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.

@St0rmyDay555
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

If you had been following this debate you would know that holding young people at the heart is exactly what every campaigner against the approach at GIDs has been doing. What do you think the motivation has been if not that? People are concerned about young people not getting the support they need but instead being set on pathways that not only will not deal with their underlying mental health issues, but will add another on top if they are put on a medical pathway to transition. That's exactly what the feminists on here and elsewhere and other campaigners have been arguing.

People are probably reacting strongly to you as it is very tiresome to have been bullied, harassed, slurred and attacked for years and then even when we are proved correct through this report, people are still trying to find ways to deride us, by saying they didn't listen as we were toxic (we weren't) or we just want a political debate ( we want politicians to do their job and stop children being harmed and women being harmed by decisions made in publicly funded institutions, and wider society).

I am sorry about child and hope they get the support they need.

@St0rmyDay555
The two things aren't mutually exclusive. I can see you're frustrated that people are talking about the Cass report when you're struggling with childhood MH services (whether they are gender related in your case or not). But it is a big ideological rift that does affect how children's services are run, so it is inevitable that it will be debated, discussed and argued over.

I don't believe that any of that prevents wider discussion of children's mental health service funding.

You’re talking nonsense; you probably know that really, but just in case you’re genuinely poorly read..

Rowling laying it out clearly and eloquently on the Cass Report: "Today's not a triumph, it's the laying bare of a tragedy."

‘Over the last four years, Hilary Cass has conducted the most robust review of the medical evidence for transitioning children that's ever been conducted. Mere hours after it was released to the press and public, committed ideologues are doubling down.

These are people who've deemed opponents 'far-right' for wanting to know there are proper checks and balances in place before autistic, gay and abused kids - groups that are all overrepresented at gender clinics - are left sterilised, inorgasmic, lifelong patients.

I understand that the review's conclusions will have come as a seismic shock to those who've hounded and demonised whistleblowers and smeared opponents as bigots and transphobes, but trying to discredit Hilary Cass's work isn't merely misguided. It's actively malign.

Even if you don't feel ashamed of cheerleading for what now looks like severe medical malpractice, even if you don't want to accept that you might have been wrong, where's your sense of self-preservation? The bandwagon you hopped on so gladly is hurtling towards a cliff.

And if I sound angry, it's because I'm bloody angry. I read Cass this morning and my anger's been mounting all day. Kids have been irreversibly harmed, and thousands are complicit, not just medics, but the celebrity mouthpieces, unquestioning media and cynical corporations.

The consequences of this scandal will play out for decades. You cheered it on. You did all you could to impede and misrepresent research. You tried to bully people out of their jobs for opposing you. Young people have been experimented on, left infertile and in pain.

I thought the last tweet was going to be my last, but I just burst into tears. The #CassReview may be a watershed moment, but it comes too late for detransitioners who've written me heartbreaking letters of regret. Today's not a triumph, it's the laying bare of a tragedy.’

And..

Stormy I genuinely think we are on the same page here. Many of us are struggling with woeful provision for our young people.
It’s just that the ideology and political wrangling are preventing provision and actually limit the options for children. That’s why we’re challenging it so strongly.

With the greatest respect this isn’t about campaigners or about their ideology. It’s about young people who need help and support when MH services in this country have been decimated. That needs to be the focus now not ideology.

Better mental health support for all children struggling emotionally would be a good start. Many of these children are languishing on waiting lists, not just gender questioning children. Mental health care needs to be available to all children and would be a good investment from a public health point of view. But this support needs to be evidence based and holistic, not ideologically driven.

I disagree. Those young people remain vulnerable to the proven harmful effects of a regressive, unscientific ideologgy which does not support equality or evidence based practise. We need to understand the conditions which allowed a male supremacist regime to control health services in order to offer those children proper help.

“You cheered it on. You did all you could to impede and misrepresent research. You tried to bully people out of their jobs for opposing you….”

What are you on about?

The Cass report found that co-morbidities had for group question gender been ignore and focus was solely on gender - one of the major ways these children had been let down.

The Cass report happened because people raised concerns and refused to shut up and be dismissed.

I think the Cass report is a good thing to improve services and fact many are now openly accepting the recommendations is a good thing. Also have have seen some media focus on wider mental health services especially for young people in media - and media and political focus can lead to more money.

There was at start of week a lot about long waiting lists for ASD and ADHA diagnoses - my kids have been caught up in these. So I think it's generally a good thing acknowledgement that mental health services especially for young are not enough at the minute which finger crossed may lead to some more cash or focus on them.

Lion is directly quoting JKR, as you mentioned her Stormy

Thank you Rhubarb. I completely agree. MH services for children have been generally in woeful decline (like much of the NHS unfortunately ) and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency as it’s too important to ignore.

Young people weren't being offered adequate mental health support prior to life changing consequences

I wouldn't have trusted under 16 me to make the right decisions for my long term health...

But your kid will die unless you let them reject the body they're born into and everything that comes with it? We can't even give them a chance to come to terms with what hand they're given in life? Promoting acceptance of reality causes suicides?

I'd have been a lot happier if people let me smoke, drink, take recreational drugs, have underage sex, and skip maturing before given the green light for it to be on me ... at the time but it wouldn't have exactly set me up well and would have been ridiculous

If an identity crisis isn't a mental health problem idk what should be anymore... let's just call it that and let kids stay kids

I agreed with your last sentence and it isn’t just gender that is an issue but MH as a whole. How are they getting away with it? Children and young people are given medication for a whole host of things because therapy , diagnostics and other treatment seems to be non existent . They know how bad things are across the board and they’ve stood back and done nothing.

Many people have been "looking at the real issue" for years, OP.

Those people have had their names dragged through the mud.

JK Rowling has been raising awareness about this, both from a women's rights and a child safeguarding perspective, for over five years. For Julie Bindel, it has been closer to 20 years.

Many people in the healthcare sector, from clinicians at the now closed Tavistock clinic who blew the whistle on these practices years ago, to James Esses who was kicked off his psychotherapy degree course for opposing the affirmation only approach to transgender healthcare, have been speaking out about this for years, at enormous personal cost.

I hope they will now be vindicated.

People have been campaigning for them to get that support,. They could never get it if they were funnelled out of MH services and into GIDs. Which they were being. We were not campaigning from an ideological position, but from one that had at its heart the basic principles of health care and an evidence base.

I am not sure why you are so angry at the people who want, as you do, for children and young people to get appropriate, holistic healthcare, and have fought for them to at least be pathwayed into the right services.

Yes those services are underfunded and understaffed, yes this is a national scandal, as is state of all of the NHS. But acknowledging MH services are under resourced, is not a reason NOT to fight when you see children with MH problems being funnelled into an inappropriate system which would harm them.

I hope they will now be vindicated.

I would hope so too, but I don't feel very confident that this will happen, because as we've seen here and elsewhere, opposing this is characterised as just being mean with the only possible motive being unthinking bigotry and a will to see children die. This has become so embedded in people's minds now that it's going to be very hard to remove.

@St0rmyDay555 I'm sorry for what you are going through with your child. Children's mental health services (and adult) are awful and do need a complete overhaul. But the answer isn't to plug our ears about the harms of gender ideology and stifle debate. If you genuinely don't know what a TRA is, as you asserted earlier, it would suggest that you don't have a good understanding of gender ideology and the harms that it causes to vulnerable children.

It is possible to care about mental health support and also about the harm that gender ideology does, not least because they are hugely interlinked. I don't understand why someone with a poor understanding of gender ideology would be so insistent that the rest of us stop talking about it.

I agree

Masses of people have been "looking at the real issue" and been hounded for it

Plus, people like me who don't dare voice our concerns openly

I’m angry at the focus and discussion being taken up with ideology at this time.

There have been next to no MH services to be funnelled out of for quite some time and I think discussion about this has been overtaken by ideology. It’s now time to move forward and focus on what needs to be done going forward.

Highlighting the dire state of services this government has wilfully run into the ground and turned a blind eye to is a start. It has had a big part to play in what has happened and is at the centre of putting it right.

"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."

Being pro child safeguarding is not anti trans and if it is then what does that tell you?

I hope they are vindicated too. I was one of those who couldn’t really understand the problem with child transition until I looked a little deeper into it and realised I was totally wrong. Reading the Cass report yesterday just made me feel incredibly sad about how institutions who are supposed to care for children stuck their fingers in their ears and will potentially continue to do so without a legal framework to allow for open discussion, research and consultation on policy.

@St0rmyDay555 Not sure why you are hijacking the thread and making it about individuals and accusing women of hero worshipping when the content of the report are about children with autism and mental health issues who are being given experimental treatments and life changing surgeries that will render them sterilised and sick.

If you don't like JKR that's your business but not sure why you need to get annoyed with women talking about this by pretending that they are talking about something else entirely and then saying "WHY AREN'T YOU TALKING ABOUT THE CHILDREN"
But we are.

Not really

“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 above is still the focus when it should be mental health provision and the dire state of services. Both played a massive part in leading to this and it needs to be the focus moving forward as all young people struggling with severe MH need help now, not debate.

"I’m angry at the focus and discussion being taken up with ideology at this time.

There have been next to no MH services to be funnelled out of for quite some time and I think discussion about this has been overtaken by ideology. It’s now time to move forward and focus on what needs to be done going forward.

Highlighting the dire state of services this government has wilfully run into the ground and turned a blind eye to is a start. It has had a big part to play in what has happened and is at the centre of putting it right."

Which ideology do you mean @St0rmyDay555, trans ideology?

Because if so women have been saying this for years and getting death and rape threats for it.

So are we allowed to talk or not? What exactly are you objecting to us doing? We all know that mental health services for children are poorly funded and poorly managed.

I'm not sure what your point is.