WHO publishes 'controversial gender guidance'

[IcakethereforeIam]

Eliza Mondegreen in Unherd sounding the alarm, all the alarms.

https://unherd.com/thepost/who-quietly-publishes-controversial-gender-guidance/

There's a consultation period that closes on 8th January, I think.

Sorry but to say again, this petition, as have posts on here, are missing the point.

WHO have already decided their position. Affirmative action and hormones.

They merely want people who will write guidelines promoting that.

We need to be querring how they reached the position they already have.

And to repeat the repeated repeat!

WHO have already decided their position. Affirmative action and hormones.

How do we query that? I think someone in Govt needs to do that? Or the press?

How do we query that? I think someone in Govt needs to do that? Or the press?

Well, much as I would like to think everyone will stop and listen to someone posting on FWR on mumsnet, I dont think they will.

So maybe everytime we see someone or a group talk about getting better delegates etc., we need to remind them the decision has been taken.

Not now, as I am not going to upset myself as the New Year comes in, we could collect the links that a PP added higher up this thread, and each time a group, or petition or whoever posts something send them the links and say we need to question their position, not how it is going to be written up!

Are you saying that the WHO is 'outright lying' about the well documented and obvious differences between transitioning before and after puberty? How are they lying? Have you ever actually talked to a trans person who transitioned prior to puberty?

1. FWR has had posts about at least two male-born children who, after being on blockers, had sections of bowel turned into neovaginas because their penises weren't large enough to invert. Bowel surgery is not trivial. Penile growth is a function of puberty. These children's transition surgeries were made medically more complex and riskier by not undergoing puberty. So it's not a simple case that post-pubertal transition is uniformly easier than non-pubertal transition.
2. It is Ashley, not WHO, who is currently advocating the mass medication of children with puberty blockers.
3. This is the wrong set of questions when it comes to Ashley's proposal that all children take blockers.

The relevant set of questions goes something like:

• Why should a huge, >99.9% majority of children be subjected to the known risks of puberty blockers for the sake of a tiny tiny, <0.1% minority of children?
• Who gains from mass medicating children like this and how?
• Who gains from having a majority of children delay their puberty?
• What unintended consequences might there be of giving all or most children blockers: health, financial, social, and otherwise?
• What are the safeguarding risks associated with having huge numbers of older teens with the bodies of pre-pubescent children?
• What are Ashley's clinical and scientific credentials, given that Ashley is promoting a medical intervention?
• What are Ashley's motives for promoting this medical intervention at such wide scale?

Where did you get the idea that Ashley thinks a majority of children, or indeed all children, should be given puberty blockers?

Or is this just another made up thing ascribed to someone who supports trans rights to be quickly ditched when one of the two or three posters on here willing to challenge lies and nonsense points it out?

From the guidance: 'puberty blockers should be treated as the default option' for all youth.

Default option. Which implies that unless unusual/exceptional reasons presenting, all youth referred for gender issues should be provided with this medication.

It is known that many, in fact a statistically high number of children will, if uninterfered with, find that these issues resolve naturally.

It is also known that increasing numbers of young adults given blockers and the drugs, hormones and surgeries that the blockers are the known gateway to with (statistically) very few indeed moving on to any different pathway, regret these changes to their body and describe their distress, and the severe harms caused to them that are now lifelong.

Hesitating about prescribing these blockers, and leaving those drugs, hormones and surgeries as an absolute last resort would therefore be a very normal, sensible response.

As far as I can see, the argument against it is that yes, non trans children (and young adults) will be harmed, and regret it, and feel devastated at the destruction of their lives, but true trans children will not and be happy. And the issue is that these true trans children be happy and so non trans children are acceptable collateral damage in pursuit of this wonderful and crucial goal.

Which is leading me increasingly to the conclusion that those arguing for all this - like the boxing thread, the right of men to identify as women and fight women in the name of their validation which risks killing women -

is that there are two kinds of humans in this ideology. The trans ones and the other ones.

And so long as the trans ones are happy and have everything they want, it doesn't matter about what harms are done to the non trans ones. Losing their sports, resources, health care, being excluded, being maimed by regretted surgery, being killed in the boxing ring - it doesn't matter. Because they were not of the group of humans that have value or matter, and their harm resulted in the better happiness of a trans person.

And a good non trans person would embrace this and understand their subordinate role in life without protest, and think only of the support and furthering of the happiness of the trans person involved.

Am I starting to get this incredibly dysfunctional and appalling view?

I listened to Marci Bowers.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-care/

'Bowers, the new WPATH president and a transgender woman, said she has worried that some patients who begin puberty blockers at a young age won’t ever be able to have an orgasm because they never experienced one prior to pausing puberty, regardless of whether they have surgery.'

'Complications from genital surgeries are common. A California study found that a quarter of 869 vaginoplasty patients, with a mean age of 39, had a surgical complication so severe that they had to be hospitalized again. Among those patients, 44% needed additional surgery to address the complication, which included bleeding and bowel injuries.
For adolescents transitioning to female, puberty blockers and hormones can complicate eventual genital surgery. That’s because the medications can stunt development of the male genitalia from which a vagina and vulva are constructed. In 2020, de Vries and other Dutch researchers urged clinicians to inform transgender youth and their parents about this risk when starting puberty blockers.'

The poster wasn’t claiming that Ashley thinks the default for all children with gender identity issues should be puberty blockers.

They were claiming that Ashley thinks it should be the default for all children.

But of course that’s not true, is it?

Well that's a very lovely straw man you've got there.

When l saw "all youth", I interpreted that as "all youth". If Ashley meant "all children attending the gender clinic" then Ashley should have been clearer.

As predicted and as is typical on these boards…

Poster makes false claim.

Other posters lap it up.

When it is pointed out that claim is false, posters just move on to the next falsehood and dismiss the poster pointing out the truth. It is essentially the Trump MO - flood the zone with shit. Most of it will stick so who cares if some of it is rebutted

Can you link to Ashley saying puberty blockers should be the default for all children?

How many children (or which groups) are you so enthusiastic to have puberty blockers as the default for? Do tell us.

Not playing that game - the question is really simple. Was the poster correct in their claims about what Ashley thinks or not.

See my previous post re the Bannon-esque goalpost shifting.

Why? Would your answer be too revealing?

Posters respond logically.

You home in on trying to argue that your quite intentional misinterpretation of one line of one post which has obvious other meaning to anyone reading in good faith means that you are somehow justified and right. And ignore everything else in pursuit of what is in effect a possible bit of SPAG. Making it pretty clear really that you have nothing else.

Yes dear.

The quote in context (my bold) is here:
https://www.florenceashley.com/uploads/1/2/4/4/124439164/ashley_thinking_an_ethics_of_gender_exploration_-_against_delaying_transition_for_transgender_and_gender_creative_youth.pdf

Puberty blockers delay hormonal puberty. Discussion of the ethics of puberty blockers has largely centred the question of reversibility. Although reversibility plays a distinctive role with regard to the foreclosing of future opportunities, few authors extend their foray past it. Although taking puberty blockers is a form of medical treatment, it certainly facilitates exploration significantly more than letting puberty run its course; whereas puberty strongly favours cis embodiment by raising the psychological and medical toll of transitioning, puberty blockers structurally place transgender and cisgender hormonal futures in approximate symmetry. Youth who take puberty blockers have their options wide open, their bodies unaltered by either testosterone or oestrogen. Although much remains unknown about the long-term effects of puberty blockers, limited empirical evidence and clinical experience make us more than justified in assuming that whatever risks puberty blockers have do not foreclose future life paths as much as undergoing puberty does.

The neutrality of puberty blockers as opposed to unmitigated hormonal puberty should evacuate any hesitancy towards initiating gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogues for youth who desire them. From the premise that facilitating exploration should be our starting point in caring for trans and gender creative youth, puberty blockers must be seen as the default position, to be readily prescribed since they leave the largest space for future identity development and negotiation. Clinician hesitancy as well as the belief that a considerable amount of prior gender exploration must be undertaken before prescribing puberty blocker appear to be unjustified and uncritical, whether it is rooted in psychological inertia or subtle prejudices towards trans lives.

It certainly looks to me as though FA is advocating puberty blockers for any child who requests them from their GP. FA also minimises the appalling other effects of these drugs such as osteoporosis in their 20s as has been experienced in many young women who took these drugs for precocious puberty.

But you really do need to ask, who actually thinks it's a good idea to treat children in early puberty with these drugs, so that they end up as 16-year-olds with the body and brain of a 12-year-old?

Nothing in that quote says puberty blockers should be the default for all children.

In fact the statement is explicitly qualified “in caring for trans and gender creative youth, puberty blockers must be seen as the default position, to be readily prescribed since they leave the largest space for future identity development and negotiation”.

Thanks for proving that it is a lie to claim Florence Ashley thinks puberty blockers should be the default for all children.

As I said, just one example of the lies on this board that go entirely unchallenged except by maybe one or two posters. A perfect example of the absolute indifference of this movement to the truth.

It looks like I misread Ashley's position and it's puberty blockers for every child who asks for them, not puberty blockers for all.

We are still talking about a lot of children, many of whom are autistic and many of whom will go on to become happily gay if left untreated.

I know that my discomfort at being female is because undergoing female puberty whilst autistic and undiagnosed is genuinely traumatic and living as an autistic woman in a neurotypicalist patriarchy really sucks. The answer is not to give puberty blockers to autistic children, but to recognise their autism early on and support them in accepting their bodies' changes and protecting them from sexual harassment and abuse (yes, all children deserve safety, but autistic children are vulnerable so need more support than most).

All my questions about who benefits etc still stand, bar for the scale. Instead of talking about all children, I am now asking those questions about the autistic, gay, or both children who are vulnerable and were over-represented at Tavistock.

As I said, just one example of the lies on this board that go entirely unchallenged except by maybe one or two posters. A perfect example of the absolute indifference of this movement to the truth.

I make a reading mistake and you tar the entire board with that brush. Nice. Really grown-up there.

I’m not sure that your post is the gotcha that you think it is?

PlanetJanette said: Nothing in that quote says puberty blockers should be the default for all children.

In fact the statement is explicitly qualified “in caring for trans and gender creative youth, puberty blockers must be seen as the default position, to be readily prescribed since they leave the largest space for future identity development and negotiation”.

OldCrone said: “FA is advocating puberty blockers for any child who requests them from their GP” i.e. repeating FA’s own claim that PBS must be seen as the default. OldCrone is not saying that FA made this claim for all children.

So, no lie.

Ah, I see the accusation of lying was in response to a mistake made by another poster. Who admitted and corrected their mistake. Shame not all posters could be so honest and readily admit to making mistakes.