Final Report Cass Review now published

[IwantToRetire]

Dr Hilary Cass has submitted her final report and recommendations to NHS England in her role as Chair of the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people.

Download from https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/

So GIDS likely knew the services they were offering were unlikely to stand up to evidence-based review, stopped collecting relevant data which would be useful for said review and carried on with the service regardless?

It baffles me that health care professionals would do this - and why. Surely you would want your ideology supported by data.

I agree with other posters who have said that any indication from Labour that they will implement the recommendations in Cass rather than burying it is hugely positive.

Which means that if you had any data to support your ideology you would share it as widely as possible.

My observation of the debate on Mumsnet (and I still feel like a newbie, only here for 18 months) it is far from polarised. It's very open, rooted in concern for people directly effected by the imposition of gender theories.

Young women being encouraged to do life-long damage to their bodies, young men ditto, young women in sport physically endangered by larger opponents, robbed of fairness in competition. Women's spaces opened up to any predatory man who chooses to access them.

And again and again, adult men being prioritised over adult women and over children of either sex.

They need to actually read the report and make sure all their MPs who spoke up supporting the conversion bill are briefed accurately. They won't.

We should take a lot at Hansard and make a note of the relevant MPs who 'need educating' with a copy of the Cass Review.

I suspect we will see a number of MPs continue to push misinformation post Cass Review. The SNP in particular find themselves in a 'curious position'.

We need to hold power to account now at this point. That means continuing to push rather than assuming that it's all over and everything is ok now.

But NHS records only record 'gender'. This can be changed at will (by creating new NHS record and transferring cross as much irrelevant as little data as desired, so genuinely possible to obfuscate biol sex). Rarely done prior to involvement of a GIC, but can be. So GIDS sex/gender data would be unreliable anyway - it may literally not be possible/realistic to provide this data.

So relived this is now out, after initially feeling elated that we have been vindicated, I’m now feeling depressed because it’s not over is it?
With the likes of Girl Guides (who now sell Pride keyrings) and schools not following government guidelines, are any of these “trans child” pushers going to listen to Cass and stop pushing their agenda?

Yes absolutely, and so the obvious conclusion is that it doesn't exist.

But how have we ended up with so many seemingly rational healthcare professionals signed up to an ideology? They can't all be trans or nonbinary themselves so I don't understand what their incentive was if the data was clearly not there to the point of stopping collection of it. Have any of them done interviews and explained their rationale?

Following to read later.

This. A million times over. Medicine should be evidence based. Not ideological. And not based on anecdata.

I am not transphobic. I believe people who identify as trans should receive appropriate, evidence based care. Just like everybody should. I am optimistic this report might open the door for that.

It needs honest, evidence based discussion.

100% fucking this!!

I am sure over the coming days and weeks there will be many attempts to ‘both side’ this and branding of FWR as the equal & equivalent of TRA.

that can fuck right off to the far side of fuck

the Cass report says everything we have been saying for years! We have said treatment needs to be evidence based, we have highlighted the massive increase in young ND women identifying as boys, we have pointed out the quite staggeringly poor practice at GIDS. All of this is vindicated

there will be no rewriting of history. There’s been enough of that already !!

Oh dear, that hasn't aged well.

I haven't read the report yet but have looked through the summary and it's all there. All the concerns that have been thoughtfully discussed here for years. I remember back when posts or whole threads would be deleted when people pointed out much of what has been stated in this report. I feel for all those children who were pushed down the single pathway without question.

Are private practitioners and clinics going to adopt the recommendations in this report?

“Cass said that “online influencers” had played a key role in fuelling confusion among young people about their gender identity and what they needed to do to change it.
“We haven’t done a comprehensive search but certainly when we were told about particular influencers I followed some of those up. Some of them give them very unbalanced information.
“And some of them [young people] were told that parents would not understand so that they had to actively separate from their parents or distance their parents. All the evidence shows that family support is really key to people’s well being. So there was really some dangerous influencing going on,” she said.”

From The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/10/thousands-of-children-unsure-of-gender-identity-let-down-by-nhs-report-finds

All excellent from Cass,
I expect she didn’t have time to look into Charities, MPs, Lords, Film “stars” etc because they have been just as influential.

We need to be right on top of the receipts and hold power to account.

No more of this. Ed Balls sounds like he just attempted it.

Yes. It's not just the batty Jeffrey Marshes.

I stress the importance of the Online Harms Act with this.

Promoting transition to minors needs to be right there with Pro-Ana and pro-suicide stuff.

I think that there was/are extreme views on both sides but I don't think as a whole the MN boards propagated the extremism

I think I would summarise the "Mumsnet" position and influence as follows:

• People tend to take a greater interest in things which affect them and people like them directly. Mumsnet users are overwhelmingly women with children, so unsurprisingly they are deeply invested in a subject involving harm being done to women and young people.
• The vast majority of women on Mumsnet have been pregnant and given birth, which means they have a more acute awareness of the sexed differences between men and women than young people or indeed men. (There's nothing quite like growing a human inside you to make you make you deeply sceptical about the suggestion that India Willoughby is living as a woman and Freddy McConnell is living as a man.)
• The name "Mumsnet" is off-putting to most people who aren't mothers or would-be mothers. This means it is a corner of the internet which is almost exclusively female, where discussion between women of or past childbearing age has been allowed to flourish largely in the absence of men, children, teenagers and adults with no particular interest in having children. This means we have been allowed to actually talk about this without being shouted down by the kind of people who would shout us down on other social media, at a Let Women Speak event, or even in the workplace or parliament. By the time these people were alerted to Mumsnet as a "hotbed of transphobia", the debate was already well underway.
• Because Mumsnet users care deeply about women and children, the debate has generally been grounded in compassion and genuine concern for people's welfare rather than prejudice or bigotry. Even when talking about adult trans women in the context of single sex spaces, most MNers express sympathy for those with genuine dysphoria and support alternative solutions such as third spaces, whilst being realistic about the impact on women and girls of simply allowing anyone who says they are a woman to be treated as one for all purposes. The only real anger towards "trans people" seems to be against those who have personally harmed women, e.g. in the context of prisons or sports.
• Another age related point: many MNers are past the age of caring too much about whether people like them and have reached the no fucks given stage. This makes us harder to shame into silence and submission.
• And finally, it is an anonymous forum. So women from all walks of life, including in professions giving them valuable insight into these issues, have been free to say things on this site which would put their jobs and personal relationships at risk if they were to say them in public. This has really helped to open up the debate. Hopefully now it will be much easier to say these things out loud.

All in all I think the influence of Mumsnet will have been considerable. (Many thanks of course to Justine Roberts who has held firm in the face of considerable pressure.)

Have just read the Guardian article from yesterday evening. I had to double check that I was reading something from the Guardian.

Am googling the York Uni reviews. Pretty shocking level of quality for academic papers. It takes a lot of work to get an academic paper submitted and accepted. That so many were poor quality is really concerning.

There are so many fast moving threads on this just now I can't keep up and sorry if I've missed it.

But does this mean the end for the conversion therapy ban?? At least as it stands, including trans related issues?

If that ban gets passed then all this will have been wasted, her recommendations overruled.

I think they are relived someone’s built a golden bridge they can retreat over. It’s cowardice really.

Yes I also can't believe the sudden change in journalism from the Grauniad

Grauniad has an issue.

Access for medicalisation of children in the US is a Democratic position. Right ahead of an election and the Guardian is trying to cater to the US market.

Good question.

It's difficult to see how Labour can move on with the ban whilst also claiming to be implementing the recommendations in Cass.

I think this is actually a golden opportunity for Labour (particularly if Starmer has been privately panicking about trans issues and looking for a way to subtly row back on his previous position) to say, "This changes everything. We know things now that we didn't know before. We need to ensure that young trans people are getting the best quality care in accordance with the best available evidence."

And if Labour doesn't do that, it will be easier to hold their feet to the fire. It will be easier for any MP in parliament opposing the ban to stand up and say, "What about Cass?"

The House of Lords will say, "What about Cass?"

Mumsnetters protesting outside parliament will say, "What about Cass?"

The point at which it becomes easier to drop the conversion therapy ban than to proceed with it is the point at which they will drop it.