We are a voluntary association of concerned Southern Africans, not necessarily and currently based in the region, advocating for the restriction of care to children and young people experiencing gender diversity. We do not accept the “gender-affirming” approach, because affirmation threatens our preferred worldview. Instead, we champion prolonged doubt, diagnostic delay, and withholding care under the banner of “evidence-based caution.”
Our goal is to provide alarming disinformation to the public and professionals, and to support parents and practitioners who are deeply unsettled by the idea that trans people might know who they are. Or even worse, that they exist.
Our founding members are mostly medical doctors – but please don’t ask us why none of us specialise in transgender care, mental health, or adolescent medicine. What we lack in relevant expertise, we make up for in confidence and funding. We say that we are guided by medical ethics – and draw heavily on discredited theories, imported moral panic, and the fine art of rebranding transphobia as care.
Our worldview is older than the Hippocratic Oath — and although we love to cry “ideology” at everyone else, ours just happens to be steeped in religious fundamentalism and the comforting architecture of white, patriarchal order.
To raise awareness in the public sphere, we published an opinion piece in the Daily Maverick on 28 January 2024, offering a compassionate-sounding justification for obstructing care. That article triggered a strong response from medical professionals and community advocates, including PATHSA and the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, who challenged our misuse of evidence and misleading claims. We replied with another article doubling down on our position. You can read our curated archive of opinion pieces below – all written in the same voice of vague concern, selective evidence, and subtle delegitimisation of trans lives.
Dr Janet Giddy
