Did anyone else hear Helen Webberley on R4 this morning?

[QuentinSummers]

She runs some medical websites in Wales that have been taken down while they are investigated by CQC
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-39520785

Helen Webberley runs a transgender advice and medical service that is renowned for giving prescriptions for cross sex hormones on the basis of an online appt and £50 prescription charge. She prescribes to children. She was very cagey about the nature of her "advice service" this morning
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/11/transgender-nhs-doctor-prescribing-sex-hormones-children-uk

It'll be interesting to see what happens!

Hmm, that's an interesting article.

I'm not sure if it's my bias but I don't think she comes across well there. The last question is interesting. Such certainty in the reply seems overconfident.

It's this paragraph that annoys me:
"By contrast, some believe that our society hitting “peak trans” is in fact teenage girls reacting against the expectations of modern womanhood in the age of selfies and online porn.

“But we would hear that,” Webberley says. “The amount of listening we do — we have girls who have been abused by their uncle and then reject every single part of their femininity that’s been abused all those years and say, ‘I want to be a boy instead.’ That’s not gender identity. And girls who don’t feel comfortable with all the fluffy stuff, they carry on as girls, but they don’t wear skirts."

I can't even quite put into words why it annoys me.
One reason is that she is bringing abuse into this issue which is distracting from the point that is being made although I'm sure abuse is a reason for many girls but this is kind of separate to the pressure on all girls. And the other is that she seems to be implying that girls can opt out of the pressures put on them by just not wearing a skirt, which is quite stupid. I don't think she understands the point that is being made.

So, boy, am I careful. I choose my patients really carefully. And maybe one or two will come back in the future and say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’ Be cautious, but don’t harm 99 just so the cautiousness was OK for the one.”

So right there. Right there she is admitting that there is no actual diagnosis. Only what the child says.

I have absolutely no doubt that it would be horrific to have a child who had gender dysphoria. But I can't be the only one who read that and in my head was shouting why. Why do they have gender dysphoria? What are the causes.

She seems to be saying that where she can instantly recognise a possible cause, like past sexual trauma, she doesn't prescribe.

So she eliminates people on the basis of certain circumstances. And when she can't find any to explain it away, she treats them.

I don't get it. All that says you treat people on the basis of ignorance, not knowledge.

Why aren't we throwing money, time, resources and research at the cause? Rather than relieving the symptoms.

It's interesting though, because never actually says she gets or recommends a different type of help. And forgive me for disbelieving an abused teen wanting blockers or hormones would reveal the abuse in a skype session.

Link to the Times interview (I find it easier to read a long piece in newspaper format rather than in MN)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-doctor-who-helps-kids-to-change-gender-xsw6dxc7n?shareToken=e4f913c40c9aa7c74e1a53e1485c4edf

Just adding, in case it wasn't obvious - my link gives full access. The Times now lets subscribers do this for a limited number of articles per day (not sure how many) - no need to c&p the whole thing any more. Just click the icon with the arrow in the bottom right in the app and then Copy.

I didn't know that, thanks errol

I only found it by accident, thats why I mentioned it. It's quite a good solution to them having a paywall but allowing some sharing.

I'm not keen on her analogies with abortion or cancer. Neither are comparable with childhood transgenderism which seems to be something else entirely. And in the case of teenage cancer preserving future fertility is always taken into account before treatment isn't it? So a bit uncomfortable with those bits.

“Gender is a spectrum, but most of us don’t fluctuate very far. Sometimes I might feel a bit more masculine, but I don’t want to take hormones to grow a hairy chin.”

Bit disappointing to hear a medical professional saying something so unscientific - what does feeling a bit more masculine even mean?

Transgender teenagers often present as a mental-health emergency. In the case of transgender children, time is an enemy.

But if it is a mental health issue then surely they would be passed to a MH specialist - she isn't one is she?

This statement also raises the issue of why we are encouraging children to change their bodies to fit in with their minds, rather than the other way round. If it's a MH issue then it would be the mind that we would treat, not the body.

That Times interview highlights the power of transgenderist Newspeak to disguise what's actually going on in the rapidly expanding paediatric transition industry.

Newspeak: 'helped a 12-year-old to transition'
Reality: 'gave a 12-year-old girl male sex hormones that rendered her infertile'

'Transition' is a not a medical term: it's metaphysical one, implying a process of changing from one state of being into an entirely different one. And we can see how this word, which throws a mystical veil over what are in reality extreme medical interventions designed to stunt or obliterate aspects of the sexed body, actually leads people to magical thinking, such as when the reporter writes, with complete seriousness, that Webberley:

helped this 12-year-old genetic female to go through a male puberty

A girl who is given puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones will not go through a male puberty. She will not develop adult male genitalia and adult male bone structure. She will not start to produce sperm. To imagine that doctors can 'transform' female children into male adults is an outright absurdity, easily as science-denying as any flat-earth creationist belief (more so actually). What they can do and are doing is turning them into girls with stunted bones and ovaries like shrivelled raisins - and those are the known outcomes. The less well established but emerging outcomes of arresting a child's puberty and then permanently shrivelling their gonads before they mature are serious health problems such as osteoporosis and chronic pain (now being reported by women who were given Lupron for precocious puberty two decades ago) and possibly stunted cognitive development, owing to the crucial role that puberty plays in the maturation of the brain.

And all of this is being done to increasing numbers of children in the name of an evidence-free and in fact religious belief that it is possible for a girl child to have a 'male soul' inside her female body, and vice versa.

Webberley says: 'I've pushed as many boundaries as a doctor would ever push.'

Well, that's one way of putting it. I agree that what's she's doing to children is easily up there with the worst historical examples of dangerous medical fads, with the lobotomy craze of the 1940s and 1950s being a prominent recent antecedent.

Transgender teenagers often present as a mental-health emergency. In the case of transgender children, time is an enemy.

As a professional, in another field, decisions made in panic and under pressure are the WORST decisions. If she means the child is suicidal, then that needs to be treated as a mental health emergency before untested drugs and hormones are doled out.

Round of applause for DonkeySkin.

Thehumanrace

Puberty blockers are being used off label.

Lupron is the most popular and it is an anti-cancer drug.
So they are being used for something they weren't designed for specifically. They were also to help halt puberty in children who started it too young (precocious puberty). And then they were taken off them.

The long-term effects of puberty blockers have not been studied.

Statistically if a child starts on puberty blockers, they will go on to cross-sex hormones. Almost 100%.

Cross sex hormones are irreversible.

Here are several articles about it.

gendertrender.wordpress.com/?s=Puberty+blockers+&submit=Search

HumanRace, in my post above I provide a link detailing the emerging harms of puberty blockers, which are now becoming apparent in women in their 20s and 30s who were given Lupron as children to arrest precocious puberty. Trans activists repeatedly insist that puberty blockers are harmless and reversible; the emerging data suggest that is not true.

The blog 4thwavenow has excellent information on the effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and how they (given sequentially) cause irreversible infertility. The basic mechanism is that cross-sex hormones, given to a child who has not had the chance to go through puberty, will permanently shrivel the gonads. In the case of boys, it also means their penises will never grow and they will be left with the genitalia of a child even in adulthood.

Interesting and v. worrying. What concerns me is the 'me against the world' attitude of the doctor....a Messiah complex. This is never good news in medicine, but we have seen it over and over in psychiatry and in sexual areas. Gay cures. Cures for masturbation. Brain surgery for conditions like depression or anxiety.

The certainty that I) there is a pathology present and 2) something dramatic that only a few pioneers can offer will treat it is always harmful.

It's chilling.

TheHumanRace

I'm not sure what happens if you stop the puberty blockers, because none of them ever do. They get cross sex hormones. They're said to go through the puberty of the opposite sex. But if course they don't. They don't develop penises or vaginas. Their current sex characteristics just remain undeveloped. 'Ovaries like shrivelled raisins' was one of the descriptions.

Cross sex humans in women, make their voice deepen and they grow facial hair. For men, I believe they can grow breasts, and their fat distribution changes.

If they stop taking the cross sex hormones, these changes remain. And they are of course sterile.

It is currently being discussed on another thread. Link below.

If you go to Zoloh today at 1624, she provides some further links.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3036489-Woman-attacked-by-transactivists-at-speakers-corner-part-deux?msgid=72052320#72052320

What I meant about the not stopping the puberty blockers, is they don't stop and not go on to cross sex hormones.

The way I see it is that whilst it may be possible to stall puberty and then re-start it if a child stopped taking Lupron, so technically reversible, it appears to be psychologically irreversible - 100% of children go on to cross -sex hormones. Those children also then do not go through a natural puberty at the same time as their peers, and do not go through the natural maturation period that their peers are going through, so potentially interfering with their normal development. And as many children's gender dysphoria used to resolve itself after puberty, now with the affirmative approach, that possibility could be taken away.

That's one of the things that really worries me Stopmakingsense.

The assertion that so many children are quite happy with their transition.

Firstly, I think it's far too soon to tell.

But secondly, it worries me deeply that it's because they have nothing compare it to. And their lack of mental maturity could account for their acceptance.

Like giving someone a lobotomy and saying see they're fine now.

"I read jazz Jennings will not be able to have a full sexual realtionship or orgasm due to a prebubertal penis."
AFAIK (not having watched the program, just read reports of it), the sad issue for Jazz is that unlike adult males who have gender reassignment surgery, their penis will not be developed enough to do the usual flip it from an outie to an innie style neovagina surgery (with the tip of the penis becoming the ersatz clitoris I believe). It's a basic issue as regards amounts of flesh and skin available.

I admit, I don't know the issues as regards sexual sensation etc and development (or lack of), just the more basic flesh available for cosmetic reshaping issues.

SomeDyke

I believe that's right. Not enough material to fashion a neo vagina. Which would indicate no material that would produce a sexual sensation.

Children who have been on puberty blockers have pre pubescent genitals. Adding in cross sex hormones at 16 won't force the genitals to develop into post pubescent genitals because obviously it's the wrong hormones for what they have. I can't see how these children will ever have anything like normal sexual function. At least males with inverted penis surgery still keep the sensitive penis head and females tend to get enlarged clitorises but if the clitoris has never developed past puberty how can it function normally on testosterone?