Stephen Whittle’s blog on Genderquake - with a detailed briefing for panelists

Chatty I'd be interested to hear what you think about when Gillick competence is applicable, and when not. It seems to me (not a medic, so could be wildly off-beam here) that Gillick competence, as originally envisaged, was about giving under-age children access to medical care where to deny them it would have irreversible consequences. Thus, allowing a child access to contraception without parental knowledge was better than the alternative of denying them contraception, having them go ahead with sex anyway, then having to bear the life-long consequences of an unwanted pregnancy.

No-one, presumably, would endorse invoking Gillick competence for a child who wanted a tattoo against parental wishes!

The question then becomes where medical interventions for children with gender confusion lie. The pro-intervention lobby says that not giving blockers/cross sex hormones risks irreversible consequences (claims about suicide risks, psychological impacts from the trauma of going through a "wrong sex" puberty and of "not passing" as an adult). The anti-intervention lobby points to high rates of desistance and the irreversible consequences of osteoporosis from puberty blockers, health risks of cross-sex hormones and their associated irreversible changes like growth of breast tissue/voices breaking, and the clearly irreversible consequences of mamectomies and sterilisation.

If Ben Goldacre had the guts to deal with this subject he'd be doing it. He doesn't.

Also just a general thanks to R0wantrees.
I really appreciate your links in helping me make sense of all this and can imagine that a lot of other people will be finding them really helpful too.

babel, elletoro, flowers, terfulike

Scientific journals would be important but also medical journals because legally, doctors decide when a young person has the capacity to weigh risks and benefits of a proposed treatment for themselves.

ie doctors decide the circumstances and point at which parental permission and involvement/knowledge is not prerequisite to a particular treatment going ahead, including under 16 years old. (Called Gillick competence, as referred to upthread)

This is a really GOOD thing is many ways and has helped a lot of children and young people to access treatment they need completely appropriately.

However, if doctors are being lobbied with ‘alternative facts’ by the TRA lobby then an evidence-based counter voice is urgently necessary.

I’m wondering if an anti-quackery person like Ben Goldacre or an organisation like Sense about Science would support a public discussion based on evidence.

Hi

Sorry to gatecrash. Overheard discussions of writing up scientific articles on the importance of sex. If anyone is interested in getting this published online then please PM me.

How can common ground be found?

Apart from eggs and sperm (plus a couple of blood cell types without a nucleus), all cells in the human body contain 23 pairs of chromosomes, including 2 sex chromosomes (XX for female; XY for male).

How can a compromise be reached when the very neurones of a trans "woman's" brain can be sexed as XY male?

Maybe the comment in Gaby Hinsliff's Guardian article is true:

“There is a difference between social media debate and the conversations going on elsewhere,” says Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, who was torn apart over her party’s trans-inclusive stance in one notable Mumsnet webchat, but is now more optimistic about the chances of reaching some consensus. “I am encouraged by the number of women who have contacted me privately to say they want to find common ground.” Both Woman’s Place and trans activists led by Stonewall have given well-received briefings to Labour MPs in recent months."

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/10/the-gender-recognition-act-is-controversial-can-a-path-to-common-ground-be-found

They get more and more shameless

It is extraordinary the claims and accusations that are being thrown at women with such impunity.

They get more and more shameless tho. If Harrop and Jensen were women, they would be fired. I will not now watch a programme with Jensen it but any product or service he endorses. That won't make the slightest difference to Channel 4 or it's advertisers.

I think there are signs that TRAs and their apologists are beginning to overreach themselves

I hope that there are enough MPs from all parties who are at least aware of the importance to consider that there may be conflicting rights and that this deserves respectful discussion and consideration.

The open letter from Amnesty, Stonewall and Mermaids to Penny Mordant is telling as it seems to be a call for protection from the right wing press.
As opposed to SW's claims, the letter ascribes the government's delay to,
"This has been partly due to pressure from the right-wing press"

It seems there may be a risk of conflation with free speech / hate crime / Levinson 2 etc and in this respect, those papers / MPs may have more to gain from a possible 'over reach'.

“Unfortunately, the Rules don’t allow trans prisoners to be placed in a prison of their preferred gender role until they have obtained legal gender recognition.”

Whittle is just plain wrong about this. Easily, demonstrably, two-seconds-googling wrong.

I wonder why such an experienced academic would get something like this wrong?

dangerous to women and girls would be my assessment

And mine

The UK has an excellent child and adolescent Gender Identity Clinic as part of a larger mental health trust ... the Feminist attacks have been sufficiently vocal to make clinicians very nervous about the provision of the service.

When Heather Brunskill Evans spoke at the Bristol 'We need to Talk' event, she said ( think) that there were clinicians with concerns about the affirmation approach and fear of reprisals if they voiced them.

Polly Carmichael is quoted in The Spectator article:

"Gender has become amazingly topical and we have to be really careful not to assume that anyone is exploring or questioning their gender is going to want to change their bodies in line with that. The extremes on either side are not helpful. We need to look at the grey areas in between. To do that we need to be able to talk and discuss these issues. All too often stakeholders become lobby groups.”

Preferred gender roles what a load of bollocks!

Smart, persuasive, persistent, highly successful in progressing the trans agenda and dangerous to women and girls

OK - he's all of that, but he's still a numpty if he thinks ordinary sensible people will buy into his 'biology'.

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time. Or so said Lincoln.

I think there are signs that TRAs and their apologists are beginning to overreach themselves.

Sorry, link to Janice Turner article:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2993425-Maria-Miller-interviewed-by-Janice-Turner-full-text

The interview that Maria Miller gave to Janice Turner when she commented about 'so called feminists' demonstrates this is highly unlikely.
There have though been interventions from some male Conservatives including Norman Tebbit (see Kirkup's article), David Davies (not the Brexit one) who hosted the 'we need to talk' meeting at Westminster and Jacob Rees Mogg.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/jacob-rees-mogg-radical-feminist/

"It also highlights a serious point about the politics of transgender rights which might have been missed over the Easter weekend. The Mail on Sunday this week carried an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg. The paper didn’t make much of it, but it contained quite an important line:
He is uneasy about some aspects of the transgender rights debate.
‘If you have people who have no intention of changing sex but think it would be fun to go into the women’s changing room, we cannot ignore that.’
In other words, JRM is worried about self-identification, which the Government is – nominally – committed to exploring in a consultation."

Does anyone know why the GRA reform consultation was put on hold? According to Whittle, it was all down to feminist campaigning.

After a campaign by some Feminists earlier this year the proposed consultation was put on hold.

He also seems to think that our main concern is about men in women's toilets:

The Feminists suggest that men will use the legislation to demand access to women’s only spaces such as changing rooms, and toilets in order to commit sexual assaults.

According to Whittle, feminists also have a great deal of influence over the provision of services at Gender Identity Clinics:

The UK has an excellent child and adolescent Gender Identity Clinic as part of a larger mental health trust ... the Feminist attacks have been sufficiently vocal to make clinicians very nervous about the provision of the service.

Is anything in that blog post actually true?

Isn't one's biological sex written into every cell on the body with DNA? Isn't that something we just found out in the last few decades?

Scientist, please correct me if I am wrong.

I read a lot of the thread he wrote on here - I found his language to be full of obfuscation. Lots of waffle, pseudo-babble, and half-truths. But I agree, he is intelligent and persistent - he knows exactly what he is doing here. He was instrumental in getting the GRA2004 passed.

SW comes across as intelligent, dishonest, and extremely agenda-driven. But also clever enough to hide it behind a sympathetic academic exterior.

Those are exactly the same arguments against feminism that men's rights activists have always used.

SW in twitter conversation about some aspects of feminism.

Lang
The whole reminiscing about sex in scouts what just... WTF.

When pressed on the possibility of unplanned teen pregnancy from consensual sex, he suggested issuing Guide leaders with supplies of condoms.

There's no way on earth parents of under 16 guides are going to find that appropriate or satisfactory. What planet are these people on?