Children risk psychological harm if allowed to change gender, landmark trans review warns
TRANSGENDER children face grave psychological consequences if they are allowed to “socially transition”, a landmark review is expected to say this week.
The warning comes amid a huge rise in the number of children identifying as transgender and deep concern that many schools have been allowing pupils to change gender without their parents’ knowledge, despite government guidance to the contrary.
The Cass review into gender identity services for children, which will be published on Wednesday, has promised to consider the “important role of schools” and the challenges they face in responding to “gender-questioning” pupils. The review, led by Dame Hilary Cass, will include an analysis of scientific literature on the effects and outcomes of social transitioning.
It is expected to say that children may experience “psychological” repercussions as a result of being allowed to change their name and pronoun to the gender of their choosing.
The interim report noted that changing a child’s name and pronouns was “not a neutral act”. Prepubescent children should not be put on the same “pathway” as older adolescents who wish to identify as the opposite gender, the final review is to say.
The review’s findings are likely to be reflected in the Department for Education’s (DfE) official guidance for teachers on how to deal with transgender children, the final version of which is due to be published later this year.
Following the publication of the interim Cass review in 2022, it was announced that the Tavistock transgender clinic would be shut down after it was deemed to be unsafe for children.
NHS England said it would instead move young people who believed that they were trans into regional centres that take a more “holistic” approach to treatment and look at other mental health or medical issues they may have.
Since the publication of the interim review, concerns have been raised with Dame Hilary about the “schools to clinics pipeline”, in which children are allowed to live as the opposite gender
AN ACADEMIC who told the BBC that trans women’s milk is as good as breast milk has had a PhD project funded by the taxpayer.
Kate Luxion, a research fellow in creative global health, appeared on the BBC in February this year to defend an NHS trust that said it was acceptable for trans women to feed babies via drug-induced lactation.
Ms Luxion claimed that trans milk is “at least if not higher quality” than its natural equivalent and that “the baseline of what would be in a trans mother’s blood is going to be about the same as what would be in a cisgender mother’s blood… There’s actually not a physiological difference in terms of people who are assigned male at birth and assigned female at birth – all have mammary tissue”.
Ms Luxion’s PhD project, Legacies and Futures, at UCL, is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), a subsidiary of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a non-governmental body sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The Legacies and Futures project says it will investigate “similarities and differences between lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, nonbinary, intersex, and/or transgender (LGBTQIA+) pregnant persons and heterosexual pregnant persons whose gender matches with their assigned sex at birth (cisgender).”
Responding to Ms Luxion’s comments, Anna Melamed, midwife and campaigner for With Woman, a group of birth workers and activists, said the “perfect food for a baby is its own mother’s breast milk” because it contains all the necessary nutrients, hormones, antibodies and enzymes a baby needs.
“Research funding into male lactation is not only unnecessary and misguided, but could be detrimental to the baby’s health if it is attempted and therefore disrupts the mother-baby breastfeeding relationship,” she said.
A UKRI spokesman said: “Decisions to fund the research projects we support are made via a rigorous peer review process by relevant independent experts from across academia and business.”