I want to make sure that Irish politicians can't deny their part in Self ID

[Mermoose]

Self ID was introduced in Ireland by lobbyists who purposely avoided public discussion of it.
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/12/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/

Since then I've written to politicians explaining that gender critical people are not motivated by hatred but have well-founded concerns about sex-based rights, poor medical practice and freedom of speech. All I ever ask is for free and open discussion on this topic. Usually I receive no reply, or at best, one promising a response at a later date (which never comes).

Meanwhile, Irish parties not only support Self ID without explaining why, but they actively discourage discussion. Candidates from both the Greens and the Social Democrats have used the word 'terf'. When Primetime ran an episode on the effect of Self ID and transitioning in young people, Regina Doherty of Fine Gael criticised it for doing so. mobile.twitter.com/ReginaDo/status/1087840022265503744

I think that Self ID, belief in innate gender identity, and denial of biological sex, are all going to turn out to harm a lot of people, trans people included. In time, trying to silence criticism will look, not like a woke vote-winner, but like the arrogance, authoritarianism and stupidity it is.

In the meantime, people get harmed. Because for politicians in Ireland, the safe bet is supporting all this and demonising gender critical people. We need to change that. We need them to wake up and really think about this, and let opposing views be heard.

I think the way to do this is to make sure that they know they can't wash their hands of this if it all turns out the way we think it will. I'm hoping that Irish women & men on here would be interested in a letter-writing campaign. Here's my idea:

We choose a few individuals from each party. We write to them, clearly setting out the possible problems with self ID and current medical treatments. We ask for open debate. And we tell them that the reason several of us are writing the same letter to them, is so that they cannot deny they knew about these issues.

[Apileofballyhoo]

I'm in.

[Mermoose]

Cheers Apileofballyhoo

[Mermoose]

Second Section:
A Culture of Silencing Dissent or Questions in Medicine

Experts in GIDs
Several experts working in Gender Identity Services have raised serious concerns about the treatment given to young people with dysphoria. They have spoken about a culture in which it is difficult to discuss these concerns and in which evidence is lacking, and political lobbying seems to have undue influence.

Marcus Evans, one of the governors of The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has resigned last year. In his resignation email he wrote
“I do not believe we understand what is going on in this complex area and the need to adopt an attitude which examines things from different points of view is essential. This is difficult in the current environment as the debate and discussion required is continually being closed down or effectively described as ‘transphobic’ or in some way prejudicial.”
www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/23/child-transgender-service-governor-quits-chaos

Susan Evans, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and wife of Mr Evans, resigned from the Tavistock Clinic in 2004 over similar concerns. She is currently bringing a case to see if current treatment guidelines are lawful.
^“I fear that in 10 years time, there will be a lot of people in their mid-20s whose lives have been wrecked by poor assessment and poor evidence based treatment, who will have been rushed down a path which they should never have been taken down so swiftly.
“We have a situation where clinical sense has been overridden by political lobbying and activism. And I am not ashamed to say that.
“I fear that some of these young transgender patients will have grounds to sue the NHS in years to come.”^
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/11/fear-young-trans-patients-could-sue-nhs-negligence-former-tavistock/

Kirsty Entwhistle, former clinician at Leeds GIDS:
“I think it is a problem that GIDS clinicians are making decisions that will have a major impact on children and young people’s bodies and on their lives, potentially the rest of their lives, without a robust evidence base. GIDS clinicians tell children and families that puberty blockers/hormone blocks are “fully reversible” but the reality is no one knows what the impacts are on children’s brains so how is it possible to make this claim? It is also a problem that GIDS clinicians are afraid of raising their concerns for fear of being labelled transphobic by colleagues.”
medium.com/@kirstyentwistle/an-open-letter-to-dr-polly-carmichael-from-a-former-gids-clinician-53c541276b8d

In Ireland, experts have expressed concern at the proposals of a HSE steering committee on transgender services.

Paul Moran, consultant psychiatrist at St Columcille’s, says this proposal is “unsound and unsafe” because it “does not enable adequate assessment of patients and does not require proper qualification of professionals”.
“Thankfully there is in place a sound and safe service which, unlike this [proposal], has qualified, highly trained people working in a well-governed service,” Moran said.
Donal O’Shea, a consultant endocrinologist, said the St Columcille model was approved by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and was in line with best international practice, so doctors would continue to implement it.
“My concern is that they’re almost encouraging self-declaration to equal ‘you should start treatment’ and that there is no need for a full assessment prior to that decision.
“A person’s gender is their own decision but where that should lead you — should it lead you to hormone treatment and surgery or not — is a really complex decision.”
www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/simon-harris-pushed-hse-to-review-need-for-psychiatric-assessment-for-gender-switches-pzw7mnrsx?region=ie&t=ie


James Cantor is a clinical psychologist and sexual behavior scientist. He is Director of the Toronto Sexuality Centre and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He has written an article criticising the policy of treating gender dysphoria with affirmation only:
“every follow-up study of GD children, without exception, found the same thing: By puberty, the majority of GD children ceased to want to transition.”
www.sexologytoday.org/2018/10/american-academy-of-pediatrics-policy.html

Trans People
Some trans people and others with gender dysphoria are voicing dissatisfaction with current treatment, and, again, the need for open discussion. GCCAN - Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network - campaigns for more research, better information and a standard of care that provides alternatives to medical transition, as well as more complete information on side effects of medical transition and support for those who do opt for medical transition.
“Our experience as gender care consumers has shown the lack of professional advice before committing to body-altering therapies, and we have a right to this information before making decisions.” [...]
“We have the right to access peer-run support networks for gender dysphoria, including as a possible alternative to professional care. We have the right for peer-run spaces to allow for questioning and exploration of causes for our gender dysphoria without favoring transition or detransition.”
www.gccan.org/bill-of-rights

Detransitioners - people who have undergone medical transition but who then regret it - are also finding it difficult to be heard.
“Dr David Bell, consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock, described why it’s so difficult for those services which deal with trans identity to accept the detransition movement. “Detransitioners are a threat to an ideology that has acquired an almost totalitarian quality and cannot be challenged,” he says. “It is extraordinary the way in which, without any evidence at all, trans ideology has had the ears of politicians up to the highest level.””
unherd.com/2019/12/the-nhs-is-failing-trans-kids/


The taboo on discussing detransition is evident in the treatment of journalists like Katie Herzog, who, for an innocuous article interviewing several detransitioners, was ostracized as a transphobe.
Her article: www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the-detransitioners-they-were-transgender-until-they-werent
An article on her ostracism: www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/style/what-is-cancel-culture.html

Detransitioners do exist, however, and their needs are as valid as those of transitioners. Some have set up websites and groups to share their stories and offer support. eg . post-trans.com/
GCCAN also supports detransitioners & campaigns for recognition & support of detrans people.

[bellinisurge]

Thank you, op. Will be interesting to see how politicians address this in the GE campaign.

[thepuredrop]

Good luck to you all. I'm UK-based for the foreseeable so don't think I'm much help.

[Mermoose]

Third Section: Sexist Stereotyping

The use of ‘gender’ in preference to ‘sex’ raises the question what exactly is meant by ‘gender’. It’s a word that has several meanings, but nobody - including groups such as the Irish Council of Civil Liberties, which lobbied for the GRA - seems to be clear which one they are using.

Gender can be used as a synonym for sex, but obviously that is not the case with the GRA and in discussions of gender identity. Someone with a ‘male gender identity’ is not necessarily biologically male.

Gender can also mean the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex - that is, sex stereotypes, such as clothing, games, interests etc associated with each sex. Certainly in accounts of trans children, this seems to be the meaning. For example, in this study, gender identity appears to mean affinity with sex stereotypes:
“transgender boys (assigned females at birth), on average identified as boys, favored stereotypically masculine toys and clothes, and preferred to be friends with boys.”
meaww.com/trans-kids-preferences-gravitate-toys-clothes-different-sex-birth-study-assigned

In accounts by detransitioners, they often understood it this way.

[Mermoose]

Fourth Section: Academic Freedom

Feminists and others who believe sex stereotypes to be harmful need the freedom to critique and examine the concept of gender identity. Far from freeing us from stereotypes, it seems to us very much the case that the current understanding of gender is reifying them.

But the way that gender as a concept has been politicised has led to any discussion of it being termed transphobic. There has been serious suppression of debate in academia, as discussed in an article in The Guardian this month.
www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/14/sacked-silenced-academics-say-they-are-blocked-from-exploring-trans-issues

Writing in the journal of the British Educational Research Association, Alice Sullivan and Judith Suissa catalogued a series of incidents in which gender critical scholars were intimidated or smeared. www.bera.ac.uk/blog/the-gender-wars-academic-freedom-and-education

[Mermoose]

Fifth: Women’s Sports

Many sports are segregated by sex, with good reason. As developmental biologist Dr Emma Hilton has explained in her speech to A Woman’s Place UK,

“Males can run faster, jump longer, throw further and lift heavier than females. They outperform females by 10% on the running track to 30% when throwing various balls.
So big is the gap, there are 9000 males between 100m world record holders Usain Bolt and FloJo.
So early does the gap emerge, the current female 100m Olympic champion, Elaine Thompson, is slower than the 14 year old schoolboy record holder.
So unassailable the gap has proven to be, virtually all elite sports have a protected female category, to allow females to compete fairly against those with the same female potential, and to win, and, OK, to make a little money maybe.”

fairplayforwomen.com/emma_hilton/

Dr Hilton’s speech goes on the discuss the limited effect of medical transition on these differences, but also the fact that male people are often not required to medically transition to compete alongside natal females. What women and girls stand to lose is a fair competition but also, in some cases, safety, for example in contact sports like rugby.

[miri1985]

www.independent.ie/irish-news/health/doctors-in-row-with-hse-over-claims-childrens-transgender-care-is-unsafe-38920159.html

"A number of doctors have claimed a service under which adolescents with gender dysphoria can be given puberty-suppressing hormone blockers is "unsafe" and must be immediately stopped, but their concerns were suppressed.

The service is provided in Ireland by flying in two clinicians from an NHS trust in London to run clinics at Crumlin Children's Hospital.

But the Irish Independent has learned at least three doctors working in the gender area expressed grave concerns over the service provided by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust at Crumlin.

The concerns over standards of clinical care and governance were raised at a meeting of doctors and hospital officials in Crumlin last March.

These included that children had been started on hormone treatment when they did not appear to be suitable.

However, the issues raised and calls by the doctors for the service to be "terminated with immediate effect" were omitted from draft minutes of the meeting.

Something of a standoff has ensued since then, with the HSE claiming their concerns were "not representative of the many clinicians who refer to the Tavistock". Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) has also said it does not have any concerns about the service provided in Crumlin.

Some 291 Irish children have used the service since 2015.

The doctors who raised concerns are consultant endocrinologist Professor Donal O'Shea and consultant psychiatrists Dr Paul Moran and Dr Ian Schneider. All three are attached to the adult national gender service at St Columcille's Hospital in Loughlinstown, Dublin, which deals with adult referrals, including children previously treated at Crumlin."



So 3 senior doctors involved with transgender care on a day to day basis think that the child referrals are "unsafe" but the HSE is ignoring that because other people who aren't involved in it think its grand. Anyone want to speculate how many million this is going to cost the State when the lawsuits start?

[MadamBatty]

So who in HSE is making this decision that all is ‘grand’. An administrator or a Clinician? Thanks for the link Miri1985

[DuLANGMondeFOREVER]

I didn’t know the Tavi had an Irish clinic. I know they have one in Leeds. I wonder if there are any more?

[3timeslucky]

It isn't an Irish Tavi clinic as such. The HSE (our NHS but much crappier) is hiring in the services of two Tavi Clinicians. I'm sure that ensures that the HSE (and by extension we the taxpayers) will be picking up the bills for the lawsuits that will inevitably follow.

[ludog]

I've just had my local SF candidate at the door. I brought up self ID she was very cagey about it until she figured my stance on it. She's a terf, I do believe 😁

[3timeslucky]

If she's that cagey on a doorstep what chances are there of her coming over all brave in the Dail?

[ludog]

That's true enough. She wasn't inclined to believe me about the TW in Limerick prison

[3timeslucky]

So she's not GC enough to be following what's going on? I do wonder if any of them have a clue about the legislation, the impact, what's happening in schools, colleges, prisons, the concerns raised by Donal O'Shea ... anything really.

[Mermoose]

Well that's the Soc Dems crossed off for me. I just read their LGBTI+ Policy, and it's dreadful.

They are promising:

• Introduction of the informed-consent model of care (which means that patients take all responsibility for the outcome of the treatment, and removes gatekeeping)
  
• Updating hate speech legislation - in this context, will very likely lead to Maya Forstater-type cases
  
• Gender neutral facilities in all services, especially where there are vulnerable people - it actually says that, so exactly the people who need safeguarding won't get it
  
• Ban conversion therapy - which has already been done? But I take it that this means they're against anything but affirmative care, which will lead to detransitioners.
  

I wasn't hopeful, but this is worse than I'd imagined.

www.socialdemocrats.ie/socdems-lgbti-policy-bringing-hope-and-building-trust/

[miri1985]

I would hope in light of the HSE settling the case where the woman got narcolepsy from the swine flu vaccine would put them off trying anything where informed consent is the sole method and there is no gatekeeping.

That case was supposed to test whether informed consent was an appropriate model where a drug had limited clinical trials
www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/swine-flu/

It was settled out of court right before trial www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-court/woman-settles-case-alleging-swine-flu-vaccine-link-to-narcolepsy-1.4088119

[Mermoose]

I just don't know. This issue is so politicised, the strangest decisions are taken and it seems like usual caution just doesn't apply.

[miri1985]

@Mermoose in case you missed this today, thought it was very pertinent in light of what the Soc Dems and I'm sure some other parties want www.thejournal.ie/teenager-sexually-assaulted-in-cork-hospital-ward-5004069-Feb2020/

[Mermoose]

Thanks Miri. How horrible for that girl.
Buy also - why do they keep saying that it was a mistake to put her in a mixed ward because the guy had a history of mental illness? Men assault women all the time, they don't have to have a history of mental illness to do it.

[WipeYourFeet]

I read that story today & immediately thought this is why there should be single sex wards - full stop.
Mental health history of the male patient shouldn't come into it at all.

Back to the original topic of this thread, I'm ashamed to say I wish I had done my homework before the election and read the Green Party's stance on Trans issues. Endangering our kids to this fad.
It's here on this twitter thread (hope this link works) twitter.com/glasaaiteacha/status/1225365973332627456?s=21

[WipeYourFeet]

And ...

[SpindleBerry]

That's a really good article from Kirkup, thanks for posting it. I'm not in Ireland but good luck with the action you take, I believe it will have a cumulative effect.

"I’m going to conclude with an observation I’ve made here before, but which I think bears repeating in the context of that report and the things it might tell people about other aspects of the trans issue: no policy made in the shadows can survive in sunlight"

[Mermoose]

Thanks WipeYourFeet, good to have that as reference. Yeah, all the parties have lost their minds on this issue.
Thanks SpindleBerry. I was hunting down some references & stopped working on it but will add more soon.