SPATH - Scottish government treatment protocol for trans care counter to Cass

[ArabeIIaScott]

This looks highly alarming.

https://twitter.com/CanSG_org/status/1686645272129011712

'FOI response has revealed that Chief Medical Officer@DrGregorSmith
has approved SPATH as Scotland's new treatment protocol. GPs will be able to prescribe hormones, & refer patients for surgery, without psychological assessment. This decision goes against@Hilary_Cass
recommendations'

More on SPATH here:

https://forwomen.scot/16/11/2022/spath/

One thing has been handy from this. We now know what a trans conversion ban will amount to.

ANY dialog even providing some perspective for minimal watchful waiting is absolutely impermissible. Indeed, no dialog is envisaged.
Conveyor belt from first appointment with GP providing puberty blockers to cross sex hormones, straight to a double mastectomy and vaginoplasty, bypassing any talking therapy along the way.

Sheer, sheer madness. And I'm loathe to say it, but it's undeniable...it's evil.

It's about as extreme as one could possibly get. I'd imagine even among 'gender affirming' proponents this seems reckless, surely?

I maintain my opinion that this is the wheels coming off the trans HGV lorry.

For a debate, all powerful, crashing thru all GC barriers ignoring all resistance.

Now? Losing the plot, crashing towards the cliff edge.

This. Position. Cannot. Hold.

Is this actually the current approach (or currently considered to be)? The timing seems so odd with many other countries urging more caution wrt children particularly.

I joined the SGP under Harper and left under Harvie. Two very different men. Harper was gentler, willing to listen, didn't think he was right about everything and put the environment first.

Erm my mum got 2 wigs when she was going through her cancer treatment, NHS Sco, I know in England it's not always the case

My Trust provided one wig for any chemo/radiotherapy patient, but that was 7 years ago and it’s a pretty easy “efficiency saving” for Trusts to make. When all that’s left to cut is the quality of care and patient satisfaction, that’s what has to go.

More info in here:

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/fury-chief-medical-officer-approves-30611495

Sorry can't excerpt as on my phone.

"Barriers to surgery should be removed with surgery seen as a preventative measure rather than to cure distress"

I think that's because the evidence - such as it is - doesn't show that removing body parts helps people with gender dysphoria very much.

So it's much more effective to frame it as preventing a hypothetical future harm. Unprovable.

That's very characteristic of this movement - totally disingenuous in its arguments to achieve its aims. Constantly changing language and arguments for expediency.

There's no sense of 'we have a problem, we need to define it and figure out the best way to solve it'. Rather 'we have demands, let's figure out the best way to argue they have to be met'.

Right, gov response, from that Express article:

'The Scottish Government said: “The paper referred to is not an update of the 2012 Gender Reassignment Protocol for Scotland. Any suggestion this or a final document has been “approved” by the Chief Medical Officer is incorrect.
“The Chief Medical Officer has received a revised and updated Protocol from NHS National Services Scotland. This is being carefully considered prior to any future publication.”'

So they are currently reviewing the protocol. rogdmum linked an email upthread that we can write to to ask to be kept informed of that. As a parent, I very much want to be informed of what plans the government has to treat children with extreme body modifications for mental health issues.

It sounds remarkably like the absolute bonkers Action for Trans health manifesto being circulated, when was it? Six years ago?

Which seemed to be all about men with AGP. And was laden with proposals to remove as many barriers to all the feminising surgeries and hormones as possible. If I recall, they wanted over-the-counter hormones, and to be able to operate on each other (wasn't that part of the WPATH eunuch link?).

littlbrowndog · Yesterday 14:20
What’s specialist chest reconstruction you think arabella ?

SCR

Breast implants? The 'reconstruction' description sounds more like breast implants than a mastectomy to me.

Will do. Didn’t relaise had to email them

thanks

It's terrifying.
I have a 16 y/o ASD child who is also Selectively Mute, Dyslexic & has SPD. Social Security Scotland have just given me power to manage her benefits 'because we believe X is not capable of understanding, making, communicating or remembering decisions'. Yet, this same Govt would allow her to approach our GP who would fast track her for a double mastectomy, among other things.
Terrifyingly, she 'thinks she might be trans' due to the stuff swirling around at school (came home with a trans badge pinned on her on Pride day, given to her by a staff member).
I am trying to help her understand that she's 16 & (rightly) Working out who she is: 'Inside' (interception is an issue re ASD) & in 'Society'. It seems to me she is gay (she came out 18m ago) & feels much more comfortable in 'masculine' clothes. She's studying STEM. I'm trying to show her women like Hannah Gadsby, Sandy Toksvig etc. I want her to know she doesn't have to chop bits of herself off. That it's painful & permanent & doesn't work. She is wonderful exactly as she is. She's not fodder for an evil political experiment.

came home with a trans badge pinned on her on Pride day, given to her by a staff member

See, that in itself I find bloody chilling. Pinning signs onto children?

https://edinburghath.tumblr.com/post/163521055802/trans-health-manifesto The manifesto.

Looking forwards to the reverse ferret over this. Or being Scotland, should that be "reverse pinemartin"?

Ah, the usual get out "this is just one of many proposals we're looking at" blah blah.

Any proposal that stated this should have put straight into the shredder.

You just know, had there been no Adam Bryson and no instant furore over this story, the SNP right now would be pushing full steam ahead with placing men in women's jails, and fast tracking girls to irreversible damage just as rapidly as they could manage.

The lack of morals, or moral courage, is astounding.

To think I struggle to get sleeping tablets prescribed for insomnia from my GP.

If I was a troubled teen who wanted to irreversibly change my body with hormones that would be just fine. Madness.

The upcoming byelection in Scotland is ideal point to raise this power grab before the public:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4863637-rutherglen-byelection-a-chance-to-hold-snpscottish-labour-to-account

I'm staggered. Considering where things are on this issue there is no sense to this. The desperate need to be different (and so much better) than the English has led Scotland to a very strange and screwed up place. I have the choice to educate my kids in Scotland and based on feedback from mates with kids in both state and private schools, the answer is very firmly they are much better off under the English system. This type of policy insanity just confirms my decision.

The backlash to this is so fierce, and will be fiercer still. There is no way this suggestion can become official policy.

The fact that it can be even considered as a possibility is almost as bad a sin.

And it's proof positive that institutions, including the NHS of a whole country, are captured.

This is not just some rogue surgeon or pill popper marketing online, or some Tik Tok activist mouthing off. This is a cool calculated policy protocol that the most senior medic in Scotland was happy to have put forward for a yea or nay.

As I've stated before, we should actually be happy. Even maybe 12 months ago, certainly 3 years ago in the dark period of maximum trans activism policy capture and media saturation with zero kickback, this policy would be seriously considered.

Now the GC reaction is swift and unequivocal. And it's not going to happen, I'm convinced of it.

We've currently been living thru the end of the beginning of the trans phenomenon, and stories like this and their likely instant extinction mean we're commencing the beginning of the end.

I've been aware of trans overreach for a decade now, and I know many GC feminists say it started a couple of decades earlier, certainly the 2004 GRA was the major pivot.

I think the downhill slope for trans overreach is now engaging. And the swift and sharp reaction to this policy suggestion, and minimal blowback from the TRAs, is evidence.

The English system is better than ‘curriculum for excellence’ (a misnomer if ever there was one). But don’t be complacent, many English schools are just as captured or even more so.

Leaving aside general education/curriculum issues, which is another thread entirely! - in some respects Scottish schools are better than those in E&W - for one thing, our sex ed/RSHP is all laid out online, all materials and resources are provided by the gov and can be responded to, fed back on.

So yes there are issues within those, but at least we can see them and discuss them.

https://rshp.scot/

Contrast that with England, where schools are contracting sex ed out to interested outside bodies who are refusing to share content with parents. There's an enormous amount of uncertainty and a fight to even know what is being taught.

Decoupling blood tests from “gender markers” (ie sex markers) is absolutely nuts, and will only harm the patient. I have a condition which has a very different course in men and women. Blood test results which may be fine for a man would be worrying in a woman patient. How does this help patient?

A bit off topic, but timely with ArabellaScott’s comment above, a consultation on RSE has been launched - covers LGBT and worth looking at and responding to (deadline 23 Nov):

https://consult.gov.scot/learning-directorate/teaching-guidance-for-relationships-sexual-health/

good call, rogd. Probably merits its own thread, here and maybe Scotsnet?