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A lesbian NHS leader has been told not to waste time applying for a senior position at a controversial NHS trust that offers gender reassignment surgery to 10-year-olds because of their views on sex.
Kate Grimes, who previously ran Kingston Hospital in London, inquired about a top mental health role at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust.
Ms Grimes is openly lesbian and was ranked as one of the top 25 LGBT role models by the NHS in 2014.
But she was told not to bother applying for the role after she told them she believed there were only two genders and "sex is unchanging".
She has also previously publicly criticized trans rights groups and supports the LGB Alliance – a charity founded to oppose LGBT rights organization Stonewall's policies on transgender issues.
Tavistock is notorious for its clinic that can refer children to puberty blockers. It recruited external expertise after being deemed “inadequate” by inspectors last year.
It was brought to court last year by ex-patient Keira Bell, 24, who is retiring after regretting taking the hormone medication as a 16-year-old.
And it was also done by the former employee Dr. David Bell, a consultant psychiatrist, criticized because he believed that any girls who didn't like "pink bows and dolls" must be transgender.
Kate Grimes, who ran Kingston Hospital in London, was told by an external recruiter not to waste time applying for a senior position at Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust because of her gender-critical views
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London is notorious for being the only trust to offer puberty blockers to teenagers
After deciding not to proceed with her application, Ms Grimes wrote a letter to Health Secretary Sajid Javid asking him to intervene and launch a review of the processes.
Emails show that Dr. Melanie West, a recruiter at Gatenby Sanderson, told Ms Grimes that she would almost certainly not be considered for the role because of her views.
Dr. West said: "I have to say that your view that sex is immutable is not a view that the Trust wants its non-executives to have and so I would not recommend that you waste time making a request for it."
“That will be one of the questions I ask candidates in the first interview.”
Ms Grimes said she was “absolutely amazed” by the response.
Peter Daly, employment lawyer at Doyle Clayton, said excluding people because of gender-critical views constituted the same level of discrimination in the eyes of the law as doing so because of race, gender or sexuality.
In a letter to the Health Secretary, Ms Grimes said the trust had "compounded its government failings - and broken the law - by refusing to interview anyone who believes biological sex cannot be changed".
she said The Daily Telegraph: “It is entirely possible to support and care for children with gender dysphoria without believing that it is literally possible to change biological sex.
“Indeed, a fundamental principle of good health care is that personal beliefs do not interfere with the care provided.”
Ms Grimes has previously spoken out against pro-trans groups including Stonewall, the LGBT rights charity.
She accused the NHS of putting patients at risk by signing up to the charity's controversial Diversity Champions programme, which has since been abandoned by the Cabinet Office, the House of Lords and the BBC.
More than 90 healthcare organizations are believed to be members of the charity's controversial scheme, including the Department of Health, NHS England and numerous hospital trusts.
Ms Grimes accused Stonewall of "undermining" the NHS's ability to keep patients safe, "suppressing" freedom of speech and creating a "culture of fear" among some NHS staff.
And she warned that some advice risked “opening up NHS organizations to litigation and reputational damage”.
Ms Grimes recalled how she received offensive messages when she came out as a lesbian in the late 1980s, her pride in leading one of the country's leading HIV/AIDS services and her appreciation for Stonewall's campaign for greater equality.
However, she said the charity's recent lobbying on trans issues culminates in the "false notion" that a man who identifies as a woman has legal access to women-only spaces.
As a result, she added, female patients no longer have access to single-sex accommodations on wards and bathrooms.
A spokesperson for Tavistock and Portman said: “We adhere to equality laws and NHS best practice when recruiting.
“We welcome applications from all suitably qualified candidates, including whether they meet the NHS-wide criterion of promoting and respecting equality, diversity and inclusion.
“If an applicant meets the essential criteria for a position and also tells us that they have a disability, they will automatically be offered an interview.”
Why did the NHS allow me to change gender? Keira Bell shares her story in the hope that it “serves as a warning to others.”
IT engineer Miss Bell is pictured outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London
Keira told the Daily Mail what happened to her to highlight her plight and serve as a warning to others.
Keira was raised in Hertfordshire with two younger sisters by her single mother as her parents divorced. Her father, who served in the U.S. military in Britain and has since settled here, lived a few miles away.
She was always a tomboy, she said. She did not like wearing skirts and vividly remembers two occasions when her family forced her to go out in a dress.
She told the Daily Mail: "When I was 14 I was asked a question by my mother about being such a tomboy. She asked me if I was a lesbian so I said no. She asked me if I wanted to be a boy and I said no too."
But the question made Keira think she might be what was then called transsexual and is now known as transgender.
“I hated the idea,” she tells me. "The desire to change gender wasn't as glorified as it is now. It was still relatively unknown. But the idea stayed in my head and it didn't go away."
Keira's journey to the invasive treatment she blames for destroying her life began after she began persistently skipping school. An oddball, she insisted on wearing pants—most students there chose skirts—and rarely had friends of either sex.
When she repeatedly refused to come to class due to bullying, she was referred to a therapist.
She told him about her thoughts about wanting to be a boy.
Very soon she was referred to her local doctor who in turn sent her to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) near her home. From there she was treated at Tavistock because she believed she had been born in the wrong body.
Keira had entered puberty and her period had begun. "The Tavistock gave me hormone blockers to stop my female development. It was like turning off a tap," she said.
"I had similar symptoms to menopause, when a woman's hormones drop. I had hot flashes, I had a hard time sleeping, my sex drive disappeared. I was given calcium tablets because my bones were weakening."
Keira claimed she was not warned by Tavistock therapists about the horrific symptoms that lay ahead.
Her breasts, tied together with a scarf she bought on a transgender website, did not disappear immediately. "I was in the middle of nowhere," she said.
But back she went to the Tavistock where tests were carried out to see if she was ready for the next stage of her treatment after almost a year on blockers.
A few months later, she noticed the first thin hairs growing on her chin. Finally something happened. Keira was happy.
She was referred to the Gender Identity Clinic in West London, which treats adults planning to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
After receiving two expert “opinions” there, she was admitted to a hospital in Brighton, East Sussex, at the age of 20 for a double mastectomy.
She now had a full beard, her sex drive had returned and her voice was deep.
After her breasts were removed, she began to have doubts about becoming a boy.
Despite her doubts, she continued. She changed her name and gender on her driver's license and birth certificate and called herself Quincy (after musician Quincy Jones) because she liked the sound of it. She also changed her name via deed poll and received a government-authorized gender recognition certificate, officially making her a man.
She received her last testosterone injection in January last year, shortly after her 22nd birthday.
But after years of pumping hormones into your body, the clock isn't so easy to turn back. It's true that her period returned and she slowly regained a more feminine figure around her hips. Her beard still grows.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever really look like a woman again,” she said. “I feel like a guinea pig in Tavistock and I don’t think anyone knows what will happen to my body in the future.”
Even the question of whether she can have children is doubtful.
She has started buying women's clothing and using women's restrooms again, but said, "I worry every time women think I'm a man. I get nervous. I have short hair, but I let it grow out, and maybe that will make a difference."
By law she is a man, and she faces the bureaucratic nightmare of changing official papers back to say she is female.