Their Words. Their Lives. Their Truth.
Since news spread that I had referred Dr Hilary Cass to the GMC, the responses have been overwhelming. Here are some of the voices that stay with me.
When I published my GMC referral against Dr Hilary Cass earlier this month, I genuinely did not know how it would land. I knew it was the right thing to do. I knew the referral was carefully documented and grounded in professional standards. But I could not have predicted quite how widely the news would travel, or quite how many people would reach out to share what this whole situation has meant to them.
The coverage has come from many different directions. GCN, Ireland’s longest-running LGBTQ+ publication, reported that Cass appeared on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg and claimed that trans youth had been ‘weaponised’ by a ‘toxic’ debate, and that only a tiny number remain trans in adulthood. Activists and medical experts immediately condemned those claims as misleading and based on falsehoods. GB News also covered the formal complaint, reporting my concerns that Dr Cass was making statements about social and medical transition without supporting citations or evidence, and that she had been given a national platform to repeat contested claims as fact without a single challenging question.
Alongside the news coverage, something else has been quietly happening. People have been filling in the survey I shared, telling me what the Cass Review has meant for their lives, and what they would say to Dr Cass if they ever had the chance to speak to her directly. I have been reading every single response, and I want to share some of them with you here.
These are not abstractions. These are not statistics. These are real people, writing in their own words, about what has happened to them and their families. Please read them slowly. They deserve that much.
‘My friends have killed themselves on the waitlist’
My friends have killed themselves on the waitlist. I am five years on the waitlist and have been doing it myself because I have no other choice. Doctors have laughed at me and my suicidal ideation.
To Dr Cass, this person wrote simply: ‘You are killing trans people. The blood will never leave our hands.’
A four-year-old in front of a mirror
A mother wrote about her trans daughter, who has been waiting nearly a decade for surgery, who has survived a violent hate crime and a sexual assault because she is trans, and who no longer feels safe leaving the house. But what stayed with me was this:
My daughter used to stand in front of the mirror and tuck her penis away, just to see what she would look like without one. She was probably around four years of age upwards. Her friends were always girls. She loved her Barbies and her baby dolls. She was withdrawn at nursery school, until she discovered a tutu in the dressing-up corner and put it on. She was transformed.
She ends: ‘I wish we had known more and known what to do.’
A nurse, a daughter doing a PhD, and a family member who nearly didn’t survive
A registered nurse of forty years wrote about her twenty-six-year-old trans daughter, who is completing a PhD on environmental and weather systems, research that contributes directly to public safety. She is brilliant. She is also hypervigilant every single day, thinking about which toilets she is allowed to use, bracing for hostility that comes without warning. Her mother writes:
No parent should have to watch their child navigate a world that treats them like a problem to be solved rather than a person to be cherished.
She goes on to describe a member of her extended family who attempted to take their own life, believing the world would never accept them. They have a small autistic son who adores them. She writes: ‘They deserve a world that sees their humanity as clearly as I do.’
A daughter who tried to take her own life in her GCSE year
A parent writes about their trans daughter who was unable to access puberty blockers after the emergency ban following the Cass Review. She tried to take her own life. She was too depressed and anxious to attend school. She sat her GCSEs at home and achieved lower grades than her mock results had predicted.
The fact that there was no healthcare available to her at all felt to us like abandonment by the NHS and the government.
They asked what they would have said to Dr Cass: ‘That puberty blockers are reversible and offer trans teens in distress the option to pause or delay their puberty while they think about what they want. For my daughter, they could have offered breathing space and a chance to think. We felt totally abandoned with nowhere to turn.’
Four years waiting. An overdose. A blocked MP.
A parent writes that her trans son has been on the gender-affirming care waiting list for four years. They tried going privately and spent hundreds of pounds, only to be told by their GP that everything was effectively on hold because of the Cass Review. Last year, her son took an overdose. She writes: ‘Thankfully he is still with us.’
Their local MP posts anti-trans content regularly on Facebook. When she politely challenged him, without revealing she has a trans child, she was called woke, called a child abuser, and eventually blocked from his page. She remained calm and polite throughout.
Seized in a public toilet. Dead-named at the GP.
One respondent describes being seized by a group while trying to use a public toilet, held, and having their clothes removed for what the group described as a check. They also write about going to their GP surgery and being told they had completed a form incorrectly because, in the receptionist’s words, Dr Cass had proved that trans people didn’t exist. A friend’s child has had their GP begin using their dead name, despite having always been addressed correctly at the practice.
Every misgendering, every transphobic incident or action is like a stab wound. Fortunately for me they have not been real wounds as of yet, but I know plenty who have experienced them as such.
Waking up every morning not knowing if your child will still be here
From Australia, a parent writes that Queensland has used the Cass Review to justify restricting gender-affirming healthcare for children in the public system. Their trans son is now being denied care he could have received. To Dr Cass, they would say:
The fear parents live with every day. The continued self-loathing of the children in their own bodies because they are being denied appropriate healthcare. The review is based on ideology, not fact. The negative impact this review has had on so many people will create a huge drain on healthcare resources from now and long into the future.
They write: ‘I wake up every morning with the fear that my child will harm themselves and I go to bed each night praying he will be alive in the morning.’
‘To experience your precious child considering ending a life that contributes so much value’
A parent of a trans son writes about watching him be gaslit into feeling mentally ill by the world around him, forced to go through a puberty he did not want because the family could not access healthcare. He has, at times, been suicidal.
To experience your precious child considering ending a life that contributes so much value because they are having to deal with the easily prevented and unwanted effects of puberty is nothing short of tragic.
What they would have said to Dr Cass: ‘You have privileged and prioritised medical viewpoints and education over the lived experience and mental health of the people you are acting for. Doctors take an oath to do no harm, yet by not including the community, this is harming them.’
Aged seventy-four and scared to leave the house
A seventy-four-year-old trans woman writes:
I am scared to go out. I have been attacked and beaten up and the police were not interested. I was sexually assaulted by a man who wanted to see if I was real. I do not drink on long journeys, for fear of desperately needing the loo. I was pushed into a gents toilet with a vagina between my legs. I was desperate.
To Dr Cass, she writes: ‘I just want to have a quiet peaceful life. To go out of my house. To be able to go to the loo in safety like any woman. I am not a threat to anyone.’
A teacher. Three A&E-attended suicide attempts.
A trans woman writes that the Cass Review directly led her to give up her career as a teacher, due to sustained hostility from parents and colleagues. She is now unable to find another job, is living with depression and anxiety, and has survived three documented suicide attempts, each with A&E involvement. She writes:
I cannot think of another section of society that has other groups of people deciding if they can exist, or not.
If you have a story to share, please share it
I want to say something clearly to everyone who has responded so far: thank you. Reading your words has been one of the most humbling experiences of this work. Every response is being read with care, and every voice will help shape what comes next.
If you have not yet had your say, whether about the impact the Cass Review has had on your life, or what you would want Dr Cass to hear, please do so using the link below. Every submission is treated with the utmost care and full confidentiality.
The future of trans healthcare in this country will be shaped by evidence, yes, but evidence only has power when it is accompanied by human truth. Your story matters. Your voice matters. And I promise you, it is being heard.
Dr Helen Webberley, gender specialist and medical educator
If this article has reached you and you found it useful, please share it. Trans people and their families need to know that their experiences are being documented, taken seriously, and used to push for change.
GCN: Hilary Cass faces formal complaint over misleading BBC interview
My heart hurts for these beautiful humans. Thank you for sharing these painful stories. Nobody should have to be this resilient.
Thanks Dr Webberley. I've thought about writing many times however, todate can't seem to get it done. To reflect on happy times would also mean visiting the dark and not sure I have that ability yet. Yes, at 74yrs I still struggle.
I will say this, we need to get government out of the doctors offices. Such a small percentage of humanity to pray on, it's horrifying.