Radio 4 Women’s Hour Talking about Puberty Blockers Shortly

[rogdmum]

Not sure exactly when, but this morning on Women’s Hour (10:00-11:00) the recent changes to the NHS website re puberty blockers potential risks and unknowns will be discussed.

Uncovering a scandal doesn't automatically occur when the misbehaviour comes to light. Scandals can trundle on for much longer than that where everyone with a stake knows about it but there's a weird kind of inertia. It needs to be pushed and pushed until those in power simply cannot ignore it any more.

It was one of the things that really caught my attention about the Post Office Horizon scandal. Everyone involved knew about it and those responsible just looked away into the distance until there was about to be a High Court decision that was about to make those responsible look more shit and devious and plain nasty than anyone would have imagined.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jfyv

Yes! I've been having those thoughts too. A lot of these things can happen in plain sight but it takes a change in thw public mood before it blows up into a scandal.

The staff working there must know they are on borrowed time. It’s too late to reverse now they can’t say whoops sorry. That’s why they are sticking their head in the sand.

They probably don’t want to admit to themselves they were wrong.

It seems that people were afraid to challenge this as the we’re afraid of being transphobic. The approach of here is the science young people and family can make an informed choice is good here. You can’t argue with the science. It is non confrontational and that might cause some people to change there minds.

The best example of a lying in plain sight yet ignored scandal I can think of is the Hillsborough disaster. All of the relevant information was widely known for decades and yet those in power/having responsibility could simply ignore it and there was no way of holding them to account. It was only when the Hillsborough Independent Panel reported that the public became engaged and there was a huge outrage as the facts known for decades were seen as if for the first time.

An older scandal which is waiting for a similar kind of trigger to "become known" is the use of the Police as a paramilitary force during the Miners' Strike. Most of the scandalous stuff is known but those in power have been able to simply look past it for nearly 40 years. While the scandal sits there in plain sight.

Getting action needs more than just showing there's been wrongdoing.

Transcript of the discussion threadreaderapp.com/thread/1277990757786411010.html

On a more individual level it's like the Michael Jackson stuff blowing up in the public consciousness.

That blew hot and cold for years with most people ignoring how incredibly weird it was for an adult man to be constantly in the company of adolescent boys and share his bed with them.

The public watched for years as he basically 'dated' one 11 year old boy after another yet it took decades for the reality of what this most likely meant sink in.

Everyone knew about dodgy priests (I wont say rapey, that's not quite it)
But no one did anything.
Dodgy tv presenters and pop stars
Dodgy mini cab drivers and takeaway owners
That dodgy taxi driver
That dodgy bloke in your tow

I'm not the first to say this, as you on this board well know.

I know. Now I understand about Jimmy Saville. Everyone who knew him knew. A lot of them thought it was perfectly fine. Look at all the people who supported PIE.

That’s why when he died everyone was like yeah that happened. Not one person disputed it because they knew all along.

So what is happening in plain sight at the monent? Clearly we are encouraging (and drugging) young people to delay or prevent puberty.
Is there anything else?

Well mermaids and their awful behaviour. The undisguised homophobia from Susie Green. The fact that they have no safeguarding. They have influence in schools that has encouraged them to things against their better judgement.

One of the safeguarding courses I did was with a church (for my child’s toddler group). It was a different perspective to the ones I have done through work. The instructor said that whole churches can be groomed and that Christians want to believe the best in people and that can make them vulnerable. I think that is what has been happening here. Whole institutions are being groomed. People who want to see the best in people who they know are facing a lot of prejudice overlook a lot. They can see it but they dismiss their rightful concerns as internalised transphobia. This inadvertently results in actual transphobia where they accept a much lower standard of care than they would for kids who are not trans.

The same happens for disabled children (I am autistic amongst other things). There is a link between gay conversion therapy and therapy that is meant to cure autism. ABA was rebranded as a therapy for autism after it was banned by for use on gay or gender non conforming children and lo what is happening. The same kids a different cure.

Expecting abuse victims to deny reality and their trauma to validate males - would that come into this category?

Destroying girls' chances of sporting success by allowing males to compete.

The instructor said that whole churches can be groomed and that Christians want to believe the best in people and that can make them vulnerable.

This is where "be kind" and "people are who they say they are" leads us. As you say, this leads to whole institutions being groomed.

Forget "be kind". We should all be vigilant.

This is the question that people should not be able to wriggle out of: they accept a much lower standard of care than they would for kids who are not trans. That actually is transphobic. That is treating children who have been put in specific groups worse than other children, by default.

This problem also applies to consent. There is no way that a child or young person can give informed consent to throwing away their natural sexual function (capacity to orgasm, for example), their natural fertility (capacity to produce own gametes) or reproductive capacity (for women to carry a pregnancy to term) and to take on unacceptable, irreversible side effects like increased cancer risks, loss of IQ, loss of bone density, vaginal atrophy, permanent voice changes, hair growth pattern changes. These are reported from blockers, taking long term cross-sex hormones, or having surgery.

Apparently human brains don’t mature fully until 25 years old and that’s WITH natural puberty.

What child or young person can truly understand what removing those natural capacities forever, or what rendering themselves a permanent medical patient, will really will mean to them as an adult?

How can they possibly consent to something they can never reverse and about which there is every likelihood they will change their mind?

Part of the reason there is no way to consent to this is that there is still a lack of robust evidence about either risks OR of benefits from medical, hormonal or surgical transition for kids. The research is not being robustly done even where children and young people are being prescribed these treatments in large numbers by the NHS, and have been for years. And that’s another national scandal in plain sight.

The lack of conditions to allow informed consent in irreversible medical, hormonal or surgical transition at a young age, are completely different BTW, to decisions that Gillick competent young people can understand in their own situation.

Examples I would give here are being prescribed contraception or an abortion if they have an unintended pregnancy. It’s typical TRA crap to say gender critical thinking is anti Gillick. Plenty of threads on here about that if people want to read more on that.