Have you damaged the life of a child?

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The Cass Review into child’s gender services is out. For those of us who have been following this for years, it really is a No Shit Sherlock moment. All of our beliefs and fears for what is happening to vulnerable children (mainly autistic, traumatised or same-sex attracted girls) is set out in black and white.

https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/

So,

Every doctor, psychologist and therapist who ignored evidence and went along with this medical scandal and who set a child on the path of no return to future infertility, osteoporosis, increased heart disease and dementia risk, lower IQ and foreshortened life span;

Every school counsellor who felt they were Rosa Parks, whispering secrets to vulnerable kids and damaging the parent-child relationship;

Every teacher who adopted gender ideology and actively poured poison into their student’s ears;

Every teacher who shut down a student who wasn’t toeing the party line;

Every teacher who made girls feel ashamed for not being happy about sharing toilets with boys;

Every social worker who damaged the parent-child relationship and threatened parents with consequences for not affirming their child’s trans identity;

Every child’s friend’s “cool” parent who claimed their home was a sanctuary from the child’s bigoted parents;

Every autism organisation staff member or volunteer who swallowed the nonsense whole and damaged a generation of autistic girls;

Every person who cut off friends when they raised concerns about trans ideology and kids;

Every Facebook group moderator who blocked members raising the mildest questioning of gender ideology, then out up the sickening virtue signalling post about “no hate allowed”;

Every single person who chanted “protect trans kids” without knowing a single thing about the issues;

Every sports coach who allowed boys into the girl’s teams and berated objecting parents and girls as bigots;

Every separated parent going along with the child’s trans nonsense to get back at the other parent.;

Everyone who has ever donated to Mermaids;

Every single person who blindly believed that a parent’s doubts about transitioning their child were based on transphobia and bigotry, not love and concern;

Everyone who has ever told a child that society hates them because of their trans identity;

Every parent who didn’t do their due diligence and happily went along with their child and who enjoyed the attention of having a trans child;

Every politician (pretty much all of them) who decided to ride this one out, even though they could see the harm occurring in real time

This disaster, ruining the lives of a generation of children, is on you.

Hear hear. I despise the attitude that we should just ignore how people were sucked in and move on. That attitude comes from the people who don't want to admit they were sucked in and would rather protect their own ego than try to look at why they were sucked in in the hopes that it won't happen again.

To me two things seem obvious:
Rampant, vicious and persecutory homophobia was normal for most of the 20th century (and before) and seemingly sensible people were hideously homophobic. We look back now and find it hard to believe that otherwise decent people were so awful to gay people. Many people seem to worry that the same is true around trans people - that unless they're totally open and accepting of everything, they will look back and realise they made the wrong choice. People's desire not to be seen as ignorant overrides their ability to look at a situation for what it is.

Certain aspects of the TRA movement manipulate this desire not to be seen badly to maximum effect such that people who have totally legitimate logical issues feel totally wrong-footed and brainwashed into never questioning anything for fear of seeming bigoted.

The threats around suicide are especially horrendous - the repeated message is that if you don't entirely accept what a trans kid wants, they'll kill themselves and you'll be to blame. The level of manipulation in that idea is off the charts.

The CASS report marks another, much bigger, point of directional change, but I think we need to be careful how we manage the climb down from all this, otherwise more damage can be caused in the process. Not just the unthinkable damage to the children and adults at the centre of this, but far more broadly than that.

I can't even imagine how much pain they must be feeling.

I worry about the children currently on waiting lists, for whom the anticipation of finally being seen and prescribed hormone treatment will have been keeping them going, and who will now no doubt feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them.

Even if puberty blockers and hormones are not ultimately the right treatment for them, the fact that they have been allowed to believe that this was what they needed and once they got to the top of the waiting list they'd get it and everything would be better means that this is likely to hit them very hard.

Agreed. And one of the the saddest things is that this girl had never been gender questioning until she joined an LGBT club at school. Of course the narrative at the time was 'if you think you might be trans then you are trans.'

I really hope that black and white thinking like that will now be firmly in the past.

Yes vast numbers of children may have been harmed by parents, educational staff, medical staff and so on. You can't blame them, they were all following orders though. Shame on you for asking them to take accountability for their actions.

Have I understood the argument some are proposing here correctly ?

OP you lost me at this:
”Every separated parent going along with the child’s trans nonsense to get back at the other parent.”
^^

That's really depressing and scary.

My own children are still toddlers, and I am about 50% hopeful that this ideology will have burned itself out by the time they start secondary school, and 50% already planning how I will talk to them about their bodies and their identities in the hope they know better than to fall for it if it is still a thing in 10 years' time.

But I can't help but feel that even if the gender identity fad is over, there will be something else to replace it. It's terrifying as a parent to think that you just can't predict what the biggest threat to your kids' wellbeing is going to be.

I think I'm going to have to stick around on Mumsnet to make sure I know about the latest terrifying craze affecting 10 year olds when my kids are 7 so I can get ahead of the game in turning them off it.

I think if I'd had teenagers in the last few years I might have dyed my hair blue and adopted they/them pronouns myself in the hope that seeing their middle aged mum do it put my kids right off the idea.

Our now 28 year old adult autistic lesbian daughter thought she wanted to be a male in her younger teenage years, possibly because being gay was confusing. I am sure it's common, and I feel sorry for anyone who wasn't allowed to fully mature before being given these blockers, especially as autistic people don't seem to mature in the same way as their NT peers do.

I am relieved to see this report come out. I was starting to wonder if I had lost the plot somewhere along the way.

My sympathy is with parents who have found themselves forced to accept transitioning as a cure for their DCs when knowing all along that it didn't make sense. Especially when this has been promoted by HCPs and well meaning friends.

It is very hard to stand against this.

I agree with this. I'm really concerned that there are a group of kids who are going to have to go from having their trans identity 'affirmed' to being told they have to join a massive waiting list just to talk about their feelings. I hope the NHS have put in place a protocol for giving these kids immediate support but I very much doubt it. I'd have liked to see a helpline number with every news report because a lot of already distressed children are going to feel completely lost. I completely support the report's findings but I am very concerned that the children involved are still not being supported.

I'd have liked to see a helpline number with every news report because a lot of already distressed children are going to feel completely lost. I completely support the report's findings but I am very concerned that the children involved are still not being supported.

I agree.

Yep.

It's a bit like...you're homeless and living in temporary accommodation and told you're on a waiting list for a flat in a particular development. Then you hear on the news that that development has been deemed unfit for human habitation and is going to be demolished.

OK, but now what?

I have a feeling that nobody knows "now what" and these children and families are going to be left in limbo, with their only significant engagement coming from the likes of Stonewall and Mermaids shouting about how the evil nasty Tories have axed trans healthcare because they don't want people to be trans and now all the poor trans kids are going to kill themselves.

Yes, the civil rights activist to whom a trans judge compared themselves when resigning as a judge in order to fund raise and campaign for trans rights.

Thanks for the new word. I've never heard 'mendacious' before but I like it!

@BallaiLuimni ”To me two things seem obvious:
Rampant, vicious and persecutory homophobia was normal for most of the 20th century (and before) and seemingly sensible people were hideously homophobic. We look back now and find it hard to believe that otherwise decent people were so awful to gay people. Many people seem to worry that the same is true around trans people - that unless they're totally open and accepting of everything, they will look back and realise they made the wrong choice. People's desire not to be seen as ignorant overrides their ability to look at a situation for what it is.”

And - forgive me if this seems like a statement of the bloody obvious - the forced and false teaming of LGB with T was deliberately calculated to have exactly that effect. To silence dissent.

Even if puberty blockers and hormones are not ultimately the right treatment for them, the fact that they have been allowed to believe that this was what they needed and once they got to the top of the waiting list they'd get it and everything would be better means that this is likely to hit them very hard

Yes, this is appalling The way the self proclaimed saviours and protectors of 'trans kids' (no such thing btw, there are children with gender identity disorder), have encouraged these troubled young people to think there are others who hate them (when we are seeking to ensure they get appropriate evidence based treatment) and that the only pathway for them is immediate affirmation and transition ( despite the fact these children's problems may not be due to gender incongruence but due to other factors that need to be identified and treated, and even if they do grow up to have settled gender identity disorder, they may be able to manage these feelings without becoming life long medical patients with a permanent medically induced endochrine imbalance). These people, pushing this narrative are the ones who have ended up harming kids. Not those who have campaigned for evidence based and holistic treatments.

Also OP you can add a few journalists to your list.

Looking at the Guardian, as well as their article referring to puberty blockers as a "pause button", they seem to have taken the unusual step of not allowing comments on their main politics blog today. (A step they usually only take if there is some legally sensitive topic in the news and they're trying to avoid libellous posts). But in this case I suspect it's just because they've been hugely one sided on the question of trans issues and child transition for years, and they simply don't want to face up to their part in it.

Agreed. This is a shitshow of epic proportions where the youngest in society have been serially gaslit that sex change is possible, affirmed by so many adults around them who should have known better and now are left in a vacuum with their complex emotions, mental health problems and disordered beliefs left unaddressed. We can't just pretend that children haven't been fed all this nonsense for years.

We can stop it getting worse via a speedy release of the amended guidelines for schools reiterating that schools are not qualified to undertake transitioning children. A reminder that schools by law MUST be politically impartial and free from political activism and that only the courts can remove parental rights. No school has the legal power to keep secrets from parents .

Those schools who have got caught up in transactivism (and many many have successfully protected children from it) must return to being places of learning where the emotional health and wellbeing of children always takes priority over the demands of political activists.

It's bollocks. A double blinded randomised controlled clinical trial is the standard in the pharmaceutical industry and you'd have to justify deviating from it rather than adhering to it. Other complaints about the 'ethics of having a control group' are also being made by people with no clue that these types of trials have been running for decades and the ethics are well-discussed.

I've also searched the Cass report and can't find anywhere that insists on double blind studies.

I do find criticism of the 2011 UK study being uncontrolled, therefore pretty useless as trial designs go.

Completely ignoring the big issue here, but plenty if people are grandparents to adopted children. That was an ignorant comment.

I could say the same to the teachers of my trans nephew who took his own life.

Exactly what I was thinking.

You may find the tone unpalatable and shocking and not "nice" enough, but that isn't the same thing. Most of us started out being "nice". We were then told we were evil far right fascists, lied about everywhere, knew people speaking out who were doxxed and lost their jobs, were ostracised, called names. For saying what Cass is saying now. Not everyone feels particularly forgiving

this

people in real life and on here have been told they are bigots and want trans people to die as well as everything else above

if people now feel vindicated and are angry at the danger children have been put in and the abuse that they themselves have suffered then as far as i am concerned they are entitled to those feeling and can express them verbally however they choose

I've read the report and it's actually very balanced and sensible. Unlike the original post.