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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Times 16/2/1/9 Staff at trans clinic fear damage to children......

137 replies

Melroses · 16/02/2019 18:25

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/staff-at-trans-clinic-fear-damage-to-children-as-activists-pile-on-pressure-c5k655nq9

Does anyone have a share token?

OP posts:
NotTerfNorCis · 16/02/2019 19:52

The detransitioners I've seen seem to be mainly young women. That makes sense, given the rocketing numbers of teenage girls who're identifying as male.

feministfairy · 16/02/2019 19:53

Mrskeats

I am repeatedly enraged about what is happening to children. Abuse in plain sight. It is unbelievable to watch the NSPCC, the Guides, the teacher & headteacher unions, the DfE, the NHS - bloody everyone - all buying into the unethical grooming of children by activists.

Intelligent and generally honourable people / organisations just accepting the most manipulative and dangerous behaviour and never asking any questions about the Mermaids / GIRES etc bullshit. I am continually fuming ...... Sad

hipsterfun · 16/02/2019 19:54

Are there any influential organisations concerned with preventing child abuse who might now begin to take an interest?

boatyardblues · 16/02/2019 19:57

I’m really glad Andrew McGilligan isn’t letting this drop and I’m thankful to the Times for publishing. As someone else said upthread, he’s starting to give service providers and clinicians a voice and we are hearing the first murmurs of concern. I feel so sad for children who are dealing with complex issues in their lives who are being funnelled down a transition pathway, because all the while transition is seen as the answer no one is asking the right questions and getting them the help they really need.

Thank you Andrew. Flowers

hipsterfun · 16/02/2019 19:58

Sort of cross-posted with fairy there.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 16/02/2019 19:59

This is what stood out for me:

"Lobbying by pressure groups created “an atmosphere of significant persecution”.

Gids’ leadership was “unable to act, due to the intense scrutiny”

“You suddenly see groups of kids who at initial interview give exactly the same version of transition decisions, reasons, etc . . . I have overheard them in the corridor, parents coaching children before the interview and chiding them."

This is all terrifying - what is driving these people to lobby like this? I'm really glad a lot of this seems to be coming out into the open now.

R0wantrees · 16/02/2019 19:59

Clearly Gilligan has seen both of these GIDS reports. Maybe passed to him by a concerned staff member? Presumably in the hope that the attention will bring about change.

There seem to be increasing numers of clinicians speaking out and challenging affirmation and medical intervention for children.

recent published article by GIDS staff:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3505380-Interesting-new-article-by-two-GIDS-clinicians-The-Value-of-Extended-Clinical-Assessment-for-Adolescents-Presenting-with-Gender-Identity-Difficulties

BMJ letter by clinicians, Published 29 October 2018:
'Redesigning gender identity services: an opportunity to generate evidence'
authors: Richard Byng, general practitioner and professor in primary care research, Susan Bewley, emeritus professor of obstetrics and women’s health, Damian Clifford, consultant liaison psychiatrist, Margaret McCartney, general practitioner and freelance writer
(extracts)
"A recent feature in The BMJ implied that new services are all that’s needed to improve transgender healthcare. Providing timely, sensitive services for all, including those who decide to not pursue treatment or detransition, is important. But the article did not question the steep rise in referrals of mainly young women or the potential harms of medical overdiagnosis and overtreatment" (continues)

"Regulated medical practitioners should follow a framework of evidence, not simply respond to client expectations. Creating that evidence to inform quality standards is an ethical imperative. We need research to explore the interplays between gender identity, mental health and neurodevelopmental problems, sexual orientation, autogynephilia, and unpalatable gender roles" (continues)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3410257-BMJ-article-We-need-research-to-explore-the-interplays-between-gender-identity-mental-health-and-neurodevelopmental-problems-sexual-orientation-autogynephilia-and-unpalatable-gender-roles

recent thread, OP GrinitchSpinach wrote:
"Susan Bewley et al Letter to the BMJ: Safeguarding adolescents from premature, permanent medicalisation

Susan Bewley, Margaret McCartney, Lucy Griffin and Richard Byng standing up for minors again. Bravi!

...While respecting individuals’ right to a different viewpoint, it is neither mandatory to affirm their beliefs nor automatic that transition is the goal, particularly when dealing with children, adolescents and young adults. These risk closing the ‘open future’, as well as life-long physical problems including lack of sexual function, infertility and medical dependency. With 85% desistance amongst referred transgender children (8) and increasing awareness of detransitioning (9, 10), unquestioning ‘affirmation’ as a pathway that leads gender dysphoric patients to irreversible interventions cannot be considered sole or best practice.

More good-quality research trials are required to provide reliable evidence of clinical and cost-effectiveness of a range of approaches, including patient selection. These will surely include exploration of underlying unhappiness with the goal of achieving body/mind reintegration. In contrast to previous medical scandals that pathologised homosexuality, something different may be happening here. In effect, transitioning children who would otherwise have grown up lesbian, gay or bisexual may introduce another form of conversion (6). A well intentioned but permanent medical pathway for all is unlikely to achieve the best long-term outcomes. Confirming disgust in natal sex or external sexual organs, especially for those with prior childhood trauma, risks medical collusion with, or reenacting of, abuse."

www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l245/rr-1
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3507254-Susan-Bewley-et-al-Letter-to-the-BMJ-Safeguarding-adolescents-from-premature-permanent-medicalisation

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3497770-RC-for-GPs-scraps-GIRES-developed-course

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3504079-Sunday-Times-article-on-James-Caspians-case-against-Bath-Spa-University

R0wantrees · 16/02/2019 20:05

This is all terrifying - what is driving these people to lobby like this? I'm really glad a lot of this seems to be coming out into the open now.

Sheila Jeffries at the first 'We Need To Talk' meeting 2017 which followed Maria Machlaclan being assaulted at Speaker's Corner.

Sheila Jeffries describes transgenderism as part of men's sexual rights movement including prostitution , BDSM etc and that the use of children disguises this.

R0wantrees · 16/02/2019 20:08

The detransistioner stories that are coming out now are really important to helping us all understand the predatory aspect of trans. Such brave young people speaking out to protect their peers.

Important extended article by Hacsi Horváth whose personal and professional experience including 'detransitioning' is significant:
I am an adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). I’m an expert in clinical epidemiology, particularly in systematic review methods, epidemiologic bias and evidence quality assessment. As a researcher at UCSF, I managed the Cochrane HIV/AIDS Group for over a decade and on several occasions served as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) in their HIV guideline development processes.

For about 13 years, I also masqueraded “as a woman,” taking medical measures which suggest, shall we say, that I was completely committed to that lifestyle. Most men would have recoiled from this, but in my estrogen-drug-soaked stupor it seemed like a good idea. In 2013 I stopped taking estrogen for health reasons and very rapidly came back to my senses. I ceased all effort to convey the impression that I was a woman and carried on with life

Published by 4thWaveNow:
'The Theatre of the Body: A detransitioned epidemiologist examines suicidality, affirmation, and transgender identity'
(extract)
"Heterosexual males (the vast majority of men with GD) have autogynephilia.
Homosexual males with GD enjoy “femininity” and mistakenly believe this means they are “trans” or even women.
Females with GD have internalized misogyny and/or internalized homophobia.
In my opinion—which is based upon extensive research, as well as my own 13-year-long experience in pretending to be a woman–GD is only superficially concerned with one’s sex. It’s more a disturbance of identity, of mistaking the signifier for the signified. Patients have whatever mental illnesses they may have, or that develop while in the ruminations and hypomanic states that typically precede “coming out as trans.” I propose that GD is a moody, brooding syndrome that accompanies these mental illnesses. People with GD have cultivated an idealized vision of themselves as the opposite sex. At a critical point of rumination, after the patient has sufficiently disparaged his or her actual life and idealized life as the opposite sex, he or she realizes that body parts of the opposite sex may be obtained through the services of doctors (Raymond 1979, Billings 1982). Actually transforming into the opposite sex starts to seem feasible. The self-conception “splits” in two, and idealization becomes identity. Having negated any value in their actual male or female presence in the world, and now feeling themselves to actually be the self-generated persona, patients perseveratively ask themselves, “what’s stopping me?” “Feasibility” seems to trigger the split. Here begins the acute phase of GD.

Patients become obsessed with “transition.” To the same extent that they can be energized by the belief that they are making “progress,” as their bodies morph via the hormone drugs and shop clerks address them by their preferred honorifics (i.e. Miss or Ma’am for the males, Sir for the females), they can also feel destroyed by any little delay or perceived setback—including being “misgendered” or identified by others as their actual sex. Nothing else matters but “transition.” (continues)

"I agree with the late French psychoanalyst Colette Chiland when she said: “Transsexuals stage everything in the theatre of the body, and nothing in that of the psyche” (Chiland 2003). It is true that persons in the driven, obsessed stages of gender dysphoria can seemingly think of nothing except transition. No-one dreams of asking them to slow down, to seek psychotherapy... " (continues)
4thwavenow.com/2018/12/19/the-theatre-of-the-body-a-detransitioned-epidemiologist-examines-suicidality-affirmation-and-transgender-identity/

NB 4thWaveNow are "a community of parents & others concerned about the medicalization of gender-atypical youth and rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)"

Hacsi Horváth was part of the panel at the recent Washington event,
"The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns from the Left"

www.heritage.org/event/the-inequality-the-equality-act-concerns-the-left

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3490776-Women-Stand-Up-in-Washington-D-C?pg=2

Thingybob · 16/02/2019 20:11

Just means international standards are a bit shoddy

Because international standards are being set by self appointed experts like this batshit crazy woman who can identify a trans babies.

A baby boy unsnapping his babygrow, a baby girl taking out hair slides or a toddler just learning to talk saying 'I boy' are all clear messages.

th-vision.net/detail/how-to-tell-if-babies-are-transgender-M7KBZeRC1RI.html

Popchyk · 16/02/2019 20:12

Edward Lord wrote to The Times in December in order to instruct them to stop Andrew Gilligan from writing on transgender issues.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3459026-Edward-Lord-asking-the-Sunday-Times-to-censor-Andrew-Gilligan?msgid=83588944#prettyPhoto

Might I suggest that Lord's letter has had the opposite effect to the one he intended?

R0wantrees · 16/02/2019 20:19

Popchyk On the recent BBC Big Questions about feminism Jane Fae alluded to preparing some sort of challenge against a particular newspaper which had run a large number of articles concerning transgenderism without sufficient comments from people who were transgender.
I wondered if this might be The Times...
Hmm

perhaps missing the point that safeguarding children and vulnerable women etc are the focus points

morningtoncrescent62 · 16/02/2019 20:21

Does anyone here think it's possible that a child could be naturally 'trans' and need surgery as the only possible option? Even if it's just a small fraction of those being diagnosed as trans?

I don't think there's such a thing as 'naturally trans'. That would require us to accept the idea that gender identity is somehow biological, wired in from (or before?) birth, and is pre-social and pre-verbal. There's no supporting evidence to this effect.

I do think there's a minority of children (until recently around 20% of those diagnosed with gender dysphoria pre-puberty) who will experience gender dysphoria long-term, and will need to transition as adults to live a viable, satisfying life. But from everything I've read, there's no reliable way of distinguishing that 20% from the 80% whose dysphoria will resolve naturally during puberty. Setting all of these children on a path to transition which will make it far less likely their dysphoria will resolve naturally is child abuse.

A far better solution, and one which wouldn't require medical interventions on healthy bodies, would be to try to break down gender stereotyping and address sexism. You know, like feminists have been trying to do for decades.

Sunshineofleith · 16/02/2019 20:26

Wouldn’t it be great if we could go back to normal teen dramas without medicalising it. Questioning oneself and how we fit is normal. Kids should be able to explore this without feeling they are the other sex. How mad has the world come? This push to trans our kids is dark. Who is is benefiting?

R0wantrees · 16/02/2019 20:30

November 2017 Miranda Yardley article, "Suffer the Children: How Young People Became The Collateral Damage Of Transgender Ideology"

mirandayardley.com/en/suffer-the-children-how-children-became-the-collateral-damage-of-transgender-ideology/

R0wantrees · 16/02/2019 20:33

May 2017 Miranda Yardley article, "Common Threads And Narratives of Transgender Children And What This Means For Our Lesbian And Gay Populations"
mirandayardley.com/en/common-threads-and-narratives-of-transgender-children-and-what-this-means-for-our-lesbian-and-gay-populations/

Sunshineofleith · 16/02/2019 20:34

That’s a great article by Miranda. Thanks

JackyHolyoake · 16/02/2019 20:38

What will bring an end to this abuse of children is for the relevant Government ministers, Education, Health, Equalities, etc together to state that all these activities are to be stopped until more is understood about what is going on. This will end the indoctrination of children and staff in schools; the indoctrination of NHS staff all other pubic services by the lobby organisations. It will create space for questions to be raised and discussion free from the pressure of those lobby organisations.

Manderleyagain · 16/02/2019 20:38

It sounds like the report was commissioned by the service itself. It was considered by the board last week. What were they planning to do in response? My guess is the report has been leeked to the Times by someone who thought the board response would be inadequate and wanted to get something done, and keep the issue live.
It will be interesting to see if Gids do some kind of proper response to this article as its serious.

R0wantrees · 16/02/2019 20:39

That’s a great article by Miranda

Miranda Yardley has written many great, referenced and important articles in my opinion.

Which should really bring into question why so many with considerable influence have sought to silence his comments on SM and attempt to smear his reputation and work.

mirandayardley.com/en/

R0wantrees · 16/02/2019 20:47

Magdalen Berns
Published on 26 Jun 2016

'Transing a 5 Year Old Tomboy'

borntobequiet · 16/02/2019 20:47

This sort of thing is now being prosecuted - Dr Evil’s Body Modification.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-47198786
But not modifying the bodies of children?

TheSteveMilliband · 16/02/2019 20:47

@BetsyM00 how do you do sharetokens? The Times has published a lot lately on gender but I can't work out how to share the full article

Lumene · 16/02/2019 20:48

And poor doctors get stuck in the middle. Perhaps the £500,000 proposed lottery funding could go to Gids instead,so staff have the resources to come to the right diagnosis for each child.

This

feministfairy · 16/02/2019 20:48

Isn't Victoria Atkins (responsible for Child Sex Abuse & the independent Inquiry) conducting an investigation into ROGD?
Trouble is the trans allies are placed very high up in the civil service and the MoJ, DfE, EHRC etc and they are stifling all questions and responses. I've seen some truly shocking responses to women who have written to MPs and ministers challenging what is happening with their questions being ignored, belittled and on occasions deliberate lies written. And of course, you know the minister hasn't written the letter - it's a civil servant.