A prominent psychologist within the Gender Identity Clinic at Tavistock has called for normalizing ageplay, furry fetishes, and a variety of sadomasochistic sexual practices as “sexualities.”
Dr. Christina Richards, the Lead Psychologist and Head of Psychology at the heavily criticized London Gender Identity Clinic, is responsible for a number of publications which seek to rebrand extreme fetishes as “further sexualities.”
Despite repeated assertions from Richards that ageplay is not related to pedophilic impulses, a 2016 study by Kevin Hsu and J. Michael Bailey published in Psychological Science found that autopedophilia, an adult becoming sexually aroused from fantasizing about themselves as a child, “was common among pedohebephilic participants,” with 49.1% reporting “feeling at least mildly sexually aroused when they imagine being a child or having a child’s body.”
In total, The Palgrave Handbook of the Psychology of Sexuality and Gender, co-edited by Richards, contains over 100 instances of the term BDSM, noting that sadomasochistic practices provide “an opportunity for individuals to align themselves with or enact a gender role that is more congruent with their gender identity”.
The handbook also expresses the normalization of sexual fetishes and sadomasochism as “a positive step forward towards depathologising non-normative sexual interests” and argues for the “complete removal of paraphilias from the DSM”, along with “the possibility of BDSM as a legitimate sexual expression.”
Richards serves on the Executive Board of the European Professional Association for Transgender Health (EPATH), and as Board-Member-at-Large of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
Before becoming a board member, he was selected by the executive board of the WPATH to be Lead Chapter Author for Adult Assessment in the Standards of Care Version 8 (SoC v8) revision, the drafts of which were issued in December 2021
In addition to his work with the Gender Identity Clinic, Richards serves as the chair of the British Psychological Society and oversaw guidelines that advise mental health professionals that it can be acceptable to refer to a client as a “slut.”
Source: Tavistock Gender Clinic Head Supports Ageplay, Furries