Three groups of people have applied for judicial reviews

For some years now, schools, the nhs and the police have been accommodating the needs and concerns of transgender people. gids, Britain’s only gender identity clinic for children, based at the Tavistock nhs trust, has been making it easier for trans teenagers to transition medically. But now some critics of the moves are pushing back, claiming that gids is giving children puberty blockers too liberally, and that attempts by other bodies such as the police to combat transphobia are leading to an attack on free speech.

Three groups of people have recently applied for judicial reviews, the legal means to challenge public bodies. On January 22nd, a 23-year-old woman, Keira Bell (pictured), joined one of these lawsuits. She charges that gids is performing “experimental” treatment on children by giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to more than 1,000 children and teenagers, including herself, some as young as 11. She had a double mastectomy, and subsequently detransitioned.

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Fair Cop, a pressure-group set up by Mr Miller and others concerned about the way police deal with so-called “non-crime hate incidents” and especially statements deemed to be transphobic, expressed outrage at the ruling in Ms Forstater’s case. It went on: “Shocking as this judgment is, we welcome the fact that it unmasks the true demands of the trans-rights movement: that everybody in society must either believe in the falsehood that humans can change sex; or, at the very least, self-censor so that they appear to believe in it.

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