It takes a village to sterilise a child

Like all historical reckonings, one day we will say “but everybody knew”

Image courtesy of charcoal soul

Everybody knew.

The people lining the parade route. The CEO on the float. The women’s rights campaigners who railed against “period poverty” to distract you from the cross-dressing man on their executive board. The politician who called frantic mothers bigots. The café owner who cancelled their event. The investigative journalist who ignored their emails.

The doctor who didn’t question the girl’s binder scars during a routine pulmonary checkup. The director who hired a live-in female nurse for his elderly mother while piloting mixed-sex hospital wards. The human resources manager who hounded everyone to sign up for pronoun training and then terfed out, in a whisper, to her girlfriend over dinner.

The autism campaigner who took money from the Arcus Foundation. The ministers who blocked you on Twitter. The minister who stood beside the activist holding the sign. The minister who held the sign. The minister who signed.

The gynaecologist who used male pronouns while booking the lesbian teenager’s hysterectomy in the hospital CRM software. The Facebook moderator who banned a mother for wondering if it’s just a phase. The retailer who imported corsets in boys size ages 8-10. The accountant who audited the philanthropist’s transgender toddlers grants. Her office assistants.

The teacher who put pink and blue bunting around the classroom. The teacher next door who was horrified but kept it to herself. The school principal who retired early instead. The editor who commissioned a puff piece on the butcher of TikTok. The editors who ignored pitches on the 90% autism figure. The newspaper that published “The most popular girls’ names of 2022” on the day the Scottish parliament made it easier for child molesters to hide from the sex offenders’ registry. The party’s social media manager who hid the replies.

The bureaucrat who ignored the emails about eunuchs. The health technology assessor who recommended reimbursing gamete-freezing for 9-year-olds, before immediately cutting her own daughter’s internet access in horror. The assistant who took the minutes of the meeting.

The midwives who plunked newborns on the chests of mothers with no breasts. The javascript developer who kept adding more options to the gender drop-down menu box. The Proctor and Gamble graphic designer who created the puberty materials for German schools.

The childhood development expert who watched in shock as sexting was added to the school curriculum for 9-year-olds. The editor of the peer-reviewed bioethics journal. The peer reviewers. The proofreader. The psychiatrist who met the unstable patient over an unstable internet connection and immediately wrote a recurring prescription. The pharmacist who said nothing about the increasing number of GenderGP prescriptions, the ones with a Hong Kong address.

The government-funded support group that told anorexic lesbians where to get testosterone in a shortage, due to the rise in demand. The pharmaceutical distributor who noticed the rise in demand. The warehouse workers who stacked the boxes.

The children’s rights NGO with the “evolving funding strategy” and their sudden realisation that sex reassignment for kids was protected under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The surgeon who removed the girls’ nipples with a scalpel, placed them to one side, removed all the breast tissue, and then sewed the nipples back onto the girls’ chests. The anaesthesiologist, the porter, the nurse who changed the girl’s bandages. The nurse’s best mate, her neighbours, her extended family. 

Everybody.