Positive Guardian article on LGBA v Mermaids

Maybe they've learned the Kids Company lesson. Sometimes people who say they want to help children are either really shit at it or really out for themselves

@RedToothBrush shame they didn't pay any attention when two Tavistock clinicians approached them with their concerns back in 2017. Think how many children have had irreversible surgeries since that time - and lest we forget, The Guardian has a young American readership too.

Na. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say someone bothered to read the Cass report...

Yep, many of the older, cross dressing 'I have a lady penis' TIM are straight. But many of the confused growing cohort of Tavi children turn out to be gay.

It's confusing isn't it. One group looks like AGP, one group looks like vulnerable children.

LGB Alliance isn't trying to represent the heterosexual adult male population.

And neither should Mermaids be, tbh...

Thanks, Tinsel and Necessary. BB is just juggling with words. Why am I surprised?

Isn’t she making the opposite of the point she wants to make?

I think she's trying to dispute LGB Alliance's view that they're trying to LGB protect people from "transing the gay away" - thinking in particular of gay children. LGB Alliance asserting that the transition takes them from "gay" to "straight" in gender-terms.

Mermaids are countering that with "well, actually lots of 'trans' people are 'gay' post-transition", pointing at the heterosexual adult male transitioners.

Of course childhood "transitions" are not the same as adult male "transitions". Totally different cohorts with totally different motivations, and LGB Alliance isn't trying to represent the heterosexual adult male population.

Trans "umbrella" being used to obfuscate.

Classic Bailey and Blanchard article, although maybe a bit dated, and most of us know this, I think.

Gender dysphoria is not one thing

I have to assume that the mermaids witness here means that the vast majority of trans adults are attracted to the sex that they identify with rather than the one they were born to. if true (my understanding was always that trans women were disproportionately [compared with regular women] but mostly not attracted to the female sex) I can't help but feel this has some implication or other for female spaces.

Belinda Bell said the vast majority of trans adults are not straight, so the process of transition could not accurately be described as gay conversion.

But if, as she’s saying, these people are gay, then surely becoming (legally) the other gender would be gay conversion? If gay men say they are straight women, then they have renounced being gay. If gay women say they are straight men, then they have renounced being gay.

Isn’t she making the opposite of the point she wants to make?

Or has my brain not woken up yet?

Is that true? I thought a lot of TW were heterosexual men, which is why they want to have sex with lesbians?

Well, it's true in her terms - those transwomen are "lesbians", not "straight". (Ie they are heterosexual in old money).

Mermaids would say they were lesbians.

I love that the author is called Amelia Gentleman

A gay transwomen is not a lesbian. A gay transwomen is a homosexual man.

I suspect someone at the Guardian woke up and smelled the bullshit. #Woke

"In evidence given earlier in the week Dr Belinda Bell, chair of the trustees of Mermaids, said it was implausible to suggest that gay children would embark on the difficult process of transitioning in response to homophobia, and noted that the vast majority of trans adults are not straight, so the process of transition could not accurately be described as gay conversion."

Back to the thorny issue of what she meant by the words "gay" and "straight"

At last! An actual story rather than TRA propaganda (not sure there are any lesbians left reading the Guardian by now mind you)

Or have they suddenly realised they were previously on the wrong side?

Wtf is going on at the guardian I mean it almost seems as if actual grown up journalists are back in charge