Straight to the point

On International Women’s Day in 2022, Yvette Cooper seemed unable to define a woman: “People get themselves down rabbit holes on this,” she said. “I’m avoiding going down this rabbit hole.” Attempting to distract from this inability, she called for more action on violence against women. Little did she realise that most of us who criticise gender ideology do so on the grounds that allowing men to use female-only spaces leaves women and girls even more vulnerable to men’s violence.

So, either she was being disingenuous, or she doesn’t know what a woman is. Or perhaps she was just doing what many other indulgent parents do and was appeasing her transactivist son. Whatever the answer, it’s unforgivable. She is a public servant.

In the aftermath of the Cass Report into the state of Britain’s youth gender care services, I have little interest in condemning people for stupid things they have said in the past — but I am angry about those who only changed their stance once it becomes unavoidably obvious that they were wrong all along. One obvious candidate is Labour shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting — though, admittedly, he did reposition himself in the months before the Cass Report was published.

In the past, Streeting has resorted to what I call “the Joni Mitchell diversion tactic”, attributing the toxicity of the “debate” to “both sides”. Yet Streeting himself hasn’t always been so even-handed. In 2017, he called for “specialist GPs” to be trained to prescribe “bridging hormones” while patients waited for a referral — a practice starkly at odds with the conclusions of the Cass Report.

Yesterday, though, Streeting hailed Cass’s review as “a really important” piece of work. “[It] does raise some serious concerns that are pretty scandalous. Actually I think we’ve got to ask ourselves: why is it that we’ve seen medical interventions that have been given on the basis of very weak evidence? How is it that clinicians have been silenced for coming forward?”

Really, Wes? You don’t understand how these people — including your own colleague, Rosie Duffield — have also been silenced? Of course he does. But then yesterday, disingenuity was the order of the day. Even Stonewall — that rainbow-resplendent Garden of Eden — was forced to change tack. In its statement about the review, it said: “What is important, above all, is that trans and gender-diverse children get the quality healthcare that they need and deserve. The Cass Review can play a vital role in achieving this aim, if its recommendations are implemented properly.”

Coming from an organisation that has repeatedly extolled the benefits of making puberty blockers available for children, should we take this seriously? Probably not. But regardless, the fact they have been forced to even utter such words cannot be dismissed.

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In a similar vein, the prickly princelings at PinkNews published an uncharacteristically low-key piece — possibly the site’s most neutral article about the review since it was commissioned four years ago. In place of its usual fare — incoherent rants peppered with spelling mistakes — it set out some of the report’s recommendations, almost without comment. It even said that the World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare (WPATH), an internationally recognised body for trans healthcare guidance, lacks “developmental rigour”.

It can’t be stressed enough how out-of-character this is. For years, PinkNews has been a key cheerleader for puberty blockers for children, repeating myths about trans kids being at major risk of suicide if denied such treatments. Yet here it simply reports: “The review also claimed that, while research suggests that hormone treatment “reduces” the elevated risk of suicide, there is ‘no clear evidence’ that social transition has any positive or negative mental health outcomes.” On a normal day, its reporters would be screeching “transphobia” and “bigotry” from the comfort of their keyboards, but then yesterday was no normal day.

And yet, for all of yesterday’s almost-mea-culpas, it would be delusional to hope that these people will ever genuinely admit their roles in the scandal, let alone their own contributions to the horrendous damage that has been done to children. I even doubt that any regret will register — other than in terms of how it might backfire on them personally. Politicians will change their tune because they want to be popular and get elected; organisations such as Stonewall know that their funding will soon dry up, their expiry dates growing ever closer.

In 2008, I was officially “no-platformed” by the National Union of Students (NUS), becoming the first individual deemed so offensive and dangerous that I was blacklisted alongside five fascist groups. At the time, Streeting was president of the NUS, and I called him and asked for his help. When he refused, I asked if he would simply denounce the allegation that I was transphobic, even if he couldn’t do anything officially to get me removed from the list. He would not. Six years later, when I was considering whether to take some kind of legal action against the NUS for reputational damage, I contacted him again. He initially agreed to an off-the-record chat, but then stopped replying to my emails about a suitable time to speak. It’s funny how things change.

If I sound bitter that’s because I am. Thousands of kids have been harmed by this ideology, along with many, many adults. Those of us who have been shunned, lost jobs, friends and reputations as a result of accusations of bigotry and transphobia are, of course, secondary victims. And as for those who have played it safe? Inevitably, they will now stay silent or pretend that the evidence of harm contained in the Cass Report is a shocking revelation. The truth, of course, is that the evidence has been there all along. To those new converts now pretending otherwise: we see you.

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Source: UnHerd Read the original article here: https://unherd.com/