Hello and welcome 🫶
Dr Helen Webberley Gender Specialist | Medical Educator | Fierce Ally
My Story
My name is Dr Helen Webberley, and I have spent 30 years caring for people as a doctor. For the last decade of my medical career, I dedicated myself entirely to one group of patients who had been catastrophically let down by the healthcare system: transgender people.
I want to tell you how I got here, because I think it matters. I think understanding my story helps you understand why I do what I do, and why I will never, ever stop.
Where It Started
I trained as a GP and sexual health doctor and practised in that field for two decades. I loved it. I loved the breadth of it, the relationships, the privilege of being trusted with people’s most intimate concerns. I was a good doctor. I cared deeply, and I worked hard.
Then, in 2015, something shifted. I began seeing patients who were transgender, and what I learned broke my heart. These were people who had waited years, sometimes decades, for basic healthcare. Children whose parents were begging for help while NHS waiting lists stretched to four, five, six years. Families torn apart by a system that made them choose between doing nothing and seeking help outside the country.
I couldn’t look away. I knew the medicine. I understood the evidence. I had read the international guidelines. The treatment these patients needed was safe, effective, and well-established. So I started providing it through a website that I made, GenderGP. I treated patients using the same evidence-based protocols used by leading gender clinics around the world. I did what any good doctor would do: I put my patients first.
What Happened Next
In 2017, I was referred to the General Medical Council. Not by a patient. Not by a family. I was referred by NHS colleagues who disagreed with the fact that I was providing care that they were not.
What followed was six years of investigation, scrutiny, hearings, and relentless pressure. Six years of my professional life under a microscope. Six years of being told, in one form or another, that providing timely, compassionate care to transgender people was something I needed to answer for.
I fought it. At every stage, I fought it. Finally in the High Court, I was cleared. The truth won. My clinical practice was vindicated. The care I provided was exactly what those patients needed, and the evidence supported every decision I made. Despite that, the regulatory process left me unable to continue to treat patients because of the length of time I had been out and the process by which to get back in.
What I Do Now
That experience did not silence me. It gave me a platform and a purpose that goes beyond the consulting room.
I now work full time in advocacy. I challenge the misinformation that puts trans lives at risk. I take apart flawed reviews and biased guidelines. My work has been featured in The Guardian, the BBC, Times Radio, Channel 4, and numerous other national and international media outlets.
I fact-check the public figures who use their platforms to spread fear. I review the policies that are being written about trans people without trans people at the table. I speak up when others stay silent.
I do this through my Substack publication, Dr Webberley Responds, where I publish evidence-based articles, video responses, conversations, and medical explainers several times a week. I do it through my social media, where I reach millions of people with content that cuts through the noise. I do it through media appearances, where I bring the medical evidence that is so often missing from the debate.
I do all of this because I am a doctor, a mother, a wife, and because standing by while people are harmed is something I simply cannot do.
What Drives Me
I believe that gender diversity is one of the most beautiful and natural things about being human. I believe that every person, regardless of their age, deserves access to accurate, compassionate, evidence-based healthcare for their gender identity. I believe that when we understand the medicine and the evidence, the fear falls away. I believe that parents who support their trans children are not confused or coerced. They are brave, and they are right.
I believe that the current hostility towards trans people in the United Kingdom will be looked back on with the same horror and shame as every other time society turned against a minority group. I intend to be on the right side of that history, and I invite you to stand alongside me. I know one thing, the truth always wins.
The people who are making life harder for trans people right now are wrong, and I can show you why. That is what I do, every single day, and I will keep doing it for as long as it takes.
The truth always wins.
Ready to join me? Read my latest work on the homepage, or subscribe below to get everything I publish straight to your inbox.
With love, Helen 🫶
Gender Specialist | Medical Educator | Fierce Ally
