The case brought by the unbelievably brave and public-spirited Keira Bell 
(and the understandably anonymous mother of another child bringing the case with her ) who have together got an ongoing judicial review going of NHS GIDS policy around medical ‘treatment’ of children with gender dysphoria, distress or confusion should absolutely be putting the wind right up the BBC.
Breast binding = self harm, self-physical-limitation from normal healthy function and exertion. Breast binding is self-hatred and severe distress acted out brutally (only) on the female body. It’s nothing like wearing a minimising bra or sports bra because you want a different look under a T-shirt, for fucks sake. The way they describe it is so trivialised, it’s a risky and dangerous thing.
I’m sick of hearing about how the establishment is writing off kids in distress and not paying for psychological support through CAMHS. How they are actually supporting the indoctrination and harmful treatment of kids being openly pushed for by a powerful political machine advancing men’s sexual rights and selling snake oil fantasy with one hand, and making the threat of ostracism for wrong-think with the other.
When have making permanent physical damage to a child or young person’s body ever been a genuine, lasting cure for their distress, confusion, anxiety, delusion, fantasy, their response to trauma or to grooming, or to them just wanting to fit in or the fact that they understandably wishing that the world didn’t enforce sexualisation and rigid, reductive, life-confining pink or blue expectations on to them?
The way the concerns about all this has been ignored by the media in general and their rainbow-washed positive presentation of medical interventions and breast binding show they have learnt nothing from all of those recent child sexual abuse scandals, or from Savile. It’s not just the media at fault here, but they are certainly complicit.
Women have been saying to the BBC for years now that they must ask questions and we just get waved away. We have written to our MPs about this and they haven’t set up any parliamentary enquiry either.
The fact that it’s individuals who have been harmed by all this, like Keira, having to go public to challenge this in the face of an actively indifferent and hostile establishment makes me respect her even more for bringing this case, though I do feel she should not be having to do this. This is society’s problem of safeguarding, it is not about individuals.
The BBC have been not only uncritically cheerleading genderist politics for years but also making it very easy for #nodebate figureheads to avoid talking about any of the possible down sides and to avoid speaking about all of the massive unknowns.
That has been a huge failure of journalistic standards. I’m not a journalist but #nodebate should be a massively suspicious red flag to anyone with any vestige of common sense.
Small pockets of BBC output- with a particularly honourable mention to Newsnight’s Deborah Cohen and Hannah Barnes www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49036145
and also to Emily Maitliss for objective interviewing on Newsnight, and to Justin Webb for asking reasonable questions on radio 4 Today prog, have all been noted on here and praised for upholding journalistic integrity. I think they have been starting to break down the uncritical stance at the BBC. The article today on Keira Bell written by Alison Holt, Social affairs news correspondent is objective. www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51676020
However, I think that the BBC and the media altogether needs an enquiry on how they have been presenting these issues, how they have been reporting on ‘trans children’ (a completely political category that encourages separate treatment with lesser safeguarding and affirmative treatment with a lack of medical evidence).
New, professional objectivity-assuring reporting guidelines need to be urgently drawn up for the media as a whole on this whole area.