TRAs attempting to obstruct Cass review.

Perhaps Fae is using this as an opportunity to relaunch Fae as being relevant as a go-to media spokesperson.

They just needed to allow some time to pass after their ‘eggshell skull’ and that misogynist Covid comment. I mean, that they had got Faeself named as a Top 100 Lesbian by Diva after the eggshell skull comments made Diva’s decision doubly questionable.

But I don’t think Fae can stay out of the limelight, be ignored by BBC TV or Radio for long without feeling the isolation.

Thanks Hadrosaurus and MrsOverton
I’d say while this is a welcome move from Javid I think that any researcher with the right credentials should be able to ask questions of GRC data, in perpetuity, subject to the usual very tight restrictions on researching government data or health data particularly NHS records.

Child transition-related questions are very important to answer, but there are also other questions about the wellbeing of adults that Cass’ team won’t be asking under their remit. Like researching the outcomes that adult GRC holders have by looking at their healthcare records- especially important given the number of vulnerable adults who get GRCs- and asking how they have been doing since.

Or for gathering evidence to place together with detransitioned people’s views around the process for reversing a GRC, which could then be used to argue the case to make the GRC process more reversible. I understand that currently there’s a problem because it would only be possible to reverse a GRC by declaring that you fraudulently applied for your GRC in the first place, which not every detransitioned person would feel is an accurate.way to describe their application at that time, made in good faith.

Its a fundamental ethical requirement of equality that there should be no unresearched groups. GRA is still relatively recent legislation from the early 2000s. And there are known problems with it- like that GRC doesn’t allow people to change their mind about taking on a completely subjective legal status that they adopted voluntarily. Why not?

If a GRC aid nobody’s business but the adult individual’s and they must be granted a GRC if they apply and submit the right paperwork, then the same must also be true for adult people who detransition.

I've been thinking about this overnight and it's incredibly serious. Slothtoes has nailed it:
Most tellingly, while Fae is trying to whip up feeling against the Health Secretary (who has finally acted responsibly in this issue whereas previous government ministers have not), and while encouraging readers to take action against individual researchers and other people who may have authorised access to children’s or adult’s health records as part of doing this research, Fae fails to explain why doing this research is actually a problem. Fae just doesn’t want this research done.
Fae clearly has zero understanding of the extremely strict rules concerning use of data in medical research whether it belongs to an adult or a child. So strict in the case of GRC holders that government has to bring in legislation to allow this. Fae actively promoting an anti-research position and calling on others to follow tells us all we need to know.

This is an overt attempt to undermine child safeguarding in the medical field. As the research finally starts happening and all the unintended consequences emerge, Fae openly threaten the livelihoods (and arguably given the unhinged nature of so many trans extremists) the safety of professionals working in the field. I do hope that the press pick this up and Fae is challenged to explain why fae thinks that issuing threats to others in this way is acceptable? And why fae is so determined to stop research into child health care and safety?

Jane Fae article. I hope someone has archived that.

Available on the appropriately named archive sites.

Or is it only applicable to those doing specific research to inform the Cass report?

Looks to be limited to 5 years and those commissioned on behalf of the Cass review (York). NB: this link says "time limited period" but I know that I read 5 years somewhere.

This instrument will make a minor change under the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004 to facilitate the progression of the Review’s research programme, enabling the researchers to have carefully controlled access to pseudonymised data (i.e. they will not be able to identify anyone from the data they receive) for a time limited period, and solely for the purposes of the Review’s research.

cass.independent-review.uk/research/

It was good to read this.

The Review’s research team has undertaken service user engagement and involvement, with six online sessions to explain the research process and ask their views, especially around the use of data without consent. The feedback from the trans and gender questioning adolescents and young adults and their parents who attended these sessions was overwhelmingly supportive of both the importance of this study and the methods to be used.

Thank you to the link to the Jane Fae article. I hope someone has archived that. Fae seems to view themselves as having some kind of informed sage perspective on the safety and outcomes of modern day invasive medicalised child transition in the NHS over the last few years. So what’s Fae’s experience of going through GIDS services as a child or parent? Or what is Fae’s professional GIDS expertise giving Fae the authority to comment on this?

No? Nothing?

Yet Fae feels entitled to dismiss Professor Hilary Cass, a paediatrician at the height of her profession, and former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, as some kind of unethical ‘cispert’. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so ignorant and threatening to medical and scientific understanding that could actually help children’s health and welfare or could help to avoid any serious medical mistreatment of children.

I think anyone could tell Fae what’s actually seriously unethical here- that would be the long years of experimenting on vulnerable kids subject to a vast amount of pressure, leaving them with permanent physical and mental changes and keeping them permanently in their child bodies with a host of side effects and known health problems, and without the benefit of natural physical and mental adult maturation. With no research being done to say whether it’s safe or effective at helping them at all. It’s almost as though they were a group whose outcomes nobody cared about. And that’s the real scandal.

Most tellingly, while Fae is trying to whip up feeling against the Health Secretary (who has finally acted responsibly in this issue whereas previous government ministers have not), and while encouraging readers to take action against individual researchers and other people who may have authorised access to children’s or adult’s health records as part of doing this research, Fae fails to explain why doing this research is actually a problem. Fae just doesn’t want this research done.

Fae clearly has zero understanding of the extremely strict rules concerning use of data in medical research whether it belongs to an adult or a child. So strict in the case of GRC holders that government has to bring in legislation to allow this. Fae actively promoting an anti-research position and calling on others to follow tells us all we need to know.

And once again, shame on the original legislators who passed the hugely ill-thought-out GRA. I didn’t realise that its requirements for secrecy must have been a block to medical research invitations and social research follow up of people who have had GRCs ever since. That is outrageous and would have been actually something to write to MPs about to get it changed. No group should be given untested medical treatment with no research or follow up.

It’s great that this has been overturned and research can now take place. But does that change permit researchers to apply to use GRC data indefinitely? Or is it only applicable to those doing specific research to inform the Cass report?

I thought Fae was a writer of some kind? That piece is atrocious - full of typos, clunky, badly argued.

Listen
Believe
Change

Except that the whole point of research is to remove belief and instead look at real world outcomes.

If you could do a study and then say, 'ok here are the flaws in the study' in terms of explaining how bias was actually being applied. Being able to explain how the bias is being applied is actually useful in itself because you can then work to remove it or adjust for it.

But you still have to look at the real world outcomes.

If you do research and its only done by trans people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, thats biased and could be actively dangerous. You remove self interest from studies because it produces a conflict of interest.

Its also hugely disrespectful to the professionalism of people doing a review.

Don't get me wrong, i do think that you need to listen - a lack of listening is always present in medical scandals. But listening includes the voices of detransitioners and people who feel theyve been failed by those who carried out medicalised transition on them.

@OldCrone that’s chilling. What I meant by the original comment was that re Rotherham people were frightened of calling that out for fear of being called racist, likewise there is this fear of being called transphobic if anything to do with transgender issue, especially children, is criticised.

Is it me, or is an objection in that thread to the review of data is that the data kept by GIDS is “garbage”?😵‍💫

That Fae article is shocking.

What do we want?
"Less data and no research"
When do we want it?
"Now!"

Wait, but why?
"TRANSPHOBE!!!!"

We shouldn't underestimate how important 'trans children' are to transactivism:

The concept of the “transgender child” is therefore central the campaigning of transgender activism. One of the most telling admissions of this instrumentalisation in contained in an interview published on YouTube between TransYouth Family Allies executive director Kim Pearson and transgender activist Autumn Sandeen (Sandeen and Pearson 2010) with this transcription taken from the “GenderTrender” website (GallusMag 2012):

Autumn Sandeen: “I’ve always said there are two groups that are going to make change in transgender legislation and the “gender identity and expression” related language in legislation. It’s going to be trans youth because they take, you know, they demystify it and take the sex right out of the trans experience.”

Kim Pearson: “They do. They do.”
...
Pearson: “... And it’s hard to say no to kids, and the needs of kids and “keeping kids safe”. And you know, “being respected in schools” and things like that. It’s really hard for people to say no to that.”

mirandayardley.com/en/a-full-life-uninterrupted-by-transition/

twitter.com/CTransTalks/status/1543150805326364673?s=20&t=6O59felWUknZ_pi6xMCrBQ

Long thread that wants you to think that it's because the Doctors, clinicians, researchers are all CIS, and only we mighty Trans know what's best for our people.

Which really is from the Jeffrey Marsh school of thinking.

So Jane Fae is now calling for all trans orgs to withdraw cooperation from Cass review, but, more interestingly, also for targeting the researchers who use the data obtained through the new legislation. jane-67706.medium.com/clarity-in-a-moment-of-crisis-1faf63121af2

They REALLY don't want any research into this, do they? I wonder why?

Yes. It was the nurses at Stoke Mandeville, the school nurse and the local MP in Rotherham. Vilified, slandered, sacked. Exactly what is happening now.

And as with so many historical scandals involving children it’s women speaking up, asking questions and being concerned with safeguarding. Which is why we must be discredited, vilified and silenced.

This. And I have no idea how so many adults fail to understand it.

If they gave even the teeniest shit about children they would welcome this investigation. But we always knew they don’t.
It’s always been about adults needing a group children to be poster children for their adult political cause to give it legitimacy.
And now those adults are afraid that the numbers of children taking on this role that advantages their political purposes might fall away. That’s all they care about. They do not care about the kids.

Thanks RedToothBrush, that looks like a really interesting thread to explore.

Neuroscientist Sophie Scott on sex and brains.

mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Play/54419

There never been any real evidence found to really support the idea of a pink/blue brain conclusively despite what people say.

I also think its worth considering alternative possibilities and causes. For example there has been studies into radicalisation and brains. People with extreme views do seem to have different brain patterns - normal brains, but brains doing something a bit different when it comes to what they term 'sacred values'.

There does seem to be an ability to de-programme though. This is by exposing them to different view points rather than simply remaining in an echo chamber.

This begs a very difficult question if you do find differences between brains - is it innate at birth or could it be the product of a certain type of socialisation? As in could it actually be the result of grooming / brainwashing?

I've mentioned it on a couple of threads with links about this on MN before.
Here you are:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3610447-Pink-Brain-Blue-Brain-Some-research-on-radicalisation-and-brains

So I think that there could be something in brains, but I also think we need to be careful about the correlation and causation thing going on and there is a large elephant in the room even with that which TRAs might not like too.

There are also some pretty frightening implications if you can indeed deliberately change the brains of people and in effect deliberately programme them. If you deliberate remove debate and discussion, it could effect how people actually think on a physical level, not just what they think on an emotional level.

FWIW as an aside, my sibling is trans. They had a brain scan to see whether there was any different. They couldn't find any difference between his male brain and other male brains. It was a very normal male brain apparently. So yeah, I remain very unconvinced by pink and blue pseudo bollocks and concerned about radicalisation of all forms.

As of right now I would happily let them slither quietly back under a rock

Golden bridge and eyes on the prize. There is a clear need for an evidence review given the absence of adequate follow-up of the children and young people who have been supported by GIDS.

People who are uneasy about the opposition to such an evidence review need to know that there is a golden bridge and that they can cross it when they're ready.

@TheBiologyStupid Exactly, TRAs block any research into the subject so there can never be anything scientific to go on. And for psychological studies (such as Blanchard) there is a trend to discredit those too, leaving no research and everyone at the mercy of their theories/ideologies.

It is no different to religion, which again blocked any study as it would start to disprove religion's word.

I think there is definitely something in the hormonal doses a child receives whilst in the womb, which is a theory for homosexuality (and you could argue transsexualism is extreme homosexuality), but again the deliberate interference by TRAs would prevent such studies from taking place.

But when you're dealing with people who deny what XX and XY chromosomes mean, what hope do you have?

There is probably some truth in trans brains being different [...].

My understanding is that adult male brains are 10% larger (unsurprising, since adult male bodies - and their internal organs generally - are also 10% larger). [Side note: no evidence that this gives men any intellectual advantage :o) ] However, although there are other sexed differences that develop in male and female brains after puberty there is no evidence to support the claims that male-to-female transsexuals have brains that more closely match adult female brains. There are huge caveats, of course: 1) a general lack of data, not least because TRAs have tried to stop it being collected, as a pp has noted above; 2) specifically, it is unclear how the brains of mtf individuals participating in studies have been affected by cross-sex hormones in the first place, thereby blurring cause and effect.

Helen Joyce addresses this somewhat in her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality in Chapter 3, where she writes:

Once the activists are done with demoting sex from an objective characteristic of individuals to a social fiction, it is time for step two: to ‘reify’ gender identity – that is, to turn it from an abstract idea into something concrete. The main argument put forward is that neuroscientists have found a brain structure that is different in trans people, or shown that trans people’s brains look like those of the sex with which they identify.

This is an odd claim to make if you also insist that biological sex is not binary, since you have to know which bodies are male and female before you can group brain scans into male and female and look for the differences. It is equally strange to claim that differences between brains could be a solid basis for classifying people as men and women, but those between genitals could not. Machine-learning algorithms can be taught to classify brain scans as male or female with around ninety-five percent accuracy. But that is far worse than the human eye can do with faces, and worse still than it can do with genitals.

Helen's book is brilliant - no wonder that the TRAs hate her so much.