https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2024/apr/22/where-does-the-cass-report-leave-trans-teenagers-podcast-today-in-focus

Despite what I consider is the total failure to see the elephant in the room in regard to children and trans (see below), this podcast is still worth listening to, Prof. Hilary Cass is not herself interviewed, which is a miss, but another reporter/journalist provides a summary of her findings, but most of the podcast is with young and young adult transpeople. Which is fine, but dealing with the science of the medicine behind dealing with "trans issues" is not best conducted by selected individual experience, i.e. cherry picking or anecdotal - the human story is interesting in those interviewed, but it brings little enlightenment to the wider issue and suggests the Guardian is now a guardian of trans-gender ideology. My wife tells me that two journalists resigned a year or two publicly stating the Guardian editors would not allow any article they wished to write questioning gender ideology. The podcast seems to skip over the seriousness of issues related to the Tavistock Clinic

A Dr Aiden Kelly, who had worked at the Tavistock Clinic was given some time to push back on Prof. Cass’s findings. He did admit to some failings, but laid that at the feet of the clinic’s mandated way of doing things. He now works privately in the same area of medicine.

Chase, now 17, for instance (not her real name) starts the programme by saying, and I quote "I was at any rate like a tomboy, for, like, most of my childhood, then about...age twelve, I think, I realised I was trans."

"I think I had been feeling that way for a while before I knew what label to put on it and even then I didn't, I didn't really know what was happening But then I thought OK twelve's quite young , so, right, I ingested that narrative of what is a right age to "come out, so right, I'll sit on this for a while" Her mother is then interviewed describing briefly the process she went through, Leading up to the Tavistock Clinic.

JKM I grew up in a family with a tomboy younger sister. She refused to wear dresses, played with the boys, said one of my friends “Eeh, she’s like a lad, she can FIGHT!” She grew up as a well adjusted community contributing married lady with two lovely children and two grandchildren, with a hubby she can manage quite well, thank you. OK, another anecdote.

"What now for the thousands of teens on the gender service waiting list? asks the programme's journalist.

The journalist enquires why the Cass report was commissioned, and this is summarised. The first reason given was the really sharp rise in young people referred to gender services. In 2009 the total number of referrals in England and Wales was 60, of which the majority were boys. ration of 3 to 1.(45 to 15) By 2022 more than 5,000 children and young people had been referred to Tavistock and almost three quarters of these referrals were girls. So she (Prof. Cass) was trying to see what was behind the exponential rise. Also she was responding to questions raised by the quality of care at the Tavistock, whistle blowers (apparently there ten of them - an unheard of amount of whistling) were telling that too many young people were being inappropriately referred on to a medical pathway.

The podcast is 30 minutes long, but not once is there any discussion about the main issue that Prof, Cass was supposedly investigating, that is the "exponential rise" in referrals, reflecting, one supposes the exponential rise in "gender dysphoria" in young people, particularly girls. I listened in vain for such a discussion.

Surprise, surprise, here is now a massively long waiting list, which a doctor interviewed later, agrees is unlikely ever to be dealt with in the NHS.

I am not going to discuss the rise further than this:- Why is it happening? Does not a near 1,000% rise (I assume the first figure was an annual referral, the second referred to referrals over the thirteen years, but I’m not sure) in cases over just thirteen years suggest some fundamental underlying cause. Is it an infectious illness like Covid. As a retired GP, I am finding it difficult to believe it's a virus, or bacterium, or toxin in the food or environment. So what is it? Surely the only rational explanation is that it is a cultural phenomenon, which from the scale of the change has features of a mass hysteria ( like Salem witches, or a belief in some of the more ridiculous conspiracy theories breaking out in the last twenty year or so) or cult like thinking. It strongly suggests an important and distressing social pathology of unhappiness in young people but particularly girls which is reflected in this case by gender dysphoria, but in others perhaps by depression and anxiety, or by violence and misbehaviour etc.

But to have a thirty minute programme supposedly "examining" this phenomenon and not examine this matter is bizarre. It suggests that certain agencies, including the Guardian, won't examine it because it raises uncomfortable questions as to what exactly is "gender dysphoria", and is it in most of these youngsters a culturally contrived delusion? A temporary phenomenon fuelled by social media in adolescent girls related to a general dissatisfaction with their bodies and their place in the world. Where "affirmative action” is just a mischievous, inappropriate and damaging collusion? I have no expertise to answer my own question, but I'd like to hear people who have this expertise formulate some rational answers. I have done no further investigation, but I will do so over the next few weeks and see what I can find out.