Transgender advice ‘causing harm’ to children

A panel of medical and legal experts and two people negatively impacted by gender reassignment have told a group of Victorian MPs that the ‘affirmation model’ is causing irreversible harm to children.

Attendee: Moira Deeming. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

A panel of medical and legal experts and two women negatively impacted by gender reassignment surgery have told a group of Victorian MPs that the ‘affirmation model’ of care is causing irreversible harm to children, and undermining the parent-child relationship.

The group — who included “detransitioners” Jay Langadinos and Mel Jeffries, Queensland Children’s Hospital child psychiatrist Jillian Spencer, child and adolescent psychiatrist Peter Parry, paediatrician Dylan Wilson, plastic surgeon Ramin Shayan, Queensland Law School emeritus professor Patrick Parkinson and senior legal counsel Mark Sneddon — called for an urgent inquiry into Victoria’s conversion therapy laws.

The laws, passed by the Andrews government with the support of the Coalition in 2021, make it illegal to seek to prevent someone from expressing their gender identity, putting medical practitioners in danger of being found to have broken the law in situations where they do not believe it is in a patient’s interests to undergo a gender transition.

Tuesday night’s “Child Safeguarding and Consent Forum” at the Victorian Parliament on Tuesday night, was organised by Liberal Democrat MP David Limbrick and Liberal Party Legislative Council member Bev McArthur, who crossed the floor to opposed the 2021 legislation.

Amid deep divisions within the Victorian Liberal Party over the issue following the expulsion earlier this year of MP Moira Deeming — who is a vocal supporter of those concerned about the treatment of children with gender dysphoria — the event was attended by Ms Deeming, Liberals Renee Heath, Joe McCracken, Chris Crewther, Richard Riordan, Bill Tilley and Ann-Marie Hermans, Fisher & Shooter Jeff Bourman, and One Nation MP Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, as well as political staff, academics, journalists and members of the LGBTIQ community.

Dr Spencer, who was controversially stood down from clinical duties at the Queensland Children’s Hospital earlier this year following a complaint about her treatment of children with gender dysphoria but remains employed by Children’s Health Queensland, said it was “not compassionate to ignore the complexity” of gender dysphoria by treating it with the affirmation model, which has been adopted across Australia, despite being abandoned in overseas jurisdictions including Sweden and Britain.

The affirmation model involves encouraging children who present with gender dysphoria to socially and then medically transition. This can involve the prescription of puberty blocker medication from ages 10 to 12, and cross sex hormones from as early as 14.

“The research studies indicate that treatment with puberty blockers does not lead to improvements in mood or psychosocial functioning, or in the symptoms of gender dysphoria.

“There is no evidence they reduce the risk of suicide,” Dr Spencer said.

She said treatment with cross sex hormones led to “lifelong implications of infertility, impaired sexual function and irreversible changes to the body, as well as the physical health side effects, consequences and risks.”

“The affirmation model undermines the parent-child relationship and the entire structure of the family by putting the parents in a weak and frightened position,” Dr Spencer said. “This is because the gender clinicians provide false information to parents that without gender affirming care, their child will … likely die by suicide.”