Observer today re Keira Bell

[rogdmum]

There’s also two great stories in the Sunday Telegraph today which deserve their own thread (I’ll not hog all the thread starting) but here’s the Observer with quote from Bayswater Support Group:

“The Bayswater Support Group, which describes itself as supporting “the parents of children with adolescent-onset gender dysphoria” who want to “explore all options before resorting to irreversible medical treatments and surgery”, welcomed the ruling.

A spokesperson said the UK’s current approach affirming a child’s need to transition was embedded at an institutional level.

One mother belonging to the group said: “Nothing can describe the fear you feel as a parent when you realise that medical transition is the only solution presented to your child for distress around their gender identity. Given that institutions – from schools to government, charities to the NHS – have supported this route, we have felt powerless to intervene.”

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/06/keira-bell-lawyer-warns-on-internet-coverage-of-transgender-issues

@BewaretheIckabog

It’s trending on Twitter.

I do wish people would recognise the children have been let down, not by transphobia, but by organisations like the Tavistock, Mermaids and Stonewall.

They have failed them by refusing to explore options apart from affirmation and medication. They have failed them by not having proper checks and balances and by riding roughshod over basic safeguarding. They have failed them by not following good practice and due diligence. They have failed them by ignoring the law on informed consent. They have failed them by encouraging self-harm and suicide ideation as the alternative and telling them people with genuine concerns are transphobic bigots. They have failed them by closing down all debate and research.

If children are distressed it’s not because of JKR or the witches on MN it’s because the organisations supposed to help them have acted unlawfully and with tunnel vision.

Misgendering and dead-naming people is a hate crime according to these organisations but medical experiments rendering children sexually dysfunctional and sterile are ok as is joking about your gender dysphoric child’s genitalia. What has happened is criminal and KB et al have brought much needed sunlight.

Let’s hope things change and all children get the support they need.

Great post.

I doubt a child of 10 would be given a pb. We've had the odd child start puberty at primary then. It's usually reserved for extreme cases such as 6/7.

No 10 year old is given GnRHa drugs for precocious puberty. PP is classified as 8 or under in girls and there is discussion about reclassifying that to 7. PP girls are actually taken off blockers at 10.

There is no overlap between precocious puberty kids and gender dysphoria kids.

Was so relieved to read today’s Observer editorial piece on this and came onto this board to see if it had been mentioned! I didn’t realise the Observer had a different position on this (I also thought it was effectively Guardian on Sunday as PP suggested)
Is this a sign the media may get braver after the Bell victory and will start to (finally) call out the emperor’s new clothes?
And I also wonder, will they now also follow suit with the issue of sex based protections and spaces? Or is that too much to hope for.

I think the reaction of some of these people make them look totally unhinged. They have been inside their echo chamber for so long and their sense of normality has become so skewed that they genuinely can't understand why most people outside of the bubble are horrified by the idea of a 12-year-old being set on a path to sterilisation and surgery.

I also hope that this reaction shakes the Guardian into realising just who it has been aligning itself with. These people can't even bring themselves to acknowledge that the case of Keira Bell should never have happened. No one has said something like 'what happened to Keira was awful but since then our procedures have tightened up and our psychological assessments are much more rigorous than they were in 2012'.

No. It's all accusations of transphobia, emotional blackmail about suicide and an insistence in some quarters in calling Keira 'Quincy'.

Really, Guardian, this is who you've been appeasing all these years?

Absolutely Betty. And even then they're use is being debated for PP.

Once again; why the obsession for giving these drugs to children from adult males?

Edge, yes, it's been completely normalised. There's been a lot of grooming going on.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in the Graun or Observer offices in this showdown.

I’m unfailingly shocked by the position taken by those purporting to support these distressed young people “OH MY GOD EVERYONE HATES YOU AND THEY WANT YOU DEAD!!”.

I would have rather thought that support would be more along the lines of “OK, so we’re not sure if this treatment has helped you, and it might not be the best option. In the meantime, you are loved and supported and we will figure out what the best thing to do for you is. Don’t worry- there is hope”.

But no. Everyone hates you and wants you dead, and if you hadn’t thought of suicide before, now is a good time, because that’s a perfectly normal response from someone in your position. It’s inexcusable.

My personal favourite response was the one from Ben V on the quotes from the We're Still Here conference, in which he proudly announced that anyone who is even slightly concerned about this is "concern-trolling." That's quite a rhetorical trick, taking someone's valid concern and immediately deriding it as trolling just because he doesn't personally agree with it!

I'm amazed Dawson wasn't in court representing GIDs or maybe Mermaids or the Tavistock to put those Judges right. Amazing how all this evidence being shouted about was missing from that court case.

Exactly.

It's all very Trumpy.

Everyone hates you and wants you dead, and if you hadn’t thought of suicide before, now is a good time, because that’s a perfectly normal response from someone in your position. It’s inexcusable.

It's almost as though they want there to be an increase in suicide attempts in order to prove that they are right. Why else would they do this to children who they say they care about?

@DinoGloria

Absolutely Betty. And even then they're use is being debated for PP.

Once again; why the obsession for giving these drugs to children from adult males?

Yes, why? You can't 'diagnose' a child as trans, if by trans you mean someone who will experience severe gender dysphoria into adulthood and beyond. So what is the reason?

The gender believers are daily looking more and more like the right wing religious zealots they accuse us of being.