New children's gender identity clinic, clinical trials and Cass

Spot on. But that's what society have allowed transactivism to do. To upend all our accepted standards for safeguarding children to the extent that all of our safeguarding organisations have been corrupted:

Social Work England exposed this in Rachel Meade's successful case against them.
The NSPCC exposed this with their initial condemnation those exposing their employee wanking in rubber fetish gear in the toilets
The CQC are a Stonewall champion
Ofsted were a Stonewall champion
The DfE threw money at Mermaids (notorious for their paedophile / porn scandals) & Stonewall who were busy dictating to schools that girls must share changing rooms, sport etc with boys claiming to be girls.
Great Ormond Street Charity are tone deaf enough to fly the pride flag at the hospital telling some of the most unwell, disabled and vulnerable children in the country that their bodies could be flawed but fixed with a sex change
And as for the NHS.....

Organisations who should centre children's safety above all else have instead centred a toxic and dangerous lobby who have been allowed to use children to promote their niche beliefs .

To add: raising public awareness of autogynophilia is also key to this.

Obviously it's a different paraphilia (and I'm hopefully within MNHQ guidelines here) but paedophilia is a good case study. Prior to heightened public awareness of it, NAMBLA and PIE had a much easier job WRT the loopholes.

As an aside, MN gave me one of my "no way!!" moments re NAMBLA. Prior to being on this board, I just figured it was a made up name and group in a South Park episode. Good old South Park have clearly been all over this whole wider topic for a while, through the medium of comedy.

@ResisterOfTwaddleRex @RethinkingLife that all makes perfect sense.

My gradualist approach mirrors my current IRL journey to support my daughter. I'm in choppy waters right now but luckily I've got some people who've been on the journey all along and their critical thinking continues to kick in. I fully believe that had I gone "full ultra" (which isn't my style anyway) I would be in a more precarious position than I am now. The incremental gains have helped to build a foundation.

But I'm glad I've got the absolutists reminding me of the loopholes. It keeps me on my toes, in a good way.

How is this meeting in any way ethical?

It's literally using children as experimental subjects, putting their fertility, sexual function and brain development at risk.

But if both the GRA and PC of GR don't go - ie we keep the latter - activists will just keep on and on. Safeguarding won't be achieved.

This is my greatest apprehension. In the same way that NAMBLA and PIE have never truly gone away and the concepts and ideas behind them continue to be put forward, I have profound reservations about the potential for the opportunistic ongoing harms created by these pieces of legislation.

Don't think we are miles apart, Bonfire. But if both the GRA and PC of GR don't go - ie we keep the latter - activists will just keep on and on. Safeguarding won't be achieved.

Organisations purporting to do safeguarding, get it, or use it to advance their arguments that are not behind this, are now (on a lot of reflection and back and forth, and am I a dreaded Ultra), a red flag for me I'm afraid.

The GRA definitely has to go. Or be rendered toothless, so that it's simply a £5 certificate that affirms someone's belief but changes nothing factual e.g. sex on official documents.

The PC of gender reassignment is already toothless in law. It just needs to be explained better to organisations, once the EA has been tidied up to clarify that sex means biological sex. Someone with the PC of gender reassignment has the same legal rights as someone of the same sex, age and religion (or lack of religion) as someone without that PC. It doesn't supersede any of the other PCs. For example, an adult male who identifies as a woman has the same right to single sex spaces as an adult male who does not identify as a woman. Organisations need to use these existing single sex exemptions much more effectively. It's absolutely proportionate that such a male does not belong in female spaces, services and sports. The single sex exemption is about sex differences (fact), not gender identity (belief).

The GRA's existence and lack of clarity on the EA are the key issues.

It's unclear whether Sex Matters and Genspect have a view on GRA repeal as an end goal or not.

Edited to add: I fully agree that safeguarding cannot be fully achieved without this being sorted.

I don't think SM or Genspect want Repeal. That's the difference. And safeguarding cannot be achieved without it. The GRA and PC of GR have to go.

Resister - I'm horrified by the disregard for child safeguarding. I recognise Levi Pay's political argument for the plurality of voices and approaches.

My anger lies with the success of Press for Change and Denton that was beyond the wildest dreams of those who implemented it.

It's a different take on the premature anti-[X] argument. No individual or organisation wants to be confronted with being captured by a harmful ideology and it can even lead to punishment to have realised the harms. Golden bridges involve face saving for the people who walk across them. I don't like it but I accept that the current face-saving solution would be to demonstrate the implausibility of running an ethical trial.

premature anti-[X]: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5222295-jkr-on-more-people-accepting-reality-and-rewriting-history?reply=140258649

NB: I've lost my confidence in the ultimate sense and responsibility of people. I would not be startled if the trial were authorised. I'd like to see if there are any special insurance arrangements for HCPs who put forward candidates for the trials and those that take 'informed consent' from the parents. I'd very much like to see the public-facing materials for the participants who are considering trial participation.

ETA: xd with Bonfire

That's a really interesting exchange on X. Thank you for sharing it.

There was a discussion on the Supreme Court thread (#3) which talked about the difference between absolutists and gradualists. In this scenario, Clare Page is the absolutist and Genspect/Levi Pay the gradualist. We need both approaches.

I fully agree that it's abhorrent that we need "tactics" in order to prioritise safeguarding but sadly that's the reality of where we are right now. Parents are being reported to Social Services as abusers (citing safeguarding) if they don't affirm their child's gender identity and/or affirm the belief that we all have a gender identity.

Policy makers are caught in the ridiculous position where safeguarding itself has become the battlefront: at one end of absolutism, there's a group saying that parents are a safeguarding risk to their children if they don't affirm and/or let their child "explore their identity" (whatever that means - most parents are happy to let their children challenge sex-based stereotypes and wear clothes etc that express their personality choices). At the other end of absolutism, there's a group (or individuals like Clare and KJK) saying that schools and healthcare institutions are a safeguarding risk to children if they encourage children to "explore their identity" (again, it's unclear what it means but institutions are telling children that they might not be a girl or a boy, depending on their preference regarding sex-based stereotypes).

Safeguarding is lost in a whirl of confusion.

Gradualists like Sex Matters and Genspect are trying to tactically win it back. Absolutists like Clare Page and KJK are trying to forcefully win it back. Each of these different approaches will help.

Lets not forget, the original ethics committee in the late 90s declined this approach. They kept going to different ethics committees until they found one that approved it. And then immediately went outside of their own age range.

And that's before infiltration by activists.

Ethics committees are always looking for members. I hope they would be vigilant about infiltration by TRAs.

I'm with Clare Page on this latest from Genspect and I find it very concerning that Levi Pay (Sex Matters, previously Stonewall), would reply to her correct assertion that tactics aren't appropriate in child safeguarding, with defence of use of tactics

x.com/nosecretlessons/status/1865493476755779949?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

x.com/soppystern/status/1865684806484295896?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

sex-matters.org/about-us/advisory-group/levi-pay/

Like Lesbian Labour said recently, we used to care about safeguarding:

x.com/lesbianlabour/status/1864810764332404997?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

A multi-disciplinary team approach will be taken to identify those children who, with the consent of their parents, may be deemed clinically suitable for consideration of puberty suppressing hormones through the study.

I wonder how they will identify children who are clinically suitable for a 'treatment' which will sterilise them and may have serious impacts on their physical health and brain development? These are children who at the time of this assessment are likely to be physically healthy and with normal brain development but who wish they were the opposite sex.

How can this get past an ethics committee? Sterilising children and impairing their physical health and mental development because they want to be the opposite sex (which is impossible).

It is envisaged that children and young people in both England and Wales will be able to participate in the study with access through NHS children and young people’s gender services. A multi-disciplinary team approach will be taken to identify those children who, with the consent of their parents, may be deemed clinically suitable for consideration of puberty suppressing hormones through the study. Children participating in the study will also continue to receive comprehensive psychosocial support.
The study will measure a range of potential treatment benefits and harms (for example whether puberty suppressing hormones impact in a meaningful way on levels of anxiety or depression, on body image, or brain development) using a range of validated tools, questionnaires and user feedback. Key measures included in the study, and the way data are collected, will aim to bridge gaps in existing research and will also be shaped by engagement with a range of stakeholders, including children and young people referred into NHS gender services and their families or carers.

www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/gender-dysphoria-clinical-programme/implementing-advice-from-the-cass-review/cyp-gender-dysphoria-research-oversight-board/

Trial stil listed on the NHS England CYP Research Oversight page. Ethics approval is supposed to be due this month with recruitment ready to start in Feb. 2025.

Rumours of something about puberty blockers coming out tomorrow, unclear if it's about the trial or more generally.

A trial just can’t be done.

To do one, it needs to be possible to identify which children will grow up and still wish they were the opposite sex, as opposed to those who would grow out of it if left alone.

It would need to be deemed acceptable by an ethics committee that children will be sterilised, plus all the other harms, particularly in the context of the point above. I don’t see how any committee can agree to that.

And the children/families would still need to be able to consent to puberty blockers, despite the two points above. Which they can’t.

The only way a trial can be done if these three fundamentals are ignored.

Yes great idea to have equivalent trial with psychosocial interventions to compare with

I’m torn about whether there should be a trial or not. On one level a trial would give us clean answers we could refer to, on another, PBs are fundamentally a bad idea. Certainly this proposed trial should be paused until they know what they’re doing

Archive link

https://archive.ph/jkaIG

I hope they follow the suggestion of having an equivalent trial of psychosocial interventions for those with early childhood onset gender dysphoria.

This popped up on my newsfeed this evening. Adding it to this thread:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/12/07/nhs-puberty-blocker-trial-activists-cass-review-safeguards/

Jo Bartosch in Spiked, though it seems it may be covering the same ground as Hannah Barnes in the New Statesman (I've not read her article yet)

https://archive.ph/MyTiq bypass the paywall

www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/22/why-is-the-nhs-ignoring-the-cass-review/

Excellent article. Hannah Barnes, when all this is over, you can be proud that you did a sterling job in trying to protect young people from this misguided ideology and from the consequences of lazy and cowardly politicians.

Great Article from Hannah Barnes…

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2024/10/are-nhs-gender-services-disregarding-the-cass-review