It’s completely rational for girls to want to be boys

I’ve always been perplexed why anyone lucky enough to be born male would want to swap sexes. But it seems completely rational to me that girls might rather be boys.

The UK’s recent High Court judgment that under-16s aren’t mature enough to give informed consent to puberty blockers highlighted the extraordinary switcheroo that has recently taken place in transgender clinics. Not only have diagnoses of gender dysphoria gone through the roof, but who wants to be what has reversed. A few years ago, nearly three-quarters of patients unhappy with their sex were male; now it’s almost exactly the other way around. So in this season of goodwill, I’d like to extend some genuine sympathy to all those underage girls desperate for puberty blockers.

Granted, I’m sceptical of the exploding demand for changing sex. A natural human inclination to envy, an understandable desire for simple answers to complex problems, increased medical capacity to revise what for 200,000 years was immutable and the unsettling power of social fashion have all combined to multiply what a decade ago was a tiny handful of folks profoundly alienated from their bodies. But know what? I’ve felt alienated from my body since I was 13. I can’t blame any teenage girl for experiencing the same ‘What the hell is this?’ as I did.

Male puberty presents its challenges. The voice cracking. The hairs sprouting (though pubic hair on boys isn’t considered gross; for girls these days, alas, anything follicular down there is horrifying). The acne — which girls get, too. Most of all, that wilful fifth limb, which grows in size and insistence and seems to have a mind of its own. Its scheming to make babies you probably don’t want yet must exert a terrible tyranny.

But puberty for girls is much more drastic, and thus more apt to induce a sensation of being trapped in an organism that is out of control and has nothing to do with you.