After being challenged by many intellectuals and health professionals, the Family Allowance Fund (CAF) has finally (discreetly) changed its tune on the issue of transgender children.
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In a text published on January 25 on its website, the organization responsible for paying social benefits to households intends to provide advice to parents on how to “
properly support
” a transgender child.
This article explains that "
22% of French people between the ages of 18 and 30 feel neither male nor female
" (quoting an IFOP survey for the newspaper
Marianne
) and describes this phenomenon as "
gender dysphoria
", which It is advisable to “
play down
” before “
finding out
” more about the subject.
Read also“Born in the wrong body”: an article on trans children published by CAF is controversial
This text quickly sparked a controversy.
In a column published in the February 17 edition of Le
Figaro
, 80 health professionals, intellectuals and academics, including Élisabeth Badinter, Jean-François Braunstein, Caroline Eliacheff and Céline Masson, accused CAF of "relaying the presuppositions
of gender theory
.
The signatories of the forum asked the Minister of Health, François Braun, who is responsible for CAF, to "
have this disinformation page removed without delay
" because of its "
shortcomings
" and its "
partiality
".
For its part, the association Juristes pour l'Enfance sent two registered letters to CAF to request the withdrawal of the article.
The CAF website has been discreetly modified
In detail, the signatories regret that CAF did not take into account the opinion of a large part of the medical profession about transgender children.
“
The only words exposed are those of two activists for the rights of transgender people: never is reference made to real specialists in childhood and adolescence, psychologists, doctors or biologists”, deplore the signatories
.
Did the ministry intervene directly with the CAF to grant the request of the signatories?
In any case, no announcement has been made in this regard, and neither François Braun nor the Family Allowance Fund has communicated on this subject.
However, the page has been modified, and two significant additions have been made to the text.
The first, and the most fundamental, consists in recalling the important, if not irreversible, consequences of a gender transition, and in the first place proposing psychological support: "To emphasize that medical changes are of course not to be taken
at mild with potentially heavy impacts beyond changes to the external genitalia
», now mentions the article online on the CAF website.
This mention is followed in particular by a reference to the opinion issued on February 25, 2022 by the National Academy of Medicine, which calls for the greatest caution on the subject.
In addition, the article now mentions an approach launched by the Minister with the High Authority for Health, in order to come up with recommendations.
An approach which aims to "
provide complete information [to] readers
", we explain modestly to CAF, which reminds Le
Figaro
of its wish to "
deal with all the themes relating to the life of families in their diversity, in particular by giving the floor to institutional and associative actors identified for their involvement in a subject
”.
"
This change is a victory, or at least a step forward
", rejoices the academic Claude Habib, one of the signatories of the column published in
Le Figaro
, who believes that this text has therefore fulfilled its objectives, by preventing the only expression of a militant voice on the issue of transgender children.
Complaint before the College of Physicians
Several of the doctors who signed this forum, on the other hand, had the unpleasant surprise of receiving a summons issued by the departmental councils of the College of Physicians.
They were indeed seized of a complaint filed by the association OUTrans, a collective which campaigns for the rights of trans people (and whose co-president is widely quoted by the article of the CAF).
“
To date, eight of the nineteen doctors who signed the forum in
Le Figaro
were summoned in early April by their departmental council of the College of Physicians
”, details their lawyer, Me Delphine Meillet.
The other doctors expect in turn to receive a similar summons.
The complaint filed by OUTrans notably accuses these signatory doctors of “
medical disinformation
” and “
charlatanism
”.
The detail of the complaint, consulted by
Le Figaro
, argues in particular that, "
with regard to the gender-affirmative approach, it is false and serious to say that it is not based on any scientific basis
", on the grounds, according to OUTrans that a "
world association of transgender health professionals
" have issued recommendations for good practice, which are "
consensus
"... only within the NGO.
“
We believe we are dreaming,
comments for her part the child psychiatrist Caroline Eliacheff, also a signatory of the
Figaro tribune, when we see certain eminent colleagues such as Professor Didier Sicard, former president of the ethics committee, accused of charlatanism!
Under the Public Health Code, the departmental councils of the College of Physicians seized by a complaint have the obligation to organize a contradictory confrontation with each of the parties.
The College of Physicians declined to comment.