Inside job

The Australian Psychological Society took four years to produce a gender dysphoria statement that gaslights members by hiding the woeful state of the evidence base

Photo by Hirzul Maulana on Unsplash

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In its new statement on gender dysphoria, the Australian Psychological Society promises it will “inform members of relevant advancements in the field”.

But this is a document doctored to exclude the most significant development of recent times—the 2024 UK Cass report and a brace of gold-standard systematic reviews since 2018, all exposing the lack of good evidence for the “gender-affirming care” of minors.

And yet the society has the cheek to insist that members must keep “up to date with the latest knowledge and guidelines”.

A psychologist reading the new position statement—“Supporting the mental health and wellbeing of transgender and gender-diverse people”—will find little reason to hesitate before referring a child to a puberty blocker-driven gender clinic.

This statement has a backstory. In 2021, clinical psychologist Dr Sandra Pertot was confronted with a complaint, her first in 45 years’ practice. In a podcast, she had talked about gender dysphoria from a mainstream clinical perspective. She did not sound “affirming” enough, according to some trans listeners. The complaint was resolved with the society acknowledging the “multiple perspectives and views” on the topic.

But now the society was on notice. It had an uncritical affirmation-only policy and activists stood ready to enforce it. Back then, the policy stated: “As a professional organisation committed to evidence-based practice, the Australian Psychological Society (APS) therefore opposes any forms of mental health practice that are not affirming of transgender people—including children. Any psychologist involved in such practices is likely to be in breach of the APS Code of Ethics.”

But the APS also had some members well-informed about the risks and flaws of the gender-affirming model. So, in 2022, the APS commissioned a panel to review its affirmation-only policy. Two years later, it issued a new draft policy for consultation. Last year, members began to wonder why it had not been finalised and published.

The 2024 draft was a compromise. It was far from free of gender ideology, but it would have alerted psychologists to the sobering results of systematic evidence reviews in the UK, Sweden and Finland, and the more cautious approach in those countries to the gender medicalisation of minors.

The tension in the draft document showed in the “further reading list” for members. It included the Cass report, but it also recommended gender-affirming treatment guidelines from the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

Psychologists diligently working through the reading list could end up very confused. Those treatment guidelines were found to be of low-quality and not fit for use, according to a peer-reviewed study commissioned by paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, the author of the 2024 report. Dr Cass was critical of a practice of circular referencing among low-quality guidelines which created a false impression of consensus favouring the gender-affirming model. Where should psychologists place their trust—in the Cass report or those guidelines?

Today we discovered how the APS has resolved the dilemma.

No mention of the Cass report in the 2026 position statement. No mention of the systematic reviews, undertaken independently in several countries, which showed no good evidence for the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones given to gender-distressed minors. But the low-quality gender-affirming guidelines remain in the new statement. Gone is the draft’s warning that these guidelines “differ in terms of ideological standpoint and scientific rigour and the outcomes have been widely debated”.

This story has played out internationally. Small groups of activists capture the policymaking machinery of medical or mental health associations and resist attempts to restore balance. It’s easy to see now why such factional politics are necessary. Gender-affirming care for minors has such a weak evidence base that its clinical dominance must depend on authority—so-called eminence-based medicine—and the silencing of dissent.

The new APS statement makes no reference to the unprecedented spike in gender clinic caseloads since the 2010s, nor does it note the puzzling flip in patient profile from boys with early-onset gender dysphoria to teenage girls often with a range of psychiatric problems but no prior history of dysphoria.

The 2024 draft did not dodge this reality: “In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of young people being referred to specialist or medical gender clinics, the reasons for which are debated”.

The draft cited the work of the American researcher Dr Lisa Littman who coined the term “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” to suggest that social media and peer groups might be influencing the trans identities adopted by young people. This possibility is unacceptable to gender ideologues. And so, the Littman references are banished from the 2026 statement.

Even the WPATH guideline, much cited by the new APS statement, concedes that, “For a select subgroup of young people, susceptibility to social influence impacting gender may be an important differential to consider.”

Speaking of subgroups, the APS has an entity known as the Psychology of Diverse Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities Interest Group. They get a shout-out on the Acknowledgements page of the new position statement.