Who is pushing gender ideology within the NHS?

The rot is coming from inside the house

A week ago, media outlets such as The Independent and The Guardian published rumours that Rishi Sunak was proposing to cave to trans activists by enacting a ban on exploratory therapy for any patients who claimed to have an identity problem with their sexed body. This would mean that patients could diagnose themselves as needing permanent medical interventions based on their self-proclaimed gender identity, interventions which they would then receive without question. 

Thankfully, further reports indicate that Sunak does not intend to include 'gender identity' in any ban, which, if true, is excellent news. The Conservatives could hardly have continued to portray Keir Starmer as an impressionable political windsock whilst reversing course on an issue where the stakes could not be higher. 

The ongoing swirl of facts and false claims regarding this alleged ban on “all-inclusive” conversion therapy is typical, given gender activists largely operate by twisting the meanings of words. So, to them, ‘care’ is carrying out permanent, harmful medical interventions; ‘harm’ is protecting vulnerable patients from making irreversible decisions that they will likely regret at a later date. ‘Professionalism’ is throwing tantrums, smearing colleagues as bigots and reporting their Twitter likes to their professional body. Finally, what they call  'conversion therapy' is exploring all potential factors behind a patient's distress in order to find the best course of treatment for them. 

Removing safeguards for distressed people because they invoke a gender identity is medical negligence. Patients deserve to have any comorbidities explored and to be treated holistically, not only through the lens of a nebulous concept like ‘gender identity’. To claim otherwise on the basis of gender activists’ ttantrums would be neglectful and dangerous. As Hannah Barnes’ book Time to Think highlights, many of these patients have internalised homophobia or sexism, meaning that they cannot accept themselves as they are and see permanently changing their bodies as being an escape. Other patients are vulnerable to considering ‘medical transition’ the answer to their problems due to autism, mental health conditions or trauma.

So who is behind the constant push to ban exploratory therapy for these vulnerable patients? GLADD is the UK’s Association of LGBTQ+ Doctors and Dentists. Dr Joseph Hartland is the lead author of GLADD’s nationwide conversion therapy medical schools charter. The charter’s front page states that it has been written by ‘queer medical activists’ and with it, GLADD is effectively attempting to bring in a ban on the holistic approach without a mandate from the government. One might infer that this move is preemptively shaping the law to suit their agenda, without public awareness or consent.

Campaigners for the charter have been seen to exert pressure on medical schools to pledge that they will follow the charter’s demands only to ‘affirm patients’ gender identity and sexual identity’. Note the linguistic sleight of hand in referring to ‘sexual identity’ rather than ‘sexuality’, which indicates that GLADD believes that internal self-ID should always take priority over inherent sex and sexuality. Its authors have often encouraged medical students to put pressure on their medical schools to sign the charter, with Dr Callum Phillips tweeting ‘If your medical school [hasn’t signed the GLADD charter], it’s their queerphobia!’. He went on to tweet ‘If you don’t see your [medical school’s signature], ask them why they haven’t joined in signing. For real, @ them. Let them know we are watching’. This immature but authoritarian behaviour is very typical to see from gender activists who try to push unquestionable gender affirmation into the NHS. 

    Dr Joseph Hartland has stated that GLADD’s proposed ‘all-inclusive ban on LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy’ would ‘not impact on trans or gender non-conforming people’s ability to access psychological support. However, he goes on to say that this support ‘must be free of any agenda that favours one gender identity over another.’ This so-called LGBTQ+ inclusive ban would have made healthcare professionals unable to favour maintaining a patient’s intact, healthy body over their imagined (and often very changeable) ‘gender identity’. They would have been required to opt for the path of irreversible surgery or hormones whenever a patient requested it, not taking into account their current vulnerabilities or potential future regret. This is a very extreme position, which would lead to widespread medical harm. Any government that made the cowardly decision that these patient sacrifices must take place in order to avoid a backlash from gender identity activists would lack any integrity or true leadership - and this is something that Labour needs to keep in mind. 

    As above, GLADD’s Dr Hartland gives Juno Dawson as an example of successful transition, despite Dawson having made the extremely homophobic statement ‘A lot of gay men are gay men as a consolation prize, because they couldn't be women. That was certainly true for me’. This indicates that internalised homophobia was the reason behind Dawson’s transition, as Dawson describes being a gay man as being an inferior state. This hardly inspires confidence in these gender activists’ demands that no patient request for gender interventions should ever be questioned. In turn, it does not inspire confidence that the government would have been endorsing ‘the right side of history’ had they proceeded with a so-called ‘all-inclusive’ conversion therapy ban. 

    We should also remember that the organisations pushing for an ‘all-inclusive ban on conversion therapy’ often hold glaring conflicts of interest. For example, GLADD’s Trans Rep Dr Katie McDowell is also a current Trustee of the charity Mermaids. Mermaids is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission for potential ‘serious systemic failings’ and their trustees page carries a regulatory alert. Dr McDowell is a doctor working in paediatrics and was quoted in this article from October 2022 describing biological sex as ‘a concept’. Interestingly, in recent months both Dr McDowell and Dr Hartland appear to have been removed from GLADD’s committee page. However, a current reference to Dr McDowell being GLADD’s Trans Rep remains on their activism page (which is an eye-opening read in itself…). 

In GLADD’s Trans Rep committee profile below (formerly featured on their website), it states that Dr McDowell is a Mermaids trustee ‘interested in [changing] the medical school curriculum to better represent the needs of trans & non-binary patients’. GLADD’s medical schools charter is indeed affirmation only, so this Mermaids trustee’s stated aim would appear to have had some influence. 

Worryingly, 80% of UK medical schools have signed GLADD’s gender affirmation only charter. Many medical school leads have even included pronouns alongside their signatures on the charter.

    It should also be noted that GLADD is one of the partner organisations behind the national NHS Rainbow Badges scheme alongside Stonewall, the LGBT Foundation and the LGBT Consortium. So it is clear that gender identity activists’ influence on the NHS is already extensive. These organisations have been busy undermining sex-based rights in the NHS in various ways, such as lobbying for the removal of sex-based terms such as ‘mother’ and insisting that trans identified males should be accommodated on female-only wards. Prohibiting safeguards for at-risk patients, who cannot have their 'gender identity' challenged, would further extend the control these organisations have over our publicly funded healthcare system.

Of course, the public has never been consulted on whether these highly ideological lobby groups should have power over the NHS. The Trojan Horse of an ‘all-inclusive conversion therapy ban’ would force vulnerable people’s self-diagnosed gender identity to be medically affirmed, with no other options. Medical interventions taking place in the NHS based on this unevidenced concept are already a scandal. Should the government remain steadfast, it could avert the further escalation of an already alarming medical and safeguarding crisis.