Janice Turner in the Times on what went wrong at the Tavistock

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

A great article from Janice, an evidenced and informative read about the nature of the treatment of teenage girls at the Tavistock with the involvement of adult trans activists and lobby groups in determining how these girls were treated being specifically detailed.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e1356292-ebdd-11ec-8821-d2e916a7eab3?shareToken=be1bbdedaf3cdb8c615e7e185ab135d7

Well that might be controversial to the unthinking, but I think it needs bloody saying.

We do not fully appreciate the collapse of community and social support.

Great comment Artichokeleaves Especially this:
It has become politics led. Not needs led. With the drive being to serve the adult agendas within the politics and not primarily to do no harm and meet the needs of the individual child. Over and over in the whistleblowing accounts it is mentioned how much the centres became owned, directed and controlled by political lobby groups instead of remaining independent. The capture is the problem. This should never have been permitted

Can't be stressed enough that the oversight of a child health issue by some of the most unsuitable people in the world to have an influence, is literally a disaster for vulnerable children.

NYP article
nypost.com/2022/06/18/detransitioned-teens-explain-why-they-regret-changing-genders

“I was failed by the system. I literally lost organs.”

When Chloe was 12 years old, she decided she was transgender. At 13, she came out to her parents. That same year, she was put on puberty blockers and prescribed testosterone. At 15, she underwent a double mastectomy. Less than a year later, she realized she’d made a mistake — all by the time she was 16 years old.

Now 17, Chloe is one of a growing cohort called “detransitioners” — those who seek to reverse a gender transition, often after realizing they actually do identify with their biological sex. Tragically, many will struggle for the rest of their lives with the irreversible medical consequences of a decision they made as minors.

“I can’t stay quiet,” said Chloe. “I need to do something about this and to share my own cautionary tale.”

Can't be stressed enough that the oversight of a child health issue by some of the most unsuitable people in the world to have an influence, is literally a disaster for vulnerable children.

This.

Not to mention the political idea of no qualifications in the field being needed other than having the characteristic in question leading to people for example such as A. Challoner, advising on matters directly affecting safeguarding policy while holding no qualifications or training in safeguarding and an inquiry after repeated discussions with Challoner having to record that Challoner was not capable of understanding safeguarding.

This is a political point that is going to have to be unpicked: when it comes to safeguarding, when it comes to national policy, when it comes to diagnosis, and advice and regulations that affect other bodies for example Equality Law where there are 9 separate groups to consider, being qualified in the field and having the training and experience to give this advice has to be a thing. You may take policy advice from a group solely based on what is popularly called lived experience, but the harm has come from not ensuring proper balance and impartiality in taking this lived experience advice and being drawn into political prejudice and bias between the groups, and also from buying into a political idea that experts and qualified professionals know nothing, compared to someone who has identified as living with a characteristic in question.

A lot of this has been tried now, in a rather irresponsible free for all experiment while a lot of professionals who should have done a much better job have been asleep at the wheel and failed in safeguarding on multiple fronts. It has been proven to not work, and to cause a lot of unintended harms and consequences. Letting it continue to roll is no longer an option.

Sajid Javid just retweeted the article, saying thanks for the piece and that he is deeply concerned.

Thanks for the excellent insights. MN FWR always expands the conversation!

Does anyone else feel like a number of people are ramping up the campaign of sunlight? ☀️

When is Cass out? I feel like it's going to be damming.

Undamming, actually! I'm hoping for a tsunami of long pent-up concerns finally being voiced all over the world, and leading to a massive turnabout in paediatric practice in gender clinics.

(Sorry, I know that's a typo, but it seems like an apt one)

Oh yeah sorry! - 🌊 🌊 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊

And Sue pascoe (Tory TW with kids who has at one point claimed to have a DSD) Wittering on about WPATH guidance- READ THE BLOODY ARTICLE!

It's a fantastic article and chimes with my experience of my son's therapist saying that "the 'why' isn't important" when I expressed concerns about my son's newly-discovered gender dysphoria. I was under the impression that "why" is everything in therapy. Apparently not.

It is becoming impossible to ignore the damning data (now it's finally being kept). The detransitioners mourning their damaged bodies, lost fertility and future hopes. Women's sport being eradicated by men. The significant numbers of sex offenders self identifying as women (in spite of all the judges letting so many off because they'll be sad in prison).
Everything that women have said would happen is being revealed - and at last the press have started reporting openly instead of the spin put out by lobby groups.

So many more published articles by the day.... all over the world.

The tsunami is here.

Ah but this can all be hand-waved away with a graph showing the increase in people who are left-handed after it became more accepted, apparently.

I thought I had read that increased use of ultrasound in pregnancy increased the tendency to left-handedness? The thing is that so many interventions are relatively recent that we don't know what the long term effects are.

Wow, these are shocking reads.

I’m in Australia and feel we’re a way behind here. Ant questioning on young people being put on the medical pathway is labelled transphobic as is the questioning of trans women competing in women’s sport.

I totally agree, and I've seen some of the outcomes of that with people in my family who have suffered with serious mental illness for years.

But they worked very hard to see the whole "chemical imbalance" which would be corrected by modern drugs narrative to the public, and many people still believe that even though the theory is known not to be true and the promised effects haven't materialized. Largely it seems with the goal of de-stigmatizing mental illness, and now of course they have found that it seems to be the wrong approach for that, too.

Same here in Canada. I think the biggest problem is the CBC is still pushing the same narrative line the GUardian has taken, but there is no other comparably news agency to really face them down. There is so much trust in the CBC that many people assume if there was a serious issue, they would cover it.

Without fail, whenever ideology mixes with medicine you get a scandal.

The natural childbirth movement is a classic example.

Astute comparison.

Whilst I'm glad that the Tavistock scandal is finally being exmined, the national outrage is just not great enough imho. We have a case of mentally ill or distressed children (mostly girls) being left with long term, life limiting disabilities - which puberty blockers and surgical interventions are known to cause. If children with learning disabilities were being sterilised and physically disabled by the NHS, it would rightly be the lead story on the BBC, Sky, all the papers, Twitter, and would be the subject of an emergency debate in Parliament. It would be at the centre of national debate until heads rolled and all the care providers, activists and charities involved in it were arrested or defunded. So why is that not happening here?

Ideology.

It will unravel. Like lobotomies. A lot of people will end up being sued eventually.

This. Negligence claims are generally met by the nhs employer or the mutual defence fund. Things have to get quite extreme before criminal or disciplinary proceedings start - and here they have the cover of the concerning practices being very widespread. They are not going out on a limb with this stuff.
we have huge problems with accountability in the medical profession. Very rare that culpable individuals are made to pay a price for wrongdoing