Mary is the mother of her 14-year-old daughter Annie. Annie is trans and had been living happily as a girl for years, having found acceptance and love amongst her friends.
A couple of years ago, Annie, with her mother’s support, decided she wanted to pause the physical changes associated with puberty. Annie wanted to be able to express herself authentically and the prospect of being forced to go through puberty without hormones was unthinkable.
Long waiting lists for NHS gender services meant they had to access private healthcare, despite the significant costs. But Annie’s family knew they needed to allow her to experience those important teenage years feeling happy and healthy.
Just days before the General Election, the Conservatives used emergency legislation to introduce a criminal ban on accessing puberty blockers outside the NHS. Meanwhile, NHS England accepted the Cass Review’s recommendations that puberty blockers should no longer be routinely available.
The ban left trans young people like Annie feeling scared and alone – they felt like the Government was telling them that it wasn’t right for them to be the person they knew themselves to be.
Shortly after the ban, Mary received a call from the Police. They asked her to attend the station for an interview because she was supporting her daughter to access gender affirming healthcare. As a deeply caring, loving mother who had listened to her daughter and acted in her best interests, utter shock doesn’t do justice to how this news was received.
Like many trans people, when I transitioned, I asked my GP to change my gender marker. Not only was this important for me, so that I could be confident healthcare professionals would treat me in a way that made me comfortable, but also it reflected my changing clinical risk. Trans women are exponentially more likely to get breast cancer if they take hormones.
Respecting the autonomy and self-determination of patients is a central pillar of medical ethics. Historically, trans people have been subjected to deeply invasive and coercive practices by medical science including in the UK. At the early gender clinic at Charing Cross Hospital, as recently as the 1990s, patients were forcibly sterilised and deemed mentally ill because of their wish to transition.
Just last week, Wes Streeting announced he wants to implement the recommendations of the Sullivan Review, a report looking at the collection of data on sex and gender by public bodies.
Unsurprisingly for a Review that was authored by an advisor to a group widely regarded as an anti-trans lobbying organisation and commissioned by a former Conservative minister as part of a conference speech railing against “woke,” it proposed stopping trans people from changing their gender on NHS records.
It is deeply concerning that based on one flawed report, the Health Secretary is willing to sacrifice the rights of transgender people to self-determine their gender in medical settings. The outcome is further barriers for transgender people who want to access healthcare – especially concerning when 70% of trans people have experienced transphobia from their primary care provider.
As we celebrate Trans Day of Visibility, we are facing an emboldened movement of anti-rights campaigners who wish to deny that trans people exist. Whether denying gender affirming care to young people or erasing trans people’s gender from NHS databases, they wish to wipe our communities from public life.
But they won’t succeed. As Russel T Davies recently said, when LGBTQ+ communities are in peril we come together, we “plot, and sing, and compose, and paint, and make speeches, and march.” In short, we resist.
It is heartening that in the face of the growing backlash to the attack on trans existence, more and more people want to know how they can support their trans peers. That’s why we at Mermaids have today launched a new training module for trans inclusion in the workplace – so that everyone has the knowledge and confidence to empower trans people.
And, to date, over 1500 people have written to their MPs to stand up for trans health now, demanding a future where trans young people like Annie can access the healthcare they need, without having to wait for years or fear their experiences will be dismissed.
This year, for many trans people, visibility may not feel always feel safe or even a priority, but we need everyone, no matter where you live or where you work, to grant trans people acceptance and recognition. In a climate of rising hostility, that can look like resistance.
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