Spinning the Tavistock story

Activists are twisting the closure of Tavistock as a win for gender clinics

Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash

The closure of the UK’s Tavistock Centre, the world’s largest youth gender clinic, is, in truth, not a reversal for clinics elsewhere. The Tavistock’s long waiting times were shameful, hence the plan to replace the standalone London-based clinic with a network of regional clinics. In some ways, the Tavistock was old-fashioned, and the new-look expanded system will not only shorten waiting times but offer young Brits a cutting-edge model of “gender-affirming” care already successful in other countries, such as Australia.

So runs the argument by advocates of the “affirmative” medicalised worldview (in which clinicians follow the lead of a young person’s self-declared transgender identity and deploy hormonal and surgical treatments to make their body a facsimile of the opposite sex).

But can the fall of the Tavistock truly be transitioned into a victory for youth gender medicine?

Read the rest of this article here. It was published on September 23 by Quillette, thanks to editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann.