The Hannah Barnes book

[RoyalCorgi]

There have been discussions about the book on different threads relating to various interviews with Barnes or pieces about the book. Thought it would be useful to bring everything on to one thread.

This review by Sarah Ditum is excellent and very moving:

unherd.com/2023/02/the-tragedy-of-becoming-a-woman/

Another good one from Suzanne Moore:

suzannemoore.substack.com/p/a-review-of-time-to-think-the-book

Thank you for continued links; where people I know won't be reading the whole the book these are useful.

Just found a new piece by Hannah buried on the bbc app after a shape shifting robot

Tavistock children's gender clinic closure leaves uncertain future www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64683917

I can't copy much, app will only allow one para at a time.

Basically there seems to be optimism that the new centres will have a multi treatment approach with affirmation being seen as not the primary approach.

I suppose taking the long view, services that can smash the diagnostic overshadowing would mean that over time the narrative changes.

If they go too quickly they risk everyone debunking off to gender Gp. They need to work with parents and slowly unpick the capture.

Not to derail, but the emergence of this "guide" by Dr Michael Brady (previously discussed on FWR I'm sure) seems worth keeping an eye on too. Just as there's supposedly more scrutiny on GIDS, so it seems the idea of innate gender identity is being rolled out wherever it can be made to happen:

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11763743/Barclay-orders-urgent-investigation-woke-NHS-guidelines-telling-staff-not-use-she.html

@ResisterRex This deserves a link of its own. Atrocious waste of NHS money and time.

Done

Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE: Treat all patients as gender neutral, NHS doctors told: Health Secretary's anger at taxpayer-funded guide that tells medics not to use pronouns until patient has confirmed them www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4745330-daily-mail-exclusive-treat-all-patients-as-gender-neutral-nhs-doctors-told-health-secretarys-anger-at-taxpayer-funded-guide-that-tells-medics-not-to-use-pronouns-until-patient-has-confirmed-them

😊 thanks!

Note how quickly the Health Secretary is to confirm that he does not support this.

Ministers have got the message but it is clearly a huge task to turn round a captured NHS.

I am planning on discussing this book with the slt at my school (they already know my views) which article do you think is the best 'beginners guides to share with them?

I think what I find simultaneously disturbing and fascinating with all this is that with anything and everything else suspicion is always present. Whatever your opinions of the people involved when it comes to everything from vaccinations to medical treatments etc there are always so many people skeptical and so many people so convinced of the dishonesty and pure money making reasons why these things are available and will go so far as to not vaccinate their children or refuse medical treatment.

But when it comes to this so many people are just so convinced that this is what children need and there's no question of that no matter how awful the side effects or end results are. Yet of all the medical money making schemes this has to be up there. I mean you take drugs meant for short term use in say precocious puberty and create a need to take them for so much longer with a garuntee they will go onto more medication that they will take for a.life time. It should create more suspicion than it does.

One thing I did notice in the Sarah ditum review is that she's almost playing into the trauma a bit too. I'm not saying puberty isn't ever traumatic . That its a breeze and everyone's worrying about nothing. Of course its not like that. But I am curious as to the exact moment it stopped just being some thing everyone went through and got on with to something parents completely buy into and validate that their kids will be almost suicidal experiencing. How much is real and how much have we inadvertently created by being afraid of our kids growing up. And by insisting that everyone learns everything together at school because " equality " without realising that by removing the opportunity to discuss amongst your own that many questions will go un asked.

I know social media and the Internet has a large part to play so maybe it wasn't such a good idea to create situations where kids will have no choice but to go online because our kids are effectively being used as experiments where segregation at any point even for this one lesson is seen as offensive or unfair etc. Kids aren't any less in need of that space today than they were decades ago.

Why are we encouraging and creating the need for this constant attachment to the very technology thats causing our children so much pain and suffering. What did we think would happen with 1500 11-16 year olds together in one place armed with a device that could have them online in a split second?

Why are we failing to admit this is a problem amd instead continue to double down and pretend the result isnt an issue.

It was only a matter of time til someone jumped into this "opportunity " we created. Its supply and demand at the end of the day isn't it? The world of medicine is full of obscure /alternative/controversial clinics/practices etc gender would never be any different.

I know there have always been similar groups in schools. The cutters , the anorexics and bulimics etc but this explosion in mental health issues is something that should be raising alarm bells. Not having everyone around the child affirm that they are normal and its everyone else around them thats the crazy one.

I'm not saying mental health issues arent real at all dont take that from this. But I went to school/college and friends with and have worked with people who have been through all sorts of horrific things and have not and do not suffer from anything. I cant help but wonder if today we are teaching this generation how to be a victim and effectively also creating many if the issues that are being treated. I do have questions about the world of therapists etc too. Like with medication and affirming this gender stuff. Where is the incentive to really cure it or provide a definitive solution to it when you make your money from these people coming back for more and more. Anti depressants must also be a huge industry.

The scariest thing for me is the incestuous nature of it all. Round and round amongst the same people and places we all go. Theres no way to break free of it all.

@Whatwouldscullydo Agree with you especially about this notion that puberty is “traumatic”. Is it? For whom? I’d never heard this until a couple of years ago.

It sounds like yet another fabricated problem to enable some people to be endless victims.

I mean the days of having tape measures thrown around u on the shop floor in M&s and sanitary belts and PE knickers are over. We have so many industries set up with products designed especially for girls in particular along side the ability to order on amazon and have it arrive the next day and allow you to set up/try on in the privacy of your own bedroom. We are spoilt for choice in the world of sports bras and sports clothing. How, when these things are so much easier now , are things so much worse. It makes no sense at all.

There was a certain amount of “just getting on with it”. We grew up with a level of healthy resilience as a result of this pragmatic approach (our parents didn’t have the time or language to ask after our every feeling/ no social media/ no constant handwringing over every aspect of children’s lives eg is this broccoli organic? There were obviously huge downsides to this, though, such as emotional distress and neglect often being routinely overlooked), which means that many of us are somewhat 😵‍💫 at the idea of normal life events such as puberty being “traumatic”.

I think that's whats missing. Resilience. I'm.not saying that kids should just let everything slide. But simultaneously being a loved, well looked after child with 2 loving parents at home should not be seen the way it is now which is boring and uneventful and insignificant and so devoid of trauma you have to get together with friends and create said trauma in some race to the bottom which some how means you have it worse than a kid growing up in Foster care or who has a parent in prison or whatever.

Schools have been sold the drama. Now they are obsessed with gender and period poverty which im not saying doesn't exist but whats happening is its becoming so.mainstream now that the trauma is being removed to a degree which sounds good in theory but ignores the fact that the kids are simultaneously revelling in said drama/trauma and to.provide a " solution " actually removes part of the identity and causes them to look for another way to be a victim some how.

I'm sure I've read on here too that schools jumped on the band wagon re period poverty and then couldn't even give the stuff away. I know at dd1s school they had to physically hand the kids the freebies as no one was asking for it or taking it. Dd wasn't in that day they came and found her a few days later to give her hers she didn't even want it. I'm.sure the resources are useful if your school has a particular problem but again for many the stuff is just sitting there unused in the girls toilets.

Great posts, @Whatwouldscullydo. I think - you wouldn't stick your child in a smoke filled room all day, so how come we've let minors have unfettered access to the internet?

And I think you're right about things being "traumatic". Yes some things genuinely are. But some aren't. They're crappy bits of life we have to deal with. Dealing with them helps us learn resilience (sadly sometimes so much lacking).

When you say this:

I know there have always been similar groups in schools. The cutters , the anorexics and bulimics etc but this explosion in mental health issues is something that should be raising alarm bells. Not having everyone around the child affirm that they are normal and its everyone else around them thats the crazy one.

I agree very strongly with you. It's taken the dogged determination of some parents, some ex-patients who continue to pay a high price, and the fourth estate to start to get to the bottom of this.

All of our institutions have failed. And these aren't "missed opportunities" but failures through actively turning a blind eye, often castigating those raising the alarm.

Not quite sure which thread this belongs in best but this one seems to work, although it would also fit in one of the threads trying to convince everyone that all is sunshine and roses in Labour. From the archives:

"Doing some website housekeeping & I came across this which I wrote about how in 2019 parliamentarians were threatened with having the whip withdrawn if they attended an event organised by @StandingforXX about the Tavistock."

twitter.com/jo_bartosch/status/1626229910959448064?s=46&t=ThQQ1FUhBI5Fl7ullkYRmA

From the link in the tweet:

"After over forty years of being in the Labour Party Lord Moonie was told by Party General Secretary Jenny Formby that his membership would be at risk if he proceeded with the event. He told Lesbian and Gay News: “there was a direct attempt to coerce me into cancelling the meeting which I had sponsored, and when I refused they said they were suspending my membership. So naturally, I told them to fuck off and resigned.”

Lord Moonie added “as a doctor I am horrified at the Tavistock’s blatant disregard for the safety of adolescents and failure to follow best practice.”"

I won't post the link as it's an archive link but you can find it in that tweet.

Yes.

For some reason resilience is no longer being taught to children who are middle to upper class in many Western countries. I see so many references to the need to feel safe in the sense of never hearing anything the person disagrees with. Even some antifascist sites tell people to go and protest but to remember to take snacks and the medications with them.

It's such an odd brew of aggression towards others and this incredible (to me) demand that nothing in life will never hurt you. Perhaps these are very privileged young people who really don't know what suffering tastes like so regard minor troubles as major ones?

Yet life, on the whole, will grind us all down in one way or another, and none of us will escape pain or failure. That's what resilience is for, to get up and keep going, to learn from the failures so that they won't happen again, to grow stronger and wiser and more compassionate as a person.

I added that 'compassionate' word as I don't see any empathy from those who demand safety for themselves. The thinking is demons-vs-angels all the way, without any understanding of the complexities of life. This is how children and teens have always behaved, to some extent, but now I see thirty-year-old activists behaving like this. And I wish to understand how and why this happened.

It is worrying, especially when truly horrible things happen to others in this world (the war in Ukraine, what Afghanistan is doing by turning women and girls into chattel), that lack of empathy and that lack of all proportion.

It really is such a middle class thing. There is no way a child living through war or being denied education by the taliban would give hurty feelings from tweets a second thought.

Especially when these privileged people arent even interested in helping themselves by I dunno turning off their lap top or staying off twitter.

They arent interested in solutions to the problem or in helping themselves. The self created trauma is their entire identity

Janice Turner has a very good review of the Hannah Barnes book in the Times (no share token, sorry):

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-the-inside-story-of-the-collapse-of-the-tavistock-s-gender-clinic-z7wwj9rtw

Didn't mean to disrupt the flow of conversation, but thought people would be interested in the review. As you were!

Camilla Cavendish has also written a positive review in the ft

Yes, the puberty/trauma thing is interesting.

I think in some sense it's normally, or at least common, for puberty to be very difficult. Your body changes, so it may no longer feel right, like the image you have of yourself. You have lots of extreme emotions. Your relationships with others change. People start to see you as an adult, with extra responsibility. People start to see you sexually, which can be scary but also exciting.

It can almost feel like an out-of-body experience, and it does create an identity crises. Building a sense of themselves as an adult in community with others is part of the process, so it's normal to feel out of place.

But what kids learn now is that all of this is wrong, it's a sign of something that needs to be fixed. And they learn, in school, that they will need some kind of diagnosis to explain it. And also all the ways other kids show their distress, like cutting, etc.

No one tells them that pain and suffering are just a normal part of life and not always a problem to be solved.

There's an archived copy here: archive.ph/ebvVV

Puberty can be difficult, awkward new physical stuff to adjust to, body changing, hormones everywhere, increased tension in your relationship with parents. The difference, I think, is that nobody expected it to be easy and buckled up for a wild ride for a couple of years. Eventually, it settled down, as it should.

But your parents weren't trying to be your best friends and prevent you from experiencing any difficulty.

One thing I did notice in the Sarah ditum review is that she's almost playing into the trauma a bit too. I'm not saying puberty isn't ever traumatic . That its a breeze and everyone's worrying about nothing. Of course its not like that. But I am curious as to the exact moment it stopped just being some thing everyone went through and got on with to something parents completely buy into and validate that their kids will be almost suicidal experiencing

I agree. For us, it was also a little bit exciting because we were growing up.

The bits that weren't good were boys pinging bra straps or teasing girls for wearing or not wearing bras and worrying about leaks in class and so on.

I think the circumstances have changed so much now though with girls being indoctrinated into the rituals of institutionalised femininity much earlier (beauty rituals, fashion, looking like grown-ups and so on) and boys having ideas of girls and femininity derived from the internet and including porn.

So, the bad bits have got worse, I think.

Despite law changes around grooming, the age of consent and so-on I think girls are more readily sexialised by older men now too.