Cass review - out on Wednesday

I agree with you @BonfireLady that it’s one fundamental aspect that really needs examining in greater depth but I think Hilary Cass would say that that would be beyond the scope of her remit. It’s also far harder to articulate and pinpoint using black and white statistics and evidence.

Yes, in blunter terms I think that's KJK's point.

I'm going to throw a spanner in to the works.....

Section 6 of the final report talks about gender identity as if it were factual.

Whilst it's great that it explores why certain behaviours might be exhibited stereotypically by males and females, this is the loophole that Mermaids, Stonewall et al will use to promote gender identity as fact.

😞

On a positive note, if a gender identity believer (from this section, it seems that Dr Cass is such) still concludes that medical intervention is inappropriate based on current evidence, this is a good outcome from a medical perspective. However, there is quite a compromise when it comes to holistic care and challenging the notion that "we all have a gender identity" - and the potential impact on schools' curriculums and (educational) psychologists' approach to mental health in this area.

@Brainworm I don't think I followed completely but here is what I don't understand:
'Gender identity' or the stereotypical roles associated with those identities are socially constructed but biological sex is irrefutable fact. A male body and a female body can make a baby. It is literally the defining feature of our species.

There's been an awful lot of academic posturing about Cass's "methods" - it shows how really stupid they are if they can't comprehend that

1/ the government threw everything she needed at this,

2/ it's the biggest review of all the research ever published

3/ you're very limited by the methods due to the nature of the drug.

4/ ITS CHILD ABUSE.

It doesn’t take much pondering 🤔

Idea laundering wrt "trans children" has been very much a thing in educational academic circles.

I understood that the “weak evidence” was a more or less total lack of evidence on account of not bothering to collect any reliable data on outcomes (probably in the knowledge that they would be unlikely to support the case for the use of the medication anyway).

People who don’t understand or care much about research methods catch on to attractive terms like “double blind” and roll them out at every opportunity to give the impression that they do know something.

Peter Boghossian talks about "idea laundering" which is like a disturbing cargo-cult version of the academic ideal. It goes something like:

• social 'sciences' academics submit their made-up nonsense trendy ideas to a tame stable of journals, where the articles are supposedly 'peer-reviewed' by other academics who agree with said made-up nonsense trendy ideas and want to propagate them.
• then, those other academics who wanted to spread said made-up nonsense trendy ideas submit their articles to said journals, being able to cite the earlier lot of made-up nonsense articles.
• thus a false 'body of work' built upon 'published peer-reviewed citations' is born.
• and around it goes, basically a big pseudo-intellectual circle-jerk of high-on-their-own-righteous-farts pyramid schemers.

I haven't had the time yet to read the review, but where does this issue of the double blind study come from? I've listened to a couple of interviews (for example the BMJ one on YouTube) and she named longitudinal studies. The study she wanted to conduct (checking the outcome of 9000 former patients of GIDS) was not a double blind study. She also claimed that the biggest problem of the studies available was lack of (long enough) follow up.
Finally, not her words but mine, when a blind or double blind study can't be conducted because the effect of a drug unblinds the study, you can still conduct randomised trials, simply not blind ones.

We also stopped reviewing newer studies released in the last two years. As a result, we were left with very little evidence

What are the new studies that Caraballo feels should have been included?

'Impossible standard'

Let's reflect on that.

Why would medical testing on children with drugs that could shorten their life, lead to infertility or have a known rate of exceptionally high life changing side effects be so difficult to do in an ethical way?

Let's ponder that.

Can't edit on my phone, but formatting is buggered. It should read 1, 2 and 3.

I think the problem is that they are simultaneously claiming that

1. it does exist because trans people say they have experienced it

1. That it exists as an objective reality and always has before we knew what it was

1. We shouldn't/can't discover or try to locate it by scientific means because...1.

@Brainworm

Thanks, that's a great summary.

Regarding this bit:

What is interesting about criticisms floating around today is the insistences that gender identity is an objective phenomenon and it existed long before humans 'discovered' it

Are people saying that they have demonstrated that it does actually exist? Because I think that's probably the first hurdle to clear if we are starting from first principles...

Thank you brainworms! I love how you've explained it. I hope you teach it. And I was right with with you...

... cos I totally got apples are apples, they're round fruity things and I completely got bananas, they're bent yellow things and oranges are dimply with pips.

But then I lost it because that means appley dappley, orangey worangey, bananerisms.

😄

Thanks for that, Brainworm.

This has all the hallmarks of the way the other side think. Taking something that falls into one category and applying to it the rules of a different category.

I may not be getting something, but it seems to me that a phenomenon eg dyslexia not mattering, or not being observed, is not the same as it not existing. If we didn't read and write, we wouldn't label the inability to see words or letters in the right order, that's all. To use "exist" in the way relativist oncology proponents do is as if the naming of something brings it into being. So I can definitely see what you mean about the appeal to genderists.

I'm with you in that I can understand as I'm reading it Brainworm, but I couldn't repeat it/explain it to anyone else.😀

Fascinating- the contradiction you outlined in the last paragraph.

Really appreciate you taking the time to lay this out. Thank you!

Can you elucidate?

I know there are some crazy ideas around, but on the face of it that definition seems to suggest that if humanity went into a collective coma, or blew itself up, there would be no world, nothing. I'm sure that can't be right, so what do they mean by "reality"? Material reality? Surely not

Crash course - ontology is the study of knowledge. There are different philosophical stances regarding what knowledge actually is. Few question that the material world exists independently of human thought. For example, a tree. Trees exist whether or not they are known to us (say for example they were is an uninhabited part of the world, their existance isn't dependent on humans knowing of their existence), This ontological position is called realism. Epistemology is the study of methods that enable knowledge to be gained. When adopting a relativist stance, scientific methods (such as experimental designs and controlling variable) are deemed the most effective methods. This epistemological stance is called positivism.

When it comes to the social world, fierce debates arise over whether phenomenon exist independently of human thought or not. If you take dyslexia as an example. Some people will argue that it's an objective phenomenon and would exist whether or not it had been discovered. People would be dyslexic, just no one would know. Others argue that dyslexia only exists because we value and need literacy skills in todays world. They say that if literacy was an optional past time, like gardening, dyslexia literally wouldn't exist. Nobody would care about struggles with word level reading, no one would assume to be able to develop competence, and so deficits wouldn't exist. They suggest that if catching a ball was imperative to functioning on a day to day basis, we would 'discover' a condition/ phenomenon based on ball catching deficits. This is a relativist position that argues knowledge is socially constructed and reality changes over time and contexts,

Identity is clearly a subjective phenomenon and so lends itself to a relativist ontological stance. Typically, constructionist epistemologies go hand in hand with a relativist ontological stance, whereby methods to generate understanding (new knowledge) focus on illuminating the realities individuals and groups construct, trying to understand the phenomenon as they see or experience things. It is argued that the scientific method (such as CASS is calling for) is irrelevant. This is called a constructivist epistemological stance.

What is interesting about criticisms floating around today is the insistences that gender identity is an objective phenomenon and it existed long before humans 'discovered' it (realist ontology) but they are disparaging the methods that are typically used to learn about objective phenomenon (scientific method/ positivism). Instead, they are calling for a constructionist epistemological stance, whereby the truth can only be found through the perspectives of trans people.

Well done to anyone still with me in this. It's a bit of a nerdy area - but you did ask me to elucidate!

The Xitter post says:

Alejandra Caraballo

'TLDR of the Cass Review: "we disregarded nearly all studies because they weren't double blinded controlled studies. We also stopped reviewing newer studies released in the last two years. As a result, we were left with very little evidence." This is an impossible standard.'

Maybe the reason is: hyper-individualistic fuck you attitude with disregard for conventions that make society work properly.

Also Freeman of the Land is jumping into my head randomly for some reason at this point.

It's males who perceive and women who have to suck up the reality of mens superior perception.

That's why the word woman is up for debate but not man.

It's why we have the Cassandra effect which has been known since Ancient Greece.

Women are not allowed to perceive.

Can you elucidate?

I know there are some crazy ideas around, but on the face of it that definition seems to suggest that if humanity went into a collective coma, or blew itself up, there would be no world, nothing. I'm sure that can't be right, so what do they mean by "reality"? Material reality? Surely not.

I'm blocked by whoever that is.

Anyway, I've now seen Mishy's copypasta. Several times