Susie Green, CEO of Mermaids said: “We are delighted that the Bell v Tavistock case has been granted permission to appeal. “The first instance ruling would force transgender young people and their parents to go to court before they can get basic healthcare. Whatever our beliefs, most of us can agree that it is the young people themselves, their parents and their doctor who best understand their needs. When all three agree on what care a child needs, there is no need for a court process. “We have seen first-hand the immense damage the High Court’s ruling has done to…
Blog — Press Statements
A DANGEROUS BETRAYAL OF TRANS YOUTH Today’s judgment from the High Court risks untold, irreparable damage to young trans people in England and Wales. It heralds nothing less than a new era of discrimination, treating trans youth differently from all other young people and barring them from accessing life-saving care. The judgment does not make it a mandatory requirement for clinicians to seek judicial authority before prescribing puberty blockers to those under 18. The judgment did not decide that hormone blockers are illegal or unlawful. However, the court ruling effectively makes it very difficult for expert clinicians, who see the…
Read our full response to the DfE’s new schools guidance on RSE lesson planning here. Read our article on the relevance of clothes and toys to gender identity here. Details of the Mail on Sunday request for comment can be read for context below. In response to the Mail on Sunday article published Sunday 27th September 2020: no teacher has ever been encouraged by any LGBTQ+ organisation to state that ‘tomboys’ should be transgender. The suggestion is discrediting to the teaching profession and we call for the Mail on Sunday to explain its journalistic basis for this assertion. We have…
We welcome the broadening of this independent review of the Gender Identity Development Service’s important work. We call for transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse voices to be placed at the core of the report. If children and young people are to benefit from a better-provisioned service, the review must be based on clear evidence and lived experience. We also support the Care Quality Commission’s focused inspection of GIDS, due in the Autumn, and we trust it will further support the work of the service’s hard-working clinicians. The wellbeing of our service users lies at the very heart of everything we do….
(Scroll down for a full analysis of the Government’s announcement) After years of unhelpful speculation, debate and concern around Gender Recognition Act reform for England and Wales, we are relieved an announcement has been made. Many of our supporters feared that trans and non-binary lives would be negatively impacted by new barriers, so we are pleased that the extraordinary effort of combined LGBTQ+ organisations and allies has prevented such harm. It is particularly welcome news that the Equality Act 2010 remains resolutely unchanged amidst a barrage of misinformed demands to weaken equality law in the UK. For too long, transgender…
We have received a letter from the Government Equalities Office and would like to thank the Minister for Women and Equalities, Rt Hon Liz Truss for her communication. You can read the Minister’s letter and our original letter below. The past few months have been fraught with hazardous speculation around the impact of potential GRA reforms, and we have raised our service users’ concerns with parliamentarians, allies and the wider public in the hope that any changes brought forward are to the benefit of trans lives. We refrain from pre-empting the Government’s response to the GRA consultation, though we are…
Please understand the impact of your public statements on trans people. Warning: please be aware that the following post discusses issues which may cause distress. Today, J.K.Rowling re-stated her position on transgender lives. We have previously reached out to her both publicly and privately, offering a calm conversation around the issues she has raised and today, we sent a further email to her team, renewing that offer. We are yet to receive a response. As part of that email, we have disclosed something we hoped never to say. We say it now with permission from those involved. Without giving personal…
The below letter was submitted today (31 July 2020) to the BBC on behalf of the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ organisations. We are calling, in one voice, for a full and transparent explanation as to why trans organisations were removed from the BBC’s former ‘Gender Identity’ page. Currently, no trans organisations covering England, Scotland and Wales are included in the new ‘LGBT Issues‘ page. Those wishing to add their voice to this complaint can do so here. To: BBC Editorial Policy Department Cc: David Jordan, Director of Editorial Policy and standards; Tim Davie, incoming Director General; Baron Hall of Birkenhead, Director…
After a period of considerable anxiety and uncertainty, we are pleased that the Minister for Women and Equalities has stated unequivocally that her department will not be rolling back the rights of trans people. However, the Gender Recognition Act consultation was intended to improve the lives of trans people, never to regress their rights, and it is a sad reflection that three years of anguish, delays and assurances have so far achieved nothing more than a promise things won’t get worse. We call on the Government to publish in full the response to the Gender Recognition Act consultation for England…
Please take the time to read and share and write to your MP If we legislate to police gender in toilets, then how and at what point do we decide who is and isn’t a woman? According to a national newspaper today, Boris Johnson’s government is preparing to scrap a review of the Gender Recognition Act; a review which was commissioned by Theresa May because the current system for trans people is costly, lengthy, humiliating and unnecessary. The newspaper report suggests that the government is preparing to set out new ‘safeguards’ to protect female-only spaces including refuges and public lavatories….