Last month, the youngest ever man to have a ‘gender reassignment’ operation in the UK decided he wanted the procedure reversed. 

The 18-year-old, who was formerly known as Brad Cooper, and now known as Ria, had been having hormone injections to make him look like a woman.

Now Brad/Ria says the hormone treatment has led to violent mood swings and his change has alienated him from his family.

Commenting on the story for the Daily Mirror, child psychologist Karen Sherr said that it was “absolutely ludicrous for young kids to make such huge life-changing decisions”.

She added: “Children need to be allowed to grow into adults before they go through with something like a sex change because, as this case shows, at that age you don’t know yourself well enough.”

Other medical experts have questioned the whole area of so-called sex change operations, no matter what the age of the person being operated on.

In 2002, eight doctors from London’s renowned Portman Clinic, which specialises in treating mental illness, said that those who sought “gender reassignment” treatment tended to be “individuals who, for complex reasons, ‘need to escape from an intolerable psychological reality into a more comfortable fantasy’”.

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, they said that the desire to seek surgery was “a measure of the urgency and desperation of their situation”.

They said: “By carrying out a ‘sex change’ operation on their bodies, they hope to eliminate the conflict in their minds. Unfortunately, what many patients find is that they are left with a mutilated body, but the internal conflicts remain.”

The doctors described a ruling in 2002 by the European Court of Human Rights which gave a post-operative transsexual person permission to marry in his adopted gender role, as “a victory of fantasy over reality”.

In 2000, a UK Home Office report on transsexualism, pointed out that some people who live as transexuals “revert to their biological sex after living for some time as the opposite sex”.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, it emerged that a 45-year-old transsexual man in the US is using a female changing room at a college because of non-discrimination rules.

It seems that the man, who calls himself Colleen Francis, has exposed himself in the presence of young girls who also use the changing room, and has called for the college to act.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), say the man “undressed and exposed his male genitalia on several occasions in the presence of girls who use the college’s locker rooms”.

Students from Olympia High School and children in the Evergreen Swim Club and Aquatics Academy also use the changing rooms at Evergreen State College.

One parent told a local TV news station about the children’s response: “They’re uncomfortable with him being in there, her, being in there and they are a bit shocked by it”.

In response, Francis said: “This is not 1959 Alabama. We don’t call police for drinking from the wrong water fountain”.

Despite cases like this, and the type involving Brad Cooper, our government seems determined to introduce legislation to recognise transsexual rights.

Are our politicians even aware of some of the ramifications of this?