While the Cass article’s 400 pages may be pored over and debated, one thing is certain – young transgender persons face a troubled future.
The mother of a 17-year-old trans girl who was a patient at the now-defunct Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust claimed she had initially been “disappointed,” despite initially being “disappointed.”
She had come to the conclusion that the Tavistock, a consultant center set up to manage a small number of patients, was “fundamentally unfit for purpose,” but that the “hysterical atmosphere” surrounding the statement was causing young people to lose out on healthcare.
She had no idea what went wrong with her child until the Tavistock closed. “We were perplexed as to what was really happening. The NHS’s first email to us about what was going on was a year after GIDS closed, so we never heard anything.”
When her baby started telling her she was a lady at the age of eight in 2015, she described being “shocked as heaven” as a “girl” at the age of eight. A charity recommended she be referred to the Tavistock, “on the basis that it would either go away or it wouldn’t – and it didn’t go away.”
“Because she was autistic, they took everything really slowly. Really, really gradually.”
“There were days when I started to feel frustrated because I thought we were a little bit on trial as parents, as if they were looking for proof that it might be something we had imagined,” she said.
“I thought, ‘Do we really come across as the kind of parents who are utterly thrilled to have a transgender child?’ In an ideal world, I would prefer my child was growing up in a way that didn’t make her stand out like a sore thumb and have the potential to pass away. We might be the kind of parents who would be completely willing to support our transgender child,” said our parent.
Her sister’s gender dysphoria diagnosis finally came in 2022, six decades after they first saw a physician. One month later, she started using menstruation filters.
“Puberty blockers have been really great for her,” she said. “As she entered menstruation, she was really, really hypomanic about her shoulders, her facial hair growing, her words deepening. She felt very frightened and depressed about it.”
The Cass report, according to the woman, “presents an objective from up on high that issues need to be more challenging.” It’s difficult enough to raise a child without having the entire media or culture criticize trans people as if they’re some weirdo or as if they’re a threat to us.
Amelia Hansford, a 25-year-old trans journalist, agreed. Hansford was also given some secret care and was herself referred to GIDS. She claimed that younger people are now in a worse place than they were when she sought assistance.
“I believe it’s just like a different time for me to be 15 or 16 years old and still growing up in the UK today, with thoughts of female dysphoria,” he said. “And I believe that being transgender can be harmful in so many ways.”
When you consider how life-changing trans healthcare may be, Hansford said that society undervalued it. “I would say that, for me, going on hormone therapies has been the single greatest thing that has ever happened to me,” she said.
“It’s successfully changed my life. And I believe it’s really important to emphasize that truth, that it was created out of necessity and that it is just the most significant thing I believe I have always done in my life.”
Hansford welcomed some of Cass’s tips, such as the development of local areas, rather than having one in London.
“I think that is a step in the right direction,” she said. “However, you have to consider about application. The expertise of the individuals working there is something that, if we’re already seeing problems with the regional centers that opened up in the spring, needs to be addressed. If these geographical areas are not up to snuff, then all of this is going to be a debate place, right”?
One 18-year-old transgender man who had been given gender-affirming estrogen after receiving puberty blockers at a private office expressed disappointment in how challenging it would be for younger people to get them. Due to the lengthy waiting lists at the Tavistock, he requested assistance from a private office.
“Puberty blockers are only supposed to be a pause,” he said. “And that’s all it was for me,” he said, adding that they gave him time to think. “If I hadn’t gone on the blockers, I wouldn’t pass as a male.”
It was becoming more difficult for transgender people to access puberty blockers due to the idea that someone out there was trying to persuade young people to get transgender, he said.
But he said: “I think in a world where you’ve got to pick your battles, (puberty blockers) wouldn’t be the battle that I picked, in my opinion.”
What would it be? “Waiting lists.”
