Gender round-up
Gender identity and related news, March 2022, part 1
I won’t usually introduce these round-ups
To get gender out of my head I’ve been making notes at night. Just a few notes, I tell myself, in an unpublished google document, because I think, one day we’ll want to know what it feels like to be alive in these times. One day we’ll be able to talk about gender openly and interestedly again and we’ll want to remember the order of events.
I tell myself, if I can make notes it will help me understand my own complex feelings about gender and sex, about diversity and democracy, and why the issue feels so personal to me. And I know that for me, the writing that is closest to meditation for me, that allows me to think the clearest, is when I simply document what is around me. The way, this morning, the sun is lighting up the edge of the round chair, my younger child and my partner discussing leprechauns, my elder in a black t-shirt she has hand painted with images from 15th century paintings of hell, bending over to pat our tabby cat. The neighbour’s dog barking and barking. The almost pleasant distant drone of traffic.
Maybe if I observe and write the gender stuff down as simply as I can, I can put it to one side, and focus more steadfastly on the numerous other things there are to think and feel about, personal and political. Perhaps it’s not as big as all that, but is being amplified out of proportion by twitter algorithms and my own discomfort at changing times? An ice shelf collapses in East Antartica, climate-induced fires burn where they never have before, smaller and larger wars rage across the world, 6 million people have died from Covid-19. Why worry so much about this issue?
Of course, the google document grows huge and unwieldy because almost every day, there is something worth writing down. Sometimes it’s out in other parts of the world, the way gender ideology is changing laws and policies and having irreversible effects on adults and kids. This is no twitter spat. Sometimes it’s in my family, or in the letterbox, or among my wider friend group when they snidely dismiss women still thinking about the implications of our biological reality as a kind of archaic nonsense, worthy of group sniggering and the inevitable name calling: terf, transphobe, bigot.
So I’m migrating to this platform, thinking I might intersperse reporting with analytical pieces when I feel like it. I was going to do one round-up for March but it’s been a big month (maybe they all are) so here’s my non-chronologically ordered, Round-up March 2022-part 1.
Maya Forstater back at the UK Employment Tribunal
Between March 7th and March 25th, Maya Forstater was back in an employment tribunal case against the UK’s Center for Global Development. Back in 2019, Maya sued the Center for allegedly discriminating against her—resulting in dismissal—because of her gender critical beliefs which she held should be a protected belief under the Equality Act 20101. The Employment Tribunals judge ruled that her beliefs were not protected nor worthy of respect in a democratic society (WORIADS). Forstater appealed in 2021 and won: the previous judge had erred and gender critical beliefs were WORIADS . Now she’s gone back to the Tribunals Court, once again facing off against the Centre for Global Development. Around 10,000 people followed the live tweets. With gender critical beliefs now protected in law, the Center’s lawyers argued that it was the manner in which Maya presented her belief that was problematic, while Maya’s lawyer argued she was discriminated against for having the belief at all.
Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development (2022) Live tweets
Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development (2021) Appeal ruling
Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development (2019) ruling
March 12, Detrans Awareness Day
Stella O’Malley from Genspect hosted a webinar for Detransition Awareness Day. Introducing the webinar Stella said it’s important to position the day on the voices of the detransitioners who have their own things to say. If you’re new to this, detransitioners are those people who have medically transitioned and then transitioned/reverted back to their original gender.
Detrans Awareness Day Webinar on Youtube
Mid-March, Cass review interim report released
The National Health Service commissioned an independent review of gender identity services for children and young people. Hilary Cass, a retired pediatrician, submitted the interim report (although it is dated February 2022 it didn’t hit media until mid-March). Tavistock, the UK’s only gender clinic, was the major focus. The website introducing the report identifies several key points including:
It is essential that these children and young people can access the same level of psychological and social support as any other child or young person in distress, from their first encounter with the NHS and at every level within the service.
Other key points are: a significant increase in referrals to Tavistock; a lack of consensus and open discussion on gender dysphoria and appropriate treatment; and that normal quality controls in clinical practice have not been in place.
Some people are celebrating this as a vindication of concerns about Tavistock, concerns represented by mass resignations, letters of complaint by staff and board members, and various court cases. The central theme of these concerns is that the adherence to an affirmation model (where children’s own ideas about their gender must be unquestioningly accepted as truth) means kids and teenagers are being rushed towards irreversible medical intervention like puberty blockers, hormones and surgery. Young people are not not seen to be given the kind of explorative therapeutic space to explore other issues that they may be going on. Many of the young people presenting to the clinic have autism and have experienced trauma. Concerned clinicians also think children and young people may be, or may grow up to be same-sex attracted, so have concerns homophobia is driving transitions.
Some trans rights activists are choosing to focus on the fact that the interim report says services for gender dysphoric children and young people need to be massively expanded.
Cass Review — Interim report, February 2022
The Observer view on gender identity services for children, 20 March 2022
Sweden pulls back from puberty blockers
Meanwhile, after a review of evidence, Socialstyelsen, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW), has released new guidelines on puberty blockers saying:
For adolescents with gender incongruence, the NBHW deems that the risks of puberty suppressing treatment with GnRH-analogues and gender-affirming hormonal treatment currently outweigh the possible benefits, and that the treatments should be offered only in exceptional cases. This judgement is based mainly on three factors: the continued lack of reliable scientific evidence concerning the efficacy and the safety of both treatments the new knowledge that detransition occurs among young adults and the uncertainty that follows from the yet unexplained increase in the number of care seekers, an increase particularly large among adolescents registered as females at birth.
Care of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria—Summary (English), Socialstyrelson, 2022.
SEGM Summary of Key Recommendations from the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen/NBHW) - February update
JK Rowling’s tweet of solidarity with Maya, defending the right for someone to say sex is real without losing their job, kicked off years of slandering and abuse of the author as well as rape and death threats.
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