Abigail Shrier - Marci Bowers - critical of puberty blockers

[ArabellaScott]

Well, this seems potentially very important.

Marci Bowers, well known surgeon who has treated many 'trans children' is critical of the usage of puberty blockers in this interview with Abigail Shrier. Bowers and a fellow medic call the treatment of 'trans children/young people' reckless and sloppy.

Bowers is slated to lead WPATH as of next year.

bariweiss.substack.com/p/top-trans-doctors-blow-the-whistle

So these children seem to go through each stage with a medic who passes them on to the next stage and then washes their hands. And the next stage isn't fully apprised about what the first stage has done. Or don't seem to interlink it with the current treatment.

Just a series of buckpassing.

It's only too plausible. Except there are a bunch of mothers on mumsnet, some of whom have no qualifications at all, let alone medical ones, who could see this years ago.

It's not a secret. It's not a mystery. It's not some esoteric set of circumstances that no one can see the conclusion to. Its bloody obvious.

The buckpassing looks very much to me as something which is done, because there IS no definitive conclusion.

Or description. Or diagnosis. Or criteria.

It's all rainbows and sparkles, magic and mermaids, while they set these children on the path to puberty blockers, surgery, phalloplasties made from arm tissue and neovaginas made from colons.

Around the time of posters commenting uneasily about Jazz Jennings, the photographs of children's arms being stripped of flesh for phalloplasty was shown on here.

They were utterly horrifying. I believe Posie Parker made some posters to try and shock people into addressing the issue.

They were immediately banned on here.

And targeted elsewhere. With TRAs claiming they were fake, theatrical male up etc.

And targeted elsewhere. With TRAs claiming they were fake, theatrical male up etc.

Well, there are plenty of YouTube and TikTok videos out there by ftm transitioners. People are welcome to go and research what is fake and what is not.

Someone sees law suits a coming over the horizon?

@Datun

So these children seem to go through each stage with a medic who passes them on to the next stage and then washes their hands. And the next stage isn't fully apprised about what the first stage has done. Or don't seem to interlink it with the current treatment.

Just a series of buckpassing.

It's only too plausible. Except there are a bunch of mothers on mumsnet, some of whom have no qualifications at all, let alone medical ones, who could see this years ago.

It's not a secret. It's not a mystery. It's not some esoteric set of circumstances that no one can see the conclusion to. Its bloody obvious.

The buckpassing looks very much to me as something which is done, because there IS no definitive conclusion.

Or description. Or diagnosis. Or criteria.

This seems to be what has been going on at the Tavistock with the endocrinology referrals and consent from the young patients.

The psychologists at GIDS should be assessing whether their young patients have capacity to consent to puberty blockers before referring them to the endocrinologists. The endocrinologists assume that appropriate assessments have been done and that the children fully understand and are capable of consent for the treatment.

Who is actually responsible for ensuring that fully informed consent has been given?

Re consent and loss of sexual function - even at 15/16 I'd have agreed to a procedure that meant loss of sexual function - I didn't yet know what it was. I was in a group of friends that these days would have been seen as "geeky", those days we dressed in big shirts to cover up. I remember in school there being a biology module on human sexual reproduction - the teacher said - most people do better in this because they're interested. My group of friends all did worse, and at the time were kind of proud of our lack of interest. Of course over the next couple of years that all changed and we were all enthusiastically enjoying relationships and sex lives - it took me until 19 to have my first relationship and first sex - before that I wouldn't have known what I was agreeing to losel

@Fariha31

Someone sees law suits a coming over the horizon?

Not readily - for the reasons given upthread although it may vary from one country/healthcare system to another:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4366709-Abigail-Shrier-Marci-Bowers-critical-of-puberty-blockers?msgid=111375011

OldCrone exactly that, and I've seen in recent court cases just what you say - GIDS saying that endocrinology should check consent, and endocrinology assuming that as they've been referred from GIDS that's all been sorted.

Any medic that has knowingly harmed children can have a golden bridge straight to prison, imo.

@OvaHere

I just read this. My overwhelming first thought was, oh now you think it was a bad idea? Really?

I know this is framed as whistleblowing but is is really whistleblowing when you're the people most responsible for it in the first place?

There seems to be an undertone that we should be grateful for this sudden insight.

This

@Datun

I haven't read Shrier's book, but I'm not sure why she seems to make such a distinction between girls and boys transitioning. Boys have gender dysphoria, but girls have ROGD? Does she talk about homophobia as a motivator in her book?

I'm very glad she has lifted the lid off this, and I also think there was a strategy here. But there was an inconsistency that I hadn't expected.

An early draft of Abigail Shrier's book apparently contained a chapter on boys, because she had asked on fora for parents of teenagers with gender dysphoria for their experience, most of whom had girls and a much smaller number had boys.

I think she said at some point her editor suggested that she just focus on the girls as it made for a more compelling narrative and allowed her to portray the phenomenon within a framework of other psychic epidemics mainly affecting girls.

The number of boys with ROGD is rising too though. Their route in is not the same as that of girls and is a bit more complicated now than the original Blanchardian classification, so they are less likely to be impacted by their friendship group announcing trans identities and more likely to have been bullied and targeted for being a soft, sensitive, socially awkward guy. Or because in a oppression hierarchy, it's the only way for a heterosexual white male to have any social cachet...

And there are some who are so affected by their anime or porn consumption that it is more AGP like.
blogs.feministwiki.org/socjuswiz/2019/10/20/masculinity-anime-and-gender-dysphoria/

quillette.com/2021/04/02/when-sons-become-daughters-parents-of-transitioning-boys-speak-out-on-their-own-suffering/

There seems to be a lot of 'we didn't know' coming from Bowers. Why would a surgeon working in this area not be up-to-date on what other doctors were doing elsewhere in the world?

The Dutch doctors had been treating children with puberty blockers since the 90s, 15 years or more before Jazz Jennings.

Another problem created by puberty blockade — experts prefer “blockade” to “blockage” — was lack of tissue, which Dutch researchers noted back in 2008. At that time, Cohen-Kettenis and other researchers noted that, in natal males, early blockade might lead to “non-normal pubertal phallic growth,” meaning that “the genital tissue available for vaginoplasty might be less than optimal.”

But that hair-raising warning seems to have been lost in the trip across the Atlantic.

Why didn't Bowers and all the other doctors involved in this seemingly not know about what had already been done in the Netherlands and elsewhere? This problem was also mentioned in the documentary about Susie Green's child who she took to Thailand for this surgery. How could Bowers not know anything about this while working as a surgeon doing these operations?

It's typical of medicine - we zig and we zag...

Really? Sounds like blaming the system to me.

@YetAnotherSpartacus

It's typical of medicine - we zig and we zag...

Really? Sounds like blaming the system to me.

I thought that too.

"We zig and we zag"

Sounds like live experiments in children to me...

Thank you ANewCreation. So she's making less of an ideological distinction, and more practical one, given the numbers.

And yes, you can't call it whistleblowing. You can't whistleblow yourself.

Both surgeons. Both trans. Suddenly came to the conclusion that blockers are overprescribed. No shit Sherlock. FFS.

@Oblomov21

Both surgeons. Both trans. Suddenly came to the conclusion that blockers are overprescribed. No shit Sherlock. FFS.

Only one is a surgeon.

Erica Anderson is a clinical psychologist at the University of California San Francisco’s Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic.

That clip. And the argument between the 2 surgeons, During the procedure is

@OldCrone

There seems to be a lot of 'we didn't know' coming from Bowers. Why would a surgeon working in this area not be up-to-date on what other doctors were doing elsewhere in the world?

The Dutch doctors had been treating children with puberty blockers since the 90s, 15 years or more before Jazz Jennings.

Another problem created by puberty blockade — experts prefer “blockade” to “blockage” — was lack of tissue, which Dutch researchers noted back in 2008. At that time, Cohen-Kettenis and other researchers noted that, in natal males, early blockade might lead to “non-normal pubertal phallic growth,” meaning that “the genital tissue available for vaginoplasty might be less than optimal.”

But that hair-raising warning seems to have been lost in the trip across the Atlantic.

Why didn't Bowers and all the other doctors involved in this seemingly not know about what had already been done in the Netherlands and elsewhere? This problem was also mentioned in the documentary about Susie Green's child who she took to Thailand for this surgery. How could Bowers not know anything about this while working as a surgeon doing these operations?

Yes, very good points. In such a specialised field you'd expect doctors to be aware of developments like this.

Dr Marci Bowers (trans) is a Surgeon. Dr Ting is a surgeon.

Who isn't a surgeon?

Apologies the other one on the article (trans) is Erica Anderson. Psychologist. Not surgeon.

@YetAnotherSpartacus

It's typical of medicine - we zig and we zag...

Really? Sounds like blaming the system to me.

Quite. How about: “It’s typical of my surgeries - I zig and I zag…”

Apologies also. I was also referring to the original article posted.

"When I asked Bowers if she still thought puberty blockers were a good idea, from a surgical perspective, she said: “This is typical of medicine. We zig and then we zag, and I think maybe we zigged a little too far to the left in some cases.”'

Is it 'typical of medicine' that those who warned they 'maybe zigged too far to the left' got subjected to death and rape threats, had their social media accounts deleted, were no-platformed at universities and even hounded out of their jobs?