages: 244

Price: £39.99

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