October 18, 2023 - 10:00pm
Since its closure was announced last July, Gids — the Gender Identity Development Service at the world-renowned Tavistock and Portman Trust — has become synonymous with mismanagement and medical scandal. It was supposed to be a haven for young people experiencing gender-related distress.
Instead, following a string of complaints by whistle-blowers, an “inadequate” rating by the Care Quality Commission, a high-profile judicial review and, finally, a damning independent review, it was deemed unsafe.
In its place, two new regional hubs were set to open, with several more centres to follow. For Gids’s long-standing critics, concerned about the distress its tumult was having on children, this came as a huge relief.
The story, however, does not end there.
UnHerd columnist Kathleen Stock has spent the past month speaking to a range of clinicians, NHS professionals and parents of dysphoric children — to find out whether Gids’s new service will be an improvement.
The portrait she paints is stark: her findings suggest that the NHS gender services are yet to become a clinically safe space for children and teens, with senior figures still pushing an activist ideology. Only last week, NHS bosses internally announced that they are significantly delaying the launch of one of the hubs. And as she reveals in her investigation, it is unlikely to be the final twist in Gids’s new chapter…
You can watch the full interview with Kathleen Stock and UnHerd Editor Sally Chatterton above.
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Subscribe“The portrait she paints is stark: her findings suggest that the NHS gender services are yet to become a clinically safe space for children and teens, with senior figures still pushing an activist ideology.” <– Kathleen, your “gender does not meaningfully exist” ideology is the only threat to children involved here.
This is a tiny part of what is real, try to care and learn it.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-variance-from-the-usual-at
As matters stand is, you are the monster you claim to fight.
No, that is not a monetized link. No, UnHerd is not likely to let a factual voice refuting it’s editorial slant be heard.
You not not have to be “mentally ill” to be convinced you’re really the other sex. Developmentally, all people are born with is a sex (which has considerable influence on both the body and some aspects of behavior) and the inherited rudiments of a personality. If what you mean is, that some kids are born with a personality more in line with those interests and behaviors society considers to be “feminine” — yes, I’d agree with that.
But the thing is, that what is considered “feminine” is determined by society, and is variable. The truth is, all people will have a combination of those qualities deemed “masculine” and “feminine”. Some kids are male and on balance are “feminine”, and the same phenomenon happens in girls, who are on balance “masculine”. Kids notice when they are different.
A feminine boy, who prefers doing crafts and dressups with the girls, may decide he’s really a girl. And that idea can be very persistent, lasting years. And these days, parents are inclined to go ahead with a social transition, which later on proceeds to other interventions, to bring the body into line with the identity.
Now. Here’s the kicker. Before the transition rates started soaring and before the affirming approach, most “trans kids”, if they were not transitioned socially as children (and were raised rather neutrally) ended up by the end of puberty or in young adulthood comfortable in their bodies and with their birth sex. There are about a dozen valid studies confirming this. Between 60 and 90% of these kids who thought they were the other sex were definitely not Trans, but realized they were Gay. Only a few still felt they were Trans.
And, many older Gay men, in particular, can confirm that they went through a period in childhood when they were sure they were meant to be girls.
Are some kids “truly Trans”? Beats me. But try diagnosing which is which. You can’t. And you can’t really say that all Trans people were born that way.