BBC online article about the Texas court case

[MidsomerMurmurs]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60710227

No byline as far as I can tell. At the same time as the BBC is (often rightly) positioning itself as an accurate, reliable news outlet because of its Ukraine coverage, you get articles like the above.

so-called "abuse" vs gender-transitioning care - note the presence vs absence of scare quotes.

“Dozens of states are considering similar laws targeting trans youth”. The whole article is framed like this in order to take one questionable ideological position as the neutral, objective, trustworthy BBC stance. Yet the BBC, Newsnight etc, have reported the interim Cass review into the nature of what is appropriate care for adolescents.

Just a bit of joined-up reporting would be helpful; that’s all.

I think the BBC have been deliberately vague to as not to be labelled transphobic. Quite frankly allowing your child to have a double mastectomy is child abuse. And there is no mention that puberty blockers and other hormonal treatments are poorly researched when it comes to long term side effects. I'm not a fan of the republican party but it's time someone tried to put some kind of safeguarding in place for vulnerable children. The article also mentions the disproportionate number of suicides among trans youth. This is often mentioned as an emotive reason to support transitioning children but it's misleading. The few studies to support this have been conducted by pro-trans lobby groups eg. Stonewall... I wonder why the BBC is reluctant to mention that!

I heard the news on the radio this morning and felt concerned that the only information was that the new law was to make trans affirmative care child abuse. The ‘affirmative care’ was never explained as far as
I can remember- correct me if I am wrong.

If it is not explained the news is not only meaningless, it makes the Texan law seem outrageous. This impression is backed by the report that President Biden wants to overturn it.

No mention is given of our own, very recent Cass report on this very subject.

Has it ever mattered more to be able to rely on what one hears on the news?

I complained a couple of weeks back about back to back BBC articles that interviewed TQ+ people about the census issue while making it appear that women were just mindlessly being obstructive. No attempt to actually describe any reasons why women were doing this, and a lot of use of survey results to be very clear that said silly women were all old and past it, so it didn't matter what they thought. The directed conclusions you were supposed to reach were bleeding obvious.

They wrote back to say that they identified as not being biased or ageist, and if you'd clicked through multiple links that were all well hidden that you could eventually find a few lines about why women were fighting this in court. If you knew what you were looking for and really tried hard to go looking for it. So that was all right.

The licence fee can't go fast enough.

And this part

“ Treatment and therapies mainly consist of hormonal treatment (such as reversible puberty blockers)…..”

@SuperSleepyBaby

And this part

“ Treatment and therapies mainly consist of hormonal treatment (such as reversible puberty blockers)…..”

I'm actually considering how to word a complaint about that statement.

Treatment and therapies mainly consist of hormonal treatment (such as reversible puberty blockers)…..”*
I'm actually considering how to word a complaint about that statement.*

Whoops. Posted before I commented.

That statement needs challenging.

Make a complaint about the obvous bias - www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint

That's a terrible article. That statement about puberty blockers and social transition is just ignorant.

The actual text of the governer's directive is here:

As OAG Opinion No. KP-0401 makes clear, it is already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.

Essentially it is instructing DCS to enforce existing texas law banning children from having surgery and hormone treatment under laws against genital mutilation, cosmetic surgery on minors and child abuse.

This is exactly the same as UK law so I'm surprised the BBC implies it's transphobic. The only difference in Texas is that PBs are also banned for children, whereas in the UK they are permitted as an off-licence experimental treatment.

There is nothing about banning social transition. Texas does however ban parents from abuse through inflicting emotional distress.

gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/O-MastersJaime202202221358.pdf

Thank you for linking that letter from gov.Texas @donquixotedelamancha

It is helpful to have it for reference in order to complain about the BBC article.

Aside from that, re the arguments, obfuscation and confusion about trans issues more generally, I think this part is especially well put:

While you refer to these procedures as “sex changes,” it is important to note that it remains medically impossible to truly change the sex of an individual because this is determined biologically at conception. No doctor can replace a fully functioning male sex organ with a fully functioning female sex organ (or vice versa). In reality, these “sex change” procedures seek to destroy a fully functioning sex organ in order to cosmetically create the illusion of a sex change