Quotes
‘The experience and expression of gender diversity – as well as the responses to it – necessarily arise within and take form and colour from particular cultural and historical landscapes and these become part of the internal experience of gender.’[1]
‘While some of these children feel clear that they identify as the ‘other’ gender in a conventional binary sense, other young people are coming to view themselves in ways that radically challenge conventional categories of sex, gender and sexuality.’[2]
‘While the politicisation of gender identity in children proceeds unabated, and disputations on professional practice and principles are regular news events, we rarely hear directly from the clinicians whose job is to help young people grapple with the knowns and unknowns at the interface of sex and gender, and to gate-keep pioneering physical interventions in the face of deep distress and powerful yearning, who observe the porous responsiveness of young people to the ideas and identities on offer around them, who factor in the lack of substantive evidence on which to base decision-making, who daily juggle the prospects of doing good and doing harm.’[3]
‘It can be hard to disentangle the difficulties that are specifically gender-related from those that are associated with other developmental challenges, especially amongst those young people who present post-pubertally.’[4]
‘We read gender identity as complex and multiply-figured, a developmental achievement rather than biologically a given, even though experienced as a bedrock of their being by some young people.’[5]
‘If young people or their parents seem very sure of what the future holds, through gentle questioning we propose the value of reflecting on alternative pathways and as yet unimagined complexities, and of seeing that there are many distinct choices to be made over time.’[6]
‘We keep an awareness of situations where we sense that the gender distress may be secondary to trauma or emotional conflict, while not losing sight of the possibility of more un-conflicted transgender experience. But quite apart from any pre-existing difficulties with which the gender issues may become entwined, each trans child needs help to come to terms with the more or less perturbing experiences they have had of body-mind incongruence.’[7]
‘Our role is both to provide the most open platform for gender exploration and to insert time into the process of deliberation. We still question whether early physical intervention is emancipatory for everyone who requests it, as, for some young people, it may side-step a later adjustment to the body-as-it-is, may disrupt pathways to same-sex sexuality, and may re-inscribe binary gender conformity by encouraging steps towards rendering trans experience and trans bodies invisible.’[8]
‘The ‘crisis of meaning’ relates not just to fierce competition between different ways of understanding the meaning of the phenomenon, but to the very possibility of making meaning, the right to make meaning and the appropriate focus for meaning making.’[9]
‘Part of what gives this debate such intensity is the fact that influential bodies, confidently embracing fixed models of meaning, have historically used their regulatory gaze to oppress and diminish the social status of sex and gender minorities.’[10]
‘Many parents see their child’s distress and take it on themselves to bring it to a resolution, with little interest in practices of extended meaning-making, of deliberation and delaying intervention; parents are more likely to speak of moving forward with treatment.’[11]
‘Parents and professionals may also be oriented to different kinds of risk: clinicians more concerned about the possibility of later regret around medical intervention, even for the few, while parents worry about the risks to their child of doing nothing.’[12]
‘But until there is a clearer ethical mandate for the care and treatment of children, and firmer evidence accrues of who benefits over the long-term from which interventions, we may see a slowdown in available treatment options. This could be framed as a setback, even a backlash, against the expansion of gender norms and possibilities for young people, or it could be regarded as an attempt, in part, to negotiate more carefully the range of authentic, progressive, individual identity narratives that are available to them.’[13]
‘When it comes to the care of any young person, one size does not fit all. In cases of gender distress, individualised support is crucial.’[14]
‘Gender-diverse individuals are not a homogeneous group’[15]
‘Ethical concerns around informed consent and self-determination are a central focus for the GIDS team.’ [16]
‘Beliefs about gender identity are anchored in prior theoretical and ideological stances’[17]
‘Other issues are centrally at stake here – issues around power and rights, autonomy and authority, and responses to suffering’[18]
‘Historically, society has lacked an adequate interpretative framework to understand the experiences of gender-diverse people’[19]
‘The new technologies available in gender medicine represent one of these new clinical frontiers.’ [20]
‘We cannot take the politics out of the public conversation about trans children. There are matters of genuine substance to argue over relating to authorisation and knowledge: issues of child and parent autonomy in making value-driven life decisions; the counterbalancing need to consider safeguarding for children’[21]
‘GIDS, like other gender identity clinics internationally, sits at the epicentre of the ongoing contestation around these scientifically, ethically and politically complex issues’[22]
‘We also worry about the risks to children of withholding treatment, as we recognise their pain and confusion when their gender feelings seem at variance with the sex assigned to them at birth’[23]
‘It is possible to see conventional gender not as an inevitable outcome of the biological differences between males and females, but as a complex developmental achievement and, at least in part, as a social construction’[24]
‘Diverse gender identities have been documented across many different societies and historical time.’ [25]
‘Many trans and gender diverse people function extremely well.’ [26]
‘Attachment, dependency, boundaries – these may still be our key constructs in clinical work, but gender, race, class, sexuality and their intersections are not subsidiary concepts, but are inextricably woven with them.’ [27]
‘The postmodern way is to see gender not as monolithic and linear, but as a creative compromise in endless negotiation with the self, other and culture.’ [28]
‘Postmodernists give up the idea of any ‘inborn’ masculinity or femininity, and recognise instead the unfolding of a complex set of exchanges between self and others in which gender constructs can take on a rich variety of meanings and gender performances are put to a wide range of uses.’ [29]
‘The body cannot be ‘known’ outside of, or apart from, the grids of intelligibility that exist in our culture, any more than the mind can. And our meaning grids are steeped in conventional gender ideas.’ [30]
‘From a postmodern perspective, the methods of psychology can be seen to inappropriately mimic the natural sciences, transforming things ‘made’ into things ‘found’ and thereby concealing the social processes crucial in their production.’ [31]
‘If the idea of living in the postmodern era means anything, it is that in all our activity together we are in the business of making meaning in the absence of traditional assurances.’ [32]
‘In our time, it is hard to see any knowledge or understanding as ‘mirroring’ nature, or ‘mirroring’ reality.’ [33]
‘The idea that most of what have been considered to be the ‘natural’ facts of human life are better understood as social constructions means that we can no longer picture ourselves simply as observers, critics, knowers – but rather as reflexive understanding actors, as doers.’ [34]
‘If, as a clinician, I feel uncomfortable about aspects of how transgender identities are diagnosed psychiatrically, defined politically, parodied culturally or treated surgically – I have a part to play in voicing my concerns in the various settings I inhabit, from the therapy room to the House of Commons to the clinical team meeting to the pub.’ [35]
‘I question the attraction of fixed categories of meaning, recognising that part of the work of therapy is to help clients to try and evolve new meaning, where the existing categories are limiting and confusing’[36]
‘Therapy involves developing an alternative story about a particular experience that makes as good a fit and might allow the teller to face the future more hopefully and courageously’[37]
‘Our identities, our ideas about the kind of people we are or wish to be, are shaped by deliberating over what matters to us.’ [38]
‘The development of morally neutral descriptive terms within theories of mental distress has been an important step in freeing us from religious accounts of mental illness and helped to establish psychology as a natural science, eschewing blaming accounts of mental disturbance.’ [39]
‘Families with a transgender child may feel that they are managing an experience that can barely be spoken about. This is not just because the experience is perceived as shameful and perverse, but also because our thinking here at times operates at the limits of language. Our conventional discourses and practices of sex and gender do not allow for the possibility of transgenderism as a legitimate and valued experience of the self.’[40]
‘Despite the playfulness in popular cultural references to trans* lives, people with a non-conforming gender identity are still often positioned in public narratives as abnormal and incomplete.’[41]
‘The issues raised in this work are psychological, as well as ethical – to do with the capacity and entitlement of young people to determine their own physical development’[42]
‘Liberation psychology offers a political analysis of the predicaments of people helped by psychologists, taking it as given that societies are unequal in terms of power, and therefore in the degree of discrimination, exclusion, stress and even violence that people suffer.’ [43]
‘Knowledge in our field grows not in a gentle progressive curve towards enlightenment, but erratically, with many setbacks, false starts and cul-de-sacs.’ [44]
‘I see effective psychotherapy-even behavioural approaches -as a set of interpersonal craft-skills and techniques, framed and given meaning within an ethical framework for responding to people’s suffering with compassion and hope.’ [45]
[1] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann & J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[2] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann & J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[3] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[4] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[5] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[6] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[7] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[8] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[9] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[10] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[11] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[12] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[13] Bernadette Wren, ‘Notes on a crisis of meaning in the care of gender-diverse children’, in L Hertzmann, J Newbigin (eds), Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, Routledge, 2019.
[14] Bernadette Wren, ‘Polarising debates around gender dysphoria are deeply damaging for young people – I’ve seen it firsthand’, Independent, Saturday 13 April 2019
[15] Bernadette Wren, ‘Polarising debates around gender dysphoria are deeply damaging for young people – I’ve seen it firsthand’, Independent, Saturday 13 April 2019
[16] Bernadette Wren, ‘Polarising debates around gender dysphoria are deeply damaging for young people – I’ve seen it firsthand’, Independent, Saturday 13 April 2019
[17] Wren, Bernadette (2020) You can’t take politics out of the debate on gender‐diverse children. Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(1):40-42 · February 2020
[18] Wren, Bernadette (2020) You can’t take politics out of the debate on gender‐diverse children. Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(1):40-42 · February 2020
[19] Wren, Bernadette (2020) You can’t take politics out of the debate on gender‐diverse children. Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(1):40-42 · February 2020
[20] Wren, Bernadette (2020) You can’t take politics out of the debate on gender‐diverse children. Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(1):40-42 · February 2020
[21] Wren, Bernadette (2020) You can’t take politics out of the debate on gender‐diverse children. Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(1):40-42 · February 2020
[22] Wren, Bernadette (2020) You can’t take politics out of the debate on gender‐diverse children. Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(1):40-42 · February 2020
[23] Wren, Bernadette (2020) You can’t take politics out of the debate on gender‐diverse children. Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(1):40-42 · February 2020
[24] Wren, Bernadette and Launer, John and Music, Graham and Swanepoel, Annie and Reiss, Michael (2019) Can evolutionary thinking shed light on gender diversity? BJPsych Advances. ISSN Print ISSN: 2056-4678 ; Online ISSN: 2056-4686
[25] Wren, Bernadette and Launer, John and Music, Graham and Swanepoel, Annie and Reiss, Michael (2019) Can evolutionary thinking shed light on gender diversity? BJPsych Advances. ISSN Print ISSN: 2056-4678 ; Online ISSN: 2056-4686
[26] Wren, Bernadette and Launer, John and Music, Graham and Swanepoel, Annie and Reiss, Michael (2019) Can evolutionary thinking shed light on gender diversity? BJPsych Advances. ISSN Print ISSN: 2056-4678 ; Online ISSN: 2056-4686
[27] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[28] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[29] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[30] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[31] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[32] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[33] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[34] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[35] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[36] Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology, 24 (2). pp. 271-291. ISSN 0959-3535
[37] Wren, Bernadette (2012) Researching the moral dimension of first-person narratives. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 9 (1). pp. 47-61. ISSN 1478-0887 (Print), 1478-0895 (Online)
[38] Wren, Bernadette (2012) Researching the moral dimension of first-person narratives. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 9 (1). pp. 47-61. ISSN 1478-0887 (Print), 1478-0895 (Online)
[39] Wren, Bernadette (2012) Researching the moral dimension of first-person narratives. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 9 (1). pp. 47-61. ISSN 1478-0887 (Print), 1478-0895 (Online)
[40] Wren, Bernadette (2002) ‘I Can Accept My Child is Transsexual but if I Ever See Him in a Dress I’ll Hit Him’: Dilemmas in Parenting a Transgendered Adolescent. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 7(3):377-397 · July 2002, DOI: 10.1177/1359104502007003035
[41] Wren, Bernadette (2015) A clinical service for gender non-conforming young people: What can a liberation psychology perspective contribute? In: Liberation practices: Towards emotional wellbeing through dialogue. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 78-88. ISBN 9781138791138
[42] Wren, Bernadette (2015) A clinical service for gender non-conforming young people: What can a liberation psychology perspective contribute? In: Liberation practices: Towards emotional wellbeing through dialogue. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 78-88. ISBN 9781138791138
[43] Wren, Bernadette (2015) A clinical service for gender non-conforming young people: What can a liberation psychology perspective contribute? In: Liberation practices: Towards emotional wellbeing through dialogue. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 78-88. ISBN 9781138791138
[44] Wren, Bernadette (2015) ‘There is no room in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for providing intervention without an evidence base’: The case against. Context (139). pp. 27-31.
[45] Wren, Bernadette (2015) ‘There is no room in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for providing intervention without an evidence base’: The case against. Context (139). pp. 27-31.