Mum fights gender experiment

London’s beleaguered Tavistock youth gender clinic faces litigation aimed at protecting a 15-year-old autistic girl from puberty blocker drugs.

London’s beleaguered Tavistock youth gender clinic faces litigation aimed at protecting a 15-year-old autistic girl from puberty-blocker drugs with unknown long-term risks.

The anonymous mother of the girl, said to be suffering “gender confusion”, has reluctantly put her on the waiting list for the clinic but believes treatment would be unlawful because her daughter cannot give informed consent.

“We want the best for our children but we need this to be from a position of evidence-based, not experimental, medicine,” Mrs A says on a crowdfunding website that has so far raised more than £6000 ($11,170) for court action.

The last fortnight has brought news of several significant developments in the transgender debate in the UK, US and Sweden, underlining the global reach of concerns, especially about the welfare of vulnerable minors.

London’s NHS Tavistock clinic has lost several clinicians and their concerns about possible harm have been reported by British media, along with criticism of a pivotal 2007 study supposed to show the safety of puberty blockers.

The autistic girl’s mother has been joined in the legal campaign by a former psychiatric nurse at the clinic, Sue Evans, who said she became alarmed when children were rapidly referred for hormone treatment without proper assessment of their full medical history.

She said staff at the clinic were under “tremendous pressure (from) distressed patients, sometimes the families, but most worryingly from the ‘support’ groups and charities who seemed to be having undue influence on the treatment approach.”

Global investigation

In Sweden, child and adolescent psychiatrist Christopher Gillberg, a world authority on autism, has begun a pioneering international project to scrutinise the evidence claimed for medical treatment of trans youth.

“We are trying to review everything and not just from Sweden,” he told The Australian.

Professor Gillberg — whose neuropsychiatry research group is based in Sweden with hubs in Britain, Japan and France — believes “experimental” treatment of trans-identifying children is “possibly one of the greatest scandals in medical history”.

In Sweden, he said, many of the teenagers suddenly declaring trans identity, with no history of confusion about their sex as children, had autism or anorexia nervosa.

“A vast majority of the cases are girls, which is a new phenomenon; in the old days most ‘real trans-cases’ were boys, or at least the gender ratio was never 4:1 in favour of girls, which is currently the case.”

Professor Gillberg said his research group had concluded that puberty blocker drugs “should be stopped for this group (of “rapid onset” teenagers) immediately until there is longitudinal research — and there is virtually nothing — showing evidence either way.”

Detransitioners unite

In the UK, the first charity for detransitioners has been set up by science journalist Charlie Evans, 28, who spent almost 10 years as a trans man.

The Detransition Advocacy Network, to be launched in Manchester on November 30, aims to link up otherwise isolated detransitioners, see how many there are, and raise money for legal and medical advice.

“I’m in communication with 19 and 20-year-olds who have had full gender reassignment surgery who wish they hadn’t, and their dysphoria hasn’t been relieved, they don’t feel better for it,” she told Sky News.

“They don’t know what their options are now.”

Trans activists dismiss detransitioners, saying there is no data showing a major trend in regret, but also oppose any attempt to research them.

In the UK psychotherapist James Caspian, who was experienced in trans health, heard worrying reports of trans people wanting surgery undone, and proposed a research study for a master’s degree at Bath Spa University in 2017. Mr Caspian was denied approval, and said he was told the university was worried about a “backlash” by trans activists to his “politically incorrect” project.

Pronouns not enough

In the US, a group of nine detransitioners has joined this month’s historic Supreme Court battle over an attempt to extend anti-discrimination protection from biological sex to self-declared gender identity, forcing workplaces to “affirm” trans staff.

“There is an explosion of people with gender identity issues,” the group says in a “friend of the court” brief.

“This emerging group of people with gender identity issues are suffering from emotional, psychological, or social identity discomfort far deeper than new pronouns can rectify. Courts should not ignore that fact.”

The group includes James Shupe, America’s first legally recognised non-binary transgender person whose 2016 case led 11 states to allow an X gender marker on driving licences.

Now he says his “sex change to non-binary was a medical and scientific fraud.”

Legal defence

In the US, a new non-profit law firm, calling itself the Child & Parental Rights campaign, has been launched to defend families against pressure to uncritically go along with the trans declarations of often troubled children.

“When school officials follow the blueprint provided by activists to withhold information (from parents) about their (trans-identifying) child or to aid and abet minors to circumvent parental authority that protects them from unscientific and unproven political ideologies, we will assist parents to hold them accountable,” the website says.

The campaign also says it will also go to court seeking damages for “consumer fraud and harms caused by unsound psychological or invasive medical ‘gender affirmation’ procedures performed on minors.”