Wes Streeting is Pretending He’s Not the Villain
The UK’s Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, made some self-serving remarks that sound an awful lot like disingenuous crap.
Streeting moments before near fatal chocolate river incident
Opinion by Aly Gibbs
It’s been a tense week! Between powerful cisgender Boss Tweed-esque figure and International Flat Cap Wearing Champion (2022) Evan Urquhart saying what we’ve all been thinking (and generating more comments than we’ve ever received on a single Assigned piece in the process) and Jane Migliara Brigham reminding us that armed minorities can be much harder to oppress, I’d say we’re due for something silly.
So I’m going to make fun of Wes Streeting!
If you aren’t familiar, you lucky duck, Streeting is the Health Secretary for the currently in charge Labour government. He is a Gay man and a transphobe who ensured that a temporary ban on puberty blockers first issued by conservatives was made permanent despite tremendous backlash. He is, simply put, a traitor and a bigot of the highest caliber.
Now, somewhat unbelievably, Streeting is lamenting the long wait times trans Britons face for necessary, life saving healthcare, even though his government is largely responsible for that delay in care.
“Evidence shows trans people have higher rates of mental health conditions, including depression, when compared to the general population. Longer wait times only steepen this pain,” said Streeting at the NHS England LGBT+ Health Annual Conference in London on Monday. “Over 42,000 people are still waiting, often for years, for their first appointment at adult gender dysphoria clinics. That’s 42,000 people who are hurting, anxious, and exhausted. This breaks my heart... 42,000 or more individuals should not be feeling invisible, misunderstood or unsupported.”
For trans people in the UK, this must feel like a slap in the face. Streeting and his ilk have spent the entirety of their time in charge waging an actual war against the trans community. For him to pretend that’s not the case, that he gives even a smidgeon of a fuck about trans people, is so obscene it’s nauseating. Worse yet, he went on to attempt to sympathize with us.
“When I was growing up, I knew how it felt to keep part of myself hidden, scared of the judgment of others. To be bullied just for being me. I was lucky. I had a network of friends, family and organisations who loved and supported me for who I was. Having the confidence to be ourselves is as important as the confidence to express concerns about our own physical and mental health. And when who we are is so intimately linked to how we feel, safe spaces and understanding ears are what we need most. So it is personally upsetting to me, and I am sure to anyone reading this, that LGBT+ people still face worse health outcomes than other population groups.”
In what The Guardian buffoonishly described as extending an olive branch, Streeting said, “I know there are questions in our community about my motivation on this issue and the decisions that I took within days of coming into office. My motivation has only ever been to make sure that medicine given to children is safe and effective, and grounded in robust evidence.”
I suppose I can’t see into Wes Streeting’s heart of hearts and discern the inner truth of his very soul, but frankly? I think that’s a fucking lie. If Streeting’s motivation was to ensure that trans youth were receiving evidence-based, safe, effective treatment for gender dysphoria, he would have given his support to the affirming care model that nearly every medical professional on the planet stands by. He wouldn’t have taken puberty blockers away from trans kids, because we’ve been prescribing them since the 1980s without any significant adverse effects. He wouldn’t have rushed to dismantle trans healthcare by weaponizing the heavily biased Cass Report.
How many years will trans Britons have to wait for adequate care while Wes Streeting and people like him bloviate about how concerned they are, how heartbreaking it is that their actions have harmed tens of thousands of people?
To Wes Streeting, I give my most hearty: Go to hell, dickhead.
Aly Gibbs (She/They), formerly Alyssa Steinsiek, is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
