Hannah Barnes book review in The Observer

[PriamFarrl]

www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1676792952

Sorry if this has already been posted.

Hang on, are they saying that the Tavistock was wrong…..?

Thanks for posting.

'Such a book cannot easily be dismissed. To do so, a person would not only have to be wilfully ignorant, they would also – to use the popular language of the day – need to be appallingly unkind. This is the story of the hurt caused to potentially hundreds of children since 2011, and perhaps before that. To shrug in the face of that story – to refuse to listen to the young transgender people whose treatment caused, among other things, severe depression, sexual dysfunction, osteoporosis and stunted growth, and whose many other problems were simply ignored – requires a callousness that would be far beyond my imagination were it not for the fact that, thanks to social media, I already know such stony-heartedness to be out there.'

Oof.

Also:

'At times, the world Barnes describes, with its genitalia fashioned from colons and its fierce culture of omertà, feels like some dystopian novel. But it isn’t, of course. It really happened, and she has worked bravely and unstintingly to expose it. This is what journalism is for.'

Bravo, Hannah Barnes.

So pleased to see this in the Observer. That's what so many people who are the drivers of this in schools, the NHS etc read. Not sure they'll actually join up the dots yet, but if even a small number stop and think...

What a brave and astonishing review. Completely unthinkable that we would have seen something like this is a national paper a year ago.

Fantastic review. It's by Rachel Cooke, who is one of a number of gender-critical journalists at the Observer. She did a great interview with David Bell a while back, so knows the subject very well. It does make me laugh to think of Guardian and Observer staff sharing the same offices - do they talk to each other?

Another of Barnes’s interviewees is Dr Kirsty Entwistle, an experienced clinical psychologist. When she got a job at Gids’ Leeds outpost, she told her new colleagues she didn’t have a gender identity. “I’m just female,” she said. This, she was informed, was transphobic.

Now, some authorities claim this means you are agender, and therefore trans. So hard to keep it straight!

Does the book examine how this ideology took root in the first place? Who were the leading exponents? These things do not just happen.

Last line in that article:

This is what journalism is for.

Owen Jones and all the others who did not listen to Suzanne and Hadley, take note.

The tide is well and truly turning

Don't get too excited. The Observer has long had good GC articles. It's a completely different editorial team to The Guardian, which is still stonily silent.

Thanks for the link - I have just bought the book on the strength of that review.

The replies to the tweet from @guardian are amusing:

twitter.com/guardian/status/1627224515150245888

A fair number of the rebuttals take the form of the woeful Onion article from the other day.

IDK the answer to your question, but broadly speaking, I think it's fine and maybe more helpful to have a book that focuses very hard on one aspect of this mess (treatment of children).

I believe in one of the extracts I've read the influence of the toxic Gendered Intelligence (as well as Mermaids) is mentioned as having an inappropriate influence behind the scenes.

Such a book cannot easily be dismissed. To do so, a person would not only have to be wilfully ignorant, they would also – to use the popular language of the day – need to be appallingly unkind.

Indeed! Which explains the state of The Guardian's Twitter thread about the Observer article: archive.ph/AP2Yf

Rose, who's in the thick of this, is the kiln person from The Pottery Throw Down

What I find most astonishing is the lack of research going on at the Tavistock.

I was an HIV nurse specialist in the early 1990s and, as a new disease, research was fundamental to our care and treatment. Every week something new emerged from the whirlwind of trials. Then when I moved into cancer care in the late 90s, there was again so much research going on, every aspect of patients “cancer journeys” was analysed, findings implemented, practice adapted accordingly. National cancer care standards and practice are based on clinical research. Most oncology patients are eligible for - and informed about - current trials, be they new treatment trials or quality of life/end of life studies.

As the only GIDS in the UK, why was there so little research and audit?

"IDK the answer to your question, but broadly speaking, I think it's fine and maybe more helpful to have a book that focuses very hard on one aspect of this mess (treatment of children)."

I was just curious. I am always on impressed by the additions to the literature on the subject, it is hard to keep up now!

TheBiologyStupid - Rose has clearly read the book and very carefully considered the harm done to children. Or maybe not 🙄

What do you mean in the thick of this? Tweeting about it? I used to follow Rose on Twitter but stopped, for reasons I know I don't need to explain on here...