ShoutOut for Athena SWAN
Gender identity, misinformation, indoctrination, and the Athena SWAN Ireland scheme
It was May 2021. The country was caught in a spiral of Covid lockdowns and re-openings. Hairdressers, restaurants, and pubs were all still closed, and lectures that semester had all been held online. Staff where I worked at the then Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), which is now part of the South East Technological University, were sent details of a workshop about ‘gender diversity and expression’ to be delivered online by an Irish organisation called ShoutOut. I signed up to attend. Unknownst to myself at the time I had stepped into a labyrinth.
ShoutOut specialises in providing ‘educational programmes’ with the goal of improving life for LGBTQ+ individuals. The workshop for WIT staff was optional to attend, but I had been interested in the topic of gender identity since late 2018 and wanted to increase my own knowledge. Plus, I was curious about what information would be presented. The training was one of a series of pilot workshops and was part of a collaborative initiative, led by the Institute of Technology Carlow and involving WIT, Mary Immaculate College, Carlow College and Limerick Institute of Technology. Over 70 people attended that first workshop. The two (relatively young) female presenters from ShoutOut delivered a second follow-up workshop a week later and over 50 attended.
During the first workshop, the presenters stated that sex is not binary, that it is a spectrum. They said that sex is ‘assigned at birth’. They explained that anyone who is not trans is cisgender. They praised transwoman Laverne Cox and said that Caitlin Jenner was a less good advocate and was, in their words ‘unfortunately the most famous transwoman in the world’. They recommended the practice of ‘pronoun positivity’ which involves people displaying pronouns including in email signatures, and they recommended the use of gender-neutral language advising us to say things like ‘hey folks’, ‘hello everybody’, ‘distinguished guests’, ‘hi gang’ or ‘hi team’ rather than saying ‘ladies and gentlemen’ or ‘boys and girls’.
I acknowledge that these ideas are shared by many, however, they are contested and yet they were being presented as fact, as though this was the only way to think about gender or gender identity. Sex, if it is understood in terms of genitalia can indeed be argued to be a spectrum rather than a binary but sex, if understood in terms of gametes is a straight forward binary – there are two gametes, sperm and ova.
The use of the phrase ‘sex assigned at birth’ is linked to the treatment of people born with intersex conditions or ‘differences of sexual development’ (DSDs) and who may have been born with ambiguous genitalia but sex, for the vast majority (over 99.9%) of children is observed and recorded, rather than something that is ‘assigned’.
The presenters’ use of the word ‘cisgender’ as an umbrella term for people who are not transgender suggests that everyone has such a thing as a gender identity but not everyone does. I, for example, do not have a gender identity. I am a woman. For me, it is not an identity.
The comments about Caitlin Jenner were questionable during a workshop designed specifically to support LGBT people when Caitlin Jenner identifies as transgender. It wasn’t stated why Jenner was a less good advocate than Laverne Cox but Jenner is known as someone who believes that it is unfair for males to compete in the women’s category in sports competitions even if that male identifies as a woman.
The recommendation for staff to use pronouns and gender neutral language puts pressure on people in educational institutions to uncritically adopt gender identity theory.
The bit however, that concerned me most was when one of the presenters stated that puberty blockers are reversible. This is dangerous misinformation with potentially damaging ramifications.
Puberty blockers, or gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) analogues, block puberty. They delay the development of secondary sex characteristics, and the intention of using them is to alleviate distress associated with gender dysphoria and give the child time to consider decisions about taking what were considered to be more irreversible steps.[1]
The use of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria is linked to what is called the ‘Dutch Protocol’ that was developed in the Netherlands.[2] The Dutch Protocol is part of the ‘gender affirmation’ model of care.[3] A recent study about the Dutch Protocol pointed out that it was never shown that the benefits of the affirmative model were substantial enough to outweigh ‘the burden of lifelong dependence on medical interventions, infertility and sterility, and various physical health risks’.[4] Recent international systematic reviews of evidence have found that the practice of gender transition for children rests on ‘low to very low quality evidence’.[5]
In England, the puberty blocker that has been used to treat children with gender dysphoria is triptorelin which has marketing authorisation for the treatment of prostate cancer, endometriosis, and precocious puberty (which is puberty that begins before the age of 8 in girls or 10 in boys) but its use for gender dysphoria is off-label.[6] This means that triptorelin is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat gender dysphoria.[7]
As far back as September 2019, an overview showing a lack of evidence for the use of hormonal treatments for children with gender dysphoria was published in Sweden and it pointed out that the use of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones is ‘potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis’.[8]
In March 2021, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published a systematic review which stated that the quality of evidence of the impact of puberty blockers on bone density, cognitive development or functioning, and on other physical issues such as kidney or liver function, was of very low certainty.[9] The review also found that puberty blockers led to ‘little or no change in gender dysphoria, mental health, body image and psychosocial functioning’.[10]
The Karolinska Hospital in Sweden issued a new policy statement on the treatment of children with gender dysphoria in spring 2021 and from April 1st of that year their practice of prescribing puberty blockers for under 16 year olds was ended.[11]
All of these developments had happened before the ShoutOut workshop at WIT and yet attendees were told that puberty blockers were reversible. Because of my interest in the topic, I was aware of many of these latest developments, but ShoutOut were meant to be the experts, not me, I was just a lecturer in world religions and ethics. And yet, here we had a so-called expert organisation teaching staff at a higher education institution about an enormously complex topic, promoting a contested theory as fact and stating that puberty blockers were reversible. This had implications not just for staff but also, potentially, for staff member’s families and for students. What if a staff member had a child diagnosed with gender dysphoria? Might they think it was safe for the child to go down the route of puberty blockers?
At that first workshop I raised an issue in the online chat about the reversibility of puberty blockers – I was nervous and was very careful to be civil and polite and non-adversarial. The presenters did not even acknowledge my query. On the follow up session a week later they did say that there was not universal scientific agreement on the use of puberty blockers. And then they stated that puberty blockers reduce harm.
After the workshop I sent emails to the in-house organiser and to other senior staff in WIT raising concerns about the training. I was advised that the session had been externally funded by Ireland’s Higher Education Authority (HEA) and was linked to the HEA ‘Gender Equality Action Plan’ and to ‘Athena SWAN initiatives’. This was how I first heard about Athena SWAN.
I spent the next few months dipping into the topic, trying to untangle the conundrum of why staff in higher education institutions in Ireland were being indoctrinated in gender identity beliefs and in trying to figure out what the workshops had to do with this thing called Athena SWAN. The workshop, however, was just a symptom of a much bigger and far deeper problem than just this one organisation teaching HEI staff gender identity theory as fact. My first article about Athena SWAN was published on the online outlet ‘broadsheet.ie’ in November 2021.
My introduction to Athena SWAN was a step into a labyrinth that I’m still exploring and still discovering new passageways, branches, and chambers. ShoutOut and SETU are just tiny components of the complex. However, those workshops give some indication of the levels of misinformation and indoctrination occurring in tandem with participation in the Athena SWAN Ireland scheme. All higher education institutions in Ireland are required to engage with this Charter and as part of this, are compelled to adopt gender identity theory as fact.
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[1] NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) (2021) ‘Evidence Review: Gonadotropin releasing hormone analogues for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria’, available: https://web.archive.org/web/20220414202655/https://arms.nice.org.uk/resources/hub/1070905/attachment
[2] Abbruzzese, E., Levine, S.B. and Mason, J.W. (2023) ‘The Myth of “Reliable Research” in Pediatric Gender Medicine: A critical evaluation of the Dutch studies – and research that has followed’, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 49:6, 673-699, DOI: 10.1080/0092623X.2022.2150346.
[3] SEGM (Society for Evidence based Gender Medicine) (2021) ‘Sweden Karolinska Ends All Use of Puberty Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones for Minors Outside of Clinical Studies’, 5 May, available: https://segm.org/Sweden_ends_use_of_Dutch_protocol [accessed 19 Nov 2023].
[4] Abbruzzese (2023)
[5] Abbruzzese (2023)
[6] NICE (2021)
[7] See FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) (2018) ‘Understanding Unapproved Use of Approved Drugs “Off Label”, available: https://www.fda.gov/patients/learn-about-expanded-access-and-other-treatment-options/understanding-unapproved-use-approved-drugs-label#:~:text=Unapproved%20use%20of%20an%20approved,a%20different%20type%20of%20cancer.
[8] Karolinska Policy Change (2021) ‘Policy Change Regarding Hormonal Treatment of Minors with Gender Dysphoria at Tema Barn – Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital’, [unofficial translation by SEGM], available: https://segm.org/sites/default/files/Karolinska%20Policy%20Change%20K2021-3343%20March%202021%20%28English%2C%20unofficial%20translation%29.pdf.
[9] NICE (2021)
[10] SEGM (Society for Evidence based Gender Medicine) (2021) ‘New Systematic Reviews of Puberty Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones Published by NICE’, 31 Mar, available: https://segm.org/NICE_gender_medicine_systematic_review_finds_poor_quality_evidence[accessed 19 Nov 2023].
[11] Karolinska Policy Change (2021)