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The ’Chilling effects’ of gender identity ideology on our work

 

Adverse effects on therapy

 

The adoption of the term gender identity is having a number of seriously damaging effects on clinical and therapeutic practice:

Adverse impacts on therapeutic practice:

  • displacement of standard exploratory therapy by gender identity affirmative therapy;

  • uncritical promotion of the themes of and ;

  • undermining established professional neutrality and boundaries, in order to adopt allyship and advocacy roles;

  • minimisation of clinical responsibility for assessment, risk management and safeguarding;

  • marginalising the distinct contribution of therapy to alleviating gender distress, and instead colluding in the facilitation of social and medical transition for clients;

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Unpacking the concept of gender identity not fit for purpose, Jenkins, P. (2023) Critical Therapy Antidote

 

Adverse effects on clients

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The potential harms associated with gender identity healthcare, with gender identity affirmative therapy as a willing and fully complicit partner in this process, can be listed as including the following:

  • destruction of healthy tissue and body parts for cosmetic purposes;

  • long-term adverse health consequences (risk of reduced bone density, infertility);

  • failure to resolve gender identity distress, despite irreversible medication and surgery;

  • unnecessary and unethical medicalisation of same-sex attraction;

  • failure to address or resolve concurrent long-standing conditions (anxiety, autism, eating distress, sexual trauma);

  • medium-term risk of retraumatisation, via detransition or retransition;

  • heightened longer-term risk of suicide

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Trans affirmative therapy engendering harm beneath a veil of protection, Jenkins, P. (2023) Critical Therapy Antidote

 

Adverse effects on therapists and on our professional bodies

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The adoption of the term gender identity is having a number of seriously damaging effects on our professional associations and on research and publication in professional journals:

Adverse impacts on clinician and therapist professional associations and their influence:

  • censorship of publications and denial of open professional debate to critics of gender identity;

  • politicisation of professional complaints against gender critical clinicians and therapists;

  • promotion of anecdotal lived experience as the benchmark for research and continuing professional training;

  • displacement of rigorous research methodology e.g. systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials, by easily misrepresented cohort studies;

  • growing defensive practice by clinicians and therapists in working with gender identity, with evidence of increasing professional flight from the field

 

Unpacking the concept of gender identity not fit for purpose, Jenkins, P. (2023) Critical Therapy Antidote

 

Defending exploratory and mainstream therapy

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Making sense of the Tavistock experiment 2011 – 2021

Time to think: The inside story of the collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children - Barnes, H. (2023)

Calibrating gillick in the age of gender wars part 2- The curious case of the tavistock - Jenkins, P. (2021) Critical Therapy Antidote

 

Working with children and young people

“Transitioning Children: The Clinician’s Assumptions and Client Suggestibility”, pp. 91-109, in Thomas, V. (ed.) Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice - Ayad, S. and O’Malley, S. (2023)

Living in a fantasy - Beney, L. (2024) , Save Mental Health

Freedom to think: the need for thorough assessment and treatment of gender dysphoric children - Evans, M. (2020) , British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin

Challenging the myths on how to work therapeutically with gender-questioning children and young people - Jenkins, P. and Beney, L. (2024) , Critical Therapy Antidote

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Ethical issues in therapeutic work with clients

Sharing personal pronouns: Legal and ethical arguments against therapist self-disclosure, Jenkins, P. (2022) Critical Therapy Antidote

Why exploratory therapy is mainstream therapy and not conversion therapy. Jenkins, P. (2024) Critical Therapy Antidote

 

Legal protection of free speech for therapists

Don’t Get Caught Out: A Summary of Gender Critical Belief Discrimination Employment Tribunal Judgments. Birchall, R. and Phoenix, J. (2024) Occasional Paper. Employment and Justice Series. School of Law, University of Reading

UK women win key cases against gender ideology at work Jenkins, P. (2024) Critical Therapy Antidote

 

Against the current misuse of therapy research

”LGBT research and the push for a legal ban on conversion therapy in the UK” Jenkins, P. (2024) Critical Therapy Antidote

Rapid review of Coventry University research on conversion therapytherapy - Sex Matters (2021)

 

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