Political issues can be slow to reach Australia – the price it pays for what at times feels like an enviable isolation from a mad world. The lack of interest in the medical treatment of children claiming to be transgender, a debate that has raged in the US and UK in recent years, shows how slow on the up-take we Australians can be. Fortunately, that might be about to change.
A recent judgement in a family court reveals why. The case centred on a 12-year-old boy in Melbourne, who, with the encouragement of his mother, sought to be administered puberty blockers on the grounds that his ‘true’ gender is that of a girl. The father, while not opposing his son’s desire to ‘explore’ his gender-identity (he wears girls underwear, for example), drew the line at puberty blockers. Judge Andrew Strum found himself in the unenviable position of adjudicating this squalid family dispute. In his judgement, he decided to strip the mother of custody. He also heavily criticised the hospital at which the boy was treated. This is the first time trans orthodoxy has ever been challenged in the Australian legal system.
One name in particular stood out in the case – that of Dr Michelle Telfer, who gave evidence in support of the child’s mother. Telfer, in her position as head of medicine at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, wrote what the hospital describes as the ‘best practice’ guidelines for the treatment of trans-identifying children. This includes the administration of puberty blockers, ‘gender-affirming’ hormones and even double mastectomies for girls once they reach 16. Incredibly, Telfer’s Melbourne RCH accepts three-year-olds for treatment.
Rather than obediently accept the ‘best practice’ guidance, Judge Strum took it to task. ‘I do not accept that the child, at this age and pre-pubertal stage in life, can properly understand the implications, and potential risks, of puberty blockers’, he wrote. Like any thoughtful adult, Judge Strum expressed grave doubts about the morality of allowing a child to make life-altering medical decisions. ‘The child is still a child, and not even, if it matters, a teenager’, he said.
Telfer relied on platitudes and hyperbole to make her case. She told the court that trans children and their families were ‘best placed to know what is in their interests’. She even equated the Cass Review, which found no scientific evidence to justify the use of puberty blockers, to Nazism. Judge Strum showed common sense and humanity. ‘At this stage in the child’s life, all options should be left open, without any acceptable risk of harm to the child’, he wrote in his judgement.
At other moments, Judge Strum’s criticisms of Telfer and Melbourne RCH were more pointed. He rightly questioned how the hospital’s guidance had assumed its status as ‘best practice’, when it did not ‘have the approval… of the commonwealth or any state or territory government, including any such government or minister… or department of health’. In other words, it is best practice according to Telfer and the hospital she ran – no one else. Judge Strum said her evidence in the hearing was ‘tantamount to her agreeing with herself’.
A reckoning for Telfer and the Melbourne RHC can’t come soon enough. In recent years, the hospital has embraced a surge of minors claiming to experience gender dysphoria, from 100 patients in 2014 to more than 1,000 in 2022. Thousands of children have been prescribed puberty blockers (Judge Strum noted that ‘no alternative treatment options’ were offered), the use of which is becoming increasingly shunned across the West. Melbourne RCH may well become Australia’s Tavistock – the scandal ridden London gender clinic, which was forced to close after the Cass Review.
Australia might have been slow in registering the danger of puberty blockers and hormone treatments, but there are signs the authorities are getting their act together – and fast. In January, the federal Labor government announced an inquiry into the treatment of transgender children, with a particular focus on puberty blockers. It followed the lead of the Queensland government, which earlier that month became the first Australian jurisdiction to pause the use of puberty blockers.
These developments seemed impossible only nine months ago, the last time a trans activist argued their case in an Australian court. In Tickle vs Giggle, a judge ruled that an app designed specifically for women discriminated against a man named Roxanne Tickle by banning him from using it. The precedent established by that case, namely that ‘sex is changeable and not necessarily binary’, was fortunately ignored by Judge Strum.
Every time puberty blockers and hormone ‘therapy’ have been subject to analysis, they’ve been exposed as dodgy and harmful. People and institutions that promoted these so-called treatments need to be held to account. Finally, there are signs this might happen sooner rather than later. Trans ideology is losing its grip on Australia.
Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.
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