The ideological capture of the Welsh Government
Gender Identity
The term “gender identity” is used in two separate contexts:
In psychology
1. In psychology, gender dysphoria is a diagnosable condition where an individual’s internal perception of themselves (their “gender identity”) is incongruent with their biological sex.
Many trans activists claim their gender identity is something that they were born with. Stonewall define gender identity as:
A person’s innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or something else (see non-binary below), which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth.
In sociology
2. In sociology within queer theory.
Within her highly influential book, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler argued that although gender is culturally formed, it is also a domain of agency or freedom.
Butler believes that gender is performative, so that the way we express our gender influences the way those around us, respond to us.
Butler argues that to resist the violence that is imposed by idealised gender norms, gender non-conforming children should act as if they are the gender that they wish to be. Butler believes that by defiantly performing the role of the “other” gender, these children are less likely to be subject to ridicule.
In contrast to many trans activists, Butler does not believe that gender identity is innate. As she states in Gender Trouble
"There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results."
Queer theorists aim to challenge social prejudices. Its proponents are only tangentially concerned with the promotion of trans interests. They are engaged in a massive exercise in social engineering.
Although coming from different places, trans activists and queer theory proponents have formed something of an unholy alliance. Where they do align is in their reification of idealised gender norms.
For queer theorists, an atypical gender identity, far from being a potential mental health issue, is a defiant resistance to those idealised gender norms and something to be celebrated.
Trans activists see in queer theory’s call to defiantly act the gender they wish to be, a justification for “performing” their preferred gender role.
Jay Stewart from Gendered Intelligence:
“Queer theory was the roadmap to my own self-understanding”
Alex Drummond, a member of the Stonewall Trans Advisory Board:
“It was only when I was researching gender theory as part of my masters that I discovered all this amazing science”
There are two problems with Butler’s approach:
· Challenging the prejudices experienced by gender non-conforming children is, of course, a laudable aim. However, the danger in Butler’s theory is that vulnerable children, for a variety of reasons, may identify as trans, and come to believe that they really are another sex.
· Gender dysphoria, which many clinicians believe should be regarded as a mental health issue, is being framed as an issue of social justice – leading to the conviction that the gender identity of those who suffer with it, should immediately be affirmed.
At the very heart of queer theory is a lie and lies beget lies
Those invested in the lie subscribe to an ideological belief - one that is not grounded in a material reality – and are not neutral participants in the weighing up of evidence. Those who don’t subscribe to the lie are slandered as bigots.
I believe many people who subscribe to this ideological belief have been hugely influential
Wales RSE Curriculum
Professor EJ Renold has been tasked with leading the development of the new RSE curriculum for Wales which will be mandatory for all children from the ages of 3 to 16.
Renold has been massively influenced by Judith Butler.
In 2006 Renold had an article paper published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education. The article was entitled “'They won't let us play … unless you're going out with one of them': girls, boys, and Butler's 'heterosexual matrix' in the primary years”.
https://whatisawoman.uk/videos/Renold_E_2006_They_wont_let_us_play_unle.pdf
The article ends with something of a rallying cry.
The heteronormativity of gender relations in the early years is certainly ripe for some ‘gender trouble’, and some of this work is well underway and radically disrupting a range of gender and sexual truths in what might be more fittingly described as the ‘hetero/formative years’
Renold is certainly focussed on disrupting a range of gender and sexual truths.
Renold has authored a downloadable and interactive pdf document available at
which is described as “a resource for educational practitioners who want to support children and young people (age 7-18) to make positive relationships matter in their school and community.”
The Agenda resource includes the “Mixed Muffin Challenge”.
This was highlighted in a Times article:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transgender-muffin-exercise-sends-wrong-message-gs7z0zgcz
The article included a quote from Professor Kathleen Stock from Sussex University:
“The materials are troubling because they effectively encourage young people, and particularly gender non-conforming girls and young lesbians, to conclude that their distressing feelings aren’t just a sign that the world is sexist, but rather a sign that they themselves need fixing.”
The resource includes a reference to Alex Drummond’s visit to Plasmawr school in Cardiff:
When hearing of this visit, Professor Kathleen Stock tweeted:
Imagine: You’re a young lesbian discovering who you are. @stonewalluk tells you that Alex Drummond is a lesbian too. You therefore think you belong to a group that includes people with penises – maybe you should be “open” to that. But you aren’t. So maybe you are, in fact, a boy?
The resource includes a link to a video by Trans*Form Cymru – funded by the Welsh Government. The video normalises medical transition and features a number of articulate young people who identify as trans:
The Trans*Form toolkit mentioned in the resource contains a reference to a Trans Youth Sexual Health booklet produced by Gendered Intelligence:
https://youthcymru.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/39880-YC-TransForm-Toolkit-English-Final.pdf
https://genderedintelligence.co.uk/static/images/2012/11/17/17-14-04-GI-sexual-health-booklet.pdf
The booklet contains this advice:
The resource contains links to Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids, whose CEO believes we should make access to puberty blockers as easy as getting the contraceptive pill, and Stonewall, whose CEO believes puberty blockers offer much needed time for a young person to explore their identity.
Almost all children who start puberty blockers for gender dysphoria go on to take cross sex hormones.
[Puberty blockers] .. play a vital role in helping to alleviate the distress many trans young people experience and offer much-needed time to questioning young people to explore their identity. Denying this vital support is not a neutral act and can be deeply harmful to trans young people
Nancy Kelley: Stonewall CEO
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/stonewall-statement-high-court-puberty-blockers-ruling
In an article that was scathingly critical of GIDS (the Gender Identity Development Service for children and young people) , philosopher Heather Brunskell-Evans wrote:
GIDS’ faith in an inherent pre-discursive “gender identity” prevents it from recognising the social construction of gender i.e., the specific experiences and social pressures faced by the girls who now make up its client base which is rising exponentially every year.
The girls who arrive at its door are living through an increasingly sexualised culture that is hidebound by pink and blue binary gender stereotypes.
In such a culture a lesbian girl, for example, might find it more psychologically relieving to identify as a “trans boy” than to come to terms with being same sex attracted. GIDS operates from within the same lobby group culture that has influenced the young people referred to it and thus helps to construct the “transgender child.”
The child’s allegedly “authentic voice” is refracted through the “gender identity” ideology that saturates social media, and which is reproduced ad nauseum by Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, postmodern philosophy, and quasi-science.
The resource includes a poem of sorts that encourages kids to believe they can specify their gender:
REMEMBER REMEMBER don’t divide us by gender
please welcome all genders that sex is not gender
don’t assume our gender and if we tell you our gender
REMEMBER REMEMBER
In August 2020, the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, stated that schools in England that teach children about changing their gender identity could have their Ofsted rating downgraded.
Of course, her ruling will not apply to Wales.
The resource states that children have a right to an identity (including a gender identity)
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child does not mention gender identity. The section that references the term identity reads:
Article 8 1. States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.
Article 8.1 provides as examples of a child’s identity, those facets of a child’s experience that are external to the child, and root them in their family, community, and country. In contrast, gender identity is highly personal.
Renold’s reference may refer to an updated implementation handbook prepared for UNICEF
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/620060?ln=en
The handbook adds other potential elements of identity including gender identity
Asserting that a child has a human right to a self-declared gender identity, will make it more difficult for a clinician to challenge a child struggling with gender dysphoria and is, arguably in contravention of Article 5 on the Conventions of the Right of the Child.
States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights, and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians, or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention.
Children cannot possibly have the capacity to be aware of the socio-cultural influences on their psychology nor of the lifelong implications of medical intervention.
An adult agenda is being pushed on children.
In 2018, it was reported that the author of the handbook was jailed for the rape of a 13-year-old boy.
The abusers behind 'gender identity' for children - Christian Concern
The resource links to an article titled:
A trans review of 2017: the year of transgender moral panic
In the article the first news item that was indicative of a moral panic was a BBC documentary – Transgender Kids: Who knows best?
This is a highly one-sided political reference to a powerful documentary.
A trans review of 2017: the year of transgender moral panic (theconversation.com)
Another political statement is made with the poster:
If a man is an adult human male, then trans men are not men. Why are we lying to our children?
The resource also references the GENDER UNICORN. The link in the PDF is broken but the page can be accessed on the target site here:
Gender Unicorn - (transstudent.org)
This site includes definitions of “gender identity” and “sex assigned at birth”
Gender Identity: One’s internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, or another gender(s). Everyone has a gender identity, including you. For transgender people, their sex assigned at birth and their own internal sense of gender identity are not the same. Female, woman, and girl and male, man, and boy are also not necessarily linked to each other but are just six common gender identities.
Children are being taught that everyone has a gender identity. Scientifically, this is baloney. Children are also being taught that the word “sex” is transphobic.
Sex Assigned at Birth: The assignment and classification of people as male, female, intersex, or another sex based on a combination of anatomy, hormones, chromosomes. It is important we don’t simply use “sex” because of the vagueness of the definition of sex and its place in transphobia. Chromosomes are frequently used to determine sex from prenatal karyotyping (although not as often as genitalia). Chromosomes do not always determine genitalia, sex, or gender.
Debbie Hayton is a transsexual. She is also a physics teacher at a comprehensive school. She is appalled at what our children are being taught. She writes:
Gender identity can neither be proved nor falsified. Moreover, I don’t need a gender identity to explain my own transsexualism, and I don’t see why anyone else needs one either. In fact, the fixation on gender identity may be hampering research into what is really going on in my head and the heads of other transgender people.
schools have taken on board the concept of trans children — a priestly class, perhaps? — labelled them and set them apart. The consequences to those young people are potentially monumental, and not just those who might be referred for medical treatment. Never before have we humoured the fantasies of children in such a way. What impact will it have on their long-term psychological development if they are raised under an illusion that they are the other sex, or perhaps neither sex? Nobody knows.
The creation of the trans child has liberated nobody, certainly not the other children who are being required to give up their single sex spaces. But nor has it helped the children at the centre of this storm: gender non-conforming children who do not need to have a gender identity imposed on them. Women’s rights are there to be reclaimed, but children only grow up once. If gender identity is not necessary to explain transsexualism, it is certainly not needed in child development. I do not see how children aged as young as two — according to Stonewall — have a trans identity, unless adults tell them they have one. It’s time to stop imposing our preconceptions and prejudices on them, and leave them to grow up in peace, as boys and girls.
https://debbiehayton.com/2022/08/13/the-creation-of-the-trans-child/
In a mock comments section anticipating pushback from parents, the resource states:
The point of AGENDA is to suggest some creative, open-ended, and non-judgemental ways to respond to what students bring – not to impose anything on them.
Except perhaps for the beliefs that:
· everyone has a gender identity
· a gender identity is a human right
· the word ‘sex’ is transphobic
· trans men ARE men
· a woman can have a penis
· a man can have a vagina
· children can specify their gender
· sex reassignment surgery is normal
· people who are concerned about the medicalisation of our youth are part of a moral panic
The resource has a section on social media that references Tumblr and video blogs.
A large number of the children who develop late onset gender dysphoria appear to be influenced by social media.
Helena Lacroisx talks about her transition after being influenced by Tumblr
When I first decided that I would come out as trans it was like it was a gradual process so I didn't just come out one day and say I'm a boy. I started with like I'm a demi girl my pronouns are they them like that kind of thing um and then I just progressively got more and more towards like wanting to be a boy um but yeah every step along the way every time I would change my pronouns or change my name or something like that on Tumblr um people would be very supportive and like send me messages being like oh I support you so much this is amazing that you're doing this and like being yourself and finding yourself um so there's a lot of support there and I also um a big thing on Tumblr is like most people who've been on twitter will also recognize this but it's like when you're talking about an issue if you're like a straight white person they will tell you that you're not allowed to have an opinion on that issue and like as a teenager I always felt very self-conscious about that that I wouldn't be able to speak my mind on anything I like to speak my mind like I'm a pretty like opinionated person um but I would always get that response that I can't say what I want to say because I'm a straight white girl but after I came out as trans that kind of went away and I now had some credibility and ability to speak on different issues um so that was aside from the support it really felt like I could speak my mind better
https://unsafespace.com/ep0562/
GIRES
The Gender Identity Research & Education Society is a lobbying organisation whose stated aims are to improve the lives of trans and gender diverse people.
GIRES promote the belief that trans people have the wrong brain for the body they inhabit.
In an online presentation they claim:
“Being trans is something people are born with”
There is no evidence that this is true.
The current UN Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is Victor Madrigal-Borloz. He is a strong supporter of “trans rights” and has come out in support of self ID. However, even he has stated:
“Gender is not something that is inherent to persons. There is no evidence to that effect. Gender is in fact the relationship between the person’s free will and the series of stereotypes that assign behaviours or patterns or roles to a particular given sex or to the understanding of sex in a given society”
https://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/asset/2636/2636765/
GIRES are campaigning for the definitions of the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ to be changed to refer to psychosocial / cultural factors instead of their commonly understood definitions of referring to adult males and females. In their 2017 Annual Report, they state:
GIRES supports the application of the term “sex” to biological factors and “gender” to psychosocial and cultural factors. Hence, male/female are terms for describing sex. 'Man/woman, or any variations between or outside these psychosocial categories, are terms for describing gender identity'.
https://www.gires.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/GIRES-Accounts-2017.pdf
Some have convinced the Welsh Government to go even further.
Social Transition
In June 2020, the Welsh Government published the School and community-based counselling operating toolkit. The Ministerial signatories were Kirsty Williams, the Minister for Education and Minister for Health and Social Services, Vaughan Gething.
Under the heading, Non-binary and transgender children and young people, the toolkit states:
Not all children experience themselves to be exclusively male or female, boy or girl, either in an embodied sense, an internal sense or in terms of their social gender (or a combination of these).
Whether children experience themselves as exclusively male or female or not, is irrelevant. In all but a miniscule number of intersex cases, where there is some ambiguity, babies are observably either male or female. Sex is immutable.
The toolkit continues:
The umbrella term for people whose gender is not exclusively male or female, i.e. aligning with traditional ideas of a gender binary, is currently ‘non-binary’.
The terms “male” and “female” are used to refer to “sex”. The terms have nothing whatsoever to do with socially expected gender roles and behaviours.
Our children’s mental health will not benefit from adults indulging a fiction.
The toolkit continues:
A growing number of children and young people identify within a range of gender spectrums, with research indicating the effects of early transition having a positive impact on well-being, as well as demonstrating that access to transition support improves emotional well-being. One such study from Canada, for example, found a drop in attempted suicides of transitioning young people when parents/carers were supportive and affirming, highlighting the need for understanding and acceptance.
This is quite a claim. Unfortunately, there is no link, that I can see, that is given to the referenced study.
Most studies that have been undertaken show that for about 80% of children, their gender dysphoria does not persist into adolescence if they are not socially affirmed.
https://www.transgendertrend.com/children-change-minds/
Moreover, in a study by Thomas Steensma in 2013 it was noted that:
“Childhood social transitions were important predictors of persistence”
Steensma suggested that there could be a link between social transitioning and the cognitive representation of the self which could influence the rates of persistence.
https://www.transgendertrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Steensma-Persistence-2013.pdf
The toolkit makes a positive reference to Sam Hope, a non-binary, bisexual transgender activist and counsellor, and provides a link to their top ten tips for working with trans students including:
5. Don't “out” trans people
Be clear with a trans student exactly what they want shared and with whom. Consider ways in which they could be accidentally outed (e.g., in letters home). Ensure historic name changes and other details do not resurface to expose transitioned students. Know your duties under equality and data protection law.
6. Use inclusive admin systems
Use best practice guidance for monitoring forms and where gender needs to be asked. If a student cannot legally change their name yet, make sure their "known as" name is used. A deed poll is a legal document – accept it. Alert students to potential issues with exams and certificates - think ahead and draw up protocols.
This is the same advice given by Stonewall Cymru to the Equality and Diversity Team in Rhondda Cynon Taff Council and detailed in their Transgender Toolkit for Secondary Schools.
It was the advice followed when last year, a child was socially affirmed without their parent’s knowledge.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/school-rushed-to-help-our-boy-become-a-girl-vvs2qjcw8
Many who work with young people fundamentally disagree with this approach, most notably Stella O’Malley, a psychotherapist from Ireland who experienced gender dysphoria herself as a child. O’Malley fronted the Channel 4 documentary – It’s Time to Talk.
She is also a director at Genspect -an international alliance of professional groups, parents, trans people, detransitioners.
O’Malley describes social transitioning as a powerful psychosocial intervention.
Medical Transition
The current chair of trustees of GIRES is Cath Burton. She is also a member of the Welsh Government LGBTQ Independent Expert Panel.
Burton is a middle-aged heterosexual male who had a successful career as an airline pilot. She transitioned at the age of 58. She is adamant that the impulse that led her to transition at the age of 58 is the exact same impulse that leads many, often autistic and often nascent homosexual children to seek transition before puberty.
On 17th March 2021, Burton gave evidence in front of the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament
In her speech, Burton stated:
“At Tanner stage 2, there is a very limited window of opportunity to prevent long-term damage from inappropriate puberty.
This is where puberty blockers are essential, and those puberty blockers really need to be prescribed at the onset of Tanner stage 2 (first visible signs of puberty)”
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/6436ad0d-508d-4208-97da-a39a913a254c
(15:42:08 – 15:44:00)
Burton is not the only person associated with GIRES who has influence over Welsh Government policy.
Wales currently has one Gender Clinic which is located in Cardiff. The clinical director is Dr Sophie Quinney. Dr Quinney was a GP until 2018 when she met her first transgender patient.
In an article written for Cardiff University Press, she writes:
I did not come across training in transgender health or an awareness of trans lives until I (knowingly) met my first trans patient in 2018. To say that I was unprepared was an understatement. Horrified by my abysmal performance, I began my own journey to enlightenment, starting with some frank conversations with trans people about where I was going wrong. Although my journey took me further than I expected, as I now work and teach in this area as a general practitioner (GP) with a special interest,
https://thebsdj.cardiffuniversitypress.org/articles/abstract/285/
Quinney has been massively influenced by a former Chair of Trustees at GIRES, Dr Ben Vincent. Dr Vincent is not a medical professional. He is a sociologist and describes himself as a queer, non-binary academic. He is also author of a book titled Transgender Health: A Practitioner's Guide to Binary and Non-Binary Trans Patient Care.
The article referenced above is in the form of a dialogue between Dr Quinney and Dr Vincent. In the article Vincent advises us to beware the idea that a person’s physiology, anatomy, or genetics are fundamentally male or female things.
Ben: I agree that sex is the association of particular phenomena with categories – male and female – that are initially determined by what we expect to find, or see develop, in people born with a penis or vulva, respectively. Beware the idea that a person’s physiology, anatomy, or genetics fundamentally are ‘male’ or ‘female’ things. Otherwise, this logically backs us into the corner of talking about trans women having ‘male’ biology, trans men ‘female’ biology, and frames non-binary people’s body parts in these terms. Doing so is political, not a foregone conclusion of a morally neutral scientific enterprise. Generally, the whole concept can be sidestepped – it is always clearer and more accurate, for example, to specify XX chromosomes rather than ‘female’ chromosomes, testes rather than ‘male gonads’, etc. with the added benefit of not alienating your trans patient from their experience of healthcare.
Here, we may have an inkling of where the origin for the strange language in the school and community-based counselling operating toolkit may have arisen.
The Welsh Gender Service practice a highly affirmative approach to clients from the age of 18, although referrals to the service can be made from as young as 17 years and 6 months.
Clients are not required to go through the mental health teams [3:10]. If a client is “ready”, referral to hormone therapy can be made at the first appointment [28:13].
Eighteen is still very young.
The part of the adolescent brain responsible for self-regulatory competence is not fully developed until the mid-twenties.
In brief, risk-taking increases between childhood and adolescence as a result of changes around the time of puberty in what I refer to as the brain’s socio-emotional system that lead to increased reward-seeking, especially in the presence of peers. Risk-taking declines between adolescence and adulthood because of changes in what I refer to as the brain’s cognitive control system – changes which improve individuals’ capacity for self-regulation, which occur gradually and over the course of adolescence and young adulthood. The differing timetables of these changes – the increase in reward-seeking, which occurs early and is relatively abrupt, and the increase in self-regulatory competence, which occurs gradually and is not complete until the mid-20s, makes mid-adolescence a time of heightened vulnerability to risky and reckless behavior.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2396566/
In the promotional video for the service [3:50], Quinney states:
I joined the movement to improve healthcare for trans and non-binary people in 2018.
I use a gender affirmative approach and see my role as giving you the knowledge and support you need to progress your transition in a way that is best for you.
In a podcast as part of their 'Gender: A Wider Lens' series, Stella O'Malley and Sasha Ayad discuss 'Collective collusion'.
In the podcast, O’Malley defines collective collusion:
A collusion in therapy is the process whereby a therapist consciously or unconsciously participates with the client to avoid an issue that needs to be addressed
...clinics are much more prone to it than independent therapists... In clinics there can be very much of a group ethos.
...collusion occurs when the therapist somehow merges with their client's view of themselves and the world instead of helping the client explore the world
https://gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/episode/7-collective-collusion
In September 2021, Dr Az Hakeem, a clinician who has spent over 20 years working with patients presenting with gender dysphoria. He believes the Welsh Government’s approach is dangerous
I am very concerned with Welsh Government’s proposed affirmation-only model for gender dysphoria. Based on my clinical experience this seems to be a potentially dangerous approach. There is a presumption that all patients presenting with gender dysphoria are the same and that one solution fits all. This is not the reality.
Merely affirming ones’ experience of transgender identity is clinically unhelpful for many people as there are a considerable number for whom the presentation of feeling that they are in the wrong body may not be a fixed long-term one, indeed, it may be one which they later regret.
Further, rather than being a single condition there are many conditions; only some of which may be suitable for permanent fixed physical interventions such as hormones or surgery. In the service I ran, we saw patients with all sorts of gender presentations and, significantly, 26% of the adults I worked with were people who had previously had physical gender interventions such as hormones or surgery but who had later come to regret this decision; people who would now be considered detransitioners.
https://merchedcymru.wales/2021/09/20/welsh-governments-approach-to-gender-dysphoria-is-dangerous
In front of the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament on 17th March 2021, Cath Burton talked about the new Welsh Gender Service model where additional training is offered to GPs who are interested in learning it. Burton explains that in the Welsh model, the patient leads the process and can get hormones prescribed within a week of requesting it.
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/6436ad0d-508d-4208-97da-a39a913a254c
(16:07:21 – 16:10:15)
The model Burton is referring to is presumably the one documented here:
Paragraph 10, under the section “Education, Training and Appraisal” it states:
There is currently no single recognised training course. Practitioners who have not previously provided such services will attain requisite knowledge through completion of relevant CPD activity which could include attendance at relevant courses, reading and / or e-learning (a list of resources will be made available to provider practitioners and also be hosted on GP One, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board and WHSSC websites; Local Health Boards will be responsible for ensuring that relevant CPD opportunities are available to practitioners providing services under the terms of the DES)
CPD training for all medical practitioners in Wales was created by Sophie Quinney and is available here:
https://gpcpd.heiw.wales/vitals-series/transgender-health/
In this video, Dr Quinney states:
Evidence suggests that gender identity is rooted in neurobiology – in a part of the developing forebrain also influenced by sex hormones but at a different point in time to the development of the genitalia. Being separated in time offers the potential for sex and gender identity to be influenced independently.
Dr Quinney provides no references for that “evidence”. Her assertion is not generally accepted. Why should we accept that it is true?
Further training can be found on the HEIW site on gender diversity.
https://gpcpd.heiw.wales/clinical/gender-diversity/hunaniaeth-ryweddol/
The Gender Diversity module claims that the increase in the number of young people being referred to GIDS is “likely to reflect improved access to information and representation”.
This is an extraordinary assertion.
The Interim Cass Report into the provision of gender identity services for children stated:
This increase in referrals has been accompanied by a change in the case-mix from predominantly birth-registered males presenting with gender incongruence from an early age to predominantly birth-registered females presenting with later onset of reported gender incongruence in early teen years. In addition, approximately one third of children and young people referred to GIDS have autism or other types of neurodiversity. There is also an over-representation percentage wise (compared to the national percentage) of looked after children.
https://cass.independent-review.uk/
Given the profile of the new cohort of children presenting to GIDS, it seems unlikely that the massive increase is due to improved access to information.
In response to a Freedom of Information Request, the Wales Gender Service confirmed that they do not collate data on the profile of their service users.
A letter from several medical practitioners, comprising The Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, was published in the British Medical Journal. It welcomed the interim report from Dr Hilary Cass on service provision at GIDS:
The origin of poor governance and lack of data collection needs to be openly addressed as GIDS is not unique. Globally, there are significant difficulties in discussing, let alone challenging, the practice of gender clinics, due to the belief systems of those who adhere to gender identity theory – a non-clinical ideological perspective for which there is little to no empirical support. This position requires clinicians to believe that everyone has an innate, subjective gender identity and that individuals whose bodies do not match this should be provided with ‘gender-affirming’ medical interventions regardless of the harms and lack of evidence of benefit. However, a child or adolescent’s sense of gender is part of a complex inner sense of self that can change during the process of development. Medicalising young people on the basis of unsubstantiated theory is unethical: there are many reasons why they might feel dysphoria, disgust, dissociated or ‘cut off’ from their physical bodies, including internalised homophobia, histories of trauma, cognitive difficulties and mental health problems. Each person suffering from such distress requires space and time to understand their feelings.
The government should look closely at materials provided by advocacy groups (such as Stonewall, Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence, and others) that teach children and clinicians (e.g., GPs, nurses, medical students and mental health professionals) gender identity theory as if it is fact, without referencing the concerns and uncertainties in the evidence. Until this is addressed young people will be at increased risk of misinterpreting their complex difficulties as proof they are ‘trans’ and believing there are simple and medical solutions to their distress.
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2016/rr
ROGD
In 2018, Brown University School of Public Health assistant professor Lisa Littman coined the term ‘Rapid onset gender dysphoria’ to describe surveyed parents' accounts of their teenage children suddenly manifesting symptoms of gender dysphoria and self-identifying as transgender.
Rapid onset gender dysphoria is an observation. It describes the new phenomenon of patients presenting to gender clinics, described in the Cass review as:
predominantly birth-registered females presenting with later onset of reported gender incongruence in early teen years
Littman hypothesised that psychosocial factors (such as social influence, maladaptive coping mechanisms, internalized homophobia, and mental health conditions) can cause or contribute to the development of gender dysphoria in some individuals. Her research has proven hugely controversial because it challenges the prevailing model based on the belief that all of us have an innate gender identity.
In a webinar on ROGD, Dr Littman describes the two models and why she believes the development model is superior to the “innate gender identity” model [1:58:00]
If there are psychosocial factors that influence some children into taking the decision to transition, then we need to be very careful about what we teach children in our schools.
The innate gender identity model is the approach favoured by Dr Sophie Quinney and the Welsh Gender Service.
In 2019, an article entitled “Gender incongruence in children, adolescents, and adults” was published in the British Journal of General Practice.
The article stated:
Generalists, with expertise in whole-person care, handling uncertainty and complexity, have a key role when consulted by identity-questioning and transgender individuals for routine care, gender identity concerns, treatments recommended by private or NHS services, or for referral. Presentations with prior emotional trauma, co-existing mental or neurodevelopmental issues, or ‘bridging hormones’ requests may make primary care professionals uneasy. Without a considered approach to practice, high-quality evidence and guidance, a policy of active ‘affirmation’ and ‘treat or refer’ may lead to more people receiving medical interventions with uncertain outcomes.
https://bjgp.org/content/69/681/170
A year after the article was published, Quinney tweeted her opinion of it:
Detransition and regret
The Interim Cass Report highlights a significant problem in measuring the success of therapy – the lack of data on the outcomes for transitioned clients:
1.25. There has not been routine and consistent data collection within GIDS, which means it is not possible to accurately track the outcomes and pathways that children and young people take through the service.
1.26. Internationally as well as nationally, longer-term follow-up data on children and young people who have been seen by gender identity services is limited, including for those who have received physical interventions; who were transferred to adult services and/or accessed private services; or who desisted, experienced regret or detransitioned
https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/
GIRES are not in doubt. In a Facebook post in February 2021, they stated:
Regret is, however, very rare. A review of multiple studies show that there is less than 1% of regrets, and a little more than 1% of suicides among operated subjects.
This is a statistic that Dr Quinney has repeated.
The quoted 1% regret rate was from a time when “innate gender identity” was not the dominant model that gender clinics worked by.
Stella O’Malley is critical about the use of this statistic
It was from a time where there was extremely different medical gatekeeping... much smaller numbers were transitioning ...very strict criteria for detransitioning (you would had to have had genital surgery)
The truth is that we don’t know how many people have detransitioned. However, there are reasons to believe that:
1. Children are transitioning for different reasons than was previously the case
2. The regret rate is much higher than 1%
A second paper by Lisa Littman was published in Archives of Sexual Behaviour in October 2021. The paper was titled:
Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners
The article stated:
Respondents detransitioned for a variety of reasons and most (87.0%) selected more than one reason. The most frequently endorsed reason for detransitioning was that the respondent’s personal definition of male and female changed, and they became comfortable identifying with their natal sex (60.0%)
This is a significant observation that indicates that most of the new cohort of transitioners have been influenced to transition by changes in the definitions of the words male and female and man and woman.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02163-w
Language
In August 2022, biologist and author Colin Wright published an article on his Substack site titled:
The Transgender Umbrella Casts Its Shadow Over Gender Nonconformity - Why are we pretending we don’t know why kids think they’re trans?
The article described the two different hypotheses for the massive growth in the number of late transitioning teenagers.
· The social acceptance hypothesis – the world is more accepting of diverse gender identities
· The social contagion hypothesis – transgender identities have become trendy in a culture where intersectionality oppression scores act as a form of social currency
Wright came up with another very simple explanation for the growth in numbers:
The definition of “transgender” currently used and embraced by our largest and most prestigious scientific, medical, and human rights organizations is literally synonymous with common gender nonconformity.
We can call this the definitional expansion hypothesis or the widening umbrella hypothesis.
Planned Parenthood is a US-based nonprofit that provides services to transgender patients at all their locations, and in 2020 were “second largest provider of gender affirming hormone care” nationally. On their website, “gender” is defined as “a social and legal status, and set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts,” and that “it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.” The “gender binary” is defined as “the idea that gender is strictly an either/or option of male/men/masculine or female/woman/feminine based on sex assigned at birth,” and they define “nonbinary,” which is a type of transgender identity, as referring to a “rejection of the gender binary’s assumption that gender is strictly an either/or option of male/man/masculine or female/ woman/feminine based on sex assigned at birth.”
The literal and straightforward reading of this is that people who are gender nonconforming—i.e. people who do not behave according to traditional notions of masculinity or femininity that society expects of them because of their sex—are transgender.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), in their Glossary of Terms, defines “transgender” as “an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth.” The “gender binary” is the system in which one’s “gender identity is expected to align with the sex assigned at birth and gender expressions and roles fit traditional expectations.”
Again, the most straightforward reading of this is that a transgender person is someone who simply does not conform to traditional stereotypes of masculinity or femininity associated with being male or female.
But what about scientific institutions?
The American Psychological Association (APA), which is in charge of establishing the norms for clinical practice in the United States, defines “transgender” as “an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.”
The examples go on. In numerous cases, “transgender” has become synonymous with gender nonconformity.
In September 2020, the Department for Education issued new guidance for school leaders in England to help them plan and prepare for the new statutory curriculum. The guidance included the following instructions:
We are aware that topics involving gender and biological sex can be complex and sensitive matters to navigate.
You should not reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance by suggesting that children might be a different gender based on their personality and interests or the clothes they prefer to wear.
Resources used in teaching about this topic must always be age-appropriate and evidence based. Materials which suggest that non-conformity to gender stereotypes should be seen as synonymous with having a different gender identity should not be used and you should not work with external agencies or organisations that produce such material.
Department for Education: Guidance: Plan your relationships, sex and health curriculum
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-your-relationships-sex-and-health-curriculum
The Welsh Government have not given similar instructions.
Conversion therapy
In advance of the UK Government proposals to ban conversion therapy, Adam Jowett from Coventry University was commissioned by the Government Equality Office (GEO) to make the case for banning “gender identity conversion therapy”.
As reported by the campaign group Sex Matters:
The entirety of the evidence presented consists of four articles based on three datasets, and limited highlights from six one-hour interviews with individuals. The studies are weak, and the report relies heavily on a single question in a self-selected survey run by a US transgender advocacy organisation.
The UK Government produced a consultation document on Banning Conversion Therapy and asked for input.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/banning-conversion-therapy/banning-conversion-therapy
A response was given by the Equality and Human Rights Commission explained that the consultation document had no clear definition of the terms “conversion therapy” and “transgender”:
The consultation document contains no clear definition of what will amount to “conversion therapy” caught by its proposals, nor of the meaning of “transgender” – a term which has no clear legal meaning, is potentially wider than the concept of gender reassignment in current UK law and is understood by different people in different ways.
It further commented:
We are concerned that the consultation does not make sufficiently clear in section 5.2 which forms of communication would be caught by a ban on talking conversion therapy, as this term is used as a ‘working term’. The Government should make clear that psychological, medical and healthcare staff can continue to provide support to people experiencing gender dysphoria; this should include support to reduce distress and reconcile a person to their biological sex where clinically indicated, including for children and young people aged under 18 if this is in their best interests.
In response to the EHRC comments, GIRES posted a statement:
It is difficult to imagine a trans-inclusive definition of CT that would not include attempts to “reconcile a person to their biological sex,” as a prime example of CT. Indeed, this kind of language is recognisable as echoing that of CT proponents, such as the ultra-conservative ‘Heritage Foundation’.
The UK Government decided not to proceed with a ban on transgender conversion therapy.
In April 2022, Hannah Blythyn made a statement in the Senedd:
Excluding trans people from the UK Government’s much-delayed proposals on ending this ineffective and harmful practice is causing very real and widespread distress. There's no clear rationale for this exclusion of trans people from the protections provided by the proposed ban; in fact, the opposite is the case, as the UK Government’s own LGBT survey found that trans people are nearly twice as likely as lesbian, gay and bisexual people to be subject to conversion therapy. It goes against the advice of independent experts, the medical profession, and the Anglican Church.
So-called conversion therapy, which attempts to change or alter a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, is an abhorrent, draconian, and wholly unacceptable practice founded in deep-rooted homophobia and transphobia that should have no place in our communities and country. It is carried out under the false pretext of 'therapy', inflicts severe pain and suffering on LGBTQ+ people, and often causes long-lasting physical and psychological harm. When what somebody needs the most is support, to be empowered and to be loved for who they are, they are worn down to believe who they are is fundamentally wrong and something to be cured.284
The Welsh Government is completely opposed to this practice and is doing all we can to make it and the harm it causes history. We made a commitment in our programme for government to use all available powers to ban all aspects of LGBTQ+ conversion therapy and seek the devolution of any necessary additional powers
https://record.senedd.wales/Plenary/12810#A71493
Evidence as to what is considered harmful conversion therapy practice came to light in May 2022 when it was reported in the I that psychotherapist Az Hakeem had been reported to the General Medical Council (GMC).
Hakeem had engaged in a twenty-five-minute online consultation with a late transitioning female and suggested that there was little difference between her gender, and his teen Goth identity.
Nancy Kelley, the CEO of Stonewall was outraged
The complaint to the GMC was rejected.
Dialogue
There are many people who have concerns about the influence that lobbying organisations and ideological beliefs have had on the development of the Welsh Government RSE curriculum and health provision for people struggling with gender dysphoria. These people’s concerns deserve to be listened to.
The concerns include:
· The teaching of the unscientific notion of gender identity in schools given the evidence that changing the definition of the words male/female and man/woman is a contributory factor in the decision of many young people to transition
· The strict adherence to an affirmation only model of gender dysphoria care that penalises therapists who challenge a young person’s rationalisation of their feelings
· The shutting down of any voices that challenge the prevailing narrative.
In October 2021, in a twitter exchange, the Chair of the LGBTQ+ Expert Panel described the suggestion that a representative from the LGB Alliance be invited to join the panel to formulate a LGBTQ+ Action Plan as equivalent to inviting the English Defence League to write a race action plan.
The definition of bigotry is the obstinate attachment to a belief.
Many people believe that sex is real, immutable and unlike gender identity, is a material reality. These people further believe that it should not be the responsibility of our elected representatives to change the definitions of words.
That such people get branded as bigots is an unconscionable inversion of reality.
In June 2022, in response to a question from Conservative MS Laura Anne Jones, Mark Drakeford stated
transgender women are women. That's my starting point in this debate
https://record.senedd.wales/Plenary/12874
If the requirement for any dialogue with the Welsh Government is to concede the argument people are trying to make, it makes communication impossible.
According to Women’s Rights Group, Merched Cymru, the Welsh Government has refused to listen to a host of organisations
The Deputy Minister appears unwilling to speak to us, or to LGB Alliance Cymru, or to Women’s Rights Network Wales, or to Labour Women’s Declaration Cymru. Our Government has also ignored offers from Fair Play for Women, Lesbian Labour, Transgender Trend, Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, Thoughtful Therapists, LGB Alliance, Safe Schools Alliance, and numerous individuals.
Mark Drakeford’s “red line” is the same as that of former Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt, who responded to a tweet from transwoman Miranda Yardley asking for dialogue by stating:
Trans women are women. It’s the sticking point on both sides I’m afraid and won’t make for a very interesting “debate”.
Money
There is a massive financial incentive into making children into lifelong medical patients and huge amounts of money are being pushed into the normalisation of the idea that people can be in the wrong body.
In 2007, Dr Norman Spack set up the Gender Management Service clinic at Boston’s children’s hospital. It was the first clinic in the United States that offered what would become known as "gender affirming care", providing puberty blockers to children suffering with gender dysphoria later followed by cross sex hormones.
In that same year, Arcus Foundation, founded by billionaire philanthropist Jon Stryker, started massively funding organisations promoting trans demands. Stryker is heir to a multibillion-dollar medical corporation.
One of the benefactors of Stryker’s largesse was Global Action for Trans Equality (GATE).
A screen shot of its website (transactivists.org) from 2011 indicates that it was funded by Arcus Foundation and Open Society Foundations. Open Society Foundations was founded by billionaire George Soros, one of the most successful financial investors of all time.
From 2009 to 2019, Arcus Foundation donated $1,280,000 to GATE
In the About Page of the 2011 website the organisation states its aims:
Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) are reviewing the International Code of Diseases (ICD), and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which gives activists the unique opportunity to lobby for changes of the current (mental health) pathologization of trans* identities.
About GATE « GATE – Global Action for Trans* Equality (archive.org)
A report documenting a meeting in the Hague in 2011 between GATE representatives and WHO officials is on the GATE website.
https://gate.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/its-time-for-reform.pdf
It is clear from the report that GATE were pushing for the requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to be removed as a barrier to legal recognition. They are pushing for self-ID. In order to achieve self-ID, they lobbied the WHO to remove gender identity disorders from the category of mental health disorders.
Access to legal recognition: in the majority of countries with laws and regulations allowing trans people to change their legal gender, trans* people's access to the legal recognition of their gender identity relies on medical diagnosis and letters from medical providers. Trans* people must be able to access to these legal provisions, even with a change in the relevant ICD codes
https://gate.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/its-time-for-reform.pdf
GATE were successful.
The latest version of the ICD, ICD-11, was adopted by the 72nd World Health Assembly in 2019 and came into effect on 1st January 2022.
The section on gender identity disorders was removed from its position under the section Mental and behavioural disorders and a new subsection was created under the section Conditions related to Sexual Health.
It was entitled Gender incongruence of adolescence or adulthood.
On the basis of the WHO change, Quinney claims that “Being trans is not a mental illness”. She’s right. Trans is an identity, but gender dysphoria is a psychological ailment that may be helped by psychological or medical intervention.
In July 2021, GATE published a document on its website titled “Trans Rights are Human Rights Prepared by GATE, ILGA-Europe, and TGEU”
The document, created for activists, misrepresents Lisa Littman’s study
The story of “rapid-onset gender dysphoria”: In a paper published in 2018, Littman professed to have discovered a “new type of gender dysphoria” - one based on social pressures, generally affecting people assigned female at birth, and based on parents’ perceptions, appearing without prior warning from their children. The study on which this idea is based is methodologically biased, so much so that the journal, PLOS One, printed a correction and apologised to the trans community for publishing the original article.
https://gate.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/TransRightsAreHumanRights_July2021.pdf
ROGD is an observation, not a diagnosis, one that is borne out by the new cohort of patients attending the GIDS clinic, as referenced in the Interim Cass Report.
The World Health Organisation were influenced by GATE, an extremist trans activist organisation, massively funded by philanthropic organisations founded by two billionaires.
Another benefactor of Stryker’s generosity is Stonewall.
Stonewall is the largest and most influential LGBT rights organisation in Europe. In August 2014, Ruth Hunt was appointed CEO. The previous March, same-sex marriage was legalised in England and Wales. The legal rights of LGB people in the UK had been secured.
In that same year, Stonewall received $42,000, for ten months of funding for the Rainbow Laces campaign to tackle homophobia in sports from Arcus Foundation.
In 2015, the Arcus Foundation awarded Stonewall a further grant of $100,000 for two years of support to ensure full legal and social equality for trans people by integrating trans-specific work into all key campaigning and programs.
Stryker explained a precondition of being awarded a grant.
We also required that all grantees have a board-approved non-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation and gender identity. We believe it's critical for all our grantees to show an organizational dedication to LGBT rights, officially and in writing. To this day, non-discrimination remains an eligibility requirement for all grantees.
https://www.synergos.org/news-and-insights/2008/interview-jon-stryker-journey-inclusive-philanthropy
It seems that, in the very early stages of her leadership, Hunt was in discussion with representatives of Arcus Foundation and the grants that Arcus Foundation awarded to Stonewall came with the pre-condition that there should be no discrimination on the basis of 'gender identity'.
This is not UK Law, but the policy mandated by Arcus Foundation is the same policy that Stonewall is pushing to all the organisations that have signed up to its Diversity champions program and Workplace Equality Index.
An organisation's ranking in the Stonewall Best Employer List is entirely dependent on how well it implements Stonewall guidance. Between 2015 and 2021 the Welsh Government paid £887,279 to Stonewall, more than any organisation other than the UK Government.
In contrast to UK Law where gender reassignment is a protected characteristic, the Welsh Government Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy follows the policy demanded by the billionaire heir to a multi-billion dollar medical corporation
https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2021-04/atisn14991doc4.pdf
Conclusion
There is a very popular ideology that has captured our young people and, seemingly, our elected representatives too. There is a whole army of people who claim that all of us have an internal gender identity that may or may not align with our sexed bodies - an army that can be categorised as "Team Trans Rights".
Team Trans Rights further claim that it is our internal gender identity that is the real determining factor as to whether we are a man or a woman.
A man who identifies as a woman is not a man. He is a transwoman - a subset of woman.
A woman who identifies as a man is not a woman. She is a transman - a subset of man.
People who neither identify as a man nor as a woman are said to be non-binary.
Team Trans Rights have taken words that are an objective definition of a material reality and redefined them to match subjective feelings - subjective feelings that require the acceptance of socially expected gender roles and behaviours - for without the frame of reference that such stereotypes provide, how can an individual possibly know what gender they identify as.
Our sexed bodies are a material reality. Stereotypes are an idea. Team Trans Rights are pushing an ideology.
And you can't have dialogue with an ideologue.
It is a faith-based belief. You are either a believer or you are a heretic.
For those people whose very identity depends on the validation of others, the truth is transphobic.
Indulging this fiction is a denial of reality and the denial of reality is having enormous consequences.
In July 2020, the Welsh Government published a statement that included this profession of faith
We believe trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid.
https://gov.wales/written-statement-statement-support-wales-trans-communities
Individual politicians can, of course, believe what they like but the Welsh Government has no electoral mandate to change the definition of words. The Welsh Government has no electoral mandate to push an ideology.