Junk science

treatment for children and adolescents. But there is no clear evidence that there is such a thing as ‘gender identity’. The term comes from gender studies and the humanities, not medicine. Gender is merely a stereotype or a social construct.

The problem is that gender here is determined by diagnosing people’s feelings in relation to the clothes they wear and how they conform to rather conservative tropes for what makes a man or a woman. The NHS criteria for determining gender dysphoria relies entirely upon social stereotypes where girls are likeable, boys are assertive, and so on…

Treatment for gender dysphoria starts to look something like gay-conversion therapy. Added to this is the fact that more than 40 clinicians have left the NHS’s GIDS clinic over the past three years alone due to serious concerns over the safeguarding of children in their care.

But there are signs that the tide is turning.

There is some good news, however. Last week, BBC Woman’s Hour reported that much of the language on the NHS website around ‘gender dysphoria’ has been reworded to more accurately reflect science. One major change was that the NHS no longer states that puberty-blockers like Lupron are ‘reversible’ since there are few studies on their long-term physical or psychological effects. What is known from trials of hormone-blockers in sheep is that it ‘is associated with permanent changes in brain development’. For the study’s authors, this ‘raises particular concerns about the cognitive changes associated with the prolonged use of [hormone] treatment in children and adolescents’.

References to trans children committing suicide have also been removed from the NHS website. The threat of suicide was used to frighten parents into submitting their child into harmful treatments. The site no longer equates ‘gender identity’ to having specific interests as a young child – such as wearing ‘typical boys’ or girls’ clothes’, or disliking ‘taking part in typical boys’ or girls’ games and activities’. The NHS also no longer claims that sex can be changed. The new phrasing is as follows: ‘Some people may decide to have surgery to permanently alter body parts associated with their biological sex.’ After years of kowtowing to the gender lobby, for the NHS to even use the term ‘biological sex’ feels revolutionary.

For over a decade the trans lobby has been successful at promoting anti-science hokum as truth. And it has promoted regressive and conservative notions of gender in the process. It’s time to speak up against it.