Cass review - out on Wednesday

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/06/children-socially-transition-face-grave-psychological-risks/

Major.

Excellent

Excellent stuff!

It's a shame that the Telegraph chooses to use the term "transgender children" when reporting it, but otherwise a great write-up. And of course a significant improvement on the BBC's obfuscation and omissions on the whole subject so far. I share the above scepticism on whether they will report this at all when it comes out.

Hopefully this report will be significant in countering the dangerously ignorant submissions of the EHRC and UK Paediatrics and Child Health to the draft government guidance on Gender Questioning Children. Also, it should hopefully be helpful in the current court cases being brought by Sue Evans (challenging why private clinics are allowed to prescribe puberty blockers) and Anna Castle (challenging 16+ year olds being fast-tracked in to the WPATH-aligned adult care pathway).

As there is no imminent sign of either the final version of the schools' guidance or any mandatory safeguarding approach (e.g. Liz Truss' Bill getting backing from the government), this report will be incredibly significant for everyone who is fighting the enforced belief of gender identity in schools, as well as in getting better mental health support for the children and young people who are caught up in this awful medical scandal.

I can only assume that Dr Cass’ team saw those latest studies and evaluated them too for the final report.

And that some of the recent movements from organisations is because they know what the report will say.

Thank you for link.

Hopefully @BonfireLady the school guidelines have deliberately been held back in order to cite Cass. The complete legal mess with no case law to refute the dangerous assertion that pc of Gender Reassignment applies to children - all children no matter how young - legally undermines the guidelines.

It's a mess of epic proportions as none of the writers of the original legislation (GRA / Equality Act) realised that self invested adults and groups would be able to persuade society that sex change for children was needed.

I suspect that Cass has been so delayed as a number of other studies were due to be published from which important data and summaries have been referenced.

And the schools guidance relies heavily on Cass.

It sounds like Cass will also cite the impact and influence of schools too.

it feels like someone made a huge map underground and spent some time moving the pieces and making the links to establish the order in which things have had to work.

Ministers had considered an outright ban on social transitioning, but Victoria Prentis, the Attorney General, advised that such a move would be unlawful under the Equality Act 2010'

I would like to know more about this

That was round about the time the school draft guidelines came out iirc

Do you mean the Webberleys sacking all the staff from GenderGP?

@ArabellaScott was that the "unlawful" bit schools week were jabbering in about?

Whilst the bbc and guardian may be shit in reporting on this, we can bet our bottom dollars that JK will be talking about it a lot.

And making sure all are listening

I think (IANAL) it's because the pc of Gender Reassignment is considered to apply to children? Therefore the requirements must apply to children - no matter how young.
When the GRA / Equality Act were written nobody thought we'd have so many powerful adults and groups targeting children to think that pubertal angst could be solved with a sex change. So there was no clarification of age and there's no case law about age etc.

Yes, I can't find links to VP's direct decision but it's reported last July:

https://archive.is/GtBRt

And she said that to ban social transition the govt would have to bring in new legislation.

I wonder if we're looking at a rewrite of the EA?

There was a leak from some government lawyers pointing out the guidelines could be subject to legal challenge and sadly that's what we really need. Or the government to get its act together and amend legislation to ensure that safeguarding children cannot be set aside in favour of the demands from adults that children should be allowed to sex change. That the pc of gender reassignment does not apply to 3 year olds (or 7, 11, 13 or 15 year olds)

The NAS / UWT's submission to the consultation focused on the legal problems that could put schools in the legal firing line from trans lobby groups. Transgender Trend also highlighted this in their submission.

Hopefully 🤞🤞

It feels like an arm wrestle between the law (no minimum age for PC of gender reassignment to apply) and the safeguarding of children and vulnerable young people.

The timing of the general election comes in to play as well. At the moment it's not clear how far the Tories want to go on this either before the election or as a wedge issue in their manifesto. They seem to be hedging, possibly more worried about a split in the party than anything else? The final Cass Report could also be helpful here as it will allow for some "experimental" political debate to continue within both the public discourse and parliament. I hope they grab that opportunity with both hands.

As many have said on many threads, this shouldn't be a partisan issue, but Labour and the Libs Dems are a lost cause and the Tories remain the only party that seems to go near it in a effective way.
Although that said, the previous track record of the Minister for Schools, Damian Hinds on this topic isn't exactly encouraging...

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4943126-idiot-who-wrote-current-rshe-guidance-is-education-minister-again

Hopefully it was a case of Damian Hinds being blindsided by the forced-teaming of sexual orientation and gender identity (as a single package), like so many others have been because of the TRA/Stonewall lobbying, and his views have changed since then.

I look forward to all of the conversations that will stem from the release of the final report. It feels like it's all going on the right direction on medical interventions, at least for under 18s (ideally this will implicitly end up including vulnerable young adults too) but with lots of inevitable fight still being put up by those who either genuinely believe they are Being Kind or are actively part of the Dentons' strategy, or something akin to it.

Well no. I was thinking about the organisations like UK Council for Psychotherapy.

However… now that you mention it… would they have someone who leaked the direction of the report to them? Or just worked it out for themselves?

That appears to be a grey area given the EA hasn't specified children. But could be argued either way I assume.

So potentially an amendment to GRA in light of harms evidenced by Cass...?

Please let this publication mark the end of ignoring children’s neurodivergence and trauma (and safeguarding and informed consent and scientific and medical knowledge) by giving them unnecessary drugs and surgeries that we already know won’t make them feel better and will make them feel worse. While ignoring their psychological needs.

It’s been a shameful period of a disgusting use of permanent damage of kids in order to make them poster children in a campaign to support adult men’s sexual rights and sexual access to other people.

I am waiting for this report with great hope - something needs to make Australia wake up to this dangerous ideology and evil transitioning techniques, please let it be this!

This report will have world impact I'm sure.

A firm and very clear intervention from The Hill, a publication in the US that goes out of its way to keep to the centre ground, to the extent of having contributors from both the Left and the Right being allowed to go at each other like Punch and Judy:

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4573662-the-reckoning-over-puberty-blockers-has-arrived/

This is an opinion piece submitted by Leor Sapir, very much on one side of the debate. However, it has been given a platform in a mainstream US publication.

A very good and unequivocal article, thanks.

This popped up on my X feed this morning and is rather timely:

https://ateachersguidetosexandgender.org/2022/07/06/a-teachers-guide-to-the-cass-review-interim-report/

One of the specific areas I'm focusing on with both my daughter's school and my MP is the legal position of schools allowing teachers to share their belief in gender identity under the current statutory guidance and other legislation. In short, the lack of minimum age in the EA for the PC of gender reassignment seems to be the elephant in the room here too.

Hopefully the people that put this document together will do a similar analysis on the final report when it comes out.

However, in the interim I'll be pointing my daughters' school to this paragraph in particular:

Moreover, the promotion of specific beliefs about the source(s) of gender-related distress could influence children’s attitudes toward the diagnostic process before meeting with a clinically trained professional. Guidance from the Department for Education states that teachers “are in a position of authority and will typically be respected and trusted by the pupils they teach, giving their personal opinions greater weight and credibility. As a general principle, they should avoid expressing their own personal political views to pupils unless they are confident this will not amount to promoting that view to pupils [4].”

Once I've read the final Cass report this week, I'll ask for a meeting with the school to discuss next steps. To be clear, the school has been really collaborative but I'm now going to respectfully challenge them on their position to wait for the final Guidance on Gender Questioning Children before they take any steps on changing their policies. They are in a difficult position but I would argue (and I expect/hope to see good reasoning in the Cass Report) that they leave themselves fully exposed to legal risk in the future if they continue to allow teachers to promote the belief that everyone has a gender identity e.g. pronouns in emails, pronoun posters on walls, posters of trans"identified role models etc.