Stuart Waiton: Why the SNP have got it so very wrong on transgender issues

FOLLOWING the humiliating closure of the Tavistock clinic in London, calls have been made by David Bell, a former governor of Tavistock, and by the feminist activist group For Women Scotland, for Glasgow’s own Sandyford gender clinic to be closed. So far, the Scottish Government appears to be dragging its feet about whether to close Sandyford.

The Tavistock clinic has been closed following a report by Dr Hilary Cass that strongly condemned potentially harmful clinical practices that were driven by what she called “diagnostic overshadowing” – an anti-scientific approach based on a belief system of gender affirmation.

Implicit in Cass’s report is the understanding that Tavistock was driven by a gendered ideology, rather than by good medical practices – an ideology that saw an ever growing, indeed exponential number of children, especially girls, being transitioned.

Children coming to the clinic with what would previously have been understood as a psychiatric condition known as gender dysphoria, or who came with wider problems and difficulties, including self-harming, trauma and autism, where almost immediately assumed to be transgender and treated accordingly.

Rather than taking time and assessing all of the young person’s issues over time, there was an ideological, rather than medical led intervention, resulting in puberty blockers and hormone treatment.

Considering the lack of any research into the potential harm of this approach, an approach that has been dropped in other countries like Finland and Sweden, we have to ask why was this allowed to develop and why is the Scottish Government dragging its feet?

Part of the explanation for these anti-scientific practices being allowed to develop is that they were, and still are by many, understood to be 'progressive'.

Helped by the addition of the letter “T” to the LGB campaigns, transgenderism and indeed the ideology of choosing your gender identity have come to be understood as part of the movement for sexual and gay liberation.

But transgenderism is not the same as gay rights. Indeed, in some respects it is the opposite of it, and there is a growing recognition that many, possibly most, of the children being encouraged to transition are in fact gay.

Author Helen Joyce put it most starkly when she argued that, “we are frankly castrating young gay boys…. And putting lesbian girls on the path to mastectomy”.

When we look at homophobic countries like Iran, they have one of the highest levels of transgender operations. This is because they detest homosexuality – not because they are progressive. 

Modern 'progressive' politicians appear to ignore the arguments that a key reason for this demand by more and more young people to transition is to do with cultural and political trends and because of the online activities of transgender activists.

Indeed, increasingly, when the Scottish Government talks about “consulting stakeholders and communities”, they do not mean communities of ordinary people or the public, they mean activist and identity groups who can be found on myriad committees in Holyrood.

Moreover, identity and the ideology of gender identity has been institutionalised, and both business and state institutions, including universities and schools, are today falling over themselves to fly the LGBT flag and to promote themselves as social justice activists.

At the wider level of politics and culture, we also find that the counter-cultural idea of “being the real you”, has become a key framework for understanding the idea of “rights”, indeed of how we think about the individual and about what is morally good.

What we end up with is a culture that, ironically, considering the supposedly radical nature of Scotland and Scottish politics, embraces the idea that there is no such thing as society, just individuals and their own, personal, and chosen identities.

With the transgender craze, not only has this resulted in the abandonment of the idea of social norms but also the rejection of biological facts.

Through the modern celebration and institutionalisation of hyper-individualism we have essentially embraced an immature adolescent culture, and called it progress. The result is a form of state sponsored child abuse that the Scottish Government believes is liberation.

Part of the reason the Scottish government is dragging its heels is no doubt that they don’t like to think that anything done by the evil Tories is right. But more worrying is the fact that Scottish politics is weighed down by a more purified form of wokery that has more completely adopted the narcissistic attitude of identity politics. This leaves, indeed encourages, children to obsess over their selves and their bodies.