Dr Natacha Kennedy
Goldsmiths College, London
The indefinite puberty-blocker ban announced by Keir Starmer’s Labour government this week bears a hideous resemblance to Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28 introduced in the late 1980s, which targeted LGBT children at school. It targets those who are least able to resist, the most powerless part of a tiny marginalised minority, and is universally opposed by those it applied to. Section 28 was one of the most shameful episodes in the UK’s history and is now one that will be repeated, but with a slightly different demographic, The Cass Scandal.
But that is where the similarities end. Section 28 was debated in full in parliament and voted on by MPs. The puberty-blocker ban, the first anti-LGBTQ+ legislation for 36 years, was introduced by a cowardly back-door route originally designed to ban ‘dangerous’ drugs, which these are not – it needs to be reiterated at every opportunity that there is no evidence of any harm being caused to trans children in the 30+ years that they have been used to treat gender dysphoria, to the extent that there are now middle-aged trans people who were successfully prescribed puberty blockers. The ban was passively supported by a parliament that has not been allowed to scrutinise it.
One of the most significant things about the way it was mentioned in parliament this week was that the announcement was entirely devoid of justification. No reasons for the ban were given, just a bland claim that the government is “convinced” that implementing it will result in improvements… blah.
It was not Margaret Thatcher’s strident and honest (if utterly vile) “no-one has an inalienable right to be gay.” rhetoric, it was the bland marketing-speak of a junior copywriter, who hasn’t yet been replaced by AI. It was originally announced as a measure to “protect” trans children, well that has now gone. It is being implemented because somehow denying trans children healthcare, traumatising them, forcing them to go through an unwanted puberty and making most of them suicidal, is going to “deliver material improvements in the wellbeing, safety and dignity of trans people of all ages…” which it clearly isn’t. The idea that Labour will “work with us” to help us to live freely, equally and with dignity is so obviously a lie that it would be laughable were the Party not already collaborating with those who want to turn us into second-class citizens.
This is a Labour Party that is now far to the right of Tory Prime Minister Theresa May. Unlike the Tories however, Labour has abandoned one of its core reasons for existing; to stand up to the powerful on behalf of ordinary people. To a large extent Labour has caved in to the (abuse of) power of the fascistic, right-wing billionaires who own most of our media and their vicious “journalist” lackeys who spread fear, disinformation and hate for them. If Labour is not going to stand up to the powerful on behalf of the powerless, what is it for?
This time however implementing the equivalent of Section 28 has required a coordinated campaign of dishonest media misrepresentation, as detailed in this report by Fair’s Lexi Koren, in collaboration with the rest of the British establishment. It has taken the full force of the dishonest media/political establishment to fabricate The Cass Scandal, as a supposedly scientific ‘report’ which needs to be regarded, not as any kind of scientific ‘endeavour’ – it has been too widely and thoroughly discredited to be regarded as in any way scientific – but as a pseudoscientific political document. The media has presented it repeatedly as though it were ‘gold standard’ science when it hasn’t even been peer-reviewed. The level of duplicity and dishonest coordination between these different sections of the British establishment is quite staggering but also very revealing. It demonstrates the level of coordination and duplicity between politicians, the media and the supposedly ‘impartial’ civil service to present a lie as the truth for the purpose of harming children.
But this time it is Labour’s lie and the harm that will come from this ban will be owned by every Labour Party member, every MP, every councillor every MSP every AM, everyone in the Party who has not loudly stood up to be counted on this subject. Labour has sold its soul to those who want to harm or kill children.
It was always inevitable that the pointed cruelty of obsessive transphobes would mean they would harness the hatred of the far right and pack governmental agencies with transphobes in order to attack trans healthcare, but to do that they have had to create the tapestry of lies that is The Cass Scandal. Gender-affirming healthcare for young trans people works, and works very well, Cass is essentially what Weber described as an authority strategy. The political establishment, corrupt politicians and transphobic “journalists” have conspired to give Cass the credibility it does not deserve. Cass is junk science, a series of fabricated and entirely dishonest manufactured deceptions to pain the good as bad, up as down, success as failure. The Cass Scandal is the entirety of this, not just the pseudoscience of Cass but the media circus, the political corruption, psychiatric malpractice, medical deception and establishment dishonesty that surrounds it. The Cass Review was just part of the Cass Scandal; it is a tool, a pretext to be deployed by deeply dishonest media and corrupt politicians to hoodwink a public that has little knowledge or bandwidth for the detail of young trans people’s lives. It is a instrument of deception, a device to enable the production of ignorance and the authorisation of harm to children.
It is this we should be talking about, because it is this that The Labour Party is part of, and not a peripheral part, it is front and centre of the Cass Scandal. The other dishonest actors provided the (smoking) gun, Labour pulled the trigger. Everything about this ban, from the instigation of the widely discredited Cass Scandal to its sordid, mendacious conclusion with the healthcare and hope removed from a generation of trans kids is now firmly Labour’s property. When its harmful consequences become clear Labour will be held responsible, not the civil service, not the media establishment, not the hateful transphobic campaigners, not the medical bullies. Just The Labour Party. Every lie is Labour’s, every half-truth is Labour’s, every misrepresentation is Labour’s, every inaccuracy by omission is Labour’s, every injustice is Labour’s, every harmed child is Labour’s and every ounce of shame is Labour’s, all of it.
It needs to be remembered that this ban is also a deeply violent crime against children.
Children.
Political interference in anyone’s healthcare is violence, interfering in the healthcare of children is violence against children. There is a word for someone who harms children, now that word applies to every member of the Labour Party. As a teacher I worked with children who had been harmed by adults they should have been able to trust, and it is not pretty. Trans kids should have been able to trust a government that presented itself as ‘competent’ and the opposite of Johnson/Truss/Sunak chaos, instead they have been treated far worse by Labour than any Tory has ever done.
What is most significant however, is that it has taken the full force of state violence and propaganda against trans children to do this, state brutality involving the complicity of all arms of the establishment to bring the entirety of the state’s power to bear on this tiny and defenceless group. This demonstrates just how rabidly fanatical transphobic hate really is; that the state is prepared to physically harm children in its campaign against trans people (or as they call it ‘transgenderism’).
A few months ago politicians were airily claiming that the puberty-blocker ban would ‘protect’ trans children. My own research into the effects of the puberty-blocker ban has demonstrated that this is the biggest lie here. The puberty-blocker ban is already harming trans children and doing so in a way that will scar them for life – or shorten their lives significantly. This was the most significant omission from Streeting’s bland marketing-puff in parliament this week, no justification, no claim that the ban is to ‘protect’ children. By omission the cat is out of the bag, Labour’s puberty-blocker ban is there for one reason only; to harm children. Cruelty is the point for Labour. Trump would feel right at home.