The trans movement has a lot in common with other movements of mass social contagion. Unfortunately, the medical profession is not immune.
According to some enthralled commentators, the ascension of Donald Trump to the US presidency has heralded the death of woke. However, news of its death in Australia is greatly exaggerated.
The most bizarre symptom of this phenomenon is the mass social contagion that is the trans movement. It is rightly called a social contagion because, as psychologist Dianna Kenny points out in her new book, Gender Ideology, Social Contagion and the Making of a Transgender Generation, the trans movement has a lot in common with other movements of mass social contagion on a par with historical delusions.
Unfortunately the medical profession is not immune to this kind of false thinking, which spreads within a closed professional circle. The result for many children afflicted with gender dysphoria has been and will be disastrous.
Why would the Australian medical profession become involved in what is in fact a delusion? Why does the medical profession in Australia still use puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on minors who have no idea about the future physical and psychological effects when this “affirmative treatment” largely has been abandoned in most of Europe and Britain? Why are some of these young people told they should take hormones to block puberty so they will have time to “think about transitioning” when it prolongs their immature dysphoric state? Why should a child of 14 even be allowed to make a decision that will irreversibly affect their fertility?
To try to sort out this mess, a conference on the future of youth gender medicine recently was held at NSW Parliament House in Sydney. It was attended by many members of the psychiatric and medical profession including Kenny, National Association of Practising Psychiatrists president Philip Morris and pediatrics professor John Whitehall, who reviewed the evidence of Britain’s damning Tavistock inquiry on side effects of blockers and hormones.
It is not the first time that some accepted theory of treatment has been harmful. Kenny gives many examples, such as when lobotomies were seen as an answer to many ills that were psychological.
However, the closure of the Tavistock clinic was the wake-up call, following a damning independent review led by Hilary Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. Cass found “remarkably weak evidence” to support the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for gender-distressed children. So why is it so difficult for medical practitioners in Australia to get the message about this treatment? Whitehall’s review of the Tavistock inquiry concluded there was little evidence for benefit and a clanging silence on side effects of the affirmation model.
Why do gender clinics persist with this and not use more psychosocial therapy? The reason, according to Kenny, is that the medical profession has succumbed to a line of argument that is not medical but subtly ideological, the other part of this social contagion with a longer provenance than the latest woke manifestation.
Kenny gives a comprehensive timeline tracing the development of queer theory, the idea that is germane to the transsexual movement – that sex and gender, which are claimed to be fluid, should be decoupled. Kenny pinpoints the fad’s real beginning in the 1980s with philosophical deconstructionism, the rejection of observable reality. This led to queer theory, which decouples sex and gender, claiming that gender is an immutable subjective feeling that is also fluid. Queer theory also claims sex occurs on a spectrum.
The gender dysphoria definition replaced gender identity disorder in 2013. In the US it was ruled that the Affordable Care Act must cover transition surgery and the lower age limit of 12 for puberty blockers was abolished. This was followed by a rapid increase in referrals of children.
However, the Cass report turned things around. In 2023 the Gender Identity Service in Britain was closed and other European countries quickly changed policies on cross-sex hormones for the very young. But not in Australia.
Why? Trans identity is deeply embedded in our law, especially human rights, anti-discrimination and anti-vilification laws. To overturn the gender madness would mean changing a huge matrix of laws. However most sensible Australians would say: “Well, that is OK for adults, why are we still doing this to children?”
It is almost impossible to get therapy that is not affirming. Kenny already is being threatened by the ACT Human Rights Commission with anti-conversion therapy laws modified to cover gender identity.
It is illegal in most states and the ACT for concerned parents to take a confused child out of the state or territory for treatment. However, if the parent of a child as young as five is convinced the child has an opposite sex identity, they can get affirmative treatment, even ensuring that the child be treated as the opposite sex, and teachers must comply.
In the case of adolescents, relying on a shaky notion of Gillick competency, a child of 14 can say they want treatment to transition when many of them have a range of psychosocial problems, including autism and ADHD, not to mention collusion by fellow gender dysphoric kids. Kenny has called this phenomenon among adolescents “a cult” – an apt description.
We cannot keep doing this to children who have fallen prey to this latest social contagion, and the medical establishment must not abrogate its responsibility to them by continuing with dangerous puberty blockers and affirmative treatment.
Source: The Australian