Healthcare system changed ‘quite rapidly’ in UK with clinic accused of promoting politics

Well we are seeing the sciences, the medical profession being captured by ideology and it's so dangerous because it's one thing to have other professions, academia, media, whatever, lean heavily one way or the other but you don't want political ideology to be influencing medical care. That is something that is, I think, something that would worry everybody. How prevalent is it? Is it the new graduates that are emerging that hold these views and are required to hold these views essentially to get through their university course? Yeah, I think it's probably in the last five to ten years or so. So when I did my nursing training over ten years ago, I didn't really see any of this that much. I mean the ethics of nursing is that you're taught to view people as individuals and that you shouldn't bring politics into discussion with a patient and you should keep your views to yourself, you know, and that you shouldn't judge any person by the protected characteristics. But I think in the last five to ten years that's significantly changed and it's happened quite rapidly. We know that the things that, I mean I know that the things that were being taught at the Tavistock are not just exclusive to the Tavistock but there's research that shows that up and down the country, in the UK, clinical psychology training courses are teaching critical race theory and they are teaching decolonisation and woke ideas. Since my lawsuit has been in the press, I've had so many psychologists, nurses and psychotherapists write to me saying, you know, I don't know what to do, I don't like these ideas, I don't know whether I should speak up, I'm so glad you've spoken up, I hate my training, I just feel it's something that I need to get through so I can get my qualification and it's very, you know, there's a real kind of authoritarian atmosphere and people just feel frightened and they just say, look, I just don't know what to do. This sounds like institutional bias and I would argue institutional racism to have this critical race theory, this really ugly doctrine based in neo-Marxism being pushed in this manner. Just more broadly, what was the culture within the Tavistock Gender Clinic like? Was there a lot of self-censorship? Were people scared to actually say what they thought because they looked at what happened with you, you're going to be disciplined, you're going to have your career prospects impacted negatively if you said something? Yeah, so at the Tavistock, there's two buildings at the Gender Identity Service and there's a psychotherapy service which is a talking therapy where I was, I wasn't at the Gender Identity Service. When I was doing my training, there were lawsuits coming out in the press about safeguarding whistleblowers and other members of staff who were suing the Gender Identity Service for having been essentially put through disciplinaries and bullied because they spoke up about some of the harms that would be done at the Gender Identity Service. And in my training course, this just was not spoken about. So we even saw with the case of Keira Bell, who's a former patient who sued the Gender Identity Service, she had put puberty blockers, she went on to have her breasts removed and then she later regretted it and felt that she wasn't supported in her decisions properly. And none of these issues were talked about. It was like it was just, it was all in the news and where I was in the training, we just were not talking about it at all. And there was this real repressive atmosphere, like we just can't talk about these issues, which is quite extraordinary for a profession, which is all about talking and about being open and being able to discuss things. That's kind of what talking therapy is. And yet there were so many things that we weren't allowed to talk about. And in my training, I was really the only person who was questioning these ideas. And I can understand why, because the responses of the lecturers, how they were responding to me when I was just asking questions was essentially that I was being really bad. I was, I was being inappropriate. And there was a real kind of, I was being told off, essentially, for asking questions. So you can imagine that other students would just think, well, I'm not going to ask questions, then I just want to get my qualification and get going. So that was the, it was just like being at a taverstock, it was like being in a bubble. It was just like there was this outside world, and they just didn't want to look at it or talk about it. Well, I think they're being forced to look at it now. And then they're going to be plenty more lawsuits like the one that Kira Bell brought forward. But it's not just taverstock or the NHS, Britain is getting more and more comfortable with prosecuting people who say hurty words. A lawyer who works for the government is being sued for saying only women menstruate. Apparently, the nameless claimant here believes this and other gender critical views expressed by Ellsworth Doomer-Wrigley has the effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, and or offensive environment for the claimant. Is this just another way that debate is stifled and people are prevented from expressing really very much mainstream logical views because they may face this sort of legal action? Yeah, it's very concerning. I think in the area of woke ideology and gender ideology in the UK, it feels like very much it's one step forward, two steps back. So we make gains, we've won lots of legal cases. And there's been lots of gender critical feminists or just people that believe in biological sex, that have have won employment tribunals, there was quite a significant court ruling of a woman called Mayer Forstater, whose court case led to a judge that gender critical beliefs are worthy of democratic respect in a civilized society. So we can now claim discrimination if we are discriminated against for having gender critical views. And yet, there are still these cases coming through from trans activists, and people who want to push back against women's rights and gay rights. And I think the whole issue is that within our Equalities Act, in the UK, we have the protected characteristics of sex, but also gender reassignment surgery. And these two things could conflict. So it's really hard to weigh up the balance of both of these rights. So I mean, it is worrying the direction that free speech is going on in the in the UK. And then there's a recent hate crime law being introduced in Scotland on 1st of April this year, that essentially could see people criminalized or even arrested for what, what they would see as offensive views, which could just be saying that a man can't become a woman. I mean, JK Rowling is very famously a gender critical feminist, she lives in Scotland. And she's, she's already saying that trans activists are saying that come April, they're going to go to the police about her views that men can't become women. So I mean, we've recently banned puberty blockers in England, which was a really huge step forward for people who were speaking out about the harms being done because of trans ideology and gender ideology. But as soon as we're celebrating that, then we have all of this new legislation coming in that's going to prevent our freedom of speech. So it's it's a real war going on and that we're making gains. And then as soon as we feel we're getting we're pushed back. So that's kind of the state of play in the UK at the moment. So it's very worrying. Amy Gallagher, thank you so much for your time this evening. Good luck with your case. We appreciate your insights tonight. Thank you. Thank you for having me.