WHO publishes 'controversial gender guidance'

[IcakethereforeIam]

Eliza Mondegreen in Unherd sounding the alarm, all the alarms.

https://unherd.com/thepost/who-quietly-publishes-controversial-gender-guidance/

There's a consultation period that closes on 8th January, I think.

Well that really doesn't surprise me.

That's terrifying (terfifying?). Blockers as the "default option...* There's so many things children can't do until they're 16, 18 or 21 (USA), why are they allowed to make such a big, irreversible décision on this ?

Bloody hell! I hope some of the better informed/less blinkered experts and groups are also going to respond to the consultation. I am surpised (or maybe not) the WHO is not waiting for the final Cass report.

From one of the members of the panel:

”Puberty blockers structurally place transgender and cisgender hormonal futures in approximate symmetry. Youth who take puberty blockers have their options wide open, their bodies unaltered by either testosterone or oestrogen. Although much remains unknown about the long-term effects of puberty blockers, limited empirical evidence and clinical experience make us more than justified in assuming that whatever risks puberty blockers have do not foreclose future life paths as much as undergoing puberty does”.

Christ on a cracker.

"actual side effects of gender-affirming medical care [...] a substantial increase of gender euphoria”

I sincerely hope the member giving this opinion isn't a clincian - because to any clinician or neuroscientist a 'substantial increase in euphoria' would be ringing big alarm bells.

It may sound like a marvellous thing in lay terms, but clinically it's quite the opposite. In fact one thing known to cause a similar effect is the neurological damage from tertiary syphilis.

The way they've framed the guidelines has, imo, conceded everything

This new guideline will provide evidence and implementation guidance on health sector interventions aimed at increasing access and utilization of quality and respectful health services by trans and gender diverse people. The guideline will focus in 5 areas: provision of gender-affirming care, including hormones; health workers education and training for the provision of gender-inclusive care; provision of health care for trans and gender diverse people who suffered interpersonal violence based in their needs; health policies that support gender-inclusive care, and legal recognition of self-determined gender identity.

I can't see how any objections will be recognised as valid. Perhaps this is why it's so heavily stacked with activists. Anyone remotely sceptical can't operate under these restrictions. They should scrap it completely and look at the framing. Starting with what do they mean by 'trans' and 'gender diverse'.

The biographies of the experts on the panel make for interesting reading!
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/hq-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-library/biographies_tgd-gdg_proposed_members_2024.pdf?sfvrsn=5b1e7491_3

So the majority of the 'experts' are activists and advocates promoting one side of a very controversial issue. As far as I can tell the panel does not have anyone who is critical of, say, the use of puberty blockers given that there is very little longer term follow-up information on those who have been on them for several years. And there is no representation from those countries which have decided to limit puberty blocker use to research purposes, given that lack of longer term health information.

The time period allowed for commenting made me laugh aloud! From December 18 to January 8. If you wanted to find a time slot when people, especially women, in Europe and North America (the continents most affected by these issues) would be too busy to read online or write letters to the WHO then this would be that time period!

So the attempt is to do this behind the curtains, as the Denton papers suggest.

But I would still love to know who it is in the WHO that chose who would be on this panel, what the ideological beliefs of that person or persons are, and why another organisation supposed to serve us all (like the UN Women) seems to be totally captured by ideologues from one secular religion.

Surely what truly should matter here is the overall health and well-being of individuals with gender dysphoria and those who transition (and in some cases detransition), and to study that requires actual data on both the benefits and costs which we do not have. So this panel seems extremely premature.

Dangerously batshit. Is the phrase that keeps coming to mind.

Oh, look. It's Walter Pierre Boumann.

This is the announcement.

https://www.who.int/news/item/18-12-2023-who-announces-the-development-of-a-guideline-on-the-health-of-trans-and-gender-diverse-people

In line with WHO policy on conflict of interest, members of the public and interested organizations can access the biographies of the GDG members for this guideline and inform WHO of their views about them. The list comprises 21 members. All comments should be sent by email to [email protected] by 8 January 2024.

I'm not sure if we're being invited to comment on the guidelines or the GDG members (or both). But that does seem a very biased panel composed (almost?) entirely of transactivists.

https://www.institutemh.org.uk/news/1629-professor-jon-arcelus-contributes-to-new-global-guidelines-for-the-care-of-transgender-and-gender-diverse-people

Here's the NHS casually dropping eunuchs into the conversation, again.

Sorry, slight tangent. But relevant. Boumann works closely with Arcelus.

Given that at least some of the five mentioned areas (self-id effects and if 'gender-inclusive care' means that women are erased) they are going to discuss will directly affect women's rights, surely this panel should have some representatives from women's organisations, too?

Women?! Good lord, who on earth cares about women!

Well, not the old fashioned cunty kind.

on “the health of trans and gender diverse people”, with a focus on access to hormones and surgeries (what it calls “gender-inclusive care”)

This part is really, really asinine. Throw in a buzzword that at the same time makes people who question this 'care' look like assholes for being 'exclusionary'.

Every time I think we might be taking a step forward some bullshit like this appears. If much remains unknown about long term effects of puberty blockers why would anyone think giving them to children is a good idea?! It is really terrifying that this is coming from WHO. Jesus Christ what next, how the hell do we protect our children from all of this, when is the madness going to end???!!!

@OldCrone I read that to mean an opportunity to comment on the panel members. It seems like it would be worthwhile as a scan read doesn't scream balance and I don't see anyone who obviously has a research background on the impacts of puberty blockers, which as a lay-person I would say was key. As the remit of the panel is to determine what knowledge gaps there are for writing the guidelines then it would make sense to have people on the panel who are at the forefront of that (albeit limitied) research.

Fwiw I've worked alongside WHO developing standards, and some of the staff were fantastic whilst others were genuinely terrible, completely unqualified egomaniacs. Trouble is, once it gets to be WHO guidance its flipping hard to go against even if its "soft influence" on global health policy.

The attached images are screen shots (sorry if they have slipped out of order) from the WHO guidelines on developing guidance (and who says the UN is a bureaucratic nightmare?) that lay out what constitutes a conflict of interest, which it looks like the consultation is exploring.

It's a tricky area for sure, unlike say malaria guidelines, it seems like interest/conflict of could be very closely aligned...

So we can probably get together a response that lays out concerns?

• Conflict of interest
• Lack of balanced views
• Lack of expert/informed input
• Suggestions of additional sources to balance

We can do that in a week.

Thank you, but I can't read them! Are you able to link at all?

It’s depressing as anything

The whole thing is a leaky colander and we fix one bit and another rears up

I don’t know how we fix it atm

It feels like it is all over. The activists will have won if this goes through.

This is so problematic. The who are a subset of the un. This sets out the framework of what good care should be globally. We really are so far ahead in the UK even though still so far to go. Sad the gender non conformity of the 80s and 90s couldn't continue 😢