Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Can anyone remember where the evidence about the demographic characteristics of GIDS service users is?

22 replies

WeAreGerbil · 17/01/2021 14:28

I think it came out about a year ago (though time seems a bit strange at the moment!)

There was some stuff in there about vulnerability and in particular a larger proportion of children from lower socio-economic groups than I would have expected. I want it for something I'm writing for one of the political parties, and I can't find it through Google.

TIA if anyone knows what I'm referring to!

OP posts:
persistentwoman · 17/01/2021 16:06

Are you thinking of Michael Biggs work? Have a look at Transgender Trend:
www.transgendertrend.com/the-tavistocks-experiment-with-puberty-blockers-part-5-the-belated-results/

WeAreGerbil · 17/01/2021 16:24

Thanks for the response, I can't see what I thought I remembered, I feel as though it was about the same time, but I thought it was stats produced by GIDS themselves, possibly in relation to some challenge. I remember some discussion on here at the time. It's weird I can't find it again (note to self to keep better records of things when I find them!)

OP posts:
Al77 · 17/01/2021 16:55

From the abstract, it looks like this is what you are after:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25431051/

I no longer have an Athens account though so can't get the full text version for you sorry.

Al77 · 17/01/2021 16:58

pg 6 for demographics and comorbidities

Al77 · 17/01/2021 17:00

Also this from the US:
healthresearchfunding.org/gender-identity-disorder-statistics/

WeAreGerbil · 17/01/2021 17:23

Thanks, that's got some really useful info in it (though still not the document I was thinking about!) - 88% of the girls identified as same sex attracted or bisexual - bloody hell.

OP posts:
MoleSmokes · 17/01/2021 18:34

WeAreGerbil Was it this?

“An open letter to Dr Polly Carmichael from a former GIDS clinician”
Kirsty Entwhistle
July 18 2019

medium.com/@kirstyentwistle/an-open-letter-to-dr-polly-carmichael-from-a-former-gids-clinician-53c541276b8d

WeAreGerbil · 17/01/2021 19:32

Also not what I was thinking of, but still useful, thanks!

OP posts:
Soontobe60 · 17/01/2021 19:48

[quote Al77]Also this from the US:
healthresearchfunding.org/gender-identity-disorder-statistics/[/quote]
Whoever wrote the article you’ve cited is clearly about 16! It’s full of grammatical errors, has no substantiated references to back up iota claims, and is just nonsense actually. Take this load of tripe for example:

  • The Causes of Gender Dysphoria Gender dysphoria, as of now, doesn’t have any causes that are completely understood by the medical community. Finding what causes gender dysphoria is a topic of interest for the transgender community and the medical community. Gender dysphoria, when formerly classified as gender identity disorder, was originally conceived as a psychiatric condition. Recent studies now suggest gender dysphoria is inherently biological, originating from how gender identity develops from birth. Therefore, gender dysphoria isn’t a mental illness. As mentioned, gender dysphoria may develop from disparities in how a child’s gender identity develops from birth. Most of a child’s gender identity develops happens in the womb or uterus. To understand how gender is determined in the womb, and possibly may play a role in gender dysphoria, let’s look at how gender develops in the womb*
MoleSmokes · 18/01/2021 19:36

WeAreGerbil - Is it in the info on the GIDS website? I haven’t re-read this to check, just looking through my bookmarks for you Smile

”Referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) level off in 2018-19”
28 June 2019

tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/news/stories/referrals-gender-identity-development-service-gids-level-2018-19/

GIDS has published a lot of other stuff, not just on their own website.

Maybe something among this lot?

repository.tavistockandportman.ac.uk/view/subjects/R3.html

I don’t know the title of the original version of this article on Medium by Valentina Medici - it is incredibly useful and crammed full of stats so, obviously, Medium deleted it.

The archived version starts:

”It has taken me nearly two years to compile this lot, And I have done this because I am heartily fed up with having to battle for the rights of women and girls in the face of people who believe that sex based rights are not under attack.

Well, in a nut shell, they are. And here is plenty of proof.“

archive.is/2cvw3

Another possibility?

”Gender-affirming hormone in children and adolescents”
BMJ 25th February 2019

blogs.bmj.com/bmjebmspotlight/2019/02/25/gender-affirming-hormone-in-children-and-adolescents-evidence-review/

PlantMam · 19/01/2021 02:10

This one?

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1359104518791657

In a 2 year period (2009-2011) 8.6 % of children referred to GIDS were either in care or adopted.

(this was before the big spike and the flip to mostly girls occurred).

NecessaryScene1 · 19/01/2021 06:22

either in care or adopted.

I recall reading that in Canada there was a ludicrously high percentage of children in care that had been transed recently. I guess the natural result of being raised in a "Stonewalled" institution that has a stupid list of "signs of distress = trans", high likelihood of distress, and no parents to step in. :(

(Sorry, just increasing the references backlog, not helping...)

MoleSmokes · 19/01/2021 15:01

@PlantMam

This one?

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1359104518791657

In a 2 year period (2009-2011) 8.6 % of children referred to GIDS were either in care or adopted.

(this was before the big spike and the flip to mostly girls occurred).

Thank you for digging out that reference! I had been wondering if there was similar pattern to Canada!

NecessaryScene1 The person leading the campaign for a national inquiry in Canada is Jenn Smith, trans-identified male (Mods: that is how Jenn describes himself and he uses male pronouns).

I’m not sure if I have already posted the text below on another thread:

This is an international scandal.

It is not just children in care in the UK who are disproportionately likely to be referred for experimental chemical and medical transition resulting in sterilisation.

Jenn Smith is campaigning in Canada about the disproportionate number of children in care who are being referred to Gender Services as “trans”. Within that group, there is even higher over-representation of Indigenous children.

Jenn is male, transgender and uses male pronouns. He only looked into the proportion of children in care because he had been in foster care himself. He is having huge problems getting anyone in the British Colombia legislature to take an interest.

These are some notes I made of the stats Jenn shared in one of his videos:

Dr Wallace Wong - Gender Psychologist, British Columbia

Of all his patients approx 1,000 children, 50% from Ministry of Child and Health Development, ie Children in Care

BC
approx 650,000 school age children
approx 6,500 in Care

Gen Pop Kids:
0.5% (1 in 200) kids ID as Trans

Kids in Care under Dr Wallace Wong:
7.7% ID as Trans (15 times as many as in the General Population)

But family doctors can also prescribe blockers, hormones and they too may have more children in care

May be as high as 10% Kids in Care are Trans vs 0.5% in General Population

Kids in care may be 20 times more likely to be trans than other kids.

** But Gen Pop figure will include Kids in Care? So maybe higher again?

Jenn has tried to raise with MSM but they are not interested in covering the story

7.7% of Canadian kids are indigenous children

52% of Children in Care are indigenous

Not known: proportion of Dr Wong's patients that are indigenous

(Canadian Govt used to sterilise indigenous children!)

Jenn Smith is calling for a National inquiry into trans rates in Canada:

  • all Children in Care
  • indigenous children in care
  • kids with ASD

”Updated: Call for National Inquiry into Mass "Sex Reassignment" & Sterilization of Vulnerable Youths”

2 Nov 2020

This is an update of my video calling for a national inquiry into the sudden mass "Sex reassignment" and subsequent sterilization of large numbers of foster children, autistic youths, indigenous youths, and children and adolescents with various other psychological and emotional problems. Has eugenics returned? We need a national inquiry now! New citations / sourcing included in video.

Jenn did, or tried to do, a Speaking Tour in British Columbia to raise awareness of the issue. Everything went well until he introduced a new segment of his talks that focused on the Pharmaceutical industry. Then this sort of thing happened: protests organised by trans activists and local politicians, local police ignoring phone calls for help because they had been told not to respond, fire service failing to attend, Jenn repeatedly physically attacked, in one case being disabled and hurt when a giant net was thrown over him. Local press covering incidents as, you can guess, “protests against transphobia and bigotry”.

Warning: The sound on this video is very loud!

”14 min of Raw Footage Madness as LGBTQ Protesters Go Crazy Silencing Transgender Speaker Jenn Smith”

6 May 2019

Excerpt from an hour and a half of madness when a massive mob of LGBTQ protesters behaved like spoiled screaming children in order to silence a speaker that identifies as transgender from criticizing transgender laws and programs that he feels harms children, women's rights, and basic freedoms.

”Call For National Inquiry into the Mass Medical “Sex Reassignment” and Chemical Sterilization of Vulnerable Youth”

1st Nov 2020

^”We now have evidence (see attached video below) that foster children, autistic children, indigenous children, and various other at risk children suffering from emotional and psychological problems are being “sex reassigned” at startlingly high and disproportionate rates (fifteen to twenty times more than children without these issues), and are being put on life-long physically altering pharmaceutical medications that can permanently sterilize them.
Powerful drugs such as Lupron and synthetic hormones (which according to the University of California San Francisco causes permanent and irreversible sterility), the long term side effects of which are not known, are prescribed to kids as young as “Tanner Stage 2” (typically starting at 10 or 11 years old). “Lupron,” said Smith, “is associated with all kinds of potentially serious side effects including bone density issues and the stunting of genital development and numerous other problems. It essentially disables parts of the endocrine system stunting growth and development.”^

Smith also notes current policies are trampling women’s rights and parental rights, and he citesthe case of a Delta fatherwho was forced against his will to facilitate his daughter’s “sex reassignment” procedures which included the injection of high doses of testosterone. This case has been the subject of numerous Supreme Court hearings.”

Continued at:

transanityca.wordpress.com/2020/11/01/call-for-national-inquiry-into-the-mass-medical-sex-reassignment-and-chemical-sterilization-of-vulnerable-youths/

Jenn Smith interviewed by Erin Brewer. This covers a lot of ground, including Jenn and Erin’s perspectives from their own troubled childhoods, experiences of trans identity and dysphoria as means of coping with trauma.

”A Moratorium on Medically Transitioning Children and A National Inquiry”

13 July 2020

Jenn Smith, an activist for children's rights, shares his deep concerns about the explosion of children being medically transitioned. Jenn grew up in foster care and was alarmed at hearing rumors of the high number of children in foster care being medically transitioned. Jenn shares his story of being a transgender child in the foster care and why he is so concerned about the dangerous treatments given to trans identified children. He is petitioning the Canadian government for a moratorium on all medical transitioning of children and a national inquiry.

Erin Brewer has also been exposing the activities of Gender Services in the USA, Canada (and elsewhere) as well as interviewing parents, detransitioners, educators, campaigners, etc.

One of these is Psychologist Dr Wallace Wong - the Vancouver Gender Therapist who Jenn Smith discovered was transitioning hundreds of children in foster care. Over 500 children in foster care out of 1,000 children on his books. The youngest less than three years old.

Wong acknowledges that only 20% of children will go on to transition if they are not affirmed in a cross-sex identity - yet he affirms 100%.

Other studies suggest that only 2% of children do not “desist” after puberty.

80% - 98% would have been cured by natural puberty if they had been allowed to experience it.

Instead, 80% - 98% will receive unnecessary and harmful medication that causes developmental delay, bone deterioration and sterilisation with increased risk of cancer and cardiac problems.

This is in preparation for radical surgery that will leave them with significant risk of further long-term health problems, eg. early Alzheimer’s in females, and increased risk of mental health problems and suicide.

80% - 98% did not need any of these interventions. Many will want to “detransition” as best they can. The treatment, including chemical and physical castration, hysterectomy and double mastectomies will cause gender dysphoria that they would otherwise never have experienced beyond puberty.

Half of those children will be from the tiny percentage of the population who are in foster care, children who have already experienced trauma and need help. Instead, they are exploited for profit and their ruined lives disregarded as collateral damage.

20% of all the children Dr Wong sees have autism. This is also much higher than in the general population.

Children with autism are particularly susceptible interpreting metaphor as literal reality, eg. “born in the wrong body”, and to getting fixed ideas, ie. being “persistent and insistent.

Not content with admitting that he intends to deliberately harm up to 98% of the children he sees, Dr Wong recommends that children attempt or threaten suicide or self-harm eg. cutting themselves, in order to get bumped up the waiting list

”Wallace Wong: Exposed”
15 July 2020 Erin Brewer

It is unbelievable that psychologist Wallace Wong is allowed to see vulnerable children at his clinic. He admits that the vast majority of children with gender confusion will outgrow it and that there is no way to diagnose transgender children, yet he enthusiastically encourages children to identify as transgender.

As Robert Hoogland fought to stop his daughter from being given testosterone that will irreversibly harm her body, Wallace Wong testified that she would benefit from this dangerous treatment and that she was capable of providing medical consent.

I urge you to support Rob in his efforts to save his daughter from further harm and to bring Wallace Wong to justice.

Jenn Smith, who is calling for a national inquiry into what is happening at gender clinics, wanted me to make sure to include this because Wong has a reputation for being litigious:

It is possible that Wallace Wong saw Rob Hoogland's daughter more than twice, but the court report shows that he saw her twice for assessment before referring her to the children's hospital for medical transitioning. Though he might have given her tests, there is no test for transgenderism and no way a doctor can tell if a child is going to maintain a transgender identity throughout adulthood.

WeAreGerbil · 19/01/2021 15:06

Thanks all, I think what I'd remembered was the stuff about levels of abuse / neglect rather than socio-economic class, so I've used that. We'll see whether we still get called transphobes....

OP posts:
MoleSmokes · 19/01/2021 15:09

Just remembered why I had not already posted that text above before.

It is not clear whether Wong has affirmed as “trans” all the children referred to him. It seems bizarre that he would suggest, as he seems to, that the only children referred to him are the 20% who would not have desisted had they been allowed to experience natural puberty.

He does seem to be making that claim and it is extraordinary that he has not been called out on it by his professional body.

MoleSmokes · 19/01/2021 15:11

WeAreGerbil which reference is that in?

PlantMam · 19/01/2021 17:56

If you use the older ‘gender identity disorder’ as a search term you pull up lots of older articles, if you add ‘trauma’ ‘sexual abuse’ ‘looked after’ ‘fostered’ you find lots of case studies and articles.

Ken Zucker was well aware of the phenomenon but was treated incredibly shoddily by bosses under pressure from adult activists.

2016 article: www.thecut.com/2016/02/fight-over-trans-kids-got-a-researcher-fired.html

More recently, of course, we have learned the story of the Irish self ID transperson who is currently held in a woman’s prison. Tavistock did not diagnose gender dysphoria in this patient, but they were certainly a)abused b)in the looked after system and c)living in a cross sex identity.

There are lots of transactivist orgs saying trans people are more likely to experience childhood trauma, but seeing as the cross sex identity is (at least externally) manifested later on, it seems to me that they are using the same data set backwards, and that trauma is a contributing cause to the cross sex identity, rather than the cross sex identity being inborn and the person being subjected to traumatic abuse because of it.

(Although I don’t doubt that GNC/potentially ‘pre gay’ children are more likely to targeted for some forms of abuse, especially in chaotic families, so there is some element of chicken and egg here)

2008 Atlantic article refers to chaotic home lives and neglectful parenting:

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/a-boys-life/307059/

From the Tavistock’s research depository re: families with gender dysphoric children and social work (basically a whole load of ‘no one knows anything!)

repository.tavistockandportman.ac.uk/1110/1/Davidson%20-%20CFSW%20Revision%202-1-14.pdf

2 GIDS case studies published by clinicians in 2019:

critorix.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/clarke-2019.pdf
Another case study from one of the above (a family/systemic therapist) in an article advocating for gender exploration rather than affirmation:

gr.icf-consultations.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Towards-a-Gender-Exploratory-Model-slowing-things-down-opening-things-up-and-exploring-identity-development.pdf

(I like this dude ^ must be hard trying to operate within the political landscape when your approach is thoughtful and slow)

This one has three GIDS case studies, I’ve read it before but can’t seem to get access to it now?

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0075417X.2018.1443150?scroll=top&needAccess=true

There are quite a few psychosocial case studies of families who use the GIDS service in various post graduate thesis published online (unsurprising seeing as T&P is a teaching hospital)

repository.uel.ac.uk/download/05cb94124d963b38f50bad01eea1ea5e403e31a12c7ed7424984d57526694467/1503346/2013_DSW_Gregor.pdf

Anyway, it seems to me that the most effective way to support traumatised and ‘at risk’ kids is via intensive family systemic therapy til 18 and, if still deemed necessary, people can transition in adulthood.

This approach would be a fuck of a lot more expensive than prescribing blockers, even with the eye watering costs of triptorelin.

Transition is instead presented as a simple solution, so you can see why parents and guardians of complicated and distressed kids might cling to it.

NecessaryScene1 · 19/01/2021 18:09

Blinking in awe at MoleSmokes' and PlantMam's citation prowess.

We're not worthy!

MoleSmokes · 19/01/2021 22:41

NecessaryScene1 Blush thank you!

PlantMam - "If you use the older ‘gender identity disorder’ as a search term you pull up lots of older articles, if you add ‘trauma’ ‘sexual abuse’ ‘looked after’ ‘fostered’ you find lots of case studies and articles."

Thank you! Handy tip!

And thank you for all those references.

The number of looked-after children caught up in this is not something I have seen picked up by the mainstream press. I think that it would raise even more eyebrows than the high proportion of children with autism.

WeAreGerbil · 20/01/2021 10:54

Yes, it was the vulnerability of children in relation to trauma, losing a parent, etc. that I thought was particularly striking, as well as the shocking statistic above around sexual orientation.

I could have spent hours on writing something, I wish I had more time to pull it together, but hopefully have made main points, I've written a long letter but this is because it's impossible to get our views across any other way.

OP posts:
PlantMam · 21/01/2021 11:50

I’m just rereading Kirsty Entwistle’s (former clinical psychologist at the Leeds satellite GIDS) open letter to Polly Carmichael (head of GIDS) and there are a couple of bits that seem relevant here, so while I realise it’s too late for Gerbil’s letter, I figured I will pop them down for future reference:

There is a ‘system’ for scoring the referral as low, medium or high complexity. I frequently voiced my concern that colleagues were not seeing abandonment/estrangement by a parent as an indicator of complexity. For me, this was another reason that made me feel so disoriented. In my Clinical Psychology training and in other services the loss of or abandonment by a parent would be something to be explored and the impact understood but I felt that at GIDS this factor was often minimised or dismissed.
I was also shocked by the complexity of referrals. I read many referrals of children who have been sexually abused and many children have witnessed and/or been subjected to domestic violence.

I also felt that was an overrepresentation of the young people who were living in poverty. I had a young person whose family were living within such extreme financial constraints that he considered it a treat to buy a can of pop. I also had another young person who was living in a very complex and unstable arrangement who arrived to sessions in a poor state of hygiene and said that there wasn’t money for hygiene products. How is it ethical to undertake a gender identity assessment with the view to a medical pathway when there are children and young people do not have their most basic needs met?

In terms of complexity I also had on my caseload several young people who declined to communicate verbally or communicated verbally to a very limited extent. I think that at GIDS verbal communication difficulties are often minimised as transmales being afraid to speak because they have a ‘feminine voice’ but in all of these cases I believe that there was something more complex than that going on. Again, it’s very difficult to undertake a gender identity assessment with a young person who struggles to communicate verbally, especially within the time constraints of the service.

One of the other major factors that meant that I could not sustain working at GIDS was the failure of social care to provide support to the young people I referred. As the children come from all over the North of England I was dealing with several different social care teams trying to get support for my patients who were either doing risky things, living in risky situations or in contact with risky people. In none of my cases was input from social care secured.
How is it possible to undertake a gender identity assessment when young people are living in these circumstances and sometimes even more extreme? I do not believe that GIDS can claim to function effectively when it is part of a broader system that is failing to provide adequate support and protection for children and young people.
I also believe that there are clinicians at GIDS who are putting vulnerable children on the medical pathway when they are not receiving proper input from CAMHS and Social Care with regards to mental health problems and complex family and housing difficulties.

medium.com/@kirstyentwistle/an-open-letter-to-dr-polly-carmichael-from-a-former-gids-clinician-53c541276b8d

Coming back to this open letter now, 18 months after it was published, with all that had happened in between, it seems to me that Kirsty Entwistle is an extraordinarily brave and principled woman.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page