Ben Hunte BBC article about puberty blocker ban

[risefromyourgrave]

Not biased at all maybe they’re trying to appease the people upset by big meanie Amol Rajan....

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55369784

Adults have whipped up hysteria in children, feeding their distress at going through normal natural puberty. Children should never have been told that early onset osteoporosis, infertility and vaginas atrophy would improve their mental health.

@Positrans - I thought you believed that being trans was not a mental health issue so I'm a bit confused here because you seem to be suggesting that it is.

Doctors and parents have told the BBC the ruling could cause distressed trans teens to self-harm or even take their own lives.

Evidence?

Gender dysphoria is when a mismatch between a person's sex assigned at birth and their gender identity causes them distress.

What is a 'gender identity' and in what way(s) is it expected to 'match' their sex? We really need an objective definition of what a 'gender identity' is and why such serious physical treatment is required when it doesn't 'match' someone's body.

Quote from a 'trans boy':
"I spend a lot of time wishing I could be a normal boy and there is no help for me."

Who has been telling this child that they can change sex?

A clinician who currently works within the NHS GIDS, told the BBC her patients are now being left alone to deal with distress.

"The young trans people I'm talking to now are experiencing deeply distressing mental health problems," she says.

Does she think that these mental health problems would be better treated with counselling and therapy or with drugs to arrest their normal development which will make them into medical patients for life?

In a letter seen exclusively by the BBC, GenderGP - one of the only private healthcare providers for transgender people in the UK - calls on NHS England's Medical Director for Specialist Services, James Palmer, to take urgent action.

The letter asks him to provide "interim solutions to prevent harm". It adds: "The mental health implications of this cannot be underestimated, and the risk of self-harm and suicide must be acknowledged."

They seem to have conveniently overlooked the fact that GenderGP is now owned by a company based in Hong Kong and is still being run by a doctor who has been suspended from practising in the UK and who has a criminal conviction for running an illegal clinic here.

They have also conveniently overlooked the fact that at least one of GenderGPs teenage patients took their own life whilst under their 'care' and taking opposite sex hormones prescribed by them.

On the other hand, you do have the voice of Theo, who was so distressed he tried to take his own life and spent time in intensive care.

And the way to solve Theo's obvious mental health issues is to put Theo on a lifetime medical pathway, starting with unlicensed drugs. Great!

Anyway, I thought being trans was just like being gay?

archive.is/6nHPQ

How can people not see that giving the message that part of being trans is being suicidal is just so dangerous?!

@Positrans, I'm not sure, I've never been to a psychiatrist. But perhaps yes - perhaps someone COULD have suggested to me that the reason I didnt fit in and was deeply depressed as a teenager was because I had gender dysphoria, especially if lots of my peer group seemed to have the same problem.

I remember being a very unhappy adolescent who didn't fit in, and had suicidal thoughts. I wasn't one of the trendy crowd, I wasn't beautiful and I tended to wear baggy clothes as I didn't like my emerging mature female body. I hated having to wear a bra. I didnt put on makeup and spray clouds of hairspray in the loos. I didn't especially like boys, I remember pretending to fancy someone so I wouldn't be left out. I didn't especially like girls either. Eventually my best friends were female, but none of them were especially feminine.

But, I am definitely a woman. And I'm glad I came through adolescence without anyone casting doubt on it, as I think I would have taken a suggestion of a solution, ANY solution, for my issues, and run with it.

I'm really interested, if trans people have always existed, why weren't they all committing suicide in droves when I was a teenager?

@highame

Had Theo been given good support instead of fed the line that Theo could change sex and all would be right with the world. Theo and kids like him would be adjusting to puberty and then getting on with their lives. The majority of kids hate puberty. Many kids think about suicide this doesn't mean preventing one harm by medicating and so causing a more long term health damaging harm

Hear hear! Using a threat of suicide is leading to all sorts of issues. Not least, people who do use it as emotional blackmail to get what they want, such as men who use it to stop their partners from leaving them.

Appallingly biased and irresponsible piece of so-called reporting. I have just emailed my complaint to the BBC.

You simply don't need to permanently physically damage a perfectly healthy body in order to express your "gender identity".

Look at Eddie Izzard, she's not done much at all and I presume Positrans, you accept her femaleness to be the same as your mum's.

Teenagers: there was a load of self harm (mostly girls) when I was a teen - Certain ‘tribes’ were known for it (lesbians being one). This isn’t a trans think it’s a teen thing.

The Jack Turban article from earlier this year shows that adults who were on puberty blockers as children are twice as likely to have been hospitalised for a suicide attempt in the last 12 months compared to those who hadn’t been on puberty blockers.

The Tavistock whistle blower pointed out these kids are given "lines" by TRA forums and Mermaids etc in order to get what they want.
Who's to tell which are genuinely distressed and which aren't so much, so who do you help most?
It's a dangerous narrative.
Stop encouraging it.

@SillyOldMummy

"I'm really interested, if trans people have always existed, why weren't they all committing suicide in droves when I was a teenager?"

There aren't droves of trans people. I don't know when you were a teenager, but one of my trans friends (the one I mentioned on a previous thread who was in coma for 2 weeks) made her first suicide attempt over gender dysphoria as a 15-year-old in 1981.

You might also want to consider how many people took their own lives because they couldn't tell anyone they were trans in a world that was even harsher against trans people. I certainly told no one growing up - not family or anyone. I was utterly terrified that someone would find out.

Does Ben do no research on the people he quotes or is Gender Gp and Harrop the best they have?

And if their gender identity is insistent, persistent and consistent by the onset of puberty, we can be almost completely sure that it is fixed. At that point, we move, in some cases, to puberty blockers

So they’re not a “pause” to give kids time to think then are they? It’s nice to see acknowledgment that this is a lie, and it’s about affirming rather than buying time.

Telling a vulnerable young child that they can change sex is unbelievably cruel. The best you can ever hope for is a medically induced resemblance to the opposite sex that comes with serious side effects such as needing a hysterectomy at an early age due to atrophy. And you will still know that you’re not really the opposite sex because such a thing is an impossibility. Letting a child go through puberty and disabusing them of the notion that they actually are the opposite sex is the kindest way forward. There are lots and lots of female teens who feel they are the opposite sex. There are vanishingly few women over 30 who do. If there were really such a thing as being born in the wrong body then surely the numbers would be steady across populations? They’re not and it’s only really in the past 10 years that there has been such a huge rise of girls thinking they are boys. How do you explain this? Something in the water?

@PronounssheRa

Does Ben do no research on the people he quotes or is Gender Gp and Harrop the best they have?

Harrop has zero training and experience in dealing with the normal development and the spectrum of developmental problems in children. He has no idea what kids are actually like and he’s treated as an expert spokesperson on this subject.

By the BBC.

You can't change someone's gender identity with mental health support. Would it work on you - do you think a psychiatrist could completely convince you that you have a male gender identity?

What is a 'gender identity'? How is a 'male gender identity' different from a 'female gender identity'? What is the problem that these treatment programmes are trying to solve? How do you believe that changing someone's body into a facsimile of one of the opposite sex (and in doing so making them into a lifelong medical patient) will help their mental health?

@NotBadConsidering

And if their gender identity is insistent, persistent and consistent by the onset of puberty, we can be almost completely sure that it is fixed. At that point, we move, in some cases, to puberty blockers

So they’re not a “pause” to give kids time to think then are they? It’s nice to see acknowledgment that this is a lie, and it’s about affirming rather than buying time.

Yeah, the ‘buying time’ thing is an outright lie. It’s because they want to preserve the body in a childlike state until it’s legal to give irreversible hormones because this will give the most ‘realistic’ results, especially for males. That’s the only reason why and it’s criminal that they try to pretend that there’s any other reason for it.

It’s amazing how quickly that came out. Fiona Bisshop, president of AusPath said the same in her article for the Sydney Morning Herald. Years and years of “it buys time for kids to decide” gone, the second the Bell ruling came in. Instead now it’s “it shows we are picking the right kids”,

“We have always been at war with Eastasia.”

There aren't droves of trans people

Dorothy stringer secondary school in Brighton have something like twenty in each year group at the moment. About the same numbers as when bulemia/anorexia was the disorder du jour.

Honestly, when the only 'other view' is one that celebrates a wholly one sided, factually untrue article that has been posted to emotionally manipulate people into overlooking the very serious issues identified by court judges - who took an impartial decision from the evidence submitted by the expert clinicians doing the job- and cares only about the children who fit their own personal agenda...

It becomes very clear that there is no point even trying to debate this. I hope this is very thoroughly tested again in an appeal, in part because those so wholly stuck in a personal agenda without being able to deal with the wider picture or the issues involved should not have any part in making lifelong impacting decisions on children. If adults cannot even face and engage with the issues here beyond plain denying they exist or matter, then the judges had it right; children certainly can't.