Ben Hunte BBC article about puberty blocker ban

Teenagers: there was a load of self harm (mostly girls) when I was a teen - Certain ‘tribes’ were known for it (lesbians being one). This isn’t a trans think it’s a teen thing.

You simply don't need to permanently physically damage a perfectly healthy body in order to express your "gender identity".

Look at Eddie Izzard, she's not done much at all and I presume Positrans, you accept her femaleness to be the same as your mum's.

Appallingly biased and irresponsible piece of so-called reporting. I have just emailed my complaint to the BBC.

@Positrans, I'm not sure, I've never been to a psychiatrist. But perhaps yes - perhaps someone COULD have suggested to me that the reason I didnt fit in and was deeply depressed as a teenager was because I had gender dysphoria, especially if lots of my peer group seemed to have the same problem.

I remember being a very unhappy adolescent who didn't fit in, and had suicidal thoughts. I wasn't one of the trendy crowd, I wasn't beautiful and I tended to wear baggy clothes as I didn't like my emerging mature female body. I hated having to wear a bra. I didnt put on makeup and spray clouds of hairspray in the loos. I didn't especially like boys, I remember pretending to fancy someone so I wouldn't be left out. I didn't especially like girls either. Eventually my best friends were female, but none of them were especially feminine.

But, I am definitely a woman. And I'm glad I came through adolescence without anyone casting doubt on it, as I think I would have taken a suggestion of a solution, ANY solution, for my issues, and run with it.

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

How can people not see that giving the message that part of being trans is being suicidal is just so dangerous?!

archive.is/6nHPQ

On the other hand, you do have the voice of Theo, who was so distressed he tried to take his own life and spent time in intensive care.

And the way to solve Theo's obvious mental health issues is to put Theo on a lifetime medical pathway, starting with unlicensed drugs. Great!

Anyway, I thought being trans was just like being gay?

Doctors and parents have told the BBC the ruling could cause distressed trans teens to self-harm or even take their own lives.

Evidence?

Gender dysphoria is when a mismatch between a person's sex assigned at birth and their gender identity causes them distress.

What is a 'gender identity' and in what way(s) is it expected to 'match' their sex? We really need an objective definition of what a 'gender identity' is and why such serious physical treatment is required when it doesn't 'match' someone's body.

Quote from a 'trans boy':
"I spend a lot of time wishing I could be a normal boy and there is no help for me."

Who has been telling this child that they can change sex?

A clinician who currently works within the NHS GIDS, told the BBC her patients are now being left alone to deal with distress.

"The young trans people I'm talking to now are experiencing deeply distressing mental health problems," she says.

Does she think that these mental health problems would be better treated with counselling and therapy or with drugs to arrest their normal development which will make them into medical patients for life?

In a letter seen exclusively by the BBC, GenderGP - one of the only private healthcare providers for transgender people in the UK - calls on NHS England's Medical Director for Specialist Services, James Palmer, to take urgent action.

The letter asks him to provide "interim solutions to prevent harm". It adds: "The mental health implications of this cannot be underestimated, and the risk of self-harm and suicide must be acknowledged."

They seem to have conveniently overlooked the fact that GenderGP is now owned by a company based in Hong Kong and is still being run by a doctor who has been suspended from practising in the UK and who has a criminal conviction for running an illegal clinic here.

They have also conveniently overlooked the fact that at least one of GenderGPs teenage patients took their own life whilst under their 'care' and taking opposite sex hormones prescribed by them.

Adults have whipped up hysteria in children, feeding their distress at going through normal natural puberty. Children should never have been told that early onset osteoporosis, infertility and vaginas atrophy would improve their mental health.

@Positrans - I thought you believed that being trans was not a mental health issue so I'm a bit confused here because you seem to be suggesting that it is.

Regardless of your views on affirmation and puberty blockers, it’s just not ok to tell teenagers “you must feel suicidal”.

I can tell you now how this will play out, because I've seen it many, many times in the past with the BBC - enough times to know that this is deliberate policy on their part, not accident.

Shockingly badly researched and one-sided article by Ben Hunte is published, and splashed with link near the top of the News front page.

Complaints flood in about factual innacuracies, breaking of guidelines on reporting suicide, bias.

Article gets toned down, a few caveats get put in.

But the BBC don't actually care because 90% plus of people who read an article will do so within the first few hours of it being on the website, and will take away the inital impression from the biased article.

They do this over and over again - with women's sport and trans inclusion, with over-medicalisation of trans-identifying teens, with trans-identifying prisoners being placed in women's prisons. Sensationalist, heart-string-tugging pile of shite published first, then they're forced to fact-check and issue a toned down, marginally more balanced version - but do so in the knowledge that from a propaganda perspective the later correction doesn't reach nearly as many people.

(BTW, please can someone archive this original version for side-by-side comparison after the toned-down version has been issued?)

@CaraDuneRedux
"So on one side we have "watch and wait, give children plenty of mental health support, create a less judgemental culture where people can be gender-non-conforming without expectations that certain body types go with certain behaviours, personalities, life choices and choices of dress.""

No, that's on both sides. However on the this side, we allow the child to express their gender identity (affirmation) because science shows that it helps their mental health:

www.jaacap.org/article/S0890-8567%2816%2931941-4/fulltext

www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(18)30085-5/fulltext

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.

There's a more balanced article on this topic in Quillette Magazine:
quillette.com/2020/12/18/like-it-or-not-keira-bell-has-opened-up-a-real-conversation-about-gender-dysphoria/?fbclid=IwAR3evs0U-zaMgl_41bZzvY75QONsU5T5zvCVd8E18pn1Hy1Z-3KwpfDKiVM

"As the data belatedly released by Tavistock itself show, blocking puberty is associated with a variety of adverse medical outcomes. This is hardly surprising, since puberty is a critical development period for many parts of the body, from the reproductive organs and skeletal system to the brain. In particular, puberty is a critical period for the development of strong bones that help prevent fractures and osteoporosis in adulthood. From a medical point of view, artificially halting puberty is a dangerous shot in the dark. Yet endocrinologists and other medical experts who’ve raised the alarm about puberty blockers in recent years have routinely been smeared as transphobic. We know of no other area of health policy in which alerting the public to clear and well-established health risks (among children, no less) is stigmatized in this way. "

The BBC is failing in its duty to report suicide responsibly and without sensationalism in this article. Worth referencing the Samaritans Media Guidelines in any complaint - they should be well known to BBC Journalists. Young people are very susceptible to suicide contagion, it's startling how irresponsible this article is. Not to mention the disgraced GenderGP being granted credibility by the journalist - clearly not a someone who has done their background research.

https://media.samaritans.org/documents/MediaGuidelinessFINALv22TABa8C6.pdf

So on one side we have "watch and wait, give children plenty of mental health support, create a less judgemental culture where people can be gender-non-conforming without expectations that certain body types go with certain behaviours, personalities, life choices and choices of dress."

And on the other side we have "give children who are otherwise - due to their age - not considered mature enough to make decisions about having sex, drinking alcohol, getting tattoos, life altering, irreversible drugs or they will kill themselves and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT YOU EVIL, EVIL WOMEN... (conveniently ignoring the advice of mental health charities on not weaponising talk of suicide in this way)"

Hmm, not picking up "right side of history" on this one, really.

We all know where to send complaints to. This ‘journalist’ demonstrates time and time again their bias. Isn’t the BBC supposed to be neutral?

Had Theo been given good support instead of fed the line that Theo could change sex and all would be right with the world. Theo and kids like him would be adjusting to puberty and then getting on with their lives. The majority of kids hate puberty. Many kids think about suicide this doesn't mean preventing one harm by medicating and so causing a more long term health damaging harm

Fortunately suicide among gender confused teens is 'vanishingly rare' according to Polly Carmichael.

www.transgendertrend.com/the-suicide-myth/

I sincerely hope Theo gets much better mental health support than currently is available, and I completely agree that it is a national scandal that adequate mental health care and proper counselling is not available to children in this situation.

By proper counselling, I mean non-proscriptive, open-ended counselling, which explores issues like previous histories of sexual abuse, co-morbidities with conditions such as aspergers, rather than affirmation only followed by handing out untested, off-label drugs with potentially horrendous side effects like they were smarties.

www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints