Closing down to protect children

The seemingly unstoppable march of transgender ideology may be coming to a halt in post-Christian Britain., where a periodic outbreak of sanity may be a sign of hope.

On July 28, 2022 it was announced that the National Health Service in the U.K. will shut down the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in London, widely known as Tavistock. This move comes as a result of a report of an independent review chaired by Dr. Hilary Cass, former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

In a letter to the National Health Service, Dr. Cass wrote of the dangers of giving children puberty blockers. Her words were clear:

A further concern is that adolescent sex hormone surges may trigger the opening of a critical period for experience-dependent rewiring of neural circuits underlying executive function (i.e. maturation of the part of the brain concerned with planning, decision making and judgement). If this is the case, brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers, which could have significant impact on the ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences.

One danger is that children may suffer impaired brain development that would affect them for life. But why is the report so unsure? Why does it say that it is merely possible that “puberty blockers may . . . disrupt brain development.” This uncertainty exists because, despite the fact that thousands of children already have been treated in this way, adequate research has not been done to determine whether it is safe. Shockingly, Cass writes:

To date, there has been very limited research on the short-, medium- or longer-term impact of puberty-blockers on neurocognitive development.

Marcus Evans is a psychoanalyst in private practice, and he formerly served as Consultant Psychotherapist and Associate Clinical Director of Adult and Adolescent Service at the Tavistock facility. He resigned from the Tavistock board of governors in 2019 because of his deep concerns with the ideological capture of the institution by activists. He wrote in Quillette:

Yet in 2019, it was revealed that the GIDS program at Tavistock clinic had lowered the age at which it offers children puberty blockers on the basis of a study that—it later was revealed—concluded that “after a year of treatment, ‘a significant increase’ was found in patients who had been born female self-reporting to staff that they ‘deliberately try to hurt or kill myself.’” The fact that Tavistock officials ignored such evidence suggests they have bought into the idea that transition is a goal unto itself, separate from the wellbeing of individual children, who now are being used as pawns in an ideological campaign.

Keira Bell is a young woman who became one of these pawns. As the story of her experience reveals:

Keira’s battle was based on her own horrifying experience. Aged 16 and, by her own admission, ‘very mentally ill’, Keira had been given the drugs by doctors at the controversial clinic to pause her own development before realising—six years later and after undergoing a double mastectomy—that it was a monumental mistake.

In 2013, in the midst of a mental health crisis, she told a GIDS therapist that she thought she was a boy. Instead of exploring the underlying causes of her depression and anxiety, GIDS staff recommended puberty blockers.

The next few years were a nightmare for Keira. By age 20 she had had surgery to remove both breasts, but by age 22 she realized none of this had helped her mental health at all and that she had made a huge mistake. She is now an advocate for making it illegal to treat children with dangerous drugs and irreversible surgery instead of treating their mental problems with traditional therapy.

How many more Keiras are out there, waiting for their tragic stories to be told?

The use of children as pawns in an ideological campaign to deny the reality of biology is a sign of the extreme degeneration of late modern Western society. In an age of extreme relativism, the adults who run our institutions find themselves unwilling to stand up to a well-organized and aggressive group of extremists portraying themselves as victims in order to victimize others.

This kind of ideological abuse of children will eventually end, but not because of the virtue or courage of governments or scientific bodies. Most likely it will end because of career-destroying lawsuits brought against gender identity affirming professionals and institutions by the victims of this activity.

Future generations will look back at the transgender hysteria as we look back on the Salem witch trials. They will wonder how we let it go on so long. How will we answer that question?