Conflicts spill over every week: the Biden administration seeks to redefine sex under Title IX — and 26 states sue the Department of Education. A lawsuit brought by a young detransitioner moves forward. In New York, elected officials chastised parents for raising concerns about fairness in girls’ sports, labelling the parents’ call for a review of sports policies as “hateful, discriminatory and actively harmful”. One state assemblyman accused parents of “creat[ing] a conversation that is not needed” — even as male athletes knock female competitors off the podium.

But the conversation isn’t getting any smarter and the US is increasingly out of step with international developments concerning gender identity in healthcare, education, and sports.

The release of the final report of the Cass Review sent shockwaves through UK politics last month, with policymakers across party lines expressing grave concerns about its findings. But — in the latest iteration of important information getting lost over the pond — the report has had little to no effect on the heated debate over transgender issues in the US. So, even as the UK starts to reckon with the fallout of a medical scandal, the US splits furiously down the middle.

Trans activists and US medical organisations insist there’s nothing the country’s parents, doctors, and policymakers need to learn from Hilary Cass. But the Cass Report could do much to inform dialogue across a divide in US politics that seems increasingly unbridgeable. At the very least, Cass’s findings could retire some overused, under-evidenced talking points: no, the science isn’t settled. No, there isn’t evidence gender-affirming care saves lives (suicide is, thankfully, rare, and shouldn’t be used to emotionally blackmail critics). Yes, some young people are being harmed — not helped — by interventions that are, if not “life-saving”, certainly life-changing.

Americans don’t have a Hilary Cass. No independent commission has its eye on the country’s sprawling network of youth gender clinics. It’s impossible to know whose words — if anyone’s — will have the power to shift the debate from partisan terrain to the realm of evidence and reason.

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Eliza Mondegreen is graduate and researcher.

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