Bronwyn Williams replies to the Guardian journalist, Josh Taylor, who wrote the article “How children became the target in a rightwing culture war over gender”
Dear Mr Taylor,
Unfortunately comments were closed on the above article by the time I read it today. So, email it is.
It’s interesting, Josh, that you apparently endorse the Media Watch accusation of ‘shamelessly one-eyed’ reporting of the trans issue in the Australian, when you’re doing exactly the same thing.
For example, you focus a lot of attention on Professor John Whitehall in an attempt to comprehensively discredit his commentary with largely extraneous data. Whitehall has 50 years experience in paediatric medicine. Is it not possible that he knows something about the treatment of children generally? Transgender presenting children are still human children, with bodies that function, physiologically, in the same way as all other children. Someone with Whitehall’s clinical experience is well-qualified to comment on the safety or otherwise of untested hormone treatments for children. It matters not that some children presenting at gender services do not receive hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones because some do, and those children are part of a medical experiment unsupported by any robust research.
Second, you fail to mention the contribution of other practitioners who DO work with transgender children and young people, like Dr Dianna Kenny. Did you seek her input when writing your story?
Third, Lisa Littman’s study that proposed a role for social contagion in the rapid increase in the number of adolescent girls presenting at gender services with no prior indications of gender dysphoria was not ‘discredited’. It was subject to an unusual level of scrutiny at the behest of the trans lobby but retained peer-review approval.
Fourth, you neglect to mention that four prominent medical practitioners contested the Lancet’s approval of the RMCH’s gender treatment guidelines, and published a letter to that effect in the magazine. They described the guidelines as addressing ‘the health of transgender children…with imprecise language and overplayed empirical evidence’ –
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32223-2/fulltext
Fifth, were you unable to secure an interview with Dr Michelle Telfer, lead author of the RMCH gender treatment guidelines and head of the hospital’s gender service? I note you report comments she made in an interview on LGBTQI community radio station, Joy, in July last year. Is she not talking to either you, or the Australian reporters, and if not, why not?
Finally, you say the reality of treatment for children and adolescents presenting at gender services is ‘a long way from the headlines’. How do you answer the parents whose children have been set on the path of irreversible medical and surgical transition with very little effort made to address their other obvious mental health conditions?
Feelgood stories about trans kids are okay, but there’s a cohort of young people out there who need comprehensive psychological support, not assurances that their body is ‘wrong’ and hormones and surgery will fix it.
Kind regards
Bronwyn Williams