My extensive research was possible only because the University of Oxford paid my salary and the Department of Sociology let me pursue my curiosity without hindrance. Few academics in Britain enjoy such privilege, as bureaucratic managers exhort their underlings to maximise their consumption of external grant funding and their mass production of “outputs”. Naturally these managers punish any line of research that strays from what is deemed orthodox by activist scholars and students, because dissenting research will not receive grants or achieve publication and will alienate fee-paying customers.
Pursuing this research on puberty blockers entailed personal costs. Many colleagues warned me that I was being “very courageous”, a message familiar to viewers of Yes Minister. I have surely made myself unappointable to any other post; I have lost students, invitations to seminars, and friends. But there is no need for another victim narrative. If you express unpopular views, then you can hardly complain about being unpopular.
As I pursued my investigation, the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care was given a grant of £700,000 to interview young people who identified as transgender, their parents, and gender clinicians. The project’s advisory board included a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock along with the co-founder of Gendered Intelligence, a transgender campaign group. Interviewees were recruited through organisations promoting endocrinological and surgical interventions. <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/GxToX/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/06/mermaids-trans-charity-loses-case-lgb-alliance-gay-rights/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">One was Mermaids. Another was GenderGP, a Singapore-based firm led by two British doctors; one has been struck off from the medical registrar for dishonesty, while the other has a criminal conviction for running an unlicensed clinic.
This project produced a website featuring videos of young people praising puberty blockers. These included testimonials recommending named private providers, <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/GxToX/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/28/exclusive-online-clinic-willing-prescribe-sex-change-drugs-children/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">including GenderGP. After complaints from me, these providers’ names disappeared from the website. Today it still claims that “hormone blockers are a reversible intervention” and “it is more harmful to withhold this intervention that [sic] to provide it”. This project exemplifies what happens when universities and the NHS are yoked to campaigning organisations.
Part of a longer article at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/17/how-i-took-on-the-puberty-blocker-orthodoxy-and-won/
Can also be read at https://archive.ph/GxToX