Leaked Cass interview

So if men would only accept effeminate men in toilets we wouldn't have to trans anyone...

The recommendations could have been different though. We don't know enough about the effects of PBs long term on children with GD so we could either do an RCT, OR more long term assessment of the children who have already received them/not received them, or look at side effects we know about already and say we won't use them any more.

Cass didn’t do the reviews though - teams of reviewers carried out the reviews of evidence. She just pulled it together into a report and couldn’t really misrepresent what the reviews found.

She said that the men who have been passing as women in women’s toilets for years clearly shouldn’t go into men’s toilets (no criticism of men and their narrow minded gender views) implying that the men who don’t pass should go in the men’s. That view is just encouraging passing privilege which the TRAs hate. If you are a true believer you think all men who feel like women regardless of how they look, should be living their best life in the women’s spaces.

The answer, from listening to this is either chop and stunt the growth of children to fit a narrow view of gender and they can live on in their anxious stealth mode, or educate/ support people to accept more varied gender presentations with their actual lived biological sex.

What you both seem to be missing is her wholehearted endorsement of the puberty blocker trial. She recommended this in her report, and still seems to think that some of this cohort of autistic and traumatised children should be put on these damaging drugs as some sort of research experiment.

She knows that there is no benefit to blocking puberty in girls, but still wants some of these girls to participate in this horrifying experiment, and in the meantime be taught how to bind their breasts 'safely' by a nurse.

The comment about adult male transitioners in women's toilets is relevant because whether or not such males can ever 'pass' as women was the whole point of the original Dutch experiment on children. This is where the idea of 'trans children' originated. It's the reason why blocking puberty came about as a 'treatment' for gender nonconforming children. Without this emphasis on 'passing' as adults, nobody would have come up with this idea of treating this group of children with harmful drugs.

If males can be treated as adults and 'pass' successfully, there is no point in giving these drugs to children. Saying that they have always 'passed' as women and we haven't noticed removes the whole reason for giving them to children. By saying she believes this, this she admits she is recommending giving damaging drugs to children for no good reason.

I’m with @quixote9. if the aim is to make everyone believe the same thing, we will fail, Dr Cass is a paediatric expert asked to report on paediatric services, she did that, and her report has materially improved the situation for children beyond all recognition. Having known one of the whistleblowers at GIDS, I think the Cass report has saved multiple lives from being much worse. Whether or not she believes in adult gender identity as a soul type thing is her own business. I look at the things she references in here eg about the high prevalence of autistic and traumatised children in those with a gender identity presentation as really helpful.

Do I have this right?

1. Totally Trans: zomg Cass is aggainst puberty blockers how very dare she

2. Gender Critical: Cass believes that trans identifying men who pass can use women's toilets. So bad.

It doesn't matter what she believes if she makes an honest synthesis of the valid scientific work. Emphasis on "valid." She did that. The TRA's favourite studies done without controls or other necessary methods weren't used. Result: puberty blockers don't do what it says on the tin. The fact that she personally hasn't cast a critical eye at the Be Kind brigade is a footnote.

So many contradictions in what she says.

She mentions the original Dutch experiment on children which took place because someone in the gender clinics thought that mental health in adult (male) transitioners was poor because they didn't pass well enough. But then later she says that these males have been using women's toilets for years and we didn't notice because they pass so well.

And she knows this passing issue doesn't apply to girls, who make up the majority of adolescents at gender clinics, yet she doesn't say anything about how pointless this treatment is for girls.

The claim is that puberty blockers are completely reversible. But children are advised about fertility preservation before treatment with them. If they're completely reversible this should be unnecessary. And if they don't go through puberty they won't have any mature eggs or sperm to freeze anyway, so how can they do this?

I'm surprised that an intelligent woman can come out with such incoherent nonsense.

Thanks shed.

This is both concerning and yet positive as has been mentioned. Concerning as to how much she repeats tropish misinformation. Yet, with all that she still found a significant lack of evidence.

I do agree that language matters. And saying a little boy is really a girl because he wants to wear a dress is a perfect example of unhelpful language.
It's very upsetting.

DS, who is autistic* and now in his 30s went through a phase of adoring a velvet dressing up dress. It was pre-school, he would run downstairs, take off his clothes and insist on wearing the dress all day, for months. We just shrugged and let him get on with it, he then moved onto a policemans outfit. There was also a tutu in the nursery dressing up box that one little boy thought was the best thing ever, also shrugged off.

Now these 2 and 3 year olds would be pathologised, diagnosed and called gender incongruent, which is yes, very upsetting and also bloody terrifying Their parents would either get sucked in or have a fight on their hands whereas we had no such stuff going on to deal with. Mind you DS was glued to trainsets whilst wearing his frock so he might have made peoples heads fall off.

*Language again, diagnosis is actually Aspergers and I nearly put that becasue DS has strong views about the difference. He can also probably tell Asperger's life story in great detail so I never really know what to do 😬

She really thinks that these children will be offered a full suite of services when they present with gender dysmorphia?

I am an adopter. Adoptive families are crying out for support, which is incredibly difficult to access. Adopted children have some of the worst outcomes of all children.

Adoption is one of the high factors in being trans.

Wouldn't it be just bizarre if adopted kids end up being able to access all these lovely services for being trans, not because of what happened to them as babies or adoption issues?

But it goes across the board. It sounds like the best way for any unhappy child, for whatever reason, to get help will be to say they are trans. Everyone else will still be stuck trying to get into CAMHS.

'I spoke to the mom of a little boy who was still using he him pronouns, but he would sometimes go to school in a dress, sometimes in more male typical clothes and um and he and his parents and the children around him were quite relaxed and his options were sort of more open. He and and he was sort of generally much less anxious than the young people in stealth.'

I'm sorry but this is exactly the point being made in this Transgender Trend article about why transitioning very young is so harmful.

I'm starting to really worry that Dr Cass hasn't a clue what she's on about.

It’s even more ridiculous considering earlier comments about how Gen Z seem to have discovered gender nonconformity. Obviously they haven’t but more importantly why say it’s a good thing but then give the idea it should be transed away.

If the men have been passing just fine
then no surgery or medication of children is needed
so the Pathways trial can be binned

whoops

I cannot understand from this part why the obvious conclusion is that children are much happier if allowed to express themselves in a 'gender non-conforming' way, whilst also understanding that they cannot change sex.

This is literally what this is saying, unless you are coming from the unquestioning premise of 'born in the wrong body.

'Um we looked at evidence around social transition. It wasn't clear that it had either positive or negative effects on on on mental health in children. And the evidence is weak in adolescence, but there is some suggestive evidence that if you socially transition early, that may change the trajectory of your gender development. And we had a multi-professional review group which was looking at children and young people who were being put forward for puberty blockers. Um, and and they'd reviewed about 200 cases. And the children who were in most distress who were the ones who were in stealth because they were really anxious about being outed which was driving the urgency for puberty blockers. The young people who seem to be much less um stressed were the ones who were um either being flexible about their gender.

I spoke to the mom of a little boy who was still using he him pronouns, but he would sometimes go to school in a dress, sometimes in more male typical clothes and um and he and his parents and the children around him were quite relaxed and his options were sort of more open. He and and he was sort of generally much less anxious than the young people in stealth.'

Also note the 'was still using he him pronouns', which implies that the expectation is that this will change.

I agree, this is extremely worrying.

Thank you for the commentary.

The identity brigade claimed she was trabsphobic and that clouded her views wrt puberty blockers. So she's actually on board with identities and STILL found puberty blockers harmful, gives weight to that at least.

I've listened to it all and I think that's a fair observation. I cannot see any evidence of critical engagement with the starting point for all this. I have come away thinking she sounds biased in how she approached this work.

I am shocked that she spent 4 years working on this without ever interrogating what "trans"/"gender identity" etc even is, or whether a medical pathway is even appropriate to "solve" the problem of someone not fitting stereotypes for their sex. "Gender incongruence" now seems the preferred term but that is very clearly nothing more than someone's conformity to sex stereotypes.

At one point she talks about a "trans" little boy whose "gender incongruence" means that he sometimes wears a dress to school. The fact that she thinks that is an appropriate and supportive example of a trans child says everything.

The comments in the chat are also interesting. One NHS staff member protests that describing "Trans Kids Deserve Better" as an extremist organisation is "unhelpful" because "language matters". They are the organisation which delivered cardboard coffins to Streeting's constituency office. I think "extreme" is an accurate description.

I do agree that language matters. And saying a little boy is really a girl because he wants to wear a dress is a perfect example of unhelpful language.

It's very upsetting.

Thanks @Shedmistress

I've only skimmed through but this absolutely looks like Dr Cass is fully accepting that gender identity is real and is used as a beginning premise for everything that comes after.

I thought the same when reading the Cass Review, but hoped it was just to keep the TAs happy.

This is very disappointing on first view, but will need to digest more later

In the Q&A at the end she says that if a girl is going to bind her breasts, a nurse should show her how to do that 'safely'.

She seems to be completely taken in by the transactivists.

The redacted bit fell at the point where he relayed a question that suggested that GC people were a safeguarding risk to children (I guess I’m the context of a GI clinic). It’s an interesting comment considering the Levy enquiry highlighted that some of the people involved felt that they couldn’t ask certain questions through fear of transphobia. It seems like a constant requirement that unless you are a fully fledged affirmative activist - stay away.

Agree Flo, it’s disappointing to hear this from Dr Cass.

I’ve listened to the whole thing and at a couple of points (first one maybe 33 minutes in) there’s a high pitched alert noise on the recording and the screen is marked REDACTED. Was busy doing last minute Christmas prep so I wasn’t listening too carefully and I’m not sure if anything was redacted. None of it seemed particularly sensitive or offensive tbh.