Julie Bindel at UnHerd:
“The gender capture is making a mockery of our profession,” says Lianne Smith*, an experienced clinical psychologist who works with children. “We save lives — I save lives. This approach is destroying lives.”
Smith is in no doubt about the damage she believes is being done within — and by — her profession. Psychology should be a lifeline for youngsters struggling with their mental health. Yet according to a small but growing number of clinicians, their ability to help is being undermined when it comes to those experiencing gender dysphoria.
At the centre of their concerns is the rise of so-called “affirmative care”: an approach which treats a young person’s declared gender identity as something to be validated rather than explored. Complicating the matter yet further is the Conversion Practices Bill, which will criminalise any attempt to instigate conversations around sexual orientation and gender. In other words, it will criminalise those psychologists who attempt to prompt deeper thinking in minors who are gender confused.
I spoke to dozens of psychologists for this investigation, all of whom expressed fears about the professional consequences of speaking openly. The institutions that should be defending them have instead helped create a climate in which voicing scepticism can carry serious consequences — both for clinicians themselves and for the vulnerable young people in their care….
Two years on from Cass’s review, the psychologists I spoke to attest that, if anything, things have got worse. Underlying complex presentations remain unexplored and insufficient time is given to evaluate psychological needs. As the conversion practices bill strides ever closer to legislation, fear within the profession is growing — yet hardly anyone dares to speak out. Of that small but significant minority of child clinical psychologists who have questioned the affirmative approach of “gender medicine” — all have been roundly punished. Some have lost their income, been labelled transphobic, or worse, held responsible for the deaths of “trans kids”.
“I’m seeing kids now who really need a psychologist who isn’t going to instantly affirm them and send them down the ‘gender’ route,” says Nancy Reed*. Clinicians are afraid to speak out, says the clinical psychologist based in London. “If they heard bad things about me [professionally] and their parents took them away from my care, they would be instantly affirmed by someone else, and that would be the end of that.”
The current model for gender treatment resembles what clinical psychologist Leslie Jones* describes as a “trans conveyor belt”: the affirmation approach leads to social transition, which in turn leads to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and seriously risky life-long medical trajectories. We already know this. But what’s surprising is that the direction of travel isn’t changing. Jones was “horrified” by the “ideological stance” that had gripped the private gender clinic he worked in. Gender became the sole focus, with all of the problems which may have been behind the gender distress unexplored and left to fester. And as another clinician confirmed, we have “gone miles from evidence-based psychological thinking. It’s infiltrated everyone as well as the systems, the people, society.”
A grim but important read.
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