when you challenge that certainty, even in an empathetic way. A good therapist will skillfully try to move through this discomfort and encourage the child to understand that their certainty is not necessarily a helpful, healthy thing. This is already a challenge on an individual, clinical level. But the politicised culture around the trans issue makes everything worse.
For the longest time, not embracing gender-affirming care had you instantly dismissed as a bigot. This just isn’t true. Those of us who don’t instantly affirm a child’s identity are the ones actually interested in opening up discussion. We’re interested in exploring the variety of rich and complex ways that a person becomes who they are. We are not interested in pushing children into narrow gender stereotypes, which state that boys are always logical and play football, or that girls inevitably want to dance and wear pink. These beliefs, on which gender-affirming care relies on, are deeply regressive. That’s why exposing them to external scrutiny, as the Cass Review did, has been so important.
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