Jive Talkin'
Just what can we do when people in positions of power and authority keep misrepresenting the truth persistently and deliberately?
TLDR - we have to keep telling the truth with equal persistence, even if we cannot match their status. It may achieve nothing but I think it must be done. No life is worth living if truth becomes a lie and lies are what we are compelled to speak. So I will continue to speak up until I die, or until every platform that currently publishes me, suspends me for ‘hate’. Whichever is the sooner.
On the morning of Friday 2nd April I awoke to find some of my Whats App groups more than usually aggrieved by this Substack post. “The Divisional Court Brought to That Decision a Series of Preconceptions about Gender’: A Conversation with Jolyon Maugham, QC”. This was a conversation between Mr Maugham and an American based academic who does not appear to have any qualifications in areas of law or medicine but specialises in “Victorian literature and culture, trans feminist studies, and contemporary popular culture” at Berkeley University in California.
As it was no longer April Fool’s Day I began to read with a weary sense of dread and immediately even my low expectations were met. I tweeted my concerns about the persistent and deliberate dishonesty contained within, and found a high level of immediate engagement. You can read the thread here.
But because Grace Lavery’s post represents a really serious level of dishonesty about a High Court Judgment, scaffolded by defamatory attacks on the judiciary and a solicitor, I thought it might help other truth seekers and truth pushers consider what was claimed against what actually happened.
So lets look at what was claimed against the actual judgment. I have restricted my musings here to what I consider to be the the most serious of the misrepresentations - that the court had no proper evidence on which to rule that children were unlikely to be able to consent to PB and CSH.
If I tackled every misrepresentation I found, this post would take hours to write, even longer to read and probably no one would bother. But I urge you, if you have any degree of curiosity or unease about what is being done to children in the name of ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’, please do read both Lavery’s substack and the judgment - and draw your own conclusions.
It was a close call between this and two other issues. First, Maugham’s astonishing attack on Mrs Justice Lieven as ‘transphobe adjacent’. He knows as a serving Judge she may not respond. His criticisms were baseless and damage public confidence in our legal system and in the Bar. He should not have made them. Second, his continued attack on those individuals who have crowdfunded various legal actions by donations of £10 or £20 as ‘astroturfed’ by the ‘shadowy Far Right’. This however is such obvious nonsense, I didn’t think it worth my time further debunking it.
Claim: Puberty blockers are harmless and reversible and the court didn’t examine the evidence
Answer: No, they are not and the court examined carefully the evidence it had.
Eventually I decided this lie won over the baseless attacks on a serving judge and accusations of judicial bias, because its the biggest and most dangerous lie and the one that gives wings to all the other smaller lies that follow. Whatever you think of the quality of the experts before the High Court in Bell v Tavistock there is no doubt that puberty blockers (PB) followed by cross sex hormones (CSH) for children is an experimental treatment, the long term impacts are not known but they are likely to be very serious - loss of sexual function, loss of bone density, neurological damage, insufficient penile tissue to construct a neo vagina etc. Even if the child stopped after PB - and the evidence shows that nearly 100% of those who start PB will go on to CSH - the impact on their brains and bodies cannot be ‘reversed’ and we simply don’t know enough to claim its ‘reversible’ and ‘harmless’.
So what do Grace and Jolyon think? So hard baked is Jolyon’s ideological capture, he initially could not even conceive that Keira Bell might win.
I first read about it in The Guardian––it sounded a bit like a joke, to be honest. No one—certainly I couldn’t see any legal basis for the court to decide the matter in Keira Bell’s favor. And, indeed, I took advice from a leading public law lawyer, I mean, formal advice, as it happens, and, her view too was that the case was dead in the water.
Why was this so hard baked? Because Jolyon ignores evidence or defames those who offer evidence he doesn’t like. This is how he described the medical evidence presented to the court.
I couldn’t understand why the court was adopting such a relaxed stance in relation to the evidence that was being produced by Keira—evidence that was from quite weird marginalized figures in the medical establishment, by and large. Where it was from more mainstream figures they were speaking outside their area of expertise.
Lavery, unsurprisingly asked for their names. Jolyon didn’t ‘have them to hand’ despite having ‘commissioned’ a ‘little bit of an investigation into all of the witnesses’. Nothing sinister there. His investigations weren’t extensive enough to allow him to recall their actual names but he did feel able to say this:
And there are lots and lots of—I mean, there’s a very odd collection of people: one of them is a vet, some of them are lawyers, some of them are sort of international traveling advocates for—or rather against—affirming trans kids. Very, very few of them sit—few or none—sit inside the sort of mainstream of opinion.
I had to blink a few times after reading that. Had the High Court really put their reliance in evidence from a vet? That wasn’t my recollection. Unsurprisingly, because that is not what the court did. Maugham is either telling a deliberate lie or is very confused. Let’s have a look at the actual judgment.
First point to note is that the Tavistock reassured the court it had robust procedures for informing children and testing their ability to consent. The court repeatedly asked for evidence from the Tavistock about this only to be told they didn’t keep any. See paras 34 and 35 of the judgment.
The court asked for statistics on the number or proportion of young people referred by GIDS for PBs who had a diagnosis of ASD. Ms Morris said that such data was not available, although it would have been recorded on individual patient records. We therefore do not know the proportion of those who were found by GIDS to be Gillick competent who had ASD, or indeed a mental health diagnosis.
Again, we have found this lack of data analysis – and the apparent lack of investigation of this issue - surprising.
And para 44:
The court asked for statistical material on the number, if any, of young people who had been assessed to be suitable for PBs but who were not prescribed them because the young person was considered not to be Gillick competent to make the decision, whether at GIDS or the Trusts. Ms Morris could not produce any statistics on whether this situation had ever arisen…
Relevant to the evidence of consent was Professor Scott, the Director of University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience who doesn’t sound like a ‘travelling transphobe’ or outside the mainstream. She had ‘significant doubts’ about the ability of young people under the age of 18 years old to ‘adequately weigh and appreciate the significant consequences that will result from the decision to accept hormonal treatment for gender dysphoria.’ [para 45]
The court recognised that the use of PB for ‘precocious puberty’ was a long standing treatment. But use of PB for gender dysphoria was very different. Keira Bell relied on evidence from Professor Hruz (Associate Professor of Paediatrics, Endocrinology and Diabetes at Washington University, St Louis, USA). I suppose that Professor Hruz might be one of these ‘travelling transphobes’ but his academic credentials appear to be significant and genuine. He spoke about the ‘Dutch protocol’ devised in 2006 which appears to have been ‘blindly adopted’ over the years.
While the Tavistock maintained that PB represented just a harmless ‘pause’ this wasn’t the view of the Health Research Authority who carried out an investigation into the Early Intervention Study in 2019 and noted the concerns raised by the near 100% take up rate of CSH that concerns that ‘the treatment might be responsible for generating persistence, rather than ‘creating space to decide’.
The Health Research Agency was established, in accordance with provisions of the Care Act 2014 as a executive non-departmental public body (NDPB) sponsored by the Department of Health on 1 January 2015. It’s difficult to see how evidence produced by this body is indicative of ‘transphobia’ or seen as beyond the mainstream.
Para 57 commented on the evidence of Dr de Vries, a founding board member of EPATH (European Professional Association for Transgender Health) and a member of the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) Committee on Children and Adolescents and its Chair between 2010 and 2016.
Dr De Vries leads the Centre of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre in the Netherlands (CEGD). This is the institution which has led the way in the use of PBs for young people in the Netherlands; and is the sole source of published peer reviewed data (in respect of the treatment we are considering) produced to the court. She says that of the adolescents who started puberty suppression, only 1.9 per cent stopped the treatment and did not proceed.
This was very significant evidence for the court to build its finding that PB and CSH in reality represented one single treatment. Presumably Mr Maugham did not wish to bundle up Dr de Vries as a travelling transphobe or outside the mainstream. It rather sounds like Dr de Vries would be on Jolyon’s side here. So even the evidence from his own side didn’t help his argument.
At para 67 the court said this
Both WPATH and the Endocrine Society in their documentation describe PBs as fully reversible. Professor Butler says that “we do not know everything about the blocker and as far as we know it is a safe reversible treatment with a well-established history.” Dr Alvi also referred to the history of the use of PBs as showing that they are fully reversible. However, it is important to note that apart from the Amsterdam study, the history of the use of PBs relied upon in this context is from the treatment of precocious puberty which is a different condition from GD, and where PBs are used in a very different way.
Dr de Vries agreed that ethical dilemmas continue to exist around “the uncertainty of apparent long-term physical consequences of puberty blocking on bone density, fertility, brain development and surgical options.” Again -this evidence against ‘harmless reversibility’ comes from the Centre of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, not some frothing transphobe in a tin foil hat.
Further the court relied on the NHS own website. Does Maugham claim that even the NSH has now been captured by transphobia? Or has belatedly changed its website guidance as the evidence mounted up and up and up that to call PB ‘harmless and reversible’ was a dangerous lie to tell our children?
“Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. Although the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) advises that is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be.
But the fatal blow to Maugham’s assertions is found at para 70. The court were not attempting to judge the claimant’s evidence as superior. The more important evidence was that which ought to have been provided by the Tavistock, but which was not.
It is not however the court’s role to judge the weight to be given to various different experts in a judicial review. In our view, more important is the evidence from the defendant and the evidence base it relies upon for the use of PBs….the lack of a firm evidence base for their use is evident from the very limited published material as to the effectiveness of the treatment, however it is measured.
This makes Jolyon’s assertion that there was ‘no real challenge’ to the Claimant’s evidence utterly bizarre. It wasn’t the court’s job to challenge - it was the Tavistock’s job to provide the evidence that justified what they were doing to children. Jolyon desperately fishes about for some defence of the Tavistock, and what he finally comes up with is remarkable. Remember, the Tavistock were facing a judicial review that fundamentally attacked the lawfulness of their treatment protocol. But this was the reason they couldn’t evidence it -they thought the case was about something else.
You know, if you’re the Tavistock and you’re bobbing along, and you think to yourself, “well, this is a case about a child’s ability to consent—all perfectly normal, all perfect rational, no practical basis for saying the Gillick rule doesn’t apply here.” You don’t ball up and make those arguments about why puberty blockers are important. All of a sudden you find that you’re involved in, as I described it, a sort of de facto, judge-led public inquiry into the utility of puberty blockers, not knowing that you were going to, you didn’t turn up with the right evidence and the right witnesses and the right arguments.
If the Tavistock and those advising them genuinely did not realise that a judicial review of children’s ability to consent to the treatment they offered, would involve some comment on the treatment that was being offered, then the Tavistock needs to be shut down immediately and a Public Inquiry set up to examine why and how so much public money has been wasted and so many children harmed. But I suspect the Tavistock wouldn’t claim this defence. What I suspect has happened, and has happened to many other institutions, is that people have developed a peculiar blindness. They simply do not bother to think about what underpins their mantras, because they are on the ‘right side of history’ and any challenge is bigotry. I suspect the Tavistock couldn’t actually see that there might be criticism of what they were doing.
Conclusions
But regardless. To come to court without the ability to evidence what you are saying is nobody’s fault but your own. I suggest that no one who reads this judgment and the pages and pages of careful analysis of all the evidence put before it, could possibly agree with Maugham’s criticisms of the court’s approach to the available evidence. As he said:
I’m a practicing Queen’s Counsel, so I’m a practicing trial lawyer, and so I have to choose my language carefully.
So I have to assume, very sadly, that the deliberate misrepresentations of Mr Maugham in this interview were not made out of carelessness or casual language but chosen. He has used his status as Queen’s Counsel to give his arguments a credibility that they do not deserve. He has made personal attacks on a serving Judge and a solicitor in a matter that is due before the Court of Appeal in a few months. He has made no child any safer. Quite the reverse. He has continued to fan the flames of obfuscation and simple, deliberate lies that have so polluted any attempt to have sensible discussions about any of this.
He is a disgrace.
Outstanding analysis.
Very well presented response Sarah. How does he get away with this? Surely he should be answerable to his professional body? His increasingly beligerant behaviour and bizarre pronouncements are underpinned by his blind belief in this ideology. He has lost all ability to be objective.