Keir Starmer says he doesn’t want schools teaching young people about transgender identities

[u/PinkNews]

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/06/25/keir-starmer-trans-education-general-election-2024/

[u/mittfh]

Even though many of the studies were categorised as Moderate or High quality by the York team, Cass effectively dismissed them as very weak evidence for any intervention (including social transitioning) due to either (a) not representing children from every background, every coincidental mental / neurological condition and every age of first identifying as trans (but to do so, you'd effectively need a multinational study of hundreds of thousands of people to get enough to fulfil every category in both the "had blockers / HRT" and "didn't have blockers / HRT" cohorts), (b) a high drop-out rate (inevitable if you want to study a cohort over many years), and (c) 1-3 years after starting HRT is apparently nowhere near long enough to follow them.

She'd also like studies to examine not just the person's health, but also how well they do in life generally: do they move out of their parental home, do they get a job, do they form relationships with others. To do that would necessitate an even larger international cohort, and a study potentially lasting several decades to last from childhood to nearly 30.

Added onto which, even social transition shouldn't be started without clinical consent, and even then should only be part time (at home, not in school). While setting up multiple child gender clinics around the country and having a holistic assessment of all their needs sounds good in theory, the two new clinics are struggling to find staff, while the CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) waiting list is currently over 100,000, and there's likely to be very little additional money for health services in general over the coming few years.

So for all but a handful of children, they may go from a 4 year wait to access a gender clinic to a wait until they're nearly 30 (given Cass recommended children's gender services look after young people until they're 25 before moving to adult services) - so effectively outlawing the bulk of trans children. Oh, and private providers will likely be required to follow the same pathway as the NHS or have their license pulled.

Added onto which, despite waiting lists for adult gender referrals being 5.5 years long (they're currently booking first appointments for those referred in December 2018), she's concerned that they're allegedly too quick to issue hormones, don't take other conditions such as mental health or autism into account, and there's allegedly a high rate of detransition, so the NHS is to commission a review into adult gender services. There's also a recommendation that HRT should only be given under 18 in exceptional circumstances, and all seeking HRT should have their case assessed by an independent national panel who'd make the recommendation, rather than any doctors involved in the patient's care.

So at a time when 20+ countries offer gender self identification, we're going down the opposite route of ever increasing gatekeeping and hoops to jump through - plus the ever looming possibility of barring trans people (regardless of stage of transition) from all single sex facilities and services - most organisations won't have the funds or space to set up separate unisex facilities.