Stephen Whittle’s blog on Genderquake - with a detailed briefing for panelists

[flowersonthepiano]

Stephen Whittle’s blog on Genderquake with a briefing for panelists including the following gems:

“male and female are biological categories which were defined when science was not properly aware of the complexities of the ‘natural’ body”

“‘Self-identification’ doesn’t mean anyone can get legal gender recognition, but it would mean trans people no longer have to be diagnosed as having a mental illness.”

How is that good for people with such high rates of suicide ideation who need care?

“Unfortunately, the Rules don’t allow trans prisoners to be placed in a prison of their preferred gender role until they have obtained legal gender recognition.”

“The UK has an excellent child and adolescent Gender Identity Clinic as part of a larger mental health trust – but it is only one for the entire nation of 66 million people.

Whilst the Clinic provides an excellent service,
· it cannot cope with the numbers seeking help, and
· there is no doubt that it has increasingly drawn flak from some feminist women who object to the idea of affording children any support in their preferred gender identity.
PFC REPEATEDLY states that

• children do not receive cross-gender hormones and
• no child has ever been given gender reassignment surgery,
but the Feminist attacks have been sufficiently vocal to make clinicians very nervous about the provision of the service.”

blatantly neglects to mention puberty blockers...


Note the frequent references to “Press for Change (PFC)” which is described as “the UK trans lobby group”. A week or so ago newspaper editors were hauled before a parliamentary committee and grilled for suggesting that there is even such thing as trans lobby group. Suggesting that stating there is a trans lobby was labelled bigoted/hate speech.

Stephen Whittle is a very influential person. The views above are being inculcated into our society. It’s clear they recognize the influence that feminist protests have had in stalling the proposed changes to the GRA and making clinicians think how they handle children who arrive in their consulting rooms.

You are doing a great job! It wouldn’t surprise me if Stephen Whittle had a hand in recent efforts to silence the MumsNet FWR boards, but then I am getting a bit tin-foil hatty these days....

[R0wantrees]

The interview that Maria Miller gave to Janice Turner when she commented about 'so called feminists' demonstrates this is highly unlikely.
There have though been interventions from some male Conservatives including Norman Tebbit (see Kirkup's article), David Davies (not the Brexit one) who hosted the 'we need to talk' meeting at Westminster and Jacob Rees Mogg.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/jacob-rees-mogg-radical-feminist/

"It also highlights a serious point about the politics of transgender rights which might have been missed over the Easter weekend. The Mail on Sunday this week carried an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg. The paper didn’t make much of it, but it contained quite an important line:
He is uneasy about some aspects of the transgender rights debate.
‘If you have people who have no intention of changing sex but think it would be fun to go into the women’s changing room, we cannot ignore that.’
In other words, JRM is worried about self-identification, which the Government is – nominally – committed to exploring in a consultation."

[R0wantrees]

Sorry, link to Janice Turner article:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2993425-Maria-Miller-interviewed-by-Janice-Turner-full-text

[whoputthecatout]

Smart, persuasive, persistent, highly successful in progressing the trans agenda and dangerous to women and girls

OK - he's all of that, but he's still a numpty if he thinks ordinary sensible people will buy into his 'biology'.

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time. Or so said Lincoln.

I think there are signs that TRAs and their apologists are beginning to overreach themselves.

[tobee]

Preferred gender roles what a load of bollocks!

[R0wantrees]

The UK has an excellent child and adolescent Gender Identity Clinic as part of a larger mental health trust ... the Feminist attacks have been sufficiently vocal to make clinicians very nervous about the provision of the service.

When Heather Brunskill Evans spoke at the Bristol 'We need to Talk' event, she said ( think) that there were clinicians with concerns about the affirmation approach and fear of reprisals if they voiced them.

Polly Carmichael is quoted in The Spectator article:

"Gender has become amazingly topical and we have to be really careful not to assume that anyone is exploring or questioning their gender is going to want to change their bodies in line with that. The extremes on either side are not helpful. We need to look at the grey areas in between. To do that we need to be able to talk and discuss these issues. All too often stakeholders become lobby groups.”

[Pratchet]

dangerous to women and girls would be my assessment

And mine

[ArcheryAnnie]

“Unfortunately, the Rules don’t allow trans prisoners to be placed in a prison of their preferred gender role until they have obtained legal gender recognition.”

Whittle is just plain wrong about this. Easily, demonstrably, two-seconds-googling wrong.

I wonder why such an experienced academic would get something like this wrong?

[R0wantrees]

I think there are signs that TRAs and their apologists are beginning to overreach themselves

I hope that there are enough MPs from all parties who are at least aware of the importance to consider that there may be conflicting rights and that this deserves respectful discussion and consideration.

The open letter from Amnesty, Stonewall and Mermaids to Penny Mordant is telling as it seems to be a call for protection from the right wing press.
As opposed to SW's claims, the letter ascribes the government's delay to,
"This has been partly due to pressure from the right-wing press"

It seems there may be a risk of conflation with free speech / hate crime / Levinson 2 etc and in this respect, those papers / MPs may have more to gain from a possible 'over reach'.

[Pratchet]

They get more and more shameless tho. If Harrop and Jensen were women, they would be fired. I will not now watch a programme with Jensen it but any product or service he endorses. That won't make the slightest difference to Channel 4 or it's advertisers.

[R0wantrees]

They get more and more shameless

It is extraordinary the claims and accusations that are being thrown at women with such impunity.

[R0wantrees]

Maybe the comment in Gaby Hinsliff's Guardian article is true:

“There is a difference between social media debate and the conversations going on elsewhere,” says Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, who was torn apart over her party’s trans-inclusive stance in one notable Mumsnet webchat, but is now more optimistic about the chances of reaching some consensus. “I am encouraged by the number of women who have contacted me privately to say they want to find common ground.” Both Woman’s Place and trans activists led by Stonewall have given well-received briefings to Labour MPs in recent months."

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/10/the-gender-recognition-act-is-controversial-can-a-path-to-common-ground-be-found

[Terfulike]

How can common ground be found?

Apart from eggs and sperm (plus a couple of blood cell types without a nucleus), all cells in the human body contain 23 pairs of chromosomes, including 2 sex chromosomes (XX for female; XY for male).

How can a compromise be reached when the very neurones of a trans "woman's" brain can be sexed as XY male?

[Elletorro]

Hi

Sorry to gatecrash. Overheard discussions of writing up scientific articles on the importance of sex. If anyone is interested in getting this published online then please PM me.

[ChattyLion]

babel, elletoro, flowers, terfulike

Scientific journals would be important but also medical journals because legally, doctors decide when a young person has the capacity to weigh risks and benefits of a proposed treatment for themselves.

ie doctors decide the circumstances and point at which parental permission and involvement/knowledge is not prerequisite to a particular treatment going ahead, including under 16 years old. (Called Gillick competence, as referred to upthread)

This is a really GOOD thing is many ways and has helped a lot of children and young people to access treatment they need completely appropriately.

However, if doctors are being lobbied with ‘alternative facts’ by the TRA lobby then an evidence-based counter voice is urgently necessary.

I’m wondering if an anti-quackery person like Ben Goldacre or an organisation like Sense about Science would support a public discussion based on evidence.

[ChattyLion]

Also just a general thanks to R0wantrees.
I really appreciate your links in helping me make sense of all this and can imagine that a lot of other people will be finding them really helpful too.

[JoanSummers]

If Ben Goldacre had the guts to deal with this subject he'd be doing it. He doesn't.

[FermatsTheorem]

Chatty I'd be interested to hear what you think about when Gillick competence is applicable, and when not. It seems to me (not a medic, so could be wildly off-beam here) that Gillick competence, as originally envisaged, was about giving under-age children access to medical care where to deny them it would have irreversible consequences. Thus, allowing a child access to contraception without parental knowledge was better than the alternative of denying them contraception, having them go ahead with sex anyway, then having to bear the life-long consequences of an unwanted pregnancy.

No-one, presumably, would endorse invoking Gillick competence for a child who wanted a tattoo against parental wishes!

The question then becomes where medical interventions for children with gender confusion lie. The pro-intervention lobby says that not giving blockers/cross sex hormones risks irreversible consequences (claims about suicide risks, psychological impacts from the trauma of going through a "wrong sex" puberty and of "not passing" as an adult). The anti-intervention lobby points to high rates of desistance and the irreversible consequences of osteoporosis from puberty blockers, health risks of cross-sex hormones and their associated irreversible changes like growth of breast tissue/voices breaking, and the clearly irreversible consequences of mamectomies and sterilisation.

[ChattyLion]

Joan I don’t know if Goldacre or anyone else has refused to do so. But perhaps you know more about this?
Unless Goldacre has actively refused, I wouldn’t assume refusal. I also think if active anti quackery people DO feel too scared to address anti science and anti medicine lobbying by TRAs, that is a story in itself and should be highlighted.

[Ereshkigal]

So many sneery Dawkins loving male atheists and self proclaimed skeptics seem to make an exception for this particular faith based belief. How the cognitive dissonance doesn't melt their brains, I don't know.

[Bowlofbabelfish]

I also think if active anti quackery people DO feel too scared to address anti science and anti medicine lobbying by TRAs, that is a story in itself and should be highlighted.

Exactly. Ben Goldacres work is great - as is David Colquhoun’s and Sense about science. They’ve happily taken on every single quack or poor practitioner out there, regardless of size. For them to be wary of throwing their hats into the ring on this issue (if they are aware of it, and I’m not sure if they are) shows the sheer power of the TRA lobby. Their tactics are like the Scientology harassment methods, only with added Twitter. The sheer volume of personal attack they’d face? I’m not sure I’d want to deal with that tbh.

I’ve said it before but this whole issue needs to be put in the tabloids - it’s not going to be won in journals, it’s going to be won when papers like the DM pick it up and bring it to a wider audience. The people who got the GRA through did it quietly. They want to get the reforms and self ID through quietly as well. They are terrified of wider debate - thats why they are trying to shit down and harass anyone who speaks on this. they know that if this is discussed by the average man in the street they will be told it’s ludicrous.

The single best thing we can do is get this with a sensible slant and comment in the mail, the sun and the express. That’s going to peak millions.

[Bowlofbabelfish]

Shut down. But shit works too ...

[LoislovesStewie]

I've done an online quiz which apparently tells me if I am transgender. Despite saying at the beginning that I am female, the quiz tells me I am 57% trans male to female. Must be because I ticked that I was a bit of a tomboy. I am speechless. All sorts of silly comments were on the website expressing joy at being defined as trans . I am giving up!

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

"they know that if this is discussed by the average man in the street they will be told it’s ludicrous."

I agree bowl which I why I am not bothered by DM and the like covering it, despite the sneeriness of the TRAs when they do. The wider and more mainstream the coverage, the better.

[nauticant]

The single best thing we can do is get this with a sensible slant and comment in the mail, the sun and the express

Years back I had an argument with a journalist mate over the Leveson inquiry. His support of an unregulated press was so unwavering to me it looked like a religious belief. I thought regulation was needed.

Recently, watching the way the media has been covering this issue, I'm coming to think that an regulated press that occasionally behaves badly is better than a regulated press that always behaves correctly. When we next meet I'm going to say to my mate that I was actually wrong when we argued.

[Ereshkigal]

Recently, watching the way the media has been covering this issue, I'm coming to think that an regulated press that occasionally behaves badly is better than a regulated press that always behaves correctly. When we next meet I'm going to say to my mate that I was actually wrong when we argued.

Absolutely agree.