There's Something Rotten in the State of Gender Care

The NHS has learned nothing from the Mermaids scandal.

Is the care of patients with gender dysphoria being outsourced to trans lobby group, Gendered Intelligence?

Last week, Gendered Intelligence announced that it is providing ‘an online support group’ for patients who have been referred for treatment at NHS gender services. Those on waiting lists at four of the NHS’s eight gender clinics - the Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health, the East of England Gender Service, Sheffield’s Porter Brook Gender Identity Clinic and The Laurels Exeter - are all eligible to join.

The group of so-called ‘waiting list warriors’ is open to anyone over eighteen years of age who is currently awaiting treatment at on one of the aforementioned clinics. The online meetings, during which participants are encouraged to keep their cameras on, take place once a month and last two hours.

According to the Gendered Intelligence website, the group is run by two of its own staff members and also has guest facilitators and speakers “Who either have expertise in specific areas or specific lived experience”.

Gendered Intelligence does not explicitly state that this initiative is undertaken in collaboration with the NHS, but surely it cannot be specifically targeting NHS patients without the NHS’s permission, even blessing? After all, GI is still one of the organisations recommended by the NHS to patients currently on its gender service waiting lists.

Sheffield’s Porter Brook Gender Clinic links to Gendered Intelligence on the home page of its website, describing them as ‘our partners’. It directs the patients on its waiting list to GI as ‘a source of support’.

Similarly, The Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health (which incorporates the East of England service) links to Gendered Intelligence from its website. It even advertises the new ‘waiting list warriors’ support group.

Founded in 2008, Gendered Intelligence is a registered charity that “Works to increase understandings of gender diversity and improve the lives of trans people”. They describe themselves as “A trans-led and trans-involving” organisation and say that their aim is “to be thought leaders” in this field.

Much of GI’s work focuses on children and adolescents and it runs workshops for so-called ‘trans kids’ as young as seven. It delivers training in schools, including primary schools, telling kids they can change their names and their pronouns ‘at any time’ and encouraging them to explore their ‘gender’. As Transgender Trend says, “Confusing young children about biological sex and eroding boundaries between the sexes through pretending that sex is not real, should be something that rings alarm bells for anyone concerned with safeguarding and child protection”.

Sure enough, the group boast that their ‘youth groups’ cater for ages 7-30 (!).

Gendered Intelligence also operates online youth sessions about ‘exploring medical and social transition’ and offers detailed information on how to access multiple resources to empower ‘trans or gender questioning’ children and young people. Girls, for example, are given information about how and where to buy breast binders and ‘packers’ which mimic male genitalia.

The group also runs camping trips for 11-17 year olds and 16-25 olds which involve “living in a trans-only space” ie away from parents.

Gendered Intelligence was co-founded by its current CEO, trans-identified female, Jay Stewart. She adheres to ‘queer theory’ and the notion that ‘gender identity’ supersedes material reality. During a Ted Talk given in 2015 Stewart opines as ‘absurd’ that legal sex only includes male and female categories and that sex is defined by biology. “Our human rights should not be based up that which is biologically determined”, she says. “Our human rights should be based on the idea of pursuing that which we wish to become”.

Stewart uses the title Doctor but has no medical or psychological expertise (the title refers to her doctorate on the representation of trans people on British television). Nevertheless, she wrote an article for The Journal of Child Psychotherapy in 2018 in which she advised psychologists that they should dispense with ‘gender dysphoria’ as a clinical term and should not approach it as a mental health condition.

In 2019 Transgender Trend reported on a training session for school teachers co-hosted by GI at the Hayward Gallery. The aim of the training was to ‘explore ways of talking about gender and identity’ using an exhibition called Kiss My Genders then being shown at the gallery as a starting point for discussion.

“This exhibition, and Gendered Intelligence’s involvement with it, is yet more evidence that ‘gender identity’ ideology is queer theory, which normalises kink, BDSM, fetish, porn and extreme sexual practices.”

Heather Brunskell-Evans wrote about Gendered Intelligence in The Critic last November. She highlighted its belief in ‘the trans child’ and its adherence to an affirmation-only policy when treating gender dysphoria. “Gendered Intelligence, a children’s charity and sister to Mermaids, is flying under the radar of public scrutiny despite safeguarding breaches and the flouting of new NHS guidelines”, she wrote. “This organisation should be put under a critical spotlight.”

We have written previously about the power which scandal-ridden charity, Mermaids, once wielded at GIDS, the NHS child gender service. Has the NHS learned nothing from this finger-scorching experience? It seems history is repeating itself and yet another trans lobby group with an obvious political agenda is being allowed to assert a malign influence over NHS gender services.

Of course, those suffering with gender dysphoria require and deserve professional clinical care and it is unacceptable that they are being subjected to such cruelly long delays in accessing it. But the NHS needs to deal with this problem, not outsource their vulnerable patients to a dangerous gang of gender cultists.