Hillary Cass Takes a Trans Census!
No, really, that's the joke.
So, Dr. Hillary Cass has finished up her report for Britain’s National Health Service about providing gender related health services. It’s … a bit of a train wreck. You can find commentary on it all over the internet, but here at Pervert Justice we want to use this moment to poke a little fun.
If there’s one overriding criticism of Cass’ “Review” of gender identity services (GIDS, in NHS parlance), it’s that she uses what should be inapplicable, highly restrictive criteria to exclude a huge amount of research that supports trans care practices while using almost no screening criteria at all to support other conclusions or practices (including withholding previously standard care). If you wish to know more, you should be reading your friendly, neighbourhood Crip Dyke over at Wonkette covering all the key key points and recommended recommendations.
But there is so much to say that not all of it fit there. There will be a number of updates and alt-takes over the next little bit of time, but this one is perhaps my favourite example of evidence free assertion from Cass, the Queen of Evidence on pg 114:
8.5 For many centuries transgender people have been predominantly trans females, commonly presenting in adulthood.
Can you even imagine the chutzpah? After yelling at people about the necessity of good evidence for over 100 pages, Cass decides to assert that she’s done a fucking census of non-binary AFAB Italians in the 1760s and it turns out that the number falls well short of the total AMAB non-binary Slovenians during the same decade?
Doc, please.
Note, also, too that Cass cites no source whatsoever for this claim, as if this population survey of trans people in China from Marco Polo to Mao Zedong was something she personally totalled up on her abacus just that morning. The Queen of Evidence, just making shit up, because why not? She didn’t have any use for that credibility anyway.
See also, too!
Are we just lucky she didn't call us "the transgenders" on every page?
So reminiscent of “well, of course women are not as smart as men, look at all these historical men’s accomplishments!” with no discussion of the patriarchy. It couldn’t possibly be that historical AFAB men were less easy to identify and out, or that the transgression of being an AMAB woman was more shocking to the men writing the history because who wouldn’t want to be a man?
Lotsa bad science in that report that extends right from those kind of assumptions.