Update on the puberty blockers trial

[Hoardasurass]

They're going ahead with the puberty blockers trial and it will be open to girls as young as 11 and boys from 12. So it looks like we're going to have to fight again to stop this eugenics campaign of sterilising predominantly gay and autistic children

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/4b3e2839923e3d87

This is horrific. I seriously (and naively) thought we were past all that. Those poor children.

@KkkItas others have said this is not a harmless pause button. This is deeply damaging medication which sterilises children. Can you imagine a 14 yo with the mental age of a 10 yo in a class of other 14 yos? Well that’s the least damaging bit. Most children who say they are trans are already pretty vulnerable and struggling socially. They are autistic, gay and victims of sexual assault. You have just divided them further from any hope of peer group friendships and sterilised them.

There are, tragically, thousands of adults who were put on puberty blockers as children who we could study as a natural experiment to see what the effects are. Standard medical ethics say this should be researchers’ first port of call. Instead they choose to sterilise more children who are too young to consent.

Where can I donate to the legal challenge? I would like to do something to help these children.

On the warpath.

Kemi Badenoch

4h
It is NOT ok to experiment on kids as young as 11 and make irreversible changes to their bodies.

We must protect children from dangerous ideology.

Conservatives will not just sit back and let this happen. I refuse to believe MPs, if given the chance, would let this continue. That is why we will force a vote, not just to pause this trial but to stop it completely.

https://nitter.net/KemiBadenoch/status/2068246503265608115

Be interesting to see what would happen if they get the debate.

Be interesting to see what would happen if they get the debate.

As the official opposition the Tories get 17 out of the 20 "Opposition Days" to choose what to debate in parliament. There is nothing preventing Kemi Badenoch using one of their days to force a vote on this subject.

I happened across this headline in the Times

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/children-waiting-list-gender-care-clinic-3lvkl6jnl

I've only been able to read the headline and subheading. Archive hasn't been working for me with Times articles for a while now. Just the subheading though!
Including 260 of primary school age!

I think this is the DM version of the story (maybe?).

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15917681/More-250-children-primary-school-age-waiting-care-NHS-gender-clinics-youngest-aged-six-under.html

Keeping them off social media might help with the social contagion aspect.

Although not from transhausen parents who don’t want a gender non-conforming or gay child.

eta It’s a bloody stupid notion that this can be done ethically, and I think Cass backed herself into a corner by giving a sop to activists in the report.

Sadly, I think Baroness Cass is a true believer, both in the idea that there is such a thing as a 'genuinely trans' child and also in the idea that medical intervention will help this (very small) group:

"There are a tiny number of people who will never be comfortable with their biological sex, with the gender associated with their biological sex. And for them, a medical pathway is the only way they're going to live their life comfortably."
(source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k1vkmxgd6o)

This is a fairly typical medic mindset - they're used to fixing things with drugs and surgery, and assume that all problems must be fixable in this way. It's one reason why medicine needs ethical oversight from non-medics.

Seems plausible.

It has appeared in the Telegraph this morning but, frustratingly, that one won't archive either.

They won't confirm the exact number of six or younger because 'fewer than ten' might be too identifying!? Ridiculous.

That the flood of kids claimed they're trans seems to be abating is a good development. I'm concerned that (from a quick read) they're not comparing the same numbers. Is the reduction to 4K+ (at one of three clinics) the same as the 6K+? If the second figure was the UK total then there might actually be an increase. Also is anyone counting the kids who, with or without their parents help, are doing it outside the NHS?

Eta I think it's the same waiting list. What's happened to the kids no longer on the waiting list? Have they been treated? Dropped out? Aged out? Desisted? Gone private? Died?

I accept that it's a relatively mainstream view that a tiny minority people really are so truly trans that transition is the only way.

But it's still a fucking leap to think you can ascertain that in a CHILD and then override everything you already knew about informed consent; child abuse; the effect of: parental attitudes, bullying, growing up in our sexist/homophobic/ableist society etc etc.

With all the huge focus on acceptance for trans people, why on earth are activists not letting go of the cruel notion of "passing"?

Then they can relax and allow children the puberty that will give them the healthiest brain and body with which to "transition" as adults, if they still want to?

Seriously. You could be a believer in trans ideology and be relatively sensible. Why has the nutty fundamentalist strain of this belief got so embedded that people like Cass are willing to abandon principles they'd uphold in any other circumstances?

Unfortunately I've lost all faith at this point in adults ever being anywhere to be found.

This will be like the grooming gangs, like women's rights, it will just bumble and bumble and bumble on forever, going nowhere, with much shrugging and long grass, while the victims stack up.

As much as tras say trans people have always been here the trans child is brand spanking new. I think the only evidence, prior to about 10-15 years ago, is the largely unfalsifiable assertions of older, adult (usually) men. Often approaching retirement or older. Claiming that they felt they were the wrong sex since...insert age when a sexual fetish would be unlikely to manifest. Thus sanitising the whole thing.

I wonder if Cass has swallowed it because she cannot believe that medics, like herself, would be so gullible, would do what they've done to children for no reason that stands up to scrutiny. It would discredit a huge chunk of her profession. I don't think she could take that step. Muddying the waters are the infinitesimal number of children who are now genuinely dysphoric. I suspect in many of them the problems they're suffering wouldn't have manifested as dysphoria if they'd never heard the word.

Why has the nutty fundamentalist strain of this belief got so embedded

Because trans ideology has become a cult and is executing a purity spiral

It certainly started out more reasonable. The original demands were for us to use preferred names and pronouns for people with gender dysphoria who had had medical modifications, whilst acknowledging that that people couldn't actually change sex. It was a polite fiction. Many of us were prepared to go along with that.

Then there was a gradual shift towards extending the 'trans umbrella' to cover various other groups who had no intention of undergoing medical modifications, some of whom didn't even want to be the opposite sex. And the concurrent blurring of sex and gender. Eventually, gender identity superseded sex for determining whether people are men or women .

Once gender identity supersedes sex, you have an irrational ideology. And it ends up executing a purity spiral as its believers try to outdo each other in zealotry.

It's had terrible repurcussions for various groups of people. Ironically, it's also made it harder for the very same group of people it was originally meant to help - people with genuine gender dysphoria who have undergone medical modifications but who don't necessarily see themselves as having actually changed sex. I think @Seethlaw is part of this group (apologies if this isn't the case and I've misinterpreted your position)

10-15 years can't be quite right, can it, as Jazz Jennings was transed at, if I remember rightly, 3 years old, and is much older than 18 now. That said, back then it was newsworthy.

Apologies, still relatively recently then.

It certainly started out more reasonable. The original demands were for us to use preferred names and pronouns for people with gender dysphoria who had had medical modifications, whilst acknowledging that that people couldn't actually change sex. It was a polite fiction. Many of us were prepared to go along with that.

I think that's something many of the current younger TRAs don't realise: that it was all a polite fiction. I think a lot of them genuinely believe that transwomen once had an actual right to enter female single-sex spaces, and that this right is now being taken away. They don't understand that transwomen never had that right to begin with, that some of them were merely tolerated into some female single-sex spaces, under conditions of proper behavior.

It's had terrible repurcussions for various groups of people. Ironically, it's also made it harder for the very same group of people it was originally meant to help - people with genuine gender dysphoria who have undergone medical modifications but who don't necessarily see themselves as having actually changed sex. I think is part of this group (apologies if this isn't the case and I've misinterpreted your position)

I used to be... very confused, because the only orthodox position was that "I was a man", and there could be no discussion about what it actually meant on a practical level. Apparently, I was supposed to think of my reproductive organs as male ones? Except a male uterus or male ovarii make zero sense to me, so I was in some kind of mental no man's (heh) land. Finally realising that a transman is simply a specific type of woman was a liberation! Things are logical again.

But as you say: this understanding makes it a whole lot harder for me to interact with the trans community. I'm literally a good old transsexual as they used to be called, but I'm not welcome in the trans community. Makes no sense.

Put that over the door.

Then there was a gradual shift towards extending the 'trans umbrella' to cover various other groups who had no intention of undergoing medical modifications, some of whom didn't even want to be the opposite sex. And the concurrent blurring of sex and gender. Eventually, gender identity superseded sex for determining whether people are men or women .

The trans umbrella has been around for a long time. This piece has an early version of the trans umbrella from 1994 (which includes people like transvestic fetishists and drag queens as 'trans').

The Trans Umbrella Is Older Than You Think – Women Speak Scotland

And people like Christine Burns and Stephen Whittle from Press for Change wanted to blur the lines between transvestites and transsexuals when they were campaigning for the GRA 25 years ago.

Dr Cass might be right that there may be some children who are not going to change their minds no matter what.

But if that is true, there is still no way at all to identify who those children are. It doesn't matter what an 11 year old says or does, there is still a very high chance they will feel differently a decade or two later, if not less.

And even if that was true, even if there was a way to know that a child wouldn't change their mind later or would still be dysphoric years later, you would still have to weigh that up against the physical, medical and cognitive downsides of transition. This is a medical treatment - be that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgery - which creates an adult who is less healthy than they would have been if you had not intervened. I cannot see what benefit there is to any child that outweighs those downsides over the years. It's not normal ethical practice to give children drugs for their mental health that we have reason to believe will damage their physical health or fertility or cognition in later life.

At the very least the data linkage study needs to be completed and show that the long-term harms are not that serious and that there are some real benefits. Though I worry that it will turn out that so many young people have been lost to follow-up, and so much information lost to poor record keeping, that it may never be possible to draw any conclusions from it.

If there’s going to be a considered and informed discussion, then squaring up with challenges that are phrased like this isn’t going to help. It’s not necessary or productive.

If you want to say that “in my view this would mean that adults were experimenting on children and I think that’s damaging, unethical and immoral” then do that. You just closed down @KkkIt who put forward a pov that will occur to many. Of course @KkkIt isn’t saying she’s happy with what you said.

Thanks @Seethlaw , it's good to hear your perspective. I guess modern fundamentalist gender believers see you as too 'liberal' and your viewpoint challenges their belief system

It feels like the goalposts moved very quickly with gender ideology and caught a lot of us (scientists, feminists, concerned parents) off guard. What do you think caused this shift?

Thanks @OldCrone

Why do you think these views became dominant within trans activism over the last, say, 10 years or so? Do you think it's because lobbying groups such as Stonewall adopted them and promoted them to institutions, making them more mainstream?

I personally noticed a shift in focus between the two different 'trans awareness' courses I did at work. The first one (in 2017) was just 'be kind and use preferred names and pronouns'. I was happy to go along with that. The second one (in 2019) was full-on 'gender identity is what makes people male or female, not sex', which started to peak me

You just closed down KkkIt who put forward a pov that will occur to many.

The poster is not a child, and can speak for herself, I assume.

Of course KkkIt isn’t saying she’s happy with what you said.
Ridiculous thing to say. You have no idea what the poster thinks.

And no. I will not be policed in how I phrase my opinions, questions or facts. If you think my comment was against guidelines, then report my post and let MNHQ consider the matter.

This trial will be using children to work out if puberty blockers can solve an internal, psychological issue, with no clear idea of what success looks like, and without the "test subjects" being able to give full, informed consent. That is experimenting on children.

If you are conducting the trial, then you are experimenting on children. If you're happy about the trial being conducted, then you are happy for children to be experimented on. There is no grey area here.

You don't have to like it, or the fact that I said it, but you don't get to decide that I can't say it.

I'm not sure. I read the Cass review and I was surprised to see a further trial of puberty blockers among her recommendations. But I thought it was maybe a statement that a proper trial would be "necessary" before any more general treatment could go ahead, rather than a statement that a trial should go ahead.

I also thought that such a trial would never get ethical approval because I couldn't see enough positive evidence in the rest of the report to justify a further trial on children unless some new positive evidence appeared from a study elsewhere in the world. And so far all the more recent evidence from elsewhere (like Riittakerttu Kaltiala's studies in Finland) has been negative.

But the thing is that Cass didn't study adults. Her remit was only children. And for a treatment with life-long effects we have to study adults properly to work out what's best for children.

@HoppityBun I have also just seen that you "hopped" yourself onto this thread specifically and only to berate me. Interesting. I now conclude that, actually, you are the one who didn't like what I said. I wonder why?

Why speak on behalf of someone else you don't even know, rather than speak on behalf of yourself? If you have an opinion about this trial, I'm sure we'd be interested to hear it.

I guess modern fundamentalist gender believers see you as too 'liberal' and your viewpoint challenges their belief system

Which is funny, because they obviously see themselves as the liberal ones, and me as the bigoted one :P

It feels like the goalposts moved very quickly with gender ideology and caught a lot of us (scientists, feminists, concerned parents) off guard. What do you think caused this shift?

I'm really no historian, so take my opinion with a truckload of salt.

I think the shift came as a result of a full-frontal collision.

The T movement has been going on for as long as the LGB one; it was just a lot less visible. But right from the 1960s, there were people campaigning for T rights, and countries passing anti-discrimination laws, and so on. Then more and more people transitioned in the public eye, and the public became accustomed to the existence of trans people, and to granting them small, gradual rights.

The problem, as I see it, is what several others have mentioned on FWR here and there: unlike LGB rights, which respect the integrity of others' rights, T rights ultimately necessarily demand the dismantling of some of the others' rights.

So while LGB activists could go on demanding full equality without encountering practical obstacles, only ideological ones, T activists eventually realised that this approach wasn't going to work for T rights. And they went on the offensive, redefining words, presenting other people's rights (and by people, I mean mostly women) as anti-trans discrimination, and embrigading the young.

Basically, I think the TRAs realised that it was a matter of "Us vs Them", unlike for LGB rights, which were a matter of "Us alongside Them". And from there, it wasn't a quest for T equality anymore, but a quest for T dominance, hence the shift.

Again, that's just what I can see from where I'm standing.