Irish health service to develop new plan for the treatment of gender dysphoria

[Jumpersaurus]

Will be watching this closely. The Irish health service has historically loved exporting its problems (most obviously abortion care); they're only doing this because their hand has been forced by the UK. I expect they'll do the bare minimum and avoid rocking any boats on either the TRA side or the Catholic right.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/02/25/hse-to-develop-new-plan-for-the-treatment-of-gender-dysphoria/?utmsource=Newsletter&utmmmedium=email&utmcontent=HSE+to+develop+new+plan+for+the+treatment+of+gender+dysphoria&utmmcampaign=eveningupdatee_digest

“The epidemiology of gender dysphoria is changing and will continue to do so. We are aware of 15 other countries including the UK who are looking at their models of care and we are doing so too.”

Is that the scraping sound of back-tracking?

Definitely. Plenty of smoke and mirrors going on here, implying we're doing just as the UK are doing in looking at our models of care, when in reality they've avoided the entire issue by passing the buck to the NHS.

I think theres too many NGO's with vested interests for the HSE to actually do anything brave like the Swedish. I mean the Government is still pushing ahead with GRC's for 16 year olds without parental consent.

Even if they decide to develop their own service the likelyhood of them being able to staff it up is in doubt, they've tried for years to recuit people for similar positions and haven't been able to.

Given the BMJ’s recent publications questioning the evidence around trans medicine, it’s high time the politicians recognised the damage being done. Wonder how they’d feel if they were personally liable for the outcomes for those 16-18 year olds?

While I agree that there is a degree of reversing going on with this announcement, I was kinda optimistic when I read the article yesterday.

"The development comes after a visit to Dublin to meet the HSE last week by Dr Hilary Cass, who is heading an ongoing review in the UK of the treatment of gender dysphoria in children and young people."
and
The effort to develop a domestic service has been hampered, amongst other reasons, by divergent views on the best approach within the health service and difficulties in recruiting staff to an area that is frequently the subject of contentious debate.

I dont think the second point would have been published 12months ago?

Is the Catholic 'right' still a thing. My kids are all adults but I was at the local secondary last week and there are two rainbow 🌈 signs , one either side of the main entrance.

I would have cheered this to the echo 10 years ago , now it terrifies me. For context this is a village of 1,500 ppl in rural Cork. On the plus side it is the old pride flag.

I wonder what Muslim parents make of it. To say nothing of Ukrainian Orthodox!

Most Catholics place emphasis on social justice, which gets characterised as 'left'. The official church opposes capital punishment (not an issue anywhere in Europe but relevant to America). Catholic hospitals had much more leeway on termination of dangerous pregnancies under Canon law than they did under national law after the original referendum (1983?). And the country, still nominally majority Catholic, voted very strongly in favour of same sex marriage. Catholic and 'right' don't sit quite as tightly as people assume - it isn't like American evangelicals or some of the Northern Irish protestant denominations.

On this one, I suspect common sense and biology would be strong influencers. I still don't understand why the gender recognition act didn't require a referendum as it changed the definition of man and woman, and both words are used in the Constitution.

I know. My DS is in a Catholic primary and I'd have hated the idea of it 6 years ago but now I feel relief. The principal is an extremely sensible seeming woman and I feel fairly secure that ideological nonsense is pretty limited in her school. I feel stress about the upcoming decision re secondary school. Our nearest secondary is an Educate Together and I was initially delighted about this.

However, ETs are probably the most gung-ho about this stuff and will likely cling hardest as the rest of society peaks. Apparently the school has 'gender neutral' toilets, which I find extremely off-putting. Though I guess if they are fully private cubicles all off a main corridor, it is potentially safer than having supposedly single sex toilets that an opposite sex student claiming to be trans can access. And on the other hand, our other nearest school is a gaelscoil and I'd worry that I wouldn't be able to understand what he might be taught.

It's a minefield. DS is a pretty matter of fact type child who believes very genuinely in being kind but knows you can't change sex and than NB isn't real. So while I do still worry about him being convinced otherwise, I also worry quite a bit about him stating facts and becoming ostracised. I do hear more and more from parents of young teens that they are starting to tire of this shit. So maybe he'll just be one of many. However an awful lot of my friends are still full woke and raising their children to believe you can really change sex or be neither, and a lot of their kids are in ET primaries. I'm sure a lot of them will end up in ET secondary.

I use the term Catholic right to refer to the likes of the Iona institute and their various splinter organisations, Rónán Mullen, Breda O'Brien, etc. We saw during repeal how vocal they can be, and how powerful their PR machine is when required. I think most mainstream politicians prefer to stay under the radar on any topic likely to rattle their cage.

I imagine they'd give the TRAs a run for their money if this became an open public debate, and can't see many politicians wanting to be in the middle!

They aren't helpful to this cause though as they are too out there. In the US you have the likes of Matt Walsh, a Catholic conservative who I disagree with on many, many things. However he is objectively an intelligent documentary maker and presenter. Comes across as largely likeable and rarely does anything to alienate the average person on the street when he campaigns against gender ideology. The worst he has done is be 'mean' to Dylan Mulvaney in a way that lots of GC presenters say is true but shouldn't be said so bluntly.

We, on the other hand, have Enoch Burke. Who I wouldn't be entirely surprised to learn was some sort of TRA psy-op because he has been sooooo damaging to any argument we can make about not socially transing teens in school. (I don't actually think he's a psy-op.) His behaviour has almost certainly made it significantly harder for another teacher or other school staff to raise objections as they will be likened to him.

Oh I take your point @Jumpersaurus ! Then there's John Waters I suppose. Mary Kenny ?

Just that I think phony liberals are more sensitive to criticism from non Irish or at least non Catholic sources. Come to think of it , many African Christians are deeply conservative. And Poles.

Soon the government will be impaled upon the horns of a dilemma. Perhaps they will set up some inquiry and then do a runner until after the next election.

Is Enoch Burke a Catholic? He (and the family) are very atypical.

Some of the phony liberals need both the homophobia and the misogyny of gender ideology pointed out to them. The mindset that tolerated the laundries, the marriage bar, the lack of divorce (and earlier, separation) rights, the barrier contraceptive ban, the abortion ban, the cervical cancer scandal, the symphisiotomies, the hepatitis scandal etc etc etc is still there in nice middle class Ireland and its citadel in HSE management. Now it's all about gender, trans rights and surrogacy - women, particularly poor women, don't count as fully human. Overreach will scupper it in the end (I hope) but it needs spelling out to the naive.

Fair, I think he's actually from an Evangelical church. However, he is still seen as religious right and his behaviour, which is far from just objecting to having to use a new name and preferred pronouns, really has made things harder to make rational objections to gender ideology, especially in schools.

He's very irritating, but assuming that he is representative of anyone else, including people who are GC and/or Catholic, is probably a long way from reality (basing this on conversations).

I know a lot of people who see him as indicative of the 'transphobe' argument. He's the only teacher I know of who has spoken out against validating the gender identity of their students. To a lot of people, that makes it seem like the only people who object are those on the absolute fringe.

Burke and his siblings are Pentecostalists. A small but growing denomination. Not representative of most Christians of course. I can see his support wouldn't be very useful.

Perhaps I was unkind talking about ' phony liberals'. But if they were true liberals they wouldn't try to censor the views of women , gay people or concerned parents , surely?

Some are absolutely phoney liberals. I personally know a few people who use their trans activism to gain status and power. (Inculding my XH.) But I honestly think most people who follow along with it all, really do just think they are being kind and doing the right thing.