Author: Claire

While I slog through the final report of The Cass Review, which is like trying to read 400 pages of really bad ‘gender critical’ fan fiction about trans people, I’ve been bookmarking and noting stuff of interest that other people have been discovering in direct or indirect relation to it, as well as responses & critiques. So I thought Id round these up and put them in one place for reference (in no particular order) Suffice to say the abuse of this review to attack trans healthcare is a scandal of frankly monumental proportions, which some are rightly calling #CassGate.…

There are a number of foundational standards and principles that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are required to abide by in order to retain their ‘A’ status accreditation rating as a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI). These are known as the Paris Principles, which were defined in 1991 and adopted by the United Nations in 1992. The EHRC were reaccredited with A status in October 2022, with GANHRI, the UN governing body responsible for accreditation, releasing a report of recommendations to changes in the EHRC’s operations, highlighting significant areas of concern. We covered that in an article in…

The link between the EHRC & Alliance Defending Freedom.

Yesterday the Office of National Statistics released the next tranche of data on sexuality and gender identity, with a focus on how that intersected across age and ‘sex’. The ONS analysis doesn’t really offer any surprises, despite the attempts by trans hostile activists to muddy the data by trying to force trans people to respond according to what may be on their original birth certificate. Unlike my previous article, I’m going to stay strictly within the ONS data here as I look at trends etc. ONS Findings Let’s start with the stuff the ONS analysed first. The most interesting…

Recently the first tranche of data from the 2021 Census for England & Wales in relation to trans people was released by the Office of National Statistics. In some ways it makes for interesting reading, but ultimately it doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know, and in others it leaves things more muddied overall, thanks to making the “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” question entirely optional. So, what do we have to work with, and what does it give us in terms of solid or speculative data?  Content warning…

I did a talk recently, and at one point I said, ‘If there’s one thing trans people are not short of, it’s courage’. And it’s the absolute truth. From the battlefields of the war torn Ukraine and the dancefloors of nightclubs in Colorado, to the streets of the UK, the individual struggles are different – but the courage remains. There’s a point where courage and fear are pretty much indistinguishable. Many of us cross that point in our own journeys, when we step outside as ourselves for the first time, and many of us do it on a daily basis,…

Updated 3/3/24 So, the EHRC’s reaccreditation by the UN is all over, and GANHRI, the international accreditation body for National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) has released its report.  Let’s take a look at it and see what it means – especially in regard to the submission we made as to their multiple failures for the trans community, and then we can look at where the EHRC are now. Notes on Reaccreditation & Context There’s a couple of things in terms of context that are worth getting out of the way before we delve into the meat of the report itself.…

In this second article I’m going to look at the referrals process outlined in the interim service spec. In order to understand just how bad this is, it’s worthwhile to understand broadly what the current referral’s process is – or rather was. Note : Im going to use CYP throughout to refer to Children or Young People / Person. Referrals Then & Now Previously, referrals into the GIDS service could be made by a range of professionals in various organisations in addition to GPs – schools & colleges, social services and voluntary organisations such as Mermaids & Gendered Intelligence, among others.…

As most of you reading will be aware, the NHS released its new interim service specification for the treatment of trans & gender diverse (TGD) children and young people last week. This is the service spec proposed for the two new ‘regional’ centres that replace GIDS to use. Supposedly it’s based on the findings of the Cass Review, and I can well believe it given that Review is inherently cis-biased and trans hostile, and has been from the start. The purpose of this series of articles is to summarise at a high level the major issues with this new…

By Steph and Claire Continue Reading Not Safe To Be Me Protest – Steph & Claire’s Speeches