1 week Ago By Sandra Pertot
Harmony Machin ('Why I spoke up against hate speech and got marched out of Tucker Carlson event', Newcastle Herald , 29/3) is quite right to say that hate and bigotry have no place in discussions about the rights of minority groups. Trans advocates are also quite right to say there have always been people who identify as the other gender, and they deserve understanding and appropriate support. Login or signup to continue reading Over my 50 years of practice as a clinical psychologist, I saw sexuality and gender-questioning clients.
In the '70s, '80s, and '90s, young people who thought they might be gay deserved the time and patience to work out what was the right path for them: it wasn't my role to affirm their sexuality one way or the other. Some came to the understanding they were gay, some decided they weren't. The trans people I saw in the early years of practice were always adult males.
Any man who wished to have medical and surgical treatments to live as a woman had to undergo in-depth and lengthy assessments by a psychiatrist. Despite the strict criteria, there were men who later regretted their transition. One client I saw had been on cross sex hormones for several years and was on the wait list for surgery when he changed his mind.
In 2004 the gender clinic in Melbourne was sued by a man who alleged the hospital was negligent because it mistakenly diagnosed him as a primary transsexual before his gender reassignment in 1988. These examples should serve as a warning to gender-affirming health professionals that great care needs to be taken when assessing a gender-questioning person. In the past decade, there has been a surge in gender-questioning young people, predominantly adolescent females.
Under the current assumption that if a person says they are trans they are trans, too often there is no comprehensive health assessment or exploratory counselling process before they are affirmed socially (eg change their name, use different pronouns) or prescribed hormone therapy. Further, advocates for this approach state that a child who says they were born in the wrong body should be considered for puberty blockers which are claimed to be safe and reversible. The argument is that if the child is "forced" to go through the unwanted puberty they are at risk of suicide.
However, there is no historical evidence to support that claim, in fact the suicide rates for any reason for a child 14 and younger are thankfully very low. It is unethical for gender-affirming health professionals to ignore the increasing number of young people who regret their medical/surgical transition. Good health policy dictates that these people should be given support and their cases examined to identify possible risk factors for such an adverse outcome.
Any health professional or parent who expresses concern about the current model of gender-affirming care is labelled transphobic and accused of hate speech, and, as the case of Queensland psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer demonstrates, at risk of losing their employment. Older gender-questioning clients are usually male, and now, under self-identification laws in most Australian states, any man can claim to be a woman, no medical assessment and no medical or surgical treatment required. Under the legal fiction that this declares him a woman, he can access female spaces, sports, support groups, associations and so on.
There is an ongoing case in Victoria of a lesbian group who want to hold a public function but the Australia Human Rights Commission says that restricting entrance to lesbians born female is discriminatory. The cultural gender debate has become disturbingly polarised and this isn't helped by gratuitous claims of hate speech and transphobia. There are people who do well living in their preferred gender role, and there are people whose mental and physical health suffers.
It is time for what trans advocates so loudly oppose: an open, comprehensive, respectful discussion of the challenges identified in the current gender debate. Daily Today's top stories curated by our news team. Also includes evening update.
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