Unsound methodology, unacceptable bias, problematic and unsupported conclusions. As academics we regard The Cass Review as dangerous and potentially harmful to trans children.  As academics with decades of research experience between us we can confidently say that The Cass Review would fail if it were submitted as an undergraduate dissertation. Its methodology is shoddy in the extreme and it is clearly biased throughout. It does not include a proper systematic literature review or material published in any language other than English as well as excluding most research evid ..read more

The Cass Review excluded any involvement from any trans people whether academics or clinicians. Today the mainstream media continued that exclusion.  In almost entirely uncritical reports about Cass the following media platforms included zero responses from trans people or organisations representing young trans people, such as Mermaids of Gendered Intelligence; The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, BBC News, The i Paper, The Independent The 'findings' are consequently being reported as though they are uncontroversial, although at least The Guardian had the courage to print an oppos ..read more

Information made available to me by whistleblowers has cast doubt on the integrity of some of the Guardian's reporting, especially  of issues that relate to trans people. Here I report and give my opinion of these revelations. There have been problems since the mid-2010s with the Guardian's reporting of issues relating to trans and non-binary people. This has included the kind of trans-exclusionist policies like those of the Murdoch Times, the Telegraph or the Mail. These problems have even included censoring part of an interview with Professor Judith Butler which criticised "gender-cri ..read more

Social Media post advocating putting trans people in concentration camps. One of the most important things to be crystal clear about at the moment is that Organised Transphobia and all its constituent elements – ‘gender-critical’ transphobes, fascists, religious fundamentalists and extremists, Incels, ‘journalists’ – is committed to a violent outcome using violent (and illegitimate) means. Their aim, driven by hatred in most cases, political or financial gain in others, is to cause harm to trans people, including children, and – if possible – eradicate trans people from the world alto ..read more

Today the Tories will almost certainly decide to implement more anti-trans policies in the UK. Through their puppets they have already started to implement a dangerous and deadly policy of denying healthcare to trans children, something that is, in my view, child abuse. What they will announce later today is anyone's guess but it is likely to be deliberately and needlessly nasty like fascist governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, who they admire greatly. Doubtless the media will make a great deal of the anti-trans petition to install a bio-determinist definition of gender, while they will ignore ..read more

 The IPSO "consultation" is, of course not a consultation since it attempt to phrase its questions in such a way that the core assumptions and issues cannot be challenged. That has not stopped me from doing so however. I have only answered three questions, the others are, in my view pointless. Anyway, these are my responses for what they are worth, rather hurriedly put together so they may not read as fluently as I would like. 1b. Do you have any other comments about how the draft guidance strikes this balance? The big failing here is that groups do not have any right of redress, or e ..read more

My opinion of the new NHS Service Spec for trans children Early this summer Olson et al (2022) published a very significant longitudinal study of 317 transgender children aged between 3 and 12 years of age who had socially transitioned. Social transition means that they were known by their preferred pronouns and chosen names and treated as their true genders, the genders with which they identify rather than the genders assigned to them at birth. The conclusion the study came to was emphatic; 94% of these children continued to identify as trans after five years.  So why has the NHS decided ..read more

The Labour Party permitting an anti trans event at its Conference in Liverpool is something most Party members and members of the wider trade union movement will find appalling. This article is about why I believe it is problematic.  Extreme Rightwing Ideology “Gender-critical” transphobia has morphed, as every trans human rights campaigner said it would, into an extreme rightwing movement associated with fascists and neo Nazis. An anti-trans rally in Brighton recently was attended by many on the far right, including supporters of Tommy Robinson.  One of the people there was Helen ..read more

All bullies are cowards, as the well-known maxim goes, and Suella Braverman, her cronies in the media and the "gender-critical" transphobes (Trans Actual 2018) are no exception to this. Let’s examine the deliberate misinterpretation of the Equality Act by Suella Braverman the “Attorney General”, what is intended, and is it a new Section 28 for trans children...? A few days after she announced that government lawyers and civil servants should no longer advise ministers when their actions are illegal, Suella Braverman has (co-incidentally?) said she wants to disallow large sections of the Equ ..read more

  Throughout the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century the “Jewish Question” was “debated” in much of Europe. In essence the “Jewish Question” was a polite term for antisemitism. It culminated, in the 1930/40s in the holocaust in which 6 million Jews were murdered. The “Jewish Question” was about non-Jewish people debating what to do with Jews, how they should be forced to live, how their lives should be restricted, what human rights, if any, they should have.  In the UK and US in the last few years there have been many similar euphemistic terms deployed for transp ..read more