MNHQ writes: "what we'd ask you to think about is the impact on the parent who's not an activist, and likely isn't even posting, but whose adult child is transitioning, or who is doing so themselves. Would they feel belittled, mocked or attacked? Would they think Mumsnet was not for them? If so, we're going to have to remove it. It's a fudge, but it's the best we can do at this stage."
Thing is, the internet is alive with support for parents who endorse their child's transition. There are reality TV shows - "I am Jazz" for one - offering wholly uncritical support for transition at younger and younger ages. There are huge resources if you go along with the transition narrative.
It's the parents who are worried about the rights and wrongs of this whole thing that are short on support. There are a few blogs, by de-transitioners and by parents. And of, course, there's youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org/ First, Do No Harm: Youth Trans Critical Professionals Thinking Critically about the Youth Transgender Narrative.
I hope MNHQ looks at this site, sets someone to read its contents (there's not too much to read yet). It's very important that MNHQ realise that the people posting on this blog, these health professionals, are having to blog anonymously because these days failure to go along enthusiastically with the trans agenda wrecks careers. You can lose your job over expressions of even the slightest doubt, even though the current orthodoxy means teenagers are being given off-label drugs and sterilized.
This is how they describe their mission:
We are psychologists, social workers, doctors, medical ethicists, and academics... We are left-leaning, open-minded, and pro-gay rights. However, we are concerned about the current trend to quickly diagnose and affirm young people as transgender, often setting them down a path toward medical transition.
Our concern is with medical transition for children and youth. We feel that unnecessary surgeries and/or hormonal treatments which have not been proven safe in the long-term represent significant risks for young people. Policies that encourage — either directly or indirectly — such medical treatment for young people who may not be able to evaluate the risks and benefits are highly suspect, in our opinion.
Medical transition can involve administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to young children. These drugs are being used off-label. The long term side effects are not known, but there is cause for concern. They can certainly result in permanent sterilization of a child who has not even been allowed to go through puberty. In essence, the rush to treat transgender children medically is a massive experiment. For the young person who has never lived as their own sex in their own body, surgical intervention may seem like the next logical step. Young people can undergo such treatment without parental permission once they are eighteen years old. In these surgeries, healthy organs are removed.
We are alarmed by the trend among mental health professionals to affirm a young person’s self diagnosis as transgender with minimal exploration. In many cases, these young people come to identify as trans after binges on social media sites such as tumblr, reddit, or YouTube. There is evidence that social contagion may be at play. In many schools and communities, there are entire peer groups “coming out” as trans at the same time.
For such a self-diagnosed young person, the next stop is often a therapist’s office. In several states, there is now legislation on the books forbidding therapists to engage in conversion therapy. While the sentiment behind this legislation is laudable, in some cases, it is being interpreted to mean that therapists cannot explore gender identity with a youth who is professing to be trans. This would mean we can’t ask why; we can’t explore underlying mental health issues; we can’t consider the symbolic nature of the gender dysphoria; and we can’t look at possible confounding issues such as social media use or social contagion.
It is time that mental health and other professionals begin speaking out on this issue.
Thing is, people think medicine is all science, but there are fashions in medicine just like in anything else - and they can do a lot of damage. Initiating medical treatment with a side effect of sterilizing children is a huge deal, and normally only considered if potentially life-limiting illness is involved.
I remember the Satanic abuse scandal, a moral panic that originated in the US in the 1990s but spread to the UK - see the Orkney child abuse scandal. Innocent families were torn apart and hundreds of children removed from their parents due to a sudden explosion of uncritical belief, particularly among social workers, that there was a hidden but significant population of children being raped, even murdered, by Satanist groups. This belief took hold very thoroughly, and went on doing its damage almost uncontested for years until it fizzled out. No single provable case of the Satanic abuse they sought was ever found. But at the time pretty much everyone believed in it, or seemed to.
There have been other fashions in medicine/social work concerning children and young adults. Anyone else remember the epidemic of False Memory syndrome, developed and encouraged by unscrupulous therapists? That too was debunked, but only after it had done its damage to the innocent. And of course there was the horrifying anal dilation business in Cleveland which caused irreparable damage to the children and families involved.
Trans activists try to shut down debate with everything in their power, and one of the arguments they use is that "you don't want to be on the wrong side of history."
Well, I'd argue that by creating a safe space for parents to critically analyse what the trans agenda is doing to their kids, that MNHQ is going to be on precisely the right side of history. The whole toxic mess will explode in the not-too-distant future, with young adults de-transitioning, scandals and law suits. Whatever the motives, transing children can only be considered wildly irresponsible, and this will eventually come out.
In the meantime, many parents are desperate for support and MN is ideally placed to provide it. I'm sure no one would insult or try to hurt questioning parents, but outspoken help is precisely what so many need. Check out the replies on 4th Wave Now, a community of parents & friends skeptical of the "transgender child/teen" trend. Pretty much every post that appears is answered by several parents who have just found the blog, expressing their huge relief and gratitude that there's a place where the trans agenda is being held up to scrutiny.