TWIBS: Cass Receives Peerage for Bad Science
It appears the second most vile transphobe in Britain has been rewarded for her evil maneuvers with… nobility? Sure. Sick. Cool!
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Okay… this one’s a doozy.
Hey, you remember Hilary Cass, right? The primary author of the Cass Report, a document designed to advise the UK’s government on healthcare for trans youth that is best used as campfire tender or emergency toilet paper, Cass has regurgitated transphobic talking points more times than I can count and likely drafted the Report from a heavily biased viewpoint. The Report has been heavily criticized by healthcare and methodological experts, including the fucking Yale Law School of Medicine. In spite of its clear bias and poor methodology, the Report has inspired the new Labour government to make permanent a once temporary ban on puberty blockers and been hailed as a sort of holy grail for anti-trans activists seeking even a crumb of (psuedo)-scientific validation for their bigoted beliefs.
Naturally for her primogenic role in this absolute disaster Hilary Cass has been awarded a life peerage by the prime minister and king.
Let me break this down for you very quickly: Peers in the United Kingdom are, for the most part, landed gentry. Some have been granted a seat in the House of Lords, one half of the evil UK bicameral legislative process known as Parliament. Peers were at one point mostly hereditary, titles they inherited by being blueblood jerkoffs, until 1999 when Tony Blair booted the majority of them out of their peership, a process that’s being finalized as we speak. Life peers, like Cass, are appointed by the reigning monarch at the prime minister’s advice, and their title cannot be transferred.
Which means she is now… Baron Hilary Cass.
Uh… sorry, I mean Baroness Hilary Cass. Got carried away there.
As a supposedly politically unaffiliated crossbench peer, Hilary Cass—who I feel obligated to remind you, in case you’ve forgotten in the last few sentences, is a virulent transphobe and author of the most significant piece of transphobic pseudoscience published in recent memory—is now tasked with sitting in on legislative meetings where she will help draft new laws, join committees that consider public policy, and “hold the government to account.”
This despicable woman, who has already done so much harm to trans youth throughout Britain, is now one of its select de facto lawmakers. Peerages are exceedingly difficult to remove, requiring an Act of Parliament. Even the crown can’t strip a peer of their title once granted, and parliament hasn’t done so in over a century. Seats in the House of Lords can be revoked, as mentioned previously, but unless very serious scandals come to light and trigger a peer’s inbuilt British humiliation fetish, forcing them to resign their seat, this too is a rare occurrence.
Individual members of the House of Lords don’t possess unique power to alter the shape of UK legislation on their own, but given how excited Labour have been to hang on Cass’s every disgusting piece of pseudoscientific advice, it seems likely to me that she will wield a lot of influence in Parliament.
If you’ve got trans friends in the UK, consider buying them a drink or something. I’ve said it before and I’m afraid I’ll have to say it again and again: Things are about to get worse for trans folks in the UK.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
