The long-awaited Cass review of gender identity services (Gids) for children and young people is finally here, and people with a wide variety of views appear to be welcoming it. In more civil, fact-based times, in which transness was accepted as just another example of human variation, this outcome could be to its credit: appropriate for a review of clinical services by an expert clinician.
However, we do not live in such times. Instead, in recent years, the UK has fallen to 15th in European LGBT+ equality rankings (in 2016, the UK ranked third) and was highlighted by the Council of Europe alongside Hungary, Turkey and Russia as a state where LGBT+ rights are under attack from political figures, including governments. We are also experiencing a steep rise in transgender hate crimes, which a UN report directly attributes to “the toxic nature of the public debate surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity”.
