We want concrete

Well something concrete, at least

I am struck by the contrast in the government’s approach to Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) and to gender identity ideology in schools and the health service.

While I am unaware of any child having died as a consequence of foamed concrete falling on them, the government has acted swiftly in fear this might happen. Schools have been closed and a programme of remediation is underway.

I am aware of children who have died as a result of gender identity ideology falling on their heads.

A young person has a 19 times greater chance of committing suicide if they are allowed to develop their transgender ideation socially and medically. And yet, the government has been aware of this problem for years. In stark contrast to its RAAC intervention, it has dithered, dallied, and delayed any meaningful response.

In the four years since the Government realised that something needed to be done, and so set the ball rolling on the Cass Review, there has been very little progress in providing protection for children.

The case of Keira Bell’s judicial review into prescription of puberty blockers at The Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service served to inject some caution into the mix where prohibition would have been far more appropriate. And let’s pause for a second to contemplate how we ended up with a division in the NHS called a Gender Identity Development Service. A gender identity is as spurious as one’s character in Dungeons & Dragons, and just as fantastical. Moreover, why would one need developing, we all know that a gender identity is the last thing any person would wish for.

Dr Hilary Cass published an Interim Report that barely went further in advancing adolescent safeguarding. It might have put a quasi-official stamp on the caution around puberty blockers, and the fact (trite to any half-decent child-development professional) that social affirmation is ‘not a neutral act’ – could the language used be any less neutral?

This April, Cass gave another signal as to the direction her review seems to be heading. In an article published in the Royal College of Psychiatry’s magazine Insight, she made a number of concerning statements. While her considerable experience in paediatric medicine commands great respect, one cannot help but wonder if her judgement is beginning to fail. For instance, she states that “Some may go on to develop a stable trans identity and may benefit from medical intervention”. There is absolutely no way of knowing whether a patient presenting for gender medicalisation will or will not have a ‘stable trans identity’. Moreover, the well-known negative effects of the treatment could never be described as a benefit. We know that medicalisation can afford a temporary amelioration of feelings of gender dysphoria, a phenomenon known as gender euphoria, but it is transitory. The only incontrovertible benefit will arise from having no medical intervention, especially because we know dysphoria resolves in time. It is also becoming very clear that real gender dysphoria (if there is such a thing) is vanishingly rare. Most adolescents acquire dysphoric feelings through excess rumination, or in a great many cases just fake it (and this has been known for over four years, too, and was reported in the Irish Independent). To be fair, Cass does acknowledge “the lack of a consistent view about the nature of gender dysphoria”.

In another concerning phrase, Cass states “There will not be black and white answers” and it is this mindset that has clearly plagued and crippled her review. Of course, there will be black and white answers. Members of the Cass review team need to recognise this. Is sex binary and immutable, or is it not? Is opposite-sex imitation ever ethical? Are the long-term downside risks proportionate to the short-term manifestations of distress? Some of these are difficult, however concrete answers are required. I have been studying the evidence and working with families embroiled in this particular arena for longer than Cass – and I can say unequivocally that there are some black and white answers. One of these is that children would be at far reduced risk of transgender ideation if the pathway went nowhere, a dead end, with a bloody great concrete wall at the end of it.

Cass also says: “We are seeing a generational shift in attitudes to the meaning and mutability of gender”. Well, that may be so, but that does not mean that gender (as distinct from sex) is something that requires medical intervention. Also, I would caution against putting too much store in the generational shift. There is a component of the promotion of gender ideology that is part of the far-left’s Long March Through the Institutions which will prove hard to shift in the current political climate. There is also a component which is clearly a social trend. Twenty years ago, the sight of young men displaying a Calvin Klein waistband and three-quarters of their arse above gravity-defying (or not in some amusing cases) jeans was commonplace. Now, this fashion has gone the same way as flares. In twenty years time, there will be fewer teens identifying as trans. Transgender ideation is a cultural phenomenon, one that requires profound cultural change to eliminate, that, too, is a black and white answer.

The Interim Report from the Cass Review has already informed an Interim Service Specification for Children and Young People with Gender Dysphoria (it is preferable to call the condition Transgender Ideation because dysphoria might not have developed, or it might be falsified). This new specification is to NHS Service Specifications what RAAC is to school ceilings. Its failings will become apparent in due course. The specification was consulted upon. There was a report carried out into the consultation by TONIC which highlighted the clear lack of consensus. There were two clear respondent groups which the TONIC report called Group A and Group B. Group A were all in favour of the maiming and sterilising of our youth, they were mainly the current patients and the ‘woke’ half of contributors. Group B consisted of concerned parents and those with an evidence-based outlook. With no consensus, the NHS had to pick a side, they went with the ideologues. The sceptics were ignored, completely. 

Twas ever thus.

Four years ago, I attended the Governor’s meeting at The Tavistock and told them they were harming our children. Hannah Barnes, author of the medical expose Time to Think was with me that day, alongside other parents in the support group I founded, and another journalist. The story was reported in The Sunday Times under the headline “Parents battle ‘state‑sponsored sterilisation’ of trans children.” You can be sure that if, four years ago, chunks of concrete were regularly maiming children in schools, the government would have acted, just as they have done now on a precautionary basis, to shut down the schools. So why did they not shut down the gender clinics?

This precautionary principle applies to children’s safety in schools, why not elsewhere, especially when the harm is real and demonstrable? There is no doubt that as soon as the government got wind of the unevidenced, unsafe, quack medicine practised in the name of gender ideology it should have imposed a moratorium on it. The apologists will say “Oh, they’ll just go elsewhere” and that is true.

On average, a girl has her breasts unnecessarily amputated every single day on the NHS. And then there are the private patients, and then there is the phenomenon of girls getting mastectomies by Mustafa in Marmara – yes, Turkish tit-removal tourism exists to fulfil the sad, misplaced desires of those who raised funds via GoFundMe to bypass the NHS waiting lists. 

It is clear then, that we must prevent children getting the dumb idea that they can have a gender identity in the first place. And rid them of the notion it needs ‘developing’.

Any cursory examination of causes of transgender ideation in adolescents would have highlighted the role played by schools, be it via bullying, dodgy RSE materials, or activist teachers. Our kids are set on the pathway to lifelong misery, likely infertility, and probable premature death, in schools. And that is why concrete steps must be taken to reverse this dereliction.

The crucial fact is this: the Government knew of the harms created by gender medicine four years ago and chose to do nothing. The Cass Review is now looking increasingly like being a sop, the political long-grass. The fudge it claimed to aspire to was never achievable, there was never a consensus to be arrived at. Given the choice between giving the patients what they need and giving the patients what they want, I fear Cass will recommend the latter. 

And what the patients want is for crumbling concrete to crush their crania.

What the rest of us need is concrete action. The evidence base for opposite-sex imitation is full of holes, and it is crumbling. It is unsafe. Close the gender clinics down. Kick gender identity ideology out of schools.