Radio Canada( French) questioning affirmation model.

[334bu]

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/enquete/site/episodes/864008/episode-du-jeudi-29-fevrier-2024

Surprisingly critical.

This is in French and with Quebecois accent is very difficult (at least for me It was).
It discusses the ease with which minors can obtain blockers and hormones in Canada( a 14 year old actress is prescribed these after a 10 minute interview in a private clinic) and interviews parents of. 3 detransitioners, two detransitioners and one happy transitioner as well as various medical personnel on both sides of affirmation argument.
.My French is not really good enough to do a transcript but some may find this interesting

@worrieddragon thank you for doing this. Much appreciated

Considering there's been reports of some girls thinking if they stop testosterone after having their breasts cut off then their breasts will grow back I don't think many of the children involved have been able to give proper informed consent.

How can a group of kids who in the main have never actually had sexual relations of any kind with another person make decisions about making themselves infertile and entering menopause at 20?

It's so insane I can understand why a lot of people refuse to believe it's actually happening with so little thought and even less psychological work with the patient done before hand.

@Couci Thanks so much for the context about Canada, that was just what I wanted to know. Great to hear that this is a respected documentary strand on a mainstream channel. It certainly seemed well made and they'd done their own research rather than just relying on what lobbying organisations told them.

And funny about Radio meaning telly as well. It would be super interesting to find out whether there's any wider media pick up. Often these stories just drop and everyone is very very busy looking the other way. But I think they have impact. I understand the Trans Train documentary made a big difference in Sweden - I think referrals to gender clinics began to drop even before they announced they were stopping prescribing blockers. (I think I remember reading that somewhere, but I can't reference it I'm afraid.)

There's a clip in the doco from the 'Tout le monde en parle' show where Annie Pullen Sansfacon where she makes a massive claim about affirmation reducing suicide - it wasn't clear that it was super recent though.

group of kids who in the main have never actually had sexual relations of any kind with another person make decisions about making themselves infertile and entering menopause at 20?

I was reviewing something recently that crossed into service planning for menopausal care and support. Somewhere in there there was, of course, an overview of services to support TW. One interesting piece of awareness was anticipating the age range of TM who might need services: these include the very young who experience very early menopause post-surgery, those who opt for radical surgery after children (mid 20-30s), and those who transition after children are grown (mid 40-50s).

Re: infertility, it reminded me of Kajsa Ekis Ekman (KEE) and the claim that the biggest backlash will occur when the rising cohort of transitioned girls grow up and realise they’ve been sterilised.

In 2021 KEE participated in an WHRC webinar and reported that she had been contacted by a Swedish infertility clinician who reported seeing increasing numbers of women in their 20s who (after testing) have atrophy of their reproductive organs. These are women who had been treated with puberty blockers and cross hormones at a young age and gone on to have difficulty with conception. (It seems that they had detransitioned but this wasn't entirely clear.)

@RethinkingLife That's interesting (and depressing) about the menopause planning. Did they have any numbers, or was it guesswork? I don't get the impression that there are anything like the same numbers of females transitioning in middle age as males, but I'd be interested to know if there's data. It seems quite plausible that FTM transitioners wouldn't draw as much attention, for a whole range of reasons. Or it may be that it just isn't happening really, (Jette Knox as the exception to test the rule).

SEGM have done a thread on TwitterX: SEGM on X: "Canada's public broadcaster aired a new documentary, Trans Express, underscoring the growing international concern with the practice of youth gender transitions. SEGM's NYC 2023 conference was profiled. /1 Full documentary (in French): t.co/R18MGwRft0 Synopsis (in… t.co/OSIXaPLK1Q" / X (twitter.com)

And there's now an online article - also in French, but probably easier to follow than a transcript if you chuck it into google translate: Transition médicale de genre chez les mineurs : le Québec va-t-il trop vite? | Radio-Canada.ca

Thanks @worrieddragon , I see there is a You Tube link showing the audiovisual article and this is at the end of the Twitter/X thread you linked to above. The You Tube piece lets you choose subtitles in various languages apparently (I assume English is one of them).

@worrieddragon , thank you for your sterling work.

Here's Annie Pullen Sansfaçon on Tout le monde en parle last September (I thought it was more recent than that--her interview must really have stuck in my mind):

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/tout-le-monde-en-parle/site/segments/entrevue/456619/identite-transgenre-prejuges-jeunes-famille

She has a doctorate from De Montfort University in the UK.

And here's Pasquale Turbide, the reporter from Enquêtes, with Suzie, the mother of the poor kid who was transitioned in spite of having various mental health problems:

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/tout-le-monde-en-parle/site/segments/entrevue/481843/transition-genre-trans-adolescence-sante

This is from Sunday, March 3, 2024. You can see the reporter getting very upset, hardly able to speak, when the question of reactions from transactivists comes up.

I get the impression that this is seen by the general public in Québec as a niche concern. It doesn't affect that many people, unless you're one of the families caught up in it, and I don't think most people knew that 14-year-olds could make this kind of decision. Our language also distances us to a certain extent from some of the excesses of the US and Justin Trudeau's (minority) government.

Ah, good spot @maltravers I just saw the clip at the top with English subtitles and thought only the trailer had them. But the full video has auto-generated subtitles, which aren't bad at all (AI clearly is going to replace us!) You have to go go into settings and pick auto generated captions in the language of your choice.

If you just have two minutes, I highly recommend watching the clips from the two affirming psychologists talking about detransitioners: from ~34m to 35.30. (It's not really happening, if it is it's they don't really regret all of it, if they do then it's not our fault and they shouldn't blame us. Watch the body language.)

@Couci Thank you for sharing that - it's not available to view in the UK as such, but I was able to view it by switching my VPN to Canada. Yes, the journalist's sudden emotion was very striking. Until then she'd been extremely sharp and on top of all the details, and those accusations clearly hurt.

'And if it happens you mustn't talk about it because it's stirring up hate and attacking trans people' was the only thing missing from the list of 'Why you mustn't care about detransitioners' above.

Hopefully when the compensation and breach of trust trials start these fake money grabbing dr Frankensteins will stop.
Thankyou @worrieddragon

The online article has some additional details that weren't included in the documentary edit, for example Clara saying that she already had doubts even before she had the mastectomy. She just thought she'd gone so far it was impossible to go back. 💔

For more context, Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay writing in Unherd notes the significance that this is from the French arm of the national broadcaster (CBC which is equivalent to the BBC) and writes that the English arm CBC would never dare to broadcast or publish anything like this.

https://unherd.com/breaking_news/a-14-year-old-canadian-walks-into-a-gender-clinic/

The CBC is very much captured and most of the journalism I've seen them publish on child and youth gender medicine toes the WPATH and gender activist line completely. There was a brief moment of hope when the Alberta guidelines came out about a month ago, and one of the CBC's political reporters (so not just an activist masquerading as a journalist) reported on it and wrote that "Puberty blockers and hormone therapies, which can have long-term, irreversible effects, are sometimes prescribed for younger children after consulting with a doctor". I was absolutely astonished to see the CBC publish something that said puberty blockers and not just hormones could have irreversible effects. I even took a screenshot because I though it wouldn't survive the wrath of the gender activists! And alas I was right and it only lasted a few hours before it was changed to "Puberty blockers are hormone-suppressing agents that pause the progression of puberty for as long as people are on them [...] They may sometimes be combined with hormone therapies, some of which could have long-term irreversible effects". Here's a link to the changed article:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/danielle-smith-liberal-government-trade-barbs-trans-1.7105175
I've added a image of the screenshot of the original text before it was changed.

I think this article is about as balanced and neutral as the CBC has ever been on child gender transitions - it's political reporting and not the usual propaganda - and it still obfuscates and dodges the issues.

Thanks @VeronicasMonocle The documentary focused on the haste to offer medical interventions without question, and didn't really raise wider harms of the treatment, other than in relation to fertility. All the case studies had been hustled onto cross sex hormones and surgery so quickly that PB weren't really the issue. But in the talk show @Couci linked above, I think the journalist does make reference to the fact that puberty blockers may have harmful effects in and of themselves in relation to brain development and bone density. (I was struggling a little with the Quebecois accents, but I think so.) I was pleased to see that being put out there - if the context is that activists are still silencing anything other than, 'COMPLETELY SAFE AND TOTALLY REVERSIBLE' then it's all the more impressive. It looks like she's come under a great deal of pressure, and I hope she and her team are well supported by their organisation. (She's my new heroine, alongside Riittakerttu Kaltiala)

It's fantastic seeing investigative journalists doing their jobs. I bet when they had dreams of being courageous reporters they didn't think it was going to be 'Big Rainbow' trying to shut them up!

Great work, worrieddragon, the translation, the ploughing through all that distressing evidence, your wise comments - thank you so much for doing all that for us. Chapeau!☺

Trans activists have smashed windows at Radio Canada offices in retribution for this documentary, and threatened further action in protest at how the documentary "legitimizes the far right’s transphobic demands, and it will fan the flames of violence against trans communities"

Their response to those poor girls' stories:
"Everyone should be able to experiment as they see fit, even if it means making mistakes, without having to ask permission from the state’s watchdogs. We will do what we wish with our bodies, rightly or wrongly, no matter how the state and the cultural petty bourgeoisie feel about it."

"This will be neither the first nor the last time that queers bash back!"

I really hope Radio Canada are looking after Pasquale Turbide and her team.

Mia on X: "This is a deeply disturbing statement that everyone in Canada should take seriously. In response to Radio-Canada's investigative reporting that revealed the shocking lack of safeguarding in our pediatric gender clinics, Canadian trans activists broke the windows of Radio-Canada's…" / X (twitter.com)

The full article justifying the attack on Radio Canada , and threatening more of the same, is interesting in a scary sort of way
Radio-Canada has blood on its hands: a look back at the windows destroyed on the night of March 12-13th » Montréal Counter-information (mtlcounterinfo.org)
It expresses the militant trans movement's ideas very clearly. It takes a very anti-capitalist line:
As ever, capitalism and the state, faced with repeated crises and popular unrest, are trying to divert the attention of the working classes. Rather than talking about the collapse of public services, the housing crisis, the climate crisis, the rise of fascism, police violence, or the genocide in Palestine, they prefer to focus on an imaginary threat...
We will do what we wish with our bodies, rightly or wrongly, no matter how the state and the cultural petty bourgeoisie feel about it.
[interesting that a Montréal group thinks it's petty not petite bourgeoisie - obviously not Francophones, then!]
How shameful to hear the arguments of the religious far right, neo-nazis, masculinists and the rest of the camp of hate on a public news channel!

So, MNers, where do we fit in? are we far right, neo-nazis, masculinists or cultural petty bourgeoisie? Or just campers in the Camp of Hate?
Hi-de-hi!

Name-calling just means people have no logical, convincing arguments. Ditto "no debate".

I was oblivious to all of this gender stuff until I read somewhere online that Mumsnet was a fiery pit of trans-hatred. Being neither British nor a mum, I had never heard of this terrible site, so of course I checked it out for myself. The first comments I stumbled upon concerned Keira Bell, and I remember being very shocked that GIDS didn't do follow-ups on their surgeries.

As for the recent pro-trans "demonstration" in Montreal, three windows were damaged at Radio-Canada's head office in the middle of the night. Police are investigating the "demonstration" as vandalism. Sorry, Montreal Counter-Information anarchists.

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2024-03-16/maison-de-radio-canada/des-actes-de-vandalisme-revendiques-en-ligne.php

(La Presse is an utterly mainstream newspaper.) What caught my interest was the link to an article by a columnist, Isabelle Hachey:

"Several days before its broadcast, on February 29, various media outlets had not only been alerted, but encouraged to demolish the Enquête report... before even seeing it. They had been warned that Radio-Canada was preparing to offer a platform to the transphobic far right..." [Google translate]

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2024-03-11/la-testosterone-en-neuf-minutes.php

Also interesting, but not surprising, is the refusal by a gender-affirming doctor to condemn the instantaneous testosterone prescription. And the reference to WPATH guidelines sounds a bit naive given the recent leaked files.

Yes, they've got nothing to counter the shocking stories in the documentary other than 'Look over there a squirrel / the Far Right' And some vandalism dressed up as queer liberation.

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2024-03-11/la-testosterone-en-neuf-minutes.php
[There's a pop-up translation into English option.]

That's a super article, thanks for the link. Couci. I really like the defence of the Radio Canada programme against accusations that it was one-sided and transphobic:
'I'm not going to criticise a fellow journalist for focusing on what's not good. The nature of investigative journalism is precisely to expose what's wrong.
And a 14 year old girl who leaves a private clinic with a prescription for 30mg of testosterone to inject weekly, without even having had a discussion with the practitioner about the side effects of this treatment - sorry but that's wrong. Very wrong.'
Well said, Isabelle Hachey.