TRIGGERnometry - Transgender Clinic Whistleblower Speaks Out

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

Marcus Evans is a Psychoanalyst in private practice and formerly served as Consultant Psychotherapist and Associate Clinical Director of Adult and Adolescent Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod 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

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. I'm delighted to say that our brilliant guest today is a psychoanalyst and a Tavistock whistleblower. Marcus Evans, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me. It is great to have you on. I've given you a slightly tantalizing introduction there. For any of our viewers who may not be familiar with Tavistock or the article you've written, and Quillette or any other work that you've done publicly. Just tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are? What has been the journey that leads you to be sitting here talking

to two problematic people like us? Okay, so I'm a psychoanalyst, originally trained as a psychiatric nurse, worked in psychiatry for over 40 years. And for the last 20 of those in the NHS, I worked in the Tavistock as a senior member of staff, part of the management. And then I retired from the NHS 18 months ago and I took up a post as a governor, which is a voluntary post on the Tabistock border governors. And I resigned over one of the issues that was being discussed at the time. And we'll get into that in quite a bit of detail, but we have a lot of fans all over the world. So can you give everybody an idea of what the significance of the Tabastock Trust is in the UK? Because there's been several issues that have come out of that.

I'm sure we'll talk about the Kiribel case, etc. But just give everybody a broad picture of what we're talking about here. Okay, so the Tavostok is the smallest trust in the NHS. So it's a publicly owned hospital. But it's a specialist hospital insofar as it's the biggest psychotherapy training institution in the country. And its main training is in psychonytic psychotherapy and child psychotherapy. and systemic family therapy. That's what it's really known for in terms of its history,

which is about 80, 100 years, actually. It's its centenary. But so if you picture, although it's a mental health trust, there aren't beds and inpatient psychiatric units. It's lots of individual rooms and group rooms. and people come for treatment on a sort of session basis, and then you've got a lot of senior staff and then a lot of trainees. That's basically the tabasper.

And it has been embroiled in a, well, a scandal is probably the one wrong word to put it, but it is a scandal of sorts around the gender transitioning, change of transitioning of young children, and in particular the Kira Bell case. Could you dive into that and explain to us what is happening at the moment? Yeah, so if you can picture, the sort of history of the Tabastok is in psychological work. It's not in medication or genetics. That all goes on at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley. So this is the sort of, you know, it's psychotherapeutics looking into the psychological functioning of the mind.

but about 20 years ago a service was set up called JIDS, which was an experimental service, is basically seeing kids who are gender dysphoric. And the thing that set it apart from the rest of the trust was that there was a sort of recourse to sort of treating their problems hormonally. And this was a sort of experimental and controversial treatment at the time. So in a way, it moved away from the Tavostock's traditions, if you like. I mean, it's not, you know, some kids will be given medication, but it's not in the child

and family department, but it's not what the Tavostok's known for. Tavostok's known for psychological work. But this, the Gid service, was a sort of move away from that. So how I came to be involved was, I've been part of the management for about 20. years. I was called the head of nursing and then I was in charge of the adult and adolescent department for about five years. But my wife worked in the Jid service in about 2005 and she went into the surface because she was interested in working at the Tabastock. She had got another bit of her job was doing training. And she quickly came quite uncomfortable with the fact that a lot of

kids were sort of, they come very determined, they're very fixing their view, that they're in the wrong gender and that they want to transition and they want to be given pills to transition. And the taberstock was the sort of psychological goatkeeper. So you go to the tabistock, you're seen by the sabbistock, you're assessed there, and then you're moved on to UCL, where the hormones are given. and my wife became very unhappy with what was going on back then. Marcus, sorry to interrupt it. You keep interrupting because I'll carry on.

No, no, but it's all great. I just want to clarify for the viewers and listeners, when you say kids, how old are these children? Well, this whole area has changed exponentially. So if we went back to the first 30 years in my time in psychiatry, there were small numbers of people that were transition, post-18, mainly male to female, sort of 85%. In the last 15, 20 years, it's been this exponential rise and a completely different cohort. And these are 85% female to male, and they're getting

younger and younger. So I think in her day, there were a lot of 15, 14, 15, 15, 16-year-olds. now you're getting kids of 10, 11, 12. So the age at which kids are wanting to transition is getting pushed lower. And the age at which people are prepared to give hormones has got lower and lower. That's the time has gone on. And you mentioned that your wife was becoming increasingly unhappy at this trend. What was it that she was concerned about? Well, basically, our usual approach would be to do a thorough psychological investigation.

of what was going on with the kid, what's going on with the family. Lots of these kids are on the autistic spectrum. They have all sorts of secondary comorbid issues. They're sort of socially phobic. They've got eating disorders. They may be depressed. And what she felt, there should be a thorough psychological investigation, as was the Tavostock's tradition,

into family dynamics, individual psychology, and she felt that there was too much of a willingness to sort of go along with the kid in terms of the kid's idea. They've got, there's one problem with one solution and they basically want to get through, past the gatekeepers onto UCL. That's a generalised picture, but it was a sort of predominant picture that was being presented. So I'd say, I was a part of the senior management. I say, well, what we would usually do, it's very multidisciplinary. It's not like a traditionally medically hierarchical service. You've got lots of different disciplines.

And you're used to sort of discussing and debating approaches. And I said, well, you've got to go back and challenge the culture. And she felt, she was quite a senior person by the time she'd arrived in this service, this was not welcome. It was a sort of shutting down of any, dissent or wish to examine what was going on beneath the surface for the kid, et cetera, et cetera, and she felt she got nowhere. Do you have a sense of why that was happening?

Because I imagine that people who work at the Tavistock, particularly at a senior level, these are people who've been in this field for a very long time. I imagine they all care about their patients. I imagine they all want the best for the children that come to the clinic. why would they not want feedback about concerns about the well-being of these children, do you think? Well, I mean, the thing is, is that Tabastock's a diverse place. There's lots of different departments and lots of different cultures within those departments. What I would say is that in a way, what you had here was it rapidly became apparent.

there was a politicisation of this whole area. So again, unusually, there was a very close relationship with mermaids and with gender intelligence, the track charities, and they had an unusual sort of influence over the sort of culture. Now, when I was in charge of the adult and adolescent department, I would have relationships with mind and some of the charities. but they wouldn't sort of insist on the culture or ask me to run them by the protocols for treatment, et cetera, et cetera, with separate organisation.

My prime responsibility is thinking about the people that I'm serving, the trainees and the patients and looking after the clinicians. That's my prime responsibility. And other people have got voices that all feel they should have some influence, but you'd have some distance from them. So you can keep your eye firmly on thinking about the psychological needs of the patients you're treating. So this sort of this boundary, which was sort of very sort of, you know, there was a sort of movement backwards and forwards, felt very unusual for me.

So lots of unusual things going on. And it produced, I thought, a rather, not a clinical environment that I would want to work in. Marcus, I find that very, very shocking. So essentially, you have a charity, Mermaids, which was not attached to the clinic in any shape or form. It's not a regulated NHS body, yet they were having an influence on the treatment of these children.

Well, you know, they would argue not. I would say you'd always have stakeholders. So I've outlined who my prime responsibility, and then you've got your stakeholders, and they have some influence. You know, you're trying to address what, you know, their concerns as well. I would say that as stakeholders, they had an unusually close relationship with the clinical service, and my wife felt that began to interfere with the ordinary clinical environment in which there would be debate, discussion, challenge about a particular treatment approach. You know, this is what she would be used to.

And it just wasn't happening in Jid's. So what she did, what we actually discussed and what she did was she was the first whistleblower in 2005. And the medical director at the time, David Taylor, set up a serious review of the service. He was on news night the other day because he produced this report in which he had recommendations. He felt that the sort of clinical governance of this experimental service was going off the beast, if you like. And he felt there should be much more thorough outcome measures, research, looking at the downside of treatment, all the sort of things that you would expect, particularly in an experimental treatment with vulnerable kids. However, he moved on as medical director

and not a lot changed after that initial report. And Marcus, you use a word politicisation within the clinic. What do you mean by that? Well, I think that once your sort of your decision making is based on a sort of belief, a pre-existing belief structure may be embedded within the clinicians, may be met by the parents and some of the parents and some of the kids, you're not in a clinical environment.

You see, lots of people, you know, will come into psychiatry, and when people are in a sort of chaotic state of mind and they feel that their minds are falling apart, they often focus down narrowly on there's one problem with one solution. Now, psychological health is usually based on the opposite. It's based on sort of opening things out thinking that we're complicated. We've got many different moving parts as a personality and that usually our problems are made up of all sorts of things coming together. So we're trying to sort of open things out for kids, for example, you're saying, okay, that's what you believe.

let's have a look at who you are, what's going on beneath the surface, what might be troubling you, let's open this dialogue out. So we think about things in the round. And you're not going along with fixed beliefs. There's one problem and one solution. So just one more thing. So one thing that's often talked about is that the kids completely certain. Well, for me, that's a red flag.

You know, if you're making very serious decisions, you would expect to have doubts, questions, anxieties, conflicts. The absence of those is a problem. You know, and we believe, and we know as psychoanalyst, you know, that beliefs can be driven by all sorts of forces. Not all of them healthy or rational. Now, my job is not to argue with the patient. my job is to say, okay, that's what you think, and you feel distressed if you feel I'm questioning that.

But my job is to open things out, as I said, and explore things. And Marcus, I'm really glad that you brought up because there's two points I want to explore. Number one, the influence of social media on kids and their desire to transition. And number two, the link between children who want to transition and autism. Yeah, okay. well, you know, when you're coming up to adolescents, you're very preoccupied about the way you're seen, and social media has increased that tenfold, so that we really haven't caught up what effect social media is having on us as individuals and in terms of our relationships with ourselves and with others.

And so in a way, it's as if the way I am is always now being judged from how I look from the out. outside. Well, that's always been the case in adolescence, but now it's increased tenfold, and I think it's problematic in lots of different ways, in more than just this area, all sorts of areas, because we're partly to be assessed with the outside world, that's being a human, but we've also got to look after the soul. I don't, I'm not religious in the size of, I mean, what's going on inside you. But, Marcus, aren't there also, you know, websites in particular, I think Pinterest was one that was being named encouraging children to transition or see themselves as trans? Yeah, there are websites that boast, if you feel out on a limb, a little bit odd, like you don't fit in,

well, that's probably about 50% of adolescents. I don't know what your adolescence is like, but I felt like I was a sort of square peg in a round hole. You know, come join the site, and then there's a sort of, a kind of, a, coaching, kids are coached, to get past the gatekeeping questions. And sometimes, you know, the clinicians say that the kids are almost like they're just speaking rote, what they know the clinicians are, you know, so you've got a tick box sort of scenario. These are the questions you'll be answered. These are the answers that they're looking for, you know. So, yeah, it's all very worrying. There's a cultish feel about about, about,

the social media aspect of this. So effectively there's these pages on these social media websites or websites themselves are effectively grooming children in order to transition. Yeah, I mean, certainly you don't get a helpful discourse about the downside of transition. There are lots of downsides of transition. And often it looks like a short-term solution to the anxieties and problems of puberty, if we're thinking about adolescence. but there's a long-term cost, which isn't spelled out.

Also, transitioning is not easy. It's not easy psychologically. It's not easy socially. And it's not easy in terms of the impact of the medicalization of your psychological problem. You know, you've got to have ongoing hormones. If you have, subsequently, if you have gender reassignment surgery, the surgery's got all sorts of implications. This is not an easy route. And none of that, I think, is being spelled out in the, I'm not an expert on the websites,

but this is widely documented, yeah. And Marcus, we'll come to that point in a second, but what I really want to explore, and then Constantine, by all means, take over, is the link between autism and the children who are wanting to transition. Yeah, so the thing is, my wife and I are writing a book about psychological approaches is because we feel it's a sort of vacuum that's been neglected and probably what the Tabastok should have been concentrating on for the last 20 years.

But basically, you know, if you've got sort of fragile, a kid with a fragile ego that doesn't tolerate too much conflict or anxiety, I mean, that can be all of us. We're looking for ways of getting rid of the psychological pain, as it were and sort of flattening the mind if you like and and um the autism kids who are autistic or on the autistic spectrum they struggle with conflict anxiety and psychological pain um so that they're very they're very attracted to the sort of doctrine that says basically the reason you're suffering is because of x if you do y you'll get rid of all your problems and

you can flatten all this stuff that's stirring you up. And, you know, because just puberty is very important in this in terms of the transition from being a child, often within a family or looked after by a parent, within a sort of structure. And you're transitioning into adult. The hormones are going to kickstart your secondary sex characteristics. That's got all sorts of implications for what sort of. of role you're going to play in society, what sort of sexual role, what sort of adult you're going to be, you're transitioning from being a child into an adult, is expected to work,

have relations, maybe have a family, etc., etc. So all sorts of physical, psychological, and social anxieties get sort of stirred up by puberty. And in a way, there's a wish to sort of put the break on, just sort of stop it. The problem is, If you do that, you take the kid outside their usual peer group and developmental structure in which all the kids are going through the same thing and learning on the job, as it were. Now, that's what they said. That was the rationale that's sort of like a sort of breathing space. But what we subsequently discover in the court case, it's not a breathing space at all

because 90% of the kids who start on privacy blockers are on a medical conveyor belt, which doesn't stop until cross-sex hormones, etc. So it is like trying to stop and arrest a sort of natural, physiological and psychological and the sociological process called puberty. I was going to ask you about that, Marcus, because, I mean, it's a strange question to ask someone whose job it is to make, to help people improve their mental health and well-being. But do you think this is part of a broader thing in society where we over-perth

I would argue, certain feelings. For example, yes, if you're trapped in a perpetual cycle of deep sadness, we might describe that as depression. That does not mean that experiencing sadness for an hour or for a day or even for a week in response to some really difficult events in life is abnormal. It does not mean you need to, you need quite and quite help. It just means something's happened and you're responding to it as a human would. But if we have a society which sort of says the moment you feel anything negative, we've got to treat you, we've got to help you, then it's no surprise, is it, that young children who are about to experience, as you say, a very difficult period of life, seeing that coming, maybe starting to experience bits of it, go, I need treatment,

I need medication, I need physical help, whatever it might be. Do you think there's a part of that? 100%. I think that, yeah, look, life is difficult, you know, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you know, we're faced with all sorts of psychological problems. at every, you know, every turn in life, every part of development. So, and sometimes they're thrown under this like COVID and, you know, we're having to adapt. But I think the sort of wish to describe all these experiences being some sort of sort of mental health problem, I think does a disservice to mental health and is in danger of pathologising, as you say, a lot of quite normal reactions.

I used to be in charge of a liaison service in Kings in the 80s and a guy fell off he fell off a railway bridge and he basically was paralysed he lost the use of his legs and the nurses came down and referred him to psychological medicine they said he was depressed and I thought I don't know what else you'd be you know it's a completely now I was sympathetic to them they were overwhelmed. Don't get me wrong.

So I didn't send them away. But I thought it was an interesting word. It was quite appropriate. You know, if you're paralysed, you're going to be depressed, but not in a sort of pathological way, in an ordinary way. It's part of mourning. You know, you're going to have to come in terms of the loss. And I think you're right. I think all sorts of things are being captured as part of mental health. Actually, I belong in ordinary, you know, they're just part of the slings and arrows

outrageous fortune. The other thing that goes along with this is you see when there are, you've got to look at the influence. I'm not against medication, by the way. I'm not a psychoanalyst is against medication, but there is a tendency for the drug companies to capture sort of an increasing field, say ADHD or depression or anxiety. And all of a sudden, you're sort of more and more people being sort of trapped in that diagnosis for which there is a pill. And then, you know, you go to the GP and huge numbers of people are on antidepressants. Years ago, they wouldn't have been called depressed. They weren't suffering from what I knew, pound shillings and pence as melancholia or psychotic depression for which there's medication.

You know, they're unhappy. They're miserable. They're lonely, etc., etc. that's not. So in other words, what's captured in the diagnosis of depression is massively increased and it's related to the new medications that are being provided. As I say, I just want to just reassure everyone, I'm not against medication. It can be very helpful, but I think sometimes it's too easy for us as psychiatric practitioners to give a pill to, what are ordinary psychological problems of life.

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of us, how do you know the difference between when you need help with your mental health and you're experiencing the normal things that life will throw at you and an actual, healthy, unpleasant, but yet healthy response? How do you know the difference? Well, when it's interfering, when your depression is interfering in a substantial way with your ability to conduct your ordinary life, you know, and so, we all have days when we go with COVID. And I don't know about you guys, but sometimes you get up and you just feel a bit blue.

But, you know, a sort of chat and, you know, you do something you enjoy and you can pull yourself out of it. Someone who's suffering from depression can't do that. You can't pull yourself out of it. You know, you need more than ordinary help to get yourself out of feeling blue. and it interferes with your daily functioning. Okay. Well, I just thought it was an interesting aside because I do feel that having spoken with you and with many others, it ties into the trans issue.

It's an attempt to deal with quite natural feelings that it may be uncomfortable. And coming back to that issue, what is your explanation for this? What I think people need to appreciate the extraordinary transformation of what you would. describe as the typical patient in the last 30 or 40 years, where you've gone from almost exclusively boys wanting to become women to where we are now, which is almost exclusively girls wanting to transition. How does that happen? I mean, I'm not a social, I think you've got to sort of ask sociologists and, I mean, my view would be there is a sort of misogyny. There's a sort of it's attractive being sort of macho at the moment.

You sort of get rid of your feet, the idea of a male. It's the interesting thing about the ideology is it becomes more and more rigid. You know, if you look at some of the stuff that Stonewall put out to children, you know, the gender stereotypes are so rigid. Boys like action and football, girls like, you know, pink, fluffy dolls and ballet. and, you know, my sons didn't ever conform to those stereotypes. But, you know, and nor did I in all sorts of complex ways. So I think the attractiveness of being some sort of figure who gets rid of vulnerability

doesn't really worry about what other people think is quite hard. you know and all the sort of softer side is projected into women who's seen is quite you know sensitive and in touch with their emotions and that makes them vulnerable to being hurt and this isn't true this is just a parody of the gender stereotypes but i think this ideology does create this rigid division and then people are very attracted to getting rid of their emotions being a tough guy not really anyway i sort of feel like I'm off piece, really, because the fact is, as the story unfolded, to go back to why I'm here talking about this, if I could for a bit, what then happened was my wife left the service and then

the service carried on, and I'd hear as a manager about rumbles and concerns from time to time, but the service got bigger and bigger and bigger as the demand for its clinical services. has increased and the contract increased. Until now, it's a very big part of the Tavistock. It was, you know, very small part of the Tavistock 20, 25 years ago. Now it's a very big part of the Tavistock. And what happened was when I took up this voluntary position as governor, two things landed on the governor's desk.

And as a governor, my job was to sort of oversee is the trust doing what it's supposed to be doing. We're not part of management. We're just a sort of watchdog, if you like. And two things came on the desk. One was a letter written by 10 parents whose kids were being treated by Jids. Basically what they said, it was a very detailed letter saying we had hoped our kids all got comorbid problems. We'd hope there'd be a thorough psychological investigation, etc., etc. That didn't happen. We're not happy. We feel like. We feel like our kids have been fast-tracked through to the medication. So that was one thing.

Then a colleague of mine, Dave Bell, who's probably the best-known clinician in the Tavistock, who was the staff governor previously. Previous, and we didn't overlap. I started as governor. He'd left. And basically, he'd been approached by 10 members of staff from Jids with very similar concerns to the parents.

So he'd done a report. The trust knew about it. And then the report was presented to the trust board, I think. That's right. I think that's right. And, of course, it was saying a lot of similar things. Staff felt the relationship with mermaids was too close. A lot of these kids that were being transitioned had got secondary,

and so comorbid problems, that there wasn't enough. interest in sort of debate and discussion within the culture of the service, etc, etc. What the trust did was, they were very unhappy about the report. They wouldn't let me see the report. Despite the fact I said, look, I want to see this report. If I'm going to adjudicate whether the trust is doing his job, I've got to see all the materials.

That was withheld. So I thought, that's odd. Why would you withhold that report from a, uh, governor and there were other governors that requested it as well. The second thing was, that's right. So then they set up the medical director was going to do the trust report. So several of us said, that's fine. But we'd like Dave Bell to be at the final hearing of the report

so he can hear whether the medical director's report is addressing the concerns raising by the start. No, he can't. So a sort of, I don't know, there was quite a few emails, went backwards and forwards over a sort of six-month period contesting this. And it was contested when we met. And it appeared to me that the trust wanted to use the medical directors report to bury the concerns about the service. And I, and I, and I, I could see then the extent to which the trust and its management of this service was politicised. I mean, part of the reason is that, you know, that the trust is dependent on the JID service with NHS England, as a stakeholder, gender intelligence and mermaes, extremely influential. It could put influence on NHS England. And I began to think that the political tale was wagging the clinical dog. Anyway, you know, the battles continued, as it were.

And then, to my shame, I actually voted through the medical directors report. I actually sent round an article to all of the governors saying, I thought that the medical directors report fell short of our own. answering Dave Bell's questions in quite a few key areas. So I was unhappy with the report. However, I sort of voted it through along with everyone else. Not very happy with myself. Marcus, can I just ask why you did that?

Well, because I thought they were trying to take it seriously. What I didn't, I wasn't sure about was how genuinely, they were in wanting to look at what was going on beneath the surface. Because that's what seemed really difficult. That was like a no-go area. There's a belief system and it comes back to another change. It's as if this is now longer a mental health issue. It is now a sort of consumer issue.

The child has chosen to transition. Okay. This moves it out of mental health. I never take the view that the anorexic has chosen to have anorexia, and if they don't want to eat, they're going to starve to death. That's, you know, that's not my view is to try and understand what's going on. It's not to sort of collude with that. But this seemed to be a movement into sort of idea that this was the consumer choice, and I was dead against that. So I went along with it, and not very happily.

and then the next day the trust put on the website, basically an article saying that the medical director's report had been accepted. Dave Bell's report was basically undermined by virtue of the fact they said Dave Bell had no expertise in this area. They didn't mention the fact that the medical director had no expertise in it either. And the case studies were all fictional. Now I know Dave, he's as ethical as a day as long. He'd never fictionalise those cases.

So basically, they're basically trying to, again, bury the concerns by attacking the messenger. And at that point, I knew that the trust wasn't going to listen to me. And while I'm in the Board of Governors, I'd signed a confidentiality agreement. And in a way, they got me where they wanted me, which is inside the tent, being very unhappy, but basically no one's listening. So I then resigned. Do you have a website or do you plan to have a website? Well, if you do, then EasyDNS are the company for you. Easy DNS is the perfect domain name registrar provider and web host for you. They have a track record of standing up for their clients, whether it be cancel culture, de-platform attacks or overzealous government agencies. He knows a bit

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Sign up for their newsletter, access of easy that tells you everything you need to know about technology, privacy and censorship. And Marcus, now I'm looking forward to the Kira Bell case, which she won. Can you explain to people who may not have been following that case or may not be based in the UK why that is such a landmark case now? Yeah, one or two steps in between. Just if you were... Okay. There was Posey Parker set something up at the House of Lords with Lord Mooney, and there were, hang on, there were five of us spoke. Stephanie Davis-Ary spoke about education, I spoke, Richard Bing, who's a GP professor, he spoke, Michael Laidlaw, endocrinologist from the States, and a woman from Kelsey Alliance, which is a family group from the States.

The other interesting thing, I'm learning all the time here because Posey Parker sent out invites to every MP and every Lord. Basically, one Tory MP arrived and Tammy Gray Thompson. No one else arrived. Lord Mooney had the Witt withdrawn. He'd been a Labour Party member for 40 years. So I realised he had to host the meeting, but no one would basically attend. They'd been threatened that they would have the WIP withdrawn if they attended. And so that the, as James Kirkup has written, the sort of silencing of opposition in this area, you guys will be familiar with it, is unbelievable.

No one's allowed to have a mind of their own or speak their own voice, as we saw with J.K. Rowley. Subsequent to that meeting, basically, a group of us met. My wife decided to take a judicial review with Mother A, who is a woman who's got a gender dysphoric kid, autism. My wife started the crowd justice campaign and then Kira Bell stepped in basically because my wife and I could have lost the house if we'd lost because we'd have had to pay our size damages and the other size damages. so it was just too risky. And Kira Bell, obviously, being someone who's been through the process, was the right person to take the case to court finally. The implications are, though, you know, that when you looked at,

I put in a witness statement, as did my wife, and my wife and the lawyer gathered experts from all over the world in autism, in autism, in endocrinology, in neurodevelopment psychology, etc., etc. It was an amazing group. When you read our side's evidence against the Tabastok, there was no comparison, we're talking about people with very high profiles in their profession, given their considered opinion, backed up by a wealth of serious research against,

on the other side, basically, you know, political beliefs, really, backed up by there's one study done in Holland in 2011 on 70 boys, 20 of whom dropped out. I mean, there was no comparison. So,

yeah, I mean, but the case, the case is an amazing win, I think, for sanity. You know, and it safeguards against early medicalization of kids.

Marcus, let me ask you this. If I were an uninitiated person who'd not been paying attention to this issue in every way, and I were to take what you were saying and I'd go, okay, so what you're telling me is that senior medical and psychiatric professionals basically agree that transitioning young children shouldn't happen without a full and exhaustive process. And even then, it should be when they're 18 and they're capable of consent, etc., etc. and yet the powers the B, MPs, lords, etc. are so terrified of supporting what you're doing. The day won't even come to a meeting

because they're going to have their whipward drawn. If I were looking from the outside, you'd go, what is going on? Is there some kind of evil lizard conspiracy to transition children? Or what is it? That's going to be the title of the video, by the way, Marcus. Yeah.

I'm not a conspiracy theory. I've learned so much about the power of political forces in our media. Who's prepared to speak up? Who's not? You know, we set up a Facebook page. And basically, my wife and I are all about the evidence for kids. That's all it is. That was taken down because we vote Facebook rules.

I mean, you know, I don't get into the nastiest side of this very, what can be very nasty argument. We just present sort of clinical facts, as it were. So that was quite amazing to me. My Twitter, what's it, banned as well, for similar reasons. And you contact them and you go, why? Because I'm not slagging anyone off. I'm not saying anybody should die or anything like that. I just, you know, been sort of trying to get support for Kira Bell in the case.

And so, yeah, it's quite extremely. extraordinary what's going on. And sometimes when you talk to people, they go, it can't be as bad as you say it is. You must be, I don't know, you've lost the plot, you've hit a midlife crisis, you're angry with the Tavistar. No, it really is quite extraordinary. You know, as a mental health practitioner, someone who's proud to be in the business that I'm in, I'm really quite ashamed by, you know, the lack of, it's, this is political belief and idea of, over rational, scientific argument. And Marcus, I think the thing is that we often forget about as well is what the process of transition is like. We just apply the term trans and that suddenly people have this transition

and they go on and they live their lives and everything's hunky-dory. But the reality isn't really like that, is it? Well, that was the legal argument. You know, is an 11-year-old capable of making things, decisions about the implication, a short term, you know, taking the medication, which has got long term hidden effects in terms of their development. And, yeah, and in which really the downside of treatment is never really spelled out. So JIDS would have, so they argued that 11-year-olds were capable of making these decisions,

But then they have sort of special bits of information, which were written like sort of Janet and John books for simplicity. So hang on, you're saying, hang on, the kids capable of making complicated decisions, but it's written in this simplistic way. These two things don't add up. Well, that doesn't add up with anything else that we think about children. I mean, think about the age of consent, right? Yeah.

Children can't consent to what may be just, you know, an activity that doesn't really have any long-term consequences. But, you know, if there's no pregnancy, you know, people had sex and nothing really happened, you could argue. So they can't consent to that. But what they can consent to at the age of 11 is completely transforming their hormonal balance and their physical body. That does not seem to match up to our current standards for treating children as children, does it? Not at all. No, no. I mean, you can't get a tattoo.

can you till you're 18? There's all sorts of things you can't do you're 18. No, this is, there's a sort of non-think about this area. You know, it's like a sort of group phenomena in which you cannot challenge it. You know, A, you get attacked as J.K. Rowling did. But B, you know, there's a sort of cultural, look, your prejudice, this is all part of some paternalistic plot to control what other people do with their lives. It's never been my intention as a psychoanalyst, as a psychiatric practitioner, to control people's lives apart from, you know, when they're, you know, they need sectioning and they're so psychotic that their actions may danger others or themselves.

Apart from that, at the end of the day, my job as a psychoanalyst is to help individuals understand what's driving them so that they can make better decisions about their lives. But I'm not trying to turn them into a version of what Marcus Evans thinks they should be. That's not my job. That's unethical in my view. But that's how you're viewed. This is really some sort of – I've been called a Christian right-wing bigot. It's why we got you on the show, Marcus.

Yeah. My political, I'm sort of a bit liberal with wishy-washy. And I think the last time I went to church, my mother's horror, is when I was nine years old. You know, I know, actually I had to go to church. I was at boarding school, so I had to go in church until I was 15. But, you know, this is what gets chucked at you. Yeah, it is. I think everybody knows that now. It's just an easy way to dismiss people, isn't it? Yeah. You know, Francis is an old school lefty. I'm a sort of centrist with quite libertarian views.

But people will assume if you care about, you know, children not getting their breast-slice off at age of 14, that means you're a right-wing bigot. Well, maybe we should be all right-wing bigots on that basis, shouldn't we? I mean, the thing is, you're in alliances with all sorts of people that I never thought I would be. So I had a long discussion with panorama about going on the first panorama, which was exposing jids, and they said,

look, we can't get anybody to go in front of the camera. And as a psychoanalyst, I didn't want to because, you know, because I've got patience and, you know, your job as a psychoanalyst is to be in the background. Unfortunately, I've broken those rules from the people that I see. but basically I watched the effect of the fact that Polly Carl Michael kept saying, you know, these kids are safe in our hands and we're very, you know, measured in what we do. And I knew that wasn't the case. And I was furious with myself and not going on panorama.

So the Daily Mail contacted me and said, we'll do a piece. You can tell your story. And of course, all the broadsheets, they'll give you a sort of quote. but they won't let you tell your story. So I was doing an interview with the Daily Mail, and the Daily Mail were absolutely down the line on this. They were very thorough, they were very professional, and they knew all about it, and I was very grateful to them.

But I'd never imagined myself doing an interview with the Daily Mail until this. So, yeah, life's taking a funny turn. And Marcus, why do you think this issue is so toxic? Because it seems to me, for the vast majority of people, if you ask them about it, they would be entirely in agreement with everybody here in this discussion. Why is it that it descends into name-calling, you know, people getting, you know, threatened, abuse, etc., etc.

Well, I think we've become, again, I think it goes back to your earlier point, Constantine. We've become obsessed by people's feelings. Now, as a psychoanalyst, I'm here to say things are very important, but also the objective mind is important. And we've got this out of characters out of balance so that, you know, if someone's traumatised by what you're saying because they feel hurt, well, that's part of the story. But we should also be interested in thoughts and facts and reason. You know, we need both. And at the moment, our discourse seems to be dominated by what people feel. And as I say, just to say, as a psychoan, as I, you know, I'm listening all day to what people feel,

but I also want to know what people think. You know, we've got to use our minds as well as our hearts. And sorry, I don't know if I've lost your question there, Pram. No, no, no, no. No, it was a very, very good point, you know, that we become obsessed with people's feelings. We've become obsessed, you know, with not wanting to hurt or offend people. But there also is something, unfortunately, called objective reality. Absolutely.

You know, and if you've got an 11-year-old girl or boy and you're, you know, you're slicing off parts of their genitalia because of feelings, you need somebody to go, well, hang on a minute here, we need to look into this. The thing is, is that, you know, there was a long history, wasn't it? And prejudice in this sort of area. And it's as if this sort of has piggybacked on that bad history. And now nobody wants to be seen as being prejudiced. The problem with that is it's like judgment has also been lost in the process.

Because I would say there's a difference between judgmentalism and judgmentalism. judgment. We need judgment. We need to be wary of judgmentalism. And we need to start separating these things out and being able to, you know, freedom of thought and freedom of discourse is so important for us as individuals. You know, so a person comes to me and says, I'm absolutely sure I'm X. And my job isn't to butt heads with them, but it is to say, well, hang on, I wonder why you're so fixated on this belief and why. And why, why you have to drum that into me that I can't challenge it. Because sort of tyrannical states of mind, again, as psychoanalyst, you're sort of wary of.

You sort of think, well, hang on a minute. What's driving this? And why can't you, why can't we examine this area? Because, you know, most of the time we know that sort of when we're in a healthy state, you know, you're not so defensive. You can have things examined and looked at from different points of view. but when you become fanatical, it's usually being driven by something else. And that's my job as a psychoanalyst, is trying to understand what that is. Yeah, and Marcus, one question that I really wanted to ask you,

so I'll tell you, so I was a teacher for 12 years, regular viewers and listeners to the podcast, have a drink now. And one of my colleagues, I remember she came to me, absolutely distressed in floods of tears, to tell me that her 11-year-old daughter told her that she wanted to transition, and she used the words, not if I transition when I transition. And this is an 11-year-old girl.

What would your advice be as a mental health practitioner to that woman in particular and to schools of parents up and down the country who are dealing with this particular issue? Well, I certainly think... Right. Okay, so there are several levels to this. One is at the school level that, you know,

if there is... you've got to find out who's teaching what and are you happy with what's being taught and I would sort of you know parents need to get organized around this and some parent parental groups have got wise to the fact that their kids are being taught things which you know are part of a sort of political doctrine and then I'd you know that that needs to be addressed

and Stephanie Davis-Ary runs a website called Transgender Trend, which has been sort of helping parents sort of get to know what's going on and there are materials which you can present the headmistress or headmaster or whatever and challenge that. At a sort of individual level, if you've got a partner, you know, you've got to sort of get on the same page. This problem often drives a wedge between the parents. which again is very unhelpful.

You've got to have a sort of serious sort of thrash out where you're coming from and what the approach might be. But for me, I would say, you know, you're trying to, what do with adolescents when they get a being about something. You know, you're trying to sort of have a think about what they're like in the round, you know, as a personality.

Are they struggling in a particular area? How do they measure up against, it's their brother and sister. Are they struggling at school? Think about them as a person across the board. Because kids often, you focus on one thing and the problem area is somewhere else. And you don't want to get into arguments if you can.

You know, sometimes you've got to stand up to your kids, you know, and say, well, hang on, you know, we need to slow this down and are not being bullied into anything. And I'd certainly be prepared to do that. that. But then what's trying to think about them and think about, as I say, what's going off for them off camera, if you like, as well as, you know, everyone's attention is sort of drawn to the area of conflict. And that's often not what's driving the problem, as it were. So then you've got problem of trying to get mental health practitioners who there's been a sort of enormous policy

capture into this area where you've got the affirmation model which was adopted with virtually no evidence and a jettison in what used to be in place was what's called watchful waiting which is that gender dysphoric kids you know most of them would desist if supported and left of own devices. There's a sort of huge capture of the clinical environment. So then you've got to find, you've got to be wise and you've got to find clinicians who are not going to automatically affirm if you think they need clinical help. But someone who's prepared to say, I'm a general child psychotherapist,

psychologist, and I will look at your kid in the whole, take into consideration, and, you know, coma will be problems, et cetera, et cetera, get to know them, and we're not making any quick decisions. Sorry for the long spiel, but that's... No, no, Marcus, it's great advice, and I think it's an issue, actually, that terrifies a lot of parents, a lot of people won't speak up on it,

but there are plenty of people who don't even have children yet, who are thinking, well, when I do have a child, is this the thing that they're going to go to school and get brainwashed? And there was a story in the papers today from Eaton all places where they're teaching them transgender ideology and all this sort of stuff. So it seems to be very widespread in the educational system. Can I just say one more thing.

The ideology divides. Basically, we advise the generations. We have parents who contact my wife and I going, they don't trust the services. My kid wants to transition. You know, we're in an argument. So it divides the generations. It sometimes divides the parents, you know. dad's four, mum's against, and this can actually split up couples.

Not in my house, mate. My wife would destroy anyone who tried to go near it. It divides the mind from the body, you know, because actually this is a problem in the mine and it's related to all the changes that are going on in the body. So, you know, it's a very divisive area and we're needed to sort of bring, find links and bring things together, and it creates so much division. and pain because of it and damage. Thank you for that cheery ending to the interview market.

It's brilliant. But listen, we've got one more question for you. And by the way, thank you so much for coming on the show. It has been a genuine pleasure speaking with you. And our last question as always is, what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society, but we really should be? Well, I think it's related to what we've been discussing.

I think it's the closing down of discussion and debate, which is, you know, it's such bad news. And it's bad news individually. We all need to be challenged and we live in an environment. You see, this idea you could define who you are. Your identity is partly formed by who you are, but it's also in negotiation with the external world. And, you know, we've sort of lost sight of that sort of dynamic, if you like.

We live in relation to the external world. We don't have the right to say, this is me, and you know, you've got to accept it. And if you don't, I'll scream and shout at you. You know, other people have got their own minds. They're entitled to have a view, including what they think of you. And this is important for individual psychology and psychological health, and it's important for democracy. Spoken like a true bigot. Thank you, Marcus.

Marcus, thank you so much for coming on. We'll make sure to put your details in the description of the video. Thank you, everybody, for watching. We'll see you very soon with another interview or a live stream. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. Episodes go out on Wednesday and Sunday. Live streams are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. See you soon, guys.