Ancient and Modern: Lucy Beney’s Talk from The Battle of Ideas
By Lucy Beney
The draft Conversion Practices Bill is completely at odds with child development
“He’s like a man you’d meet any place. Until you recognise that ancient face…”
From The Return of Pan – The Waterboys – Dream Harder, 1993.
The UK’s draft Conversion Practices Bill is extraordinary in many respects. One of the most striking differences from other legislation is its inclusion – as accepted fact – of various ‘identities’ and beliefs which hitherto have no legal definition, or even shared understanding, among the wider public.
This should come as no surprise, as declaring personal ‘identity’, or ‘identifying’ as something or someone, has become an increasingly common feature of everyday life.
However, the provisions of the draft Bill overlook some important truths – namely, child development and how an individual’s identity forms; how factors which historically have influenced identity, and rooted children, have weakened in recent decades; and, at the same time, how those peddling limited, newly-invented and ideological concepts of identity have had greater access to children in their formative years than ever before.
As a result, young people are now extremely vulnerable to ideological ‘grooming’. This is particularly dangerous where ‘gender identity’ ideology is concerned, because ‘trans’ identification can set children on a path towards irreversible modification of their healthy bodies and a lifetime of medical dependence.
Natural Identity Formation
A child’s identity starts to form at the very earliest age. Traditionally and historically, how children saw themselves, and learnt about themselves, was through the filter of family, the wider community and religious affiliation. A child’s identity is shaped by their life experiences, talents, personality, preferences, and the different environments and new relationships they enounter as they grow up.
Children have always faced challenges. Life has always presented individuals of all ages with heartbreak and upheaval, and destructive, misguided influences in the world are nothing new. Until relatively recently, though, most children had those solid, early foundations to underpin their lives, and to buffer them against the worst that could happen. As recently as twenty or thirty years ago, there was a general understanding that people of all ages are individuals, intrinsically valuable and always evolving. Everyone is shaped by personality and relationship, tempered by experience, triumph and disaster.
In recent decades, however, all those original influences on identity have weakened, or disappeared. The family, as traditionally understood, has imploded. There are children now who are unsure how many siblings – or even grandparents – they have. ‘Family’ is an ever-changing cast of characters, rather than a reliable team of which they are an integral part.
The days when everyone in a street or village knew each other and would look out for each other, are also largely a thing of the past. Neighbours can remain strangers for years. Many people don’t practise any faith, so have neither the community nor the comfort offered to all believers, of being intrinsically valuable as a ‘child of God’.
Built to connect, as human beings are – and initially, to establish who we are relationally – this is profoundly unsettling for children. These young people are going to be looking for connection, looking to belong, and looking for validation. They are ripe for the picking by any individual or group offering that comfort.
Labels, ‘Love’ and Lies
Just as this has been unfolding, there has been a concerted effort to put in the minds of children what could quite accurately be described as the “false creations of a heat oppressed brain”. These are the ever-expanding lists of newly-minted, imaginatively-invented genders and sexualities. Even quite young children at primary school have been introduced to ‘the genderbread person’, a cartoon, anthropomorphised biscuit that explains a completely false concept – that of ‘gender identity’ – and sows the seed in a child’s mind that they might have been ‘born in the wrong body’.
These ideas, resting on a toxic mixture of regressive stereotypes and adult sexual fantasy, are likely to unsettle the mind of the most stable and happy child. For lonely, confused and hurting children, they are enormously destructive.
Anyone who has spent any time with children understands that a little person can be a train driver in the morning, perform veterinary surgery on their fluffy toys at lunchtime and before bedtime, be every part the disco diva. To exploit a child’s tendency to live in the moment, to take things literally, to gravitate towards the magical and to believe that ‘all things are possible’ is a grotesque abuse of childhood innocence.
A separate question is seldom asked, but needs urgently to be addressed: what lies behind the focus on sexuality and ‘gender’ in school programmes ostensibly related to ‘identity’ and ‘diversity’? It has resulted in an unhealthy, early focus on sexual matters among children, and a reduction of the intricate, nuanced tapestry of their evolving identity, to labels invented by those who evidently do not have the long-term wellbeing and safeguarding of young people uppermost in their minds.
The Power of Puberty
Adolescence is the point at which reality starts to take shape in a child’s life. Of course, young people retain dreams and fantasies about the life they would like to lead and the person they could become, but this starts to be grounded in reality. Puberty is a whole body and brain process, and is vital for healthy adult functioning – body, mind, and spirit.
It is interesting that there are still ‘gender identity’ advocates and activists – and even some misguided medics – who seem keen to prevent puberty from happening in ‘gender confused’ children. They reduce puberty to the emergence of distressing secondary sexual characteristics, conveniently – or perhaps intentionally – overlooking the maturation of the mind, and the body more widely. The principle of ‘first do no harm’ should make it unthinkable to lock a young person in a form of suspended childhood indefinitely, but, strangely enough, a government-sanctioned trial, which will do just this, is about to begin.
Now, there are children who are ‘untethered’ by traditional ties, who have found a ‘tribe’ among those offering the label of immediate belonging, a ‘glitter family’ to take the place of their own relatives and a way to escape what they perceive as the pain and pressure of imminent adulthood. Many of these young people have witnessed domestic violence; some have suffered developmental trauma; a large number will have been exposed to pornography; many will have received a diagnosis of neurodivergence; and the majority have experienced same-sex attraction. What unites them is a wholehearted belief in a fantasy escape from the reality of growing up.
This should concern everyone who cares about the future of these children. Rather than carelessly ‘affirming’ them in this ‘over valued belief’, these young people need to be able to tell their story, to be heard, and to be challenged gently and over time, about the meaning they have drawn from their experiences and relationships.
Working Ethically with Young People
Working with children and young people is different from working with adults. This lack of differentiation – and consideration for child development – in the draft Conversion Practices Bill is an astonishing oversight.
Fears and uncertainties over growing up need to be taken into account, and sensitively addressed.
As adolescence progresses, children also naturally try out different ideas, and ‘try on’ different identities and ways of being. By this stage, influences include peers and popular culture, along with social media and gaming. Sociogenic phenomena are not unusual – sometimes whole friendship groups ‘turn trans’. In the current climate, young people can be very certain that they have a particular ‘gender identity’ – until suddenly they are not. The group moves on, new labels come along. Sometimes, there is a good deal of anxiety generated about making the ‘right’ choice.
The unsatisfactory outcome of putting all these ideas into children’s heads is that, quite often, when a therapist asks a young person about himself or herself at a first meeting, the young person will reduce their entire character and life experience to a series of arbitrary labels. They will say, “Well, I’m non-binary, I’ve got ADHD, OCD, and my mum thinks I have anger issues”.
The thoughtful therapeutic response should be, “That wasn’t what I was asking. Please tell me about yourself – what you like, what interests you. Tell me about family, your friends, your pets”. Because of ‘trans exceptionalism’, however, much of this is seen as irrelevant, despite the ability to work with the story being a key component of therapy. There is always a reason why a child is uncomfortable with their body, or rejects their body. Sometimes this manifests as anorexia, or as self-harm – at other times, in this desire to escape the reality of the sexed body.
The Story is Everything
When there is time and opportunity to explore the back story fully, a skilled therapist will quickly find clues about what is going on.
There will be the girl who doesn’t want to grow up because she has witnessed domestic or sexual violence; she fears becoming her mother, and rather than rejecting that violence, she rejects the ‘weakness’ of being female.
Pornography plays a huge role in ‘trans’ identification, for both boys and girls. Young women exposed to violent and degrading images will say, “If that is what being an adult woman means – forget it. I can protect myself by becoming non-binary, because then I can stay in fairyland and I can be a glitter person”. Boys, who may have grown up with a single mother, or with sisters, look at pornography and think, “I’m not ever doing that to a woman. If this is what being a man is, maybe I am not one. I certainly don’t want to be one”.
It is essential to listen to the story, talk about what is happening and look at different ways of framing a young person’s experience. It is then possible to offer an alternative explanation, walk through darkness beside them and show them a different way forward. Without being able to do this, there’s very little chance either of addressing their underlying distress, or of preventing them from walking down a pathway unlike any other – and taking decisions which will actually ruin their long-term health, their chances of growing up, of having a fulfilling sexual relationship, and of having a family of their own one day.
The idea that no ‘gender identity’ is preferable to another is absurd. Bringing peace and healing to the mind, within a healthy and whole body must always be preferable to mutilating the body to address an issue in the mind.
Happy About Hippos
Early on in my professional work with young people, I adopted the analogy of watching a hippo largely submerged in a river. When first spotted, all that is visible are the ears, eyes and snout.
But under the water there’s more to explore –
Who I really am, all that’s happened before.
Initially, it is only possible to see what the animal chooses to reveal – everything else about it is mysterious, and there to be uncovered in the course of time. Likewise, nobody is just comprised of a handful of obvious markers, or labels. There is always more to explore.
The hippo needs time to show itself, and to understand how it may be better suited to some environments than others. For example, the hippo may be ungainly on the riverbank, but is beautifully graceful in the water. Hippos can be cute and cuddly soft toys – but the hippo is one of the most dangerous animals in the world when crossed. This illustrates how it is possible to be several, often contradictory things at once. Life is complex, and our identities are continually evolving.
Stuck When the Wind Changes
Under the provisions of this draft Bill, so much of this delicate process will be threatened. Distressed children will effectively be ‘fixed’ at a point in time. The identity with which they present must be taken at face value – however absurd it may be, and however frequently it changes. It is not uncommon for young people to identify as animals or fantasy figures, and sometimes names and pronouns change on an almost weekly basis as part of a desperate search for somewhere to belong.
Often, this will happen at a time when their feelings about themselves are most fluid and uncertain, and they are experimenting with ideas. This is where young people need ‘containment’; they need to be challenged gently, and they need adults to say “No, that isn’t true”, or “No, that isn’t right”. Adults in their lives – professionally or personally – have a responsibility to guide and to lead, and to help young people discern reality from fantasy.
It would appear that the Bill was drafted by people who either deliberately ignored the realities of family life, or who have little or no experience of it. Frequently, other children are involved. It would be entirely unreasonable to expect them to go along with the vagaries of a sibling’s chosen identity, or a classmate’s particular pronouns – and face criminal sanction for saying they don’t believe the young person is what, or who, they say they are. It is very easy, in the heat of the moment, to accuse a family member of being ‘transphobic’ and denying an adopted ‘identity’ – but under the provisions of this draft bill, that could be construed as an offence.
True Believers
To conclude, this Bill intrudes into the most intimate spaces of family life to enforce a belief system. Its proponents say that this is progressive – but it is, in fact, the opposite. It is highly incompatible with the freedom of thought and belief that we have enjoyed in this country for centuries, and the enlightened, rational society which our ancestors built.
This proposed law, in fact, privileges something very ancient – a belief system which demands total adherence; which outlaws dissent and punishes heresy; that requires mortification of the flesh for true believers; and which willingly sacrifices children.
It represents the most grotesque abandonment of some of the most vulnerable young people in our society. These children need someone to listen, to walk alongside them, to help them make sense of a frightening and confusing world, and to accept them as they are. Instead, we propose remaking them in their own distorted image, as drug-dependent, cosmetic approximations of people they can never be.
It is an utter disgrace. This bill must be stopped before any more young lives are torn apart.
“From the olden days and up through all the years,
From Arcadia to the stone fields of Inisheer;
Some say the gods are just a myth,
But guess who I’ve been dancing with…”
From The Return of Pan – The Waterboys – Dream Harder, 1993.
See the entire talk here
Lucy Beney is a qualified therapist experienced in working with children, young people and parents across private practice, primary schools and five years as a counsellor in a large state secondary school. She is children’s correspondent for Save Mental Health and sits on the steering committee of Thoughtful Therapists, which seeks to protect ethical practice in the psychological professions from queer theory and gender ideology.
Her report “Suffer the Children – Why having a ‘mental health professional’ in every school” is not the answer was published in June 2025 by the Family Education Trust, and she has joined the advisory group for the citizens’ assembly of Start Strong, which aims to make early childhood needs a national priority. Lucy also publishes on Substack.
Submit Your Comments
The Joint Committee on the Draft Conversion Practices Bill is accepting written evidence until 5pm on Monday 16 November 2026. Anyone can submit—individuals or organisations—and you don’t need to answer every question.
Read the full call for evidence here, and submit your comments.
Accepted submissions are normally published, so leave out personal contact details you wouldn’t want made public. For technical problems, email draftbills@parliament.uk
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