TRIGGERnometry - Transgender Clinic Whistleblower Speaks Out

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:08.600 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:10.240 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:15.600 I'm delighted to say that our brilliant guest today is a psychoanalyst and a Tavistock whistleblower.

00:00:20.700 Marcus Evans, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:22.700 Thanks for having me.

00:00:24.180 It is great to have you on. I've given you a slightly tantalizing introduction there.

00:00:28.480 for any of our viewers who may not be familiar with Tavistock or you know the article you've

00:00:34.160 written in Quillette or any any other work that you've done publicly just tell everybody who are

00:00:39.120 you how are you where you are what has been the journey that leads you to be sitting here talking

00:00:43.120 to two problematic people like us okay so I'm a psychoanalyst originally trained as a psychiatric

00:00:48.020 nurse worked in psychiatry for over 40 years and for the last 20 of those in the NHS I worked in

00:00:57.360 the Tavistock as a senior member of staff part of the management and then uh I retired from the

00:01:03.880 NHS 18 months ago and I took up a post as a governor which is a voluntary post on the Tavistock

00:01:11.060 board of governors and I resigned over one of the issues that was being discussed at the time

00:01:18.820 and we'll get into that in quite a bit of detail but we have a lot of fans all over the world so

00:01:23.580 can you give everybody an idea of what the significance of the tavistock trust is in the

00:01:28.760 uk because there's been several issues that have come out of that i'm sure we'll talk about the

00:01:33.380 kirabell case etc but just give everybody a broad picture of what we're talking about here okay so

00:01:39.880 the tavistock is um the smallest trust in the nhs so it's a publicly owned uh hospital but it's a

00:01:48.380 specialist hospital in so far as it's the biggest psychotherapy training institution in the country

00:01:55.100 and its main training is in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and child psychotherapy and

00:02:02.160 systemic family therapy that that's what it's really known for um in in terms of its history

00:02:08.980 which is about 80 100 years actually it's it's it's centenary um but so so if you if you picture

00:02:17.460 although it's a mental health trust there aren't beds and inpatient psychiatric units

00:02:25.320 it's lots of individual rooms and group rooms and people come for treatment on a sort of session

00:02:34.460 basis and then you've got a lot of senior staff and then a lot of trainees that that's basically

00:02:41.120 the Tavistock. And it has been embroiled in a, well, a scandal is probably the one wrong word

00:02:49.700 to put it, but it is a scandal of sorts around the gender transitioning, gender transitioning

00:02:56.820 of young children, and in particular, the Keira Bell case. Could you dive into that and explain

00:03:02.240 to us what is happening at the moment? Yeah, so if you can picture the sort of history of

00:03:08.100 the Tavistock is in psychological work it's not in medication or genetics that all goes on at the

00:03:14.800 Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley so this is the the sort of you know it's psychotherapeutics

00:03:21.060 looking into the psychological functioning of the mind but about 20 years ago a service was set up

00:03:30.220 called GIDS which was an experimental service is basically seeing kids who are gender dysphoric

00:03:37.980 and the thing that set it apart from the rest of the trust was that there was a sort of recourse

00:03:45.820 to sort of treating their problems hormonally and this was a sort of experimental and controversial

00:03:52.840 treatment at the time so in a way it sort of it moved away from the Tavistock's traditions if you

00:03:59.980 like I mean it's not you know some kids will be given um medication but it's not in the child and

00:04:07.920 family department but it's not what the Tavistock's known for Tavistock's known for psychological work

00:04:12.960 but this the JID service was a sort of move away from that so how I came to be involved was I've

00:04:21.480 been part of the man i was part of the management for about 20 years i was called the head of

00:04:25.260 nursing and then i i was in charge of the adult and adolescent department for about five years

00:04:29.700 but my wife worked in in the jid service in about 2005 and she went into the surface because she

00:04:39.880 was interested in working at the tavistock she got another bit of her job was doing uh training

00:04:45.420 and she quickly became quite uncomfortable with the fact that a lot of kids were sort of

00:04:52.960 they come very determined they're very fixed in their view that they're in the wrong

00:04:57.000 gender and that they they want to transition and they want to be given pills to transition

00:05:04.700 and the Tavistock was the sort of psychological gatekeeper so you go to the Tavistock you're seen

00:05:10.280 by the same as you're assessed there and then you're moved on to ucl where the the hormones

00:05:17.280 are given my wife became very unhappy with what was going on back then marcus sorry to interrupt

00:05:24.940 you keep interrupting because i'll carry on no no but no it's all great i just want to clarify

00:05:30.660 for the viewers and listeners when you say kids how old are these children well this this whole

00:05:37.380 area has changed exponentially so if we went back to the first 30 years of my time in psychiatry

00:05:44.620 there were small numbers of people that would transition post 18 mainly male to female sort of

00:05:53.120 80 85 percent in the last 15 20 years there's been this exponential rise and a completely

00:06:02.060 different cohort and these are 85 percent female to male and they're getting younger and younger

00:06:11.180 so i think in her day there were a lot of 15 14 15 16 year olds now you're getting kids of 10 11 12

00:06:20.400 so the age at which kids are wanting to transition get is getting pushed lower and the age at which

00:06:28.040 people are prepared to give hormones has got lower and lower.

00:06:32.000 That's kind of gone on.

00:06:33.680 And you mentioned that your wife was becoming increasingly unhappy

00:06:36.680 at this trend.

00:06:38.940 What was it that she was concerned about?

00:06:42.060 Well, basically, our usual approach would be to do a thorough

00:06:45.540 psychological investigation of what was going on with the kid,

00:06:49.460 what's going on with the family.

00:06:50.720 Lots of these kids are on the autistic spectrum.

00:06:53.680 they have all sorts of secondary comorbid issues, they're sort of socially phobic,

00:07:02.040 they've got eating disorders, they may be depressed and what she felt there should be a thorough

00:07:07.500 psychological investigation as was the Tavistock's tradition into family dynamics, individual

00:07:15.320 psychology and she felt that there was too much of a willingness to sort of go along with the kid

00:07:21.960 in terms of the kids idea they've got there's one problem with one solution and they basically want

00:07:29.020 to get through past the gate gatekeepers onto ucl that's a generalized picture but it was

00:07:36.620 it was a sort of predominant um picture that was being presented so i'd say i was a part of the

00:07:44.260 senior management i said well what we would usually do it's very multidisciplinary it's not

00:07:49.280 like a traditionally medically hierarchical service you've got lots of different disciplines

00:07:56.480 and you're used to sort of discussing and debating approaches and I said well you've got to go back

00:08:02.820 and challenge the culture and she felt she was quite a senior person by the time she'd arrived

00:08:09.120 in this service this was not welcome it was a sort of shutting down of any dissent or wish to

00:08:17.160 examine what was going on beneath the surface for the kid, et cetera, et cetera. And she felt she

00:08:23.180 got nowhere. Do you have a sense of why that was happening? Because I imagine that people who work

00:08:30.220 at the Tavistock, particularly at a senior level, these are people who've been in this field for a

00:08:34.580 very long time. I imagine they all care about their patients. I imagine they all want the best

00:08:39.780 for the children that come to the clinic.

00:08:42.420 Why would they not want feedback about concerns

00:08:47.620 about the well-being of these children, do you think?

00:08:51.080 Well, I mean, the thing is, is that Tavistock's a diverse place.

00:08:57.440 There's lots of different departments

00:08:58.800 and lots of different cultures within those departments.

00:09:02.880 What I would say is that, in a way, what you had here

00:09:09.380 it rapidly became apparent there was a politicisation of this whole area.

00:09:15.140 So, again, unusually, there was a very close relationship with mermaids

00:09:20.960 and with gender intelligence, the track charities,

00:09:27.120 and they had an unusual sort of influence over the sort of culture.

00:09:33.180 Now, when I was in charge of the adult and adolescent department,

00:09:36.240 I would have relationships with Mind and some of the charities, but they wouldn't sort of insist on the culture or ask me to run them by the protocols for treatment, et cetera, et cetera.

00:09:51.040 We're separate organisations. My prime responsibility is thinking about the people that I'm serving, the trainees and the patients and looking after the clinicians.

00:10:03.340 that's my prime responsibility and other people you've got voices that all feel they should have

00:10:08.260 some influence but you'd have some distance from them um in order so you can keep your eye firmly

00:10:14.640 on thinking about the psychological needs of the patients you're treating so this this sort of um

00:10:22.040 this boundary which was sort of very sort of um you know there's there's a sort of movement

00:10:29.580 backwards and forwards felt very unusual for me so lots of unusual things going on and um and it

00:10:36.960 produced i i thought a rather not a clinical environment that i would want to work in

00:10:45.060 marcus i find that very very shocking so essentially you have a charity mermaids which

00:10:51.460 was not attached to the clinic in any shape or form it's not a regulated nhs body yet they were

00:10:58.380 having an influence on the treatment of these children well you know they would argue not i'd

00:11:05.460 say you'd always have stakeholders so i've outlined who my prime responsibility and then you've got

00:11:11.040 your stakeholders and they have some influence you know you're trying to address what you know

00:11:16.460 their concerns as well um i would say that as stakeholders they had an unusually close relationship

00:11:23.980 with the clinical service. And my wife felt that began to interfere with the ordinary clinical

00:11:32.860 environment in which there would be debate, discussion, challenge about a particular

00:11:39.120 treatment approach. You know, this is what she would be used to. And it just wasn't happening

00:11:46.500 in JIDS. So what she did, what we actually discussed and what she did was she was the

00:11:52.980 first whistleblower in 2005 and um the medical director at the time uh david taylor set up a

00:12:01.140 serious review of the service he was on news night the other day um because he he he produced this

00:12:08.800 report in which he had recommendations he felt that the sort of um clinical governance of this

00:12:15.940 experimental service was going off the beast if you like and he felt there should be much more

00:12:21.300 thorough outcome measures, research, looking at the downside of treatment, all sorts of things

00:12:28.020 that you would expect, particularly in an experimental treatment with vulnerable kids.

00:12:35.820 However, he moved on as medical director and not a lot changed after that initial report.

00:12:45.260 And Marcus, you use the word politicisation within the clinic. What do you mean by that?

00:12:51.300 Well, I think that once your sort of your decision making is based on a sort of belief, a pre-existing belief structure, maybe embedded within the clinicians, maybe met by the parents and some of the parents and some of the kids, you're not in a clinical environment.

00:13:11.320 You see, lots of people, you know, will come into psychiatry and they when people are in a sort of chaotic state of mind and they feel that their minds are falling apart, they often focus down narrowly on there's one problem with one solution.

00:13:27.980 now psychological health is usually based on the opposite it's based on sort of opening things out

00:13:35.280 thinking that we're complicated we've got many different moving parts as a personality and that

00:13:41.580 usually our problems are made up of all sorts of things coming together so we're trying to sort of

00:13:47.380 open things out for in for the kids for example you're saying okay that's what you believe let's

00:13:54.440 have a look at what's who you are what's going on beneath the surface what might be troubling you

00:14:00.280 let's open this dialogue out so we think about things in the round um and you're you're not going

00:14:08.680 along with um fixed beliefs there's one problem and one solution so just one more thing so one

00:14:17.940 thing that's often talked about is that the kid's completely certain well for me that's a red flag

00:14:26.080 you know that if you're making very serious decisions you would expect to have doubts

00:14:31.600 questions anxieties conflicts the absence of those is a problem you know and we believe and

00:14:39.000 we know as psychoanalysts you know that beliefs can be driven by all sorts of forces not all of

00:14:46.860 them healthy or rational um now my job is not to argue with the patient my job is to say okay

00:14:54.420 that's what you think and you feel distressed if you feel I'm questioning that but my job is to

00:14:59.520 open things out as I said and explore things um and Marcus I'm really glad that you brought up

00:15:06.940 because there's two points I want to explore number one the influence of social media on kids

00:15:12.320 and their desire to transition and number two the link between children who want to transition and

00:15:18.700 autism yeah okay well you know when you're coming up to adolescence you're very preoccupied about

00:15:26.060 the way you're seen and social media has increased about tenfold so that we we really haven't caught

00:15:34.240 up what effect social media is having on us as individuals and in terms of our relationships

00:15:40.540 with ourselves and with others and um so in a way it's as if the way i am is always now being judged

00:15:50.060 from how i look from the outside well that's always been the case in adolescence but now

00:15:56.100 it's increased tenfold and i think it's problematic in lots of different ways in

00:16:00.800 more than just this area all sorts of areas because we're partly to be assessed with the

00:16:06.720 outside world that's being a human but we've also got to look out after the soul i don't i'm not

00:16:12.740 religious in the slice of the moment what's going on inside you but marcus aren't there also you

00:16:18.860 know websites in particular i think pinterest was one that was being named encouraging children to

00:16:25.020 transition or see themselves as trans yeah there are websites that um boast if you feel out on a

00:16:33.300 limb a little bit odd like you don't fit in well that's probably about 50 percent of adolescence

00:16:39.580 I don't know what your adolescence is like but I felt like I was a sort of square peg in a round

00:16:44.740 hole you know come join the site and then there's a sort of coaching kids are coached to get past

00:16:54.460 the gatekeeping questions um and sometimes you know that the clinicians say that the kids are

00:17:01.960 almost like they're they're just speaking rote what they know the clinicians are you know so

00:17:06.880 you've got a tick box sort of scenario these are the questions you'll be answered these are the

00:17:12.020 answers that they're looking for yeah um so yeah it's all it's all very worrying there's a there's

00:17:18.880 a cultish feel about about the sort of um the social media aspect of this so effectively there's

00:17:26.020 these pages on on these social media websites or websites themselves are effectively grooming

00:17:30.980 children in order to transition yeah i mean certainly you don't get a helpful discourse

00:17:38.120 about the downside of transition there are lots of downsides of transition and that often it looks

00:17:43.920 like a short-term solution to the anxieties and problems problems of puberty if we're thinking

00:17:49.240 about adolescence but there's a long-term cost which isn't spelt out also transitioning is not

00:17:56.480 it's not easy psychologically it's not easy socially and it's not easy in terms of the impact

00:18:02.960 of um the medicalization of of your your psychological problem you know you've got

00:18:09.740 to have ongoing hormones if you have subsequently if you have uh gender reassignment surgery the

00:18:16.280 surgery's got all sorts of implications this is not an easy route and none of that i think is

00:18:21.780 being spelt out in the uh i'm not an expert on the on the websites but this is widely documented

00:18:28.000 yeah and marcus we'll come to that point in a second but what i really want to explore and

00:18:33.880 then constantine by all means take over is the link between autism and the children who wanting

00:18:40.580 to transition yeah so so so the thing is my wife and i are writing a book about psychological

00:18:47.280 approach is because we feel it's a sort of vacuum that's been neglected and probably what the

00:18:53.760 Tavistock should have been concentrating on for the last 20 years but basically you know if you've

00:18:59.940 got sort of fragile a kid with a fragile ego that doesn't tolerate too much conflict or anxiety

00:19:09.600 i mean then that can be all of us we're looking for ways of getting rid of the psychological pain

00:19:17.560 as it were and sort of flattening the mind if you like and and um the autism kids are autistic or

00:19:26.020 on the autistic spectrum they struggle with conflict anxiety and psychological pain um

00:19:32.760 So they're very attracted to the sort of doctrine that says, basically, the reason you're suffering is because of X.

00:19:43.840 If you do Y, you'll get rid of all your problems and you can flatten all this stuff that's stirring you up.

00:19:52.600 And, you know, because just puberty is very important in this, in terms of the transition from being a child, often within a family or looked after by a parent within a sort of structure.

00:20:06.940 And you're transitioning into being an adult. The hormones are going to kickstart your secondary sex characteristics.

00:20:14.760 that's got all sorts of implications for what sort of role you're going to play in society

00:20:20.060 what sort of sexual role what sort of adult you're going to be you're transitioning from

00:20:24.900 being a child into an adult is expected to work have a you know have relations maybe have a family

00:20:31.980 etc etc so all sorts of physical psychological and social anxieties get sort of stirred up by

00:20:40.280 puberty and in a way there's a wish to sort of put the brake on just sort of stop it the problem is

00:20:47.360 if you do that you take the kid outside their usual peer group and developmental structure

00:20:53.680 in which all the kids are going through the same thing and learning on the job as it were

00:20:58.300 um now that's what they said that was the rationale it's sort of like a sort of breathing

00:21:03.220 space but what we suddenly what we subsequently discover in the court case it's not a breathing

00:21:09.400 space at all because 90 percent of the kids who start on puberty blockers are on a medical

00:21:15.980 conveyor belt which doesn't stop until cross-sex hormones etc um so it it is like trying to stop

00:21:25.160 and arrest a sort of natural physiological and psychological and sociological process called

00:21:31.800 puberty i was going to ask you about that marcus because i mean it's a strange question to ask

00:21:36.720 someone whose job it is to help people improve their mental health and well-being. But do you

00:21:42.500 think this is part of a broader thing in society where we over-pathologize, I would argue,

00:21:48.920 certain feelings? For example, yes, if you're trapped in a perpetual cycle of deep sadness,

00:21:55.400 we might describe that as depression. That does not mean that experiencing sadness for an hour

00:22:00.480 or for a day or even for a week in response to some really difficult events in life is abnormal.

00:22:05.960 it does not mean you need to you need quote-unquote help it just means something's happened then you're

00:22:10.880 responding to it as a human would but if we have a society which sort of says the moment you feel

00:22:15.680 anything negative we've got to treat you we've got to help you then it's no surprise is it that

00:22:21.080 young children who are about to experience as you say a very difficult period of life

00:22:25.140 seeing that coming maybe starting to experience bits of it go i need treatment i need medication

00:22:31.160 I need physical help, whatever it might be. Do you think there's a part of that?

00:22:35.340 100%. I think that, yeah, look, life is difficult. You know, the slings and arrows of outrageous

00:22:40.620 fortune, you know, we're faced with all sorts of psychological problems at every, you know,

00:22:46.920 every turn in life, every part of development. So, and sometimes they're thrown at a list like

00:22:52.260 COVID and, you know, we're having to adapt. But I think the sort of wish to describe all these

00:22:59.500 experience has been some sort of mental health problem i think does a disservice to mental health

00:23:06.320 and and is in danger of pathologizing as you say a lot of quite normal reactions i i used to be um

00:23:15.840 used to be in charge of a liaison service in kings in the 80s and a guy fell off um he fell

00:23:24.060 a railway bridge and he basically was paralyzed he lost the use of his legs and the nurses came

00:23:31.180 down and referred him to psychological medicine they said he was depressed and I thought I don't

00:23:37.040 know what else you'd be you know it's a completely now I was sympathetic to them they were overwhelmed

00:23:43.180 don't get me wrong so I didn't send them away but I thought it was an interesting word it was quite

00:23:47.760 appropriate you know if you if you're paralyzed you're going to be depressed but not in a sort of

00:23:54.580 um pathological way in an ordinary way it's part of mourning you know you're going to have to come

00:23:59.400 in terms of the loss and i think you're right i think all sorts of things are being captured

00:24:03.260 as as part of mental health that actually are belong belonging in in ordinary you know they're

00:24:09.960 just part of the slings and arrows outrageous fortune the other thing that goes along with this

00:24:14.680 You see, when there are, you've got to look at the influence.

00:24:22.400 I'm not against medication, by the way.

00:24:24.200 I'm not a psychoanalyst who's against medication.

00:24:26.460 But there is a tendency for the drug companies to capture sort of an increasing field, say, ADHD or depression or anxiety.

00:24:38.380 and all of a sudden you're sort of more and more people being sort of trapped in that diagnosis

00:24:45.400 for which there is a pill and then you know you go to the gp and huge numbers of people are on

00:24:52.620 antidepressants years ago they wouldn't have been called depressed they weren't suffering from what

00:24:59.020 i knew pounds shillings and pence as melancholia or psychotic depression for which there's medication

00:25:06.060 you know they're they're unhappy they're miserable they're lonely etc etc that that's

00:25:11.740 that's not um so in other words the what what's captured in the diagnosis of depression is

00:25:19.200 massively increased and it's related to the new medications that are being provided as i said i

00:25:26.560 just want to just reassure everyone i'm not against medication it can be very helpful but i i think

00:25:32.660 sometimes it's too easy for us as psychiatric practitioners to give a pill

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00:27:32.700 Babbel. Well, it's interesting how this conversation has gone sort of outside of the

00:27:39.580 trans issue, which is where we started. But I actually really want to focus in on this bit of

00:27:44.000 it, which is if someone is watching this and maybe as we all do sometimes feeling sad or upset or

00:27:50.060 how do you know the difference between when you need help with your mental health and you're

00:27:56.540 experiencing the normal things that life will throw at you and an actual healthy unpleasant

00:28:02.880 but yet healthy response how do you know the difference well when when yeah when it's

00:28:08.740 interfering and it's when your depression is interfering in a substantial way with your

00:28:13.660 ability to conduct your ordinary life you know and um so we all have days when we go with covid

00:28:22.640 and i don't know about you guys but sometimes you get up and you just feel a bit blue but you know

00:28:28.300 a sort of chat and uh you know you do something you enjoy and you can pull yourself out of it

00:28:34.480 someone who's suffering from depression can't do that you can't pull yourself out of it you know

00:28:41.300 you're you need more than ordinary help to get yourself out of feeling blue and it interferes

00:28:49.260 with your daily functioning okay well it's just i just thought it was an interesting aside because

00:28:56.960 i do feel that having spoken with you and with many others it ties into the trans issue it's an

00:29:02.620 attempt to to deal with quite natural feelings that it may be uncomfortable and coming back to

00:29:09.140 that issue what is your explanation for this what i think people need to appreciate the extraordinary

00:29:15.700 transformation of what you would describe as the typical patient in the last 30 or 40 years where

00:29:22.020 you've gone from almost exclusively boys wanting to become women to where we are now which is almost

00:29:29.680 exclusively girls wanting to transition how has that happened i mean i'm not a so i think you've

00:29:35.160 got to sort of ask sociologists and and um i mean my view would be that there is a sort of um

00:29:44.120 a misogyny there's a sort of it's attractive being sort of macho at the moment you sort of

00:29:51.460 get rid of your feet the idea of a male and it's the interesting thing about the ideology

00:29:56.840 is it becomes more and more rigid you know if you look at some of the um some of the stuff that

00:30:03.820 stonewall put out to um children you know the gender stereotypes are so rigid boys like action

00:30:11.200 football girls like you know pink fluffy dolls and and ballet and um you know my um my my sons

00:30:22.840 didn't ever conform to those stereotypes um but you know and nor did i in all sorts of complex

00:30:30.840 way so um i think the attractiveness of some sort of being some sort of figure who gets rid of

00:30:37.640 vulnerability doesn't really worry about what other people think is quite hard you know and

00:30:45.220 all the sort of softer sides projected into women who's seen as quite you know sensitive and in

00:30:51.700 touch with their emotions and that makes them vulnerable to being hurt and this isn't true

00:30:56.400 this is just a parody of the gender stereotypes but i think this ideology does create this rigid

00:31:04.900 division and then people are very attracted to getting rid of their emotions being a tough guy

00:31:11.160 not really anyway i sort of feel i'm off piste really because i the the fact is as the story

00:31:19.180 unfolded to go back to why i'm here talking about this if i could for a bit yeah what

00:31:26.220 what what then happened was my wife left the service and then the service carried on and i'd

00:31:32.000 hear as a manager about rumbles and concerns from time to time but the service got bigger and bigger

00:31:37.500 and bigger as the demand for uh its clinical services increased and the contract increased

00:31:45.780 um until now it's a very big part of the tavistock it was you know very small part of the tavistock

00:31:53.460 20-25 years ago now it's a very big part of the Tavistock and what happened was when I took up

00:32:02.420 this voluntary position as governor two things landed on the governor's desk and as a governor

00:32:07.980 my job was to sort of oversee is the trust doing what it's supposed to be doing

00:32:14.740 we're not part of management we're just a sort of watchdog if you like

00:32:19.900 and two things came on the desk one was a letter written by 10 parents whose kids were being treated

00:32:27.380 by JIDS basically what they said it was a very detailed letter saying we had hoped our kids all

00:32:34.300 got comorbid problems we'd hoped there'd be a thorough psychological investigation etc etc

00:32:38.900 that didn't happen we're we're not happy we feel like our kids have been fast tracked through to

00:32:46.340 the medication so that was one thing then a colleague of mine dave bell who's probably the

00:32:52.060 best known clinician in tavistock um who was the staff governor previously previous um and we didn't

00:33:01.520 overlap i i started as governor he'd left and basically he'd been approached by 10 members of

00:33:09.900 staff from JIDS with very similar concerns to the parents so he'd done a report the trust knew about

00:33:18.180 it and then the report was presented to the trust board I think that's right I think that's right

00:33:25.880 and of course it was saying a lot of similar things staff felt the relationship with mermaids

00:33:32.320 was too close a lot of these kids that are being transitioned had got secondary and so

00:33:37.060 co-morbid problems um that there wasn't enough interest in sort of debate and discussion within

00:33:45.980 the culture of the service etc etc what the trust did was they were very unhappy about the report

00:33:52.980 they wouldn't let me see the report if i despite the fact i said look i want to see this report

00:33:58.740 if i'm going to adjudicate whether the trust is doing its job i've got to see all the materials

00:34:03.360 that was withheld so I thought that's odd why would you withhold that report from a governor

00:34:12.260 and there were other governors that requested it as well the second thing was that was right so

00:34:18.260 then they set up the medical director was going to do the trust report so several of us said that's

00:34:27.860 fine but we'd like dave bell to be at the final hearing of the report so he can hear whether the

00:34:36.700 medical director's report is addressing the concerns raised by the staff no he can't so

00:34:46.960 a sort of i don't know um it was quite a few emails went backwards and forwards over a sort

00:34:54.340 six-month period contesting this and and it was contested when we met and it appeared to me

00:35:02.680 that the trust wanted to use the medical director's report to bury the concerns about the service

00:35:09.200 and and I could see then the extent to which the trust and its management of the service was

00:35:17.340 politicized. I mean, part of the reason is, is that, you know, that the trust is dependent on

00:35:25.100 the JID service with NHS England as a stakeholder, gender intelligence and mermaids, extremely

00:35:33.440 influential, could put influence on NHS England. And I began to think that the political tail was

00:35:43.100 wagging the clinical dog um anyway you know the battles continued as it were um and then to my

00:35:53.160 shame i actually voted through the medical director's report i i actually sent around an

00:35:58.380 article to all of the governors saying i thought that the the medical director's felt report fell

00:36:05.300 short of answering dave bell's question questions in in quite a few key areas so i was unhappy with

00:36:15.280 the report um however i sort of voted it through along with everyone else um not very happy with

00:36:23.480 myself um marcus can i just ask why why you did that well because i thought they were trying to

00:36:32.260 take it seriously what I didn't I wasn't sure about was how genuine they were in wanting to

00:36:38.640 look at what was going on beneath the surface because that's what seemed really difficult

00:36:44.580 that was like a no-go area there's a belief system and it comes back to the another change

00:36:51.940 it's as if this is now longer a mental health issue it is now a sort of consumer issue the

00:36:58.780 child has chosen to transition okay this moves it out of mental health I never take the view

00:37:06.400 that the anorexic has chosen to have anorexia and if they don't want to eat they're going to

00:37:12.260 starve to death that you know that's not my view is to try and understand what's going on

00:37:16.760 it's not to sort of collude with that but this seemed to be a movement into sort of idea this

00:37:24.140 was the consumer choice and i was dead against that so i i went along with it and um not very

00:37:32.480 happily and then the next day the trust put on the website basically um an article saying that

00:37:40.800 that um the medical director's report had been accepted dave bell's report was basically

00:37:47.600 undermined by virtue of the fact they said dave bell had no expertise in this area they didn't

00:37:53.720 mention the fact that the medical director had no expertise in it either and the case studies

00:38:00.260 were all fictional now I know Dave he's as ethical as a day as long he'd never fictionalized those

00:38:06.740 cases so basically they're basically trying to again bury the concerns by attacking the messenger

00:38:14.960 and at that point I knew that the trust wasn't going to listen to me and while I'm in the board

00:38:21.700 with governors, I'd signed a confidentiality agreement. And in a way, they got me where

00:38:26.200 they wanted me, which is inside the tent, being very unhappy, but basically no one's listening.

00:38:32.700 So I then resigned.

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00:39:37.820 to know about technology, privacy, and censorship. And Marcus, now looking forward to the Kira Bell

00:39:48.320 case which uh she won can you explain to people who may not have been following that case or may

00:39:54.480 not be based in the uk why that is such a landmark case now yeah well there were one or two steps in

00:40:01.320 between just if you okay there was um posy parker set something up in the house of lords with lord

00:40:08.320 mooney and um there were hang on there were five of us spoke uh stephanie davis awry spoke about

00:40:16.480 education i spoke um uh richard bing who's a gp professor he spoke um michael laidlaw endocrinologist

00:40:26.460 from the states and a woman from kelsey alliance which is a family group from the states the other

00:40:33.980 interesting thing i'm learning all the time here because posy parker sent out invites to every mp

00:40:39.860 and every lord basically one Tory MP arrived and Tammy Gray Thompson no one else arrived

00:40:48.060 Lord Mooney had the wit withdrawn he'd been a Labour Party member for 40 years so I realized

00:40:55.320 he had to host the meeting but no one would basically attend they'd been threatened that

00:41:00.780 they would have the wit withdrawn if they attended and so that the um as as James Kirkup

00:41:06.560 has written the sort of silencing of opposition in this area you guys will be familiar with it

00:41:13.360 is unbelievable no one's allowed to have a mind of their own or speak their own voice as as we

00:41:18.960 saw with jk rowley um subsequent to that meeting basically um with a group of us met my wife

00:41:29.800 decided to take a judicial review with mother a who is a woman who's got a gender dysphoric kid

00:41:39.720 autism she started my wife started the crowd justice campaign and then kira bell stepped in

00:41:48.980 basically because my wife and i could have lost the house if we'd lost because we'd have had to

00:41:55.800 pay our side's damages and the other side's damages. So it was just too risky. And Kira

00:42:01.760 Bell, obviously, being someone who's been through the process, was the right person

00:42:06.640 to take the case to court finally. The implications are, though, you know, that when you looked

00:42:15.960 at, I put in a witness statement, as did my wife, and my wife and the lawyer gathered

00:42:24.060 experts from all over the world in autism in endocrinology in neurodevelopment psychology

00:42:31.740 etc etc it's an amazing group when you read our side's evidence against the Tavistock there was

00:42:38.640 no comparison we're talking about people with very high profiles in their profession given

00:42:45.220 their considered opinion backed up by a wealth of serious research against on the other side

00:42:53.300 basically you know political beliefs really backed up by there's one study done in holland

00:43:01.520 in 2011 on 70 boys 20 of whom dropped out um i mean there was no comparison so

00:43:11.140 yeah i mean but the case the the the case is an amazing win i think for sanity um

00:43:20.200 um you know and it safeguards against um early medicalization of kids marcus let me ask you this

00:43:29.320 if i were an uninitiated person who'd not been paying attention to this issue in every way

00:43:34.500 and i were to take what you were saying and i'd go okay so what you're telling me is that senior

00:43:39.540 medical and psychiatric professionals basically agree that transitioning young children shouldn't

00:43:46.440 happen without a full and exhaustive process and even then it should be when they're 18 and they're

00:43:51.820 capable of consent uh etc etc and yet the the powers that be mps lords etc are so terrified of

00:44:00.280 of supporting what you're doing that they won't even come to a meeting because they're going to

00:44:05.500 have their whip withdrawn if i were looking from the outside you'd go what what is going on right

00:44:12.780 Is there some kind of evil lizard conspiracy to transition children, or what is it?

00:44:17.480 That's going to be the title of the video, by the way, Marcus.

00:44:20.000 Yeah.

00:44:21.580 I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

00:44:24.480 I've learned so much about the power of political forces in our media,

00:44:33.320 who's prepared to speak up, who's not.

00:44:36.300 You know, we set up a Facebook page,

00:44:38.940 and basically my wife and I are all about the evidence for kids.

00:44:41.860 that's all it is um that was taken down because we vote facebook rules i mean you know i don't

00:44:49.060 get into the nastier side of this very now what can be very nasty argument um we just present

00:44:56.020 the sort of clinical facts as it were so that was quite amazing to me my twitter um what's it

00:45:03.580 banned as well for similar reasons and you contact them and you go why because i'm not slagging

00:45:10.660 anyone off i'm not saying anybody should die or anything like that i've just you know been

00:45:15.700 sort of trying to get support for a kira bell in the case and um so yeah it's quite extraordinary

00:45:24.940 what's going on and sometimes when you when you talk to people they go it can't be as bad as you

00:45:30.340 say this you must be i don't know you've lost the plot you've hit a midlife crisis you're angry with

00:45:38.000 to have a start no it really is quite extraordinary it you know as a mental health practitioner

00:45:44.620 someone who's proud to be in the business that i'm in i'm really quite ashamed by you know the

00:45:50.260 lack of it this is political belief and ideology over rational scientific argument and marcus

00:46:00.220 i i think the thing is that that we often forget about as well is what the process of transition

00:46:07.100 is like? We just apply the term trans and that suddenly people have this transition and they go

00:46:12.920 on and they live their lives and everything's hunky-dory. But the reality isn't really like

00:46:17.220 that, is it? Well, that was the legal argument. You know, is an 11-year-old capable of making

00:46:24.160 decisions about the implications, a short-term, you know, taking the medication, which has got

00:46:33.720 long-term hidden effects in terms of their development and um yeah and and in which

00:46:42.320 really the downside of treatment is never really spelt out so so um jids would have so they argued

00:46:51.140 that 11 year olds were capable of making these decisions but then they'd have um sort of special

00:46:58.020 bits of information which were written like sort of Janet and John books for simplicity so hang on

00:47:05.500 you're saying hang on then the kid's capable of making complicated decisions but it's written in

00:47:11.280 this simplistic way these two things don't add up but that doesn't add up with anything else that

00:47:17.360 we think about children I mean think about the age of consent right yeah children can't consent to

00:47:24.160 what may be just you know an activity that doesn't really have any long-term consequences but you

00:47:29.840 know if there's no pregnancy you know people had sex nothing really happened you could argue

00:47:34.860 so they can't consent to that but what they can consent to at the age of 11 is completely

00:47:39.580 transforming their hormonal balance and their physical body that that does not seem to match

00:47:45.220 up to our current standards for for treating children as children does it not at all no i

00:47:50.580 I mean, you can't get a tattoo, can you, until you're 18?

00:47:53.420 There's all sorts of things you can't do until you're 18.

00:47:55.880 No, this is, there's a sort of non-think about this area.

00:48:00.520 You know, it's like a sort of group phenomena in which you cannot challenge it.

00:48:06.320 You know, A, you get attacked, as J.K. Rowling did.

00:48:09.720 But B, you know, there's a sort of cultural, look, you're prejudiced.

00:48:16.100 This is all part of some paternalistic plot to control what other people do with their lives.

00:48:23.800 Never been my intention as a psychoanalyst, as a psychiatric practitioner to control people's lives,

00:48:30.640 apart from, you know, when they're, you know, they need sectioning and they're so psychotic that their actions may danger others or themselves.

00:48:40.960 Apart from that, at the end of the day, my job as a psychoanalyst is to help individuals understand what's driving them so that they can make better decisions about their lives.

00:48:54.720 But I'm not trying to turn them into a version of what Marcus Evans thinks they should be.

00:48:59.700 That's not my job. That's unethical in my view.

00:49:03.580 but that's how you're viewed this is really some sort of i've been called a christian right-wing

00:49:11.400 bigger um i've sort of it's why we got you on the show marcus yeah my political i'm sort of

00:49:19.280 liberal with wishy-washy and i think the last time i went to church to my mother's horror

00:49:25.760 is when i was nine years old you know i know actually i had to go to church i was at boarding

00:49:30.980 schools i had to go and church until i was 15 but um you know this is what gets chucked at you

00:49:36.680 yeah it is i think everybody knows that now it's just an easy way to dismiss people isn't it

00:49:42.720 uh you know francis and i you know francis is an old school lefty i'm a sort of centrist

00:49:47.800 with quite libertarian views but uh people will assume if you care about you know children not

00:49:54.300 getting their breast sliced off at the age of 14 that that means you're a right-wing bigot well

00:49:58.340 maybe maybe we should be all right-wing bigots on that basis shouldn't we i mean the thing is

00:50:04.580 there's a sort of you're in alliances with all sorts of people that i never thought i would be

00:50:09.960 so um i had a long discussion with panorama about going on the first panorama which was exposing

00:50:17.680 jids and they said that we need we can't get anybody to go in front of the camera and as a

00:50:22.780 psychoanalyst i didn't want to because you know because i've got patients and you know your job

00:50:28.080 as a psychoanalyst is to be in the background unfortunately I've broken those rules for my

00:50:33.000 the people that I see but um but basically I watched the effect of the fact that Polly Carmichael

00:50:42.700 kept saying you know these kids are safe in their hands and we're very you know measured in what we

00:50:48.780 do and I knew that wasn't the case and I was furious with myself for not going on panorama

00:50:55.420 So the Daily Mail contacted me and said, we'll do a piece. You can tell your story.

00:51:01.560 And of course, all the broadsheets, they'll give you a sort of quote, but they won't let you tell your story.

00:51:06.800 So so I was doing an interview with the Daily Mail, which I and the Daily Mail were absolutely down the line on this.

00:51:15.460 They were very thorough. They were very professional and they knew all about it.

00:51:19.620 And I was very grateful to them. But I'd never imagined myself doing an interview with the Daily Mail.

00:51:25.420 until this so yeah life's taking a funny turn and marcus why do you think this issue is so toxic

00:51:34.540 because it seems to me for the vast majority of people if you ask them about it they would be

00:51:40.380 entirely in agreement with everybody here in this discussion why is it that it descends into name

00:51:46.240 calling you know people getting you know threatened abuse etc etc well i think i think we've become

00:51:54.060 And again, I think it goes back to your earlier point, Constantine, where we've become obsessed by people's feelings.

00:52:04.700 Now, as a psychoanalyst, I'm here to say things are very important, but also the objective mind is important.

00:52:12.520 And we've got this out of characters, out of balance so that, you know, someone's traumatized by what you're saying because they feel hurt.

00:52:21.740 well that's part of the story but but we should also be interested in thoughts and facts and

00:52:29.320 reason you know we we need both and at the moment our discourse seems to be dominated by what people

00:52:37.500 feel um and as i say just to say as a psychoanalyst i you know i'm i'm listening all day to what

00:52:44.920 people feel but i also want to know what people think you know we've got to use our minds as well

00:52:51.120 as our hearts and um sorry i've i don't know if i've lost your question there no no no no it was

00:52:58.660 no i i it was a very it's a very very good point you know that we become obsessed with people's

00:53:04.160 feelings we become obsessed you know with what not wanting to hurt or offend people but there

00:53:09.580 also is something unfortunately called objective reality you know and if you've got an 11 year old

00:53:16.720 girl or boy and you're slicing off parts of their genitalia because of feelings, you need somebody

00:53:24.180 to go, well, hang on a minute here, we need to look into this. The thing is, is that there was

00:53:30.680 a long history, wasn't there, of prejudice in this sort of area. And it's as if this sort of

00:53:38.820 has piggybacked on that bad history. And now nobody wants to be seen as being prejudiced.

00:53:46.720 The problem with that is it's like judgment has also been lost in the process, because I would say there's a difference between judgmentalism and judgment.

00:53:57.500 We need judgment. We need to be wary of judgmentalism and we need to start separating these things out and being able to, you know, freedom of thought and freedom of discourse is so important for us as individuals.

00:54:11.480 you know so a person comes to me and says i'm absolutely sure i'm x and my job isn't to butt

00:54:17.820 heads with them but it is to say well hang on i wonder why you you're so fixated on this belief

00:54:26.180 and why you have to drum that into me that i can't challenge it because sort of tyrannical

00:54:33.120 states of mind again a psychoanalyst you're sort of wary of you sort of think well hang on a minute

00:54:39.060 what's driving this and why can't you why can't we examine this area because you know most most

00:54:47.300 of the time we know that sort of when we're in a healthy state you know you're not so defensive

00:54:52.220 you can have things examined and looked at from different points of view but when you become

00:54:56.720 fanatical it's usually being driven by something else and that's my job as a psychoanalyst is try

00:55:02.980 and understand what that is yeah and marcus one question that i really wanted to ask you so i'll

00:55:08.360 tell you, so I was a teacher for 12 years, regular viewers and listeners of the podcast have a drink

00:55:12.740 now and one of my colleagues, I remember she came to me absolutely distressed and floods of tears

00:55:18.180 to tell me that her 11-year-old daughter told her that she wanted to transition and she used the

00:55:24.380 words, not if I transition, when I transition. This is an 11-year-old girl. What would your advice

00:55:30.560 be as a mental health practitioner to that woman in particular and to schools of parents up and

00:55:37.460 down the country who are dealing with this particular issue well i certainly think right

00:55:44.260 okay so there's several levels to this one is at the school level that you know if there is

00:55:51.720 um you've got to find out who's teaching what and are you happy with what's being taught

00:55:58.900 and i would sort of you know parents need to get organized around this and and some parent parental

00:56:06.420 groups have got wise to the fact that their kids are being taught things which you know are part

00:56:13.840 of a sort of political doctrine and then i'd you know that that needs to be addressed and there's

00:56:19.760 and stephanie davis awry runs a website called transgender trend which has been sort of helping

00:56:26.620 parents sort of get to know what's going on and there are materials with which you can present

00:56:32.640 the headmistress or headmaster or whatever and challenge that at a sort of individual level

00:56:38.720 if you've got a partner um you know you've got to sort of get on the same page off this this

00:56:45.340 problem often drives a wedge between the parents which again is very unhelpful um you've got to

00:56:53.160 have a sort of serious sort of thrash out of where you're coming from and what the approach might be

00:56:58.720 but for me i would say you know you're trying to what you do with adolescents when they get a b in

00:57:07.420 their bonnet about something you know you're trying to sort of have a think about what they're

00:57:12.820 like in the round you know as a personality are they struggling in a particular area how do they

00:57:18.380 measure up against their brother and sister are they struggling at school think about them as a

00:57:24.300 person across the board because kids often you focus on one thing and the problem area is

00:57:31.960 somewhere else and you don't want to get into arguments if you if you can you know sometimes

00:57:37.600 you've got to stand up to your kids you know and say well hang on you know we need to slow this

00:57:43.760 down and I'm not being bullied into anything and I'd certainly be prepared to do that but then

00:57:50.780 I was trying to think about them and think about, as I say, what's going off of them off camera, if you like, as well as, you know, everyone's attention is sort of drawn to the area of conflict.

00:58:09.220 And that's often not what's driving the problem, as it were.

00:58:13.380 So then you've got a problem of trying to get mental health practitioners who there's been a sort of enormous policy capture into this area where you've got the affirmation model, which was adopted with virtually no evidence and jettison in what used to be in place was what's called watchful waiting, which is that gender dysphoric kids, you know, most of them would desist.

00:58:43.380 if supported and left to their own devices um there's a sort of huge capture of of the clinical

00:58:52.320 environment um so then you've got to find you've got to be wise and you've got to find clinicians

00:58:58.980 who are not going to automatically affirm if you think they need clinical help but someone who's

00:59:05.400 prepared to say i'm a general child psychotherapist psychologist and i will look at your kid in the

00:59:12.440 whole take into consideration you know comorbid problems etc etc get to know them and we're not

00:59:20.120 making any quick decisions sorry for the long spiel but that's no no no marcus it's great advice and i

00:59:27.600 i think it's an issue actually that that terrifies a lot of parents a lot of people won't speak up

00:59:33.680 on it but there are plenty of people who don't even have children yet who are thinking well when

00:59:37.920 i do have a child is this the thing that they're going to go to school and get brainwashed and

00:59:43.060 there was a story in the papers today from eton of all places where they're teaching them

00:59:47.280 transgender ideology and all this sort of stuff so it seems to be very widespread in the educational

00:59:52.120 system can i just say one more thing the ideology divides basically divides the generations you hear

00:59:59.560 we have parents who contact my wife and i going they don't trust the services my kid wants to

01:00:06.260 transition you know we're in an argument so it divides the generations it sometimes divides

01:00:12.880 the parents you know dad's for mum's against and this can actually split up couples um

01:00:21.320 not in my house mate my wife would destroy anyone who tried to go near it divides the mind from the

01:00:28.520 body you know because actually this is a problem in the mind and it's related to all the changes

01:00:33.780 that are going on in the body so you know it's a very divisive area and uh we're needing to sort

01:00:39.980 of bring find links and bring things together and it creates so much division um and pain because of

01:00:47.040 it and damage thank you for that cheery ending to the interview marcus brilliant uh but listen we've

01:00:51.960 got one more question for you and by the way thank you so much for coming on the show it has been a

01:00:56.100 genuine pleasure speaking with you and our last question as always is what is the one thing we're

01:01:00.740 not talking about as a society but we really should be well i i think it's related to what

01:01:07.920 we've been discussing i think it's the closing down of the discussion and debate which is

01:01:14.320 you know it's such bad news and um it's bad news individually we all need to be challenged and we

01:01:22.960 live in an environment we all you see this idea you could define who you are your identity is

01:01:28.940 partly formed by who you you are but it's also in negotiation with the external world and you know

01:01:36.280 we've sort of lost sight of that sort of um dynamic if you like we we live in relation to

01:01:43.780 the external world we don't have the right to say this is me and you know you've got to accept it

01:01:50.520 and if you don't i'll scream and shout at you you know other people have got their own minds

01:01:55.880 they're entitled to have a view including what they think of you and this is important for

01:02:02.140 individual psychology and psychological health and it's important for democracy

01:02:06.760 spoken like a true bigot thank you marcus

01:02:09.820 marcus thank you so much for coming on we'll make sure to put your details

01:02:14.580 in the description of the video thank you everybody for watching we'll see you very soon

01:02:19.000 with another interview or a live stream all of them go out at 7 p.m uk time episodes go out

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TRIGGERnometry - January 13, 2021

Transgender Clinic Whistleblower Speaks Out

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