Australian Family Court Allows Cross Sex Hormones for Teen

@OldCrone

What makes you think that WPATH has little relevance to Australia, when they have based their own guidelines on WPATH?

So would you prefer that the court relied on evidence such as the Cass review, or on a document produced by a group of activists, many of whom don't have any medical training?

Do you want to reword this? I'm not sure what you mean.

Generally, I'd prefer the court relied on evidence based on Australian sources primarily, then if further sources are required, consensus-based, peer-reviewed evidence.

Yes, this is what I was thinking. Surely Ash is aware men can't get pregnant. So does that mean Ash will detransition to become pregnant? Does it also mean Ash sees this as a temporary status quo.
The manipulation of two children (Ash and Ash' sister) is absolutely diabolical.
Scientific fact #1 Humans can't change sex.
Can you imagine the outcry if a physiologically healthy 16 year old wanted to be sterilised because they decided they didn't want children, and a consultant went ahead?

The judge thought that the WPATH guidelines should be given “great weight, because they are models of care arrived at by consensus of the relevant professional bodies”. So he seemed to be relying on WPATH as "evidence".

From the article in the OP:

Dr O favoured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines as “by far the best available guidance at this time, and … informed by decades of expert clinician experience”.

Justice Tree agreed, giving the guidelines – as well as the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines and state government policy – “great weight, because they are models of care arrived at by consensus of the relevant professional bodies”.

This is from the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines:

the recommendations made in this document are based primarily on clinician consensus, along with previously published standards of care from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)

What makes you think that WPATH has little relevance to Australia, when they have based their own guidelines on WPATH?

So would you prefer that the court relied on evidence such as the Cass review, or on a document produced by a group of activists, many of whom don't have any medical training?

Dragging the ten year old into all this is a safeguarding issue. Who is looking out for her wellbeing during this circus?

I'm not on MN constantly, Sinner.

@OldCrone

Do you really think WPATH’s "evidence" should be given equal weight to the Cass review?

How does this question relate to the post you responded to - "Would you rather the court didn't rely on evidence? Or just the evidence you prefer?"

In Australia, the Cass review doesn't hold any legal weight. Interest, yes. But otherwise, any guidelines such as Cass and WPATH have little relevance. Particularly as the Cass review is relatively new and, as he noted, produced in a "vexed environment", the Justice could be reluctant to rely upon it. I'm not sure why this surprises you.

Is there any evidence that the government commissioned the report due to 'the toxicity of the debate', as asserted by a PP?
I thought it was commissioned because various professionals raised concerns that the 'go to' treatment option didn't have evidence to support it efficacy and safety in use on children.

I see that you have no response to the info about WPATH.

Again, inane.

There's evidence (the Cass review) and then there's WPATH.

This article by Hannah Barnes gives a good summary of the problems of relying on WPATH for guidance.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/09/disturbing-leaks-from-us-gender-group-wpath-ring-alarm-bells-in-nhs

Despite its grand title, WPATH is neither solely a professional body – a significant proportion of its membership are activists – nor does it represent the “world” view on how to care for this group of people. There is no global agreement on best practice. The leaked messages (and the odd recording) – dubbed the WPATH files – are disturbing. In one video, doctors acknowledge that patients are sometimes too young to fully understand the consequences of puberty blockers and hormones for their fertility. “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall,” one Canadian endocrinologist says.

WPATH’s president, Dr Marci Bowers, comments on the impact of early blocking of puberty on sexual function in adulthood. “To date,” she writes, “I’m unaware of an individual claiming ability to orgasm when they were blocked at Tanner 2.” Tanner stage 2 is the beginning of puberty. It can be as young as nine in girls.

...Surgeons talk about procedures that result in bodies that don’t exist in nature: those with both sets of genitals – the “phallus-preserving vaginoplasty”; double mastectomies that don’t have nipples; “nullification” surgery, where there are no genitals at all, just smooth skin. And doctors discuss the possibility that 16-year-old patients have liver cancer as the result of taking hormones. The problem is not necessarily the discussions themselves, but that the organisation is not so open when speaking publicly.

...The most recent version [of WPATH’s standards of care] does away with all age limits from the beginning of puberty for hormones and surgical interventions, other than female to male genital surgery, and contains a chapter on eunuchs.

Several staff at England’s NHS adult gender clinics are not just members of WPATH (one is the former president), but authors of that current SOC. So too was Susie Green, the former boss of the young people’s charity Mermaids; a lack of medical expertise does not exclude either membership of WPATH or the power to influence policy.

This is important:
a lack of medical expertise does not exclude either membership of WPATH or the power to influence policy.

Do you really think WPATH’s "evidence" should be given equal weight to the Cass review?

JessaWoo · Today 03:18

Inane.

There's no need to summarise your posts.

Excuse my naivety, but if Ash wants to take cross sex hormones to be able to 'live as a man' what the hell is all this talk about harvesting eggs from her sister to enable a pregnancy?
Men don't get pregnant.
Surely that's an indication that this scenario is batshit crazy?

Don’t confuse two things. Baroness Cass conducted an independent review. The review itself was not subject to any political interference.

The review was commissioned by the government due to the toxicity of the debate both by politicians from all parties and people on both sides of the argument. The political debate continued throughout the period with politicians from all parties making statements depending on their point of view.

This politicised the dialog around the review, but to her credit Baroness Cass stayed silent and conducted the review with the utmost integrity to ensure it was independent.

WRT the pact - as I’ve said upthread, it was most likely evidence that Ash understood the cross sex hormones could leave them infertile - acknowledging there were downsides. No one in their right mind would think it could be binding.

Would you rather the court didn't rely on evidence? Or just the evidence you prefer?

Inane.

I have heard it said (in Australia) that the CASS report was “political” and driven by conservatives a la Trump. Why do people make that claim? Is Dr Hillary Cass a Conservative Party member? Or is she religious? It puzzles me because the UK is not particularly conservative in the vein of the US and is way less religious, perhaps even more so than Australia too. I am wondering if there is some background that I have missed.

I am also personally quite taken aback that a pact with a ten year old was treated as if it had been made by adults. I assume it’s not binding and the younger child can change her mind at anytime? Still, it would be hard for her to do so, as the older sibling proceeded with the transition process on the understanding there would be access to the eggs.

On reflection.

The FCFOA is now a faith based court. In this case they have relied on the evidence of one of their priests, who has consulted their holy texts and recommended a suitably observant course of action, taking the opportunity to decry science which offers evidence in opposition to scripture, and to make passive aggressive suggestions about how the general public ought to be more observant of this faith. Knowing that their faith is challenged, they have secreted the identities of those enforcing the dogma.

It's f**king terrifying. But in its so overtly religious behaviour, there is an opportunity for a well managed appeal to dismantle this judgement and cause better regulation of the way this court goes out to the legislation for advice.

It's funny - for years we've had those fearing outgroups and foreign religions taking over the legislature screaming about sharia law for example, when the real threat is this new American religion.

Because:

He's a moron.

Why make a statement like this? This is a judge you're dismissing here. You may not like his actions, but to call him a moron? 😳

Can you post some links to the research you're referring to?

Thank you Just. Lots more detail there.

There is some more information about this case from earlier this year (names were changed).

https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/a-childs-fertility-pact

The judge was also involved in another case several years earlier re teenagers accessing hormones.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/lanesainty/this-trans-teen-was-the-first-kid-from-townsville-to-start-t

Who do I donate to here in Aus (esp Qld) to work against this insanity?

The family court here has a rep for overreach in other areas (recent setting aside of a binding financial agreement in a separation case) and this just makes me even more worried.

Because this gender cult isn't part of daily discourse here, I think few are aware of the slow, quiet creep of this neo religion into the authorities.

@MerryMaker so the Scottish Government sentencing guidelines that allowed a rapist to escape a custodial sentence because he was under 25 are based on really flawed science.

That is so concerning,

You are wrong. The researchers who did the original research are so alarmed at how it is being misunderstood they wrote a follow up scientific paper explaining why what you are saying is wrong.

Brains have plasticity. They develop throughout our life. There is no time of maturity. Simply that there are periods where brains make more connections, and where connections are pared back more.

There are small changes detected about 25 years old. We have no idea if these changes translate into real life behaviour. We do know people can have significant brain damage in parts of the brain that nominally align with certain functions, and yet be unaffected. Brain research and understanding is very much in its infancy.