The Hannah Barnes book

Dennis Kavanagh posted this link to this video on his substack a couple of days ago. I didn't know about Hannah Barnes' book until I watched the video. It is a very sobering watch. I am surprised it hasn't been posted on here yet, unless I have missed it elsewhere.
"How Did Society Fall into a Freshly Clothed Eugenics Movement and Ideologically Sacrificed Children?"

I think the way forward here should be going back.to old school methods.

Schools ditching the homework apps. Going back to homework diaries and written work. Then all the kids would need is a drug dealer phone.

Kids are less safe now witg access to smart phones even though theoretically it should make life so much simpler
. But because u can Google in a second kids have lost the ability to forward plan. Have a back up plan..organise themselves etc uts hindering their street smart not making them.safer. and the sheer amount of information available is over whelming. They dont have the skills to pick out whats a good source amd what's some blog by some conspiracy theorist.

We all survived using a house phone to call friends or knocking on doors. Its not a big deal.

I just started a thread but then I noticed this one.

Its like we were right all along.
www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1676792952

The Rachel Cooke review is really powerful. How long can the Guardian bury its head in the sand?

Related thread in case of interest:

Sunday Times: The Tavistock is still operating and referring children for puberty blockers www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4746010-sunday-times-the-tavistock-is-still-operating-and-referring-children-for-puberty-blockers

Thanks drhf

A good review. I googled again. As of an hour ago it is on the Guardian website.

www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids

How long can Guardian editorial staff, Senior Labour politicians, and NHS managers/EDI staff, keep the line that there is nothing amiss.

Here's hoping that because the foundations are so slight, the whole gender edifice will tumble quickly.

PS The Rachel Cooke piece is in the Observer of course - silence (omertà) from the Guardian proper.

This is actually a review of Private Eye’s own review, I’m posting it because it reproduces the PE review in full. (I know nothing of this blogger but I agree with his comments here, and I can’t link to the actual review.)

mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2023/02/eye-tavistock-review.html

amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids

That is very weird.

An important book is coming out that is likely to be of interest to their readers, whether those readers agree with Barnes or not. They can't not review it, so they restrict access.

I think puberty is much more difficult now. A decade ago I allowed DD to have Fb, or bebo, when leaving primary school though insisted everything went through my email until she was 13. Eventually we sat down and discussed the endless stream of posts from "cool girls" having fun hanging out in shopping malls etc. Phones did not have the same capabilities then, so the posting would have happened from their bedrooms. Ie they were much like everyone else, going to school, doing homework, watching box sets of Friends or playing Farmville, and occasionally handing out. Even then boys were under pressure. DS was exposed to porn aged 11 (he was upset so told me.) Others aged 8. Some of the memes circulating were offensive and cruel.

Fb is out. Now it is TikTok, SnapChat and WhatsApp. Parents cannot control and the social pressures from influencers, filters, smartphone capability, etc have grown immensely. Throw genderwoo, and a girl who does not present in a typically feminine way, has poor social skills, has self-esteem issues and and and, is very likely to feel inadequate or plain "wrong".

(Sport was DDs saviour. Lots of positive role models either amongst the older girls or, around 15 when she started playing for senior teams, young women. Unfortunately now the presence of a stronger TW, either on the opposite team, would be likely to put her off. A couple of months ago in her 20s she wound up pretty battered playing against someone in their 30s with a male body.)

It's book of the week on the Guardian Editions app - a very positive review by Rachel Cooke.

The app is subscription only so I can't link to the article and couldn't find it on the Guardian website or from Googling, which is worrying...

One thing I did notice in the Sarah ditum review is that she's almost playing into the trauma a bit too. I'm not saying puberty isn't ever traumatic . That its a breeze and everyone's worrying about nothing. Of course its not like that. But I am curious as to the exact moment it stopped just being some thing everyone went through and got on with to something parents completely buy into and validate that their kids will be almost suicidal experiencing

I agree. For us, it was also a little bit exciting because we were growing up.

The bits that weren't good were boys pinging bra straps or teasing girls for wearing or not wearing bras and worrying about leaks in class and so on.

I think the circumstances have changed so much now though with girls being indoctrinated into the rituals of institutionalised femininity much earlier (beauty rituals, fashion, looking like grown-ups and so on) and boys having ideas of girls and femininity derived from the internet and including porn.

So, the bad bits have got worse, I think.

Despite law changes around grooming, the age of consent and so-on I think girls are more readily sexialised by older men now too.

Puberty can be difficult, awkward new physical stuff to adjust to, body changing, hormones everywhere, increased tension in your relationship with parents. The difference, I think, is that nobody expected it to be easy and buckled up for a wild ride for a couple of years. Eventually, it settled down, as it should.

But your parents weren't trying to be your best friends and prevent you from experiencing any difficulty.

There's an archived copy here: archive.ph/ebvVV

Yes, the puberty/trauma thing is interesting.

I think in some sense it's normally, or at least common, for puberty to be very difficult. Your body changes, so it may no longer feel right, like the image you have of yourself. You have lots of extreme emotions. Your relationships with others change. People start to see you as an adult, with extra responsibility. People start to see you sexually, which can be scary but also exciting.

It can almost feel like an out-of-body experience, and it does create an identity crises. Building a sense of themselves as an adult in community with others is part of the process, so it's normal to feel out of place.

But what kids learn now is that all of this is wrong, it's a sign of something that needs to be fixed. And they learn, in school, that they will need some kind of diagnosis to explain it. And also all the ways other kids show their distress, like cutting, etc.

No one tells them that pain and suffering are just a normal part of life and not always a problem to be solved.

Camilla Cavendish has also written a positive review in the ft

It really is such a middle class thing. There is no way a child living through war or being denied education by the taliban would give hurty feelings from tweets a second thought.

Especially when these privileged people arent even interested in helping themselves by I dunno turning off their lap top or staying off twitter.

They arent interested in solutions to the problem or in helping themselves. The self created trauma is their entire identity

Yes.

For some reason resilience is no longer being taught to children who are middle to upper class in many Western countries. I see so many references to the need to feel safe in the sense of never hearing anything the person disagrees with. Even some antifascist sites tell people to go and protest but to remember to take snacks and the medications with them.

It's such an odd brew of aggression towards others and this incredible (to me) demand that nothing in life will never hurt you. Perhaps these are very privileged young people who really don't know what suffering tastes like so regard minor troubles as major ones?

Yet life, on the whole, will grind us all down in one way or another, and none of us will escape pain or failure. That's what resilience is for, to get up and keep going, to learn from the failures so that they won't happen again, to grow stronger and wiser and more compassionate as a person.

I added that 'compassionate' word as I don't see any empathy from those who demand safety for themselves. The thinking is demons-vs-angels all the way, without any understanding of the complexities of life. This is how children and teens have always behaved, to some extent, but now I see thirty-year-old activists behaving like this. And I wish to understand how and why this happened.

It is worrying, especially when truly horrible things happen to others in this world (the war in Ukraine, what Afghanistan is doing by turning women and girls into chattel), that lack of empathy and that lack of all proportion.

Not quite sure which thread this belongs in best but this one seems to work, although it would also fit in one of the threads trying to convince everyone that all is sunshine and roses in Labour. From the archives:

"Doing some website housekeeping & I came across this which I wrote about how in 2019 parliamentarians were threatened with having the whip withdrawn if they attended an event organised by @StandingforXX about the Tavistock."

twitter.com/jo_bartosch/status/1626229910959448064?s=46&t=ThQQ1FUhBI5Fl7ullkYRmA

From the link in the tweet:

"After over forty years of being in the Labour Party Lord Moonie was told by Party General Secretary Jenny Formby that his membership would be at risk if he proceeded with the event. He told Lesbian and Gay News: “there was a direct attempt to coerce me into cancelling the meeting which I had sponsored, and when I refused they said they were suspending my membership. So naturally, I told them to fuck off and resigned.”

Lord Moonie added “as a doctor I am horrified at the Tavistock’s blatant disregard for the safety of adolescents and failure to follow best practice.”"

I won't post the link as it's an archive link but you can find it in that tweet.

Great posts, @Whatwouldscullydo. I think - you wouldn't stick your child in a smoke filled room all day, so how come we've let minors have unfettered access to the internet?

And I think you're right about things being "traumatic". Yes some things genuinely are. But some aren't. They're crappy bits of life we have to deal with. Dealing with them helps us learn resilience (sadly sometimes so much lacking).

When you say this:

I know there have always been similar groups in schools. The cutters , the anorexics and bulimics etc but this explosion in mental health issues is something that should be raising alarm bells. Not having everyone around the child affirm that they are normal and its everyone else around them thats the crazy one.

I agree very strongly with you. It's taken the dogged determination of some parents, some ex-patients who continue to pay a high price, and the fourth estate to start to get to the bottom of this.

All of our institutions have failed. And these aren't "missed opportunities" but failures through actively turning a blind eye, often castigating those raising the alarm.

Schools have been sold the drama. Now they are obsessed with gender and period poverty which im not saying doesn't exist but whats happening is its becoming so.mainstream now that the trauma is being removed to a degree which sounds good in theory but ignores the fact that the kids are simultaneously revelling in said drama/trauma and to.provide a " solution " actually removes part of the identity and causes them to look for another way to be a victim some how.

I'm sure I've read on here too that schools jumped on the band wagon re period poverty and then couldn't even give the stuff away. I know at dd1s school they had to physically hand the kids the freebies as no one was asking for it or taking it. Dd wasn't in that day they came and found her a few days later to give her hers she didn't even want it. I'm.sure the resources are useful if your school has a particular problem but again for many the stuff is just sitting there unused in the girls toilets.

I think that's whats missing. Resilience. I'm.not saying that kids should just let everything slide. But simultaneously being a loved, well looked after child with 2 loving parents at home should not be seen the way it is now which is boring and uneventful and insignificant and so devoid of trauma you have to get together with friends and create said trauma in some race to the bottom which some how means you have it worse than a kid growing up in Foster care or who has a parent in prison or whatever.

There was a certain amount of “just getting on with it”. We grew up with a level of healthy resilience as a result of this pragmatic approach (our parents didn’t have the time or language to ask after our every feeling/ no social media/ no constant handwringing over every aspect of children’s lives eg is this broccoli organic? There were obviously huge downsides to this, though, such as emotional distress and neglect often being routinely overlooked), which means that many of us are somewhat 😵‍💫 at the idea of normal life events such as puberty being “traumatic”.

I mean the days of having tape measures thrown around u on the shop floor in M&s and sanitary belts and PE knickers are over. We have so many industries set up with products designed especially for girls in particular along side the ability to order on amazon and have it arrive the next day and allow you to set up/try on in the privacy of your own bedroom. We are spoilt for choice in the world of sports bras and sports clothing. How, when these things are so much easier now , are things so much worse. It makes no sense at all.