TRIGGERnometry - "Children Are Being Irreversibly Damaged" - James Esses

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

SPONSORS:  Ridge Wallet: Use Code “TRIGGER ” for 10% off your order at https://www.ridge.com/TRIGGER - Better Help: Online counselling and therapy - get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/TRIGGER - Former barrister James Esses was expelled from a volunteer counsellor role at Childline, as well as his university course, for launching a public petition trying to safeguard therapy and counselling for vulnerable children with gender dysphoria. - Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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There was a study done on children who take puberty blockers. And in this study, over 90% of those children went on to take cross-sex hormones. So we have to think about what's going on here, actually. If we leave them B, they settle into themselves. If we start them down this path of irreversible puberty blockers, they're on a one-way street towards kind of full medical transitioning. Are you tired of using bulky old wallets, giving you a... bulge where you don't want it to be. My old wallet was massive, so it brought all the ladies to the yard, which was a huge distraction and got in the way of my esteemed work on trigonometry.

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Our brilliant guest today is a former childline counsellor and a trainee psychotherapist, James S. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you on the show. You've got an interesting story to tell us, so why don't we just get straight into that? Tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you where you are? And most importantly, what is it part of your journey that brings you to be sitting here talking to us? Sure. So, yes, the last few years have been quite surreal for me. I started off my career as a criminal barrister working in the law. I didn't find it as fulfilling as I thought it might. I wanted to do something else. I decided as on a whim to take up a volunteering. counseling role at Childline, the children's charity, where I was counselling young people every week for almost about five years. And I found that so fulfilling that I decided I wanted it to become my life, and I decided to undertake training to become a psychotherapist. Until last year, I was three years into a master's degree in psychotherapy. But I was beginning to get concerned about the issue of sex and gender in relation to children, and particularly

young children struggling from gender dysphoria and being told that they're not. They were trapped in the wrong bodies. And I immersed myself in the research and the literature and the studies on this topic. And I just became more and more concerned about what was happening. I decided I had to do something to kind of speak out about this. The government were proposing banning conversion therapy. And there was a concern that this could step into banning ethical, explorative therapy for these children who were really struggling. So I launched a government petition asking them to safeguard therapy.

Within a few months, I had been expelled from my master's to grow. over email and also let go from my volunteering role at Childline. So I feel that I've, I'm the perfect example of cancel culture in relation to this sex and gender debate, which is so sensitive but so important. Well, we'll talk about that part of it in a second, but you know when you said you became concerned about this issue? Was it because you were sort of online mainlining YouTube videos about trans? Or were you, or was you, or was your, you, or was your, you, you're, you, concern prompted by what you were seeing in your counselling work? Very much the latter. As I said, I was doing this for five years and every year that went by,

there were more and more children coming through on a weekly basis saying that they felt that they were trapped in the wrong body. They were also younger and younger in age. And I'd be speaking to some 10, 11-year-olds who were telling me that they were trans and that they wanted to transition. And when I was gently trying to explore with them, what does trans mean? What does puberty mean? What does sex and gender mean? They couldn't even offer up a coherent answer because they were far too young, actually. But they did know they were trans. Even though they didn't know those other things. They for some reason knew they were trans. Correct. Well, this is what they were saying. Clearly, they were in a state of distress. It wasn't my

role to judge, of course, and it wasn't my role either to advise. My role was to explore, as we would for any other mental health condition or situation which somebody is struggling within themselves. But coupled with this is the potentially irreversible path these children are going down. I'm sure we can get onto this a bit. But, you know, I was hearing about these children wanting to be put on puberty blockers and then wanting to progress onto cross-sex hormones and even irreversible surgery. And this was concerning for me because as soon as I started reading the studies on this, I was seeing that for the vast majority of children, if left untouched and just offered explorative therapy,

they will settle into themselves and their biological sex. But unfortunately, once children start on puberty blockers, again, the studies show that it's a bit of a slippery slope towards further medicalization. It's such a red-hot sensitive topic for understandable reasons. Did you know, will you not aware, James, of what you were getting yourself into when you started to speak out? Or did you just simply think that this was something that you had to do? I didn't think what I was saying was particularly controversial. And I was coming at this from a therapeutic point of view because I was training to be a therapist and the idea of offering open exploration for the clients that are in front of us.

But I was finding that gender dysphoria, and we can talk about the meaning of that maybe in a bit, but it was being treated in a way that was quite different to any other mental health condition. For me, it was the only condition in which the proposed treatment was to affirm. the distressing thoughts inside somebody's head. If we compare it to something like body dysmorphia, for example, where people think that they're potentially, you know, hugely obese or extremely unattractive, the way for a therapist to engage with that is not to say,

yes, you're right. But actually, here we were being told and almost instructed by our training institutes to affirm somebody. So if they say they're in the wrong body, they must be. And why do you think that is? think that is? Why do you think that we've gone down this path? Because as you said, every other therapy or every other condition, you wouldn't affirm what the person is saying if they have body dysmorphia. But why is it with gender dysphoria? We do that. I mean, there's a few

reasons for that. I think part of it, I think, is out of a desire to be seen to be polite and to be respectful. And I support those aims, but I think it goes too far. So, for example, I had a conversation with a senior clinician who's working with children in this space recently. And they said that they are very mindful about using language that is potentially offensive, even if it's medically incorrect. So an example of that is, and I see this all the time, particularly in school resources, telling children that sex is assigned at birth. So this is factually and medically untrue. sex isn't assigned at birth, it's observed, it's recorded. But this clinician said that she would continue to use this language, even though it was medically incorrect, because she didn't want to

offend young people. And for me, that's a serious concern. And we used the term gender dysphoria. What does it actually mean to have gender dysphoria? What is gender dysphoria? It's a recognised mental health condition. It's basically a mismatch between how one feels about themselves and their actual physical body, and often accompanying it's this kind of significant amount of distress, understandably. Crucially, in the UK, in order to legally transition or in order to medically transition, you must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria. And this I find interesting, because the other side of the argument always say, you shouldn't pathologise being trans. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. At the same time,

they say you must offer us potentially irreversible medication and surgery to deal with this. And for me, that's wholly inconsistent. And you know, you can't have it both ways. And this is one of the reasons that I think this issue is so difficult to talk about, but also so necessary to talk about because I've said from day one, the trans issue is what will break a lot of this whole thing that we talk about and have talked about on the show a lot, because I am deeply liberal when it comes to live your life the way you want to live it,

be who you want to be, et cetera. But when you start talking about children and taking them on the path, you're inevitably going to end up with what we are now seeing, which we've all been predicting for some time, which is there will be large numbers of people who are detransitioning, who regret what they did, who regret being encouraged in doing, and we'll get people like that on the show to talk about it.

so there was a lot in the desire to be polite in a desire to be accommodating in the desire to be affirming damage was done and probably continues to be done but do you feel that we've made progress in reversing some of this craziness in terms of you know we had marcus evans from the tavistock clinic there's been a report into that now which says that it's completely unfit for the purpose of helping children who are suffering in this way and other things have happened recently i think Stonewall also where the government and institutions are sort of starting to realize this isn't a clear-cut issue of being nice to people. There's some real concerns. Do you think we're making progress? Very slowly. It does feel that the tide is beginning to turn, but I'm inundated

daily with emails from concerned parents revealing to me what has been taught to their very young children at school, what they're being exposed to online, the organisations or charities that they're engaging with. Give us some examples. Okay, I can talk about some resources that I've come across that have been taught in primary and secondary schools, which very much seems to be a way of getting gender identity in through the back door. So, for example, a parent flagged a module to me in a computing class for young people. I think the age was about 13, 14. And the class was for the purpose of describing to children how computing language works, which is in binary coding. The teaching instructions that the teachers were meant to utilize wanted them towards the end of the

class to emphasize that computing language can be distinguished from human beings who are inherently non-binary in gender. What gender identity theory has to do with computing language is beyond me, but that's very much trying to, I think, infiltrate and get this ideology in through the back door. I've come across primary schools using books and resources suggesting to children, A, that sex is assigned at birth, but B, if they are, for example, a young boy who likes the colour pink or wants to grow their hair longer, or they're a young girl who likes to play football, that actually, rather than just being gender atypical, they might actually be trapped in the wrong body. I could go on. There's, it's quite strange, really. There's a, there's a

from a book talking about pride and it's got flags, all the different flags from the different genders and sexualities that there are, all very colourful, as we know. And then there's a box for straight and a box for cis. It's just the blank white page. There's nothing there. And I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a young person and I can imagine that when they're looking at all of these bright, amazing, colourful flags and then to be cis and straight is just the white page. What young person would want to identify with that? I feel that it's been pushed upon children is almost stale or boring. And I often see the word celebrate in these school materials.

We should celebrate being trans. But I think about all the young people in society who aren't celebrated very often for just being themselves. And now there might be an opportunity for them to be celebrated simply for coming out and saying, I'm trans, I'm non-binary. It feels like a form of coercion. And do you really think that a child would want to come out as not? non-binary or trans in order to be celebrated because the reality is, as somebody who has taught for many, many years, kids just want to fit in. Kids don't really want to stand out. The vast

majority of them, they just want to be part of the group. And I think we can say that that's how we were when we were that age, surely. I do take your point, but I don't agree. I think the messaging that's coming from a lot of these organizations is very powerful. Mermaids, a charity that I'm particularly concerned about, and we can speak about that in a bit. They've got a podcast for young people. And in a recent episode, the message they put out young people was, if you are trans, you are helping society. Who's not going to be influenced by this, particularly a young child,

and particularly children who are in a state of flux? I mean, when we think about puberty, everything around you is changing, your entire being, your physiology is changing. You're trying to discover yourself. And here you have people saying, you know, basically come and join us and you will be welcomed and you will be potentially even celebrated. I see a lot of alienation as well from people's families. So again, Mermaids in this podcast,

there was a question from a young person about families struggling with misgendering them. And the podcast host weren't empathetic or tried to see it from a parent's point of view. They said, family isn't blood. What message is this sending to young people? And do you think that's part of the reason why we've seen more and more children transitioning,

more and more children identifying as non-binary trans. Do you think that's the reason? Or do you just simply think it's part of it is also because we never talked about it. It was taboo, therefore people didn't want to say that they were that particular identity. I think it's a bit of both in reality. The difficulty is the pathway that young people

are put on right now. As I said, all the studies show it's a bit of a slippery slope. So I mentioned earlier, I think it's 80% of children who just have therapy eventually settle into the biological sex. There was a study done on children who take puberty blockers. And in this study, over 90% of those children went on to take cross-sex hormones. So we have to think about what's going on here, actually. If we leave them B, they settle into themselves. If we start them down this path of irreversible puberty blockers, they're on a one-way street towards. kind of full medical transitioning. And we talked earlier about gender dysphoria

and you described it as a recognized mental health. How did you phrase it? Mental health condition. Mental health condition. What does that mean exactly? Because the reason I ask is you are well versed in all this stuff, we less so and a lot of people maybe coming to this issue for the first time. And I think this is probably the wrong way to look at it,

but to a lot of people a mental health condition, what that sounds like is this is somebody's brain that's not working the way that it should be working, right? So when you say it's a mental health condition, what does that mean exactly? Well, I think for many you can still be a stigmatizing term, but we have to think that mental health conditions are quite diverse in range and can range from basic anxiety and depression all the way up to kind of more serious mental health conditions, schizophrenia, personality disorders, etc. As I said, the reason this is a mental health condition is because there's a mismatch between one's physical body and how one feels about themselves inherently and the distress that comes along with that.

So when I use that term, and it's a recognised term in the DSM, which is basically the International Manual that classifies mental health conditions, that's simply there to recognize what these individuals are going through. But again, gender dysphoria, as far as I can see, is the only mental health condition in which potentially the proposed. treatment is to alter one's physical body. I mean, if we take another example of anorexia, for example, the proposed treatment is not to undergo liposuction. And for many, that might be quite a stark comparison, but it's much the same because these individuals are feeling something about the body that isn't quite right. There's another condition you may have heard of it. It's called body integrity identity disorder. I don't know if you've heard of that. So this is a a condition, it's quite a rare condition, but it's where people feel that a piece of their body

doesn't belong to them, almost that it's wrong or that it's bad. And often they will want it to be amputated. They might just feel that their arm shouldn't belong to them, and they want to get it amputated. The NHS will not amputate your arm. No matter how much you hate it, no matter how much you feel it shouldn't belong to you and isn't a part of you, they will not amputate your arm. Bigotts. But I'm coming across studies and stories of young people in the late 10th. years being offered double mastectomies by the NHS for gender dysphoria because they feel that their breasts do not belong to them. So we're talking about things like puberty blockers.

What actually happens if you take puberty blockers at the age of 1213? Let's actually have that conversation. Well, the age you take it on is absolutely crucial actually. Because, for example, if you take puberty blockers in advance of starting puberty, and then you go on straight away from and transition across sex hormones, your body is still technically in a prepubescent state. And so what that can lead to is, for example, infertility. And this is happening more and more, actually. So I think the age is crucial. And we're finding actually that younger and younger children have been off with these puberty blockers

because the message is we want the transition to be as smooth for you as possible. So let's halt things as early as possible. But that can have significant ramifications, particularly if people later change their mind. But puberty blockers, I mean, this is a lot of it. This is still experimental medication. We don't have long-term studies on a lot of this, but it does what it says on the tin. I mean, it basically holds one's puberty. What we don't know from the dates in the studies, because it hasn't been around long enough, is the long-term effects. Although I read a study recently suggesting that puberty are causing potentially untold developmental issues for these young people, whether it's to do with their bone growth and development or even potentially their brain development. Well, I mean, look, that makes complete sense because when you go through puberty, your bones thicken and they become stronger, your muscles develop both male and female. So if you're putting puberty blockers in, don't you effectively have the body of a child for the rest of your life? Well, again, it depends, you know, if you come off them, sorry, the expectation is that you will resume a normal puberty.

Now, I would always question what that is, because if we have interfered with a body's natural function, you can never say that they have then gone through a natural puberty because they simply haven't. But yes, for many of them, depending on how long they've been taking it, etc., it can potentially affect their bodies overall in terms of how they develop. And what about the counter-argument? Don't these puberty blockers help these kids and don't they have good outcomes as a result of transitioning?

And we hear a lot about, which is true, that people who suffer from gender dysphoria in this way have a higher suicide rate than the rest of the population and so on. Isn't this all designed to help them alleviate some of that awful distress that they're experiencing? For some. And that's why I've never called for a complete ban on these forms of treatment because I think for some it is the only resort. Although I think when it comes to strong experimental medication

and then irreversible surgery, it should probably be a last result. always want to be from a therapeutic perspective. But yes, for some it probably is appropriate. But again, I speak to many parents who were told this message by the school, by the doctor, by these charities. They allowed the children to go on puberty blockers, to take the cross-sex hormones, even to end up having surgery eventually, and their children are as suicidal as ever. And you bring up the point with parents, where are we in this country with parental consent? because that always seemed to me, I don't know what the case is in the UK and in England specifically, but the idea that, for example, parents are not being told that their child presents as a different gender,

whatever that means in school, and they're not being told that, or parents being essentially forced to consent on behalf of children to things that they wouldn't consent if they weren't sort of harassed into it or whatever. Like, that to me has always seemed strange. These are young people who are not allowed by law to make a decision about whether to drink half a glass of beer, but they can take puberty blockers and take other drastic action. What is the situation right now with that? Well, the point you just made is absolutely crucial,

and I can never get my head around the fact that, yes, a child might not be able to buy a lottery ticket or even vote in an election but can consent to potentially irreversible medication that is experimental in nature. You know, we do have to wonder what's going on here. it's wholly inconsistent. I find parents have been completely frozen-eight, actually. Give you some examples. I mentioned mermaids earlier. They've got a youth forum.

It's kind of like an online chat room, and there's moderators from people who work at mermaids. I saw some screenshots recently. This young 13-year-old girl had come through and had said that she was trans. She didn't like her breasts, but her parents wouldn't give her a breast binder because there's health risks associated with that.

Let's just stop a second. What does that mean a breast binder? Breast binders are basically materials that are used to kind of compress one's breasts and to give the appearance of not having them. It's often seen as kind of an early stage towards potentially transitioning. And what are the effects of that on the body? Significant. And again, studies are showing that people can be left with chronic pain, back problems,

even affecting breathing and lung functionality. And particularly the young people who use them off. often want to wear them for as long as possible because they want to present as not having breasts, but actually the longer you wear them, if you don't wear them under proper supervised guidance, the results can be quite bad indeed. So we can see why a parent wouldn't necessarily want their child using this. Anyway, so this young person sent that message on the forum. A mermaid's moderator, an adult, came back straight away

and offered to send out a breast binder in the post anonymously behind their parents back to them. Wow. Okay I mean Whenever I touch upon this subject I always find myself getting very upset Because Having taught, I taught secondary and I also taught primary

When you're talking about 10 and 11 year old children They have no concept of consequences Their brains have developed to the point Where they can understand that certain actions of consequences Which is why children do the things that they do When are we going to start to have an honest conversation about this, James? Because it still seems to me that we're dealing with narratives when we talk about the trans issue.

I mean, we've robbed our children. One of the beauties of childhood, of puberty of teenage years has always been the ability to explore, to try things out. I mean, if we think back to old-fashioned kind of emoes or goths or whatever, you know, it's a time to just play around and explore and figure out who you are in this world and make mistakes. and then do something different. What we've done here, by forcing children at such a young age

to make potentially irreversible decisions, we've robbed them of the opportunity to experiment, regret, and then move on. Your question was about, you know, when is the narrative going to change? I don't know, and we'll come on to this in a bit, but, you know, I spoke out about this and I was cancelled. I know many others, including many other therapists, doctors, teachers, who are raising concerns about this in their own institutions who are also being shut down.

But I think if the public at large knew exactly what was going on, I think they'd be absolutely shocked. And before we move on, one thing that I really want to talk with you about is what do you think about the link with autism and people who want to transition, identify as trans? Because it now appears, particularly in girls, that there's a connection. Significant connection.

I think comorbidities are absolutely crucial. Autism is a crucial one, just to say there are others, for example, previous traumatic experiences. Also, internalised homophobia seems to be quite a big one because actually the majority of people who come out as trans end up coming out as gay. So they're transing away the gay potentially? Well, potentially. I've heard anecdotally that among some family units, they would far rather have a child who is trapped in the wrong body and straight than gay. The autism link is particularly concerning, actually. But again, myself and colleagues are often castigated for even trying to draw a link between these things. It's very concerning. So the industry is not ready to have an investigation into autism and trans and what the links may be,

even though it's very important, because if somebody is saying that they've got gender dysphoria and they're autistic, you might be able to look at the autism as a reason why they're feeling the gender disfeworthy. dysphoria? Well, precisely so. I mean, Hillary Cass, senior clinician, is currently undertaking an independent review into medicine and treatment for gender identity amongst children and looking into Tavistock. She released her interim report actually a few weeks ago, but this is something that she

is particularly concerned about and it's flagged it in the report. So I'm hopeful that that will help to uncover a bit more about the link between autism and gender dysphoria and how we can best treatise it going forward. But if we're prevented as clinicians from even having the conversation in the first place, there's nowhere we can go. Hey, Constantine, do you want better mental health? I'm from Russia. We don't have mental health. So how do you deal with mental health? You drink vodka, then go out and wrestle bear. If you live, you feel better. If you die, you're not real men. What about the bear's feelings? It's Russian bear. It has no feelings.

People don't always realize that physical symptoms, like headaches, teeth grinding, and even digestive issues can be indicators of stress. And let's not forget about doom scrolling, not sleeping enough, sleeping too much, under-eating and overeating. Sleeping too much, under-eating. This is Western disease. Therapy has really helped me in my life to concentrate and focus. It's really important to have someone impartial who you can talk to about the tricky

issues that you're struggling to deal with. has played a really important role in helping me to deal with my ADHD and become better in all areas of my life. Why is he telling them how weak he is? Drink vodka, feel better. BetterHelp is customised online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist. So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to.

Trigonometry funds get 10% of their first month at BetterHelp.com forward slash trigger especially if they're not real men. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P-T-E-L-P-com slash trigger. So let's talk about your own story then because it's not an unfamiliar one to us on this show. We've covered things like this a lot. So there you are, a child-line counselor. Yeah.

You're starting to see that younger and younger and greater numbers of children are presenting with this issue. you start to become concerned, you do some research, what happens then? I do the research and I think I've got to do something. I have to try and start a conversation about this. And it didn't feel that within the therapeutic bodies I was operating within even my own training institution that these conversations were happening.

I co-founded a group that I'm part of called thoughtful therapists who wanted to explore with this issue more. As I said, I started a government petition. and what it said was government, if you're going to ban conversion therapy, which is an apparelan practice, please safeguard explorative therapy for young people. And the government actually responded, we got 10,000 signatures, and the government responded very favourably saying they would protect the independence of clinicians in this space, which was excellent. But I attracted negative attention online from some pretty hardcore trans activists I'm going to term them as. so there was some noise online I found out that they had made some complaints about me

to my university institution and then one day out of the blue last May I think it was a Wednesday I received an email from the deputy CEO of my course and as I mentioned I was just about to complete my third year of this master's in fact I'd just been given permission to set up a private practice in therapy so things were moving in the right direction for me

anyway this email said we've had some complaints about you and your petition and associate publicity, can you come in for an informal conversation? Now, I was a bit taken aback by that because I didn't feel I'd done anything wrong, but I said, of course I will, and I expressed my anxiety about being called in for this. It seemed quite out of the blue, and I had a response saying, please let me reassure you, there was absolutely nothing to be anxious about whatsoever. It is simply an informal chat to discuss things.

So it was scheduled for two days later on the Friday. I hadn't been provided with any evidence or anything at this stage. I'd just been told there were these complaints. Fast forward less than 24 hours later onto the Thursday and an email drops into my inbox entitled Termination of Contract. And it was a two-paragraph email and it told me in that that I was being expelled

with immediate effect from my course and that the conversation on Friday would not be taking place. So you were getting expelled immediately from your course? Why was that? Well, they said because I'd brought them into disrepute. Again, they didn't provide any evidence of this whatsoever. I say, and when we talk about my ongoing litigation, that it was because they were discriminating against me

because of my beliefs in this space. I find it so difficult to believe, James, that you started an online petition, and that immediately led to you getting fined. Was there no appeals process? Could you not have said to them? You know, this needs to go further higher up the chain? Every step of the way they ignored and flouted their own policies.

I went to respond to the email immediately to express my dismay. I thought, surely they've made a mistake. You know, surely we can figure this out. They had already blocked my email address, so I couldn't respond to it. They blocked your email address? Immediately. I then thought, right, I need to go and have a look at these policies myself and see what's going on.

here and what my rights of appeal are. So I went to log into the university's kind of intranes platform. I was blocked from that as well, so I couldn't access the policies themselves. Within a few hours, I just had a bad feeling in the back of my mind. I don't know what it was that told me to do this, but I thought I would just have a look at their Twitter. And that same evening, they had posted a tweet stating that they had expelled a student and stating their solidarity with the LGBT Plus community. And to anyone who was aware of what was going on and actually, you know, it had become quite well known what I was doing in the space, the complaints that were made against me,

people would know that was me instantaneously. So as if it wasn't enough that they had ended my training and my future vocational hopes over an email, they thought they'd stick the boot in and announce it on Twitter. I'm left speechless. And there was no recourse to complain. There was no recourse to take it further. There was nothing of that nature. I have never had a single conversation with anyone.

I've never been presented with a single policy or piece of evidence in this space. I was never offered an opportunity to appeal. As I said, they flouted their policies from start to finish. Under their policies, there should be numerous steps, including an adjudication panel, a chance to represent myself. All of this went out the window. Most striking me was that in their policy it talks about potential sanctions, for example, when immediate expulsion would be suitable.

and the type of offences for which immediate expulsion would be suitable are individuals who have committed a sexual assault on campus or defrauded the institution. And seemingly they are comparing what's my beliefs about safeguarding children and about sex and gender to sexual assault or fraud. It's interesting that you're telling us the story because I think to anyone, listen or to most people listening, this will seem beyond credibility, how ridiculous what you're telling us is. but Francis and I we were invited to speak one of Britain's best private schools recently and when we turned up a few of the teachers kind of went

do you want a tour of the school and we were like oh yeah we'd love one and they showed us one room and then dragged us into a pub to tell us what was happening at their school while looking behind them over their shoulder every few seconds and I think it seems like there are certain institutions

where there is a culture that exists in which what you did was equivalent to sexual assault in people's minds because of how toxic this whole conversation has become. So did this happen before you were let go by childline or after? No, childline followed a few weeks later. Okay. Childline were aware of my concerns in this space because I wanted to be transparent.

And in fact, I was concerned about some of childlines practices. For example, their webpage on gender identity very much reads to me and others as kind of a roadmap towards transitioning. It doesn't even talk about therapy. And there's a lot of young people that access this. So I was asking, could I input into the web page? Could I have some discussions? And for a while, they entertained me,

and they said that they were listening to my feedback. I said that I wanted to publicly identify myself as a child line counselor as part of my writings, etc. And they said to me that they didn't want me to do that. And basically, there was a conversation around that, and they decided ultimately that they would have to, to let me go. I was invited onto a video call with one of these senior management members. I thought to discuss the possibility of me identifying myself publicly as a counsellor because, you know,

why shouldn't I? It's the truth I was counselling there. And he simply told me not to come in for my next shift. Did he explain why? He said that what I was saying in this space and my concerns that I was raising could put young people off coming through to childline in the first place. But I found that very concerning because what I was raising with him was actually concerns about what happens when young people are coming through to child line, what they're being exposed to, the type of counselling that they're being offered. But for him, this was beyond the pale, clearly. Do you think there's some truth to that argument in that, you know, you clearly have strong views about this issue? And we've conceded during our discussion already that there are some people for whom transition may be the right option. And there may be young children for whom it is eventually the right option

who may be put off by the fact that someone with your views is working as a counsellor at Charin. Do you think there's some merit to that argument? I don't. And the reason is that since time immemorial, therapists have had to engage in this idea of it's called bracketing. It's basically, you know, setting aside one's personal beliefs and views on things and to deal with a client that's in front of them. And that's how I've always operated in Childline. As I said, I was doing this for five years.

I'd never received a mark against me. In fact, I'd received a lot of positive feedback, including about the way I engaged with children with gender. Sure, but do you not see how from a 10-year-old's perspective, seeing you being very vocal on this issue online, may cause them to think, well, this may be not the organization to which I need to go to get support? If a young person reading that simply wants to be affirmed and told, yes, you should transition and yes, here is how you get medication, then I suppose so. For a young person who thinks I'm struggling in myself, I want somebody who will explore this neutrally, objectively, and empathetically with me, I don't see how it could. So where are you now, James,

with the process? I was left with no choice but to start litigation against my university course and actually also my therapeutic regulatory body, who seemed to have had some hand in what happened to me. And this will come out in the wash, I suspect. But yes, I sought legal advice and I was told that I had a very strong claim for discrimination against my beliefs in this space. I had to crowd fund the money as so many people do nowadays. And today, I think I've raised

just over 80,000 pounds from concerned members of the public, which has been extremely... We need to get expelled. I'm just kidding, too. No, look, it's a hell of a lot of money. It's not going into my back pocket. It goes straight to the floor.

But, yeah, I mean, the outpouring of support and generosity from complete strangers who owe me nothing has been fantastic. But it shows the strength of feeling in this space, actually, whether it's people who are concerned about women's rights or the gay community or children's well-being. Huge strength of feeling. So I've instigated litigation.

It's moving quite slowly as these things tend to do. There's some preliminary hearings in June, and then it will proceed to a trial probably at the end of this year or the start of next year, but I'm very much wanting my day in court over this. And what are you hoping to achieve? Well, it's become about a lot more than just me, actually, to be honest. In some ways it feels that my reputation has been kind of irreparably damaged,

and the roots towards me qualifying as a therapist now appear limited. For me, it's about the bigger picture, actually, about what this issue represents for society, particularly around sex and gender, but also freedom of speech and cancel culture. And I want to make sure that no institutional university is allowed to do this to one of its students ever again. and I'm hoping that this can set a marker actually and set a standard. And universities will think twice before discriminating against their own students because they'll wind up in court. James, is there really no way back for you as a therapist? You sound like someone who is passionate about this type of work.

You sound like somebody who wants to work with children. It just seems desperately sad that you're not going to be able to do this vocation. I feel terribly sad. if I go back to Childline that was probably the most fulfilling part of my life and I was going there every week for five years and I still sometimes walk past that building

and I feel this wave of emotion and sadness that I'm not in there helping these young people that I care about and I want to support them through their own journeys in life. I hope that once this case resolved itself I will be able to carry

on of my training elsewhere I've not given up wanting to help people. I may just have to help them in a different space. But for me, the well-being of children is more important than anything. And actually, once you open your eyes to what's going on in this space, you cannot unsee it. And so I think this is going to become my life's work one way or another, even if I've suffered personally as a result of it. And at this point, there's no chance of you going to another university, taking up your qualification again. Is that, let's say, firing or sacking or whatever you want to call it?

Is that too much of a black mark against your name and nobody also wants to take you on? Well, the therapeutic community is quite small and everyone knows everything. So certainly until my name has been cleared in a court of law, I can't see how someone would want to take me on. The issue isn't the reason I chose this course was because it was on weekends. And I have a full-time job to keep a roof over my head. I'm not in a position to go down to a part-time role. This was basically the only course that I could do whilst also professional. hiding for myself financially.

And has this affected your job, your full-time job? I have to be careful about what I say here because I've, yes. And at one point, and I won't go into any great detail on this, but at one point there was a kind of investigation of sorts into me because a complaint was made to my employer. But that's resolved itself now because they followed due process and the right outcome, I believe, was reached. But yes, at one point it did look to me like my livelihood could be under threat as well.

And have the therapeutic community been to you? Have lots of people been reaching out? Have people been talking to? Have they been saying the standard things that we get? Really support your work, but dare not come out and say that I do? I've had a mix. I've had a hell of a loss of support from like-minded therapists who have equal concerns in this space. I've also had the opposite.

and it feels that a lot of the therapeutic community have almost become kind of activists in their own right. Part of my case, which has been extended, is that my therapeutic body was running a training course for therapists on conversion therapy, and the individual, I can't name them at this stage, running the training program, spent a big chunk of the training course bad-mouthing me and my case and accusing me of abusing the law and things like that. one of the people attending the training happened to be recording this and has sent it through to me and this now forms part of the basis of my case but I found therapists who are willing to have kind of badmouthed me online

I've been shown screenshots from therapeutic Facebook groups who when they discovered that I've been expelled were having a mini celebration and party a basis so I think it depends which way one's ideology lies but for people who are proponents of gender ideology they view my expulsion and elimination from the profession as something to be celebrated for the therapists that I know who are concerned about the well-being of children. This is a mark against the therapeutic profession and they are fearful,

fearful themselves of being cancelled in their own right. Well, we wish you all the best with the case. We hope you get your day in court. And I know it probably doesn't feel like this way to you right now because having been in a similar position somewhat, I understand it's very personal and emotional. But over time, I think you'll see that this is part of the bigger thing that you're talking about and the stand you've taken will form part of the process of pushing back against some of the excesses of what you're talking about. So all the best to you.

Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show. If people want to follow your work, where do they do that? Twitter. I'm pretty active on Twitter. It's just my name, James S's. I've got a substack where I'm writing more in-depth pieces on this. That's called transparency. And I've got a cryo-justice page which keeps people abridged about what's going on with my litigation, and they can follow updates through that as well. Great. I look forward to finding out how it goes.

And of course, as always, we have one more question for you, which is, as always, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Yeah, so for me, this is an interesting one because I think we spend so much of our lives talking about how we should live and not enough time talking about how we should die, because death is inevitable for all of us. And so that is why I'm a strong proponent of discussions around assisted dying. I've been a longstanding supporter of a charity called Dignity and Dying. I've seen legislation passed abroad, which has offered up assisted dying

for people who are in the most horrific situations and who want to die with dignity. In our country, we don't have assisted dying, and people are being forced to either end their lives in the most inhumane way or take themselves off to a Dignatask clinic, for example, and the fear of prosecution hanging over themselves of their family's heads, people shouldn't suffer. I fundamentally believe

that people should be able to die with dignity. So I think we need to have a discussion about this, both in House of Parliament, but also in society more generally. It's an interesting point. We had Dr. John Wyatt on the show a while ago who comes very much on the opposite point of view. But yeah, you're right.

This is an issue that seems to be coming to the fall one way or another. So thanks for bringing that to our attention. ask you a couple of questions from our supporters that only they will see on our locals. But in the meantime, James Suss, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for over me. And thank you for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or a show.

All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. In the US at the moment, I've seen a call for potentially launching a group lawsuit based on puberty blockers. It's only a matter of time until that reaches the UK.