Webberly reports Cass to the GMC - get popcorn

A few years ago my daughter was asked whether she might be a boy by a camhs mental health worker. She's autistic and gender non conforming, he based it purely on her stereotypical presentation.

Luckily she said she was a girl. I say 'luckily' but what I really mean is that I told her that is no wrong way to be a girl and that there was nothing wrong with wearing clothes that are in the boys section of a shop or wearing her hair short or not wearing make up when this question had arisen before.

Post puberty she actually is a lot more into stereotypically girly things.

There are a shocking number of autistic girls in our area who identify as boys or non binary.

The reason for this is evident.

Webberly is a disgrace and adults who have care responsibility for children should be ashamed of themselves for suggesting that gender non conforming kids might not be the sex they were born.

I think it's very damaging to invite children to consider whether they feel like a girl or a boy. What are they actually going to base that on? They have no idea what it feels like to be the sex they aren't. They can only possibly conceive it in terms of which stereotypes they feel more comfortable with. So it's inviting them to lean into stereotypes rather than what we should be doing, encouraging them to ignore stereotypes and just follow their own individual interests without needing to label them as either feminine or masculine.

TiredOf's daughter has come to the conclusion any logical teen ought to faced with this ideology. Nobody is 100% either sort of stereotypes, we're all a mix, and we should all feel free to be masculine (for want of a better descriptor) one moment and feminine the next. Let's just label the entire world as gender fluid and get on with sorting things by sex where they need to be sorted at all.

I confess I didn't think you'd be back, Tired - that the question 'how do you define gender?', which you never answered, was too difficult for you.

Thank you for continuing to engage, but if we can't know what you mean by 'gender' as in 'gender dysphoria' or 'gender fluid', it's difficult to have a useful discussion.

But to respond to what you have written, without definitions unfortunately:

I believe we need to listen to young people and support them,
100% agree!
but in a way that is neither suggesting they should transition nor that they shouldn't.
By 'transition' do you mean live as a transwoman/transman?
There I disagree 100% - given that it is impossible for a man to become a woman, or a woman to become a man, for for a girl to grow up to be a man, or for a boy to grow up to be a woman, it is unfair to offer 'transitioning' to children as a valid possibility.
Children deserve the truth: the sex you were born is unchangeable and if you are born male, you'll be male till the day you die, ditto if you are a girl, you'll remain female.
It's irresponsible and ultimately cruel to suggest to children that they will eve be anything other than the sex they were born into.

We need to listen to young people,
100% agree

have conversations with them
100% agree

and understand their individual situations without judgement.
100% we mustn't judge the child, but judging facts and situations and courses of action is what grown-ups do, it is a good thing when supporting young people to become strong, confident, sensible adults . If we don't model judgement to children, they'll never learn to make sensible, wise, balanced judgements themselves.

Sensible, wise, balanced judgements are based on fact not fiction, and children deserve the facts about their biological sex and all the loving support in the world to help them understand that you can't transition out of the sex you were born into.

But that doesn't mean that you can't be whatever kind of man you want to be, whatever kind of woman, gender is just something society tries to tie you down with, but a confident well-informed child won't waste energy on trying to elude their biological sex by pursuing the illusion of 'transitioning'.

In the end, through conversation and understanding she came to the decision that they were more gender fluid than one or the other.

Can you explain what you understand by the term 'gender fluid'?

I'm not asking for a definition, I'm asking what you, personally, understand this term to mean, and what you think it means for your daughter.

If you are actually a parent with a teen girl and have not worked out that your job is to judge and guide the girl to the best possible outcome that is rather sad as it pushed adult respondibility on to a child.

If you are doing that it is not suprising that you are undereducated with no understanding of why forced menopause as induced by testosterone overdosing is not a good idea for a teen/twenty something girl.

As for research which part of fact that the medical profession in the UK have no clinical research to support medicating adults is not a concern?

The UK has had years and years of adults involved in the NHS gender clinics and nobody has done any long term studies. What other medical field would that happen in? No doctors writing papers or using long term research to obtain promotions.

That lack of data is ignored when it is proposed to do studies on children with complex MH issues.

As far as I am aware the Cass report was a review of existing studies, not a study in itself.

Relying on a child to answer questions about their wishes seems unfair if adults are proposing something - changing sex - that isn't possible.

I don't understand why anyone would assume it to be a good idea to permanently prevent a child from reaching sexual maturity, which is the long term goal of this treatment. The goal is not to pause puberty until the child can cope, but to prevent puberty entirely.

Most adult trans people do not have 'bottom surgery' which indicates that they value their sex lives (and don't want to risk the complications), and many have had children - why remove that option? What problem is trying to be solved?

Canada may have self ID (which is irrelevant here) but where does it say that jail is the result of suggesting counselling for gender dysphoria? I believe we need to listen to young people and support them, but in a way that is neither suggesting they should transition nor that they shouldn't. We need to listen to young people, have conversations with them and understand their individual situations without judgement. My own daughter and I had a conversation where they thought they might be trans. I didn't judge, I asked questions to understand why and what their thoights were and how they came to them. In the end, through conversation and understanding she came to the decision that they were more gender fluid than one or the other. If she'd have wanted to speak to a GP or felt she needed more help then we would've approacjes it that way.
When you look at the Cass report, they spoke with 8 people out of thousands to come to their conclusions about the care that was provided.

Even Reddit seem to think she's more hindrance than help these days.

She's an absolute crackpot!

🚩

The men and non-mens party said the is a wholescale coverup by
• the famalies who accept a death cert
• the first responders and doctors involved
• the coroner who issues a cause of death other than the child took her/his own life
• the ONS who publish analysis of the data

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2024registrations
Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and Ireland) or contact other sources of support, such as those listed on the NHS help for suicidal thoughts web page. Support is available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, providing a safe place for you, whoever you are and however you are feeling.

Sigh

Idiots should stop doing the whole speak out with BS claims.

Nobody has no doubt as to how much an idiot the idiots are when the idiot opts for that.....

Medical intervention is first do no harm and then so the minimum to return the child to her/his (hopefully) prior healthy state or if there was no prior healthy state to benchmark "healthy state" against the healthy body/mind of a child of the same sex and age.

Can you explain to me why any medical "care" should be "affirming"?

It's like a six stone weakling demanding they be prescribed anabolic steroids so that they can develop the well muscled body that they identify as possessing. We shouldn't be allowing drug abuse by children or adults whether it's cross sex hormones or anabolic steroids.

What I am also saying though is that if someone feels they a child has do not align to the sex assigned at birth a MH issue about her/his body or their gender identity is different to the forms her/his personal belief system linking to stereotypical societal norms they she/he should be afforded the same care medical interventions as those who have affirming care in the same gender they were born with or identify with as children of the same sex as her or him

So that would MH support not an attempt to cosmetically change her/his body

Every case of gender affirming care giving off lable drugs to a teenager to attempt to prevent puberty is different from those who have procedures done to enhance their current gender a medical process to delay puberty in children with precocious puberty
to those the children that have procedures been given off lable drugs to alter or change their gender physical body by disrupting puberty (and all forms of care in between including psychological care).

So MH is recognised as a MH issue and a physical issue recognised as a physical issue.

If you're against gender affirming care using off lable drugs for trans people, children with MH issues then you should be against it the use of specific drug used to delay not prevent puberty for cis people children with precocious puberty

The problem of trying to use the physical issue of precocious puberty to justify the attempt to prevent the childs body going through its maturation process into adulthood is that they are not the same thing at all

It's relatively simple to measure the onset of puberty. A child entering puberty at an age lower than the accepted norms (which are the age of 8-16 for a girl) can be diagnosed and treated.

The puberty blocking drugs should not be prescribed to girls over the age of 8 because they would be within the normal range to start puberty.

The opposite applies to a child questioning their gender. They would not normally enter into precocious puberty (they could but then they would be treated for the medical condition, not for being gender questioning). The child (or rather the child's parents) would be requesting puberty to be blocked at a time when it should naturally occur for that child - over the age of 8 for a girl or 9 for a boy.

That is why they are prescribed for some children and not others.

It is not possible to measure or diagnose 'gender'.

"Why is it that people feel it necessary to stop puberty from happening when a young person may not be 'ready' for puberty"

They're not young people they're children and why do you think puberty is something any child has a choice about. It's not like choosing to get up or not, or eat they're greens or not. Puberty is a natural part of the maturing process, you don't get to put it off until you're in the mood for it. 🤯

I see there's been a lot of publicity about this stunt, no doubt Webley's aim.

Yes. Good point. Props to you tired for engaging (and not just a drive by scolding, as we get lots of) I am feeling very snappy and impatient so didn’t acknowledge how it’s actually a good change to find people engaging in hopefully good faith. There is a wealth of information from posters here and it’s good when people can access that and forge discussions rather than echo chamber. Apologies for using that expression as a verb and pls excuse my shit spag today! I feel like I’m letting the whole class down as well as myself

In fairness to Tired, what happens to occasional posters like them is that they are visiting a thread where [a] nobody agrees with them and [b] everybody has already given this a lot of thought and research so [c] it's very easy to refute their statements.

Having a whole board of posters disagreeing vehemently [but politely] with you from a position of knowledge can't be easy.

They can try matching us reputable source for reputable source, or they can accuse us of a pile-on and of being nasty bigots who are responsible for the toxicity of the discussion, or they can just go away.

It's sometimes the case that they come on here just to get quotes to prove just how toxic we are, which must be disappointing because it's usually like this - we've engaged with Tired in a non-toxic way, we've asked questions e.g. How do you define 'gender'? we've read replies, and responded to them thoughtfully.

That's true, isn't it, Tired?

And the child will be prescribed these drugs after a full and thorough diagnosis is made by an actual Dr who is trained in that area of medicine who will also monitor and follow up on the child and their progress.

The Webberleys of this world would hate for PB's to become an actual approved and mainstream medical treatment as they won't be able to make any money selling shady drugs to desperate kids over the internet.

Thanks, yes you're right. The problem with Facebook is so many people will see this, under a Green Party banner, and think these claims are true and will go on to repeat them. I guess that's just part and parcel of the misinformation mill on social media.

I'd say leave them to it. They're TRA nutters. Even P-t-d on Reddit has the measure of all the anti-Cass nonsense. In a thread about that exact Dorset Greens post, in answer to a "How can this be going on!" wail:

Protect-the-dollz
• 2h ago

Honestly?
Because it was backed by the Royal Colleges and the devolved Medical Officers.

The UK has a hierarchy of sources. An independent NHS review sits right at the top of that.

They only realistic way it gets changed is if the RCs start clamouring for it.

They won't be persuaded by anything less than major studies in the Lancet or BMJ or similiar high impact medical journals, preferably written by clinicians working with academics from major universities.

When you look at the peer reviewed stuff against Cass almost all of it is from non clinicians writing in low impact journals.

That just isn't enough in a UK context.

Note - I am not defending the system, just trying to explain why one can read 15+ studies disagreeing with or critiquing Cass and yet there is no hint of a change from the NHS.

Then another one of them witters on about WPATH 🙄

Gender: Used by coy Americans - and others - when they are too embarrassed to say/write 'sex'. Also used to signify masculine and feminine stero...

Oh, I failed.

I've posted this on the other Cass thread, but posting it here as well as it is so shocking. This is from the North Dorset Green Party's facebook page.. absolutely outrageous claims regarding suicide being covered up etc.

Is there any point in reporting this?

If it’s a little too hard for Tired to answer, maybe they could just define the single word “gender”. Ideally in one sentence and see if the word “stereotypes” can be avoided.

im patient, I’ll wait too.

And let's look up the follow-up rates for each sector, shall we?

A man has SRS or FFS in Thailand, or Spain, or France. Who's monitoring him in the UK?

Thank you ! I think many of the women on here are gender non-conforming too, so it's not just me.

If you've researched the social history of sex and stereotypes, you'll know that the women's movement in the 1970s and early 80s managed to reduce the impact of gender stereotyping - photos from that period will show school children with similar clothes and haircuts, women were taking up trades and professions which had been closed to them previously, there were campaigns - often humorous - against blatantly sexist advertising
[e.g. an ad for a car that said 'If this car was a woman, it would have its bottom pinched' was graffitied with 'If this woman was a car, she'd run you over'😄]

On a more serious note, it was also the era of women's refuges, rape crisis centres, Reclaim the Night, Women against Violence against Women, etc.

Gender stereotyping was consigned to the bin - David Bowie, Marc Bolan, and later Annie Lennox are examples of how people could present themselves without denying biological sex.

But there was a backlash against the modest gains of the women's movement.
Disney princesses. Fairies. Butterflies. Pink. Glitter. Sparkles. Once again 'femininity' was associated with this kind of stereotype.

We are still in the tail end of that glitter-washing. Boys who are not comfortable being male seem to be taking the glittery stereotype of femininity as the model for 'feeling like a woman' and seeking to transition.

When men say they 'feel like a woman' they seem to have a limited opinion of what a woman is, and it owes more to the sparkly backlash than to the women's liberation women of the 1970s and 80s, or the reality of most women's lives in the 2020s.

I feel very sorry for children who are presented with 'this is what a boy should be like' and 'this is what a girl should be like' and if they don't fit the stereotypes, they are the problem, not the stereotypes. and need 'care', in your opinion of the gender-affirming kind.

You said previously I agree we need to remove gender stereotypes, but until that day, they are there and they affect everyone.
If we had to wait until the world was perfect to do the right thing, we'd never achieve anything.
Women in the recent past did a pretty good job of removing many gender stereotypes, so you shouldn't be so pessimistic
Until such time as we reach the day you think marks the end of gender stereotypes, I'm not prepared to accept the damage they do to children, who are led to believe - not by you, but by a very influential and powerful movement - that they have an inherent gender, rather than a socially constructed model of one, which may be at odds with their biological gender, and that it is possible for them to change sex so it accords with their inherent gender.

I'm against anybody young or old being encouraged to believe things that aren't true.