"When you have met one trans person you have met one trans person..."

In today's guest post, trans theologian and author Alex Clare-Young reflects on the Cass report, and suggests a different approach

"Medicine's ground state is uncertainty. Wisdom - for both the patients and doctors - is defined by how one copes with it." (Atul Gawande, Complications 2002)

Ironically, I have been uncertain about how to respond to the Cass report, which begins with this quote, since its publication. The report to which I am referring is the independent review of gender identity services for children and young people. Its implications, though, effect the treatment and public response afforded to trans and non-binary people of all ages.

The reason the report is so hard to respond to is that it suggests some relatively sensible things, such as actually funding and providing adequate care for trans people, whilst also making sweeping statements and pronouncements that rather throw us under the bus. Dr. Cass entirely fails to consult the trans adults that some gender diverse children become and, so doing, misses the wider implications of her words. In particular, Cass judged that the evidence base for trans healthcare is lacking. In doing so, she invalidated not only gender affirming healthcare but also the lives of those of us who need it. This invalidation of trans people continues to escalate in UK politics as we head towards a General Election, with Kemi Badenock justifying and doubling down on Rishi Sunak’s promises to ‘clarify’ the meanings of sex and gender, with the likely outcome of prioritising the former.

One of the most problematic assertions in the report is that 'although some think the clinical approach should be based on a social justice model, the NHS works in an evidence-based way' (Cass 2024, 20). Whilst this might seem, on the surface, to be reasonable, it is an attitudinal statement which begins to expose the narrow approaches to diversity with our aging and struggling healthcare system. For me, there are six problems with this statement:

1. It trivialises justice.
2. It sets justice and evidence in binary opposition.
3. It alienates justice seekers.
4. It assumes that individual experiences can be explained by universal theories.
5. It instrumentalises or objectifies human bodies.
6. It prioritises a biological/medical model of sex and gender.

Conversely, the theological and social justice based lenses through which l dare to see and attempt to understand something of the world, as a trans theologian, suggest that:

1. Justice is vital to human flourishing.
2. Justice is based on evidence, including testimony, and requires a widening, rather than a narrowing of the field being assessed.
3. Justice seekers are needed in every conversation, in every place, and at every time.
4. Each individual is a unique part of the one diverse human body.
5. Human bodies are sacred, autonomous, and interconnected agents of change.
6. Sex and gender are a complete matrix of all sorts of factors that include, but are not limited to, body, identity, social construct behaviours, norms, exploration, community, relationship, communication, movement, and so much more.

Most important of all is that when you have met one trans person you have met one trans person. Each of us is unique with our own bodies, minds, experiences, understandings, identities, desires and needs. In Trans Formations l argue that those who write about trans people must resist neutrality, honour incarnation, call for fragmentation, be revelatory, and be in motion. In resisting neutrality, We can speak up for human rights to equitable access to healthcare and a full part in public life. In honouring incarnation, we can take bodies seriously, prioritising human beings over systems and theories. In calling for fragmentation, we acknowledge that each person is unique, and that one-size-fits-all approaches are inadequate. In being revelatory, we call out practices, systems and structures that hide truths. in being in motion, we resist stagnation and press for change.

Trans voices matter. If one 'copes with uncertainty' by silencing dissent then wisdom is lost. I seek the wisdom of trans voices speaking from lived experience. Will you seek with me? Will you, too, be transformed?

Alex Clare-Young is the author of Trans Formations: Grounding theology in trans and non-binary lives.