Bravo, Dr Spiller. If I had a say, it would be that your article could be read by all psychologists, then disseminated to all parents seeking support for their troubled children.
I came across you early in my search for help for my child.
At the time I didn't have faith in any psychologist. I'd had to pull my child from specialised psychology for late diagnosed autism, because gender arose, and was focused on affirmatively and dismissively of the real issues we sought care for- executive function, sensory difficulties and auditory processing difficulties affecting socialisation.
But reading about you gave me faith in my intuition that I was heading in the right direction. I felt a validation of my own immense concerns, at not finding substance in ANY research related to GA'C'.
I have a professional background related to medicine, and I hunted hard.
I agree with your article 100%.
It bemuses me as to why my medical and allied health colleagues are so captured. Are they lazy, raised online, too young to have experience or critical discernment?
When you speak of the APS, I wonder, if like my own professional body, they are administrators rather than clinicians? Career Board representatives/ professional seat- sitters rather than senior clinicians with rich clinical and educational histories?
Or is it a profit driven race held somewhere more distant, that feeds from the multitudes of vulnerable customers internationally? In which the marketing and lobbying is so effective that it has infused media to a cultural degree?
I feel a desparate loss in reading your article.
I'm so so so so sorry that the APS loses a voice that it really needs.
Like you I'm also fearful for the children of others and the sequelae for society.
I'm lucky.
My child escaped with my very hard work over years- late night research on gender, parenting, neurodiversity, introception, anxiety, educational influences, family based therapy,
parenting, ppp, tomes on autism, etc... while holding down a professional job and maintaining normalcy within the family.
It wasn't as hard, however, as being agile around the medical professionals and therapists who would have been authoritative influences to concretise and pathologise what was a passing, immature growth stage.
Anyway
We're here.
I thank you for your small voice in my research.
I thank you now for your clear, understandable voice on a large stage.
May you reach more parents like me.
Better yet, may your very sane, caring and calm but urgent voice, reach the APS in time for the profession as a whole to be saved from huge destabilising and damaging influences.
Well done, Vanessa! I feel the same way but did not want to waste my valuable time in arguing the points with them, knowing that they would fall on deaf ears. But bravo to you for a sterling effort. Remember what George Orwell said in "1984": “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” You are a revolutionary!
‘The Australian Psychological Society (APS) strongly supports the affirmative model of care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals, including children and adolescents. They advocate for respectful, person-centered practices and warn that attempting to alter or suppress a person's gender can cause severe psychological harm’.
. . . good call Vannessa, ethics do matter, the APS they’ve surely drunk the Kool Aid.
I have been exploring what the current gender policy of our parallel psychological organization in America - the American Psychological Association (APA) - looks like. Sadly, the APA, like the APS here in Australia, is also engaged in deceptive practices, having provided contradictory guidance on medicalized sexual abuse of children (I can no longer call it gender affirming care).
The APA (America), like the APS (Australia) has recently resiled from their saner, more cautious 2025 public position, and returned to its deluded earlier policy statement that advocates for children’s unobstructed access medicalized sexual abuse.
Is APS engaging in puerile copycat behaviour? Hiding behind what other professional societies and organizations are doing with gender policies suggests that they are, confirming my suspicion that APS don't have sufficient cognitive function to form evidence based opinons on their own.
The APA and our APS , in supporting obligatory G. A. C. for minors have selectively repudiated their claimed validity of application of “ Psychological Science “, which looks , in this case, to be an isolated oxymoron? Perhaps we can understand it as the result of a “ perfect storm” with the virtual tsunami of vulnerable young children, presenting with transgender ideation ( with or without distress) to a captive subset of therapists, largely young biological females , with personality traits high in agreeableness and conscientiousness, who have dominated clinical practice, with the social science protagonists in the driver seat. Medically trained participants who have provided the medical intervention components of G.A.C. ( paediatric endocrinologists, paediatrians and paediatric surgeons) in repudiation of their specific scientific training, ought to have never entered the fray, for their contributions have proved irreversibly harmful. Feminization of both workforces has captured their narcissistic compassion and social activism and might explain much of the dominance of this grotesque “ therapeutic “ frolic ? The social sciences would have been best left to find their own way back to truth and reason?
“ Gender Medicine “ was born deep within the humanities’ Gender Studies which gave us Queer Theory’s rejection of heteronormativity, in favor of the plethora of alternatives. The social sciences have remained as dominant drivers of this chapter of how to respond to childhood assertions of transgender ideation within “Psychological Science “. The question remains as to just how Medical Science has become a compliant , essentially secondary player in providing the medical and surgical tactics’ components of G.A.C. , specifically in minors. The only plausible understanding of what Medical Science is doing in this space can only be the result of individual clinicians acting out of one or two motives, those being narcissistic compassion, at best, and/or deliberate social activism ( in denial of medical training and knowledge) at worst. They have all made a conscious decision to be more offended by truth than by ideology.
This is a great summary of many of the issues with the affirming approach and the responses that are (sadly) often given. Really helpful in trying to figure out how to explain to people new to the topic as to what has gone wrong.
Bravo, Dr Spiller. If I had a say, it would be that your article could be read by all psychologists, then disseminated to all parents seeking support for their troubled children.
I came across you early in my search for help for my child.
At the time I didn't have faith in any psychologist. I'd had to pull my child from specialised psychology for late diagnosed autism, because gender arose, and was focused on affirmatively and dismissively of the real issues we sought care for- executive function, sensory difficulties and auditory processing difficulties affecting socialisation.
But reading about you gave me faith in my intuition that I was heading in the right direction. I felt a validation of my own immense concerns, at not finding substance in ANY research related to GA'C'.
I have a professional background related to medicine, and I hunted hard.
I agree with your article 100%.
It bemuses me as to why my medical and allied health colleagues are so captured. Are they lazy, raised online, too young to have experience or critical discernment?
When you speak of the APS, I wonder, if like my own professional body, they are administrators rather than clinicians? Career Board representatives/ professional seat- sitters rather than senior clinicians with rich clinical and educational histories?
Or is it a profit driven race held somewhere more distant, that feeds from the multitudes of vulnerable customers internationally? In which the marketing and lobbying is so effective that it has infused media to a cultural degree?
I feel a desparate loss in reading your article.
I'm so so so so sorry that the APS loses a voice that it really needs.
Like you I'm also fearful for the children of others and the sequelae for society.
I'm lucky.
My child escaped with my very hard work over years- late night research on gender, parenting, neurodiversity, introception, anxiety, educational influences, family based therapy,
parenting, ppp, tomes on autism, etc... while holding down a professional job and maintaining normalcy within the family.
It wasn't as hard, however, as being agile around the medical professionals and therapists who would have been authoritative influences to concretise and pathologise what was a passing, immature growth stage.
Anyway
We're here.
I thank you for your small voice in my research.
I thank you now for your clear, understandable voice on a large stage.
May you reach more parents like me.
Better yet, may your very sane, caring and calm but urgent voice, reach the APS in time for the profession as a whole to be saved from huge destabilising and damaging influences.
Thank you yet again. From the bottom of my heart.
Well done, Vanessa! I feel the same way but did not want to waste my valuable time in arguing the points with them, knowing that they would fall on deaf ears. But bravo to you for a sterling effort. Remember what George Orwell said in "1984": “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” You are a revolutionary!
‘The Australian Psychological Society (APS) strongly supports the affirmative model of care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals, including children and adolescents. They advocate for respectful, person-centered practices and warn that attempting to alter or suppress a person's gender can cause severe psychological harm’.
. . . good call Vannessa, ethics do matter, the APS they’ve surely drunk the Kool Aid.
I have been exploring what the current gender policy of our parallel psychological organization in America - the American Psychological Association (APA) - looks like. Sadly, the APA, like the APS here in Australia, is also engaged in deceptive practices, having provided contradictory guidance on medicalized sexual abuse of children (I can no longer call it gender affirming care).
The APA (America), like the APS (Australia) has recently resiled from their saner, more cautious 2025 public position, and returned to its deluded earlier policy statement that advocates for children’s unobstructed access medicalized sexual abuse.
Is APS engaging in puerile copycat behaviour? Hiding behind what other professional societies and organizations are doing with gender policies suggests that they are, confirming my suspicion that APS don't have sufficient cognitive function to form evidence based opinons on their own.
The APA and our APS , in supporting obligatory G. A. C. for minors have selectively repudiated their claimed validity of application of “ Psychological Science “, which looks , in this case, to be an isolated oxymoron? Perhaps we can understand it as the result of a “ perfect storm” with the virtual tsunami of vulnerable young children, presenting with transgender ideation ( with or without distress) to a captive subset of therapists, largely young biological females , with personality traits high in agreeableness and conscientiousness, who have dominated clinical practice, with the social science protagonists in the driver seat. Medically trained participants who have provided the medical intervention components of G.A.C. ( paediatric endocrinologists, paediatrians and paediatric surgeons) in repudiation of their specific scientific training, ought to have never entered the fray, for their contributions have proved irreversibly harmful. Feminization of both workforces has captured their narcissistic compassion and social activism and might explain much of the dominance of this grotesque “ therapeutic “ frolic ? The social sciences would have been best left to find their own way back to truth and reason?
“ Gender Medicine “ was born deep within the humanities’ Gender Studies which gave us Queer Theory’s rejection of heteronormativity, in favor of the plethora of alternatives. The social sciences have remained as dominant drivers of this chapter of how to respond to childhood assertions of transgender ideation within “Psychological Science “. The question remains as to just how Medical Science has become a compliant , essentially secondary player in providing the medical and surgical tactics’ components of G.A.C. , specifically in minors. The only plausible understanding of what Medical Science is doing in this space can only be the result of individual clinicians acting out of one or two motives, those being narcissistic compassion, at best, and/or deliberate social activism ( in denial of medical training and knowledge) at worst. They have all made a conscious decision to be more offended by truth than by ideology.
This is a great summary of many of the issues with the affirming approach and the responses that are (sadly) often given. Really helpful in trying to figure out how to explain to people new to the topic as to what has gone wrong.
Thank you for trying to fix this!
Gender Medicine