The judgment in Keira Bell's case will be given tomorrow

[MaudTheInvincible]

The judgment of the Tavistock's appeal of the case will be given at 2pm.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/royal-courts-of-justice-cause-list/royal-courts-of-justice-daily-cause-list

Brave Keira. You have done so much to protect children from ideologically driven healthcare around the world. Your integrity and courage is inspiring and rare in this ridiculous day and age. 💚🤍💜

This image seems pertinent to a question raised upthread.

Brilliant, @Wrongsideofhistorymyarse
Great image
It explains JUST why I am spitting fury

Wrongside. I love that picture.

Great picture wrongside

Thank you

I've been discussing this stuff for a decade and am so over #bekind

There's a difference between #bekind, and everyone being respectful during a robust debate.

I want to hear trans voices in our discussions too, not so we can be educated and agree with everything they say, but so we can all understand each other better.

I don't disagree with anyone challenging butterfly and I can hear the hurt and anger of posters on the infertility subject.

I know some of you have seen this pattern a lot, so it frustrates you. I've lurked a long time on here, I have also seen it, and seen posters pointing it out. I just genuinely didn't read it in the same way this time. So to me it sounded like other posters were being hostile unnecessarily.

I don't know anything about butterfly, maybe she's left now we've been 'educated' but maybe she was listening all along and has gone off to reflect. Maybe somewhere in between. Maybe she's not bothered, maybe she found the experience stressful or upsetting. None of us know. I know when I'm challenged on here I take it on board, and it can take a while for me to process. It's an intense board to post on.

Re pronouns, I don't want to be referred to as cis, and I've personally decided to use trans people's preferred pronouns in most cases. I'd rather communicate without deliberately offending people if I can.

LongBlobson, I agree with you.

Wanting a civil and respectful discussion/debate is not the same as #bekind

“Hopefully you learned something”, “you’re welcome to invite me onto another thread as long as we keep the discussion to things I want to talk about”.

#nothankyou

Civil, absolutely. But lectured - again?

That whole intervention was started from an inherently hostile position.

Hopefully now that we've gotten the reactionary backlash out of the way, we'll be able to open up more frank and honest discussions on the subject.

They are describing Keira's case as a reactionary backlash. This is what they are saying "now we've got that out of the way" about. The whole premise of their arrival was that any influence over trans medical treatment from parents here, or supporters of Keira was now OVER, and this being over was a good thing as it was REACTIONARY BACKLASH and MORAL PANIC.

I've put those words in capitals for those upset that the person who can only see parents who don't want their children in this manner wasn't treated respectfully enough.

That person has ZERO respect for parents and made it quite explicitly clear right at the beginning. They certainly we're not here to speak respectfully to parents.

Why are you ignoring that? Was it the poor me story?

don't want their children damaged in this manner

It seems pretty clear to me that is no such thing as a singular, monolithic experience; just shared points of commonality.

There is, though. Our biology.

@StrangeLookingParasite

It seems pretty clear to me that is no such thing as a singular, monolithic experience; just shared points of commonality.

There is, though. Our biology.

Exactly this.

The one single thing that every female person on the planet has in common, regardless of nation, race, culture, faith, anything other characteristic.

It exists. Female people and their shared biology exists. Their right to identify themselves by this one shared characteristic and to group themselves by it and organise themselves because of it should exist.

@NotBadConsidering

So to summarise:

• You said you had had no negative effects from puberty blockers but were told at the time about issues with bone density and you describe your health as precarious as a result of oestrogen and have been on multiple medications as a result

• Despite you attending the clinic, you were treated in a way that you viewed as gaslighting while the realities of biology were made clear to you. This mental health aspect was not treated and led to ongoing problems in your 20s.

• You wrote there was an awkward question about impaired sexual function and fertility while you were in your mid teens and believe, thinking in retrospect you were able to consent. This is now being expected of children as young as 10 or 11. As a point of contrast, much of the narrative of I Am Jazz has revolved around Jazz’s pursuit of lost libido and sexual function. There’s a whole episode on it.

• No one from GIDS has any idea of any of the long term health issues you have because they haven’t followed up on you or your cohort and as such, they aren’t in a better place to understand.

• you think anyone who raises concerns about females being unable to consent and understand as heartless people who are only interested in their own view of the cosmetics of it all, and that we should probably keep out of it if we don’t have any direct “skin in the game.”

• you’ve talked out your experiences, but haven’t clarified how you think this applies to children aged 10,11, 12 who are being expected to think about these things at their age.

While it’s great you’re comfortable as you are, I find the whole thing incredibly sad. A life of medicalisation, ongoing mental health issues initially, rose tinted glasses about consent around sexual function and fertility is deemed a good outcome because the perceived alternative timeline being worse.

Nothing in your posts has convinced me or even wavered me to think that children should be given puberty blockers. To put it simply, it’s either:

Puberty blockers = Adults with mental health issues + a myriad of irreversible physical health issues to which they couldn’t consent to as children

or

No puberty blockers = adults with mental health issues + a myriad of lesser, more reversible physical health issues to which they can decide to undertake themselves as adults.

The issue still remains around consent. Children under the age of 16 cannot comprehend the future that they’re in for with this medical affirmation, in particular girls whose gender presentation is part of a more complex mental health narrative.

Yikes that's a lot of emails. Invoke my name repeatedly and I return, like an evil fairy godmother or alternatively an ominous smell that makes you think you probably ought to call a plumber!

First of all, an apology. Sorry all, intention was absolutely not to offend on the fertility comment - I specifically pointed out that I don't view infertility in that way as I was wary of being interpreted as thinking infertile women are incomplete and keen to avoid that inference; which seems to have happened despite my best efforts alongside a whole host of accusations of appropriating the suffering of others. If I don't believe something, say I don't believe it, take pains to try and communicate that, say it's not my business to claim a specific set of experiences, and am -still- read as having said it, I don't know what more I can really do - other than simply not respond. However, not responding is read as cherry-picking topics, trying to dominate the discussion, or cowardice.

This is all rather bleakly illustrative of the Authentic Internet Discussion Experience.

While I was responding honestly in good faith to a legitimate question, I don't think there is a possible useful answer I could have given that wouldn't have been an aggravating factor, and on reflection I think merely existing in the vicinity of this subject is an aggravating factor. I'm sorry for any harm caused; this wasn't the intent at all, but the damage was done nonetheless.

I'll try and avoid mentioning it again, even if asked. Not because I want to dominate the topic, shut down other people's feelings or cherry-pick; nor flounce off in cowardice - simply because I just don't want to hurt anyone.

Secondly, @NotBadConsidering
Thanks for compiling these responses! Can I make a few clarifications?

You said you had had no negative effects from puberty blockers but were told at the time about issues with bone density and you describe your health as precarious as a result of oestrogen and have been on multiple medications as a result

Clinicians expressed a general state of concern about being without sex hormones for an extended period of time - we're talking many unbroken years - due to concern about the possibility of effects on bone density as observed in post menopausal women. It was very clear that they wouldn't allow me to remain on blockers indefinitely without the long-term introduction of either estrogen or testosterone into my system; nor would I have wanted to anyway.

I was on them for a total of seven years. The majority of this time was in conjunction with hormone therapy. After GRS, there was of course no longer a need for them.

The negative medical effects I -have- suffered from transition are ones I suffered many years after being discharged from GIC, both of which have clear causes unrelated to blockers.

They are:

1. a minor, intermittent and mostly ignorable side effect from surgery (occasional bladder irritation), which has precisely nothing to do with medication side effects but which can be mitigated by very commonly prescribed medication in a well-trodden and mature treatment pathway.
2. a side effect from twenty years of being on what you'd prefer to call CSH and which I understand as the medication known and referred to as HRT in all medical literature I have encountered that applied to myself, including in notes used to refer to my own treatment pathway made by medical professionals who have treated me, and which I was advised to use when referring to this medication by doctors in the general case. In thise case, it is an extremely well documented and in no way transition-specific issue which has largely been mitigated by switching to using transdermal patches rather than tablets. (I will try to refer to it as CSH or hormone therapy from here out.)

I experienced no effects that I would classify as negative from puberty blockers, both before and after the manual introduction of hormones.

I did experience:
-A complete halt to androgenic puberty (the reason why I was taking them).
-A reduction in libido (welcome and helpful).
-Clearer thoughts and reduced sense of psychological 'fizz' and unwelcome effects on mood, especially reduced aggression.
-A profound and very noticeable effect on my general psychological wellbeing observed and regularly commented on by others, many of whom were unaware I was even pursuing treatment.

If there are cognitive developmental effects within my cohort - to my knowledge, the only ones generally cited have been inferred from a couple of cherry-picked low-sample size (in one case, single sample size) papers which concluded that a statistical relationship couldn't be ruled out but their subjects were already population outliers and the variances were already accounted for within the bounds of natural factors - then I certainly didn't experience them in any noticeable way. Single datapoint, but I think it's fair to say I'm evidence that if there are negative long-term effects, they aren't (reliably) pronounced. Perhaps it's possible my cognitive development was affected in some way? If so, it's certainly not clear how I differ from my non-trans peers, however.

That said, I am spending my Wednesday evening trying to provide perilously personal datapoints which challenge an established, if tenuously defined narrative in a mostly-hostile space, in the process opening myself up to hurtful responses which I could easily avoid by just never engaging with the subject of GC feminism in any meaningful way until it starts directly impacting on my life and trying to ban me from going to the loo or some other such ridiculousness. I'm clearly an idiot!

Those actual facts: a summary!
Blockers: No negative side effects
Hormones: One negative serious side effect, addressed by medication and lifestyle
GRS: One negative minor side effect, addressed by medication

Despite you attending the clinic, you were treated in a way that you viewed as gaslighting while the realities of biology were made clear to you. This mental health aspect was not treated and led to ongoing problems in your 20s.

I think we all know the arguments weaponised against trans people, both today and historically. I'm sure none of them will be unfamiliar to posters on this board. They're used by people on here all the time. Plenty of them have already been rolled out on this thread. Some are just as hurtful as they've always been. Some are wryly amusing, when viewed with the healthy light of distance, especially when they describe behavours equally evidenced by other posters, as @LongBlobson, @EdgeOfACoin and @rabbitwoman have rather pointedly mentioned.

I understand gaslighting as follows: 'persistently putting forth a false narrative which leads another person to doubt their own perceptions to the extent that they become disoriented and distressed'. Yeah, sure, anyone can roll out a dictionary definition and then use it to claim whatever is whatever. You could argue that's just people bluntly 'splainin away those silly genderfeels to a confused kid, tough love you'll get over it etc. Thing is, I didn't. We don't. Trying to brainwash us doesn't work. Demonstrably. Repeatedly. It just severely messes us up while failing to address the underlying issue.

Pursuit of treatment at GIDS had nothing to do with the way any of us was treated by society. It was already occurring before I went, and persisted afterwards. It pitched me into the depths of depression, caused me to believe I had to apologise and justify my existence to every person I met, made me deeply fearful of confrontation and made me desperate to demonstrate my authenticity, validity and meek, benign and substanceless inoffensiveness in a bunch of hugely self-destructive ways that I've found myself once again retreading here. What a shock; living under the Patriarchy and encountering traumatised veterans of past Gender Wars still nursing their own injuries really screws GNC kids up. (Forced teaming alert! See, I'm learning the jargon! Next you'll see me talking about being peaked.)

My treatment actively helped, because it meant that the abuse eventually ended - at least, in a way that was personally targeted. It was still there, of course; I'd just become invisible and thus no longer a target. As if by magic, it then started to fade. It was still tough - still intensely isolating. But increasingly manageable, and eventually, largely gone.

Blah blah blah. Whatever. Poor injured fragile genderfeels boohoohoo. Any attempt to illuminate or expand will be read as splaining, sympathy farming or appropriation - the usual.

I'm not trying to win the oppression olympics here; just communicate an apparently opaque point more clearly. I can't really find a more apt term than gaslighting to describe the experience of existing in a society that constantly tells you everything you do and experience is false when the evidence you are literally living stands to the contrary.

You wrote there was an awkward question about impaired sexual function and fertility while you were in your mid teens and believe, thinking in retrospect you were able to consent. This is now being expected of children as young as 10 or 11. As a point of contrast, much of the narrative of I Am Jazz has revolved around Jazz’s pursuit of lost libido and sexual function. There’s a whole episode on it.

I've not watched Jazz's show - sounds fascinating!

It was awkward because I was a teenager having a very frank discussion with two strangers and my mother, about sexual functioning with relation to a set of organs that I despised and wanted to be rid of. I'd have been able to have the same conversation several years beforehand, it would have just spared me a lot of misery in between.

As for libido - well, it's certainly cooled down to something tolerable after the frankly deeply uncomfortable state it was in during my mid-teens. I've had several sexual partners of different genders over the years and not had difficulty 'functioning' with any of them. I've never been able to understand our societal obsession with sex and found it frequently mystifying how big a deal it is for so many people, but this is a common opinion amongst my non-trans peers and the experience is certainly pleasant enough that I don't remotely feel that my sexual function is impaired. To the contrary; it's something that isn't reelingly abhorrent to even consider.

Retrospective determinism might be at play here. Would you realise what was missing, if you'd never known it? From where I'm standing, I'm certainly lacking nothing, and more to the point, the reason why I'm even standing here is because I was acutely aware of elements that were missing at the time.

No one from GIDS has any idea of any of the long term health issues you have because they haven’t followed up on you or your cohort and as such, they aren’t in a better place to understand.

A fact I am in the process of helping to rectify, now I know it's even an option!

@NotBadConsidering

So to summarise:

• You said you had had no negative effects from puberty blockers but were told at the time about issues with bone density and you describe your health as precarious as a result of oestrogen and have been on multiple medications as a result

• Despite you attending the clinic, you were treated in a way that you viewed as gaslighting while the realities of biology were made clear to you. This mental health aspect was not treated and led to ongoing problems in your 20s.

• You wrote there was an awkward question about impaired sexual function and fertility while you were in your mid teens and believe, thinking in retrospect you were able to consent. This is now being expected of children as young as 10 or 11. As a point of contrast, much of the narrative of I Am Jazz has revolved around Jazz’s pursuit of lost libido and sexual function. There’s a whole episode on it.

• No one from GIDS has any idea of any of the long term health issues you have because they haven’t followed up on you or your cohort and as such, they aren’t in a better place to understand.

• you think anyone who raises concerns about females being unable to consent and understand as heartless people who are only interested in their own view of the cosmetics of it all, and that we should probably keep out of it if we don’t have any direct “skin in the game.”

• you’ve talked out your experiences, but haven’t clarified how you think this applies to children aged 10,11, 12 who are being expected to think about these things at their age.

While it’s great you’re comfortable as you are, I find the whole thing incredibly sad. A life of medicalisation, ongoing mental health issues initially, rose tinted glasses about consent around sexual function and fertility is deemed a good outcome because the perceived alternative timeline being worse.

Nothing in your posts has convinced me or even wavered me to think that children should be given puberty blockers. To put it simply, it’s either:

Puberty blockers = Adults with mental health issues + a myriad of irreversible physical health issues to which they couldn’t consent to as children

or

No puberty blockers = adults with mental health issues + a myriad of lesser, more reversible physical health issues to which they can decide to undertake themselves as adults.

The issue still remains around consent. Children under the age of 16 cannot comprehend the future that they’re in for with this medical affirmation, in particular girls whose gender presentation is part of a more complex mental health narrative.

Part, the second:

you think anyone who raises concerns about females being unable to consent and understand as heartless people who are only interested in their own view of the cosmetics of it all, and that we should probably keep out of it if we don’t have any direct “skin in the game.”

I think that's a little unfair, and is misrepresenting what I said. I'm going to -have- to tickle the dragon's tail a bit here to correct, and I really, really don't mean to cause offence; words aren't neutral and I don't think I can help doing so in the process of clarifying this point, but by way of a warning: please understand this is an encapsulation of how it feels to have adults trying to interfere in your treatment. I'm just trying to communicate clearly, not trying to imply posters here are heartless for expressing their concern about vulnerable kids in ways that are different to me. We're all concerned. That's why we're writing Paragraphs on the internet about this.

I firmly believe that the only people who have any business questioning the decisions of children experiencing gender incongruence are primary caregivers and medical professionals empowered to evaluate and, if necessary, assist them in taking steps to address their suffering. I held that opinion when I was literally walking that road myself, I've encountered no evidence that would even slightly change my opinion since, and it is one that is overwhelmingly shared by every person who has ever walked that path that I've ever spoken to. Adults who have never experienced gender dysphoria obsessing over the actions and decisions of trans kids has always been distasteful and disturbing to us and, as we have seen from the fallout over the initial ruling on the Bell case, can have directly harmful effects. Did you see the palpable and hugely visible despair exhibited last year in response to that ruling? Do you think that is what a positive outcome looks like? Even as a victory against what you perceive to be a source of harm, it's a hell of a pyhrric one, yes? It casts the very real and immediate suffering of many kids as a worthy sacrifice in the name of preventing the hypothetical future suffering of a statistically miniscule some. Anyone suffering is a tragedy, but the spotlight fallacy is in full effect here, and it's grotesque how the prevailing narrative is being constructed to demonise and blame caregivers.

I'm just...so very, very done with well-meaning but ultimately harmful and obstructive adults, who simply cannot possibly understand what it's like to have to deal with this stuff, trying to control the narrative in line with their preconcieved notions, and then calling it a victory when they succeed in making it harder to get needed treatment. Right now, it's just a constant background roar in the press and on social media every day. It's exhausting. We've always wanted to just be left to get on with it. The recent appeal lets us get back to getting on with it. Please, please let us get on with it. This is pretty much our rallying cry, and has always been.

Sorry, I'm in danger of letting myself get upset about this and being uncharitable as a result - you'll not find a subject more relevant to my life experiences, so I apologise for coming on a little strong here. You clearly don't want to see kids suffer; that's why this is even a point of discussion.

Once again, @NotBadConsidering, thanks for going to the trouble of summarising and engaging; this is a hugely emotive subject and I'm not trying to attack you, just trying to provide a perspective for why it's so damn harmful to interfere in a treatment pathway that's been working for three decades.

you’ve talked out your experiences, but haven’t clarified how you think this applies to children aged 10,11, 12 who are being expected to think about these things at their age.

It's a hell of a decision to make at that age. Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn't have felt ready yet, had the option been open. I'm pretty sure I mostly cared about getting another 8MB ram on our PC so I could play WinQuake at that age - but I was certainly aware of my own transness and the pain it was causing. I'd only just found out there was a name for what I was experiencing - I watched The Wrong Body, the first documentary I'd ever seen talking about some of the first FTM kids to go through GIDS, that year, and realised there was something meaningful I could actually do about it, which started the whole slow process of gathering enough information to present to my parents and then my gp in order to get a referral.

That's the thing, though. I did all this. Not anyone else. There's no coercion; no pressure. You have to ask for the thing. You have to have asked to even get to the point where you get referred, and then you have to go through multiple stages of evaluation, and then if you want to move onto hormones years later, you have to ask for those as well as part of an ongoing process of evaluation, assuming you even get to that point as right now waiting lists are so ludicrous that you might have already passed outside of the range that GIDS covers, at which point you are thrown to the wolves of the adult service which once again has a ludicrous waiting list.

I think society is certainly very different nowadays. Perhaps in ways that can bedazzle and bewilder and bombard with a host of misinformation. On the counter point, access to useful information means many more people are able to even realise their options at an age where many of those options are relevant. I'm not sure the experience of gender dysphoria in childhood is any different, however, in any case. The signal-to-noise ratio on information and public discussion is just vastly worse.

I might not have felt ready to make my case for blockers at age 10, had it been an option to do so, but I'd certainly have jumped at the chance the moment puberty started seriously kicking into high-gear if I'd been allowed - it was very clear from age 11 that it was the wrong road, and any doubts I'd had before weren't going to go away. By 13 it was agonising! It always seemed like a pretty clear-cut matter to me, short of immediately jumping onto irreversible hormones, which is the only viable alternative I can see short of forcing kids to watch an unwanted puberty slowly, agonisingly wreck their body before their eyes. It's hard to communicate exactly what that feels like, but it is an unspeakably abhorrent, distressing, miserable thing.

My historical experiences by definition can't be entirely universal to today's; but they are real, and can be viewed with the benefit of having observed the entire run of 21st century history of trans activism and public existence from the inside. The words have changed; society has changed; the entire way that we think about gender has changed. About the only stable fixture is that people evidently still experience gender incongruence, treatment can help them to deal with it, and those who start it later, with great regularity, wish they'd started it sooner.

That, alone, seals the deal in my eyes. What do you want? "To have started blockers three years ago."

That's a tune that has stood intact since I even knew how to sing it, and it sure is sung by a lot of people nowadays.

While it’s great you’re comfortable as you are, I find the whole thing incredibly sad. A life of medicalisation, ongoing mental health issues initially, rose tinted glasses about consent around sexual function and fertility is deemed a good outcome because the perceived alternative timeline being worse.

Thanks, yeah it's pretty good being here, all told. Not being flippant - I'm happy, successful and well liked and regarded with a great career.
All I need is to remember to stick a patch on every few days and take a tablet. If I need to, I can take another tablet as well.

I don't think it's a case of rose-tinted glasses to have made realistic decisions in the past based on clear communication and a careful cost/benefit analysis, and to be glad to have made them now. It makes me feel weirdly self-conscious to say this, as it can't help but come across as gloating, humblebragging or whatever you want to call it, but it just seems so damn important to do so - we just don't really hear positive long-term narratives like this because everyone is far too afraid to speak up, for fear of being accused of heresy or cowardice for...existing, I guess?..and nobody ever cares about anything that isn't doom and gloom and despair.

Alternative timeline me; well. I don't know what could have been, and it's easy to succumb to the lure of retrospective determinism. I know what is, and it feels awfully like a good outcome.

As for mental health issues - you know where they came from. They were a product of existing in a miserable, wretched society that hated me for what I was. This was always acutely clear. They dissipated when I started feeling safe. They'd have dissipated sooner if I'd have being going through all this today, as that point would have been reached sooner. Might not have even experienced them at all - depends on where I lived and whether the people in my life and who I met every day in the street were supportive or not, I suppose.

I've been completely honest about my experiences, including the bad ones. If I'd wanted to mislead or misrepresent, I wouldn't have mentioned those at all.

Nothing in your posts has convinced me or even wavered me to think that children should be given puberty blockers.

Children, wholesale? Even after 16? That'd be a rollback on a quarter-plus century old theraputic process, older than face transplants, older than transatlantic telesurgery, older than self-contained artificial hearts - but why? Because of Kiera Bell trying to blame GIDS for treating her gender dysphoria at face value?

I understand why you came to those conclusions as that's the prevalent narrative in overtly gender-critical echo chambers such as this one, which have at this point spent years repeating the same few scraps of data, and now maintain them almost as articles of ideological certainty - that's an echo-chamber problem, not a GC one, don't get me wrong, and heaven knows the trans community has its own issues of a similar nature, so I'm very sympathetic - but the dichotomy you've presented doesn't appear to be factually correct. I don't believe there's a great deal of utility in framing things like this in general, as it tends to discard a great deal of nuance, but it should read more like:

Puberty blockers = Adults with reduced gender dysphoria + lower desire for expensive and dangerous surgical interventions + normal side effects from hormone therapy + potential temporary bone density complications

No puberty blockers = Adults with pronounced gender dysphoria from unwanted physiological changes that present extra surgical risk to address + normal side effects from hormone therapy

They're clearly having, and have had for about thirty years, a massive positive impact on a whole bunch of young people who would have had to endure a journey that was much more miserable without them, and I've provided some pretty clear, albeit personal, datapoints to this effect while being honest about side effects.

I'm not here to convince you that gender is a magical playground you don't have to be critical of; just to point out how my actual experiences and those of so many others do not actually match this narrative. How you interpret that is up to you; the genie's out of the bottle and the rest of the world will watch as the next generation of trans kids grows up in an environment that doesn't force them to hide in order to survive and thrive. There'll be plenty of data, and some tough conversations ahead. I look forward to seeing where we end up.

Part, the third:

The issue still remains around consent. Children under the age of 16 cannot comprehend the future that they’re in for with this medical affirmation, in particular girls whose gender presentation is part of a more complex mental health narrative.

Can I just check before we proceed: are you basing this stance on Kiera Bell, who started blockers at 16, hormones at 17, had surgical intervention at 20 - which, I might point out, she owns and accepts as a decision she made, even if she blames clinicians for letting her take the steps before it - and in fact, whose narrative doesn't actually have an overlap with determining the capacity for consent of under-16's at all, beyond conjecture?

Do you think blockers should ever be used? I'm not trying to catch you out or back you into a corner; I just want to understand what you actually believe. Is it ever appropriate to administer them, at any age?

I actually largely agree that one particular facet of this treatment when it comes to young people transitioning away from female secondary sexual characteristics appears to afford a little more breathing room -solely when considering physiological outcomes - when held side by side with the male equivalent. That, however, is an important but ultimately secondary slice of what's under consideration, here.

When referring specifically to desisters and the tiny proportion of detransitioners - many of whom, I should point out, cite the same issues that I and those in my cohort struggled with in our late teens and early twenties in their reason for detransitioning: i.e, that existing in a world that hates you is hard - we're referring to a tiny fraction of vulnerable, often very confused people who manage to cheatsheet or otherwise trick themselves into embarking on what is otherwise an extremely effective and carefully managed treatment pathway. Or find that their feelings on gender change over time, or even find themselves caught up in movements that seek them out and actively encourage them to detransition while telling them how courageous and brave they are and how any doubts they might be experiencing are the side effects of those nasty chemicals. No, this isn't hyperbole - this happens. I've seen it happen, repeatedly. I've lost friends to it, sometimes for years at a time. Sometimes forever. I've seen people bounce back from it, and I've seen people get swept up in it, disappearing into a cloud of misanthropy, cynicism and rage that takes years to unsnarl, and sometimes never does.

Anyone who finds themself in that situation is pretty much in the same situation as any equivalent late transitioner, only caught up in a mire of misinformation and with huge pressure not to express their true feelings, nor doubt either way. That's not a great place to be. It's not an impossible place to escape from, though seeing as how Kiera Bell seems to be ominously orbiting the event horizon of the antivax movement and edging closer with every passing day, I think it's fair to say that this probably won't be the last time she makes headlines. I hope she finds a safe path ahead.

Right, drifted a little there, but we are, ultimately, discussing her narrative as if it directly informs the trajectories of under-16's.

I think I've been fair and respectful here, while discussing a hugely contentious and emotive subject, and I don't think I'm appropriating anyone else's experiences nor implying anything unintended.

So, reiterated datapoints:

GIDS: Professional, careful and responsible. Immensely helpful.
GIC: Obstructive, slow, outdated even by the standards of the time.
Social transition: Difficult in terms of societal response; relatively straightforward and hugely affirming outside of good old fashioned transphobia. No regrets, even at the height of those difficulties.
Medical transition:
Blockers: No negative side effects.
Hormones: One negative serious side effect, addressed by medication and lifestyle.
GRS: One negative minor side effect, addressed by medication.
Overall transition retrospective: Extremely positive. Far better than I had dared hope, and indeed much better than what had been communicated to me at the time.

Right, I think that's all: I am now being accused with some regularity of the usual bingo card set, so I'm wary about further responses even to direct mentions and questions. Will try and keep them sparing if they happen.

Phew. That sure was a lot of Paragraphs. I'll pop a coin in the stereotype threat tax box later.

As an aside, I'd be -fascinated- to know if any wider followup studies become available with statistically significant findings. My peers and I were indeed guinea pigs, trailblazing an experimental treatment in tiny sample sizes, largely without followup for our own protection, and of course I'm genuinely curious.

I experienced no effects that I would classify as negative from puberty blockers, both before and after the manual introduction of hormones.

I’m sorry to break it to you, but your bone density will be reduced. You haven’t had no negative side effects from puberty blockers, what you mean is there are no visible side effects from puberty blockers that have affected your health yet.

With regards to oestrogen - wrong sex hormones as I now call them - you say you’ve only had one serious side effect. So far. Have any of your doctors told you about the fact you’re at increased risk of breast cancer? And stroke? You’re only in your late 30s.

www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/study-shows-increased-risk-of-breast-cancer-in-transgender-women/

I've not watched Jazz's show - sounds fascinating!

You should. Because Jazz started puberty blockers at the age of 10, nothing developed at all, so Jazz is quite open and frank about never having had any sexual feeling at all. And because nothing had developed, all of Jazz’s surgeries were done on prepubertal organs. This is the reality now, not yours.

It was awkward because I was a teenager having a very frank discussion with two strangers and my mother, about sexual functioning with relation to a set of organs that I despised and wanted to be rid of. I'd have been able to have the same conversation several years beforehand, it would have just spared me a lot of misery in between.

I asked you before and you didn’t answer, how does a child of 10 or 11 fully understand and consent to giving up something they have never experienced? You say if you had had the discussion earlier it would have been easier. That’s preposterous.

As for libido - well, it's certainly cooled down to something tolerable after the frankly deeply uncomfortable state it was in during my mid-teens. I've had several sexual partners of different genders over the years and not had difficulty 'functioning' with any of them. I've never been able to understand our societal obsession with sex and found it frequently mystifying how big a deal it is for so many people, but this is a common opinion amongst my non-trans peers and the experience is certainly pleasant enough that I don't remotely feel that my sexual function is impaired. To the contrary; it's something that isn't reelingly abhorrent to even consider.

But again, if treatment starts earlier like it does now, these adults have nothing. Do you think it’s appropriate that adults are deciding on behalf of children that they should never experience anything, just because of society’s obsession with sex?

Retrospective determinism might be at play here. Would you realise what was missing, if you'd never known it? From where I'm standing, I'm certainly lacking nothing, and more to the point, the reason why I'm even standing here is because I was acutely aware of elements that were missing at the time.

But the children today never will.

@oldwomanwhoruns

Well put, *@TooWicked*. I thought the most interesting thing that Butterfly let out of the bag was that they had presented themselves dishonestly to their medics.

That bit about ' poor me, I normally wore jeans/ tee shirt but HAD to wear dresses to see the medics'

It puts one in mind of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. So? So you managed to persuade the medics that you were nuts to get your chosen drugs? Bully for you. Deception all the way down.

This is fascinating!

Which part of this was deception? The part about wearing a dress to appointments after being advised that the entire endeavour would be rendered completely futile if I didn't do so? The part about normally wearing jeans and t-shirt? Who was I deceiving? Was my sister also decieving people by doing so? Do you think that I should only have recieved treatment by conforming to the whims of a gatekeeping dinosaur using an obviously pathetically flawed diagnostic criteria?

Do you think trans women are women if they wear dresses, and are being more or less deceitful by doing so? I don't expect this is the case, but the implication then is...what do you think?

I'm really interested in hearing about your philosophy regarding deception/authenticity and gendered expression, especially when it comes to clothing and medical gatekeeping!

I firmly believe that the only people who have any business questioning the decisions of children experiencing gender incongruence are primary caregivers and medical professionals empowered to evaluate and, if necessary, assist them in taking steps to address their suffering.

Many of us are. But even if we weren’t, when medical professionals have lost sight of what their trying to do to help these children and their own evidence shows the affirmative pathway doesn’t work then it’s the duty of all of us to help safeguard children from harm.

I held that opinion when I was literally walking that road myself, I've encountered no evidence that would even slightly change my opinion since, and it is one that is overwhelmingly shared by every person who has ever walked that path that I've ever spoken to. Adults who have never experienced gender dysphoria obsessing

Obsessing? Over the fact children are being giving treatments that cause irreversible changes to their bodies despite no published evidence it helps and published evidence it doesn’t? The question should be why aren’t more people “obsessed”?

over the actions and decisions of trans kids

Questioning their ability to consent. Not obsessing over their actions and decisions.

has always been distasteful and disturbing to us and, as we have seen from the fallout over the initial ruling on the Bell case, can have directly harmful effects. Did you see the palpable and hugely visible despair exhibited last year in response to that ruling? Do you think that is what a positive outcome looks like?

I saw a lot of people upset they couldn’t continue with a pathway lacking medical evidence. Particularly a lot of adults. Particularly a lot of males who seem to think it’s okay for teenage girls to follow this pathway.

Even as a victory against what you perceive to be a source of harm, it's a hell of a pyhrric one, yes? It casts the very real and immediate suffering of many kids as a worthy sacrifice in the name of preventing the hypothetical future suffering of a statistically miniscule some.

You don’t know it’s statistically minuscule. No one does. That’s the entire point. And the original ruling didn’t prevent children from accessing puberty blockers. It just asked that a judge be satisfied the child could understand 8 points of consent before proceeding:

i) the immediate consequences of the treatment in physical and psychological terms;
(ii) the fact that the vast majority of patients taking puberty blocking drugs proceed to taking cross-sex hormones and are, therefore, a pathway to much greater medical interventions;
(iii) the relationship between taking cross-sex hormones and subsequent surgery, with the implications of such surgery;
(iv) the fact that cross-sex hormones may well lead to a loss of fertility;
(v) the impact of cross-sex hormones on sexual function;
(vi) the impact that taking this step on this treatment pathway may have on future and life-long relationships;
(vii) the unknown physical consequences of taking puberty blocking drugs; and
(viii) the fact that the evidence base for this treatment is as yet highly uncertain

But people were sure this was the end of treatment. Why? Why weren’t people confident the children could meet these points of understanding I wonder?

Hasn't watched any of the past six years of global advertising of puberty blockers to children that is I am Jazz, but happy to rock up and tell 1,000s of parents that have watched it that we need educating out of our moral panic.

I think there's a major credibility gap here.

@Wrongsideofhistorymyarse

It was on this board some years ago that a regular transwoman poster told me that my infertility wasn't as bad as theirs because 'at least I had a womb'. They had fathered children.

It's unbelievably tone deaf to come onto a mostly female site and demand that we validate their female identity.

Wow, that's a bad take; denying other people's struggles and entering into misery olympics never seems to end well, and I'm really sorry she said that. I'm not big on throwing others under the bus and betraying the trans-sisterhood, but yikes. Did she ever apologise? Was she using it as an ill-advised rhetorical tool, or just outright claiming your suffering was lesser?

I certainly don't want to cover for people acting like jerks, and I feel guilty for asking this bit, but: was she quite early into her transition?

I've noticed that, especially in the middle of that awkward 'early transition weirdness' period, it's common to feel like the entire world is arrayed against you. (I combined mine with a terrible 'rational atheist' online persona and went and tilted at every organised religion-shaped windmill I could find!) Sounds like she might have been? Certainly not an excuse; just an explanation.

That's the thing, though. I did all this. Not anyone else. There's no coercion; no pressure. You have to ask for the thing. You have to have asked to even get to the point where you get referred, and then you have to go through multiple stages of evaluation, and then if you want to move onto hormones years later, you have to ask for those as well as part of an ongoing process of evaluation, assuming you even get to that point as right now waiting lists are so ludicrous that you might have already passed outside of the range that GIDS covers, at which point you are thrown to the wolves of the adult service which once again has a ludicrous waiting list.

This paragraph sits in a too long passage that demonstrates a skewed retrospective view of what you think you could have consented to at a younger age. It’s different now. Children at 10 need to understand what they’re getting themselves into. All children. The children with ASD, Intellectual impairment, trauma, precocious children, children with foetal alcohol syndrome, children in state care. You have very poor understanding of consent in children and are only able to apply your current views to your rose-tinted view of yourself at that age. It doesn’t work like that.

Children, wholesale? Even after 16? That'd be a rollback on a quarter-plus century old theraputic process, older than face transplants, older than transatlantic telesurgery, older than self-contained artificial hearts - but why? Because of Kiera Bell trying to blame GIDS for treating her gender dysphoria at face value?

Because there is published evidence that it doesn’t improve psychological functioning. And there is no other evidence to show it helps. If you have any published evidence in medical journals that states the opposite I’d be happy to read it. In the mean time children are being harmed by this pathway.

I understand why you came to those conclusions as that's the prevalent narrative in overtly gender-critical echo chambers such as this one, which have at this point spent years repeating the same few scraps of data, and now maintain them almost as articles of ideological certainty - that's an echo-chamber problem, not a GC one, don't get me wrong

Not as a result of an echo chamber . As a result of appraisal of the medical evidence. Like the BMJ, and NICE, and the high court concluded also.

They're clearly having, and have had for about thirty years, a massive positive impact on a whole bunch of young people who would have had to endure a journey that was much more miserable without them, and I've provided some pretty clear, albeit personal, datapoints to this effect while being honest about side effects.

We don’t know that though. Because no one has any long term data. All we know is you feel like they have given you a positive impact and even you aren’t honest about side effects because you aren’t acknowledging the risks of side effects that aren’t visible to you. And historical data that has been actually published shows that if left alone, the majority of males desist with their distress in adulthood. You seem capable of acknowledging you are a single data point but incapable of acknowledging that if studied properly, you might be the statistical anomaly.

And your cohort is not the same as the current cohort. Once again we are now talking about children being put on puberty blockers much earlier, and many more females. Where is the evidence or long term positive impact for this cohort?