Gender Dysphoria, Children, And Moral Panics

What new data from the UK shows about trans children

Photo by Kyle on Unsplash

It’s been a year since the Cass review into gender clinics for children in the UK came out. I wrote about the review last year in depth, noting both the few strengths of the document as well as the many weaknesses. If you’re interested in a summary of why the Cass review is not a great document to base any sort of clinical decision-making on, I recommend having a read of those pieces:

The Cass Review Into Gender Identity Services For Children

There is now an addendum to the story. 9 months after the main review came out, York university has now formally published their epidemiological study looking at trans youth in the UK. This was relegated to an appendix in the original review, and barely mentioned in the document.

Shockingly — but, at this point, unsurprisingly — the new paper from York seems to contradict quite a few of the theories that the Cass review puts forward.

Let’s look at the data.

The Study

Before we dive into the numbers, there’s some important background. Over the last 15 years, the number of children who were referred to UK gender clinics rose quite a bit. This was one…