The Cass Review has landed
And it’s a really, really big deal
The last few days have been extraordinarily busy, with barely time to draw breath.
First, late last week, I heard from Sall Grover’s legal team in Australia that Roxy Tickle’s team had changed their mind and decided to call me for cross-examination in the case of Tickle v. Giggle, which started on Tuesday. Roxy Tickle is a man who has had genital surgery and received government paperwork stating he is female; on that basis he claims that he suffered gender-identity discrimination when Sall’s app, Giggle for girls, which is female-only, turned him away. Sall’s case is that this was sex discrimination, not gender-identity discrimination, and was therefore lawful (sex discrimination is legally permitted in certain circumstances, such as for the purpose of single-sex spaces).
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Last year I wrote an expert witness statement for Sall, focusing on the meaning of the words “woman” and “female”, the importance of using a sex-based definition for women’s rights, the need for women to be able to speak freely about the two sexes and the harms done when they can’t. Some weeks earlier I had been told that the claimant – Tickle – was intending to call only a single witness, Sall herself, and notifying me that I wouldn’t be called to appear (by videolink).
The sudden change of mind on Tickle’s side meant I had to spend the weekend scrambling to reread my statement, and asking lawyer friends for advice on being a good witness. The main tips they gave me were these: answer the question asked, no more and no less; don’t try to make a case – that’s the job of the advocates; know your witness statement back to front; and remember that your purpose is simply to help the judge come to the right ruling. If you should ever have to be a court witness, you could do worse than listen to this short podcast on how to be a good one.
I had been told that I would appear early in the day Sydney time on Wednesday of this week – that is, about 1.30am UK time. But during Tuesday’s hearing, the judge decided I needn’t be called. I haven’t had more detail about why than what appeared on Tribunal Tweets, and of course Sall and her team have more important things to do than fill me in beyond the bare fact that I had been stood me down. It was frustrating to have spent the weekend going through all the references in my witness statement and making sure I could say precisely why I had written every single point, but at least I was spared having to stay awake for a hearing in the middle of my night.
And what a good thing I was! By Monday we knew for sure that the final report of the Cass Review was being published on Wednesday, and on Tuesday we received an embargoed copy. Cue frantic reading, briefings for journalists and quotes for media, plus a blogpost and briefing for Sex Matters, all jointly with colleagues. I also did a curtain-raiser interview with TalkTV.
Wednesday continued busy as well, with three live interviews – including my first appearance on the BBC since my position on gender-related issues became public knowledge.
First up was BBC Radio 5 Live. Straight before me – a pattern that the BBC repeated every single time it covered the issue - was a clip from an interview with a transwoman saying nothing at all relevant to the findings of the Cass Review. This one was particularly ludicrous: a young man who literally said that he knew he had always been he was a girl because he had photos of himself in a blonde wig and pink dress when he was a baby. This implausible claim – who puts a wig on a baby? - wasn’t challenged by the interviewer, and I didn’t find a way to bring it up during the actual interview, though it bugged me that it was left to stand.
Listen to @HJoyceGender on @bbc5live talking about the #CassReport
"people talk about the toxic debate but what there is is one side that has refused to debate and do research and another side saying please look at this, this is not normal, please do your jobs" pic.twitter.com/4qhNdeOUrE— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) April 10, 2024
In the afternoon I was on TalkTV.
And finally, a live interview with a big Australian radio station - it went out well after midnight local time, but it was a great conversation and I hope will get heard on repeat and might lead to further coverage of the issues in Australia, where youth gender transition is continuing apace.
The publication of the Cass Report was coordinated with the publication of a set of related research papers, and this pitch-perfect editorial in the British Medical Journal by its editor-in-chief, a noted proponent of evidence-based medicine. One notable omission, however, was a paper on long-term outcomes for the children seen at the GIDS clinic at the Tavistock (which closed at the end of last month): incredibly, all but one of the UK adult gender clinics refused to cooperate with Cass by providing her with data. They will now be directed to do so by NHS England and the health secretary, and I sincerely hope to see the individuals responsible hauled into the Department of Health and asked to explain themselves. As I write the health secretary has told NHS England that adult gender services will now be reviewed as well.
And still the fallout continues. Some extremely important figures in Labour – notably Wes Streeting, who is slated to become health secretary if Labour wins the next election, as expected – have made strong statements welcoming the report, and shifting from previously gender-affirmative positions.
Where Stonewall and Mermaids eventually land remains to be seen. Both find themselves in an extremely tricky position. They have both spent years describing precisely the careful, evidence-based approach Cass calls for as transphobia and “conversion therapy”. Their efforts to reverse ferret (for this wonderful bit of British journalese, see here) have been heavily criticised by the hardliners in their own camps. Mermaids published a statement focusing heavily on long waiting lists for care, and said that it would say more “in coming days”. It’s probably glad that it left Twitter/X some time ago: here’s a sample of the wilder responses to Stonewall’s tweet about its own pretty similar position.
If you fancy a laugh, check out the quote tweets responding to Stonewall’s reverse ferret. This ghoulish organisation is being eaten by its own children pic.twitter.com/cNJlLiLUJ1
— Simon Edge (@simonjedge) April 10, 2024
A transphobe composed an insane anti-science hit piece with the help of other transphobes to destroy trans lives and Stonewall are... supporting it? Thank God I cancelled my monthly donation last year. With "allies" like this, who needs enemies?
Jesus fucking wept. https://t.co/AN3uP5w8bp— jugheadjonzz.bsky.social (@thedorkmite) April 10, 2024
Of course I had hoped the Cass Report would be a big deal – it’s the most painstaking, evidence-based look at the field of gender medicine that’s ever been done, and Dr Cass is widely respected. But I couldn’t be sure: sometimes stories that seem to have every element of being a big news deal fade away without a trace, and other times quite minor events blow up. I’m so glad to have had the chance to watch it all from close quarters, and to have played a part, both in bringing attention to the issues beforehand and in contributing to the coverage.
You can’t work in journalism for long without developing a deep respect for, indeed fear of, the Gods of News: they’re powerful but also unpredictable. Some people have an almost supernatural sense for when the winds change, but nobody is able to predict this sort of thing really consistently. You just have to be ready to move fast, and to jump on the news when it happens.
At these times I always think of my two favourite books about journalism: Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop and Terry Pratchett’s The Truth. Both are hilarious parodies that get so much right about the news trade, in particular the need to move fast when you sense that the moment is right.
My colleagues at Sex Matters have grown used to me resharing in our group workspace, whenever News Happens, the famous section from Scoop where William Boot “comes good”. Boot is an English country gentleman who has fallen on hard times and brings money in by producing overwritten columns about the English countryside for the Daily Beast (he’s the origin of the expression “Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole”). A comedy of errors leads to him being sent to a fictional African country to cover a coup.
He ends up getting the titular scoop, and wiring it back to the newsdesk of the Daily Beast in London, which is already heartily sick of his unusable and expensively wordy telegrams. I’ve reread the book many times, and I still get the shivers every time I get to this bit.
“The general editor looked. He saw ‘Russian plot... coup d’etat... overthrow constitutional government... red dictatorship... goat butts head of police... imprisoned blonde... vital British interest jeopardized,’ it was enough; it was news. ‘It’s news,’ he said. ‘Stop the machines at Manchester and Glasgow. Clear the line to Belfast and Paris. Scrap the whole front page. Kill the Ex-Beauty Queen’s pauper funeral. Get in a photograph of Boot.”
Getting the embargoed Cass Report and realising what a big deal it was was the nearest I’ve come to a busy day in a newsroom since leaving The Economist. Those are the days that act as a test for whether a person is cut out to be a journalist rather than, say, a policy analyst. The days where something big and fast-moving is happening on your patch; stories are being added and dropped in a hurry; an editorial is being bashed out by someone you’re frantically briefing while you’re still doing the reporting, calling your contacts and taking notes at high speed, and – on the very biggest news days – the fact-checkers, picture desk, production and print sites are being warned that copy deadlines are going to the wire. The adrenalin carries you through, and when you come out the other end it feels like everything is different – and You Were There to see it happen.
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