＂Children Are Being Irreversibly Damaged＂ - James Esses
Episode Stats
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Summary
James Essis is a former child counsellor and trainee psychotherapist, who speaks out in defence of trans children who are being told they are trapped in the wrong body. In this episode, James shares his story of how he became concerned about the issue of sex and gender dysphoria in relation to children, and how he decided to speak out about it.
Transcript
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All the studies show it's a bit of a slippery slope.
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So I mentioned earlier, I think it's 80% of children who just have therapy
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There was a study done on children who take puberty blockers,
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and in this study, over 90% of those children went on to take cross-sex hormones.
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So we have to think about what's going on here, actually.
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If we leave them be, they settle into themselves.
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If we start them down this path of irreversible puberty blockers,
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they're on a one-way street towards kind of full medical transitioning.
00:00:27.880
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
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Our brilliant guest today is a former child line counsellor and a trainee psychotherapist,
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It's great to have you on the show. You've got an interesting story to tell us,
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so why don't we just get straight into that. Tell everybody a little bit about who are you,
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how are you where you are, and most importantly, what is it part of your journey that brings you
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to be sitting here talking to us? Sure. So yes, the last few years have been quite surreal for me.
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I started off my career as a criminal barrister working in the law. I didn't find it as fulfilling
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as I thought it might. I wanted to do something else. I decided on a whim to take up a volunteering
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counselling role at Childline, the children's charity, where I was counselling young people
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every week for almost about five years. And I found that so fulfilling that I decided I wanted
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it to become my life and I decided to undertake training to become a psychotherapist. Until last
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year I was three years into a master's degree in psychotherapy but I was beginning to get concerned
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about the issue of sex and gender in relation to children and particularly young children struggling
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from gender dysphoria and being told that they were trapped in the wrong bodies and I immersed
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myself in the research and the literature and the studies on this topic and I just became more and
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more concerned about what was happening. I decided I had to do something to kind of speak out about
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this. The government were proposing banning conversion therapy and there was a concern
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that this could step into banning ethical explorative therapy for these children who
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were really struggling. So I launched a government petition asking them to safeguard therapy.
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Within a few months I'd been expelled from my master's degree over email and also let go from
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my volunteering role at Childline. So I feel that I'm the perfect example of cancel culture
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in relation to this sex and gender debate, which is so sensitive, but so important.
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Well, we'll talk about that part of it in a second. But you know, when you said you became
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concerned about this issue, was it because you were sort of online mainlining YouTube videos
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about trans or were you or was your concern prompted by what you were seeing in your counselling work
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very much the latter as i said i was doing this for five years and every year that went by there
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were more and more children coming through on a weekly basis saying that they felt that they were
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trapped in the wrong body and they were also younger and younger in age and i'd be speaking
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to some 10 11 year olds who were telling me that they were trans and that they wanted to transition
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And when I was gently trying to explore with them,
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Even though they didn't know those other things,
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my role was to explore as we would for any other mental health condition or situation which somebody
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is struggling within themselves but coupled with this is the potentially irreversible path these
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children are going down I'm sure we can get on to this a bit but you know I was hearing about
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these children wanting to be put on puberty blockers and then wanting to progress on to
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cross-sex hormones and even irreversible surgery and this was concerning for me because as soon
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as I started reading the studies on this I was seeing that for the vast majority of children
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if left untouched and just offered explorative therapy they will settle into themselves and
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their biological sex but unfortunately once children start on puberty blockers again the
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studies show that it's a bit of a slippery slope towards further medicalization. It's such a red
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hot sensitive topic for understandable reasons. Did you know were you not aware James of what you
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were getting yourself into when you started to speak out? Or did you just simply think that
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this was something that you had to do? I didn't think what I was saying was particularly
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controversial. And I was coming at this from a therapeutic point of view, because I was training
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to be a therapist, and the idea of offering open exploration for the clients that are in front of
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us. But I was finding that gender dysphoria, and we can talk about the meaning of that maybe in a
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bit, but it was being treated in a way that was quite different to any other mental health
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condition. For me, it was the only condition in which the proposed treatment was to affirm
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the distressing thoughts inside somebody's head. If we compare it to something like body dysmorphia,
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for example, where people think that they're potentially hugely obese or extremely unattractive,
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the way for a therapist to engage with that is not to say, yes, you're right.
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But actually, here we were being told and almost instructed by our training institutes to
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affirm somebody so if they say they're in the wrong body they must be and why do you think
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that is why do you think that we've gone down this path because as you said every other therapy or
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every other condition you wouldn't affirm what the person is saying if they have body dysmorphia
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but why is it with gender dysphoria we do that i mean there's a few reasons for that i think
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part of it I think is out of a desire to be seen to be polite and to be respectful and I support
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those aims but I think it goes too far so for example I had a conversation with a senior
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clinician who's working with children in this space recently and they said that they are very
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mindful about using language that is potentially offensive even if it's medically incorrect so an
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example of that is, and I see this all the time, particularly in school resources, telling children
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that sex is assigned at birth. So this is factually and medically untrue. Sex isn't
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assigned at birth. It's observed. It's recorded. But this clinician said that she would continue
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to use this language, even though it was medically incorrect, because she didn't want to offend young
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people. And for me, that's a serious concern. And we use the term gender dysphoria. What does
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it actually mean to have gender dysphoria? What is gender dysphoria? It's a recognised mental
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health condition. It's basically a mismatch between how one feels about themselves and
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their actual physical body. And often accompanying this is kind of significant amount of distress,
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understandably you know crucially in the UK in order to legally transition or in order to
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medically transition you must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria and this I find interesting
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because the other side of the argument always say you shouldn't pathologize being trans there's
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absolutely nothing wrong with it at the same time they say you must offer us potentially
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irreversible medication and surgery to deal with this and for me that's wholly inconsistent and
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you know you can't have it both ways. And this is one of the the reasons that I think this issue is
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so difficult to talk about but also so so necessary to talk about because I've said from day one the
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trans issue is what will break a lot of this whole thing that we talk about and have talked about on
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the show a lot because I am deeply liberal when it comes to live your life the way you want to
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live it be who you want to be etc but when you start talking about children and taking them on
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the path you're inevitably going to end up with what we are now seeing which we've all been
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predicting for some time which is there will be large numbers of people who are detransitioning
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who regret what they did who regret being encouraged in doing and we'll get people
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like that on the show to talk about it. So there was a lot in the desire to be polite,
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in the desire to be accommodating, in the desire to be affirming, damage was done and probably
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continues to be done. But do you feel that we've made progress in reversing some of this craziness
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in terms of, you know, we had Marcus Evans from the Tavistock Clinic. There's been a report into
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that now, which says that it's completely unfit for the purpose of helping children who are
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suffering in this way. And other things have happened recently, I think, with Stonewall also,
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where the government and institutions are sort of starting to realise this isn't a clear-cut
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issue of being nice to people. There's some real concerns. Do you think we're making progress?
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Very slowly. It does feel that the tide is beginning to turn, but I'm inundated daily
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the organisations or charities that they're engaging with.
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OK, I can talk about some resources that I've come across
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that have been taught in primary and secondary schools,
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which very much seems to be a way of getting gender identity
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So, for example, a parent flagged a module to me
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in a computing class for young people I think the age was about 13 14 and the class was for
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the purpose of describing to children how computing language works which is in binary coding
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the teaching instructions that the teachers were meant to utilize wanted them towards the end of
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the class to emphasize that computing language can be distinguished from human beings who are
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inherently non-binary in gender. What gender identity theory has to do with computing language
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is beyond me, but that's very much trying to, I think, infiltrate and get this ideology in through
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the back door. I've come across primary schools using books and resources suggesting to children
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A, that sex is assigned at birth, but B, if they are, for example, a young boy who likes the colour
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pink or wants to grow their hair longer or they're a young girl who likes to play football that
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actually rather than just being gender atypical they might actually be trapped in the wrong body
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um i could i could go on there's um it's it's quite strange really there's a there's a page
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from a book talking about pride and it's got flags all the different flags from the different
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genders and sexualities that there are um all very colorful as we know and then there's a box
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for straight and a box for cis. It's just the blank white page. There's nothing there. And I'm
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trying to put myself in the shoes of a young person. And I can imagine that when they're
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looking at all these bright, amazing, colourful flags, and then to be cis and straight is just
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the white page. What young person would want to identify with that? I feel that it's been pushed
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upon children as almost stale or boring. And I often see the word celebrate in these school
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materials we should celebrate being trans but I think about all the young people in society
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who aren't celebrated very often for just being themselves and now there might be an opportunity
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for them to be celebrated simply for you know coming out and saying I'm trans I'm non-binary
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it feels like a form of coercion and do you do you really think that a child would want to come
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out as non-binary or trans in order to be celebrated because the reality is and as
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somebody who's taught for many, many years, kids just want to fit in. Kids don't really want to
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stand out. The vast majority of them, they just want to be part of the group. And I think we can
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say that that's how we were when we were that age, surely. I do take your point, but I don't
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agree. I think the messaging that's coming from a lot of these organisations is very powerful.
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Mermaids, a charity that I'm particularly concerned about, and we can speak about that in a bit,
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and they've got a podcast for young people and in a recent episode the message they put out
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young people was if you are trans you are helping society who's not going to be influenced by this
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particularly a young child and particularly children who are in a state of flux I mean when
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we think about puberty everything around you is changing your entire being your physiology is
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changing you're trying to discover yourself and here you have people saying you know basically
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come and join us and you will be welcomed and you will be potentially even celebrated I see a lot
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of alienation as well from from people's families so again mermaids in this podcast there was a
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question from a young person about families struggling with misgendering them and the the
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podcast host weren't empathetic or tried to see it from a parent's point of view they said family
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isn't blood what message is this sending to young people
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And do you think that's part of the reason why we've seen more and more children transitioning,
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more and more children identifying as non-binary, trans?
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Therefore, people didn't want to say that they were that particular identity.
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the difficulty is that the pathway that young people have put on right now um as i said all
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the studies show it's a bit of a slippery slope so i mentioned earlier i think it's 80 percent
00:15:23.520
of children who just have therapy eventually settle into the biological sex there was a study
00:15:29.400
done on children who take puberty blockers and in this study over 90 percent of those children went
00:15:34.500
on to take cross-sex hormones so we have to think about what's going on here actually if we leave
00:15:38.740
them be, they settle into themselves. If we start them down this path of irreversible puberty
00:15:43.280
blockers, they're on a one-way street towards kind of full medical transitioning. And we talked
00:15:48.620
earlier about gender dysphoria and you described it as a recognised mental health, how did you
00:15:55.220
phrase it? Mental health condition. Mental health condition. What does that mean exactly? Because
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the reason I ask is you are well-versed in all this stuff, we less so, and a lot of people may
00:16:07.000
be coming to this issue for the first time. And I think this is probably the wrong way to look at
00:16:12.280
it, but to a lot of people, a mental health condition, what that sounds like is this is
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somebody's brain that's not working the way that it should be working, right? So when you say it's
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a mental health condition, what does that mean exactly? Well, I think for many, it can still be
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a stigmatizing term. But we have to think that mental health conditions are quite diverse in
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range and can range from basic anxiety and depression all the way up to kind of more
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serious mental health conditions, schizophrenia, personality disorders, etc. As I said, the reason
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this is a mental health condition is because there's a mismatch between one's physical body
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and how one feels about themselves inherently and the distress that comes along with that.
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So when I use that term, and it's a recognised term in the DSM, which is basically the
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international manual that classifies mental health conditions um that's simply there to
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recognize what these individuals are going through but again gender dysphoria as far as i can see is
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is the only mental health condition in which potentially the proposed treatment is to alter
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one's physical body i mean if we take another example of anorexia for example the proposed
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treatment is not to undergo liposuction and for many that might be quite a stark comparison but
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it's it's much the same because these individuals are feeling something about the body that
00:17:35.120
that isn't quite right there's another condition you may have heard of it's called
00:17:40.000
body integrity identity disorder I don't know if you've heard of that so this is a condition
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it's quite a rare condition but it's where people feel that a piece of their body doesn't belong to
00:17:48.820
them almost that it's wrong or that it's bad and often they will want it to be amputated they might
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just feel that their arm shouldn't belong to them and they want to get it amputated the nhs will not
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amputate your arm no matter how much you hate it no matter how much you feel it shouldn't belong
00:18:03.720
to you and isn't a part of you they will not amputate your arm bigots um but i'm coming
00:18:10.320
across studies and stories of young people in their late teen years being offered double
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mastectomies by the nhs for gender dysphoria because they feel that their breasts do not
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belong to them so we're talking about things like puberty blockers what actually happens if you take
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puberty blockers at the age of 12 13 let's actually have a conversation well the age you take it on
00:18:34.140
is is absolutely crucial actually because for example if you take puberty blockers in advance
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of starting puberty and then you go on straight away from that and transition it across sex
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hormones your body is still technically in a pre-pubescent state and so what that can lead to
00:18:51.240
is for example infertility and this is happening more and more actually so i think the age is
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crucial and we're finding actually that younger and younger children have been offered these
00:19:00.000
puberty blockers because the message is we want this the transition to be as smooth for you as
00:19:04.260
possible so let's let's halt things as early as possible but that can have significant ramifications
00:19:08.660
particularly if people later change their mind but but puberty blockers i mean this is still
00:19:14.580
experimental medication we don't have long-term studies on a lot of this but it does what it says
00:19:18.440
on the tin i mean it basically halts one's puberty what we don't know from from the days in the
00:19:22.920
studies because it hasn't been around long enough is the long-term effects although i read a study
00:19:26.740
recently suggesting that puberty blockers are causing potentially untold developmental issues
00:19:32.920
for these young people whether to do with their bone growth and development or even potentially
00:19:37.440
their brain development well i mean look that makes complete sense because when you go through
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puberty your bones thicken and they become stronger your muscles develop both male and
00:19:48.020
female so if you're putting puberty blockers in you don't you effectively have the body of a child
00:19:52.980
for the rest of your life well i think again it depends you know if you come on them if you come
00:19:59.840
off them sorry the expectation is that you will resume a normal puberty now i would always question
00:20:04.940
what that is because if we have interfered with the body's natural function you can never say that
00:20:11.040
they have then gone through a natural puberty because they simply haven't.
00:20:14.300
But yes, for many of them, depending on how long they've been taking it, etc.,
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it can potentially affect their bodies overall in terms of how they develop.
00:20:23.900
Don't these puberty blockers help these kids and don't they, you know,
00:20:28.280
have good outcomes as a result of transitioning?
00:20:31.040
And, you know, we hear a lot about, which is true,
00:20:35.920
that people who suffer from gender dysphoria in this way
00:20:39.940
have a higher suicide rate than the rest of the population and so on.
00:20:47.040
some of that awful distress that they're experiencing?
00:20:51.020
For some, and that's why I've never called for a complete ban
00:20:53.960
on these forms of treatment, because I think for some,
00:20:57.260
it is the only resort, although I think when it comes
00:20:59.620
to strong experimental medication and then irreversible surgery,
00:21:04.040
it should probably be a last resort and my focus would always want to be from a therapeutic
00:21:08.760
perspective but yes for some it probably is appropriate but again i speak to many parents
00:21:13.240
who were told this message by the school by the doctor by these charities they allow the children
00:21:19.060
to go on puberty blockers to take the cross-sex hormones even to end up having surgery eventually
00:21:22.920
and their children are as suicidal as ever and you bring up the point with parents uh where are we
00:21:30.300
in this country uh with parental consent because that always seemed to me uh i don't know what the
00:21:36.300
case is in the uk and in england specifically but the idea that for example parents are not being
00:21:43.420
told that their child presents as a different gender whatever that means in school and they're
00:21:50.340
not being told that or parents being essentially forced to consent on behalf of children to things
00:21:57.420
that they wouldn't consent if they weren't sort of harassed into it or whatever.
00:22:03.560
These are young people who are not allowed by law to make a decision
00:22:10.600
but they can take puberty blockers and take other drastic action.
00:22:17.620
Well, the point you just made is absolutely crucial,
00:22:19.440
and I can never get my head around the fact that, yes,
00:22:21.780
a child might not be able to buy a lottery ticket or even vote in an election,
00:22:24.760
but can consent to potentially irreversible medication
00:22:29.660
You know, we do have to wonder what's going on here.
00:22:33.820
I find parents being completely frozen out, actually.
00:22:43.020
and there's moderators from people who work at Mermaids.
00:22:53.000
but her parents wouldn't give her a breast binder
00:22:55.900
because there's health risks associated with that.
00:23:07.000
that are used to kind of compress one's breasts
00:23:21.380
and again studies have shown that people can be left with chronic pain back problems even affecting
00:23:26.580
breathing and lung functionality and particularly the young people who use them often want to wear
00:23:32.000
them for as long as possible because they want to present as not having breasts but actually the
00:23:35.480
longer you wear them if you don't wear them under proper supervised guidance the results can be quite
00:23:40.000
quite bad indeed so we can see why a parent wouldn't necessarily want their child using this
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anyway so this young person sent that message on the forum a mermaid's moderator an adult
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came back straight away and offered to send out a breast binder in the post anonymously
00:23:56.280
behind their parents back to them wow okay i mean whenever i touch upon this subject i always find
00:24:07.340
myself getting getting very upset because having taught and i taught secondary and i also taught
00:24:13.260
primary when you're tilting about 10 and 11 year old children they have no concept of consequences
00:24:19.640
their brains haven't developed to the point where they can understand that certain actions
00:24:24.680
have consequences which is why children do the things that they do when are we going to start
00:24:30.000
to have an honest conversation about this james because it still think it still seems to me that
00:24:34.080
we're dealing with narratives when we talk about the trans issue oh i mean we've we've robbed our
00:24:39.580
children. One of the beauties of childhood, of puberty, of teenage years, has always been the
00:24:45.120
ability to explore, to try things out. I mean, if we think back, you know, to old-fashioned kind of
00:24:50.020
emos or goths or whatever, you know, it's a time to just play around and explore and figure out
00:24:55.680
who you are in this world and make mistakes and then do something different. What we've done here,
00:25:01.820
by forcing children at such a young age to make potentially irreversible decisions, we've robbed
00:25:06.200
them of the opportunity to experiment regret and then move on um your question was about how you
00:25:13.060
know when is the narrative going to change i i i don't know um and we'll come on to this in a bit
00:25:19.520
but you know i i spoke out about this and i was cancelled i know many others including many other
00:25:25.400
therapists doctors teachers who are raising concerns about this in their own institutions
00:25:29.840
who are also being shut down but I think if the public at large knew exactly what was going on
00:25:36.260
I think they'd be absolutely shocked and before we move on what one thing that I really want to
00:25:42.820
talk with with you about is what do you think about the link with autism and people who want
00:25:47.820
to transition identify as trans because it now appears particularly in girls that there's a
00:25:53.660
connection significant connection I think comorbidities are absolutely crucial autism
00:25:58.840
is a crucial one just to say there are others for example previous traumatic experiences
00:26:04.320
also internalized homophobia seems to be quite a big one because actually the majority of people
00:26:09.680
who come out as trans end up um coming out as gay and so they're transing away the gay potentially
00:26:16.180
well potentially i've heard anecdotally that among some family units they would far rather
00:26:22.120
have a child who is trapped in the wrong body and straight than gay um the autism link is is
00:26:28.120
particularly concerning actually but again myself and colleagues are often castigated for even
00:26:34.180
trying to draw a link between these things. It's very concerning. So the industry is not ready
00:26:40.580
to have an investigation into autism and trans and what the links may be even though it's very
00:26:46.520
important because if somebody is saying that they've got gender dysphoria and they're autistic
00:26:51.040
you might be able to look at the autism as a reason why they're feeling the gender dysphoria.
00:27:03.700
into medicine and treatment for gender identity amongst children
00:27:10.700
She released her interim report actually a few weeks ago,
00:27:12.720
but this is something that she is particularly concerned about
00:27:16.240
So I'm hopeful that that will help to uncover a bit more
00:27:19.640
about the link between autism and gender dysphoria
00:27:25.380
from even having the conversation in the first place,
00:27:29.860
Hey, Konstantin, do you want better mental health?
00:27:49.760
People don't always realise that physical symptoms like headaches,
00:27:53.420
teeth grinding and even digestive issues can be indicators of stress and let's not forget about
00:27:59.340
doom scrolling not sleeping enough sleeping too much under eating and over eating sleeping too
00:28:06.060
much under eating this is western disease therapy has really helped me in my life to concentrate
00:28:12.540
and focus it's really important to have someone impartial who you can talk to about the tricky
00:28:18.620
issues that you're struggling to deal with therapy has played a really important role in helping me
00:28:24.380
to deal with my adhd and become better in all areas of my life why is he telling them how weak
00:28:30.780
he is drink vodka feel better better help is customized online therapy that offers video
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phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't have to see anyone on
00:28:43.820
camera if you don't want to. Trigonometry fans get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com
00:28:50.180
forward slash trigger, especially if they're not real men. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com
00:28:59.420
slash trigger. So let's talk about your own story then, because it's not an unfamiliar one
00:29:06.380
to us on this show. We've covered things like this a lot. So there you are, a childline counsellor.
00:29:13.460
you're starting to see that younger and younger and greater numbers of children are presenting
00:29:19.800
with this issue you start to become concerned you do some research what happens then
00:29:26.580
I do the research and I think I've got to do something I have to try and start a conversation
00:29:34.060
about this and it didn't feel that within the therapeutic bodies I was operating within even
00:29:38.000
my own training institution that these conversations were happening. I co-founded a group that I'm part
00:29:44.320
of called Thoughtful Therapists who wanted to explore this issue more. As I said I started a
00:29:49.100
government petition and what it said was government if you're going to ban conversion therapy which is
00:29:54.380
an apparent practice please safeguard explorative therapy for young people and the government
00:29:59.720
actually responded. We got 10,000 signatures and the government responded very favourably saying
00:30:03.640
they would protect the independence of clinicians in this space which was excellent.
00:30:08.000
But I attracted negative attention online from some pretty hardcore trans activists, I'm going to term them as.
00:30:19.020
I found out that they had made some complaints about me to my university institution.
00:30:26.300
And then one day out of the blue, last May, I think it was a Wednesday, I received an email from the deputy CEO of my course.
00:30:33.700
And as I mentioned, I was just about to complete my third year of this master's.
00:30:36.740
in fact I'd just been given permission to set up a private practice in therapy so things were
00:30:42.560
moving in the right direction for me anyway this email said we've had some complaints about you
00:30:47.940
and your petition and associate publicity can you come in for an informal conversation
00:30:52.640
now I was a bit taken aback by that because I didn't feel I'd done anything wrong but I said
00:30:57.580
of course I will and I expressed my anxiety about being called in for this it seemed quite out of
00:31:02.500
the blue. And I had a response saying, please let me reassure you, there was absolutely nothing to
00:31:07.560
be anxious about whatsoever. It is simply an informal chat to discuss things. So it was
00:31:12.300
scheduled for two days later on the Friday. I hadn't been provided with any evidence or anything
00:31:16.960
at this stage. I'd just been told there were these complaints. Fast forward less than 24 hours later
00:31:22.480
onto the Thursday, and an email drops into my inbox entitled termination of contract. And it
00:31:29.120
was a two paragraph email and it told me in that that I was being expelled with immediate effect
00:31:34.660
from my course and that the conversation on Friday would not be taking place. So you were
00:31:39.480
getting expelled immediately from your course. Why was that? Well they said because I'd brought
00:31:46.440
them into disrepute. Again they didn't provide any evidence of this whatsoever. I say and when we
00:31:52.900
talk about my ongoing litigation that it was because they were discriminating against me
00:32:14.140
you know, this needs to go further, higher up the chain?
00:32:19.780
Every step of the way, they ignored and flouted their own policies.
00:32:23.480
And I went to respond to the email immediately to express my dismay.
00:32:31.280
They had already blocked my email address, so I couldn't respond to it.
00:32:38.940
I then thought, right, I need to go and have a look at these policies myself
00:32:42.720
and see what's going on here and what my rights of appeal are.
00:32:45.180
So I went to log into the university's kind of intranet platform.
00:32:49.500
I was blocked from that as well, so I couldn't access the policies themselves.
00:32:53.480
within a few hours I just had a bad feeling in the back of my mind I don't know what it was that
00:32:59.960
told me to do this but I thought I would just have a look at their Twitter and that same evening they
00:33:04.360
had posted a tweet stating that they had expelled a student and stating their solidarity with the
00:33:11.680
LGBT plus community and to anyone who was aware of what was going on and actually you know it
00:33:17.520
become quite well known what I was doing in this space the complaints that were made against me
00:33:21.200
people would know that was me instantaneously so as if it wasn't enough they had ended my training
00:33:26.480
and my my future vocational hopes over an email they thought they'd stick the boot in and announce
00:33:31.620
it on twitter i'm just i'm left speechless and they there was no recourse to to complain there
00:33:42.320
was no recourse to take it further there was nothing of that nature i i've never had a single
00:33:49.060
conversation with anyone. I've never been presented with a single policy or piece of
00:33:53.200
evidence in this space. I was never offered an opportunity to appeal. As I said, they
00:33:57.940
flouted their policies from start to finish. Under their policies, there should be numerous
00:34:01.420
steps, including an adjudication panel, a chance to represent myself. All of this went
00:34:06.420
out the window. Most strikingly was this in their policy, it talks about potential sanctions,
00:34:11.360
for example, when immediate expulsion would be suitable. And the type of offences for
00:34:16.000
which immediate expulsion would be suitable are individuals who have committed a sexual assault
00:34:19.840
on campus or defrauded the institution and seemingly they are comparing what's my beliefs
00:34:26.080
about safeguarding children and about sex and gender to sexual assault or fraud it's interesting
00:34:31.400
that you you're telling us the story because i think to anyone listening or to most people
00:34:35.840
listening this will seem beyond credibility how ridiculous what you're telling us is but we francis
00:34:42.900
and I we were invited to speak at one of Britain's best private schools recently and when we turned
00:34:49.020
up a few of the teachers kind of went do you want a tour of the school and we were like oh yeah we'd
00:34:53.180
love one and they showed us one room and then dragged us into a pub to tell us what was happening
00:34:57.540
at their school while looking behind them over their shoulder every few seconds and I think
00:35:03.180
it seems like there are certain institutions where there is a culture that exists in which
00:35:11.380
what you did was equivalent to sexual assault in people's minds because of how toxic this whole
00:35:18.200
conversation has become. So did this happen before you were let go by Childline or after?
00:35:24.300
No, Childline followed a few weeks later. Okay.
00:35:29.200
Childline were aware of my concerns in this space because I wanted to be transparent. In fact,
00:35:33.520
I was concerned about some of Childline's practices. For example, their webpage on gender
00:35:38.360
identity very much reads to me and others as kind of a roadmap towards transitioning it doesn't even
00:35:42.880
talk about therapy and there's a lot of young people that access this so i i was asking could
00:35:47.020
i input into the web page could i have some discussions and for a while they entertained me
00:35:51.460
and they said that they were listening to my feedback um i said that i wanted to publicly
00:35:56.480
identify myself as a child line counselor as part of my writings etc and they said to me that they
00:36:01.480
didn't want me to do that um and basically there was a conversation around that and they decided
00:36:07.880
ultimately that they would have to let me go i i was invited onto a video call with one of these
00:36:14.100
senior management members i thought to discuss the possibility of me identifying myself publicly
00:36:18.920
as a counsellor because you know why shouldn't i it's the truth i was counselling there uh and he
00:36:23.720
simply told me not to come in for my next shift uh did he explain why he said that what i was
00:36:33.380
saying in this space and my concerns that I was raising could put young people off coming through
00:36:39.160
to Childline in the first place. But I found that very concerning because what I was raising with
00:36:46.540
him was actually concerns about what happens when young people are coming through to Childline,
00:36:51.100
what they're being exposed to, the type of counselling that they're being offered.
00:36:55.560
But for him, this was beyond the pale, clearly. Do you think there's some truth to that argument
00:37:01.500
in that, you know, you clearly have strong views about this issue. And we've conceded during our
00:37:07.840
discussion already that there are some people for whom transition may be the right option.
00:37:11.960
And there may be young children for whom it is eventually the right option, who may be put off
00:37:16.820
by the fact that someone with your views is working as a councillor at Childline. Do you
00:37:22.120
think there's some merit to that argument? I don't. And the reason is that since time
00:37:27.600
immemorial, therapists have had to engage in this idea of, it's called bracketing. It's basically,
00:37:31.900
you know, setting aside one's personal beliefs and views on things and to deal with the client
00:37:35.720
that's in front of them. And that's how I've always operated in Childline. As I said, I was
00:37:38.920
doing this for five years. I never received a mark against me. In fact, I received a lot of
00:37:43.800
positive feedback, including about the way I engage with children with gender dysphoria.
00:37:47.000
Sure. But do you not see how, from a 10-year-old's perspective, seeing you being very vocal on this
00:37:51.280
issue online may cause them to think, well, this may be not the organisation to which I need to go
00:37:56.980
to get support if a young person reading that simply wants to be affirmed and told yes you
00:38:06.360
should transition and yes here is how you get medication then I suppose so for a young person
00:38:11.300
who thinks I'm struggling in myself I want somebody who will explore this neutrally
00:38:16.700
objectively and empathetically with me I don't see how it could so so where are you now James
00:38:22.640
with the process um i was left with no choice but to start litigation against my university
00:38:30.120
course and actually also my therapeutic regulatory body who seemed to have had some hand in what
00:38:34.460
happened to me and this will come out in the wash i i suspect but yes i sought legal advice
00:38:39.380
and i was told that i had a very strong claim for discrimination against my beliefs in this space
00:38:44.240
uh i had to crowdfund the money as so many people do nowadays and today i think i've raised just
00:38:51.240
over 80 000 pounds from from concerned members of the public which has been extremely we need to get
00:38:55.740
i'm just kidding no look it's i mean it's a hell of a lot of money i yeah it's not going into my
00:39:04.140
my back pocket it goes straight to the floor um but yeah i mean the outpouring of support and
00:39:09.440
generosity from complete strangers who owe me nothing has been fantastic but it shows the
00:39:13.320
strength of feeling in this space actually whether it's people who are concerned about women's rights
00:39:24.560
It's moving quite slowly as these things tend to do.
00:39:29.580
and then it will proceed to a trial probably at the end of this year
00:39:33.840
But I'm very much wanting my day in court over this.
00:39:40.720
Well, it's become about a lot more than just me, actually, to be honest.
00:39:43.860
in some ways it feels that my reputation has been kind of irreparably damaged um and the routes
00:39:49.800
towards me qualifying as a therapist now appear limited um for me it's about the bigger picture
00:39:55.820
actually about what this issue represents for society particularly around sex and gender but
00:40:00.220
also freedom of speech and cancel culture and i want to make sure that no institution or university
00:40:06.380
is allowed to do this to one of its students ever again and i'm hoping that this can set a marker
00:40:11.720
actually and set a standard and universities will think twice before discriminating against
00:40:17.080
their own students because they'll wind up in court. James is there really no way back for you
00:40:22.520
as a therapist you sound like someone who is passionate about this type of work you sound
00:40:26.640
like somebody who wants to work with children it just seems desperately sad that you're not
00:40:32.120
going to be able to do this vocation. I feel terribly sad if I go back to child line that
00:40:41.100
was probably the most fulfilling part of my life and i was going there every week for five years
00:40:45.180
and i still sometimes walk past that building and i feel this wave of emotion and sadness that i'm
00:40:51.720
not in there helping these young people that i that i care about and i want to support them
00:40:56.680
through their own journeys in life um i hope that once this case resolves itself i will be able to
00:41:03.440
carry on with my training elsewhere um i've not given up wanting to help people i may just have
00:41:09.400
to help them in a different space but but for me the well-being of children is more important than
00:41:14.500
anything and actually once you open your eyes to what's going on in this space you cannot unsee it
00:41:19.080
and so I think this is going to become my life's work one way or another even if I've suffered
00:41:24.680
personally as a result of it. And at this point there's no chance of you going to another university
00:41:31.240
taking up your qualification again is that let's say firing or sacking or whatever you want to call
00:41:37.160
But is that too much of a black mark against your name
00:41:46.240
So certainly until my name has been cleared in a court of law,
00:41:49.940
I can't see how someone would want to take me on.
00:41:52.320
The issue is, and the reason I chose this course
00:41:55.620
and I have a full-time job to keep a roof over my head.
00:42:00.160
I'm not in a position to go down to a part-time role.
00:42:03.360
This was basically the only course that I could do
00:42:09.400
And has this affected your job, your full-time job?
00:42:15.540
I have to be careful about what I say here because I've...
00:42:21.180
Yes, and at one point, and I won't go into any great detail on this,
00:42:25.760
but at one point there was a kind of investigation of sorts into me
00:42:32.760
But that's resolved itself now because they followed due process.
00:42:36.060
and the right outcome I believe was was reached but yes at one point it did look to me like my
00:42:41.680
livelihood could be under threat as well and have how the therapeutic community been to you have
00:42:46.500
lots of people been reaching out have people been talking to you have they been saying the
00:42:50.860
standard things that we get really support your work but dare not come out and say that I do
00:42:56.020
I've had a mix I've had a hell of a lot of support from like-minded therapists who have equal concerns
00:43:01.300
in this space um i've also had the opposite and it feels that a lot of therapeutic community have
00:43:06.000
almost become kind of activists in their own right um part of my case which has been extended
00:43:12.420
is this my therapeutic body was running a training course for therapists on conversion therapy
00:43:17.240
and the individual i can't name them at this stage running the training program
00:43:20.960
spent a big chunk of the training course bad-mouthing me and my case and accusing me of
00:43:27.440
abusing the law and things like that um one of the people attending the training happened to be
00:43:33.980
recording this and sent it through to me and this now forms part of the basis of my case but
00:43:37.880
um i found therapists who are willing to kind of bad mouth me online um i've been showing
00:43:43.080
screenshots from therapeutic facebook groups who when they discovered that i've been expelled
00:43:46.800
were having a mini celebration and party a basis um so i i think it depends which way one's ideology
00:43:55.260
lies but for people who are proponents of gender ideology uh they view my expulsion and elimination
00:44:01.640
from the profession as something to be celebrated for the therapists that i know who are concerned
00:44:05.700
about the well-being of children this is a mark against the therapeutic profession and
00:44:11.360
they are fearful that fearful themselves of being cancelled in their own right well we wish you all
00:44:17.580
the best with the case we hope you get your day in court and uh i know it probably doesn't feel
00:44:22.700
like this way to you right now because having been in a similar position somewhat i understand
00:44:26.660
it's very personal and emotional but uh over time i think you'll see that uh this is part of the
00:44:32.340
bigger thing that you're talking about and the stand you've taken uh will will form part of the
00:44:38.820
process of pushing back against some of the excesses of what you're talking about so uh all
00:44:43.460
the best to you thank you thanks for coming on the show thanks uh if people want to follow your
00:44:48.280
work where do they do that twitter i'm pretty active on twitter it's just my name james s's
00:44:54.100
i've got a sub stack where i'm writing more in-depth pieces on this um that's called
00:44:58.480
transparency uh and i've got a cryo justice page which keeps people abridged about what's going on
00:45:04.700
with my litigation and they can follow updates through that as well great i look forward to
00:45:08.420
finding out how it goes and of course as always we have one more question for you which is as
00:45:12.800
always what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be yeah so for me
00:45:17.080
this is an interesting one because I think we spend so much of our lives talking about how we
00:45:20.600
should live and not enough time talking about how we should die because death is inevitable for all
00:45:26.700
of us and so that is why I'm a strong proponent of discussions around assisted dying. I've been
00:45:32.980
a long-standing supporter of a charity called Dignity in Dying. I've seen legislation passed
00:45:37.760
abroad which has offered up assisted dying for people who are in the most horrific situations
00:45:48.720
and people are being forced to either end their lives
00:45:53.160
or take themselves off to a Dignitas clinic, for example,
00:45:56.600
and the fear of prosecution hanging over themselves
00:46:02.940
I fundamentally believe that people should be able to die with dignity.
00:46:06.880
So I think we need to have a discussion about this,
00:46:08.920
both in the House of Parliament, but also in society more generally.
00:46:16.420
who comes very much from the opposite point of view.
00:46:20.040
This is an issue that seems to be coming to the fore
00:46:27.280
from our supporters that only they will see on our locals.
00:46:31.080
But in the meantime, James, thanks for coming on the show.
00:46:35.440
We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode
00:46:40.940
And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go,
00:46:49.920
In the US at the moment, I've seen a call for potentially launching a group lawsuit based on puberty blockers.
00:46:57.620
It's only a matter of time until that reaches the UK.