Five months after its release, the Cass Review continues to shape the conversation surrounding Transgender rights.
Writing for The Telegraph, George Chesterton describes how the report has led to a seismic shift in attitudes.
“Cass’s report warned of a “toxic” debate in which parents felt forced to allow their children to change gender, fearing they would otherwise be labelled transphobic. At the time, the findings by Cass, a leading paediatrician, were roundly criticised by trans activists. But now the narrative is changing.
“In the space of just a few days it was revealed that the campaigning charity Stonewall – which has long been in the vanguard of trans activism – is ending its controversial training programme for schools.
“Then, the SNP health minister told the Scottish parliament that the Government had accepted Cass’s review and would implement its recommendations. The Good Law Project campaign group also announced it would no longer take trans-related legal cases following high-profile defeats. All this a couple of weeks after the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, decided to uphold the emergency ban on privately accessed puberty blockers for anyone under 18, against vociferous opposition from fellow Labour MPs.”
“On the whole, the trajectory seems to be in a sensible direction and the Labour Party moving this way too is huge,” says gender critical philosopher and writer Kathleen Stock. “Even for those sympathetic to the ideas of trans activists it is hard to oppose the Cass Review.”
“All in all, it’s been a week of retreat for the trans lobby, which made significant inroads into institutions across education, health, charities and corporations over the past few decades, and a triumphant week for those who campaign against its doctrine. “It feels like the grown-ups are back in the room,” says Maya Forstater, CEO of human rights charity Sex Matters.”
Chesterton goes on to explore how this change is even impacting pro-trans campaigning groups. “In another shift last week, the Good Law Project, run by Jolyon Maugham, the campaigning KC, declared that it would stop taking on pro-trans legal cases. The announcement came after the group lost two high-profile trans-related cases this year, the first challenging the treatment times for trans care in the NHS, and another backing the trans-rights charity Mermaids’ attempt to have the gay-rights charity LGB Alliance removed from the charity register.
“A statement on the Good Law Project’s website this week read: “It’s getting harder and harder to win rights for the trans community through the courts and it doesn’t feel right to keep asking the community and its allies to carry on contributing to the enormous costs of this increasingly difficult litigation.”
“The two sides will continue to oppose each other without much scope for compromise (something likely to keep gender-questioning children marginalised), it’s just that one side has had the rug pulled from under it by the cold, hard facts of medical science and is struggling to find a new way forward.”
“The journey of a denuded SNP from advocating trans self-identification to accepting the Cass Report looks very much one of political necessity, since the trans debate contributed to the downfall of the past two First Ministers. After a decade of being thought of as the most effective and canny politician in Britain, Nicola Sturgeon never recovered from the controversies aroused by her Gender Recognition Reform Bill, not least her inability to clarify her position when a man convicted of rape changed gender and was sent to a female prison.”
Ultimately, “as Stonewall says, the gradual retreat is strategic. There has been no Damascene conversion – if anything the events of this week suggest militancy is likely to increase as their opportunities to influence diminish.”
Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has also argued that the Equality Act should be updated.
Lady Falkner said this would help strike a clear balance between women’s rights and trans rights, reducing the need to refer to court rulings, sometimes by “activist judges”.
“There are easier ways to do things and I think sometimes Parliament does have to assert its own primacy in terms of the legislation that it has passed,” she told The Telegraph in March.
Labour has drawn criticism for its muddled stance on trans issues. Sir Kier Starmer had previously argued “99.9 per cent” of women did not have a penis before agreeing with Sir Tony Blair that a woman has a vagina and a man has a penis.
Following the role of the SNP’s gender reforms in accelerating the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon, Sir Keir toughened his position on trans self-identification defining a woman as an “adult female”
Nonetheless, Labour is standing by its plans to make it easier to change gender by “modernising” the Gender Recognition Act (GRA).
As it stands, transgender people are required to submit evidence they have lived as their preferred gender for two years in order to obtain a gender recognition certificate.
Instead, Labour is expected to replace this requirement with an effective cooling-off period that would last for the same amount of time, while also swapping a panel of doctors and lawyers for a specialist doctor.
Worth reading in full.
