Category: Gender

The Secretary of State will currently be receiving many representations to stop what is being tagged #StreetingTrial. He has publicly registered his discomfort with medically interfering with natural puberty and also appealed for cross-party consensus “to take the heat and the ideology” out of the debate.  However, aside from the ubiquitous heat and ideology in the context of current debate on “gender”, there is no real possibility of clinical and professional consensus on allowing a clinical trial of puberty blockers to go ahead on children reaching and going through puberty. Many clinicians would say that a serious medical intervention which impacts the body and brain of a developing child is unjustifiable where it is seeking to address what are fundamentally psychological matters of feelings: wishes, desires and dislikes. But many clinicians who would say that have been silenced over the last decade by anxieties for their jobs and reputations. They may have hoped for the universities  and research journals to have promoted enquiry and discussion and their professional bodies to have supported ethical and cautious individualised psychological practice. Until now that enquiry and caution has not been forthcoming and they have seen that the heat and ideology of transgenderism has resoundingly captured the floor. 

The Cass report, the closure of Tavistock GIDS and the banning of puberty blockers seemingly opened a door for more widespread and welcome reflection and review.  A hoped-for follow up of the many young people who were given puberty blockers in the UK, however, has never been undertaken and the prospect of using this medication on more children in the context of a “clinical trial” now looms. This is a turning point for many silent and silenced clinicians and they are protesting. 

We publish here a letter to Wes Streeting that sets out the objections of clinical psychologists whose professional training and expertise means that they cannot, in conscience, agree that such a trial is justifiable.

The Rt Hon Wes Streeting

Secretary of State 

Department of Health and Social Care

14 December 2025

Dear Secretary of State,

Plea to halt the Pathways Puberty Blocker Trial

We, the undersigned 20 clinical psychologists, have personally noted and experienced the censorship of open debate in academia, educational and health service settings and in the media. Clinicians and other professionals have been silenced and feared for their jobs and reputations. It is only now that more of us feel able to speak out, and we are doing so to ask that the Pathways Puberty Blocker trial be halted.

There are many possible psychological, familial, cultural and social reasons why some children show signs of feeling unhappy with the sex they were conceived with and born as. This distress is not the same as suffering an inborn constitutional condition or a serious life-threatening illness such as cancer, hence the ethics and the cost-benefit weighing of the medical risks of clinical trials is completely different. It is neither ethical nor is it possible to conduct a legitimate randomised controlled trial on puberty blocking for psychologically based distress. The actual purpose of the Pathways Puberty Blockers trial is ill-defined, and its methodology cannot answer questions beyond “what happens if we do this to one group and do it a bit later to another?”. With such an unsound rationale it is clear that the medical and developmental risks are not justifiable.

It seems only political intervention at this stage can pause the trial so that the many serious questions can now be raised by clinicians. There is not a current professional or clinical consensus in this area of practice and many clinical experts have grave reservations. We are concerned, as you are, about the sociopolitical context that has influenced previous decision making and we strongly question the assumptions that underpin the rationale for this trial. Our concerns include ideological agendas and vested interests. Past research in this area has been heavily scrutinised and weaknesses, bias, suppressed and inadequate research exposed. The current trial risks repeating and replicating these issues again in its flawed research design. 

Key psychological and clinical considerations are central to our grave concerns. Young children do not understand the essential nature of their birth sex until they are older, or the nature and fluidity of the concept of their identity which is still forming. At the age at which it is being proposed they receive puberty blockers they cannot validly consent to risk their fertility, their ability to experience sexual pleasure and other aspects of adult sexuality. Parents cannot validly consent on their behalf as this is not the same as their sanctioning risky treatment for potentially life-threatening diseases.

Politicians on all sides of the House would support you to act with courage and responsibility.  Halting the Pathways Puberty Blocker trial will allow these seriously problematic issues to be fully and more widely considered before more children are subjected to medical interventions that we already know interfere with normal maturational processes and which are likely to result in serious lifelong changes to their bodily functions and their brains.

We welcome your openness where you acknowledged that you have concerns with, and deep discomfort about, medications that interfere with puberty. As clinicians we share that discomfort. Leaving behind the heated ideology which to date has interfered with debate, the reality is that previously suppressed profound lack of consensus remains within the clinical community and that the trial should therefore not proceed. We are happy to engage in further discussion or assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Ms Patricia Harvey           Consultant Clinical Psychologist (rtd) on behalf of

Dr Lucy Johnstone           Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Dr Gill l’Anson                   Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Dr Celia Sadie                  Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Dr Libby Barnardo          Clinical Psychologist

Dr C Thompson               Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Dr John Higgon               Consultant Clinical Psychologist (rtd)

Prof David Pilgrim        Chartered Clinical Psychologist

Dr Peter Harvey              Consultant Clinical Psychologist (rtd)

and 11 named Consultant Clinical Psychologists/Clinical Psychologists.

Gender distress in children and young people may have been the subject of a raging social polemic, but it is undeniably psychological phenomenon arising within diverse developmental, family and social contexts.  The proposed Pathways clinical trial [see here]  is laden with methodological and ethical concerns. Its publication has been in the pipeline for some time. Yet again the British Psychological Society fails members and the general public – it has neither produced a timely response the this highly controversial project, nor is there any sign of the guidelines for psychological interventions with gender distressed children that was promised many months ago. The BPS has fundamentally abdicated on this important issue of psychological theory, research and practice. We republish here, with permission and in full, a highly pertinent blog post [see original here].

As well as concerns about risks vs benefits, and the ethics of irreversible interventions  with children, the UK’s puberty blocker trial raises fundamental questions about how we respond to distress.

So the UK’s puberty blocker (PB) trial has ethical approval, and thus the green light to proceed. The details of the trial are extensively covered elsewhere. Suffice to say that drugs which suppress the hormonal changes which come with puberty are currently banned from being prescribed to minors. This  follows concerns raised by the Cass Review. Clearly this is not a perfect ban, both inside the NHS and outside it (I won’t provide any link to recent publicity surrounding dodgy private providers). However, the Cass Review also pointed to the limited evidence for the effectiveness of such drugs and called for more research. So, the UK is now running a trial to consider the effects of these medications on the mental and physical wellbeing of under 16s with gender incongruence “when a person’s gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth” (a quote from the trial summary). The evidence to date has been of poor quality and, charitably put, not hugely suggestive of benefits.

While this trial has been long-anticipated, reactions have been, perhaps predictably, mixed. Here though I want to focus on some of the risks. There have been a number of prescriptions of such drugs in the UK in the last fifteen years (estimates suggest at least 2000) and, as Cass pointed out, follow up of those people has been poor. Also significant health concerns about the wider effects have been raised (and have been known for some time). Indeed the original “Dutch Protocol” for young teens assumed to be transgender, relied on the effects of such drugs stunting male genital growth to facilitate later “passing” as female. And while that sounds really very creepy indeed, it’s fairly remarkable the degree to which this was overlooked as the protocol influenced the development of services in other countries. There was simply an assumption that we were sure, even at very early stages, that we know what gender ‘is’, that we would know who would have a settled transgender identification, and that the risks of treatment were worth the benefits. The first assumption has been thoroughly debunked by the Cass process, and worries about the second (harm vs benefit) are really at the heart of objections to the current research.

In relation to harms, as well as effects on sexual development, concerns have also been raised in relation to irreversible consequences for bone health and brain development. Given this I don’t think it’s hugely insightful to point out that proper follow-up of those given such drugs is a logical first step. Not to mention the possibility of further animal trials before opening up more experimentation on children. While proper follow-up has been an aspiration for a while (and there is a current review into adult gender services which might provide some of this information), finding the data for that basic first step has been more difficult than you might imagine. But still lot of this information is out there already. On the basis of what was effectively a huge unregulated trial conducted by the UK’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). The concerns about brain development are clearly present for the investigators, and there will be a parallel study looking at brain changes over time. However, this study is also with live ammo (i.e. actual human children), something which surely should be ethically questionable given the, at best, inconclusive results from previous animal trials (linked above).

These worries about the general mental and physical health effects of PBs are also highly relevant when considering the quality of the study protocol itself. This piece, by Hannah Barnes (the author of Time to Think, award-winning account the UK’s national gender service), outlines many of the issues. Methodology will, I think, be a significant area of coverage over the next few weeks. Initial concerns include the degree to which the questions about any changes to mental wellbeing will be answered at all, given that the study compares the PB group to a group receiving other support and interventions. The risks (and apparent irreversibility) of the effects of such drugs also raises ethical questions which it is perhaps surprising that the ethics committee has not taken more seriously. As Dr David Bell (a clinician who investigated practices at GIDS) said the other day, not only is the trial unable to reliably answer its own questions, but also,

“UK law, derived from European law and the Declaration of Helsinki, says that research on children should not disrupt their normal stages of development without good reason,”

Part of the reasoning behind such prohibitions is that we do not consider children able to meaningfully consent to potentially permanent changes of the sort puberty blockers may produce. All of which is to say there is more to this than simply a poor study design. We’re asking children to consent to something permanently life altering. We may do this with medical trials where lives are at stake but, again a significant finding of Cass, was that suicide risk in the cases of children presenting in GIDS services was not discernibly different from those presenting in other mental health services. The myth which terrified so many parents (“would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter”) was just that.

All of these concerns are being raised and documented elsewhere, and there will doubtless be more critique emerging. But, however we gauge the risk vs benefits, there is still something that is somewhat odd with the PB trial. Are we looking to treat mood and wellbeing issues? But we seem to be doing so by accepting that someone simply is what they say they are. And by enacting that belief with them. This is dramatically different from the way we would proceed in most other areas. We don’t, for example, respond to bodily dysmorphia by instead decide to amputate limbs. Indeed reactions to such things have generally been very negative. Maybe we just haven’t become open minded enough yet, but I’d be surprised if we ever even consider broad acceptance of this to be a sign of progressive liberality. Imagine, for a moment, that the proposed trial was about mastectomies for thirteen-year-olds with gender discomfort. Would that seem shocking? I imagine it would. What though is, fundamentally, the difference between that and permanently impeding the effects of puberty? Other than that it is less visible.

Another parallel might be if we decided we’d trial treating eating disorders with Ozempic. If we actually decided the treatment was to encourage children to become as thin as the want? At a key moment in their physical development. Would that be OK? It seems that in the case of eating disorders we enter treatment with an idea that living in your body and minimising dangerous changes is our preferred stance. With gender issues however, sometimes that stance seems to be dismissed as cis-hetronomative or as conversion therapy.

Of course all such calculations of cost vs benefit fall away if one other factor holds: that we treat the idea of being trapped in the wrong body as real. That we decide that an experience or feeling is some kind of metaphysical identity. As Helen Joyce puts it, a “gendered soul”. After all, you perhaps need to believe in something pretty strongly if you are, for example, going to castrate a child on TV. Risks/side effects/long term outcomes, comorbidities and complexities will be of little concern as the belief is so fundamental. Given that, it is worth revisiting the quote at the beginning of this piece, about “when a person’s gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth”. The reference is to “gender identity” rather than, for example, to bodily, or role, discomfort. An experience is being interpreted as an identity which is potentially fixed. But one which really has no scientific validity. And this is happening in reference not even to a real case, but when considering hypothetical children who might enter the study. As an encore we get sex “assigned” at birth, something which may have some relevance to very rare circumstances of unusual genital development, but for the rest of us create the false impression that sex is somehow a chancy guess. This kind of language is something we might expect from gender identity activists, but I at least was surprised to see it from the oversight committee of a high profile medical trial. Perhaps it’s less surprising though when you consider that the host institution has a long record of an affirmative position around what is routinely framed as LGBTQ+ rights. Which now, evidently, include the right of adults to deny children normal development.

Kathleen Stock recently compared PBs to trepanning, a process that presumably also felt less morally complex in a time when we believed we needed to release tormenting demons. Maybe, if you believed hard enough, you might allow a shaman with a dubious skull-slicing protocol near your head? I had rather hoped medical researchers today might not ground their judgement in such notions of souls and spirits. After the announcement of the puberty blocker trial though I am left wondering.

A feminist psychologist seeks to promote open discussion of a trans campaigning phrase. Natalie C Rose posts….

In the United Kingdom, very recently, the government’s current Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, was pictured on a Pride parade wearing a t-shirt proclaiming Protect the Dolls (see here). “Dolls” in this context are males identifying as females, so-called trans women, who seek to “pass”. Passing means achieving the perception by others of the trans person being their adopted gender rather than their biological sex. For some trans people this is more important than for others. Social experiences of failing to pass are deemed to cause distress, anger and despair. Google the phrase Protect the Dolls and AI will inform you that “…the phrase originated in the 1980s ballroom scene and has become a popular slogan supporting transgender women. The term “dolls” is a term of endearment used within the LGBTQ+ community specifically by and for trans women. The phrase, popularised by designer Conner Ives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect _the_Dolls) is a call for protection and affirmation of trans women, especially in the face of increasing attacks and discrimination…”. This is a demand made on everyone in society. As far as I am aware there is no similar injunction pertaining to trans men.

Profanity?

But why dolls? Dolls are the archetypal toys of childhood, having manifestations across many cultures through human history. They are varied in form and meaning, witness baby dolls and Barbie Dolls™. The term Doll meaning a woman was once familiar in the all American movie. Uttered by an all-American teen or GI it objectified the glamorous female catching his attention. Dolls, however, are also the stuff of the Horror movie genre; unsettling, uncanny, creepy and threatening.  They stray easily into the profane – blow-up dolls with usable orifices for an adult market not only interested in doll adults but also in doll minors. This was presaged by the shockingly aberrant forms of the misformed sexualised child dolls of YBA’s Jake and Dinos Chapman in the art exhibition Sensation, which opened its world tour in London in 1997 alongside the famous pickled shark and the children’s handprints constructing the face of Myra Hindley (see here). Culture plays out many forms and has multiple active connotations and allusions. Sexual desires weave their way through much of this, and it seems sexual proclivities and fetishes still need material material as well as digital imagery on screen and online.

Sanity?

So, what is with the dolls of transgenderism beyond the ballroom scene that most will know little or nothing about? These trans dolls may be 6 feet 2 inches tall with unalterably broad shoulders, and the male to female dolls are the ones we are urged to protect. Within transgender campaigning, this truly concerns only the males wanting to be females not the females wanting to be males. From the perspective of psychological inquiry, this quickly takes us into the psychological world of some of that male group and their allies and into a delusion of trans-substantiation. To trans woman India Willoughby and to the gender studies scholar Professor Sally Hines, males who don female clothes and make up and also take oestrogen do actually become the 1959 Cliff Richard’s real cryin, talkin’, sleepin’, walkin’, living’ doll, – they become embodied woman, real females   “..take a look at her hair, it’s real, and if you don’t believe what I say just feel…” (see here).

How many of males currently identifying as females are actually aspiring to a notion of the living doll? More real than a real woman. Some openly describe themselves as better women than cis women;

Trans women are the only real women! Humanity through technology and medical advances has progressed to the point that cis females have gone the way of the Neanderthal; a biological dead end that’s time and purpose have passed”. (see here)

 Are we allowed to say this is not sane, call it a delusion? Here the belief system joins forces with Transhumanism, where individuals want to shuffle off the limitations of the actual mortal coil and attain their fantasised essence, incorporating and possessing it for themselves, forever. Real women, biological females, are an irritating inconvenience and are dispensable.  Surely this is a less than sane and morally offensive subjectivity?

Sanctity?

Non-doll-like, actual women are diverse, messy, imperfect, flawed. Conceived as female, born as baby girls, navigating the trials and tribulations of growing into womanhood, women make up half the human race and they sit at the heart of nature’s preferred model for reproduction of the species. From fairly early on, in all cultures, those women have a wariness (more or less conscious depending on upbringing and experience) of the otherness of males, their superior strength, their propensities for significant differences in sexual, aggressive and dominant behaviour, their gestures, gait and mannerisms. Most men, including trans women, will never understand how instantaneously women, including young girls, women with Down’s syndrome and older women with dementia will reflexively perceive that a trans woman is not a woman. This recognition is not necessarily one of perceiving an active threat, but of something disquieting, untoward. This will add to their sense of vulnerability when it occurs in the context of a woman’s sickness, psychiatric disturbance, trauma or incarceration. Sometimes there will be real danger.  

Sanctuary?

As acknowledged above, trans women, in the main, may present no physical threat to women when they enter women’s spaces, but they do disturb the precious sanctity by disturbing women’s inner peace. Sanctity for womanhood has been sought, often in vain and at a high price, in human cultures through millennia. Where it has been achieved, it is precarious and fragile. Latterly it has been threatened by chants of “Transwomen are Women”, the mantra that closes down discussion and when contested has lost women their jobs.  Sanctity needs sanctuary. Such sanctuary gives women psychological as well as physical safety. Women want it for women’s reasons, such as being able to just be off-guard, to enjoy dignity and privacy, a rest from being kind when you just feel uncomfortable. It is not wanted for the performative reasons of many trans women who seek to enter women’s spaces. As a woman out there, you can only reliably take that privacy and dignity for granted in the company of your biologically female kin in unquestionably women only spaces. 

Please now let us keep to the letter of the UK Supreme Court Ruling about those spaces (see here).

Are we ready to talk about wholesale gender affirmation in UK schools?

Our previous posts (see, for example, here and here) about the continuing contentious debate surrounding trans ideology have focussed on clinical and counselling psychology. However, it can be argued that educational psychology has an even more important part to play as its remit is for all children whether in health care systems or not. We are very pleased, therefore, to post this timely and thoughtful piece from Dr David Buck, an independent Consultant Educational Psychologist.

1. Educational Psychologists’ Campaign for ‘Gender Critical’ Approaches.

A small number of Educational Psychologists (EPs) have mounted an ongoing campaign for the last couple of years to raise the issue of ‘gender politics’ in EP practice.  This group suggests that the existence of ‘grooming gangs’ in Rotherham and elsewhere in the UK makes a parallel argument for institutional complacency in UK children’s services due to managers’ fear of retribution from ‘PC/critical social justice’ activism.  This has led to the current position of the EP profession as a whole becoming institutionally ‘gender affirmative’, thus challenging biological explanations of sex difference (Joyce, 2021) and supporting ‘social transitioning’ (e.g. chosen use of pronouns and encouragement to adopt opposite sex stereotypes). 

Much progress has been made on limiting ‘medical transitioning’ to the realm of adult choice and is no longer part of the ‘gender affirmation’ of children.  Severe limitations are now imposed on the use of puberty blockers and re-assignment surgery for the under 18s after the relatively unaccountable activities of the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS – launched in 1989 to help people aged 17 and under who are struggling with their gender identity) leading to its appropriate closure by the NHS in March 2024. 

We are now arguing against the wholly unguarded support that Educational Psychology training courses and local authority (LA) EP delivery services appear to be giving to ‘social transitioning’ (an inherent component of the ‘gender affirmative’ approach). This is now clearly at odds with the Department for Education’s (DfE) ‘Gender Questioning Children’ (GQC) guidance and the Cass (2024) review, which was unable to discount its harmful effects. We also, more broadly, counter the clear bias in favour of critical social justice theory (CSJT), which drives ‘identity politics’ that is deployed within EPs’ professional associations.

In contrast, our own campaign promotes the relevance of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) assessment to ‘gender distressed’ children as a means of accommodating this group in UK schools leaving whole school environments relatively unchanged, especially single sex spaces and the Science curriculum, which has been altered to prioritise gender identities over biological explanations of sex difference. 

We have attempted to get EP governance, professional associations, training course leaders, EP forums and blogs, etc. to at least facilitate discussion on ‘identity politics’ that includes ‘gender critical’ commentary.  Such views are characterised by a biological definition of sex difference which we have been promoting.  We prefaced all our posts with the following note:- 

These posts are sent in the spirit of opening debate on the important issues raised around trans-identifying students within all phases of the education system relevant to Educational Psychology practice. However since ‘gender affirmation’ has become such an overwhelming position any alternatives e.g. ‘gender critical’ views (i.e. a biological definition of sex difference, presented here) are treated as ‘transphobic’. It is ‘trans activism’ of ‘Gender Identity Ideology’ that is our particular target (since it ignores negative whole school effects) and is not directed at trans-identifying individuals themselves. 

These professional associations include the British Psychological Society (BPS), the BPS Division of Educational and Child Psychology (DECP), the Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP) and the National Association of Principal Educational Psychologists (NAPEP) UK , as well as the EP forums and EP blogs that include EPNET and EDPSY. These groups have all resisted, in their own ways, the facilitation of any discussion or publication that could be considered ‘gender critical’, often simply because they promote the Cass Review or the DfE – GQC guidance.

2. On Organisational Capture by Gender Ideologues.

In our view, the current authoritarian manner and regressive misogyny (e.g. encouragement to adopt sexual stereotypes) that underlies the promotion of ‘gender affirmation’ by all public services, including UK Educational Psychology Services and EP Training Courses, has now reached a point of being a real threat to child safeguarding.  The threat is associated with the unreflective ‘institutionalised political correctness’ (the PM’s contemporaneous comment on the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal (CSE)) whether from naive critical social justice activists or public sector policy scribes. Such threats are not trivial, as the events in Rotherham demonstrated.  Hence our current emphasis is on those didactic ‘PC’ (now ‘social justice’) narratives, similar to those in past CSE scandals, which are still apparent in the present as anxieties held by those in positions of professional governance of children’s services.  These fears, held by those professionals, are that they could somehow be exposed as acting in a discriminatory manner. Events demonstrate that this distorts their rational decision-making.  This is just as relevant now within children’s services’ responses to ‘Gender Identity Ideology’ (GII) as the topical focus on the inertia of these services’ is associated with the ‘grooming gang’ CSE scandals of the past. The potential harm of ‘social transitioning’ – that it can lead to re-assignment medication and surgery – has not been eliminated by research (Hall et al., 2024; Cass, 2024) so safeguarding should, in our view, default to a cautionary approach in this regard i.e. ‘do no harm’.

We maintain that the UK EP training, governance, management, and EP representative organisations put greater emphases on the ‘social justice’ for minority groups rather than on the effective assessment of their special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) through well-established statutory procedures of Part 3 – Children and Families Act 2014. Their apparent obsessions with niche minority interests flamboyantly demonstrate the EP profession’s virtue signalling of ‘social justice’ which is made at the expense of general negative effects on wider school issues.  One of the most prominent examples is their promotion of the messages from Gender Identity Ideology (GII) charities. Here the minority interests of trans-identifying children are so obviously ranked above whole school interests via ‘gender affirmative’ views e.g. they take a position that prioritises the ‘inclusion’ of these pupils’ access to all facilities according to their chosen gender. This is to the potential detriment of single sex sports, spaces and healthcare for all, where ‘sex’ in these contexts has normally been defined as ‘biological sex difference’.  

The EP profession’s university-based training courses and local authority EP services’ senior staff also show widespread support for ‘gender affirmative care’ reflecting the bias of the GII charities noted above. Their activity on the EPNET forum has clearly indicated widespread and uncritical promotion of ‘social transition’. They are now effectively briefing against both the latest DfE guidance ‘Gender Questioning Children’ and the Cass Review which has highlighted the poor evidence base for either positive or negative outcomes of gender affirmative care.  Even more seriously, this clear bias towards ‘critical social justice theory’ is evident in their professional association, the AEP, in its feedback on DfE guidance GQC consultation. This feedback formulated plainly irresponsible recommendations NOT to follow the DfE GQC guidance. They do this by leaning heavily on the entirely unaccountable advice from GII charities, such as the discredited Stonewall ‘Global Diversity Champions Programme’ and ‘Just Like Us’ who say: ‘We recommend schools do not implement this draft, non-statutory guidance. We encourage teachers to stand for inclusion, not exclusion’. The implication that gender-critical commentary would ‘stand for exclusion’ is disingenuous or faux-naïf at best. 

These organisations are more concerned with virtue signalling the ‘well-being’ of these niche minority groups such as trans-identification rather than that of the school population as a whole.  As deserving of attention as these groups may well be, the wider negative implications for all of meeting their needs across the educational system are rarely directly addressed by the BPS, DECP, AEP, NAPEP or EPNET.  The dominance of the moral imperative to signal ‘inclusivity’ apparently easily overrides the rights of others e.g. in schools the rights of all to single sex spaces, sports and healthcare. The organisations’ role in platforming the profession’s obsession with demonstrations of their own ‘compassion’, ‘kindness’ and ‘empathy’ take primacy over the more mundane issues that abound for all SEND children e.g. the current dearth of SEND resources, poor literacy and numeracy levels.

3. Educational Psychologists Are Influential So Discussion Within The Profession Is Vital.

We have been raising these concerns because LA EPs are very influential across the whole school estate as a reference point for special educational needs and disabilities (SENDs) and wider psychological needs relevant to all pupils e.g. counselling services after a school is involved in a ‘critical incident’. It is therefore imperative that they are offering evidence based advice that is congruent with government guidance.

The issues we have discussed here will only be resolved by the encouragement of open debate amongst front-line workers, free from training, governance, representative organisations and managerial oversight within each of the public sector services responsible for child-safeguarding.  That is currently impossible in the Educational Psychology profession in general and within the remit of the BPS, DECP, AEP, NAPEP & EPNET in particular.  Their spurious technocratic reference to rules and values of self-serving interest, especially amongst Senior Management Teams and academic Educational Psychology training staff, is evident in their active censorship and attempts to shut-down rather than facilitate such debate. 

Although the British Psychological Society (BPS) has made a post-Cass statement , this shows a very weak and ambiguous response to that review.  Additionally, the formal professional guidance shows little has changed since pre-Cass versions – the BPS full guidance (originally published in 2109, revised version published 2024) shows that none of the ‘References’ or ‘Further Reading’ are post-2022 let alone post-Cass Apr 2024.  Professor Christina Richards chaired both the original and the review working parties and much reference is made to her book, co-authored with Dr James Barrett, ‘Trans and non-binary gender healthcare for psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals’ (published pre-Cass in 2020).  Not only that but in their book’s biographies it is revealed Professor Richards was elected to the Executive Board of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).  This self-selecting lobbyist-group is well known for its ‘gender affirmative’ position and as such has been widely criticised for its ‘independent’ pretensions e.g. Jennifer Black (2024) , The Economist (2024), Malcolm Clark (2024)

‘…No organisation has played a greater role in the adoption of the pseudo-science of so-called ‘gender affirming healthcare’ globally than the World Professional Association of Transgender Health…’  (Clark, 2024).

Given its active choice to hold onto gender ideologues to revise its policy document, the BPS seems unwilling to represent any neutral, let alone any sort of independent, review of the impact of Gender Identity Ideology as one might have hoped on a first reading of their ‘new’ post-Cass guidance.  Indeed its current focus on GII  appears to support the proposal that sex is determined by an individual’s feelings of gender identification to the opposite sex rather than being biologically fixed (see also here).

4. Conclusion.

However we may regard USA President Trump at a personal level, Joanna Williams has summarised his recent Executive Order (20^th January 2025), which proclaims the United States will only recognize ‘two sexes, male and female’ in this way…

By asserting the basic, biological reality of two-sexes, Trump will safeguard women’s right to single-sex prisons, hospital wards, changing rooms and public toilets. Female athletes will no longer risk injury or lose scholarships after being forced to compete against bigger, stronger males. Children will not be taught to choose from one of hundreds of so-called ‘gender identities’ and encouraged to bring their bodies in line with this new sense of themselves through a lifetime of popping pills and surgery. The need for pronoun badges or declarations will be done away with and even the transgender Pride flag, with its baby pink and blue triangles, can be retired. (Williams, 2025 ).

Further, in the UK the Supreme Court is about to (Feb/Mar) make a final decision on the case of Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent).  The question being considered concerns only the status of those who have Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs).  It has already been established that for the Equality Act and all other laws that individuals who identify as the opposite sex do not legally alter their biological sex.

If ‘Women Scotland Ltd’ win the Scottish government will have to amend the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 to make clear that ‘women’ does not even include men with GRCs.  This will eliminate the last UK legal anomaly that creates confusion over the biological reality of sex in law.  If so, how long will it take the BPS and others to alter their position which undoubtedly will become regarded as at odds with all these international legal developments?

The BPS position on the ‘culture wars’ in general and on ‘identity politics’ in particular is becoming out of sync with cultural shifts regarding trans-identification with every week passing.  Its sluggish, if not overtly stubborn responses to these cultural, political and legal changes is leading it to a future perception as the ‘Tavistock GIDS’ of ‘social-transitioning’.  GIDS was established in 1989 and closed down in March 2024 by the NHS.  The most poignant question, due to the subtle, nuanced but non-the-less powerful forms social-transitioning can take is  – will anyone notice, or will it take another 35 years to bring the BPS to book? 

In the meantime front-line EPs would do well to process their involvement with trans-identifying children through an encouragement of parents of this client-group to use the Education, Health & Care Needs Assessment procedures of Part 3 CFA 2014 (Buck, 2022, 2024).  EPs can then protect their own professional credibility by writing in a manner suitable for Special Educational Needs & Disabilities Tribunals and Family Courts.  Then at least there will be a greater possibility such reports will be properly judged against the principles within the NHS Cass Review, the DfE’s ‘Gender Questioning Children’ guidance and revised legislation.  In this context EPs’ written output is free from evaluation against the rapidly ageing GII values that their employing local authorities, Educational Psychology training course tutors, EP representative bodies or the British Psychological Society itself continue to offer. 

REFERENCES

Black, J. (2024).  Dispute arises over World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s involvement in WHO’s trans health guideline  https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/387/bmj.q2227.full.pdf

British Psychological Society. (2024). Guidelines for Psychologists Working with Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity: For adults and young people (aged 18 and over). https://www.bps.org.uk/guideline/guidelines-psychologists-working-gender-sexuality-and-relationship-diversity

Buck, D. (Sept. 2022). Transgenderism in Schools.
https://www.cieo.org.uk/research/transgenderism-in-schools/

Buck, D. (Apr. 2024). The Importance of Special Educational Needs Assessment Concerning Trans-Identifying Children in UK Schools: The Role of Educational & Child
Psychologists’. – Genspect. https://genspect.org/reconstructing-uk-educational-child-psychologists-roles-regarding-intersectional-identities-of-transgenderism-with-special-educational-needs/

Cass, H. (2022). Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people. NHS England. https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/

Children & Families Act. (2014). Part 3 Children And Young People In England With Special Educational Needs Or Disabilities Section 22. The Stationery Office, London.

Clark, M. (2024).  All roads lead to WPATH – ‘The Critic’. https://thecritic.co.uk/all-roads-lead-to-wpath/

Department for Education’s (DfE) ‘Gender Questioning Children’ (GQC) guidance. https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/supporting_documents/Gender%20Questioning%20Children%20%20nonstatutory%20guidance.pdf

The Economist (27 Jun 2024). ‘Research into trans medicine has been manipulated.  https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/06/27/research-into-trans-medicine-has-been-manipulated

Equality Act. (2010). The Stationery Office, London.

Executive Order (20^th January 2025). Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To TheFederal Government. The Whitehouse, USA. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

Forstater v. CGD 2022 – M Forstater v CGD Europe and others: 2200909/2019 – GOV.UK

Hall, R. Taylor, J., Hewitt, C.E., Heathcote, C., Jarvis, S.W., Langton, T., Fraser, L. (2024). Impact of social transition in relation to gender for children and adolescents: a systematic review  – BMJ Archives Disease in Childhood. https://adc.bmj.com/content/109/Suppl_2/s12

Joyce, H. (2021). Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality – Oneworld.

Richards, C. & Barrett, J. (2020). Trans and non-binary gender healthcare for psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals. London: Royal College of Psychiatrists/Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/trans-and-nonbinary-gender-healthcare-for-psychiatrists-psychologists-and-other-health-professionals/BE6DD100185E0396E84363F92C6A329E

Supreme Court (2024). Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent). https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042

 Williams, J. (2025) . Donald Trump, feminist icon? https://cieo.substack.com/p/donald-trump-feminist-icon-68a?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=365184&post_id=155344749&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ueb70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email