Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans speech from Declaration of a Sex Based Rights at Leeds Civic Hall Saturday 25th May 2019
(extract)
"Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids have no clinical expertise or child psychology background.
The alleged ‘middle-course’ of the Tavistock is deeply politically positioned and ethically compromised — a phenomenon the clinic disavows when challenged by whistle blowers. In effect it is driven by a single theoretical construct: it has at its core the issue of ‘gender identity’ defined by transgender theory and lobbying. As an endocrinologist said last week at The House of Lords:
“Physicians need to start examining Gender Affirming Therapy through the objective eye of the scientist-clinician rather than the ideological lens of the social activist”.
Reclaiming Children’s Human Rights
I return to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child and point out that since the introduction of ‘gender identity’ as an inherent characteristic “the best interests of the child” – not only those confused by gender but ALL children – have not been the primary consideration of their adult caretakers.
Firstly, with regard to the child’s “right to the enjoyment of health”, the institutions, services and facilities responsible for the care or protection of children have NOT conformed with the standards established by competent authorities, particularly in the areas of safety and health and for the following reasons:
Gender medicine is the only branch of medicine which makes healthy people medical patients for life. It offers physically healthy children and young people dangerous, off-label drug treatment with life-long deleterious consequences on the basis of a child’s subjective feeling, for which there is no scientific test. There is no neuroscientific evidence for pink brains and blue brains; there are no established diagnostic criteria, laboratory imaging or other objective tests to diagnose a ‘true transgender child’.
Almost all children on puberty blockers progress to cross-sex hormones, and blockers plus cross-sex hormones inevitably lead to sterility and — the increasingly common trend — mastectomy for young women. Even short-term hormone treatment leaves irreversible effects on the bodies of young people who want to ‘transition back’.
The model of alleged ‘informed consent’ to hormone therapy is woefully inadequate since children are not developmentally competent to give full, free and informed consent to such medical interventions or to comprehend, despite the transgender narrative that feeds youthful fantasies, that when they are adults they can be transformed to the opposite sex. So called ‘gender affirmation surgery’ can only simulate sex organs, for example by excising the penis and testicles to construct an internal, insensate cavity into the male body, or by creating a prosthetic penis fashioned from flesh taken from elsewhere on the female body. The consequence of this is not only sterility, but the reduction or even complete elimination of sexual, genital sensation. The tragedy is that the vast majority of children will resolve gender dysphoria naturally during adolescence.
Gender questioning and feeling trans are influenced by a complex mix of personal pre-disposition (e.g. related to trauma in the child’s background and autism) and the larger culture of sexualization and sexual objectification of girls. Nearly 70% of referrals to the Tavistock gender clinic last year were girls. We should stop encouraging young people to believe they are trans. The children and adolescents who are allegedly ‘consenting’ have been taught about ‘gender identity’ by organizations such as Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids and Stonewall, and are influenced by the glamorisation of transgenderism on the internet and social media.
Secondly, with regard to “the rights, responsibilities and duties of parents” to safe-guard their children, ironically, parents who do not believe their child has been ‘born in the wrong body’ and immediately affirm they are transgender are often regarded by agencies as failing to safeguard their children. But adult caretaking requires — no,obliges— parents to guide their children through the psychological, maturational stages of childhood and adolescence necessary to achieve adulthood, before allowing them to take any deep, irreversible decisions about their bodies." (continues)
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3596961-Dr-Heather-Brunskell-Evans-at-Leeds-Declaration-Event