Ben Hunte BBC article about puberty blocker ban

I feel for these children. And I can't say this any better than to quote the Observer's leading article about this the other week week:

"This is a chilling state of affairs that is detrimental to child safety. There are children who will find last week’s judgment distressing and it is imperative they receive the professional support they need. Children are not pawns to be deployed in adult debates about identity. Bell’s bravery has paved the way for a child-centred judgment that gives them the protection they deserve"

Those heavily in favour of blockers tend to be adults who are bitter that they don’t pass convincingly for the opposite sex and wish that they hadn’t gone through puberty. So instead they project that on children and want to subject them to a range of serious side effects that they themselves never had to suffer.

So encouraging a load of dysphoric kids to feel helpless and hopeless because they might not be able to chemically stunt their development seems extremely irresponsible.

Well we certainly have no evidence that the medical/"affirmative" pathway IS the answer

Imnobody4 - They weren't given leave to appeal in the first judgement. This doesn't stop them appealing to the Appeal Court directly but the Appeal Court can decide whether or not to hear the case. The Tavistocks own research, published since the judgement, strengthens the case AGAINST the Tavi in my opinion. They show that all children put on puberty blockers went on to cross sex hormones - a key plank of their case was that they were different treatments - and there was no improvement in mental wellbeing of the children on PBs, and they suffered from a significant reduction in bone density vis a vis their peers. Begs the question - what is tbe justification for these drugs at all?

There does seem to have been a few successful attempts recently of trans youth ending their lives but in each case those kids had additional serious mental health problems and were all recieving social and medical affirmation. So surely that is proof that the medical pathway is not the answer?

The other trusts are getting involved because UCL is where the paediatric endocrinologists are based who give the puberty blockers, and Leeds is where their outreach clinic is. So they’re all as guilty involved in it together.

It is now appealing against the decision, along with University College Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust.

Leaving aside Ben for a minute. What does this mean? Is it this usual practice? Are they saying they have new evidence? How long before the C of Appeal gives its decision? Will there submission be public?
I can't believe other NHS Trusts are getting involved with this when the Cass review is in progress.

@positrans
You can't change someone's gender identity with mental health support.

"Changing gender identity" (whatever that really is) isn't the aim. Surely we can agree that reducing Theo's distress, and enhancing the meaning and enjoyment he finds in life, is the aim. The idea that the only way this can be done is via an essentially untested chemical method is deeply disturbing.

@Positrans The Tavistocks own research, belatedly published, shows that children's mental health is not improved by taking puberty blockers. But physical health is negatively impacted. We are giving distressed children a drug with known negative impacts on physical health, unknown long term impacts on psychological functioning (NHS website) and no impact on mental wellbeing.

Honestly, when the only 'other view' is one that celebrates a wholly one sided, factually untrue article that has been posted to emotionally manipulate people into overlooking the very serious issues identified by court judges - who took an impartial decision from the evidence submitted by the expert clinicians doing the job- and cares only about the children who fit their own personal agenda...

It becomes very clear that there is no point even trying to debate this. I hope this is very thoroughly tested again in an appeal, in part because those so wholly stuck in a personal agenda without being able to deal with the wider picture or the issues involved should not have any part in making lifelong impacting decisions on children. If adults cannot even face and engage with the issues here beyond plain denying they exist or matter, then the judges had it right; children certainly can't.

There aren't droves of trans people

Dorothy stringer secondary school in Brighton have something like twenty in each year group at the moment. About the same numbers as when bulemia/anorexia was the disorder du jour.

It’s amazing how quickly that came out. Fiona Bisshop, president of AusPath said the same in her article for the Sydney Morning Herald. Years and years of “it buys time for kids to decide” gone, the second the Bell ruling came in. Instead now it’s “it shows we are picking the right kids”,

“We have always been at war with Eastasia.”

You can't change someone's gender identity with mental health support. Would it work on you - do you think a psychiatrist could completely convince you that you have a male gender identity?

What is a 'gender identity'? How is a 'male gender identity' different from a 'female gender identity'? What is the problem that these treatment programmes are trying to solve? How do you believe that changing someone's body into a facsimile of one of the opposite sex (and in doing so making them into a lifelong medical patient) will help their mental health?

By the BBC.

Telling a vulnerable young child that they can change sex is unbelievably cruel. The best you can ever hope for is a medically induced resemblance to the opposite sex that comes with serious side effects such as needing a hysterectomy at an early age due to atrophy. And you will still know that you’re not really the opposite sex because such a thing is an impossibility. Letting a child go through puberty and disabusing them of the notion that they actually are the opposite sex is the kindest way forward. There are lots and lots of female teens who feel they are the opposite sex. There are vanishingly few women over 30 who do. If there were really such a thing as being born in the wrong body then surely the numbers would be steady across populations? They’re not and it’s only really in the past 10 years that there has been such a huge rise of girls thinking they are boys. How do you explain this? Something in the water?

And if their gender identity is insistent, persistent and consistent by the onset of puberty, we can be almost completely sure that it is fixed. At that point, we move, in some cases, to puberty blockers

So they’re not a “pause” to give kids time to think then are they? It’s nice to see acknowledgment that this is a lie, and it’s about affirming rather than buying time.

Does Ben do no research on the people he quotes or is Gender Gp and Harrop the best they have?

@SillyOldMummy

"I'm really interested, if trans people have always existed, why weren't they all committing suicide in droves when I was a teenager?"

There aren't droves of trans people. I don't know when you were a teenager, but one of my trans friends (the one I mentioned on a previous thread who was in coma for 2 weeks) made her first suicide attempt over gender dysphoria as a 15-year-old in 1981.

You might also want to consider how many people took their own lives because they couldn't tell anyone they were trans in a world that was even harsher against trans people. I certainly told no one growing up - not family or anyone. I was utterly terrified that someone would find out.

The Tavistock whistle blower pointed out these kids are given "lines" by TRA forums and Mermaids etc in order to get what they want.
Who's to tell which are genuinely distressed and which aren't so much, so who do you help most?
It's a dangerous narrative.
Stop encouraging it.

The Jack Turban article from earlier this year shows that adults who were on puberty blockers as children are twice as likely to have been hospitalised for a suicide attempt in the last 12 months compared to those who hadn’t been on puberty blockers.