TRIGGERnometry - ＂Children Are Being Irreversibly Damaged＂ - James Esses

00:00:00.000 All the studies show it's a bit of a slippery slope.

00:00:02.120 So I mentioned earlier, I think it's 80% of children who just have therapy

00:00:06.580 eventually settle into their biological sex.

00:00:09.200 There was a study done on children who take puberty blockers,

00:00:11.900 and in this study, over 90% of those children went on to take cross-sex hormones.

00:00:16.860 So we have to think about what's going on here, actually.

00:00:18.920 If we leave them be, they settle into themselves.

00:00:20.840 If we start them down this path of irreversible puberty blockers,

00:00:24.900 they're on a one-way street towards kind of full medical transitioning.

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00:01:49.620 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:52.480 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:53.900 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:01:55.000 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:02:01.000 Our brilliant guest today is a former child line counsellor and a trainee psychotherapist,

00:02:05.360 James Essis. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:02:06.920 Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

00:02:08.340 It's great to have you on the show. You've got an interesting story to tell us,

00:02:12.180 so why don't we just get straight into that. Tell everybody a little bit about who are you,

00:02:16.620 how are you where you are, and most importantly, what is it part of your journey that brings you

00:02:21.160 to be sitting here talking to us? Sure. So yes, the last few years have been quite surreal for me.

00:02:26.240 I started off my career as a criminal barrister working in the law. I didn't find it as fulfilling

00:02:31.380 as I thought it might. I wanted to do something else. I decided on a whim to take up a volunteering

00:02:36.560 counselling role at Childline, the children's charity, where I was counselling young people

00:02:41.440 every week for almost about five years. And I found that so fulfilling that I decided I wanted

00:02:46.920 it to become my life and I decided to undertake training to become a psychotherapist. Until last

00:02:54.180 year I was three years into a master's degree in psychotherapy but I was beginning to get concerned

00:02:58.880 about the issue of sex and gender in relation to children and particularly young children struggling

00:03:04.140 from gender dysphoria and being told that they were trapped in the wrong bodies and I immersed

00:03:08.720 myself in the research and the literature and the studies on this topic and I just became more and

00:03:13.340 more concerned about what was happening. I decided I had to do something to kind of speak out about

00:03:18.140 this. The government were proposing banning conversion therapy and there was a concern

00:03:22.260 that this could step into banning ethical explorative therapy for these children who

00:03:27.380 were really struggling. So I launched a government petition asking them to safeguard therapy.

00:03:33.020 Within a few months I'd been expelled from my master's degree over email and also let go from

00:03:39.760 my volunteering role at Childline. So I feel that I'm the perfect example of cancel culture

00:03:46.760 in relation to this sex and gender debate, which is so sensitive, but so important.

00:03:52.040 Well, we'll talk about that part of it in a second. But you know, when you said you became

00:03:56.380 concerned about this issue, was it because you were sort of online mainlining YouTube videos

00:04:03.560 about trans or were you or was your concern prompted by what you were seeing in your counselling work

00:04:10.860 very much the latter as i said i was doing this for five years and every year that went by there

00:04:15.740 were more and more children coming through on a weekly basis saying that they felt that they were

00:04:19.820 trapped in the wrong body and they were also younger and younger in age and i'd be speaking

00:04:24.660 to some 10 11 year olds who were telling me that they were trans and that they wanted to transition

00:04:30.780 And when I was gently trying to explore with them,

00:04:33.020 well, what does trans mean?

00:04:34.520 What does puberty mean?

00:04:35.980 What does sex and gender mean?

00:04:38.000 They couldn't even offer up a coherent answer

00:04:40.980 because they were far too young, actually.

00:04:43.120 But they did know they were trans.

00:04:45.240 Even though they didn't know those other things,

00:04:47.180 they, for some reason, knew they were trans.

00:04:49.360 Correct.

00:04:49.860 Well, this is what they were saying.

00:04:52.640 Clearly, they were in a state of distress.

00:04:54.580 It wasn't my role to judge, of course,

00:04:56.580 and it wasn't my role either to advise.

00:04:58.320 my role was to explore as we would for any other mental health condition or situation which somebody

00:05:04.740 is struggling within themselves but coupled with this is the potentially irreversible path these

00:05:11.620 children are going down I'm sure we can get on to this a bit but you know I was hearing about

00:05:15.920 these children wanting to be put on puberty blockers and then wanting to progress on to

00:05:19.560 cross-sex hormones and even irreversible surgery and this was concerning for me because as soon

00:05:25.900 as I started reading the studies on this I was seeing that for the vast majority of children

00:05:30.120 if left untouched and just offered explorative therapy they will settle into themselves and

00:05:35.300 their biological sex but unfortunately once children start on puberty blockers again the

00:05:41.760 studies show that it's a bit of a slippery slope towards further medicalization. It's such a red 0.98

00:05:49.380 hot sensitive topic for understandable reasons. Did you know were you not aware James of what you

00:05:54.880 were getting yourself into when you started to speak out? Or did you just simply think that

00:05:59.100 this was something that you had to do? I didn't think what I was saying was particularly

00:06:03.780 controversial. And I was coming at this from a therapeutic point of view, because I was training

00:06:07.740 to be a therapist, and the idea of offering open exploration for the clients that are in front of

00:06:14.120 us. But I was finding that gender dysphoria, and we can talk about the meaning of that maybe in a

00:06:18.500 bit, but it was being treated in a way that was quite different to any other mental health

00:06:22.600 condition. For me, it was the only condition in which the proposed treatment was to affirm

00:06:27.820 the distressing thoughts inside somebody's head. If we compare it to something like body dysmorphia,

00:06:34.460 for example, where people think that they're potentially hugely obese or extremely unattractive,

00:06:39.660 the way for a therapist to engage with that is not to say, yes, you're right.

00:06:45.140 But actually, here we were being told and almost instructed by our training institutes to

00:06:49.860 affirm somebody so if they say they're in the wrong body they must be and why do you think

00:06:56.620 that is why do you think that we've gone down this path because as you said every other therapy or

00:07:02.060 every other condition you wouldn't affirm what the person is saying if they have body dysmorphia

00:07:06.380 but why is it with gender dysphoria we do that i mean there's a few reasons for that i think

00:07:13.780 part of it I think is out of a desire to be seen to be polite and to be respectful and I support

00:07:23.380 those aims but I think it goes too far so for example I had a conversation with a senior

00:07:27.880 clinician who's working with children in this space recently and they said that they are very

00:07:34.060 mindful about using language that is potentially offensive even if it's medically incorrect so an

00:07:40.400 example of that is, and I see this all the time, particularly in school resources, telling children

00:07:45.440 that sex is assigned at birth. So this is factually and medically untrue. Sex isn't

00:07:52.680 assigned at birth. It's observed. It's recorded. But this clinician said that she would continue

00:07:58.260 to use this language, even though it was medically incorrect, because she didn't want to offend young

00:08:03.640 people. And for me, that's a serious concern. And we use the term gender dysphoria. What does

00:08:10.640 it actually mean to have gender dysphoria? What is gender dysphoria? It's a recognised mental

00:08:16.020 health condition. It's basically a mismatch between how one feels about themselves and

00:08:23.660 their actual physical body. And often accompanying this is kind of significant amount of distress,

00:08:29.340 understandably you know crucially in the UK in order to legally transition or in order to

00:08:35.480 medically transition you must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria and this I find interesting 1.00

00:08:42.540 because the other side of the argument always say you shouldn't pathologize being trans there's

00:08:47.620 absolutely nothing wrong with it at the same time they say you must offer us potentially

00:08:53.280 irreversible medication and surgery to deal with this and for me that's wholly inconsistent and

00:08:59.800 you know you can't have it both ways. And this is one of the the reasons that I think this issue is

00:09:05.760 so difficult to talk about but also so so necessary to talk about because I've said from day one the

00:09:12.620 trans issue is what will break a lot of this whole thing that we talk about and have talked about on

00:09:18.460 the show a lot because I am deeply liberal when it comes to live your life the way you want to

00:09:24.320 live it be who you want to be etc but when you start talking about children and taking them on

00:09:30.140 the path you're inevitably going to end up with what we are now seeing which we've all been

00:09:34.860 predicting for some time which is there will be large numbers of people who are detransitioning

00:09:38.700 who regret what they did who regret being encouraged in doing and we'll get people

00:09:43.560 like that on the show to talk about it. So there was a lot in the desire to be polite,

00:09:50.600 in the desire to be accommodating, in the desire to be affirming, damage was done and probably

00:09:56.720 continues to be done. But do you feel that we've made progress in reversing some of this craziness

00:10:02.220 in terms of, you know, we had Marcus Evans from the Tavistock Clinic. There's been a report into

00:10:07.480 that now, which says that it's completely unfit for the purpose of helping children who are

00:10:11.740 suffering in this way. And other things have happened recently, I think, with Stonewall also,

00:10:16.260 where the government and institutions are sort of starting to realise this isn't a clear-cut

00:10:22.540 issue of being nice to people. There's some real concerns. Do you think we're making progress?

00:10:29.920 Very slowly. It does feel that the tide is beginning to turn, but I'm inundated daily

00:10:37.900 with emails from concerned parents

00:10:40.860 revealing to me what has been taught

00:10:44.020 to their very young children at school,

00:10:45.880 what they're being exposed to online,

00:10:48.620 the organisations or charities that they're engaging with.

00:10:51.740 Give us some examples.

00:10:54.700 OK, I can talk about some resources that I've come across

00:10:57.280 that have been taught in primary and secondary schools,

00:10:59.860 which very much seems to be a way of getting gender identity 0.84

00:11:02.740 in through the back door.

00:11:03.860 So, for example, a parent flagged a module to me

00:11:06.820 in a computing class for young people I think the age was about 13 14 and the class was for

00:11:14.420 the purpose of describing to children how computing language works which is in binary coding

00:11:19.680 the teaching instructions that the teachers were meant to utilize wanted them towards the end of

00:11:26.240 the class to emphasize that computing language can be distinguished from human beings who are

00:11:31.660 inherently non-binary in gender. What gender identity theory has to do with computing language

00:11:38.100 is beyond me, but that's very much trying to, I think, infiltrate and get this ideology in through

00:11:44.480 the back door. I've come across primary schools using books and resources suggesting to children

00:11:51.940 A, that sex is assigned at birth, but B, if they are, for example, a young boy who likes the colour

00:11:59.040 pink or wants to grow their hair longer or they're a young girl who likes to play football that

00:12:03.600 actually rather than just being gender atypical they might actually be trapped in the wrong body

00:12:09.140 um i could i could go on there's um it's it's quite strange really there's a there's a page

00:12:14.640 from a book talking about pride and it's got flags all the different flags from the different

00:12:18.620 genders and sexualities that there are um all very colorful as we know and then there's a box

00:12:24.580 for straight and a box for cis. It's just the blank white page. There's nothing there. And I'm

00:12:32.780 trying to put myself in the shoes of a young person. And I can imagine that when they're

00:12:35.680 looking at all these bright, amazing, colourful flags, and then to be cis and straight is just 0.99

00:12:39.540 the white page. What young person would want to identify with that? I feel that it's been pushed

00:12:46.000 upon children as almost stale or boring. And I often see the word celebrate in these school

00:12:51.500 materials we should celebrate being trans but I think about all the young people in society

00:12:56.400 who aren't celebrated very often for just being themselves and now there might be an opportunity

00:13:01.760 for them to be celebrated simply for you know coming out and saying I'm trans I'm non-binary

00:13:06.040 it feels like a form of coercion and do you do you really think that a child would want to come

00:13:13.760 out as non-binary or trans in order to be celebrated because the reality is and as

00:13:20.620 somebody who's taught for many, many years, kids just want to fit in. Kids don't really want to

00:13:25.560 stand out. The vast majority of them, they just want to be part of the group. And I think we can

00:13:29.660 say that that's how we were when we were that age, surely. I do take your point, but I don't

00:13:38.300 agree. I think the messaging that's coming from a lot of these organisations is very powerful.

00:13:42.720 Mermaids, a charity that I'm particularly concerned about, and we can speak about that in a bit,

00:13:46.560 and they've got a podcast for young people and in a recent episode the message they put out

00:13:51.740 young people was if you are trans you are helping society who's not going to be influenced by this 0.95

00:13:59.460 particularly a young child and particularly children who are in a state of flux I mean when

00:14:02.820 we think about puberty everything around you is changing your entire being your physiology is

00:14:08.460 changing you're trying to discover yourself and here you have people saying you know basically

00:14:13.900 come and join us and you will be welcomed and you will be potentially even celebrated I see a lot

00:14:18.940 of alienation as well from from people's families so again mermaids in this podcast there was a

00:14:24.380 question from a young person about families struggling with misgendering them and the the

00:14:29.940 podcast host weren't empathetic or tried to see it from a parent's point of view they said family

00:14:36.860 isn't blood what message is this sending to young people

00:14:43.900 And do you think that's part of the reason why we've seen more and more children transitioning,

00:14:50.080 more and more children identifying as non-binary, trans?

00:14:55.720 Do you think that's the reason?

00:14:56.900 Or do you just simply think it's part of it?

00:14:59.040 It's also because we never talked about it.

00:15:01.580 It was taboo.

00:15:02.820 Therefore, people didn't want to say that they were that particular identity.

00:15:08.020 I think it's a bit of both in reality.

00:15:11.660 the difficulty is that the pathway that young people have put on right now um as i said all

00:15:19.940 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 0.62

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

00:16:01.460 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

00:16:16.740 somebody's brain that's not working the way that it should be working, right? So when you say it's

00:16:23.280 a mental health condition, what does that mean exactly? Well, I think for many, it can still be

00:16:29.720 a stigmatizing term. But we have to think that mental health conditions are quite diverse in

00:16:35.620 range and can range from basic anxiety and depression all the way up to kind of more

00:16:39.880 serious mental health conditions, schizophrenia, personality disorders, etc. As I said, the reason

00:16:46.860 this is a mental health condition is because there's a mismatch between one's physical body

00:16:51.200 and how one feels about themselves inherently and the distress that comes along with that.

00:16:55.560 So when I use that term, and it's a recognised term in the DSM, which is basically the

00:16:59.880 international manual that classifies mental health conditions um that's simply there to

00:17:05.360 recognize what these individuals are going through but again gender dysphoria as far as i can see is

00:17:11.420 is the only mental health condition in which potentially the proposed treatment is to alter

00:17:15.380 one's physical body i mean if we take another example of anorexia for example the proposed

00:17:23.180 treatment is not to undergo liposuction and for many that might be quite a stark comparison but

00:17:28.660 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

00:17:44.620 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

00:17:54.420 just feel that their arm shouldn't belong to them and they want to get it amputated the nhs will not

00:17:59.920 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 0.54

00:18:10.320 across studies and stories of young people in their late teen years being offered double

00:18:16.160 mastectomies by the nhs for gender dysphoria because they feel that their breasts do not

00:18:20.320 belong to them so we're talking about things like puberty blockers what actually happens if you take

00:18:27.580 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

00:18:40.560 of starting puberty and then you go on straight away from that and transition it across sex

00:18:45.560 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

00:18:56.900 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

00:19:43.160 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 0.99

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.,

00:20:18.320 it can potentially affect their bodies overall in terms of how they develop.

00:20:22.040 And what about the counter-argument?

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.

00:20:44.640 Isn't this all designed to help them alleviate

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.

00:22:01.060 Like, that to me has always seemed strange.

00:22:03.560 These are young people who are not allowed by law to make a decision 1.00

00:22:07.640 about whether to drink half a glass of beer,

00:22:10.600 but they can take puberty blockers and take other drastic action.

00:22:15.240 What is the situation right now with that?

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

00:22:27.540 that is experimental in nature.

00:22:29.660 You know, we do have to wonder what's going on here.

00:22:32.040 It's wholly inconsistent.

00:22:33.820 I find parents being completely frozen out, actually.

00:22:37.000 Give you some examples.

00:22:38.440 I mentioned Mermaids earlier.

00:22:39.980 They've got a youth forum.

00:22:41.160 It's kind of like an online chat room,

00:22:43.020 and there's moderators from people who work at Mermaids.

00:22:46.420 I saw some screenshots recently.

00:22:48.220 This young 13-year-old girl had come through

00:22:50.100 and had said that she was trans. 0.78

00:22:52.060 She didn't like her breasts, 1.00

00:22:53.000 but her parents wouldn't give her a breast binder 1.00

00:22:55.900 because there's health risks associated with that.

00:23:00.200 Let's just stop a second.

00:23:01.660 What does that mean, a breast binder? 0.99

00:23:04.480 Breast binders are basically materials

00:23:07.000 that are used to kind of compress one's breasts 1.00

00:23:10.020 and to give the appearance of not having them.

00:23:13.600 It's often seen as kind of an early stage

00:23:15.200 towards potentially transitioning.

00:23:17.600 And what are the effects of that on the body?

00:23:20.900 Significant.

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 0.99

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

00:23:45.360 anyway so this young person sent that message on the forum a mermaid's moderator an adult

00:23:51.600 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 0.64

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 0.95

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.

00:26:57.180 Well, precisely so.

00:26:58.240 I mean, Hilary Cass, senior clinician,

00:27:01.500 is currently undertaking an independent review

00:27:03.700 into medicine and treatment for gender identity amongst children

00:27:09.100 and looking into Tavistock.

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

00:27:14.920 and has flagged it in the report.

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

00:27:21.860 and how we can best treat it going forward.

00:27:23.740 But if we're prevented as clinicians

00:27:25.380 from even having the conversation in the first place,

00:27:27.740 there's nowhere we can go.

00:27:29.860 Hey, Konstantin, do you want better mental health?

00:27:33.880 I'm from Russia. We don't have mental health.

00:27:36.360 So how do you deal with mental health?

00:27:38.400 You drink vodka, then go out and wrestle bear.

00:27:41.300 If you live, you feel better.

00:27:43.200 If you die, you're not real man.

00:27:45.100 What about the bear's feelings?

00:27:47.220 It's Russian bear. It has no feelings.

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

00:28:38.060 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.

00:30:17.520 So there was some noise online.

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

00:31:57.780 because of my beliefs in this space.

00:32:01.160 I find it so difficult to believe, James,

00:32:03.940 that you started an online petition

00:32:05.840 and that immediately led to you getting fined.

00:32:10.000 Was there no appeals process?

00:32:12.260 Could you not have said to them,

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.

00:32:27.920 I thought, surely they've made a mistake.

00:32:29.400 You know, surely we can figure this out.

00:32:31.280 They had already blocked my email address, so I couldn't respond to it.

00:32:34.720 They blocked your email address?

00:32:36.440 Immediately.

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 0.58

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

00:39:17.360 or the gay community or children's well-being.

00:39:21.080 Huge strength of feeling.

00:39:22.360 So I've instigated litigation.

00:39:24.560 It's moving quite slowly as these things tend to do.

00:39:27.760 There's some preliminary hearings in June

00:39:29.580 and then it will proceed to a trial probably at the end of this year

00:39:32.480 or the start of next year.

00:39:33.840 But I'm very much wanting my day in court over this.

00:39:37.680 And what are you hoping to achieve?

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

00:41:40.320 and nobody else will want to take you on?

00:41:42.840 Well, the therapeutic community is quite small

00:41:44.980 and everyone knows everything.

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

00:41:54.220 was because it was on weekends

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

00:42:06.060 whilst also providing for myself financially.

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

00:42:29.200 because a complaint was made to my employer.

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

00:45:44.280 and who want to die with dignity.

00:45:46.700 In our country, we don't have a sister dying

00:45:48.720 and people are being forced to either end their lives

00:45:51.660 in the most inhumane way

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

00:45:58.900 or their families' heads.

00:46:01.060 People shouldn't suffer.

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.

00:46:13.120 It's an interesting point.

00:46:13.860 We had Dr. John Wyatt on the show a while ago

00:46:16.420 who comes very much from the opposite point of view.

00:46:19.080 But yeah, you're right.

00:46:20.040 This is an issue that seems to be coming to the fore

00:46:23.260 one way or another.

00:46:24.220 So thanks for bringing that to our attention.

00:46:25.780 We're going to ask you a couple of questions

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.

00:46:33.380 Thanks for having me.

00:46:33.980 And thank you for watching and listening.

00:46:35.440 We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode

00:46:37.240 like this one or our show.

00:46:39.280 All of them go out 7 p.m. UK time.

00:46:40.940 And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go,

00:46:43.860 It's also available as a podcast.

00:46:46.040 Take care and see you soon, guys.

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.

TRIGGERnometry - April 28, 2022

＂Children Are Being Irreversibly Damaged＂ - James Esses

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