Thanks, Not. I'll have a look. Fascinating, and encouraging that person has found MN as a forum.
I have a small group of detransitioners that I support in an unofficial capacity. TBH it's just signposting, a sympathetic ear and top tips like "period pants can help make clitoromegaly bearable".
These are the populations we have a role in helping. Hashtag be kind is tedious because it's a meaningless platitude - our job is shoulder dysfunction, bone density, cardiac health, psychological and social benefits of exercise, never mind the re-connection that people who are dissociated from their bodies can find with exercise, plus the myriad sexual and pelvic pain issues ignored by gender clinics. These are bread and butter for physio. If we don't provide care for and analysis of them then we are failing this population.
Quite how that view is seen as hateful by anyone on our exec is beyond me. It suggests that maybe they have absolutely lost touch with what physio is and who physios are.
It is SO ridiculous to ignore Cass and the law and the voices of considered, wise, informed members?
Who decided to close the thread?
What will they do if we just open another one?
What will they do if we create a rolling weekly thread on iCSP discussing these important, evidence based, scope of practice, delivering excellence issues?
We don't have to accept this silliness, that is our professional forum that is a benefit of membership which we all pay for and it seems to me that some members want to politely discuss pertinent issues on iCSP. The exec may well have a diktat they'd like to enforce, but, so what? Who gave permission for our voices to be literally* silenced? I don't remember being consulted on that.
It FASCINATES me that 65k members are so disengaged from what a professional body/trade union are doing that the majority have absolutely no idea the CSP has pushed through removal of our freedom of speech.
7% of us voted in the last council elections. SEVEN! Comment was passed at the recent webinar that "that's about standard for trade unions". Well, it bloody well shouldn't be and if I was a Chair of a council presiding over that sort of inertia I'd have bloody well resigned in shame on the spot not shrugged my shoulders and said "meh, good enough". Their highest ever engagement was 11%. Jeezo.
Being noisy is my only real skill. I'll stand and I may as well aim to get more than 7% of physios voting in the election - I'm very sure there's as many people who'd vote in order to prevent me from getting elected onto council as there are who'd vote in order to get me elected, and encouraging member engagement has a value and creates opportunity for the CSP.
It is a terrible indictment that members see the CSP as a way of getting insurance cover. They have no idea about what our talent base actually is because we don't engage, so focus goes on the noisy few. There's 65k of us and I am willing to bet that Rob would never dare to shut down a thread that Rachael M or Darren B or Jack C were contributing to.
No wonder we are where we are. The profession is as dissociated from our union as the people with gender differences that we seek to serve are from their bodies.
I think they are probably right about engagement levels - though I rail against the laziness of accepting them as an industry standard.
One of the most interesting things I've learned with all that gender has (like a baffling wrecking ball) brought into my life was something Lucy Hunter Blackburn said at a women's meeting. She is part of Murray Blackburn McKenzie, who (if you don't know them, find them on twitter) are shit hot political, legislation and policy analysts* and a significant part of the reason that a bunch of women with no money, time or resources managed to oust our First Minister**.
What Lucy said was that of people who are members of political parties only about 10% are active.
I genuinely couldn't believe it, I've always voted and been politically engaged in as much as I usually know who two or three of the panel are on Question Time, but, I've never been a member of a party. My impression was that if you join a political party you throw yourself into it and volunteer and canvas and leaflet and do all the meetings and push your political agenda forward with the aim of bettering society. I was wrong. Most people pay their direct debit and don't bother their shirt with any of it at all.
This worries me on multiple levels but, as there is a general election coming, it's particularly worrying because how on earth do parties know they are fielding their best talent when they choose candidates? What if they only have the choice of 10% of their membership? And of the 10% of all parties active members only a few actually get elected - what if those people are not the talent?
I am conscious that I daydream a bit/constantly, so I do a lot of mental talking myself down, "of course it can't be the case that candidates aren't the best candidates, standing for public office is a noble and difficult thing to do, you need nominations and a team and drive and it's a role taken on by good people who want to achieve something for the greater good"... something I believed until Sophie Sparkles*** announced on twitter the other day that <don't want to get deleted so insert the pronoun of your choice here> was selected as a Green candidate to be an MP, well, maybe this is a sign that the Scottish Greens are very short of people willing to lose them a 500 quid deposit.
It occurs to me that it might be worth applying what Lucy said to trade unions and governing bodies.
I am confident that if the majority of our 65k members had to write "The Crucible, 2024", sorry, I mean a "position statement on transphobia" they'd at least have had the good sense to wave it in front of a lawyer before sharing it with council.
Or with staff.
Or before leaving it behind in a taxi.
Or folding it into a paper aeroplane and launching it through a window.
Or allowing it to escape the safely opaque CSP to find some transparent randomer who, it seems, knew more about the Human Rights Act and the 2010 exceptions to the Equality Act than our Equity Diversity and Belonging Committee did.
The CSP is packed to the gunnels with good people doing good things. I do not believe that we are institutionally transphobic because there is no evidence for that, only vague assurances that "definitely an issue but can't share details cos confidentiality". Well, Occam's Razor would suggest that perhaps what happened was a very small group of gender activists or Queer Theory Fans were given far too much power and not nearly enough challenge - as seen in every institution and political party over the last decade. Why would the CSP have been immune to this anti-intellectual seismic change which has turned our universities, justice system, education etc etc etc upside down?
The problem is that eventually individuals have to pay a price for the wholesale adoption of Judith Butler's naive witterings.
I'm never going to accept that being a physio means turning a blind eye to women being raped on hospital wards and in jails, young autistic and learning disabled people being convicted for asking perfectly reasonable questions now that "misgendering" is a crime, children being sterilised, and if I never speak to another woman suffering from the symptoms of her testosterone induced cliteromegaly, well, that would suit me just fine because the reality of the lives of detransitioners is pretty sobering and, now, THERE's a group of vulnerable people who have been totally abandoned by the NHS. I want no part of the callous treatment I have seen of people who need and deserve support after being let down by the NHS in the most egregious way. I'd rather be stripped of my Fellowship and membership than be part of a gang who'd ignore the suffering of people who made the mistake of trusting incompetent/deluded/wicked/profiteering/cowardly/fetishistic/stupid healthcare professionals. What the hell have we collectively allowed?
If the exec at the CSP thinks this is all beyond the pale and I should be struck off for it, then, fine. That's what the complaints process is for, I'll willingly go back through the HCPC system and defend myself - everything I say is evidence based and I am still, pathetically, hoping that I'm wrong about all of this (though, I think Cass has snuffed that last flicker). I've had a practice run of the CSP and HCPC complaints processes and what I learned was there are a couple issues and possibly a marked lack of talent in all of that too.
This is solvable issue. Sex is simple. The law is simple. Critical thinking is simple. Debate is simple. Doing a good job is simple.
But, sheesh, I've run out of patience today. I'm away to have a therapeutic glass of wine (on a TUESDAY!) and think soothing thoughts about how our profession is jam packed of good people, even those who disagree with me/us are, in the main, I'm sure, fuelled by good intentions.
Though, I worry that Being Terminally Pollyanna is a thing.
I'm working away from home from tomorrow, but once I'm back midweek I'll get onto sorting the council stuff. I think I've got until the 13 May to sign up - but, I'm definitely going to stand and I'm very thankful for the people who have said they'll nominate me. I've got more than the six that I need, which is very flattering indeed.
Right, wine and happy thoughts. What do we do with all the rage, eh?
*used in the actual and old fashioned sense of the word, not the modern made-up-apply-it-for-emphasis-because-you-don't-understand-adjectives way.
** If you'd have asked me 15 years ago if I'd become a simp for political analysts I'd have asked you what a political analyst was.
* yes, I know, she resigned. Yes, she resigned for reasons of "wanting to see more of my niece and nephews and go for a coffee alone" and not over the GRR Bill. To which all the women crossed their arms and cackled "Aye, right. We warned you, but you just wouldn't listen and woe betide you if you think we're done yet".
What MBM do is 4D chess and I have learned a lot from watching three quiet, polite, considered, witty, searingly bright and utterly terrifying women in action. I am so grateful to them and for them. There are many other inspiring women too, but, that particular three are particularly mild mannered in their very particular approach and, I have much to learn from them. Seeing as how I seem to be a bit more in yer actual face. Sometimes with my fanny
**wasn't my actual fanny.
*** I think Sophie is probably quite vulnerable and shouldn't be publicly mocked, no matter how much reason <DWTGDSITPOYCH> gives. I hope that someone is looking out for Sophie because standing in a general election is not a thing for fragile people. It is entirely possible, of course, that Sophie is making the whole "I'm selected" thing up, it would be in keeping with quite a lot of that person's behaviour. As I said, probably vulnerable and I sincerely hope the Scottish Greens are mindful of their duty of care.
whoever that might have been. However, if anyone from the CSP is reading this (and was daft enough to read this far) why on earth would you assume that only one person leaked the copy and/or that it was leaked to only one person and/or you know who it was leaked to? Surely the iCSP thread and this thread and all the WhatsApp and staff room chats suggest that this is a conversation that we are going to insist on having?