Puberty blockers and Conversion Therapy – BPS in the dock

Pat Harvey posts….

Today’s (22 October 2023) Observer editorial appears in timely fashion as the NHS England consultation on puberty blockers reaches its deadline and there has been government confusion regarding a ban on “conversion therapy” (see here) for people experiencing gender incongruence.

As the British Psychological Society puts together, behind its opaque glass door, its response to the puberty blockers consultation, this succinct yet astonishingly comprehensive Observer editorial must signal to the Society that its ideological/social justice approach to the psychological phenomenon of gender incongruence and its pharmacological and surgical medicalisation must now be radically revisited.

Until now, there has not even been a pretence of balance on the subject. Like many other professional bodies, the BPS has been totally trans-ideology captured. It has colluded with those social movements rushing to affirm to unhappy children, often dealing with their adolescence alongside other trauma and difficulties, that it is their “gender identity” that is the problem which can be fixed with affirmation, medications and surgery. The BPS’s track record on this is deplorable. This is demonstrated by:

• The BPS’s confirmation that affirmation is the default approach to gender incongruence in its 2019 Guidelines, led by a trans activist, which are still extant.  This has actively discouraged and undermined the confidence of psychologist practitioners to engage with children early and in local service settings. As the Observer notes  “An independent review for the NHS highlighted many mental health professionals are already reluctant to treat children with gender distress because of pressure to adopt the affirmative approach”. This has had serious consequences for many children and families. There is little sign that any review of those guidelines will be addressing services to children, a cowardly avoidant strategy by the BPS.
• The BPS house publication The Psychologist, by its own admission, commissioning and facilitating a highly contentious article by a trans activist ideologue and resisting or refusing to print a number of critical responses by members and removing comments below the article. The BPS has actively censored publication of other material which questioned the trans activist ideological stance (Singer, J., Pilgrim, D., Hakeem, A. et al. Constraints on Free Academic and Professional Debate in the UK About Sex and Gender. Arch Sex Behav 52, 2269–2279 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02687-3).
• The BPS offering a less than positive response to Cass, focussing on referral overwhelm rather than service model failures.
• The BPS repeatedly resisting demands that it should recognise the huge pitfalls of an unsophisticated “virtue signalling” campaign to ban the ill-defined and therefore legislatively hazardous soi-disant Conversion Therapy. The Observer article notes that” “…a government-commissioned study found no evidence that trans conversion therapy happens in the UK beyond a methodologically flawed self-report survey...”. A key leader of that “methodologically flawed” research has been increasingly influential in the BPS, originally within the Sexualities Section and now Chair of its recent Equality Diversity and Inclusion Board.

The appearance of the Observer article now shows, in a carefully crafted, justifiable and easily understood argument, how crucial it is in terms of professional responsibility to remove the trans ideological social justice perspective from matters of clinical services for distressed children. It states: “The chilling effects of criminalising exploratory conversations between a therapist and a young person that could be perceived as denying their identity will only make the holistic therapy recognised as critical by the Cass review even harder to access. Campaigners will have no qualms about misrepresenting unclear law to tell clinicians, therapists and parents they may be committing a criminal offence and subject to “conversion therapy protection orders” unless they immediately affirm a child as trans.” Increased pressure to seek and to prescribe puberty blockers would be a likely result, alongside continuing reluctance of practitioners to work in this service context.

The British Psychological Society must now be made accountable for the serious shortcomings of its positioning on gender.