The more I hear about this case, the more unhappy I get. Susie Green of Mermaids has posted a comment to a tabloid newspaper today. I don’t want to link to them, but she has copied it to Facebook. You may need a Facebook login to read that. In case you can’t here are some key points.

Two independent gender specialists have attested that the child’s gender issues are real and are not being encouraged by the mother. This is not mentioned in the judgement, in which the judge appears to blame the mother for the child being trans.

A claim that the mother is a drug user is included in the judgement, despite the fact that it is anonymous and has not been substantiated.

The judge has banned the mother from defending herself against any of the charges made against her.

The Tavistock gender clinic, which has been treating the child, was not consulted for an opinion on the case.

Susie says, “The Mum was subjected to multiple malicious anonymous referrals to social services.” This is a common experience for parents of trans children. The judge appears to have taken all of these complaints as valid and reasonable.

Susie says that meetings were called by the school and GP to discuss the child’s welfare, without the knowledge of the mother. The clear implication being that both school and GP were treating the mother as a danger to the child. But it is only the mother whom the judge criticizes for being uncooperative.

There was no careful handover of care – the child was taken from their mother in a raid in the middle of the night and taken to live with a father they had not seen for 3 years.

Susie says, “This child consistently and repeatedly asserted that she was a girl.” This is not included in the judgement, but a single claim by a teacher that the child claimed to be a boy is included.

There appears to be something very underhand going on here, and sadly I believe that the same tactics will now be used against other parents of trans children, and against anyone in schools and social services who tries to help them. Please sign the petition.

Last night and this morning my Twitter mentions have been full of outrage about a High Court judgement to remove a child from the care of their mother because of concerns that said child was being abused by being allowed to present as female. There’s news coverage here.

I’ve had a chance to look through the official judgement this morning. It doesn’t make for pretty reading. I have an awful lot of questions, some of which may be answered as more information comes to light.

To start with, this case seems to be part of an acrimonious dispute between the biological parents of the child who are now separated. The case seems to have revolved entirely around the question as to whether the father or mother was correct with regard to whether the child is a boy or a girl. A child’s welfare should never come down to taking sides in such a case.

I note also that there appears to have been zero consideration that both parents might be correct. There is good evidence these days that children can have strong cross-gender identification at a very early age. However, many children are ambivalent about their gender. Forcing them to choose one or the other can be just as harmful as forcing them to make the “wrong” choice between binary genders.

I am wondering where the expert testimony is. A “Consultant Clinical Psychologist” was employed to assess the child, but there is no suggestion that she is an expert in gender issues. The child is apparently a patient at the Tavistock gender clinic, but no one from the Tavi is mentioned as giving evidence. Mermaids have stated that they have been supporting the mother and child for over two years, but there is no mention of them being asked to give evidence.

I’m struck also by the way in which the mother’s attempts to protect her child have been used against her. When the child was bullied she tried to keep them away from the bullies, and was accused of isolating the child. When she tried to allow the child to start social life again in a new environment where the child was known only as a girl, which is standard practice for raising trans kids, this too was condemned by the judge on the grounds that someone might find out. He described it as:

an arrangement that was fraught with potential for real harm to J if his true gender was inadvertently discovered

I submit that in referring to the child’s “true gender” the judge is showing obvious bias.

What is most disturbing about this case, however, is the way in which the judge gives equal weight to the opinions of people who know nothing about trans issues to those of the mother and the various agencies attempting to help her. A local authority report is quoted as saying:

It is evident that some agencies do not have a full understanding of gender non conforming children and have therefore contacted Children’s Service, sometimes when they have not met [J].

The judge responds to this with:

The two remaining passages of the conclusion make very disheartening reading indeed. They combine both naivety and professional arrogance.

I can see no basis for this comment other than that he feels he knows the “true gender” of the child. There are lots of attempts to appeal to the views of other agencies, all of which have a lot of experience with children, but none that appear to have much awareness of trans issues.

As anyone who has worked with trans children will tell you, there is a vast amount of ignorance out there. Schools, health care professionals, government agencies and voluntary services of all sorts are full of people whose view of trans people have been shaped by reading tabloid newspapers. They will often “raise concerns” solely on the grounds that they don’t believe that being trans is a real thing, or in the case of schools because they are unwilling to deal with the complications that having trans pupils entails.

Much of this reminds me of when I was a kid. My brother had very severe dyslexia, and my mum spent a great deal of her time fighting against schools and other agencies. At the time she was accused of being taken in by a popular fad that everyone with any common sense knew wasn’t real. The same sort of thing happens to parents of trans children today.

It is deeply concerning that the judge has used this case to attack the social workers who attempted to support the child’s mother. This sort of thing could easily end their careers, and it will have a chilling effect on every similar case around the country. All it will take is for some transphobic doctor or school teacher to “raise concerns” that a child is being raised in an inappropriate way and social services will have to react for fear that they too will be accused of abetting “child abuse”.

There is a petition about the case here. I make no claims to knowing how the child should be raised, but I think it entirely wrong that such issues should be decided in court, and am horrified at many of the comments by the judge.

Update: From Susie Green of Mermaids on Facebook

There have been 2 independent gender specialists who have reviewed the family and agreed that Mum is not responsible for her child’s gender expression.

I’ve been very busy over the past few days and consequently have only commented on this on social media. However, as many of you will know, the NSPCC has cancelled the event. Victory!

The cancellation came for two reasons. Firstly Kellie Malloney withdrew from participation once it became clear that a) the trans community was very unhappy, and b) that Ditum was likely to use Maloney’s history of domestic violence to discredit her, and by implication all trans people, during the debate. Secondly the NSPCC discovered that all those warnings about a huge social media backlash that people had been giving them before they went public were actually correct. The petition only got to a little over 1500 signatures before they got cold feet.

I’m still quite annoyed with the NSPCC who seem to have done no due diligence with regard to this event. Their press office has kept on claiming that the “debate” would focus on “asking what society should be doing for trans children”. However, expecting Ditum to answer that with anything other than “stop them being trans” is rather like inviting Richard Dawkins to a debate on religion and expecting him not to mention atheism.

Doubtless we shall now see a lengthy article by Ditum in the New Statesman explaining how she has been viciously and violently censored by “men” and that she is unable to express her views in public anywhere.

The good folks at Mermaids were busy holding a conference on Friday and haven’t had much time to process this, but I expect them to do so in due course and a formal complain to the Charities Commission should be forthcoming. If nothing else, the NSPCC should mention this debacle in their annual report and explain what steps they will take to prevent anything like it from happening again.