New podcast by Julie Bindel

we don't get any. Friends, other parents, teachers - they would all accuse us immediately of being nazis and bringing back gas chambers. I am not exaggerating.

I still haven't listened to anything but this is worth circling back on (my italics):

This podcast brings home how incredibly hard it is for parents - who've been abused horribly by the institutions set up to support them. So many saying they felt suicidal - where's the care for them?

And so many TRAs saying that it's not about them, and it's selfish making it so. Elon Musk may not be everyone's favourite person but the pain on his face when he talked about his own role and his own ignorance in his child's transition was so clear to see. Yet he got a torrent of abuse for his apparent selfishness, as well as people decrying his playback of deadnaming (even though his comments made sense in exactly the way he used it).

Yes, one thing that stands out when parents get a voice is how they really - whether affirming in the end or not - think things through, consider nuance and very much think about their child's wellbeing from all angles.

Yes. When they are being told by professionals in multiple disciplines that it's in their child's best interests to affirm (and the suicide myth is launched at them at the right moment) it's not a massive surprise that many will attribute any feelings of unease as their own subconscious prejudice.

When you've also got referrals to Social Services to navigate, it takes a huge effort to pivot and see it differently.

Obviously until relatively recently, most parents would have never accessed anything other than affirmation. I had no idea that this board existed when I first started this journey. All I had was a feeling that something wasn't right, based on a single sentence on the NHS gender dysphoria page (which is no longer there on the updated page) that said the impact of puberty blockers on the developing teenage brain was unknown.

Done.

Great idea for much wider exposure and a brilliantly written title and intro. It's quite the hook to catch the interest. Hopefully it will do just that 🤞🤞

Yes, this was my take away too. But it's clear when someone is shouting at parents and deliberately acting to harm family bonds that they're not acting from a position of the child's best interests. They're acting from a position of pushing a political agenda no matter the damage to children.

They must see the damage they're doing to previously stable, happy families and plough on regardless because they're Big Brother zealots.

I listened to the whole series yesterday and couldn't believe what I was hearing. I knew it was bad but I thought the social workers and teachers caught up in this believed (albeit mistakenly) that they were acting in the child's best interests. I'm not so sure that's true now.

(I listened on Spotify).

do vote :)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5163163-to-be-so-upset-about-the-stories-in-julie-in-gender-land

It’s all so terrifying. Especially for those of us experiencing gender ideology in our families. Infuriating when the #bekind contingent with absolutely no skin in the game come on to these threads to point fingers and scold us for being mean. As if worrying about toilets is the sum total and limits of our concerns.

I think gender ideology just attracts bullies who see this as a way to abuse because they seem to enjoy destroying people's lives.

It’s been a long while since I lived in the world of psychiatry/psychology but even then there were far too many drawn to those positions in order to be in positions of power over highly vulnerable individuals. Not all of course, but many. It wasn’t sadistic as in enjoying destruction (though unfortunately there were a few of those deeply damaging people), but definitely a deep need to control other’s thoughts and failing that, then certainly controlling their behaviours and actions. Being so out of control in their thinking necessitates controlling others.

GI has been heaven sent opportunity for such individuals to indulge and give free rein to the heady and thrilling feeling of exerting all that power over others whilst simultaneously eradicating any niggling doubt about one’s motives when you’re on the right side of history. I picture religious persecutors experiencing the same emotions.

@BonfireLady it is a fragile place to be when all you want is for your DC to be happy (enough) in their own skins. The worry ever present.

Yes, one thing that stands out when parents get a voice is how they really - whether affirming in the end or not - think things through, consider nuance and very much think about their child's wellbeing from all angles.

In stark contrast to the 'professionals' who seem to use 'trans' as a way to abdicate any responsibility for anything else, as Cass pointed out (not quite in those words) in her report.

it's almost as if the vast majority of parents have their child's safeguarding as a higher priority than social services, counsellors (etc) who seem to care more about religious adherence to the ideology. The world has lost all common sense.

Thank you for the lovely words above 💐

Is now a good time to throw in a plug for the brilliant collection of poems "Under the Duvet of Darkness Vol 2"?! I wrote one poem in there and that's where I channelled the release of my fear in its raw form. Mostly I just use it as the fuel to keep doing stuff that either directly or indirectly helps my daughter. The only thing I wish I'd done differently is call the poem "You said you might be trans" instead of "You told me you were trans" as it's far more accurate and still scans the same way in the rhythm. But it'll do and it felt very cathartic writing it. It's a really great book with lots of great poems. Chapter 1 "A letter to my daughter" is a collection of various different viewpoints, including of course feminism. For anyone relatively new to this board, this book and its predecessor (volume 1) has poems that have all been written by Mumsnetters. Both have been fantastically edited by the equally fantastic MNer, BoiledBeetle. Volume 2 includes a contemporary context for some of the poems too.

I've mentioned on previous threads that I've also listened to affirming parents. Obviously there will always be examples of extremes and possible narcissists, who shout loudly in the press and on social media, but I'm betting that most affirming parents are very much like the ones in the parenting group I was in: they love their children very much and have wrestled with all sorts of thoughts and feelings along the way.

The media's complicity in this abuse and harm to children shouldn't be forgotten. The way social media has silenced dissent such as noting that all mammals have two sexes (the horror of biological reality!). Meta, I'm looking at you.

The editors putting K Dolatowski's desire for wrong sex pronouns above his 10 year old girl victim's right to accurate reporting or even equal status with her abuser (no-one ever asks her pronouns).

Whilst recognising the way the brave, real journalists like Julie B, Suzanne Moore, Hannah Barnes, Andrew Doyle (and many more) have fought to simply speak the truth and do some investigation in this area. They've been brave, but it's ridiculous that they had to put their safety and careers on the line to speak the truth.

Also sending BonfireLady some 🍰☕and 💐

💐💐 to you @BonfireLady . Thank you for sharing your story. It's truly awful; a total medical scandal. I feel this is worse than the blood scandal. Mainly because it's constantly affirmed in the media, on social media and online generally as well as by politicians and celebrities so there's no getting away from it. So how do these children get brought back? 😥

Also the bit about James Esses was really awful - he was treated appallingly. His description about how his career was destroyed overnight and he was just crying and crying. For shame that those supposedly training therapists could care so little about his mental health (anyone's mental health, really). It just exposes them as liars and abusers. Why would anyone think they have any authority in the field when they deliberately took actions to destroy someone's mental health? What hypocrites! No need for them to have gone about it the way they did, even if in thrall to gender woo.

I think gender ideology just attracts bullies who see this as a way to abuse because they seem to enjoy destroying people's lives. With the parents too - even if you believe in gender woo, you can go about it in a more gradual way which recognises the parent's inner thoughts, feelings and identities as well. Rather than 'we're going to refer you to social services for emotional abuse if you can't magically immediately see your daughter as a son and remember at all times to use the wrong sex pronouns'.

The people described as behaving in this way in this podcast would have enjoyed being in the Stasi too, probably.

@BonfireLady Just to say I am in awe of how you continue to fight for your daughter all the time, against the odds.

I don't think you need to listen to this because you've lived it to a greater or lesser extent, though you may want to at some point when the time is right for you. You maybe haven't had every experience but you have suffered at the hands of abusive affirmation only institutions. And I don't know how you keep going in the face of this. This podcast brings home how incredibly hard it is for parents - who've been abused horribly by the institutions set up to support them. So many saying they felt suicidal - where's the care for them? Where's the recognition that it's the parents who need to be able to care for their children and destroying their mental health will damage their ability to do that? It's very basic humanity that is being ignored here - as well as the basics of safeguarding.

How many children have been harmed? How many families torn apart, deliberately, by these so called 'professionals' in service of a nonsensical evidence - free ideology ?

It brings it home that until the bullies masquerading as 'professionals' who are harming families are held to account for this, nothing will really change.

It's great that she's done this and I really hope that lots of people listen to it.

Although I've listened to detransitioners (and found their stories heartbreaking to hear, as well as being impressed by their strength to speak out), I would find this too close to the bone for me at the moment.

No, my daughter hasn't transitioned but I'm still incredibly aware of the bias and influences encircling her that pull her towards doing so. We've still got a "deal" on the table that we'll look at breast reduction surgery (she's barely got anything there, and with her sports bra is virtually flat) together when she's 21. She's now 15. She's moved on lots on this already, having previously told me that she would be getting a double mastectomy - or "top surgery" as she put it - as soon as she was 18. Obviously I'm buying time with our deal but I'll honour it, if it comes to it. Hopefully it won't and/or if we looked at it together she'd come to the conclusion that it wasn't something she needed when looking at risks and benefits. She also previously thought she wanted testosterone, although I'm pretty sure she's now recognised how dangerous this is for females at a cardiovascular level. To be clear, she's never overtly said "I'm trans", or explicitly said she identifies as non-binary/male, but the subject first came in to our household when she was 13 and told us she thought that she might be.

So it's close to the bone because I'm still really scared that she'll be pulled towards making an irreversible, life-impacting decision at some point. It's this fear that drives me forward in how I do everything that I can to mitigate the risk of this happening, but the influences really are everywhere. It's like playing whack-a-mole with a standard sized mallet on a football pitch sized board. I've shared some things on this board but not everything.

I've met one parent IRL whose daughter has transitioned (with testosterone), where he isn't on board with it. I have no idea if he ever was at one point as that didn't come up in conversation. He now spends his time fighting hard to stop others from having to go through this. His pain was so difficult to listen to, particularly given how his face lit up he was when he spoke about what his daughter was like before this happened. She was driven, bubbly, intelligent etc. He said that she's now just getting by in a basic job and has lost all her passion for life. I'm glad that I met him and I'm glad he's another voice fighting hard to help others. It's incredible that he has been able to channel his pain constructively. I introduced myself with my own first name - not surname - so I don't want to say anything more about him or how I met him.

But this...

Brave, brave father. He says 'what have I done to my daughter' when he realises that affirming for 3 years wasn't the right approach and she transitioned because of bullying.

He says he felt suicidal at that point.

...is a whole other level of pain. The realisation of having been complicit, albeit ignorantly and with the best of intentions, must be one of the most difficult things ever to come to terms with. I can fully understand why most parents in this situation would go the other way and champion "gender affirming care".

In addition to the timing of her periods starting, my daughter was also being severely bullied (autism-related) when her major mental health crash happened and she was admitted to hospital.

If we get to the point where my daughter does reduce/remove her breasts or make any other irreversible changes to her body linked to this awful medical scandal, I'll listen to more parents like in these podcasts. I do read the articles on PITT parents etc but I'm not mentally strong enough to hear the pain in their voices right now.

The pain in the parents voices. Jesus.

Oh brilliant - Julie is just telling these brave, brave parents to stop blaming themselves!

Julie is going up and up in my estimation. Well said! She's saying everything to those parents that I'd like to say! They were there for their daughter and they did the best for her in the face of enormous pressure to submit to the cult.

I'm about halfway through episode 2.

Brave, brave father. He says 'what have I done to my daughter' when he realises that affirming for 3 years wasn't the right approach and she transitioned because of bullying.

He says he felt suicidal at that point.

And this is why so many parents double down - because they are not brave enough to admit that they got it wrong. They were facing horrendous pressure from evil "professionals" bent on a political agenda, and the threat of being told they were abusive if they didn't affirm. I hope these parents can come back to reality and can forgive themselves.

Also the Gender GP stuff - bloody hell, no psychiatrist appointment, no linkage with local GPs. Cowboys.

The way only what the zealots think counts is very much like assigning parents as 'unpersons' too.

It's Big Brother (or Big genderfluid person) through and through.

Utterly enraging but very good journalism from Julie.

In the unlikely hope Julie's reading here - thank you for doing this. Alongside the transwidows film, this enables lots of people whose lives have been DESTROYED by this ideology finally the chance to speak about THEIR lived experience.

I've just listened to 1984 on a podcast. The way these "professionals" behaved is like those enforcing submission to Big Brother - 2+2=?

Of course Big Brother also sought to destroy family relationships

Share this very far and wide - text it to everyone you know, stick it in every WhatsApp group chat you have