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Hannah Barnes’ troubling book on the collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service is both a fascinating and painful read. It tells the story of the events that unfolded as the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) evolved from a largely therapeutic service providing mostly talking therapies for young people struggling with their gender identity, to one in which medical interventions, specifically puberty blockers, appeared to become the treatment of choice after only a few assessment sessions. Hannah Barnes, a BBC Newsnight journalist by profession, has written a book that takes a deep dive into the cultural issues, both within the Tavistock and Portman Trust and GIDS itself, as well as in wider society, that drove this change and the impact that it had.
In writing this review, I am aware of the risk of stepping into a deeply polarised debate, steeped in ideological belief that does not lend itself to nuanced dialogue. This is in part because it feels impossible to separate a review of the book from that of the story it tells, and I am likely to be seen to be taking a stance one way or the other, whether or not I believe I am. In this debate, those giving a view tend to be experienced as either for or against, trans-allies or trans-phobic, and this does not easily enable a thoughtful, curious dialogue.
The book is divided into chapters that outline chronologically, and in great detail, the course of events that took place between the early 2000s and 2022, interspersed with personal stories of young people who had themselves been patients at GIDS, some of whose experiences had been nothing but positive and others who had much more complicated outcomes. These stories, while in some ways anecdotal as they represent a tiny fraction of the young people seen in the service, bring to life the issues and complexities at the heart of the controversy surrounding GIDS: how can anyone know whether the gender dysphoria experienced by a child reflects their true identity or is a