The judgment concluded that it is highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would ever be Gillick competent to give consent to being treated with puberty blockers and very doubtful that children aged 14 and 15 could understand the long-term risks and consequences of treatment in such a way as to have sufficient understanding to give consent.

In our intervention, we submitted evidence that the GIDS operates within a core illogicality: a belief that biological sex is irrelevant to being a boy or being a girl, while providing a service that is predicated on the existence of, and ability to define, a ‘boy body’ and a ‘girl body’ that children might move between through medication and subsequent surgery. This is of course an impossibility, but it is an outcome that children are led to believe is possible.

The court judgment referenced the fact that in 2011 the gender split was roughly 50/50 between natal girls and boys but by 2019 the sex ratio had changed so that 76 per cent of referrals were females, but that the Tavistock did not put forward any clinical explanation as to why there had been this significant change in the patient group over a relatively short period of time.

This is not surprising: denial of biological sex prevents analysis on the basis of biological sex, including the specific experiences and pressures faced by female adolescents as compared to males. The lack of curiosity at the GIDS is easily explained if children are viewed through the dehumanising lens of ‘gender identity’. This also explains the apparent lack of concern about the serious physical effects of this treatment: if biological sex is irrelevant then future sexual function and fertility must also be unimportant.

The judgment is a damning indictment of clinical practice at the GIDS. The case was decided on facts and evidence known to the Tavistock, and ultimately on the lack of facts and the weakness of the evidence in the Tavistock’s defence. The GIDS lacked even basic data on children who had been given puberty blockers.

The most damning evidence of complacency in the service is the fact that the GIDS offers troubled adolescents no alternative therapeutic treatment pathway. Far from being a last resort treatment, blockers and hormones are the only treatment for children with complex histories and mental health conditions. This is the result of a service that operates on the basis of ideology in place of clinical standards. The judgment raises the issue of medical negligence and our immediate concern is for the children who have already been through this medical system.

Proper therapeutic pathways need to be developed within a psychoanalytical model that can be delivered by professionals already trained in counselling troubled young people. Children must be treated as children, not as political mascots for an ideology. ‘Gender identity’ must be removed from the UKCP Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy, and therapists and counsellors must be given back their freedom to do their jobs properly and offer children a normal duty of care.

BLOODONTHEIRHANDS