Cash and chromosomes

Good Friday in Melbourne has certainly changed. Once, as late as the long-ago Seventies, the city and its suburbs simply shut down for the day — no traffic, no shopping, no footy, no pubs, no nothing but church services for those so inclined. These days, well North Melbourne battled Carlton (if only for the first two quarters) at Docklands, you were able get whatever and a sausage at Bunnings, and the roads were perhaps just, and only just, a little less clogged than normal. But despite all the changes one thing has remained constant, the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal.

As always, volunteers solicited donations at stop lights, 3AW and Channel 7 did remote broadcasts from the tally room and the success of the appeal — a record $23 million raised — is today (April 8) hailed in the Herald Sun‘s Saturday edition with pics of sick kids and feel-good stories of Victorians’ generosity, the selflessness of RCH’s medicos and the gratitude of parents whose kids are having their health and lives set right. My son, who had the annoying habit of turning blue at inopportune moments, spent much of his early life in and out of hospitals, so I get it.  There is something especially poignant about sick children, be they your own or another’s, so I’ve always slung the traffic-light collectors a few bucks.

This year, though, those loose notes stayed in my shirt pocket.

My problem isn’t the RCH, which does sterling work overall. It’s the presence, activity and guiding philosophy of just one unit, the Adolescent Gender Service. You see, there’s a great irony here — a matter of funding priorities and, given the hand-over-fist growth in “adolescent gender dysphoria” diagnoses, fashion as well.

While karate clubs held sponsored chop-a-thons, football clubs chipped in their pie-night proceeds and all those traffic-island volunteers rattled their tins, a donation almost as large as that raised yesterday had long since been consigned to just one RCH unit courtesy of Victoria’s taxpayers and Premier Daniel Andrews.  Yes, the Gender Service clinic, which in conjunction with Monash Medical Centre’s gender clinic for those older than 16, was gifted $21 million in the state’s 2021 Budget. This was part of a $45 million total package intended to bolster “services and slashing treatment wait times for transgender Victorians”.

“Treatment”, eh?

As John Whitehall writes in the latest Quadrant:

… recognising the trouble an immature brain can inflict on its holder (and others), the legal age for consensual sex is at least sixteen: for driving, sixteen; for joining the army, seventeen; and for drinking alcohol and for gambling, eighteen.

In contrast, in guidelines from the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne[3], there is no age limit for the administration of so-called “affirmation therapy” of a confused child to a gender incongruent with chromosomes. For example, if a child with male chromosomes believes he is a girl, there are no age limits on social affirmation, and on the administration of “puberty blockers”, or of “cross-sex hormones” in pursuit of similitude with the opposite gender.

The Whitehall essay can be read in full here. But sensitive readers be warned: many will find the pictures of mutilated little girls deeply distressing.

As to the Royal Children’s Hospital next fund-raising appeal, my wallet will stay sealed while the gender clinic remains  part of an otherwise fine institution.

— roger franklin