Hilary Cass Repeats Transphobic Talking Points, Again
Ding ding! Round… uh, I lost count, actually. Dr. Hilary Cass, author of the reviled Cass Report, has yet again found herself saying a bunch of silly things and running back all the classic anti-trans activist arguments for a journalist. What fun!
Opinion, by Alyssa Steinsiek
Hilary Cass, author of the heavily biased Cass Report that every conservative writer and their mother has hailed as the second coming for anti-trans activists, is in the news because of an interview… again. Place your bets now on just how out of pocket her remarks will be! Maybe she’ll float the idea that porn makes you trans again.
The day before Cass was due to speak at a conference at the Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands on the 27th of June, she gave an interview to Dutch newspaper Trouw regarding the wide ranging and entirely accurate accusations of her rampant transphobia.
Cass’ starts the interview by explaining that, prior to being tasked with authoring a review, she had absolutely no experience with trans patients. In fact, she says that was exactly why the NHS hired her: they wanted somebody “neutral,” because the field of transgender healthcare was “so polarized.” It’s hard to imagine any other scenario in which a person without any experience in the field they’re meant to be studying would be asked to write a review of treatments they don’t know anything about to remain, supposedly, unbiased.
As usual, common sense doesn’t apply when it comes to harming trans people.
After the interviewer suggests Cass has connections to politicians in Texas, she insists that she has no connection to any American politicians. As far as we know, this is true… but it is an obvious skirting of the American anti-trans activists she does have connections to.
In 2022, Cass traded emails with Dr. Patrick Hunter, a Floridian pediatrician who is most responsible for the McMaster University “review” that inspired Florida’s draconian anti-trans legislation. Cass expressed interest in that review to one of Hunter’s colleagues, Paul Hughes, and was subsequently forwarded a copy of it. Considering the final Report released by Cass and her team, it seems likely that Hunter’s work greatly inspired theirs.
It’s also worth noting that Cass and Hunter were introduced by Riittakerttu Kaltiala, a Finnish doctor and head of the youth gender center in Tampere. The clinic Kaltiala leads has been accused by parents of child patients of asking them deeply inappropriate and upsetting questions, seemingly meant to discourage trans youth from seeking the medical care they need.
Cass later states in her interview with Trouw that “for some young people, a medical trajectory will ultimately be best,” but that “for some, the gender issue will be a changing thing that will eventually disappear without medication.” Though Cass may be broadly correct—medical intervention is best for some trans youth, but not all—she is, like most of her cohort, speaking about a vanishingly small percentage of kids. We know that the “desistance” rate among trans youth is practically a rounding error in an already comically small percentage of society.
Next, Cass repeats the tired, inaccurate talking point about some surge in AFAB youth seeking medical intervention that isn’t entirely borne out in real statistics. She suggests that “the Dutch protocol” for gender-affirming care is based on dated stats from a time when AMAB youth were the largest pool of patients. In fact, as Dutch journalist Marieke Kuypers points out, the latest studies suggest a near even split between the two groups in trans healthcare.
By this point in the interview, you would be forgiven for growing bored. Cass is repeating all the hallmark anti-trans concern troll talking points. She suggests that we just don’t know enough about puberty blockers, even though that’s blatantly untrue. These medicines have been used to treat both trans kids and cis kids experiencing precocious puberty for decades without issue.
She patronizes young transmasc and nonbinary AFAB kids by suggesting that all they need is to “take the contraceptive pill so that her [sic] period does not occur, and to learn to wear a binder safely.” What a ridiculous suggestion, as if contraceptives block menstruation uniformly for every person who takes them. As if developing wider hips and breasts aren’t every bit as traumatizing and awful for those trans kids as periods are. As if trans youth and supportive parents don’t seek medical intervention already fully aware of their options and their needs.
And do not get me started on the way she willfully misgenders every single trans kid she ever talks about. “Born males” and “born females” and “girls” and “boys,” all words chosen to affect maximal harm to any kid who might hear her speak. The interview goes on, but do we really need to see more? Is it not clear exactly what side of this conversation Hilary Cass is and has always been on?
This is a vile woman with absolutely zero care or concern for me and my community. The way she gleefully does harm to trans youth sickens me, and as far as I’m concerned she can go ahead and take that retirement she keeps bleating on about, because I don’t want to listen to her anymore.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
