WPATH leaks

[PriOn1]

There are a number of articles appearing on Twitter about some leaked files from WPATH. The impending scandal is taking far too long to break, but there are more and more signs that journalists are no longer ignoring the situation.

https://unherd.com/newsroom/leaked-wpath-files-show-gender-clinician-abuses/

I didn't make it clear that I was quoting the self-assertion to contrast with the other material and make my point about what feels like purposeful confusion.

It stands against the number of times that people protest, "Nobody's confused, and certainly not the public" whenever women say, "There's a lot of confusion as to what's meant by some terms and we need definitions to be presented to survey takers/census fillers in advance".

I bungled it. I made the mistake of posting before I'd uploaded the additional items and it seems that sometimes the update doesn't allow you to add some items on. Maybe I need a tech support companion (gif should follow this but, if other people know how to place them, I don't) 😊

Even the journalist Michael Shellenberger who is responsible for helping publish the files, calls Marci Bowers a trans identified woman.

Even he can't get it right.

Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/03/12/leaks-us-gender-group-wpath/

https://archive.ph/BfKlC just smash right through the paywall for this one

I hadn't read that 2022 piece by Suzanne Moore, linked to in the piece above, before. She sure lays into the Guardian there! And rightly so. The dereliction of journalistic duties at the Guardian lately has been disgraceful.

https://archive.ph/6MXrS

I'm always astounded that people have not been more vocal about the Jazz Jennings TV series. There is footage of the parents being dumbfounded at the experimental nature of Jazz's surgeries and there is footage of the doctors (including Bowers) acknowledging it is experimental. It's there on screen for all to see. And the surgeries went very badly wrong, causing Jazz pain and ongoing issues.

I saw one episode where Jazz's mother says something like 'Jazz shouldn't have this many medical issues at 20'

Well, quite.

Suzanne Moore gets to use the c-bomb.

It’s the tone. It’s because I Am Jazz is on the Lifestyle Channel with chirpy music and fast edits to shopping trips and superficial nonsense, presented as light entertainment. If you took the exact same script and footage and presented it in sombre tones with sad music on Panorama or Dispatches it would be seen as the catastrophe it is. It’s a good example of the Rohypnol effect. It’s all there to see but people don’t see it. Even when people like Exulansic point it out in all its horror.

There's also a clip where the Mom says if Jazz won't dilate, she'll do it by force. It's truly grim that this was ever acceptable TV.

x.com/liz_wheeler/status/1640184105320030215?s=46&t=SPorwN-mokktL467rcZ57g

Should be considered assault, IMHO.

Not to mention the issues around consent when a TV company were involved, wanting to make saleable television rather than focusing on the child's best interests, and paying parents for it.

In any other circumstance, a woman threatening, on TV, to sexually assault her son would be arrested and a safeguarding referral made to SS.

Was this programme ever on TV in the UK?

It's an American series so a limited number of Brits have seen. And America is so consumed by the Christian Right v the Progressive Left.

One of the features about an obvious incoming disaster is that people don't want to see the horror of it. If they do, they have to do something about it. People don't like getting off their arses and being morally obliged. So they turn their brains off and say 'that couldn't possibly happen' because it protects them from acknowledging that horror and allows them to sit on the sofa watching the latest reality TV brain musher (and I'm not snobby about reality TV - I'm a huge fan of multi reality TV shows, I just know where reality begins and ends...)

You could see it with the pandemic. There was ample evidence by 31st Jan 2020 that there was no way that it wouldn't reach the UK. Yet on here and in the media you had everyone burying their heads in the sand saying it was a Chinese problem only for weeks before they actually started to take it seriously themselves. The people on here who started to change their behaviour or voice real concerns were framed as nut jobs.

Huge numbers of people didn't see WWII coming until it happened. Including world leaders. If you were Jewish your ability to see it coming, might have been the very thing that saved you over others.

It's about being able to see the wall of reality and the runaway train that once it's started is unstoppable. It a dynamic that is ever repeating.

And that's where the 'be kind' mentality is totally blind. It doesn't consider that 'bad stuff' happens and not everyone is good or sincere in their objects.

Arguably climate change is the Biggie on this too.

Great post (as usual) Red

It's frustrating humans are like this - and always seems unbelievable in retrospect. I've read a few accounts of WWII where the Jewish families leaving various European cities are told they're being hysterical. Then when their friends and family realised they weren't being hysterical, it was too late. There is a strong instinct to deny terrible things.

We took our kids out of school two weeks early in the pandemic. Everyone thought we were over-reacting, then the schools closed two weeks later. And we (myself and DH) avoiding catching covid from the multi-school event DD was due to attend the day we pulled her out. Multiple other parents were seriously ill after catching covid from their kids following that event - I suspect it was a super-spreader event at that point. It was so obvious and yet no-one was willing to go against the crowd.

I did catch covid a few years later, of course, but was glad not to catch it when the healthcare system / hospitals were overwhelmed, just in case I needed them.

But with this, it's even more unbelievable to me. I frankly can't believe that anyone can be sufficiently brainwashed that to take a healthy child and sterilise them is a good idea or in the child's best interests. Particularly when there's no evidence base or follow up at all that shows it benefits the child.

I also say it's important to OBSERVE the reality and understand it rather than living in a perpetual state of anxiety as conspiracy theorists do.

This is connected with a good grounding in general knowledge and how things work in practice rather than ideological driven bullshit.

I think one of the issues here is about the concept of the truth. Adam Curtis talks about how we've walked into an era where we talk about multiple truths so nothing is The Truth anymore. Except it never was. The truth isn't something you can pin down, it's something you only ever can chase and looks different from where you stand as other vantage points give different visibility. What journalism should do is build up multiple vantage points to build a collage of the truth but the principle is always to be in pursuit of the truth rather than just accept different opinions.

The whole 'is it raining outside' for a journalist applies. They might hear four different opinions but their job is to assess those opinions - person one is sat in a car and has their eyes closed, person two is a liar, person three is outside the building in the street and person four is 600 miles away in a different country. The journalist is told by 1, 2 and 4 that it's not raining and person 3 tells them it is raining.

Should the journalist publish all four opinions uncritically and with equal weighing?

@RedToothBrush It worse than failing to consider your sources when reporting that it is raining outside. It is being willing to report that it is raining inside.

What should the journalist ACTUALLY do?

Just use the opinions and other information available?

Or get the fuck outside and seek out EVIDENCE to support the opinions / disprove the opinions AND THEN challenge opinions that are not consistent with the evidence.

Women are saying that there is a sexualised element to many of those transitioning, this is about people trying to live a fantasy and that this harms women by removing safeguarding and the ability to challenge fantasists and young people who are sold a snake oil quick fix and decide to transition.

And we have this 'opinion' published without comment or thought as to how its adding to the problem and without challenging how EVERYONE'S lives are better in a fantasy and thats WHY they are a fantasy nor is there any reflection on the crotch reference.

People can believe this and have opinions but these should not be driving policy nor social pressure on the public. Evidence should be driving that.

So true about the tone!
Slight diversion here, but it's like The Hunger Games. You watch and think, how could any audience watch people fighting to the death for prizes, and of course it's because it is presented as a game show. Another triumph of labelling.

That’s interesting about the pandemic. I also withdrew my kids from school a few weeks before they shut.

I wonder if those who see the gender issue are particularly risk averse or particularly cynical?

“trust your gut” is a good way to live, I reckon

I also wonder how much of a measure it is of how willing someone is to obey instructions, or whether they are willing to consider and make their own decision based on best available information.

To read widely and think sceptically are endangered habits. Whenever I look at something on social media now, I immediately think 'what is it's bias? What's in it (for them) to publish this?"

I will also add that herd mentality is very strong in human society; it's served us well as a species, given the fact we are violent, adaptable omnivores. Our world would be a lot messier and more conflict-prone without that ability.

Unfortunately, it also means we are quite capable of ignoring the evidence when there is a social or survival need to do so. My own Covid crunch moment was that mass outbreak in South Korea as a result of a religious gathering. I realised then and there that the genie was out of the bottle and since we had not shut the airports, it was barreling towards us.

For me I could see it coming like a steam train. It was just 'common sense' to me. I take it for granted tbh. I have to stop and think about why others don't do the same.

It didn't matter what I was being told in terms of messaging in the UK. It was plain as the nose on my face that theyd be an issue.

I was left more with the questions of:
How are we going to stop it?
What effective precautions could we have and are they being used?
What are we doing differently from the Chinese / Italians?

I generally have it in my head to think about the unsaid things or the gaps in thinking or just turning the question up the other way around rather than seeing it like other people by taking it at face value.

On MN generally, I've frequently looked at the dominant narrative and tried to reframe the narrative to see if it holds up, if you do. Theres been a few things where I really have felt this doesn't

The whole Bounty in materity wards, general lack of complaints within maternity being used as a justification and then examining whether women complain and why they don't, was a really enlightening thing for me. It was clear that the narrative centred on the commercial interests and was totally at odds with regulations on high pressure sales and was completely inappropriate in a ward setting. It wasn't in the best interests of women in a vulnerable state. Yet no one really asked the right questions until MN started to support women on here over it and a few of use looked at the contradictions in policy.

Then theres the whole CS v VB thing which has been so ideologically driven, but actually doesn't really stand up to scrutiny - it has to be case by case - and poor previous healthcare is a clear driver of women having completely rational fears - especially in hindsight of all the maternity scandals that have since come to light. Slightly older white middle class educated women have the best health outcomes in every single field and it was these women being vilified as 'too posh to push'. Why? It makes no sense. These women have the highest ability of any of childbearing age to understand individualised risk profiles, research papers and make informed decisions based on their circumstances. This has increasingly changed in the last ten years (and I caution against ELCS becoming the default in a sausage factory mentality like China, because this ISN'T the best option for all women either. Its the lowest cost option if done to the extremes of scale where there are next to no VBs as can be done within sociable hours and with fewer staff - in china a lack of hcps has lead to this being the default).

You have to ask the question about if women did feel able to make complaints and they were taken seriously whether so many of the maternity scandals would ever have happened. But inside hospitals were able to say legitimately there were no official complaints, so concerns were too easy to dismiss as just noise rather than anything of substance. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence though as the rule goes.

DH and I saw the 2008 crash coming a fucking mile off and were advising friends not to take out a risky mortgage with Northern Rock in 2007. The risk profile was off the scale and we could see they couldn't afford it. Their response was 'if I couldn't afford it, I wouldn't be being offered it'. Facepalm. Its gross naivity. DH had a mate working in stock markets who was also saying similar. We bought in 2007 and did so with it in mind that there was likely to be a big crash and we'd end up in negative equity but we'd be in a good area, with a mortgage we could afford rather than taking on too much risk. We realised we'd have to rent and be stuck for years and wouldn't get approved for a mortgage for several years so it was still worth it. And then we had fucking politicians telling us that the 2008 crash couldn't have been foreseen! Like bollocks. How did we manage it, and how did many on the stock market see it? But not those who lead the country. That one always stung and I haven't forgotten. Why were they blind to what others saw as obvious? I was 30. I'd love to know the age that cynicism really starts to kick in...

The reason I've always done this questioning, is partly due to general knowledge but also because being bombed as a teen I feel my illusions and bubble of the world being a safe place was completely shattered. The things that just didn't happen to people like me, did happen to people like me. It made me look at who was 'right' and who was 'wrong' when it came to NI. The answer is neither. Theres plenty of utterly appalling handling and actions all round.

I think there are a lot of women on FWR who have had an experience where the world hasn't been perfect and they've had their 'innocence' shattered in some way.

Interestingly its young people who are buying MOST into the trans ideology. And I wonder if that comes from having come from such a sheltered life that they no long have the life experience - not just the education - that enables them to question.

Its a life skill. Does the narrative work? Does it feel off? Is there some bit of general knowledge you have that doesn't fit the narrative. Has the cynicism kicked in or do you still trust various institutions to always get it right? Understanding that you can get it wrong even with good intentions is a bitter life lesson to learn. Its the whole law of 'unintended consequences'.

On FWR we have a whole bunch of women who understand the principles of safeguarding. We have have educated women asking why this doesn't feel right to them. They understand stats. They understand research. They understand bias. They understand that gaps in evidence are vital to spot and question. They centre differ people to the dominant powers in our society and think about it from a different perspective. They ask different questions. Questions that are regarded as having value but suddenly disgarded when inconvenient. Who does this benefit? The women on FWR ask if there is consistency in ideology or just wilful glossing over when the questions get difficult.

Stuff like who are the oppressed and why don't they have a voice and why are they disadvantaged? All the rape and victim blaming stuff about lack of convictions and cases advanced by the CPS etc etc. And the over reaching point about Why Don't Women Complain? and stuck their necks out and challenge.

Women are socially conditioned to conformity and men are socially conditioned to be more independent and enterprising in their thought. Women are vilified when they don't conform and don't match ideals of feminism.

I am FAR from a conspiracy theorist or a right wing nut job. Its about what I value and have as a priority being different to the mainstream. Cos I'm awkward and difficult and dislike just fitting in because I just don't. I can't fake it. I don't value conformity. I think it is stifling and restrictive. And I think theres so many women on FWR particularly who don't conform. Its a feature - non-conformity is valued. I don't accept things at face value if its something I care about.

I am definitely not unique.

Ideologues HATE it though.

I wonder if those who see the gender issue are particularly risk averse or particularly cynical?

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_mi_1.html

Read at least the first comment, as well as the article. Not only are people with the security mindset rare, we are actively distrusted by those who do not have it.

I think women often think like this everytime we or our children walk home alone.

This is promising!

https://www.itv.com/news/2024-03-12/children-will-not-be-prescribed-puberty-blockers-nhs-says