AIBU to think this became a political issue where children are just pawns?

[EerieSilence]

I read the news regarding Hillary Cass's report and I'm horrified as to how political the debate has become, with nobody looking at the real issue, which is providing treatments to vulnerable children before they're mature enough in the name of progress.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/10/thousands-of-children-unsure-of-gender-identity-let-down-by-nhs-report-finds

So far, I can only find comments which are very divisive. It's either the feeling that it's an attack of the transgender community or the conservatives celebrating it as their proof that the wokism should be over.

The uncritical support of gender transformations has let many people down, in my opinion and damaged the transgender debate more than any conservative could have done. At the expense of confused minors who became pawns in the big battle of the gender.
And yes, I'm ready to be roasted here. I'm not transgender-phobic and I fully support transformations where they really are valid and the person who's having it done is fully aware of the consequences.

So what are you suggesting as an alternative for suicidal children and young people in broken CAMHS and adult services?

I don't think that saying that you either give children puberty blockers or leave them to die is correct. One of the problems that we do know is that puberty blockers aren't making children less suicidal and that the comorbidities that many of these children have are also linked with suicidal ideation, which puberty blockers couldn't ever solve. I really dislike this characterisation that you want children to die if you don't think that sterilising them solves their issues. Children need proper mental health support, not prescriptions that will create a whole raft of other problems.

Ok so how about we discuss that instead of focusing on women’s spaces and JK Rowling hero worshipping which is all that happens on these threads on a loop.

There is no mental health support.

Campaign for better mental health support, and in the meantime don't give kids experimental and dangerous medications.

Here we go again.🙄Never moves on from that though does it as let’s be honest that is all the vast majority of posters on these threads really care about ,not the young people at the heart of it.

I didn't mention JK Rowling or women's spaces on this thread. I said that I don't think that saying puberty blockers shouldn't be given to children is extremist and the fact that so many consider if extremist is an indication of the success of activists and then there was an accusation that I want children to commit suicide, for some reason, again, an idea pushed by activists that is going to take some time to undo. All of these children need mental health and emotional support, and not to be fobbed off my medicine that can't possibly do what it claims to do.

Nobody campaigns for it. Families with children and young people who need MH provision are too busy surviving and keeping their children alive. The rest of you just want to spend hours debating what is a woman and women’s spaces which completely drowns out anything else.

So yes children and vulnerable young people are pawns and it’s despicable.

Yes, we do care very much about those young people.

Yes, far more mental health support is needed.

As is better messaging to counteract the pernicious effect of social media.

But stopping lying to young people that they can change sex is the first and most basic step.

And so it goes on….

Absolute nonsense and a very poor attempt to twist what I said. The struggling young people are best served when we don't lie, when we don't pretend that people change sex, when we don't facilitate males being facilitated to assault some of those vulnerable young people and when we stop pretending that gender stereotypes are real. Doing the opposite is abusing those young people just in order to bolster the fragile self esteem of powerful adult males. It's a shi thing to do to children.

😂😂😂

Nope. What we want is to stop offering witch doctor style medicine which has been proven to be ineffective for some people and actively harmful for quite a few. First do no harm. This attempt at shaming women is absolutely vile.

So nothing more than that to offer. So helpful.

Where on earth have you been, OP?

Stormy is illustrating exactly why society has got to this level of negligence. Unless we can have a debate about how far reaching gender ideology has become, we can’t move forward on any level.

Children don't need puberty blockers. They just need to be told that as a boy or as a girl they can wear, look and do whatever they want. Their sex can not be changed and it doesn't need to be. If more people let their boys wear dresses and like nail varnish and playing with dolls and whatever else there would be a lot less of this.

And if people could stop leading vulnerable sen kids down this road that would be great. They're generally more likely to not blindly follow gender stereotypes but it doesn't mean they're trans.

Basicly, bring back tomboys and let boys like pink.

Men pretending to be women as some kind of fetish is a whole other issue.

And still you don’t want to discuss and focus on provision and care for young suicidal people struggling with this. The hours of debate should be on gender ideology. Sounds really helpful.🤔

or the conservatives celebrating it as their proof that the wokism should be over.

An awful lot of left wing people and people very neutral coming from medical/science stance have been branded right wing or hate filled conservatives engaging in cultural war to shut them up and dismiss their often valid concerns.

They've often been shouting their concerns and living with real life consequences of doing so while being completely ignore and attacked - this report says yes they were right - so now the tactic is well they were part of the problem. I was on a thread yesterday where a poster summed up Yvette Cooper comments - Ahh so they would have listened sooner if we'd not said anything?

Pressure groups should have been no where near clinical decision making which should have had proper research baked approached - children well being should always have come first.

with nobody looking at the real issue, which is providing treatments to vulnerable children before they're mature enough in the name of progress

You are being unreasonable for this this comment. Plenty of people were looking at this issue and kept speaking up on it, and were being attacked and hounded for doing so, for years and years.

If those brave and selfless women and men had not kept on speaking up, this may have been allowed to carry on.

Its disappointing that you are not applauding these campaigners who have been vilified for years, instead you seem to be pretending they never even existed.

But then, everyone is pretending they did not exist. Where are the accolades and thanks for those who spoke out? Those finally saying 'of course Cass is right that we need an evidence base' are the same ones who have ignored campaigners or, attacked them or supported those who attacked them.

Its a really unedifying sight. I don't normally like pile-ons on politicians as I think they do a hard job. But watching politicians who have thrown campaigners under the bus for years,. now getting fully behind the Cass report whilst refusing to acknowledge those who have been speaking out for years, has really disillusioned me. I understand why people have lost trust in politicians now. You can't watch that cynical self serving display and still respect them.

Provision and care should be the same for any other child. Diagnosis, assessment of needs, evidence based treatment and a rock solid commitment to safeguarding in each and every case.

Both can happen. Obviously. Effectively you're saying that anyone who mentions gender ideology, despite the vast damage that does to children, women and to be honest some vulnerable men, doesn't care about mental health provision because if we did, we'd use that time and energy instead to talk about that. Which is clearly a very, very silly thing to say but I guess if you're completely married to an ideology that has been proven to be a tool of the oppressors then it take some time to acknowledge the true horror of what you've supported. The reality is that children's mental health will improve when we dismantle gender ideology even if we don't create more services (which we should).

@St0rmyDay555 please stop with the dead child bs every peer reviewed study says its just not true. Even polly carmichel (whilst still running the Tavistock) had to admit in crt that children with gender dysphoria are no more likely to kill themselves than any other cahms patient. The 40% statistic that the TRAs and scot gov love to bang on about is beyond useless as it comes from a biased survey that was to small and was not even aimed at trans people but the entire LGBTQ+ community. What the survey showed was that 13 people out of 27 respondents answered yes to the question have you ever thought about suicide, not have you considered or tried to commit suicide, so a very loose woolly question open to misinterpretation and aimed at the entire rainbow not just trans people with a tiny sample size of 27 people.

I am however grateful to you for displaying exactly why you and all your TRA friends should be kept away from all decision making when it comes to the medical care that is offered to children with gender issues. So thanks for that

There's countless threads on FWR discussing GIDS, Tavistock, Sandyford, concerns about the effects of puberty blockers which were being wrongly described as 'reversible', concerns about the high incidence of girls with co-morbidities expressing a wish to transition, concerns about Gender GP and the unquestioning push towards medicialisation, discussions about 'watchful waiting' etc etc. Worries about safeguarding children who are gender questioning have been expressed on the FWR since before 2012, with several posters with foresight being banned for bringing up these issues before it was on anyone's radar.

So any chat about there being no concern about children's wellbeing is just nonsense.

I don’t understand why we are continually being pushed to treat gender questioning children differently and offer them completely sub standard care. Why are these kids being targeted for experimental treatments that have no basis whatsoever in science?

We’d never do that to children with cancer, diabetes or any other health issue. Stormy id genuinely like to hear why you want to divert these kids away from properly developed healthcare options?

What a really unpleasant post. I’m flabbergasted that you can be so dismissive. Autism and struggles with gender are known to be common. Suicidal idealisation is well known to be higher when there is autism involved too. CAMHS now sadly only seem to take on extreme cases of MH so pretty sure suicidal idealisation and self harm figures would be high for CAMHs patients dentist.

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/nccmh/suicide-prevention/workshops-(wave-4)/wave-4-workshop-2/suicide-and-autism---slides.pdf?sfvrsn=bf3e0113_2

I’m not a TRA whatever that is just a parent living with suicide risk and wanting focus to be on the young people at the heart of this instead of political debate.

I don’t. I want proper care for all young people struggling with mental health but it isn’t there. I simply want the focus to be on that not ideology and political wrangling.

The dire state of provision should be the focus but it isn’t because nobody is debating it or focusing on it. It gets drowned out. Look at this thread. It’s the same as all the others.