Update from Maya
This week’s big news is that the puberty-blockers trial has been paused. To everyone who helped make this happen: thank you! This is a major step that would not have happened without people speaking up and persevering every time they were fobbed off.
The news came to us on the evening of Friday 20th February, while Helen, Nicole and I were sitting down for dinner at the start of a weekend of thinking, planning, training and support with a group of brave and energetic young people.
They are from the generation who have been told from their earliest school years that ordinary differences in self-expression and anxieties about growing up could mean they were “born in the wrong body”, and who have been drafted into participating in the experimental treatment via “social transitioning” of their vulnerable peers.
Some had previously identified as trans or non-binary; many had been naive advocates of affirmation. All have experienced backlash from letting it be known that they no longer believe.
The puberty-blockers trial was seeking to medicalise yet another cohort, and to lock another generation into becoming non-consenting supporting players in the medical experiment of social transition.
We cannot say for sure what led to the trial being paused. Experts like the clinicians of CAN-SG wrote hundreds of letters to every group and individual they thought could have been involved in overseeing the ethics of the trial. Sex Matters and many others supported the MOU on protecting puberty. Nearly 150,000 people signed the parliamentary petition. There have been public protests and rallies. MPs and peers spoke up, as did parents and detransitioners.
Sex Matters and other groups wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, and some met him last year. Transgender Trend commissioned opinion polling. And journalists like Hannah Barnes wrote in detail about the ethical concerns.
The decision to pause the trial came not long after Bayswater Support Group of parents, together with detransitioner Keira Bell and therapist and campaigner James Esses, filed a legal application to challenge the lawfulness of the decision to approve the trial. Their legal submissions reveal regulators bumbling through a shambolic process rather than having the courage and integrity to ask basic questions.
On Thursday 26th February the health secretary, Wes Streeting, laid a new order before Parliament to enable the “data linkage” study to go ahead. It is a scandal that some NHS clinics refused to cooperate with this study, which will produce medical evidence without putting more children at risk. Streeting said: “It is my clear expectation that all relevant organisations will now provide the data required to complete this study.”
On Monday 9th March there will be a Westminster Hall debate on the trial, and a lobby day that we are organising along with the Women’s Rights Network and LGB Alliance on Tuesday 10th. This is your chance to educate MPs about why the trial has been paused and why it should not now go ahead at all. Children are still being put at risk by social transition in schools, cross-sex hormones are being provided online and widespread legal misrepresentations are leading young adults to alter their bodies in the mistaken belief that it is their right to insist society at large plays along with the fiction of “sex change”.
Maya Forstater
Why the puberty-blocker trial was paused
Dr Louise Irvine on the flawed research protocol.
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A simple statement of the law on single-sex services
The judgment of the High Court in the case brought by the Good Law Project against the EHRC is a powerful endorsement of the EHRC’s “interim update” as an accurate statement of the law.
The relevant section of the update fits on one page and is clear, simple and straightforward guidance on what employers and service providers should do in relation to everyday facilities like toilets, changing rooms and showers.
We have a take-away version that you can use. Share this simple, workable statement of the law with your colleagues, employers and service providers.
No more employer excuses!
We keep hearing from people at work that their employers are making excuses for not obeying the Supreme Court judgment.
The minister for women and equalities said on the BBC on Sunday 22nd February: “My message to employers, for the avoidance of any doubt, is that they should understand the Supreme Court ruling and take action. They don’t need to wait for the code of practice.”
We have updated our guidance on dealing with your employer’s excuses to reflect the recent High Court judgment confirming the lawfulness of the EHRC’s interim update on single-sex facilities.
Sex Matters has written to the MHRA
Following the decision to pause the “Pathways” clinical trial of puberty blockers because of safety and ethical concerns, Sex Matters has written to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Our concerns are complementary to those raised by CAN-SG and by the legal challenge led by Bayswater Support Group. We emphasise that it has not been explained to children undergoing the trial that they cannot expect to live as the opposite sex in the way they might hope, because other people have rights.
In the news
The pausing of the puberty-blockers trial following an intervention by the MHRA was covered by Shaun Wooller for the Daily Mail, Laura Donnelly for The Telegraph and Brian Dillon for the Daily Express. Maya said that the change of course is testament to the clinicians and parents who have worked so hard to get the truth out about the harms of medicalising gender distress. Helen was interviewed on the story by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV.
The subsequent announcement that Wes Streeting will change the law to enable a data-linkage study was welcomed by parents, clinicians and campaigners. In coverage by Eleanor Hayward for The Times, Fiona said that it made no sense to put hundreds more children through the brutality of puberty suppression when no-one had followed up the thousands already treated.
The news that Sex Matters is seeking to appeal the High Court decision in our legal battle against the City of London over the Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath was covered by BBC News, Niva Yadav for The Standard, Ben Lynch for MyLondon and Bridget Galton for Ham & High.
Geraldine Scott for The Times reported women and equalities minister Bridget Phillipson’s comments that employers do not need to wait for EHRC guidance before obeying the Supreme Court ruling. HM Courts and Tribunals Service’s comments to Sex Matters that it was “awaiting the outcome” of the guidance process was cited among examples of public bodies delaying implementation of the judgment.
On Talk TV, Maya was interviewed by Julia Hartley-Brewer and Fiona by Kevin O’Sullivan on Phillipson’s comments about children experimenting with school uniforms in relation to the government’s new schools guidance, which says that “social transition” should be supported.
Sophie Church for the Daily Mail covered the news that motions expected to be passed at the Green Party conference include a call to overturn bans on trans-identifying men competing in women’s sport on the basis of it being a form of misogyny. Fiona said that opposing single-sex sport is shameless anti-woman sexism.
Lobby day is approaching
The lobby day that we are organising with the Women’s Rights Network and LGB Alliance is on Tuesday 10th March (sign up at the WRN website).
The trial has been paused but it’s vital we keep the pressure on: the concerns cited by the regulator were already well known, and we think they are insuperable. Now is the time to write to your MP to educate them about the issues and explain why children deserve better.
WRN is managing registration for the day and will send you everything you need, starting with an email to your MP asking to meet on the 10th.
If you’d like this memo in your inbox every Friday at teatime, join our mailing list now.
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