NHS to open detrans clinic

Well I don't think that's true. I think it will have a different position in that it will be able to gather data on poor practice...

It will be interesting to see levels of demand. And whether this demand increases over time. And whether detransition is more common after taking a private transition pathway.

Acknowledging the need for a detransition clinic and therefore legitimising detransition, is great in its own right.

If there is no demand, then the service won't last long.

Why would anyone trans have a problem with this?

A detrasition clinic would surely suggest that that is possible. Can you grow back breasts? Reverse removal of a penis? Reverse the effects of cross sex hormones? Have a puberty after it was stopped? Reverse bone damage?

Which people and organisations pushed children into transitioning?
I recommend you talk to some detransitioners.if you want details.

By emotional manipulation, do you mean warning parents suffering from Rapid Onset Trans Panic that trying to stop young trans people from transitioning due to trans-hostile ideology won't actually prevent them from doing so - it is just an extremely effective way of driving them away and going no-contact once they hit 18, then spending the rest of their lives decrying the people who could have saved them enormous suffering and expense?
I mean parents being told that their children would commit suicide if they were not allowed to "transition". These children had problems which were not addressed and instead they were funnelled into a one-size-fits-all treatment pathway.

There is no "trans-hostile ideology". What you are railing against is compassion, medical ethics, evidence-based treatment and common sense.

By unrealistic expectations - do you mean the collective grief freely shared by the trans community over the limitations of current treatments?
I mean - for example - being told that they would be accepted as people of the opposite sex; that surgically created prosthetic sexual organs would look and function like the real thing. I should have added - that the seriousness of surgical procedures like double mastectomies, penectomies and orchidectomies were downplayed.
You admit that the community knows the limits of the surgeries and the effect of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers. I think this means the community should have urged caution.

I do agree that in a properly equpped and funded health service uniformly staffed by professional, consistent and conscientious staff who are able to comprehensively support their patients, the notion of coaching young people on the gotchas used to trip them up and deny them treatment would be unnecessary.
All patients, especially young patients, should be assessed properly and treatment based on clinical need and suitabllity.
Gate-keeping significant medical and surgical interventions is essential and ethical. You admit that kids and young people were coached in how to bring about a specific outcome - to get a course of treatment which has not been shown to be effective and has been shown to cause harm.

It's certainly tantamount to admitting the power of the anti-trans healthcare lobby

And in the future we will be able to help people detransition by telling them to change their jumper or take off their nail varnish.
Because that's the most we should allow people to undergo.

It is shocking the lies that have been told to convince innocent people that surgery and drugs was a good idea.

I hate it too. It fills my heart with such sadness every time I hear the horror stories of people who were rejected and harmed by parents who caught Rapid Onset Online Transphobia, and they're still so bleakly common. It's such a devastating thing to have to do and I'd desperately urge anyone considering it to try and find a way to reconcile with their parents if at all possible. Sometimes it's possible, after deradicalization, to recover that relationship but it's extremely difficult and requires immense willpower on the part of the victims. I'd advise always leaving the door open, but really it's up to the parents themselves.

Yes, exactly 🤨

This is good news, but I heard a few days ago that they were going to open six gender clinics for young people!

Many of us aged 40+ don’t need to think too hard to recall a time when we’d never heard the word “transgender”. It wasn’t actually very long ago.

Regarding the detransition clinic: didn’t the government recently open some “gender clinic hubs” in various parts of the UK? Is opening a “detransition clinic” tantamount to admitting that “transitioning” can be unsuccessful?

I refer the Honourable Poster to my previous response.

This entire exercise is such a transparent bone thrown to placate the right wing press and harness the 'gender critical' gravy train.

All trans people need effective healthcare. Not conversion therapy euphemistically packaged up under a 'holistic' buzzword. Not press-placating gesture clinics that cater to a hypothetical, unevidenced fraction of the marginalised minority group who need effective healthcare.

By your logic, if young trans people don't get access to treatment, their decision-making isn't impaired.

No, that interpretation is through the lens of a reader's reading comprehension and cognitive biases.

Decision-making that is skewed by unresolved MH issues will remain unresolved where there is no adequate treatment.

By your logic, if young trans people don't get access to treatment, their decision-making isn't impaired.

There are enormous numbers of trans people who expressed persistent gender incongruence throughout childhood and yet were denied or weren't even aware of the existence of treatment. They continued to seek treatment through into adulthood and transitioned as soon as they could.

Their statements are matched by the small numbers who were able to access this treatment. The unifying thread is that access to treatment at a young age is enormously beneficial. Those who couldn't access it are all too aware of the impact; those who could count themselves incredibly lucky.

The NHS is now creating 'detrans' clinics for small numbers of hypothetical people, the overwhelming majority of whom have never been able to access treatment on the NHS due to the ridiculous waiting lists and ban on healthcare for trans young people since 2020.

NHS policy now forces young people who age out of the child services (which don't provide treatment) at 18 to restart on the half-decade long adult service waiting list just in case they have, during the years they waited for treatment that doesn't exist, changed their minds. This means nobody will get any treatment whatsoever until they hit 23. They'll have gone through school and university and been forced into the workplace, enduring years of abuse, before they can even start to access any meaningful treatment.

What's important though is that there will be deserted 'detrans' clinics for the hordes of hypothetical people who don't exist, who want support to undo treatment they've never been able to access.

Will this be a clinic that finally offers people the therapy they should have had before they transitioned in the first place?

They were caught in a captured NHS + internet influencers pincer movement, basically.

I really hate the glibness of the phrase “going no contact”. I can only hear it in Jeffry Marsh’s creepy grooming voice. (Find him on TikTok if you haven’t come across him). It is a trite name for an immensely serious decision, with devastating consequences for whole families that cannot be seen and appreciated by emotionally immature teenagers.

It is a foul thing to hold it as a threat to parents who love their children, and to encourage teenagers to do this, or present it as inevitable as part of your “trans journey”.

How hard is it to step back from having gone “no contact” as a headstrong teenager? Once you have made that move, you have to keep digging into your position, keep your parents in the role of the baddies, and avoid anything that questions what you are doing to your body; it is too rigid a position to encourage anyone to adopt except in exceptional circumstances. To present it to teens and young adults as a simple solution to any kind of questioning or pushback from parents does them no favours.

And another point is that by the time it came to make decisions on surgery, the kids/young people had already had their puberty blocked and decision-making ability impaired.

But the point is those ‘going down the naval gazing pathway’ should have been properly assessed, given a differential diagnosis and then lots and lots of therapeutic support … thus avoiding the medical pathway and the potential costs of detransitioning? If you read the articles/watch the interview of people like Prisha, Richie Herron and others, they were woefully let down by a captured service in that failed to dig deeper, assess them for co-morbidities (CSA trauma or autism/ND assessment), did not give them space to explore their feelings about the GD or provide considered alternative pathways.

They were victims and should not be held culpable for the mess they are in. They had a right to expect independent, considered and professional support from their clinicians.

This ‘detrans’ clinic is a very small step towards the NHS accepting it failed them - and rather too little, too late.

True, but I suspect the amounts we are talking about are minuscule compared to the wholly self-inflicted harm from e.g. smoking and type 2 diabetes. I don't think the blame for the waste rests with de-transitioners, rather an NHS which decided that medical interventions were a valid form of treatment in the first place.

@ButterflyHatched How old are you? Because of most of us on here remember a time not so long ago when there was no trans "care" and the kids did just fine.

Which people and organisations pushed children into transitioning?

By emotional manipulation, do you mean warning parents suffering from Rapid Onset Trans Panic that trying to stop young trans people from transitioning due to trans-hostile ideology won't actually prevent them from doing so - it is just an extremely effective way of driving them away and going no-contact once they hit 18, then spending the rest of their lives decrying the people who could have saved them enormous suffering and expense?

By unrealistic expectations - do you mean the collective grief freely shared by the trans community over the limitations of current treatments?

I do agree that in a properly equpped and funded health service uniformly staffed by professional, consistent and conscientious staff who are able to comprehensively support their patients, the notion of coaching young people on the gotchas used to trip them up and deny them treatment would be unnecessary. Unfortunately we live in a world that is still recovering from the legacy of the well-known harm caused by clinicians like Richard Green and Sue Evans.

Thank fuck!
Detransitioners should be treated with kindness, must be so hard to step away when you know doing so may lose you so-called friends and allies.

But I do hope the clinic gathers data on the "gender affirming" pathways taken in order to highlight the costs, both to the NHS and to the individuals needing treatment.

Very true and in the case of young people and children it should never have happened. They should never have been given any medical treatment incompatible with their birth sex.

Good news, though. Future Watsons and Ritchies will have somewhere to go.