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.

I mean, these are independent groups starting a fresh and doing this research.

This is not the fucking WPATH declaring that all the organisations using their guidelines gives the guidelines validity when each of the organisations are using the same circular statement to give them validity in return. AND most of those organisations using the WPATH guidelines are members and were therefore involved in the creation of those guidelines. No. These groups from different countries are doing their own reviews and finding the same thing.

But apparently.... all fucking wrong!

And apparently.... history will judge those advising caution adversely.

When people have a personal investment that research that has been deemed to be weak be found stronger than it is, it is potentially about that person's very heavy personal investment in either themselves, their career or a loved one.

Exactly. There is potentially a huge amount of cognitive dissonance to be worked through

How many more before heavily personally invested people will start to re-evaluate and say, Ok, I got this wrong?

The story of the doctor who pioneered lobotomies is telling. It's possible that some people will never admit that they called this wrong.

And I remember some posters dismissing the brutal results of double mastectomies on people who have healthy breast tissue as just being 'a normal side effect of gender affirming care.'

I also remember some posters who declared that such affirming care was imperative to save lives. And that seems to have been roundly found to be a significant misrepresentation by more than one group, hasn't it. I mean, we have had clinicians declare it a falsehood for years. And point out that poor mental health was also found after transition for many reasons so, that those treatments were found to have negative impacts to people's lives but these were all dismissed.

Believe the ‘evidence’ now shows that suicide increases 19-fold post transition; whereas pre-transition suicide risk and occurrence is the same as for any under 18 with a MH referral?

I’ve always inferred from this that a) transition did not help and b) the underlying MH issues that were ignored in favour of a trans diagnosis continued or worsened (because they went untreated).

Op, the vast majority of professionals on your list aren't medical professionals. They have absolutely nothing to do with children accessing or not accessing puberty blocking medication. They aren't able to give advice on a medical issue and most have been working as best they can with no real clear guidance on gender identity issues.

I would also say that there is a scale of personal acceptance covering what counts as being gender critical but respectful and bullying or excluding behaviours and I think it's been incredibly difficult for people who work with young people in group settings to navigate that in a way that is acceptable to everyone as the boundary for this will change from person to person. I work with young people who are highly gc for religious reasons and young people who are seld identifying as trans. Its not my job to say who's right or wrong but it is my job to help them foster a respectful and welcoming group for whoever comes along to it.

I'd also say that sometimes workers do have to make individual calls. For example if a young person refuses to access mental health support due to the pronouns the practitioner insists on using is it better they access that mental health support under they/them pronouns or do they just not get support? Which in that scenario is the worst evil, because quite often the young people you're referencing are struggling with family or mental health or whatever else well before they become involved with any other services.

An example... I work with children some of whom were made homeless by their parents because they report being trans and they are no longer safely able to live at home because of how their parents react and the impact on their mental wellbeing. Should I not be offering safe accommodation to those kids? Because the alternative is an unsuitable placement or the streets. Their gender identity is nothing to do with me, the family relationship ended while they lived there and to me, that journey is for them to go on alongside medical professionals and appropriate support services who have got knowledge and training that I don't. Your op is needlessly inflammatory and I don't see what possible good is going to come from it. People can't have real constructive conversations about this issue because of sweeping emotive statements riling things up just like you've posted.

Yes. And clinicians were raising the alarm about both of these aspects years ago and were dismissed in various ways.

What has not changed is the discussion points from the clinicians and the bodies who are doing the reviews of the research. Their discussions points have remained consistent.

What has changed and changes and pivots to reflect whatever has been decided cannot be escaped from being accepted as fact in the face of overwhelming evidence, is extreme trans activists who seem to be overly personally invested and dismiss, deflect and distract discussion. I have seen nothing by way of convincing rebuttal to the WPATH leaks report. I have laughed that people had posted Reed's 'rebuttal' that made factual errors and seemed to misunderstand some basic premises. But, that report was all supposed to have misconstrued, misrepresented everything, whereas, there were many aspects that Cass and others have pointed out and those leaks confirmed.

Once you see the sparple and false confidence in action, you cannot unsee it.

@Lavender14 how would the GC families have reacted if the gender identity issues had been described as a symptom of mental health issues rather than the issue?

There have been massive mistakes made with all this. But, no, I have never personally damaged the life of a child. Let those responsible be held responsible.

I think there are important distinctions to be drawn. Take teachers for example. There is a world of difference between a teacher who was trying to carefully navigate highly charged situations with respect and care for all concerned.

Or a teacher who went with a very activist mindset, proactively planting the idea of being 'born in the wrong body' with vulnerable children and floating the possibility of medicalisation as the answer.

The family probably felt that was the case and I can understand that perspective and we engaged with the family without judgement, but at the same time if their stance means that their 16/17 year old is then refusing to live with them anymore and is sleeping rough as a result then regardless of their viewpoint or how valid it may be, they are unable to keep that child safe and an intervention is needed that the child or young person can actually engage with in order to keep them safe on a very basic level. So that's why I think sometimes the issue is greyer than threads like these accept. In practice it doesn't always work as neatly as we would like it to.

@Lavender14 I can see why affirming YP in order to reach them and support them seems sensible, compassionate even, but part of the problem is not that these parents have rejected them because of their trans identity but because of the combative and adversarial (toxic) environment in which these children and their parents were navigating these issue. The way SM/Schools etc have taken the Stonewall line and pitted parents and child against each other in the first place, created a climate of affirmation only, is at the heart of the issue. Ie.:

• Had those children been diagnosed with MH issues of which gender distress/identity confusion were acknowledged as a symptom;
• had they NOT been affirmed by school/social services/peers/social media but compassionately recognised as having complex mental health needs that were best dealt with by professionals and family;
• had they been assessed quickly to confirm or rule out ASD/ADHD or any personality disorder that exists along side these;
• had they been fast-tracked into explorative/neutral therapy and/or given medication and support within 6m of presenting to their GPs;
• had their parents then been similarly supported rather than labelled transphobic and hostile by the very people they turned to for help for their children….

Then maybe these children would not have ‘been kicked out’ of their homes?

And by ‘kicked out’ I am guessing, as an ex-teen runaway myself, that this is often a conflagration of factors leading to an escalating string of rows, a final confrontation and a teen storming out/parents telling them to leave in despair, whilst actually expecting them to come home later when they’ve cooled off. Not because their parents don’t accept their trans self, but because they know that there is no such thing as a trans child - that their child needs help and is not getting it.

Not because their parents don’t accept their trans self, but because they know that there is no such thing as a trans child - that their child needs help and is not getting it.

When you step back from it, the way in which the TRA lobby have cynically used teens natural urge to rebel against the family - to create situations like this - is as appalling as it gets.

@BusyMummy001 I understand your point completely and I fully recognise that there are always massive complexities when any family unit breaks down resulting in a teen leaving home regardless of the 'overall' reason as they might explain it. In the cases I've worked with a gc approach was taken by statutory services, parents were supported and the child was offered appropriate support and mediation offered to the family. The parents asked them to leave and refused to take them back as they weren't living within the religious expectations the parents had.

The problem is that from a legal standpoint, if a child leaves home because they find their otherwise very loving and caring and gentle parents overbearing, those parents are then rendered unable to care for that child effectively so that child is legally still entitled to alternative care as care cannot be provided effectively by the parents even if the only reason is that the child simply won't allow them to. So it's not the case where other services can just keep directing them back to their parents, they are legally obligated to provide an alternative service that will meet the needs of the young person.

So if under the model of practice you propose, a child disagrees with their parents and feels that they are not mentally unwell and are unable to live at home due to lack of acceptance of their gender identity - services would essentially be closed to them on the premise that those services agree they are unwell and should be at home and will also refuse to accept a self id. So in that scenario what will happen is young people sofa surfing or sleeping rough and not accessing services and instead relying on predators or peers who are unable to provide appropriate support. I see this happen regularly due to mental health issues of various types and if there's no immediate risk to life its unlikely that young person would have mental health care in a non voluntary capacity. You could end up creating a hole in the net where young people are lost to services and as they get closer to 18 then you risk losing them completely.

I'm not convinced that the approach you're mentioning would work in practice. I don't believe services move quickly enough (in an ideal world they would but its not likely to be our reality any time soon) and we need to provide something that can meet basic needs in the interim that young people will engage with. You're saying 6 months and I personally think that would be far too long for many young people to wait and still sustain relationships or education or employment, so much can break down in 6 months. It would need to be significantly faster than that and I don't see that happening under our current government who are currently undercutting resources to most statutory and charity community based provision.

I also think for your approach to work there needs to be really crystal clear guidance for professionals to work within that are consistent across the board and truthfully I think they'll really struggle to engage older young people if they do adopt a gc approach that doesn't allow young people to self id. So you run the risk of having very vulnerable older teens even more isolated as a result.

I agree that sometimes people are far too fast to apply a 'transphobic' label and there's definitely a culture of that especially within younger age groups which shuts down healthy discussion. I still think that part of the issue especially within groups of young people is that if a young person is presenting as trans, introducing themselves as trans etc, then other young people will generally be very accepting of that. So if staff are then working off a more gc approach, that's going to create a direct conflict by the very nature of it - language used etc etc. So now you've got a situation where a group of vulnerable young people who may really struggle to engage with professionals at the best of times, are set in conflict with the professionals trying to support them. That's not just going to affect trans identifying teens but a large percentage of the teenage population who are accepting of trans identities and who will feel it to be a type of injustice. Many people do disagree with gc viewpoints so young people will still be hearing those messages as well. As a youth worker, it's not my job to tell any young person what to think, but to work things out for themselves. So actually taking a gc approach creates a conflict with a lot of youth work models of practice and participation as it should be youth led.

I'm not sure that many are really in the place to have these conversations in a respectful, constructive and empathetic way especially in a room with trans identifying young people in it who are directly impacted. It would be like trying to have a debate on whether racism exists or not in a room with people directly affected by racism, the debate itself has the potential to be very harmful given how emotive the topic is. There is a massive amount of work to be done to even get to that stage and I don't think socially we're in the place for it yet so i think if anything a softly softly approach would work better in creating a gradual cultural shift than a more boundaried approach like you're suggesting. The difficulty is then you've people like op bombing in and being deliberately inflammatory. That's not unique to op or this thread unfortunately, it's really common on both sides.

I think you could inadvertently end up undermining really critical support services for some of the most vulnerable groups of young people out there and alienating them by trying to move too quickly.

@lavender14
I appreciate the reply and accept my reply was a little simplistic - but I was tempering reality with the ideal - being seen/starting treatment within 6m was a nod to pragmatism, and on the basis my child didn’t get seen for over 5 years, aside from one triage session after 3 years, despite multiple presentations at A&E with overdoses, suicidal distress etc. In an idea world, they should be seen with weeks. But we know that is never going to happen in the current state of the NHS. Social services were swifter to pitch up after each A&E visit, but left once they ascertained my child was perfectly safe.

Not a single person I dealt with, even though some would whisper their support, would act other than to affirm and that identity was affirmed as fact, not as symptomatic of any other condition. To this day, all her paperwork refers to her as he/him and no one has EVER actually sat down and explored her gender issues. They talk around anxiety/social anxiety and whether her symptoms are ‘just’ ASD/ADHD.

I appreciate reaching these children is hard but, say, they had a drug problem or anorexia, you would not roll them a joint or conspire with them to avoid eating as a means of building rapport? To do so would be negligent; to agree they are overweight would be a ‘lie’ - and yet the premise upon which professional rapport is built with trans IDing youth is precisely to condone and to lie? It is one thing to affirm their feelings, to express sympathy and empathy for their distress, but to effectively collude in the deceit that it is not because they have mental health problems and to frame their family issues as a conflict of ideology seems unfathomable to me.

That the child doesn’t recognise they are ill shouldn’t be the basis of the approach, surely? The adults, the professionals are simply promulgating a lie if they follow this line? A psychiatrist, GP, family doesn’t pretend that a schizophrenic, or any other mentally ill adult, is not ill - why should they collude with a child that they are?

Yet this is where adopting the Stonewall line has got us. I appreciate, given where we are right now, that we can’t change this overnight, but there has to be a move back towards honesty and truth?

The current government debate looks hugely interesting. Speeches made in parliament about extreme activists declaring that the report is false and flawed because ‘evidence ignored’ getting push back. Cross party MPs who have never spoken on this issue before in the house and saying the government needs to act decisively and to ensure private agencies are heavily monitored. And labour giving full support.

Plus push back from MPs across the political divide stating no more activism in schools.

It is remarkable. So many discussion points covered.

That sounds incredibly stressful and it's awful that your child was so failed in lack of proper medical support within a helpful time frame. I think a large part of the problem is that most professionals have been operating without guidance or a steer. I know I've been in situations where I'm trying my best to engage a young person and trying to toe what I assume to be the party line but also trying to engage their family and very gently mediate things without having the young person shut down on me completely. It's very hard to do and I think a lot of people have been essentially left to try and use the best judgement they can essentially leaving them sitting on the fence.

The thing is you mention substance use. A prime example is weed. So many older teenagers end up leaving home because their parents have refused to allow them to smoke and its become impossible in the home. They often end up in supported accommodation because even though you and I both know that the weed use is not great and their parents weren't wrong, they're approaching 18 and they will make their own decision. They will sleep rough or sofa surf. When they get their own place they will smoke weed there too and as an adult there won't be a way to stop them... so many supported accommodation providers will try to take a harm reductionist approach to help them try to reduce their use, to try to prioritise their bills first, to help them think about their neighbours and how to avoid debt and community trouble etc etc
Because if it comes down to accepting low level weed use or leaving them homeless, then the weed is the lesser evil and at least you have a chance of addressing it gradually in a way where they feel supported and you can try to rebuild the family dynamic. Even with heroin use, yes they are taught how to smoke instead of injecting to try and reduce the risks associated as shocking as that sounds.

In some ways I think there is overlap here- parents who desperately want the best for their child and a child who is possibly unwilling or unable to engage in the support offered - especially since the support offered is so woefully inadequate. 5 years is just horrendously long to wait and I can only imagine that its harder the more rural someone is. To me, something needs to exist in the grey area in between that gives breathing space and processing space somewhere safe and accessible for the young person. For me it's not about transitioning someone, but accepting that's something they are trying to figure out and trying to just be there alongside them wherever they decide that goes without steering them. It's hard because we know some people do feel that transition has been the right thing for them and they've felt better as a result so I think it's difficult to get a balance between protecting young people who are questioning and supporting those who would actually benefit long term from transition.

It's because the wheels are falling off. People are waking up.

And how fucking remarkable also that the detransitioners constantly complain of being attacked and parents of children who have had affirming treatment claim to be attacked when they speak out, yet, a person who is personally heavily invested is declaring that there is nothing to see here because no one is speaking out.

Fuck. It is beyond something when every single women’s event is protested with horrendous intimidation tactics, and violence, and anyone speaking out is declared a nazi, or otherwise abused, and there are actually people who see this and say… no one is speaking out, so there is nothing to see here. And some people actually think that is convincing? FFS.

The first detransitioner court cases are yet to go through. Some of those waiting have been abused. Why would anyone put themselves or their children through that abuse until the first cases are tested? I suspect that once the first ones are tested, if they win the flood gates will be open. But to declare ‘no group cases’ as yet, is bizarre when the stakes of abuse is so high and known to be high.

Oh. Hang on… maybe Keira Bell’s abuse was just all in her head. Maybe the other detransitioner’s abuse is just made up. It is remarkable the shite people will believe in an attempt to discredit a report that merely has echoed other countries and other world leading health organisations findings. But what do we expect from some people who continue to declare that ‘puberty blockers are safe’ in the face of mounting evidence that they are not safe at all for the purpose of gender care?

@Helleofabore just trying to catch up on the debates - can’t watch /read related stuff when my husband is home/up as he just cannot cope with it on any level. He lives in the hazy zone where if we don’t talk about it, she won’t get upset, and maybe it will go away. Will go ans watch the highlights now. Thankfully the likes of Simon Edge and Dennis Noel Kavennagh have been tweeting excerpts!

that is tough. But hopefully the momentum of the debate will help you feel supported more.

It's hard because we know some people do feel that transition has been the right thing for them and they've felt better as a result so I think it's difficult to get a balance between protecting young people who are questioning and supporting those who would actually benefit long term from transition.

This is not a neutral view @Lavender14. Lying to children that they can "transition" to the opposite sex isn't better for them in the long run. They can't. They are never going to be the opposite sex. The evidence that whatever "transitioning" is is good for people is very shaky, whatever some self invested people say.

People who are ideologically motivated think they're doing the best they can to help people they care about and will have clear, ethically justified reasons - I couldn't withhold treatment from someone who needed it/in this case it wouldn't work because the participant would know etc.

People can't listen about this because what's at stake is too high (child abuse with lifelong physical and psychological effects). They have to be right because they would never ever want to hurt children. The only way to get anyone to listen is to stop calling people evil. They aren't. They're weak, impressionable, vulnerable and passionate about individual rights.

Apart from the one or two parents on here who've thankfully reported shifting opinions in their teens, does anyone know anyone who is starting to question their beliefs as a result of this report?

Do you have a link? I always suspected this but I didn't know it had been proved.

Especially your opening para: Op, the vast majority of professionals on your list aren't medical professionals. They have absolutely nothing to do with children accessing or not accessing puberty blocking medication. They aren't able to give advice on a medical issue and most have been working as best they can with no real clear guidance on gender identity issues.

I agree that the attacking tone isn't useful, but I think that the point you make about them not being medical professionals is 100% why lots of us feel so upset with them, because they essentially gave medical advice to children with no authority to do so. They have a lot of power over our children and responsibility of care, and they followed weak/nonexistent guidance and jumped on a tribal bandwagon rather than take any personal risk. You only need to have attended a very basic biology lesson to have a clear view of the underlying glitch in the debate, and you only have to have spent 15 mins with a child to understand how impressionable they are, so it seems baffling that teachers in particular defaulted to affirmation rather than screeching to a halt and demanding evidence-based guidelines. How anyone thought they weren't storing up massive problems for later I won't ever understand.

@SpatulaSpatula “People can't listen about this because what's at stake is too high (child abuse with lifelong physical and psychological effects). They have to be right because they would never ever want to hurt children. The only way to get anyone to listen is to stop calling people evil. They aren't. They're weak, impressionable, vulnerable and passionate about individual rights.”

That is all fine and lovely for teachers, doctors and activists (referring to those “supporting ” other people’s children) so compassionate, so lovely. Maybe we slowly can get them to listen?

and is it lucky that they can walk away, lessons will be learned etc? Whereas children and parents will be dealing with the consequences for the rest of their lives.