Transgender Trend is thrilled to announce that our founder and director, Stephanie Davies-Arai, has been awarded a British Empire Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to children.
This award is well deserved. Stephanie has always put the welfare of children, and their right to grow into healthy young adults at the forefront of everything she does.
She began to be interested in the spread of ideas about being transgender after seeing a number of articles appearing in the press about young children being ‘transitioned’ in schools.
Stephanie was at that time working as a communication skills trainer in education, publishing her book Communicating with Kids in 2012. Her experience of working in a primary school for eight years, working with parents and teachers for over twenty years and bringing up four children of her own informed her concerns about the sudden phenomenon of ‘transgender children’ and the lack of any debate on the subject. This led her to set up Transgender Trend in 2015.
Transgender Trend is now the UK’s leading organisation calling for evidence-based healthcare for children and young people and for factual science-based teaching in schools. It is an invaluable resource for parents and professionals worried about the teaching of gender identity theory in schools and for those seeking evidence-based information about treatment and approach towards children with gender-related distress.
Stephanie was the first person to make the link between what children were learning on social media and being taught at school with the rapid increase in the numbers of children attending the Tavistock GIDS clinic. She wrote about the way gender identity, an unverified belief, was being taught as more important than biological sex. She argued that it was not possible to be ‘born in the wrong body.’
Since then she has written about the experimental nature of puberty blockers, documented the unprecedented rise in the number of teenage girls believing they were boys, published ground-breaking research into the failings at the Tavistock and called for children with gender distress to be treated to the same standards of care as any other patient group.
Her expertise was acknowledged when she was granted permission by the High Court to intervene in the Keira Bell & Mrs A v Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust judicial review on behalf of the claimant.
Her work was vindicated by the Interim Report of the Cass Review [1] which echoed many of the concerns raised by Transgender Trend since it was set up. More recent vindication was the announcement of an urgent inquiry by Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, into hormone treatments for children with gender distress.
Stephanie’s work on Transgender Trend has exposed the political and ideological nature of school resources and policies offered by LBGT groups. Transgender Trend has shown how these groups teach unscientific facts about sex and gender, mislead schools about the law and misrepresent the Equality Act 2010.
Transgender Trend has published its own transgender guidance for schools which is in line with the law and Department for Education guidance. For this Stephanie was shortlisted in 2018 for the John Maddox Prize, a joint initiative by Sense about Science and the journal Nature, which recognises those who promote sound science and evidence as a matter of public interest, while facing difficulty or hostility in doing so.
Everything Stephanie does is guided by the same principle, that children should be taught about their growing bodies in a truthful, factual way and that those who suffer gender distress should get the best, evidenced-based care on offer, just like any other child seeking medical treatment. Her work and ideas are now getting the public acknowledgement they deserve.
Stephanie says:
“I am very proud to receive this honour in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, as founder of Transgender Trend for services to children, and I am grateful to those who nominated me.
To me this is not only vindication of my work over the past seven years. This is recognition for all the parents who have been vilified for simply wanting a proper standard of care for their children. It is confirmation that their concerns are valid and not born of bigotry. My hope is that this honour will give all parents more confidence in challenging a system that is failing children and in holding schools to account for teaching their children non-scientific concepts as truth.
Everyone who cares about the safeguarding and wellbeing of children welcomes open debate and exchange of views. Tactics to silence debate create fear of speaking up and puts children at risk. I am proud to have played my part in facilitating discussion about the treatment of children who experience gender-related distress and I am honoured to have my work recognised as being in the service of children.”
[1] https://cass.independent-review.uk/
Wonderful news! So well deserved.
What fantastic news!!!
I’m so proud of you.
Thank you for all you have done.
Well deserved
Congratulations, so well desserved. you did it for the UK, but your work has reach the world. You have served the children of the world.
This is such a great news! Also, +1000, thank you for your work, Stephanie!
So impressive, so well deserved -Your work has meant more than you know. Thank you so very much!
You are my hero and a hero to parents and children throughout the world – please keep being the courageous, intelligent force you are. Well deserved.
Congratulations!
I cried when I read this.
So many bottled up feelings of fear.
I am so, so grateful to you and people like you.
As a woman, as mother, as a grandmother, thank you.
How brilliant is this!!! Congrats, Stephanie!
I knew I made the right decision moving to the UK to raise my child.
A country that recognizes the hard work women do to ensure their kids aren’t manipulated by media influence in school is something to be proud of.
Such important recognition of an amazing person who has persisted in face of criticism to achieve such important changes in public opinion.
Wonderful news to wake up to. So well deserved.
Congratulations on receiving your award. The irony is not lost on me that our children need safeguarding from some of the policies put in place by the one place where they should be safest: at school.
We’ll deserved and hard won. Excellent news.
Many congratulations, Stephanie. You thoroughly deserve this honour.
Well done Stephanie! Absolutely brilliant news that finally you and your team are being recognised for all your hard work.
Congratulations! Fantastic news and very well-deserved.
Great news. Congratulations Stephanie.
You speak for so many of us.
A well-earned recognition for a courageous and prophetic voice
Great news and congratulations Stephanie Davies-Arai.
Congratulations, Steph. This is an honour well-deserved. You must not succumb to what is apparently an orchestrated blackmail by a ‘powerful’ segment that would stop at nothing to drown your voice, neither should you ever give up on what you believe is best for our children. Importantly, rest assured that a lot of us out here share your concerns about the huge and unblinking disinformation related to gender dysphoria and your determination to help flatten that curve in pursuit of the best interests of not only children and young persons but also the larger society.
Hats off to you, Steph!
Angus McAngus
Congratulations and thank you so much for all your hard work on behalf of our children and grandchildren.
Fantastic achievement, many congratulations. You have given us a voice
Absolutely fantastic…and so well deserved! I congratulate and salute you for speaking out skilfully and couragesly at a time of (mostly) collecive madness. We need strong women to speak out… and you’re certainly one of us. Thank you!!
Congratulations. And it occurs to me that while the Queen is famously apolitical, I believe she personally approves these honours and I consider it very likely that this is a bit of symbolic backing for your position on the transgender issue (will anyone at Stonewall also be getting decorated this year?). It is very hard to go against the herd, this honour is well deserved.
Brilliant news and very well deserved. We need more people like you to challenge the misinformation that certain groups, with their own agendas, are trying to introduce to children experiencing varying degrees of body dysphoria.
Fantastic news and so deserved!!!
Many congratulations. Unusually, this is a case where justice has been done and provides some hope that the tide is turning against the mass delusions associated with gender ideology.
You are a champion. Well deserved, honour. Very many thanks from parents who are inspired by you to keep speaking truth. We will not give up.
So well deserved. After all your toil for the most worthy of worthy causes – protecting our children from predators – you deserve a damehood.
Terrific news! You are a light in the world, shining hope and good sense. God bless Stephanie and all at Transgender Trend!
you are HEROIC. we THANK YOU for your lifesaving work.
This is fantastic Stephanie – no one deserves this honor from the Queen more than you do. From Partners for Ethical Care (across the pond) – Congratulations!
This is the best news of the entire Jubilee. I discovered this website via a news article about Stephanie’s award, and am jubilant (!) to have found you. I have my own lived experiences which convince me this madness has to stop and we need to give children the trauma-informed care they truly need. I’ve been too scared to speak out about this issue for fear of being labelled ‘anti-trans’. You have inspired me. These are the voices we need. Keep going, I will join you! Eleanor @ Eyes On Trauma
Congratulations. Well deserved recognition.