A Gender Critical Analysis of GLADD’s Affirmation Only Medical Schools Charter

The charter is here: https://gladd.co.uk/activism-conversion-therapy-charter/

The GLADD medical schools charter was sent to all medical schools in the UK in December 2021. It has some deeply worrying content, such as encouraging doctors to simply ‘affirm’ whatever their patients diagnose themselves with around ‘gender identity’. Gender identity is a completely unevidenced concept.

Gender Identity as a Medical Concept

If we consider ‘Gender Identity’ to be gender dysphoria and a type of mental health condition, there is no other mental health condition that would lead doctors to recommend ‘surgical transition’ in order to more fully align the patient’s body with their mind. On the contrary, the patient’s mind would be treated instead. However, the GLADD charter would seemingly consider a doctor exploring reasons around a patient’s feeling of differing ‘gender identity’ to be ‘LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy’.

It is worth noting at this point that only LGB conversion therapy has been legislated against by the government and is actually against the law. They only legislated against that due to the inherent problems that they set out around a so-called ‘all-inclusive ban’. One of which being that activists’ concept of banning ‘TQ+ Conversion Therapy’ gives a green light to actually enacting LGB conversion therapy in saying to e.g. a homosexual man that as he is more stereotypically feminine then he must actually be a straight woman rather than a gay man. This is regressive nonsense and clearly poses a particular risk to lesbian teenagers and young women. A double mastectomy is non-reversible, some of the effects of testosterone on women are irreversible and the medical harm cases being brought will go up in the future (and are already rising now).

How can medical schools who have signed this charter be sure of what ‘TQ+’ conversion therapy entails? How can they ensure that encouraging or ‘affirming’ a patient’s request to medically transition is not actually meaning that doctors are taking part in LGB conversion therapy due to the patient’s internal homophobia/inability to accept themselves as homosexual? How can they be sure that they are not automatically ‘affirming’ the ‘gender identity’ of someone who is vulnerable, whether due to their age, a co-existing mental health condition, being autistic or many other risk factors which it seems that the GLADD charter would ban doctors exploring.

Dr Joseph Hartland, one of the authors of the charter (and a self-described ‘queer medical activist’, as per the front page of the GLADD charter), has been retweeted by GLADD as saying that talk therapy would be ok ‘as long as no gender identity is favoured over another’. So in other words, doctors must not show any preference towards maintaining patients’ intact bodies and originally sexed hormones etc and should instead be entirely patient-led in their diagnosis, even though we know that patients change their minds or do not actually know their own correct diagnoses (because they are not the ones who are medically trained). This is a purely ideological approach from GLADD and it is saying that ‘Gender identity’ is something that is fixed/inherent and should be medically treated as such. *This* is encouraging medical harm and will lead to court cases from detransitioners towards doctors in the future. I do not believe that from a legal standpoint there will be any way to argue that *not* sending a patient on a path of surgical and medical physical transition and instead prescribing counselling or exploring other factors is the harmful option. Doctors have to be able to name and explore potential co-morbidities or they will not be providing proper medical care of the patient.

The charter also asks medical schools to sign to say that they will give ‘joyful’ depictions of ‘LGBTQ+’. Does this mean that they should not discuss potential negative outcomes with patients? Does this mean that referring to detransitioners would be banned? Or is it simply that doctors must present patients (and students) with ‘joyful’ depictions of transitioning? This is particularly emotive language which is simply an ideological demand on doctors and the NHS. We do not request ‘joyful’ depictions of other groups. Medicine should be evidence-based, not led by activists’ emotions around a topic.

Despite the many concerning aspects about the charter, at time of writing the majority of the medical schools in the UK had already signed this charter to agree to this charter’s demands. Only 9 had not signed this charter (8 in England and 1 in Northern Ireland). This is extremely alarming. It is also alarming that barely anyone in the media has reported on this as yet.

I am aware that some Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) have been sent to all medical schools who have signed the GLADD charter to explore their reasons behind signing. It has become clear that medical schools who signed the charter did not analyse it properly before doing so. It seems that many heads of school have waved it through saying ‘Yes, yes’ for the EDI departments to deal with instead of analysing it themselves, due to seeing it as ‘gay rights 2.0’ or being pressured to by a small minority of activists. They certainly do not appear to have considered the findings of the interim Cass report in doing so, which the GLADD charter appears to contradict.

Why are senior leaders of medical schools ceding their power to EDI departments on this? Why have so many senior doctors stated their pronouns alongside their signature on the charter? Is the ideological capture of medical schools so deep that in order to be seen as being polite, kind, EDI-approved inclusive etc, leaders of medical schools are happy to sign this charter, even though it arguably encourages actual (rather than imagined) medical harm to patients? Medical institutions should not be signing pledges that are sex-denialist. This is dangerous to patients.

It is also undemocratic to push this into the NHS when the public have no knowledge of it. The public does not want their young and/or vulnerable people to be at risk of irreversible medical harm when they use NHS services due to unquestioned gender ideology put into policies due to ‘queer medical activist’ doctors’ influence.