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The editors of this groundbreaking book, Helen Brunskell-Evans and Michele Moore, deserve both our congratulations and our gratitude for compiling such a comprehensive selection of arguments, which together provide an analysis of the complex phenomenon that falls under the term ‘trans’, an analysis that is very different from the narrative currently capturing the minds of young people and professionals alike.
They bring together a variety of dissenting stakeholders to enlighten and educate us on the pitfalls inherent in the affirmative model, which asserts that gender is a self-identified feeling unrelated to biological sex. These dissenting voices include academics, activists, parents, commentators and clinicians who have all arrived, from their different involved locations, at positions of profound concern; a position collectively identified as ‘gender critical’.
It is essential to understand that ‘gender critical’ is entirely unrelated to ‘transphobic’ – the easy, careless accusation levelled at those of us challenging the so called ‘gender-affirmative’ approach which demands that, for children and adolescents who claim their biological sex is at odds with their felt gender identity, the process of both social role transition and the attendant physical intervention should go unchallenged.
It is perhaps worth stating at this point that I write this review from the position of being a clinician at the only NHS commissioned gender service for children and young people. Many scores of hours have therefore gone into the formation of my thoughts, ideas, concerns and dilemmas. These are forged out of the crucible of the gender service alongside much reading, thinking, talking and debating with colleagues and professionals along the way. My relationship with this book therefore inevitably emerges out of my personal clinical submergence in the world of gender in all its guises.
This topic is one that ignites passions, with people inhabiting polarised and strongly felt positio