One reason it has taken time to bring common sense back to the debate is that much of the media, and many NGOs, became deeply vested in gender ideology during the early and mid-2010s, at a time when most ordinary people simply weren’t paying much attention, or believed that the phenomenon was confined to academia. Websites such as Pink News relentlessly vilified anyone who suggested that biology had any role to play in determining who was a man and who was a woman. The American Civil Liberties Union turned its social-media feeds into an endless stream of trans-rights slogans and hand-clap emojis. Venerable groups such as Stonewall UK put their brand behind the most uncompromising demands of gender ideologues. A group called Mermaids demanded that aggressive transition therapies be provided to children who exhibited signs of dysphoria. All of this was done under cover of sunny, family-friendly PR campaigns that presented transition as a gateway to happiness.

Not to mention all of the "education" Mermaids and Stonewall provided to institutions and schools