Ordered to close

The Tavistock is shutting down!

The Times reports:

The NHS is shutting down its gender identity clinic for children after a review found that it failed vulnerable under-18s.

The gender identity service at Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been ordered to close by next spring.

It will be replaced by regional centres at existing children’s hospitals offering more “holistic care” with “strong links to mental health services”.

Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) clinic has been accused of rushing children into life-altering treatment on puberty blockers.

In other words into making changes to their bodies they will be stuck with for life.

The paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, who is leading a review of the service, issued a series of recommendations today for a radical overhaul of how the NHS treats young people who are questioning their gender identity.

She found that the Tavistock clinic was “not a safe or viable long-term option” and that other mental health issues were “overshadowed” when gender was raised by children referred to the clinic.

And that problem must surely be complicated and amplified by the way being trans is treated as some dazzling new religion plus political stance plus sainted status as opposed to a mental health issue. Mustn’t it? With all these adults telling teenagers that being trans isn’t a problem, isn’t a mental health issue, isn’t a mistake, but on the contrary is the most magical thrilling profound adorable identity one can wrap oneself in?

In other words isn’t it a problem and hasn’t it been a problem all along that there’s been all this massive pressure to say being trans is not a mental health issue but on the contrary a kind of divinity?

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