Hope that the Cass report will usher in a cultural shift on gender issues
SIR – Liz Truss (Comment, April 11), discussing the Cass report on gender identity, is right to call on the Government to adopt her private member’s Health and Equality Acts (Amendment) Bill, so shamefully filibustered by Labour MPS last month, and pass it into law before the coming general election.
The issues addressed by the report are of the utmost importance, and its conclusions and recommendations have implications beyond its childprotection remit. It has the potential to become the light that leads us out of the oppressive darkness of mob-driven identity politics.
I remain determined to vote for Reform UK at the election. Yet this matter is so important that, were the Prime Minister to adopt Ms Truss’s Bill and turn it into law, I would consider supporting the Conservatives again. Adrian Barrett
Haywards Heath, West Sussex SIR – It took Dr Hilary Cass four years to produce her review, but she reaches a conclusion that most of us see as blindingly obvious. Martin Bazeley
Fareham, Hampshire
SIR – I wonder if the treatments and surgeries that have been carried out on children and young adults will, in about 10 years’ time, be found to have caused tremendous mental-health problems for many of them.
Will there be, at great expense, an inquiry that finds the organisations responsible to have been negligent? Will the victims receive compensation? David Henderson
East Molesey, Surrey
SIR – I consider myself fortunate to have been born in 1938, rather than 60 years later. As a teenager, I often thought, and said, that I wished I was a boy. Had the climate then been as it is now, I might have been assured that all was well, whatever you think, no problem, you can become a boy if you want to – possibly with life-changing consequences.
I went on to have a very happy marriage, with three children and five grandchildren. I appreciate that, for some, the adoption of a different identity must be a lifeline, and I wish them well; but the immediate acceptance of vulnerable young people’s wishes is dangerous. Gillian Mitsi
London SW1
SIR – I know of at least one former practitioner at the Tavistock gender clinic who resigned because she could not, in all conscience, follow the protocols forced upon her by the management, which went against all her clinical experience.
Many such people are now needed to return and fill the vacancies for qualified staff in the new clinics being established. But will they agree after what they experienced? Tony Jones
London SW7