A startling story in the Daily Mail involving 17 students at a British school, many of them autistic, who have been convinced to change their gender.

The story does not say how old the students are, but even if they were high school age, the idea that impaired students would be tricked into changing their gender is beyond belief.

The story was given to the paper by a teacher they call Carol:

She was advised to keep parents and other teachers in the dark if a pupil claimed to be transgender;

Older pupils at her school who changed gender ‘groomed’ younger, mainly autistic students to do the same;

One autistic teenager is soon to have a double mastectomy;

Pupils who say they were born the wrong sex mimic transgender YouTube stars Carol believes are partly to blame for convincing vulnerable children they have gender dysphoria.

Last night, Conservative MP David Davies said: ‘I congratulate this teacher for coming out and telling us what I have long suspected has been going on in schools. It is horrendous that children are being encouraged by other pupils to identify as transgender, particularly if they have autism.

This is child abuse, pure and simple. Confusion about gender roles is actually fairly common at a young age, but just because a young boy plays with dolls or a young girl likes sports doesn't mean they have gender dysphoria. 

And what happened to the idea of "choosing" a gender? Even trans advocates have to be troubled by putting pressure on vulnerable children with autism to make the decision to alter their lives forever.

‘Parents are not told about this and there is no way of challenging these pupils who are convinced by others that they have a problem they almost certainly do not have. Tragically the end result could be irreversible surgical procedures. This is scandalous.’

The teacher, who has her own child, also believes many of those who say they are the wrong sex are simply gay but would face bullying if they were to ‘come out’. By contrast, she says, transgender children at the school are idolised by other pupils.

She has also raised concerns that many teachers are now too scared to challenge students’ claims they are transgender because they fear being sacked or sued for being transphobic.

The 17 pupils now identifying as transgender are following in the footsteps of a teenager who has now left the school and is planning a double mastectomy.

That student, who was born female, told Carol she wanted to identify as non-binary-a person – with no specific gender – in January 2014, at the age of 16 and two years after being diagnosed as autistic.

After consulting with her parents, the school agreed to change the student’s name on the register to one that was gender neutral. Teachers also agreed to use both male and female pronouns depending what gender the student identified as on any given day. 

Who can save us from this madness? If gender was that fungible, the human race would have died out tens of thousands of years ago. At the very least, trans humans 100,000 years ago would never have passed on their genes to the next generation. The notion of "transgenderism" - if it ever existed - would have disappeared very quickly.

So the entire transgender movement is a modern contrivance, having nothing to do with science. If adults want to play dress up and pretend to be a gender they are not, that is their right. But this "choosing one's gender" movement is now endangering the mental and physical health of children. Some high profile arrests and prosecutions would go a long way toward discouraging adults from indulging this ridiculous fantasy.