Still Genuinely Willing To Discuss In Good Faith

[Catiette]

I've taken the plunge and started a new thread. In the interests of good manners, an addendum that I may be disappearing to work for a while myself, as this has all been far too interesting to allow me to achieve any of my urgent weekend work to-dos today - I hope that, in the light of that, creating this follow-up thread isn't bad form. I just thought other people may want to continue discussing these issues (mainly, now, the redefinition of woman, and statistical trends re. women globally), and I'd definitely dip back in when the urge to procrastinate overcomes me next. No worries, of course, if people think we did it all to death on the old thread - we were fairly thorough, methinks(!), so can also just let Good Faith Discussion #2 rapidly fade into Mumsnet obscurity. 😀

It's good that is has helped you to focus your thoughts. This is definitely one of the great benefits of Mumsnet. It can be incredibly educative.

Because people have been told that to do anything but affirm that it would lead to suicides and trauma.

This is also why in numerous countries 'conversion therapy' has been expanded from being for sexual orientation to be now including gender identity. And how in some countries and states to do any therapy that causes a patient to have to review their identity is consider 'conversion'.

In some states of Australia, therapists are very concerned that this will significantly diminish the quality of health care offered to these patients. And it also then cycles around then to the testimony of the clinicians who were raising the alarms about their patients arriving at the gender clinics already self-diagnosed and asking specifically for treatments. In deed, they have also commented that these patients seem to be primed to say the same key words.

this is very concerning. And again, the question has to be asked 'who benefits from these conversion therapy bans being so openly worded that even exploratory therapy could be considered illegal'?

It also then cycles around to the even earlier clinician whistleblowers (particularly David Bell and Marcus Evans) who started to point out that mental health of their patients were NOT improving with medical interventions that often neglected the comorbidities of those people. Because even when the first whistleblowers were raising alarms, treatments had been constrained in time and in width, meaning these patients were not having their comorbidities treated, and it seems that a large proportion of these are the comorbidities are very common in trans people.

And potentially these comorbidities being treated would significantly reduce gender dysphoria.

So, again, who benefits from having ambiguity impact the conversion laws that are coming in around the world, and is still being worked on (apparently) in the UK?

Because it doesn't seem to be the trans people they are being said to protect.

Here is an Australian review here about the fact that children and adolescent patients are arriving to the clinic already prepped and the children (not so much the parents) were resistant to holistic and more comprehensive treatments:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26344041211010777

Published April 22, 2021
Kasia Kozlowska, Georgia McClure et al

Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service

Part of the conclusion

Our findings indicate that engagement with families, a trauma-informed model of mental health care, and ongoing discourse pertaining to the effects of unresolved trauma and loss need to be part of all gender dysphoria clinics and the services with which they collaborate. Because of their impact on subjective well-being and the development of the self, specific loss and trauma events present crucial opportunities for both long-term psychotherapy and more immediate, targeted treatments. The move to a more comprehensive, holistic model of care—one that takes into account the individual’s developmental history and the experiences that make up that history—has also been echoed in the work of other clinician-researchers (D’Angelo, 2020a; Entwistle, 2019; Giovanardi et al., 2018; Kozlowska et al., 2021; Williamson, 2019).

Our study found that the children and families who came to the clinic had clear, preformed expectations: most often, children and families wanted a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to be provided or confirmed, together with referral to endocrinology services to pursue medical treatment of gender dysphoria. Parents (vs. children) also largely came with the same expectations, though they were more likely to be interested in incorporating holistic (biopsychosocial) elements, including treatment of mental health comorbidities, family support/therapy, and long-term psychotherapy for the child. It was our impression that these expectations had been shaped by the dominant sociopolitical discourse—the gender affirmative model. It will be interesting to track the expectations of children and families in the years to come as sociopolitical discourses become more varied and diverse and as the voices are heard of both those who have done well and those who not done well via the medical pathway.

Our study also found that despite the high rates of family conflict, relationship breakdowns, parental mental illness, and maltreatment (see Table 3)—and our own clinical perspective that both individual and family work were indicated for the majority of families—few families rated themselves as being in a clinically severe range on self-report (SCORE-15). Coupled with the dominant sociopolitical discourse—the gender affirmative model that prioritizes the medical treatment pathway—it is not surprising that the large majority of children and families were not motivated to engage in or to remain engaged in ongoing therapy. These data bring three important phenomena into focus. First, when children and families were given the space and structure to tell the child’s developmental story—nested in the story of the family—they were able to identify and provide a detailed narrative of the key issues that had contributed to the child’s presentation and distress. Without this space and structure, the issues remain undeclared and unaddressed. Second, some families—but also some clinicians—function within a non-holistic (non-biopsychosocial) framework where the child’s developmental experiences are disconnected from their clinical presentation. This non-holistic framework is likely to promote a healthcare delivery model that dehumanizes the child (by not examining the child’s and family’s lived experience) and that promotes medical solutions (correcting the identity/body mismatch) for a problem that is much more complex. Third, as noted earlier, our experience suggests that, insofar as the gender affirmative model is taken as equivalent to medical intervention, clinicians (including ourselves) who work in gender services are coming under increasing pressure to put aside their own holistic (biopsychosocial) model of care, and to compromise their own ethical standards, by engaging in a tick-the-box treatment process. Such an approach does not adequately address a broad range of psychological, family, and social issues and puts patients at risk of adverse future outcomes and clinicians at risk of future legal action.

@NotHavingIt no probs I can be irritating but usually when I pestering my kids to do stuff.

fwiw I understand your concerns

@SpookyFBI thank you so much for your contributions. You can probably tell by the number of posters/questions that a LOT of GC people would love to understand the GI position better, and #nodebate only results in a lack of understanding on both sides.
I’m not going to add anything else as you’re probably feeling quite overwhelmed already! 💐🍫☕️

Honestly, I wasn't even thinking of you🙂

For clarity because it does look like a 'long' post.

I think many people simply repeat what they have read about 'affirming only' care and don't really understand it or the arguments against using it. They also believe that misrepresented suicide rate and that children and adolescents will commit suicide unless they are affirmed. (Again for clarity, the suicide rate is a concern but it is a concern for after transition as well as before, and is also very complex and is not necessarily higher than other mental health issues or any where near as high as reported)

Therefore people support the conversion therapy laws that have been made because they don't look further than the 'theoretical' and develop a deeper understanding of the issues.

These conversion therapy laws then reduce the quality of the treatment for trans people. They are not getting the holistic and exploratory treatment they need. Because to do so is considered as 'conversion' by 'some' extreme activists but enough of them to have this widely publicised.

These laws also come after it has been identified, in more than one country, that children and adolescents were arriving and demanding particular treatments because they have been informed by groups heavily invested in 'affirming only' care. This also has acted to reduce the quality of care for these patients. It means it is much more difficult to assess these patients needs.

This needs to be discussed widely and not at a theoretical level.

yes I'd forgotten about the suicide threats.

Susie Green has a lot to answer for, doesn't she? Not that I know if she was the original source of the 'trans daughter or dead son' lie, but she certainly repeated it enough.

Apologies for harking back to something which was discussed several pages back, but here is a very interesting article in the Guardian about Indigo children. What struck me is how extremely nice the people pushing this seemed - just as people at GIDs were described. It also refers to increased suicide among these special children and the obsession with ignoring the fact that children have an amazing imagination and taking absolutely everything they say at face value.

"There's one girl here," Nikki points out a little girl called Emily, "who had a real fear of being starved to death."
Lianne, Emily's mother, comes over to join us.
"She used to hide food all over the house," Lianne says.
"Anyway," Nikki says, "we regressed her, and in the past life she'd been locked in a room by her mum and starved to death."

(Reminds me of the woman who thought eating green vegetables was a sign that her daughter was a boy)

But I also couldn't resist this moment of hilarity;

The children nod. And the exercise in telepathy begins.
And it gives me no pleasure to say this, but blindfolded children immediately start walking into chairs, into pillars, into tables.
"You're not listening, Zoe!" shouts Nikki at one point, just after Zoe has collided with a chair. "We were [telepathically] saying 'Stop!'"
"I can't hear!" says Zoe.

I think it proves that people can really suspend their belief in reality and truly believe something magical if it makes them feel special or explains something hard to comprehend about their child:

Lianne says - like many parents of Indigo children - she wasn't in the least bit new age before the family began attending Indigo meetings. She was perfectly ordinary and sceptical. She heard about the Indigo movement through word of mouth. It seemed to answer the questions she had about her daughter's behaviour. And she's very glad she came.

The chosen ones | Society | The Guardian

For anyone reading along, here is some good information regarding children and adolescents. Created with Stella O’Malley a clinician with now a great deal of work reviewing this area. It is in 3 parts and it may have been posted already, but it cannot be posted enough.

https://sex-matters.org/advice/resources-for-parents/

Thank you so much to everyone contributing. I’m an hour into my catch-up and on about p24, just after Googling the double split experiment (mystified - but get the analogy at least). Like yesterday, started making notes, then devolved into screenshots, & now having to schedule my wider reading. 😃Fascinating contributions. Mind flying in various directions (including decisively away from the double split Wiki entry).

Slit. Gah!

I think…

Do you think gender is a one dimensional spectrum? Or is it multidimensional? Do people have a complex mixture of characteristics, some of which in any culture tend to be seen as more or less masculine or feminine?

My mind always goes back to Donnie Darko here. For those unfamiliar with the film, he's a misfit kid, and for some reason a couple of teachers at his school have hooked onto this rather dodgy self-help guru and decided to bring some of his nonsense into the classroom.

Leading to this totally classic confrontation between Donnie and his teacher. The "fear/love" line here and Donnie's response to it seems to me be exactly the correct response to all this attempt to put things on a "male/female" line.

First video is the cheesy "Controlling Fear" VHS clip played before the classroom exercise - you can skip that, but it gives a teeny bit more mood setting. Second video is the main point.

The problem we have here is that genderologists have become obsessed with "male" and "female" in the same way Jim Cunningham was obsessed with "fear" and "love". Yes, they're important, but not everything can be put onto a straight line between those things!

And their attempt to categorise everything as "male" and "female" is tying them into complete and illogical knots.

I have two issues with affirmative treatment. The big one is that it is an attempt to treat the symptoms rather than cure the cause.

My other issue is the shift in power. Parents and (I assume) teachers know that children need boundaries. We impose boundaries on children because they aren't competent to set their own. We can only set set boundaries through the exercise of power. We don't use power as a first step once children are capable of logical debate but it is still there.

Affirmative treatment transfers power from parents and teachers to children. They tell us what gender they are, what their names are and what their pronouns are. They are now setting our boundaries.

Children continually try to take power from adults and this just hands it to them. It isn't a good idea.

@NecessaryScene great reference same facile are you barbie or gi joe energy

I have a theory, which can of course never be proven, that gender dysphoria isn't linked to being any particular sex and so would not resolve even if it were possible to change sex.

So if a trans woman who had struggled with gender dysphoria all their life managed to pull off some sort of Freaky Friday style body swap - perhaps with a trans man - and wake up with exactly the same brain, but in an actual female body, they would still have dysphoria.

The reason I think this is because gender dysphoria is in the mind, not the body, so if you change the body, the dysphoria will still be there.

If society were honest about the fact that gender dysphoria is actually a psychiatric condition, and if Big Pharma were motivated by people before profits, I think there's every chance that a drug could be developed to alleviate the suffering of people with dysphoria, the way Prozac helps to alleviate depression. But since society continues to be dishonest about this subject, and since Big Pharma has everything to gain from pushing puberty blockers and cross sex hormones and no doubt other expensive drugs to treat other, as yet unknown illnesses that people may develop as a result of having taken puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, I doubt this research would ever get off the ground.

I have thought about it very much and I agree there is a huge lack of research in this area.

I'll try and combine my response to this at the same time as following up on my answer to @SpookyFBI about "reversible social transition"

Firstly the definition: I use to the Cass interpretation of social transition from the Interim Report as my basis for understanding - changing someone's name, pronouns or other similar attributes (choice/change of clothing is included as it often a marker of a gender expression for someone wishing to express a gender identity). Cass makes it very clear that anything that falls under this banner is "not a neutral act" but is an "active intervention" which can "lead to pyschological harm longer term".

I totally agree that all of those examples you gave of difficult situations longer term are going to be difficult to reverse out from for anyone who has socially transitioned who subsequently wants to stop and reverse. They help bring in ideas about why it's not innocuous. Also Swedish documentary "The Trans Train" was helpful in setting out the nuances of this.

In the absence of a body of research, I've listened to hours of detransitioners (who went on to medically transition after social transition, then detransitioned) talking and grabbed hold of anything else I could that helped me build out a picture of a social transition journey. I've had to fill in the blanks but the gist I got is that from the moment you start your social transition, you're on a pathway that you don't want to get off it because a) it feels like you're directly addressing a gender dysphoria so will eventually feel better a) everyone tells you you'll have doubts before you take the next step (e.g. chest binders then the medical pathway) so you just have to go for it c) you'd feel awkward and embarrassed if you said it didn't feel right at any point, so you daren't stop.

The best relatable thing I've got for that is someone having doubts about a marriage just before a wedding. The build up to the wedding, the cost and expectations so far, will I let everyone down if I pull out?, I'm probably just nervous because it's a big step.. and so on. I appreciate it's not the perfect analogy but it's how I processed it. In other words, the more steps you take along the journey, the more you're likely to keep taking.

I then read a 3 part story that a mum wrote about how she helped her autistic daughter to "desist" (the term that is used for non-medical detransition.. or reversal of social transition). Her daughter was fully transitioned socially, both at school and at home. This helped me consolidate my thoughts on what was right for my daughter. The biggest takeaway I had was that I needed to limit the steps she took along the social transition pathway without getting to a point where I was doing something against her will. The story I read involved a hardline approach like Erin Friday (mum from California - video on Trigonometry) took. I wanted to avoid this but it took a lot of effort because I had to fight against a big pull from outside influences. I now know that RHSE lessons in school were also an influence.

By this time, my daughter had changed her name at school (the school did it, not us - they did tell us but only after they had done it) and was demanding puberty blockers. She hadn't changed her pronouns at this point but every time she said her "new" name to someone, they asked her her pronouns. Every time she was asked her pronouns, she got more and more overwhelmed because she didn't have an answer. Eventually she said "I'm leaning towards he/him". This was the only point at which I directly intervened and I told her that "I don't know" is a perfectly valid answer. I explained to her that any gender identity exploration was a journey and that she shouldn't decide the end of the journey (he/him pronouns) without completing the journey first. I suggested to her that the internet was not the right place to do that journey because it was full of all sorts misinformation in an area of health care that isn't very well understood at the moment. Luckily she agreed. Looking back now, I think she only agreed because a) as a family we have always had lots of conversation about not believing everything you see on the internet and using critical thinking skills and b) she knew I was listening to her and getting myself informed about LGBT+ issues by talking to people from the LGBT community. Maintaining a dialogue was the most important part, even though she was being regularly violent.

I explained to her that I'd discovered from my research many autistic girls struggle with their gender identity and their bodies. I think this reassured her she wasn't alone. I also shared bits of what I learned from talking to LGBT people. But mostly, I focused on helping her to address how she felt about her changing body.

The hardest part by far was stopping a social transition being done on her behalf by the medical profession and education system. I won't go in to details on here because this post is long enough now I think! Also, I cover that aspect in lots of detail in the article that I wrote (linked above on page 17 or 18 I think).

Regarding my daughter's name, we've helped her frame her choice of preferred name as a nickname. That way it's not a transition, it's just a name she likes to be called. At one time, school had changed her actual name on her record but, at our request, this was changed back and her preffered name is now in the "known as" field.

So in summary, I think a reversal of social transition is possible but it gets harder the further along the pathway someone is. Also, I don't believe anyone can (or should) be coerced in to reversing their social transition. The mum whose article I read and Erin Friday took this hardline approach and that worked for them. However, I didn't want to do it that way. Instead, I focused on removing the outside influences of gender identity bias and focusing on her autism distress.

Probably me, with my annoyingly reasonable voice and "hidden" (in plain sight on approx page 17/18) agenda 🤷‍♀️

Anyway, lots of people have different styles. Personally I think it's great that people are sharing their thoughts. Far better than "no debate". I suspect that this board feels a bit like a no debate experience for anyone that doesn't hold the same views as the majority of posters. Even if this thread is difficult to follow at times and sometimes gets uncomfortable, I think it's a great example of a way to share different views.

So to be clear, you took the approach of nickname and dress how you want which I have one other friend who has done, and I think it is a wise one. I have other friends who have taken other routes. But your route is a toe in the water version that allows exploration without taking it to what I think is considered ‘social transition.’

And so I can see why you would like there is less likelihood of issues further down the line.

Thank you for explaining and taking the time to go through it.

I'd like to add my voice to those thanking @SpookyFBI for her time and trouble. Her posts have been very illuminating, casting light not only on the worldview of trans ideology, but also on the aetiology of its acceptance by well-meaning people of good faith.

Thanks, Spooky.

And some reading suggestions for the philosophically inclined (e.g. Spooky?)

For those wondering what gender identity could be:
What is Gender Identity? by Alex Byrne, Professor of Philosophy, MIT. (An accessible but thorough analysis of the concept.)

For those looking for a classic non-soul-based metaphysic of the human self, check out the 'sustained piece of analytical hatchet-work' on Cartesian dualism, The Concept of Mind by Gilbert Ryle (link to out-of-copyright free download versions).
If you like to buy books, the 60th Anniversary Routledge Edition of Concept of Mind has a very good explanatory intro by Julia Tanner.

(This is at the very least a classic of 20th century philosophy, certainly highly relevant to much of what has been discussed in this thread.)

[... Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976), quondam Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical
Philosophy at Oxford; also edited the journal Mind for almost twenty-five years.
... Julia Tanney, quondam Reader in Philosophy of Mind and HoD Philosophy, University of Kent, also has held visiting positions at the Universities of Picardie and Paris-Sorbonne. See also her Stanford Encyclopedia on Ryle

... It seems to me reading this sort of thing may avoid us all trying to re-invent the wheel. Anyway, Spooky at least says she is seeking ideas on all this; here are some.

I couldn't resist following links, watching videos and extensive googling, which means I'm late to the party today, but have thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

If time permits (long days at work right now), I may come back to all kinds of interesting posts later, but for now just wanted to say (again) how valuable, moving and eye-opening I've found this thread. And, at risk of over-egging the pudding, I'm honestly quite in awe of @SpookyFBI at this point. I've found it fairly intense as someone aligned with the majority at times! This is the conversation I've been wanting to have / listen to ever since becoming aware of these issues.

I do think it's significant - to me personally, at least - that I've seen more people revising, honing and sometimes even changing their views on this thread that I'm used to in such discussions. I know most of you will have been around far, far longer than I have, so may have a different view on this, but for me. at least, that's been rather special, too. I certainly feel I understand opposing perspectives better now.

At risk of an absurd metaphor...

I think this whole "debate" (now that is is one, and that's a case in point!) is often a bit of a wildly swinging pendulum - each swing high to the one side (a furious defence of the GI POV) powering the rush to the opposite (in an infuriated GC riposte). I actually think that's not necessarily a bad thing - free speech and all that, and also in that how we "power" the pendulum (in the sense that I do think one side inclines more towards abuse) can be revealing in itself.

But reading these threads has kind of been like watching the pendulum slow to me - there may not be a meeting in the middle of ideas, it's still a-swingin'... but the sheer speed of movement's been allayed, leaving a bit more time - for me at least - to watch how the pendulum's getting all the way up there away from where I am!

Hope that doesn't sound too silly/literary/whatever. I know it doesn't hold up in more ways than it does, but, hey, that's what I'm thinking after a few glasses of wine, Jung, Magritte (I knew he was an artist, so that's good, right?!) and a few paragraphs of bitesize Sage extracts. The range of knowledge being brought to bear on this issue, and the way it expands into so many different disciplines, compelling.

A woke colleague once responded to me, when I tried to turn down the temperature in a very difficult discussion with a placatory "Well, it's complicated," with a furious, "It's not - it's very simple!" In a sense, he was right - his views were. I guess, in this debate, mine are, pretty much: I believe(!) sex is real, women need sex-based rights, gender dysphoria is real and the gender dysphoric need corresponding rights, gender identity is a complex interplay of an infinity of different factors and needs to be "handled with care", but in its current ideological manifestation is primarily damaging. But I think the ability to recognise that despite one's simple views it's still not a simple conflict is paramount to untangling it all.

It is interesting reading this thread. Five or six years ago when the GRA reform consultation started up and there was a concerted attempt by women to publicise the implications it went absolutely WILD here.

There were non stop threads turning into massive slanging matches, people used the TIM acronym now banned and posters were banned, and outraged people with all the angles you could imagine would turn up for a massive row!

It was extremely educational but took a lot of staying power. And wine!

This is far more reasonable!

I'm sure loads still here remember the crazy fights though.

Hm. I do risk appearing to say free speech can accommodate abuse in the above - obviously absolutely not! But given such unpleasantness seems to be being condoned, it's at least simultaneously giving the lie to simplistic narratives of kindness.

I could have chosen a few much stronger words in my last paragraph, too - I do find aspects of the current movement quite terrifying.

But... I also found my colleague's angry "It's simple!" a bit scary, too, in his absolute dismissal of the possibility of even ever listening - it really stayed with me.

So, in the interests of slowing the pendulum, I'm going for a bit more understatement and nuance, as, at least in this particular bona fide context(!), it does seem very much worthwhile to me. 😊

If you have listened to the JK Rowling witch hunt podcast series there's a final episode where the very dark and dangerous aspect is discussed. It's a dramatic ending to the series but it is not wrong.

I can imagine it. (And the way I sound in the privacy of my own mind still can be... well... a liiiitle bit different to my posts after just a few minutes reading The Guardian's take on all this, sometimes! 😂)

Oops. My last a response to your first.

I'll add it to my reading/listening list! How the heck all this has gathered the governmental, institutional etc. sanction, momentum and influence it has is a source of concern and fascination to me...