Detrans when transition.., p.21
DETRANS: When transition is not the solution, page 21
As Gender Ideology becomes more removed from rationality and shifts more towards the ridiculous (e.g., people identifying as part cat-gendered persons) we are seeing an increasing swell in those who could be considered ‘gender critical’, even if they are not familiar with this term. Parents who find their son or daughter, with no previous concerns about their gender, suddenly declaring that they have gender dysphoria (ROGD), and are insistent on pursuing hormonal castration and removal of perfectly health breasts in girls. Women who find themselves in changing rooms alone with a male bodied person with exposed intact male genitalia but who has identified himself as ‘female’. Children at a school in Ontario where a male teacher starts to dress in female clothing with humanly-impossibly oversized prosthetic strap on breasts, which cannot be challenged, as this is part of the teacher’s new ‘gender identity’. Drag queens who instead of performing to an adult audience, being part of a government initiative where they are invited into schools to read to children, whilst having their genitalia barely covered. Lesbians who find lesbian online dating sites overpopulated by biological males, many not appearing as anything other than male, but self-identifying as “Lesbians”. Lesbians being told by charities such as Stonewall, that unless they consider dating “Lesbians with penises”, they are “Transphobic”, and to “get over their genital hatred”. Gay people being told that same sex attraction is transphobic, and instead, it should be “Same-gender” attraction, and so should consider sex with the opposite sex (surely a return to the original homophobia faced by homosexuals). Every day there is something on social media which ‘peaks’ someone into realising the ridiculous extent of the Gender Ideology cult. With every passing day of this gender ideological hyperbole, another person becomes ‘gender critical’
22. THE TAVISTOCK GIDS AND CASS REPORT
In the UK, young people experiencing distress relating to their gender were traditionally seen at the Tavistock Clinic’s Gender Identity Development Service for young people (GIDS). The clinicians in GIDS relied on limited data from Dutch research for developing their medical treatment pathways. However, from 2010 onwards GIDS’s patient population started to change. Most noticeably, it grew suddenly and exponentially. At the same time, the patient demographics changed too. Whereas the Dutch had described a small group of patients who were mainly natal males with life-long dysphoria, GIDS’s growing number of patients were now predominantly females with later onset dysphoria. It is evidently risky to offer a treatment developed for one group of people to another, especially when the evidence base was lacking in the first place. However, this is what happened. Some clinicians expressed concerns about the risks being taken.
As a result of staff concerns, the health and social care regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) assessed the service in October 2020. In their resulting report, the regulators noted more risks than just the lack of evidence base. Procedures to assess and record consent for the medical interventions received particular criticism, “There were very few details on the records of staff engaging in the more difficult task of supporting young people weigh-up the foreseeable risks and consequences.” They found that a number of young people who were receiving hormone blockers had not been fully assessed for competency and capacity in the first place.
Despite these and other criticisms, staff were found to treat the young people in their care kindly. This was the only measure for which they were rated ‘good.’ It is striking that feedback from young people and parents receiving care and treatment from a service found inadequate was “Overwhelmingly positive.” It suggests that some patients wanted the service they got, regardless.
Around the same time, Dr Hilary Cass, a highly respected paediatrician, was asked to gather evidence to ensure that the NHS provides a high standard of care to children with gender dysphoria and related distress. Part of her role was reviewing the existing service, GIDS. In her resulting report she noted that there was a lack of agreement and so a variation in practice within GIDS’s staff regarding what the most “appropriate clinical approach” should be. Some were cautious when it came to recommending a medical pathway and some were not. She also noted a lack of discussion about whether a trans identity is an “inherent and immutable phenomenon” - a question whose answer will have obvious implications for how best to manage it.
Cass went on to describe “Significant gaps in the research and evidence base,” and in the case of girls “first presenting in early teen years” a total absence of data being collected, outcomes or evidence base for interventions being given. She noted that GIDS had over-relied on the small amount of Dutch data and failed to collect sufficient outcome data on its own patients. She also described how GIDS’s medical approach differed from the Dutch one anyway and criticised the service for developing new clinical approaches when they had “not been subjected to some of the usual control measures that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced.”
In February 2022, she concluded in her interim review report that a “single specialist provider model is not a safe or viable long-term option” for the optimum care of young people experiencing gender dysphoria and related distress, effectively ending GIDS’s monopoly of care in the UK. Cass has gone on to outline her hopes that more holistic and responsive care can be delivered by “regional hubs” manned by multi-disciplinary teams and operated from hospitals across the country. She has reemphasised the need to collect high-quality data on patients undergoing “lifechanging” interventions”. She also makes it clear that in future, paediatric endocrinologists should be legally more accountable for both reaching the diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the decision to intervene medically
References:
Care Quality Commission (2021), Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust Gender identity services Inspection report, published 20th January 2021, via
https://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RNK/inspection-summary#genderis
The Cass Review (2022), The Cass Review Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people: Interim report, published February 2022, via
https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/
23. GENDER CRITICAL CLINICIANS AND SERVICES
Clinicians sceptical of Gender Ideology, with concerns this has on the physical and mental health of people, especially children who are increasingly being referred to gender clinics, have come together to form groupings so as to be able to provide a combined voice to challenge the ideas and proposals from the gender ideologues. We are all concerned that the ‘treatments’ being offered to children and adults presenting with dissatisfaction and conflict about their sex and gender, seem to be devoid of any psychological enquiry as to why the person is presenting with a gender problem, and how it arose. We are concerned that the only interventions available, or discussed, are physical ones, some of which are irreversible, for what is essentially a psychological problem, but the patient requests for healthy bodily parts to be removed. We are also concerned that unlike most, if not all, other aspects of medicine and surgery, there are no follow-up studies being done to see how successful outcomes are achieved, and whether the people who have their bodies irreversibly changed are still happy years later. We are concerned about the increasing number of children being referred to gender clinics, and the inevitable rise of detransitioners, for whom no service provision exists. SEGM (International) and CAN-SG (UK) are both examples of concerned clinicians who have come together in this way, so as to provide advice to organisations regarding sex and gender, and to collect an evidence basis for gender treatments. Details of both organisations are included in the final chapter of the book.
Away from healthcare, support groups have been set up for concerned parents with children presenting with gender dysphoria, usually ROGD. Parents are trying to make sense of what is happening with their son or daughter. and understandably, they feel terrified and helpless within the current climate of mass-affirmation. Our Duty (International) and Bayswater Group are both detailed in the final chapter.
Stephanie Davies Arai found herself as the mother of a son with ROGD and has since been the founder and champion of Transgender Trend, based in the UK, which is a reputable source of information for schools, colleges and organisations, helping them to understand gender, and advising on safeguarding and child protection. The information resources are free from the Gender Ideological cult-type narratives provided by other organisations, often run by politically motivated trans-activists which, at least in the UK, have caused significant concerns to parents who have seen the materials their children are given in school.
In other areas, organisations have been set up to protect the rights of women, or same sex attracted people, who feel that the current Gender Ideology, where biological sex has been replaced by ‘felt gender’, has eroded the rights of women and gay people. Details of these organisations including Sex Matters, Keep Prisons Single Sex, LGB Alliance and Gay Men’s Network are included in the final chapter of this book.
Whilst all these organisations are sceptical of the new prevailing gender ideology, there has been a predictable backlash from the proponents of the ideology. Politically active trans people and supporters of gender ideology label gender critical people as ‘TERFs’: Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. Never have so many men been labelled as radical feminists, especially as some feminists believe that no man could actually legitimately be considered a feminist. The more extreme trans-activists take a more severe annihilatory approach to those who oppose their ideology. They seek to make the personal details of such individuals publicly known, complain to their employers with the hope of targeting a mob-based attack of hatred towards them, cause the person to lose their job and have their life ruined. They often hide behind anonymous Twitter profiles, with animé avatar profiles, to prevent their own identities from being revealed, whilst causing as much destruction as possible to the lives of those they target. For these malignant individuals I use the considered term ‘trans-terrorist’. As with other terrorists, they fight for the cause of their ideology, with the psychopathically cold intention of ruining the lives of those they target. Online searches show guides from such trans-terrorists on how to find and target TERFs, how to ruin their careers, how to get them sacked from their jobs, and even how to find where they live and burn their cars. These trans-terrorists are a minority and are probably as representative of trans people as ISIS is to Islam, but they have the loudest voices and cause the most destruction, and many lives have been ruined as a result of their actions. Prominent actors and entertainers have been ‘cancelled’ by their employers and never been offered any more work, thanks to the determined campaigns of the trans-terrorists. As a result of their malign influence, many gender critical professionals feel the need to remain anonymous when entering discussions regarding sex and gender.
Therapists, who have historically provided a neutral exploratory space for those with gender dysphoria, are labelled as ‘conversion therapists’. The claim is made that the only therapy available should be that which ‘affirms’ a person’s new gender. Conversion therapy relates strictly to the previous practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation by therapy. Not only is this ethically quite wrong, but it is also pointless, as a formed adult sexuality cannot be changed through therapy. (The only way any sexuality may be dampened is by reducing the libido via chemical or surgical castration, but the choice of sexual interest cannot be altered). Trans-activists have petitioned for conversion therapy to be banned but have added ‘gender identity’ alongside sexuality as a list of conditions to which the ban should apply. As a result, most therapists are now understandably frightened to enquire and explore a person’s gender confusion for fear of being accused of practising conversion therapy and having their licence to practice threatened. Why would a therapist try and do the valuable work of helping someone wanting to explore their gender confusion and risk being struck off, when they could be treating patients with other difficulties where such a risk is not evident. The downside of this, of course, is that those wanting a therapist to help them think about their gender confusion are unable to access one. The only therapists available would not explore the gender confusion and would instead merely ‘affirm’ the idea of being the wrong sex, and so cause more harm by colluding with a hypothesis which will become professionally reinforced. This is more likely to lead to irreversible physical interventions and the consequent risk of a proportion of these transitioners later regretting such changes and adding to the number of detrans people. If you speak to any detrans person, the thing they all say is that they wish that they had been able to access a professional to help them think about and explore their previous gender-confused state, rather than merely affirming and colluding with notions which they subsequently realised were an incorrect conclusion they had already come to, but went unchallenged by the professionals they saw at the time.
24. THE LEGAL FICTION OF GENDER AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF DETRANSITION
SARAH PHILLIMORE
The law is often slow to keep up with social change but it’s difficult to see how any legal system could have kept pace with the changing landscape of sex and gender. In what seems like a very short space of time, concentrated efforts have been made - with some significant success - to replace ‘sex’ as an organising category in society, with ‘gender identity’. This has particular consequences for the law, which will inevitably flounder without objective tests and defined categories. And if the law is not clear, then it is more difficult to identify people’s rights and how to protect them.
Some brief historical context: the Home Office published in April 2000 the Report of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Transsexual People. Its best estimate for the numbers of ‘transsexual’ people in the UK was about 2,000 trans identifying men and 400 trans identifying females. Although the term ‘gender queer’ (the precursor to ‘non-binary’) had been used since the 1980s, it was not a mainstream term in the UK by 2000, and the report focused on transsexuals who wanted to live in the opposite sex from that which they were observed to be and were recorded at birth. This is now dismissed as an old fashioned, even insulting term.
The report adopted a realistic approach to the issue of ‘changing sex’,
“Gender reassignment is commonly termed a sex change, but in reality, it is an alteration only in a person’s physical characteristics. The biological sex of an individual is determined by their chromosomes, which cannot be changed. What can be achieved through the transsexual person’s own efforts, and with counselling, drugs and surgery is social, hormonal and surgical reassignment.”
The report noted that transsexual people deal with their condition in different ways, and some live as the opposite sex without any medical or surgical intervention. It recognised that the extent of treatment may be determined by health or financial resources. Some may revert to their biological sex and others alternate between the sexes throughout their lives. It recommended that any change to the law needs to take into the account the needs of people at these different stages.
This recognition of potential fluidity did not however appear to travel into the legislation that followed. The Gender Recognition Act (2004) is based on an assumption that any change of ‘gender’ would be fixed and permanent and it would involve simply male and female. The Act uses the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ interchangeably.
There is no mechanism to abandon your Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) once it is obtained. Indeed, one of the criteria for obtaining it is that you intend to stay in the opposite ‘gender’ for life. However, not many GRCs have been awarded – only about 5,000 so far – and only adults can apply.
The protected characteristic [PC] of ‘gender reassignment’ under the Equality Act 2010 is similarly restricted; it means proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex. You do not have to have surgery or take medication. It does not matter whether or not you have applied for or obtained a GRC. There have been attempts to widen this PC to include ‘non-binary’ status, but greater clarity is needed.
The landscape has shifted decisively since 2004 and 2010. Where the focus was once on transexuals; - few in number and very keen to ‘pass’ as the opposite sex - now we have increasing numbers of children and young adults claiming a ‘gender identity’ which can be fluid and shifting and not linked to one sex or the other. This may involve quite drastic medical or surgical intervention or simply be reflected in hair colour and manner of dress. The results of the 2021 Census show how starkly the landscape has changed. A total of 262,000 people (0.5%) indicated that their gender identity was different from their sex registered at birth and 118,000 did not further elaborate, choosing not to be in the categories of transman, transwoman, or non-binary.
This has some interesting consequences for the law. The ‘legal fiction’ introduced by the GRA was restricted to men who wished to be women and women who wished to be men, and via a GRC they could gain the ‘legal sex’ opposite to that of their birth, which would apply in all circumstances except when there was a statutory exception, sports being the most obvious example.
But what ‘legal fiction’ does gender identity seek to establish? It seems that neither the GRA nor the Equality Act now properly reflect the current climate with regard to ‘transition’.
