Mick Hartley

Dr Antony Latham, chairman of the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, writing in the Times – Scottish gender bill is a betrayal of young people with dysphoria:

The Scottish government will challenge in court the UK’s veto of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, which was passed by MSPs last year. It is timely to look again at the consequences should the bill become law.

The minimum age of legally recognising a trans person’s gender would be lowered from 18 to 16, without the need for them to have medical or psychological testing first. Such a person would generally need to live in their preferred gender for only three months, instead of two years, before legally changing gender.

The principal arguments against the legislation are, first, that it will pose a danger to women in public places from predatory men, and second that it will produce a legal inequality between trans people in different parts of the UK. What is missing in most discussions is the potential for the bill to seriously harm people with gender dysphoria.

The majority of young people who present with gender dysphoria have had problems — depression, past trauma and family breakdown — before they come forward. Autism is also very common. The idea that no psychological assessment is needed before legal recognition of their gender is thus irresponsible. What is more, at least 80 per cent of young people who present with dysphoria will, in time, with watchful waiting, become comfortable with their biological sex. This is often not apparent until well after they are 16.

It is all the more dangerous when we look at what happens if a young person with gender dysphoria is referred to a gender clinic such as the one in Glasgow. Unlike in England and Wales, where the main provider to children of puberty blockers and sex hormones has been shut down, the Glasgow clinic has not, at least officially, changed its practices at all. The fact is that once on puberty blockers, there is a medicalisation of the young person, which leads in more than 90 per cent of cases to the irreversible effects of sex hormone treatment. A large percentage of these will also choose breast removal and genital surgery.

This is what our Scottish NHS is doing. We are seeing more young people de-transitioning when they reach brain maturity, deeply regretting what has happened to them, too late to reverse the physical changes and often permanently infertile. If we really cared for those with dysphoria, we would oppose any law that absolves us from properly assessing them, and allow time to see if such dysphoria desists naturally. This is a medical scandal that may one day come to haunt us.

It should also be stressed that gender dysphoria was, in the days before gender ideogy and social media, an extremely rare phenomenon. Now it's exploded, in the form of so-called Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. It's a social contagion. Instant affirmation of these delusions, via intrusive medical treatment, is the worst possible route to take – needlessly ruining lives in the name of a fantasy. Leave the kids alone!