London Trans Rights Protest, April 2022. Photo by Karollyne Videira Hubert on Unsplash
In July last year, we exposed Bayswater Support Group’s private Discord for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, revealing evidence of child abuse and political lobbying. Bayswater describes itself as offering “parents whose children have a transgender identity somewhere to talk, share and be understood”. But posts from their private Discord forum revealed that parents exchanged conversion therapy tips, and fostered relationships with MPs to push anti-trans policies.
The Trans Safety Network has since revealed more of the abusive practices that Bayswater parents discussed on Discord.
Health secretary Wes Streeting met with and expressed sympathies for members of the group in an interview before last year’s election, as we reported for QueerAF. He met with the group again in government, and The Department for Health and Social Care invited Bayswater to take part in last year’s consultation on puberty blockers, before they were banned indefinitely for trans kids.
Despite ample evidence of its harmful actions, Bayswater Support Group remains active and politically connected. Streeting has repeatedly refused to comment on his connections to Bayswater.
We have now spoken to several children of Bayswater members. Their experiences highlight the harm groups like Bayswater do to young trans people, and the gateway they provide to broader far-right politics.
When Charlotte1, then 22, came out as nonbinary, their parents reacted poorly. “My mum started crying,” they recalled. “They begged me not to take medication for a while, because they believed I should have consulted with them.”
Charlotte was used to their mum being controlling. She had similar reactions when they dyed their hair or got a tattoo. She had also expressed some homophobic and transphobic views in the past.
Nonetheless, Charlotte hoped that their parents might get used to having a daughter. They were relieved when their mother found a group to share her feelings about their transition, until their father revealed that she was spending almost every evening on the Bayswater Support Group.
In the years since, they have noticed their mother becoming increasingly radicalised through adoption of the group’s gender critical rhetoric.
Charlotte says it began with suggestions that they had been groomed online, and that they may have undiagnosed autism. Over time, the rhetoric became more overtly hostile and mocking.
“She's gone past this point of being like, ‘I'm doing it because I love you’,” said Charlotte. Now, they believe their mother views their transition as “wrong and evil”.
Maria1, who was 21 and living with her parents when she came out, describes a similar pattern: while her mother was supportive, her father’s existing homophobic and transphobic beliefs solidified after contact with the online gender-critical movement.
Maria knew coming out to her father would be difficult, and delayed her transition for several years because she was scared of his reaction. He was a devotee of the Canadian right-wing influencer and former academic Jordan Peterson, and had expressed hope that neither of his children would grow up to be gay.
He took the news poorly, according to Maria, and admitted to quickly joining several groups, including Bayswater, to help him deal with his daughter’s coming out.
One night, Maria noticed that her father had gone to bed and left his computer logged into Bayswater’s Discord server. She was curious and began to scroll.
“It was just horrifying,” she said.“ The group told him to keep control over me by not fully throwing me out of his life, so he could exact some level of control and try and stop me from transitioning.”
Maria created a fake Bayswater profile so she could monitor her father’s activity in the group and the ideas that were influencing him. Witnessing the conversations within Bayswater helped her contextualise his increasingly erratic behaviour.
“He progressively just got more drawn into the whole gender-critical mindset,” said Maria. “ I remember one time I was really surprised because we were having a nice chat for like ten minutes, and then he just started crying and then shouting at me like, ‘Why don't you “desist”?’, which is just words plucked straight from Bayswater.”
Liam1, now a sixth-form student, experienced immediate rejection when he first came out in his early teens. His parents accused him of having been brainwashed, and took away his phone, ultimately forcing him back into the closet.
Like Maria and Charlotte, Liam’s parents sourced advice and support from anti-trans groups like Bayswater and Genspect. Over several years, Liam witnessed his mother’s transphobia intensify, and with it her susceptibility to other far-right beliefs.
GB News, a right-wing British news channel, is now a constant presence in Liam’s house. “It fed into her existing anti-trans beliefs about transgender people in schools ‘coming for you’,” he said. “But it was also like ‘the Muslims are coming for you and your children’.”
Bayswater does not portray itself as a far-right group, but group members have shared links to British far-right news outlets like GB News and Spiked, and Libs of TikTok, an American social media account that promotes transphobia. Parents have praised other American far-right influencers, like James Lindsay, who popularised “groomer” as an anti-LGBTQ+ slur, and the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who made the anti-trans documentary, What Is a Woman?.
Some members' anti-LGBTQ+ views are not limited to trans people. Posts show members mocking efforts to promote bi inclusivity, saying teachers should not facilitate LGBTQ+ clubs or teach about asexuality and aromanticism, and arguing that it is “developmentally inappropriate” for teenagers to call themselves queer.
Ableism is also tolerated, with parents casting doubt on their children’s experiences of anxiety, or accessibility needs.
Some parents have also blamed involvement in progressive activist groups like Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion for their children’s trans identities.
Noah1, currently an A level student, has seen how his mother’s transphobia has morphed into broader reactionary politics. “I think she's very worried that I'm going to get off to uni, get involved in an illegal protest, and then go to jail for a bunch of years,” he said.
While this may appear unrelated to him being trans, Noah says in his mother’s mind, the two are intimately connected. “She said that she didn't actually want me to get the grades that I wanted because it would mean going off to uni, and that she kind of hoped that I would fail so she'd have more time to desist me.”
Noah believes her fear has led his mother to attempt to sabotage his A levels, embroiling him in regular hours-long arguments that distract him from his studies.
He says his mother used to be “a generally very accepting left-leaning person” who “hated” Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing Reform Party. Now, he says she uses her anonymous X account to follow and retweet Reform MPs, express hostility towards immigrants and student protesters, and share antisemitic conspiracy theories about the trans rights movement.
He believes Bayswater, which his mother found through a friend who also has a trans child, led her down this rabbit hole. “It's the perfect radicalization tool by itself, because you don't even need to be there very long before you get networked out to everyone else,” he said.
Liam and Charlotte both describe their parents becoming increasingly isolated. “[My mum] finds it really really challenging to go out in public,” said Liam. “Meeting someone who has an ally badge: that would be enough for her to go off on them.”
Charlotte says their mother “just spends all her evenings talking to parents from [Bayswater]” and “doesn’t really go out and talk to people as much as she used to”. Even though Charlotte’s father is also transphobic, their mother’s extreme positions have put their parents’ marriage in jeopardy.
But the greatest harm of parents joining an anti-trans group like Bayswater is the impact on their children.
Maria holds Bayswater responsible for her father’s abusive behaviour. “We'd have really bad arguments,” she said. “Every time that happened, I would quickly check the group to see if he'd been posting, and actually him interacting in the group used to be very strongly correlated with how badly he treated me in the days after that.”
Despite support from her mother, and other family and friends, her father’s behaviour took a significant toll on Maria. “I think I became quite suicidal,” she said.
Bayswater parents often try to enlist other relatives into rejecting their trans child’s gender. Maria says her father unsuccessfully pushed her brother to misgender her, and generally tried to instill in him “transphobic rhetoric”.
Charlotte’s mother has been more successful in creating barriers between them and their extended family, weaponising the idea that trans people are dangerous to children to prevent them seeing their niece.
“My mum told me that as long as I present as Charlotte I'm not allowed to see her, because it's not fair on the child to be caught in this situation,” they said. “I don't feel comfortable talking to that side of the family because I know how much my mum talks and what my mum says.”
Noah has also observed his mother co-opting other family members into her rejection of her trans son. Despite coming out several years ago, he has never had a forthright conversation with his younger siblings about his own gender.
Instead, Noah says his mother instilled fear about transition in his younger siblings. They were left believing “as soon as I went off to uni, I was gonna pump myself full of horrible drugs, that was gonna give me heart disease, and I was gonna die of a heart attack,” he said.
Noah thinks his mother believes in a link between “gender and the possibility of death”.
If Noah manages to get hold of hormones, his mother has “stated plans to destroy them”, he says. He also expressed concern that she plans to force him to see a conversion therapist over the summer as a last-ditch attempt to prevent him transitioning.
Liam believes his parents are following the playbook of Desist, Detrans & Detox, a conversion therapy manual promoted on Bayswater’s website. The book contains a section about how to recruit relatives into conversion efforts.
He has witnessed his mum talking to relatives about his transition. “I told another family member [about my parents’ attempts at conversion practices] and I wasn’t believed,” Liam said.
When he came out for the second time, his mum’s abuse intensified. “When people would identify me as male in public, things really took a turn,” said Liam. He recalls his mother “shouting at me, shouting at people in public, shouting at trans people in public”.
The abuse took a serious toll on Liam. “ I was pretty seriously suicidal, and I was also getting to the point where I would hear my mum when she wasn't there, like hallucinations,” he said.
Liam began seeing a therapist through NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). He thinks that his parents only allowed him to access the service because they thought it would be conversion therapy, but in reality his therapist was supportive.
Some Bayswater parents with experience of CAMHS advise other group members to “avoid them like the plague”. Many discuss avoiding CAMHS entirely: seeking out private conversion therapists or denying their children any form of mental health support.
When Liam’s parents realised the CAMHS practitioner accepted his gender, they pulled him out of therapy. His mother also became increasingly paranoid that Liam's school was allowing him to transition behind her back – a common fear articulated on Bayswater’s forum – and prevented him from leaving the house alone.
Eventually, Liam’s school and his GP made safeguarding referrals, but the safeguarding hub declined to open an investigation, concluding that rejecting Liam’s gender was a matter of “parental choice”.
Liam was also referred to a therapeutic art class, which his parents did not allow him to attend.
“It kept getting worse,” he said. “I feel if your average teenage boy was being forced to attend bra fittings as a punishment, that would be immediately identified as sexual abuse, and it would mean instant removal, but it was just ‘parental choice’ for me.”
While Liam’s parents could cut off his mental health support, Charlotte’s were unable to stop her going to therapy.
“Seeing a therapist was the big thing that really helped me through all of this, and it’s one of the things which my parents found the most frustrating,” said Charlotte. “My mum actually said to me the phrase ‘No therapist is better than a bad therapist’.” This wording comes directly from Bayswater, which openly makes this argument on its website.
Charlotte’s parents have become an overbearing presence in their life. “[My mum] wakes up at three or four in the morning to send me these long text messages about how terrible me being trans is,” they said.
The messages also repeatedly deadname Charlotte. “The hardest thing is when [I say] please use this name for me, and I’m being very firm about it, she tells me she's going to ring the Samaritans because she's so depressed,” they said.
Charlotte’s father, who views himself as a reasonable middle-ground between his wife and daughter, has his own way of imposing on them, regularly visiting their home to confront them. At first, Charlotte says, “his whole purpose was to argue with me about taking hormones and try to get me to stop.”
Overcome with stress, Charlotte quit their job a year ago, and had to move away from queer community for more affordable housing, though after a promotion they are now able to move back.
The unwanted visits from their father continued unabated. Since Charlotte cut off communication with their mother a few months ago, he has repeatedly pushed them to resume contact.
Charlotte says their parents believe that the only loving thing for a parent to do is push back relentlessly against their trans child. Charlotte vehemently disagrees. “My parents very clearly do not love me,” they say.
Maria’s father died unexpectedly two years ago. By then, Maria had been forced out of the family home and into a flat owned by her parents. It improved her mental health, but meant accepting the end of her relationship with her father.
Shortly before his death, Maria and her mother convinced him to stop posting in Bayswater’s forum, but Maria cannot be sure that he ever truly left the group.
“The group, I think, destroyed most of my relationship with my dad,” she said. “I'm not doubting the fact that they love their children, because my dad loved me very much, but it's just the way they express that...”
While Charlotte and Maria have negotiated complex familial relationships, Liam has made peace with the fact that he “won’t have parents anymore” after he finishes school. He has been planning his escape for years.
He is profoundly angry at systems that have failed to protect him from abuse, describing what he has been forced to endure as not just tolerated, but “basically legally protected”.
Noah has also made plans to leave, but remains deeply conflicted. “There are a couple of lines that she’s crossed that a year, two years ago, I made a mental note to myself – if she ever does this, just leave,” he said.
He has gone through periods of severe depression, but says that ultimately, “my general mental health became better out of spite,” adding that he wanted to show his mother “I can have a future as a trans guy where I am happy.”
Though he struggles to imagine cutting her off, Noah cannot tolerate the idea that she may have actual political power, which is why he decided to speak out.
“I want it to be the case that if you search any of those websites, then the first thing that comes up is what they've done, what the people involved have done, what they make parents do,” he said.
“Every fucking trans kid in all of the UK has now been screwed over by this politician [Wes Streeting] who might literally have my mother's voice in his ear.”
We gave both Bayswater and Streeting the opportunity to respond. Streeting declined to comment and Bayswater provided no response.
Name has been changed