NEW: Grounds in support of intervention in the Bell v Tavistock JR appeal published

It never surprises me that a large portion of the posters we have posting about how they are all fine after transitioning are not only adults when they medically transition. But are also males. Female transitioners do seem to have a slew of health issues on cross sex hormones and it is usually ignored by the mtf transitioners (and from the stories of the ftm detransitioners not discussed as it seems to be discouraged).

And as usual some posters here ignore the change in the demographics in the current group of people seeking transition away from mtf. So they are advocating pathways that suit their own purpose as males but misses many requirements for the teenagers and children today who are in the majority female.

So why would Brook OF ALL PEOPLE want to muddy the water by publicly apparently believing that the Bell case has anything to do with Gillick?

Yes, this is very confusing.

It seems much more damaging to the concept of Gillick competence to imply that it is a blanket ruling that a child can agree to any medical treatment.

I suspect they have had no separate legal advice and have just accepted what they have been told by the Good Law Project.

Why are Brook spending their time and charitable funds on this? What on earth has it to do with them? Last time I looked, Brook provide contraception, STI testing and partner notification, and emergency contraception and abortion referral. All brilliant, essential work helping young people. Sex-specific bodily knowledge and emotional support obviously required for that. Why do a charity focused on contraception and safe sex care, then need to get involved in whether and how NHS GIDS services are expecting children to be able to foresee and consider their own permanent reproductive and sexual loss of function as part of consent? That is not what Gillick covers at all.
Serious question.

The legitimacy of Brook’s own work completely turns on the acceptance of Gillick as the legal legitimiser for them giving contraceptive advice and treatment without parental consent or knowledge. Because the child is deemed to be Gillick competent on a specific issue by a medical professional.

So why would Brook OF ALL PEOPLE want to muddy the water by publicly apparently believing that the Bell case has anything to do with Gillick?
It doesn’t. That’s a lie put around social media by TRAs trying to confect a problem to gather support for their own politics.

Brook will have their own access to legal counsel. Their legal counsel will know and admit (if they aren’t just hobbyist lobbyists) that the Bell case does not affect Gillick. Its there in black and white.

Why do they think this is in their own remit to spend money on, or give their name to? I don’t get it at all.

It rather links with the Tavistock whistleblowing and CQC information that staff are under pressure to follow activist lead instead of properly considered policy with children's best interests.

Very much so.

If the Tavi had done a better job around consent we wouldn't be here, but they didn't, address your ire at them. They are the people who have failed children, not anyone else.

Also, some of these kids are non verbal, whaaaaa?!

And also, what the fuck is up with that RCOG tweet?

Again the evidence that not even adults are able to acknowledge and be honest in engagement with the negative facts, risks and problems, and therefore are unable to weigh up all the information impartially in order to discuss an informed choice. How can children do it when adults can't?

The Tavistock, as the experts, put forward their evidence including children's voices. Its continually interesting that activists seem to want to tell the Tavistock what to do, seem to feel that they need to make the Tavistock's case for them when they are not the nhs body in question. It rather links with the Tavistock whistleblowing and CQC information that staff are under pressure to follow activist lead instead of properly considered policy with children's best interests. And that the two are not always the same thing.

Absolutely all this needs unpacking very, very thoroughly.

We can quibble about ages but, our voices will be heard. There is little misunderstanding. We struggled, we were offered help, we took it and we now live happier lives. For many of us, our sexual function is wonderful, not that it's any of your business. Personally, I'm always disappointed that GC's are so hooked up on my capability to achieve orgasm. Perhpaps you guys need help

Firstly, it’s not a “quibble” about ages. It’s vitally important to recognise that those children who were put on puberty blockers then cross sex hormones are only just reaching an age where the full implications of what has happened to them. The fact the long term implications aren’t fully known is a vital part of the judgment.

Second, “happier lives”. What does this mean? How do you explain to someone who has had their sexual function taken from them that they could be even happier? What is the measure? And if there are plenty of adults who were on puberty blockers who are living happier lives then there should be evidence of such. The only paper that has looked at this was the woeful Jack Turban paper that was shoddy at best, but even then it showed that adults who had been on puberty blockers were twice as likely to have been hospitalised for a suicide attempt in the prior 12 months. If only the Tavistock had tracked all of their patients into adulthood to provide us with information...

And no one gives a damn about your ability to orgasm. What we care about is children not having vital components of human development taken from them without proper consent when there is no evidence it improves their lives.

We can quibble about ages but, our voices will be heard. There is little misunderstanding. We struggled, we were offered help, we took it and we now live happier lives. For many of us, our sexual function is wonderful, not that it's any of your business. Personally, I'm always disappointed that GC's are so hooked up on my capability to achieve orgasm. Perhpaps you guys need help.

Now that is disingenuous, statsgeek1 and you know it. IIRC, you transitioned post-puberty, so your situation and that of the children the court decided to protect with this judgment is not comparable.

As for the claim that we are "hooked on your capability to achieve orgasm"

Again, there's a difference between adults and children. If an adult individual who has reached sexual maturity choses to risk having surgery with a 30% chance of losing sexual function (and a whole range of other, disproportionately high complications), all I think is that individual must be terribly distressed to be taking such a risk with such an important part of their life. And I hope that they find peace and have a better quality of life afterwards. In other words, if they are mentally and emotionally able to weigh up the pros and cons and still believe that is the right path for them, then that is their business and theirs alone. And if you're willing to risk never having an orgasm again? Well, that's your choice to make, not mine.

However, in the case of children,

-who cannot at age 11 understand what it means to give up the chance to ever father children,
-who cannot at age 13 understand how that decision will affect every relationship they will have for the rest of their lives,
-who cannot at age 15 truly understand what it means to be a lifelong medical patient with a self-inflicted higher risk of heart attacks or strokes than their peers,
-who cannot at age 17 imagine that they could ever want anything more than the pathway being put in front of them right now at the Tavistock,

Then we all have a duty to make damn sure that these children don't embark on treatment as a result of which long- and short-term harms are certain for a merely probable benefit of a happier life later without taking a good hard look at the evidence (especially not when there's an even higher probability that they won't want that benefit anymore once they've grown up.)

And the experts were drawn from all over the globe, top notch in their individual fields.

They did not hear from a single trans person out of the hundreds that had gone on to a happy life post blockers.

You seem to have missed my post about paras 85-88 in the judgment (which you don't seem to have read).

I'm quite uncomfortable with judgements that affect the many being based on the few though.

Now that's intriguing to me. Empirical data demonstrates that in the case of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria "the many" represents the vast majority who desist and "the few" being the small minority whose gender dysphoria persists into adulthood. Previous best practice in treating children with gender dysphoria took this fact into consideration - to prevent iatrogenic harm coming to the many who would desist, no medical transition was offered to any of them, including the few who would persist (and who today say they would have benefited from treatment starting before they were adults).

The affirmative approach looked to puberty blockers to help those few without harming the many, assuming that those would offer a harmless pause, at the end of which either puberty would resume as normal by discontinuing the puberty blockers or be permanently suppressed and the body changed with the prescription of cross-sex hormones.

Given what we know now, the well-meaning, rather naive assumptions made back then are quite painful to read now in the papers of those who pioneered the approach.

The most damaging assumptions were that medication used in children entering puberty at too early an age would have the same effects on children entering puberty at a normal age. And that the lifelong consequences of prescribing puberty blockers to children entering puberty at too early an age were well researched, with ample evidence that any negative side effects outweighed by the benefits.

Neither of those assumptions were correct.

And yet a treatment approach that negatively affects the many being based on the few who benefit is nonetheless the favoured approach in the Tavistock now.

Are you at all uncomfortable with that, statsgeek1?

Datun - Of course, you're right. They did not hear from a single trans person out of the hundreds that had gone on to a happy life post blockers. Alternatively, out of that several hundred we can assume they all desisted?

It'd also be nice to hear a 'proper challenge' as to the veracity of the expert witnesses. Of course, I'm sure you have little to worry about so we'll have to just wait and see.

statsgeek1 - if a child is found by the Court to be competent, they will be allowed puberty blockers. If a child is not competent then they will not be.

Are you arguing that puberty blockers should be prescribed to children who are not competent because in your view it will work out for the best in many cases? I just want to understand if I've understood your point.

Of course, the court has so far only heard from one of us.

Have you read the judgment? I've just been looking at it and there are witness statements from two people who were treated by the Tavistock as children as well as one child on the waiting list who was prescribed puberty blockers by GenderGP.

Paragraphs 85 and 86: 'J', a 'transgender man' aged 20. Paragraph 87: 'S', a 13 year old 'trans boy'. Paragraph 88: 'N', an 18 year old 'trans woman'.

'J', who was prescribed puberty blockers aged 12 said: “I was certain I would never want to carry a child and give birth. ... We discussed sex and I told them the idea of it disgusted me.”

'S', a 13-year-old already on puberty blockers said: "I haven’t really thought about parenthood ... I just have no idea what me in the future is going to think. I haven’t had a romantic relationship and it’s just not a thing that is really on my radar at the moment.”

These are children making decisions about their adult lives through the understanding of a child. It's perfectly normal for pre-pubescent children to find the idea of sex disgusting and not to be thinking about romantic relationships or the possibility of having children later in life. This doesn't mean that they have an adult understanding of these things or that they are competent to consent to treatment which will affect these aspects of their lives as adults.

www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Bell-v-Tavistock-Judgment.pdf

MOLESMOKES -

Of course not. That said, i'm finding it quite difficult to understand how helping under 200 children per year(out of round 600,000 live births) will have such an effect on the other 599970.

Datun - The Tavistock provided a shocking defence.

Well yes. And given the three judges read thousands of pages of evidence, one cant help concluding that there's a very good reason for their 'shocking defence'.

”I’m quite uncomfortable with judgements that affect the many being based on the few though”

You will be “uncomfortable” then with judgements that affect 99% of the population being based on the demands of 1%?

molesmokes - I didn't suggest de-transitioners voices don't matter. I'm quite uncomfortable with judgements that affect the many being based on the few though.

Datun - The Tavistock provided a shocking defence. I don't expect anything other than a scenario where children are allowed to live their lives in comfort.

Gillick competence is applied to an individual person. The ruling overstepped that mark by suggesting that no under 16 could reasonably consent to a particular treatment without the intervention of a judge.

That's not what the judgment says. It says that given the highly experimental nature of the treatment and the serious side-effects, judges will need to consider on an individual basis whether a child under 16 who wants puberty blockers is competent to make that decision (applying the criteria in Gillick) before they are prescribed, rather than just relying on GIDS' shoddy assessments of competence.

Have you read the judgment?

”Maybe an appeal will hear some voices that matter.”

De-transitioners don’t matter??

You're expecting children to understand the implication of adult sterility and limited sex life. They cant.

Datun - Gillick competence is applied to an individual person. The ruling overstepped that mark by suggesting that no under 16 could reasonably consent to a particular treatment without the intervention of a judge.

Admittedly, it was a shockingly poor defence by the Tavistock but perhaps one that they wanted. Maybe an appeal will hear some voices that matter.

Some arguments remind me of Tatchell's comments about some people's experiences being things which brought them great joy. I don't want to be more specific than that, because I'm not making accusations, but it's a mark of failing to understand that it makes no odds if you find an adult who felt they had suffered no harm and indeed felt joy from something they had no capacity to consent to.

That's not how capacity to consent works with children. That's not what gillick competency is.