A Brighton family has published advice from a leading lawyer which it says it will use to sue the city council unless it withdraws its advice to schools on trans issues.
The family says Brighton and Hove City Council’s Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit has “facilitated the fast-tracking of children from the classroom to the clinic”.
Karon Monaghan KC, a leading equalities and human rights lawyer, has written a 75-page legal opinion outlining a multitude of areas in which she says the toolkit is unlawful in its potential impact on both trans and non-trans children.
The family has also written to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) asking for a formal regulatory investigation.
Brighton and Hove City Council today said it would respond to the family’s legal letter, but would be reviewing the toolkit in light of the Cass Report on gender care for children, which was published last week.
The family say their daughter’s school socially transitioned her – e.g. used different pronouns – despite a prior agreement with the head not to do so, and claim they later found it had supported the binding of her breasts.
When they complained, they say the council relied on the toolkit to justify the school’s actions.
Ms Monaghan’s advice says: “There is an emphasis on supporting children through social transition without highlighting any of the risks that may be association with that.
“As the interim report of the Cass Review stated, social transition … is an active intervention because it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning.”
The advice says the toolkit gives no guidance on the appropriateness of “key milestones” in social transitioning such as pronouns, accessing single-sex toilets, changing rooms and residential accommodation.
And it does not assume there will always be parental involvement in how trans identified children will be treated.
The advice also says that there is no balance of rights between gender questioning children using single sex spaces or participating in single sex sports and the rights of other children, including those who are gender critical or religious.
The family said: “For over a decade Brighton and Hove City Council has been facilitating the fast-tracking of children from the classroom to the clinic.
“An approach we now know from Dr Cass’s Review there is insufficient evidence and creates significant risk for children.
“Parental concerns were dismissed by the Leader of Brighton Council, Bella Sankey as ‘baseless smears’ a claim we now know from Karon Monaghan KC is wholly false.
“Brighton Council’s finances are in a perilous state, it has the opportunity now to do the right thing, the safest thing and withdraw the toolkit immediately or risk spending taxpayer’s money defending the indefensible in court cases from parents across the city and the country.”
Ms Sankey’s comments about “baseless smears” were in response to a question from Adrian Hart from PHSE Brighton, a group set up by people worried about PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) education in schools – an area Ms Monaghan’s advice also covers.
It asked about the influence of third party providers such as Allsorts, which co-wrote the toolkit, and concern they deliver materials which are contrary to or misrepresent the law.
Last week, Brighton and Hove City Council announced it had raised serious concerns about the government’s own draft guidance for schools in relation to gender questioning children.
In a press release published on Tuesday – the day before the Cass Report was published – it said it lacked clarity and accuracy on the law, as well as lacking “humanity and understanding” for children.
Today, Councillor Lucy Helliwell, co-chair of the Children, Families and Schools committee, said the council would be responding to the family’s letter “in due course”.
She said: “We know from local and national evidence that gender-questioning young people experience bullying, and are more at risk of developing mental health problems than other young people.
“We authored the Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit with the input of partners in the city to support schools, teachers, gender-questioning young people and their parents and carers on a case by case basis.
“We’ve regularly reviewed and updated this guidance in line with legislation since the first version was produced in 2013, with the current version published in 2021. Our plan is to review the guidance again with expert legal advice following the publication of the Cass review last week.
“It’s important to remember this concerns the wellbeing and welfare of vulnerable young people. This wellbeing must be free from any ideological interference, which is why we are disappointed by the government’s draft gender questioning guidance for schools and colleges which fails to adequately protect the rights of all young people.
“As a local authority which works to ensure all our children and young people live happy, safe and positive lives, we’ll always be committed to providing support that protects and promotes their welfare.”
The toolkit has been adopted by other schools and local authorities across the country.
Allsorts was approached for comment but an auto-response referred all queries about the toolkit to the council.
NHS Sussex said last week it would be implementing all recommendations from the Cass Report.
I urge every parent in the city to write to their child’s school and ask the head and the governors to clarify their position with regard to the toolkit and the legal advice given above. Our children are at huge risk of ideologies taking over their care. We must act now.
Councilor Helliwell, (who is never seen or heard in North Portslade), is either a hupocrite or stupid. Why say, ”This wellbeing must be free from any ideological interference” in her reply and yet the guidance the council uses has been drafted with Allsorts a group idealogically driven with their own agenda! The Cass Report has begun to unravel this can or worms and it sounds like the council could be in serious trouble if they don’t reveiw current practice.
In the last trans baiting story published by this journalist in this paper someone posed the question is Brightonandhove news now formally a trans exclusionary organ?
I think the answer clearly is yes. Digging in the gutter for any hostile pieces, publishing them with grim regularity and framing the narrative to prompt the most extreme reaction from commenters seems a deliberate strategy
Compared to this paper, even The Argus comes across as a bastion of measured balance, turning off the comments when the subject matter is likely to become bigoted and hateful.
Not sure it is the paper as a whole, but the works of Jo Wandsworth have hate written all over them.
An ideology in operation is particularly visible when can only attack an individual or media channel, because an ideology has no evidence. Cass brought evidence back into the conversation, and these parents have brought the law. Keep attacking, we see you. Keep away from our children.
The Cass review is massively ideology driven. You are not finding out about this from the mainstream, which has uncritically accepted their version of Cass and some are keen on pushing it further as an anti trans and anti autonomy attack piece.
Cass is red meat to the right and is a ‘get out of thinking’ free card to the rest, who are overjoyed that at last someone has sorted out the trans thing for them so that they need not face the trial and embarrassment of thinking it through for themselves.
There are a few really significant criticisms of the Cass review that should be acknowledged. Trans voices were excluded from the review team, almost all existing research around trans healthcare was excluded after being given impossible criteria to meet. International expertise was disregarded, purtting the UK seriously out of step with the ROW. The overall perspective is that gender ambiguity is a mental health problem and a fault which needs to be fixed, rather than an eternal part of the human condition.
I could go on. It is a seriously flawed piece of work which has been rightly dubbed ‘Bad Science’ and is doing nothing to support those who most need help.
Those are some very valid points. Andrew would do well to seek an example from Andrew Wakefield’s magnum opus for why it is important to critique reports and reviews.
Andrew Wakefield, the Doctor that said MMR vaccine gives children Autism?
Yes sir. It’s a masterclass in why studies are and should be peer-reviewed, discussed, and critiqued.
Interesting mate because gender dysphoria was classified as a mental illness until 2004 at which point the government said we don’t want it considered that way anymore. Well guess what mate? The government saying something isn’t a mental health problem doesn’t suddenly make it so, if the government said depression isn’t actually a mental health problem would it suddenly no longer be so? You are so brainwashed you believe the one government claiming something overrides every single bit of science. The bad science you speak of is also in every gender affirming care report, they ignore the voice of people who stopped transitioning and the people who have detransitioned and only high light success story. So you get the choice of being a hypocrite and accepting bad science when it suits you or you can be a decent person and going yeah I messed up and made a judgement call to early.
You are mistaken about the evidence base for the Cass Review. Here is a short article by the editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, explaining how the review team assessed the available medical evidence: https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q837
Here is a twitter thread by science journalist Benjamin Ryan with multiple extracts from the Cass Review report, demonstrating that all the studies in the area were assessed and the results of around half were included in the data analysis: https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1779306273701339548
Didn’t know you could do links here. That’s a thing.
From your first link though, that rather backs up my point:
On the reasons behind rejecting 100 of 102 studies on puberty blockers: (from your link)
“To be clear, intervention studies—particularly of drug and surgical interventions—should include an appropriate control group, ideally be randomised, ensure concealment of treatment allocation”
So how does that work. You have a limited sample and a severe time constraint. You are planning on accepting a young person approaching puberty onto your trial but are only going to give them sugar pills. How does that sit with the ethics board?
Why do you need a randomised blind control group to show what happens when people *don’t take* puberty blockers? Do we not know this already?
How do you keep the control group blind? Puberty is pretty obvious. Participants will work it out.
All of this is complete nonsense illogical gymnastics designed to exclude research which points away from the predestined conclusion of the review. Regardless of how you view the end result, this is bad science, and to ignore this because it accords with your prejudice is bigotry.
This is in response to Conan the fruitarians post and their ‘interpretation’ of clinical research methods and ethics (I can’t add my comment direct to their response).
Fortunately there are internationally recognised standards (and laws) for clinical research incl. ethics in place to protect people from poor quality research/ethics/treatments of the type being promoted by people like Conan. These laws and standards were introduced in response to populations being experimented on without appropriate consent and/or safeguards in place. There are some pretty shocking examples where ideology, ignorance or just plain evil trumped safety, benefit, consent. Sadly gender medicine (as we know it today) could well be in breach of those standards in particular when it comes to children and young people. Once again highlighting the risk of ideology driven healthcare.
In the meantime surely the trans community would welcome quality, evidence based healthcare for all its members?
If you believe in the science that’s used to make our aircraft fly and not crash, make our food safe to eat and not poison us and take medication such as paracetamol that does not kill us you believe in the quality of the science used by Cass and her team to make their conclusions.
If you don’t believe in the quality of the science used by Cass and her team to make their conclusions, then don’t fly, buy food or fix a headache.
Applying judgement on science to fit a personal narrative at others now well documented cost is the symptom of an ideology.
Please help local families keep all children safe, your time matters on this.
No Andrew, I don’t think you quite understand.
The majority of existing research was omitted by Cass because it didn’t meet double blind standard with randomised testing. This is a helpful thing in many areas of research because it helps address researcher and patient bias and the placebo effect.
To use this testing model for hormone therapy or puberty blockers is however unethical and impractical. How do you tell someone who has been approved for hormone treatment that they have only been given sugar pills?How does this help them? How does this make them feel? How do you get this past a medical ethics board? How do you hide from someone that they are on puberty blockers? The impact is obvious and apparent.
It is also noted that these standards were not applied to findings by Cass or to other reach included. I am not being anti-science, just anti bad-science.
In response to Conans comment re research- it appears they don’t understand how clinical trials work. Firstly there does need to be a comparison to know if something works, how it works, who it works on, what its side effects are, whether the risks outweigh the benefits etc. puberty blockers, hormone treatment, and surgery for gender dysphoria are no different. That could be a ‘placebo’ controlled trial (for drug trials), that could be intervention v no intervention (e.g. for affirming gender, or drug trials or surgery) both widely used and ethically acceptable methods for clinical research. It could start with a retrospective comparison- and thats interesting in this case too. Do we really think there are more kids with gender dysmorphia needing to transition these days and if so why is that? Or could it be that significant numbers of teens will experience some kind of body/gender dysmorphia while going through puberty and young adulthood but most will adapt, learn to be comfortable with their bodies (part of normal maturity). I certainly experienced this. I was not comfortable in my body until at least my mid 20s and I would have been 100% influenced by this gender ideology had I been a young person today. We also don’t have data on de-transitioning and regret but we know it happens, we don’t have data on long term health outcomes of puberty blockers/hormones/surgery. Promoting poor quality and biased evidence to continue to provide a treatment that has the potential to cause significant and life long harm to children and young people without knowing the real impact, or if there are better alternatives is what is dangerous and unethical. It is astounding that these treatments have progressed for so long in the absence of proper research or clinical oversight.
My earlier comment has not yet appeared (maybe links are not allowed here?). Apologies if this appears twice.
You are mistaken about the evidence included in the Cass Review. As noted by Kamran Abbasi, the editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, “Critics of the methodology of the systematic reviews that form the basis of the Cass Review are displaying their limited understanding of research methods and evidence based medicine”.
His BMJ editorial explains: “One emerging criticism of the Cass review is that it set the methodological bar too high for research to be included in its analysis and discarded too many studies on the basis of quality. In fact, the reality is different: studies in gender medicine fall woefully short in terms of methodological rigour; the methodological bar for gender medicine studies was set too low, generating research findings that are therefore hard to interpret. The methodological quality of research matters because a drug efficacy study in humans with an inappropriate or no control group is a potential breach of research ethics. Offering treatments without an adequate understanding of benefits and harms is unethical. All of this matters even more when the treatments are not trivial; puberty blockers and hormone therapies are major, life altering interventions. Yet this inconclusive and unacceptable evidence base was used to inform influential clinical guidelines, such as those of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which themselves were cascaded into the development of subsequent guidelines internationally.”
Science journalist Benjamin Ryan has also published several threads on Twitter (his handle is @benryanwriter if you want to look for them), demonstrating that the Cass Review did not discard most of the studies, nor did the review team consider that double-blind RCTs were necessary for research to be considered of good quality. All existing studies were assessed as part of the systematic review and around half of them were included in the analyses of results.
It seems that links are allowed her *if* they hold to the anti trans bias of this organ. I have tried posting links to stories which offer a counter to the repressive commentary on offer. Reasonable stuff from Amnesty International, however these posts have not succeeded.
This news site and this journalist is an anti trans undertaking and censors views which it doesn’t support.
Make of that what you will.
Well said!
Leave kids alone Conan. That’s all we ask.
Onan the fruit loop would be a more accurate name.
Reducing oneself to base-level insults doesn’t really sell the idea you might have an intelligent response to their critics.
At least Barry, for the hassle I give him, does form an opinion, and we try to put some logic into it, and on occasion, I have agreed with him.
Insults just makes you sound like a small individual. I hope you do better in the future.
agreed, it’s very weird how every other story on this site gets a few comments over 24 hours. the moment something related to anything transgender comes out suddenly there are 10 comments within an hour.
and on top of that we’ve seen a lot of comments which are outright hate speech allowed to be posted and not removed, the site doesn’t have a report function – this is actually not even completely legal, you could report it to the hosting provider for illegal content.
one of the most bigoted trolls who has legitimately slandered various trans people (including some that had committed suicide in past stories) by calling them pedophiles and groomers (Blatchberg) outright admitted to trolling in another story the other day and Jo posted a comment right below it not even addressing it. It’s pretty obvious she’s content with just letting people post literal hate speech and there’s no way you can report it or do anything about it, it’s really weird and gross.
i think we’re going to have to raise it either with their host/domain registrar or Frank de Luc as he’s the editor.
As far as I’m aware, transgender weirdly doesn’t have the same place in law for hate crime compared to sexual orientation, race, or religion.
Giving the site’s owners the benefit of the doubt for a moment, they’re incentivised to let the hate sit there. You’ve pointed it out yourself: the stories get engagement. As long as we keep being outraged by the transphobes and the transphobes keep spouting their tripe, the site is getting traffic. The more views, the more shares, the more revenue B&HN will be getting.
That being said, I’ve noticed that whenever I post asking about missing facts on stories or trying to answer other commenter’s questions my posts aren’t published. Ergo, there’s active moderation. The prevalence of hate speech in the comments here is no accident and if all traffic was good traffic they wouldn’t bother filtering me out. So maybe there is some prejudice too.
Hate speech? Just because someone has a different viewpoint does not make it hate speech. We don’t hate ‘trans’ people only pity them.
What is hateful is drugging and maiming young gay girls. But don’t let that stop you virtue signalling.
Or, to put an intelligent spin on your words: “It is important to ensure safeguards and robust processes to ensure that non-reversible surgerical interventions, and pharmaceutical options are considered far latter, and options such as mental health review, behavioural challenges, and counselling services are considered first to ensure our young people are not subjected to inappropriate treatments.”
Rather think this tool kit is highly influenced by ideological interference and should be done away with. Best wishes to the parents. Kids beware, you could be ruining the rest of your life.
What is your opinion on the concept of teaching what it means to be transexual in schools generally? Say, if a toolkit was developed that is free from ideological interference?
In my opinion (and that of the all sane and conscious people) Brighton and Hove Council are guilty of profound child abuse.
What is eroding the childhood age of consent if not a pedophile dream agenda?
Remove it for sex changes and you remove it for sex.
We’ve been through this for several days now Barry, did you do the recommended reading?
I disagree. I think your statement is primarily emotive, and just aims to be inflammatory without actually proving a reason for your opinion. Elaborate.
No need to ‘elaborate’. You wouldn’t be so triggered if you hadn’t understood exactly what I said. It would be far more illuminating to hear your justification for eroding the age of consent.
This wasn’t a reply to you, Barry. I’ve already explained your question previously in-depth. I’m more interested in understanding and challenging Katy’s perception.
We get it Benji you have an agenda to harm kids. Move on
Fallacious comments don’t mean anything beyond not having anything worthwhile to say. You’re better than that.
The comments of Conan the fruitarian lol are the problem.
…and that’s an incomplete ad hominem. Critique the viewpoint with a reasoned retort, rather than the person, otherwise, it’s not compelling, just fallacious.
It’s disingenuous!
That’s not what that word means. Best stick to words you know.
There is nothing transphobic in this article – major news organisations have run this story, why would a local paper ignore it?
I am so glad the Cass report came out. This idea that children are trans needs to be stopped. You want to chop bits of your body as an adult, go for it, but leave children alone.Trans ideology needs to be kept away from schools and children.
of course children can be trans, what a peculiar thing to say. almost every trans adult was a trans child, you don’t suddenly turn 18 and either start or stop being trans.
In law, a child is a child is a child and nothing comes before the safeguarding of that child.
What and who that child grow up to be is another matter and should be their own choice and journey, no adult coercion or grooming allowed.
A tautological statement is a terrible way to start to argue something, Barry, it’s meaningless. The definition of a child who can provide informed consent is far more complex than your oversimplification attempts to persuade. But, we have already covered this in a previous article, haven’t we?
I respect the call to safeguard children, this is indeed very important. Without going back to previously covered ground, there are a lot of aspects to work on when considering consent. Like I said previously, I suspect we are ultimately of the same mind when it comes to this; I believe our difference in opinion stems from should a young person be outright prohibited from encroaching on the topic of transgenderism with relevant specialisations, or should it be a sliding scale, taking into account individual circumstances and the uniqueness of each young person. Where do various treatments lie in terms of appropriateness? Should surgical alterations only be for adults? Are there risks of not facilitating transition?
Many questions. A myriad of adjacent discussions to have. Nothing we can solve here, I’m sure. But we must be open to the debate to gain greater understanding of this complicated issue.
No need for anyone to tie themselves up in knots over this Benjy boy. Under law a child remains a child until they reach the age of majority, irrespective of how mature they may seem for their age and need parent or guardian consent. Until recently a school couldn’t even put a plaster on a child’s knee or offer them Calpol without contacting the parent/guardian first. ‘Gillick consent’ is unlawful manufactured consent and Gillick was furious to see her name given to this without her own consent.
Gillick and Fraser are both aspects to young people consent, and is part of that same law and guidelines. I’m finding your logic tripping over itself here Barry, a bit of confirmation bias, perhaps.
Incidentally, you mention plasters, that used to be something freely allowed, then resisted, and now going to more common sense about it. It shows how conversation is important, and how it cannot be as clear cut as perhaps you articulate it should be.
That’s quite the sociopathic lie there mate with no evidence. Plenty of people have transitioned well into their 30s or 40s without being diagnosed with gender dysphoria
Actually many young girls DO stop being trans.
Ironically Andy, go back a few years, and the same opinion was sprouted about homosexuality. Before that, racial inequality. The idea of being transgender should be debated and discussed, tempered with all the complexities that surround developmental psychology in children, including the concept of body dysmorphia.
What is transgender should be discussed with children, and taught in a balanced way, in the same way we talk to children about healthy sexual practices early on as well, tempered by exploring why a young person feels that way. And I’d agree that surgical intervention should be something avoided as a first-line treatment, even delayed until a reasonable age of consent.
The risk of not talking about it with children is that with access to a lot more information than when you and I grew up, they gain incorrect knowledge, or without context, and that can be just as dangerous as what you are articulating happens through engaging in the topic, Andy.
This is just the start. Wait until all the schools, parents and councils in other areas BHCC has imported this poison to, fantasising they were being trailblazing by starting their very own educational policy independently of national government policy, start to sue BHCC as well.A certain Labour Councillor who devised the school trans toolkit and was quite happy to brag about it until recently needs to resign with immediate effect if there is any damage limitation to be done. A certain council leader who had a member of the public forcibly removed from the Council chamber for daring to ask a public question about what was going on last October and tried to dismiss public fears as ‘baseless smears’ also needs to step down and is not fit for public office.
Thank you to BHN for enabling this to be openly reported and commented on- can only imagine what grief you get for that given how other women who have exposed concerns/issues on this issue have been treated. Thank you to Cass for exposing the health and wellbeing issues and lack of evidence, thank you to this KC and the parents appointing this KC for exposing the legality of this issue and what is doing to our children. Too many children harmed, too many ‘professionals’ hoodwinked/terrified to speak up, too many women and girls rights quashed by this ideology driven agenda at any cost. It’s beginning to unravel and there are many lessons to be learnt.
I agree that it is an excellent opportunity to discuss the topic from a variety of viewpoints to discover reasonable pros and cons. The tricky part, I suspect, just based on even commenters here, is to avoid emotive language that often descends debate into a phantasmagoria of fallacious arguments which are neither helpful nor insightful.
I wonder how many people citing the cass report have actually read it? because it seems in direct opposition to some of their claims. Here are some things that are in the cass report:
1) The cass report recommends that children aged 16 and over should be allowed access to hormones.
2) The cass report says that only 20% of children referred to a gender clinic proceed with any kind of medical treatment.
3) The cass report confirms that no children, not a single one is being given any kind of surgeries.
4) The cass report supports the use of regional trans youth clinics to better support trans children.
The cass report also claims WPATH lacks “developmental rigour”. WPATH forms the basis of trans healthcare guidance for doctors and scientists all over the world since the 1970s. This is the equivalent of a man with a telescope telling nasa that the sun revolves around the earth.
I’ve read the Cass report in full, I’ve read the KC report in full. They are well structured comprehensive evidence/legal based reviews. Neither are transphobic, nor are the people agreeing with them. No one is saying people should not get the treatment they (actually) need. People are concerned about, and objecting to health care interventions that cause harm to vulnerable children and young people, have life long consequences, and erode others rights, while trans activists continue to try and shut everyone up who doesn’t agree with them, including reporters reporting legitimate information. Fortunately the ‘have you actually read it’, ‘it’s bogus, inaccurate, and transphobic’, ‘it actually says this’, ‘you’re transphobic for disagreeing with me’, ‘these comments are all hate’, ‘it’s out of line with the ROW’, and attempts to railroad women’s and girls rights, and silence/destroy people who have legitimate views (at best gender critical views (and within their rights to have/express) in the absence of quality, reliable evidence to the contrary- and in no way transphobic) isn’t going to work anymore. WPATH has been discredited, it has actively promoted ideology and unreliable ‘evidence’, and has caused untold damage- even if it’s been around since the 70s.
I like how you threw a bunch of unrelated nonsense out and didn’t refute any of the points made! Made you look really smart!
And WPATH hasn’t been “discredited” hence it still forms the basis of care in just about every developed country.
Yawn. At least you didn’t call me hate filled, a bigot or transphobe for expressing a legitimate, evidence based, view point just because you don’t like my considered and incredibly ‘smart’ opinion.
Unfortunately Blatchberg, this is the real world, and such concepts are indeed real. You may not agree with them, but that doesn’t invalidate their existence. One of these days, I genuinely hope you can write an intelligent logical statement. Maybe today will be your day? I dare you.
Well, I can prove to you that gender identity is real, right now. I identify as a male. This matches my biology. My gender identity is therefore male. You have just argued this to be fact by denying other identifications as being “rubbish” and “not real”. Therefore, we agree that gender identity is real, and you have contradicted yourself.
So you argue that equating gender identity with religious beliefs, by implying that just because something is believed or identified with, doesn’t make it inherently true.
However, there are significant differences between religious beliefs and gender identity. While religious beliefs are matters of faith and interpretation, gender identity is a deeply personal experience that can differ from one’s assigned sex at birth.
The existence of transgender individuals and their experiences is supported by scientific evidence and the consensus of medical and psychological associations. Respect for diverse gender identities isn’t about forcing belief but acknowledging and affirming individuals’ experiences, promoting inclusivity and understanding.
Male isn’t a gender mate. Stop with this sociopathic lying. MALE is sex, man is the gender. You can’t identify as a male gender there’s no such thing, you can identify as a man and also be a male, you can also identify as a man as a female but male isn’t a gender identity it’s a sex. A female cannot be a male and vice versa. The prerequisites to being a male are being born a biological male as the same applies with biological females the prerequisite is being born a female. There is no prerequisite for being a man or women so it’s functionally just a costume people can take off and on. You didn’t prove anything with your dumbass statement other then that you understand nothing about biology and you understand nothing about your own beliefs either.
There are two groups.
– One group believes a human’s body is defined by the clothes the individual needs to wear.
– One group believes a humans’s body is defined by measurable biological sex.
If these people really want to waste their own money and the money of council tax payers in Brighton and Hove by suing the council then they should, but the cranky barrister they seem to have found does not appear to understand the law, and so the case will end up with them losing and a lot of people will have wasted their valuable time. Still, it would be useful to set a precedent.
Karon Monaghan is an expert in equality law. You can find out more about her here: https://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/member/karon-monaghan/
Conan the Fruitarian is mistaken about the evidence included in the Cass Review. As noted by Kamran Abbasi, the editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, “Critics of the methodology of the systematic reviews that form the basis of the Cass Review are displaying their limited understanding of research methods and evidence based medicine”. His BMJ editorial explains: “One emerging criticism of the Cass review is that it set the methodological bar too high for research to be included in its analysis and discarded too many studies on the basis of quality. In fact, the reality is different: studies in gender medicine fall woefully short in terms of methodological rigour; the methodological bar for gender medicine studies was set too low, generating research findings that are therefore hard to interpret. The methodological quality of research matters because a drug efficacy study in humans with an inappropriate or no control group is a potential breach of research ethics. Offering treatments without an adequate understanding of benefits and harms is unethical. All of this matters even more when the treatments are not trivial; puberty blockers and hormone therapies are major, life altering interventions. Yet this inconclusive and unacceptable evidence base was used to inform influential clinical guidelines, such as those of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which themselves were cascaded into the development of subsequent guidelines internationally.” Science journalist Benjamin Ryan has also published several threads on Twitter (his handle is benryanwriter if you want to look for them), demonstrating that the Cass Review did not discard most of the studies, nor did the review team consider that double-blind RCTs were necessary for research to be considered of good quality. All existing studies were assessed as part of the systematic review and around half of them were included in the analyses of results.
Putting the same point in three times doesn’t make it any more valid. See my response to the first iteration a few hundred yards up this thread.
Some big and angry words above. But basically – giving a minor (statistically more likely to be on some sort of spectrum) life-altering drugs and surgical interventions is actually to child abuse. End of. And to do it behind the back of parents even more sinister if that was possible. The idea that the council is behind this is quite frankly one of the most scary things I have encountered in the UK ever.
I will add that I and just about everyone I know have no issue with the very very small proportion of the population that wish to express themselves differently to the mainstream. So be it – we live in a society where you are free to do so, and should be able to do so without let or hindrance, and I really do support that right.
However when you want what you cannot have i.e access to the toilets/changing rooms of the people with different combinations of X and Y chromosomes to yourself, you just can’t have it due to the rightful concerns of those habitual users of those spaces, similarly if you have had the muscular/physical benefit of testosterone during puberty you cannot compete in women’s sports on a level playing field. However much you want it to be different it is not and will never be.
The interesting thing I see is that tolerant people are now becoming polarised due to questionable laws and the somewhat misguided actions of our public servants. This has the potential to cause more disharmony than good in the long run.
Do you know that you can be born female but still have male chromosomes? Everything isn’t all black or white you know !
I hope we are beginning to see an end to this madness.
Genuine question:
I am interested to know how a judicial review of Oxford council’s use of this “guidance” resulting in them discontinuing it was not replicated over the whole of England and Wales. Or does somebody have to bring the same case in each and every authority with each authority expecting a different outcome?
Oxford CC appears to have pulled it before it got tested in court- which in itself says a lot. Will be interesting to see how BHCC responds, and if they allow it to get to judicial review or pull/amend it first. They have already said they plan to amend it ‘in response to the Cass report’ with legal advice, so it would make sense to ensure all human and equality rights for all other pupils are also protected in that amendment too.
Thanks KL
Exhibit A.
https://thelatest.co.uk/brighton/2018/10/09/the-trans-toolkit-helping-schools-respect-trans-students/
That’s a good link – well worth a watch. It shows the Trans Toolkit to be considered, fair, thoughtful and – most of all – child centred. A good thing done by our council.
Except there is no such thing as ‘trans children’ in law, just ‘children’. Ignorance of the law by a council won’t be accepted as an excuse when this all goes to court.
Conan and other radical trans activists need to leave the kids alone.
I am not a radical trans activist. I am a reasonable and balanced person with no particular agenda here, but I do get concerned about extremists like yourself imposing your world view and moral outlook on others and seeking to limit and control people who are exercising their right to be themselves.
To echo the words of other commenters here – leave the kids alone! Give people space and opportunity to find their own identity and autonomy – its none of your business!
This is a very worrying time for young trans people. In recent years i have heard a couple of very sad stories. A 17 year old trans boy, who’s parents won’t let him walk around the house or even eat with them. He had to eat his meals in his bedroom and all because he identifies with being a boy but was born a girl. Another story of a trans woman, 19 years of age but has to keep her trans identity a secret at home, as her parents would be so unaccepting and at work, for fear of being beaten up. She can only dress as she wants and use her new name when she is with her small circle of friends or visiting a friends home, who have parents who are not so narrow minded to difference. The numbers of trans people who kill themselves is very very high. If i had a teenager and for whatever reason they thought they could not talk to me, i would really hope that there was someone within school that they could speak to instead. Someone to support them. I really hope that this isn’t about to be taken away. I wish that as a society we were not so caught up with gender differences. Maybe then it would not be so big a deal to people.
Great point. It’s important to ground ourselves with the individuals that this topic relates to. With often complex and difficult lives, it can be incredibly difficult to ascertain what is the best action to take. A challenge that changes with every new person, meaning the solution is never a standardised one.
Your examples highlight the devastating impact this can have on both individuals and their families, and why reliable, trusted, evidence is desperately needed to properly inform all aspects of care instead of trans activists and misguided supporters of the ideology promoting unevidenced interventions including affirmation and social transitioning by default and in ways that risk alienating parents/families. Recognising these children and young people often have additional mental health issues Cass has debunked the perception that gender dysphoric children and young people are more at risk of suicide than their peers. I agree with you- it is a shame gender has become such an ‘issue’, but it is an issue because it has been dominated by an ideology that labels and pathologises (at scale), ignores science and reliable evidence, creates and promotes demand for unproven interventions that have lifelong impact, attempts to discredit anything and anyone that questions/challenges it, demands rights it has no right to, while also trampling on others rights-especially women’s and girls. Hopefully things will start to change for the better now, but a lot of damage has been done and a lot of young people are left in the aftermath.