No more puberty blockers for children from the NHS - reported in the Times!

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

This is massive - and long overdue

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/97ce2e81-2884-42f5-bb82-2a2778f2cc91?shareToken=9568e79f0683beea68ffe5e978b05a29

One of the "official" looking articles (I think by WPATH?) floating around critical of Cass has been written by the mother of a trans child, Cal Horton, who was supervised by Anna Carlisle, of Goldsmiths, who is mentioned in the conference that was recorded by AHarpySings here on mn.

Horton has written several articles / pieces of published research (including her PhD) on "trans children" and inclusion in primary school. A clear example of how you enter academia to make your ideas influential.

www.brookes.ac.uk/profiles/staff/cal-horton

The Cass Review: Cis-supremacy in the UK’s approach to healthcare for trans children

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2024.2328249

When you pull apart the very concept of the fact that there is no such thing as a "trans child," and entire career is built on sand.

We’re Still Here Conference 8th September: A report from the inside www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3398737-We-re-Still-Here-Conference-8th-September-A-report-from-the-inside

Second post on that thread: care of theharpysings

2. Education Panel:

There were 4 panelists and I didn’t get all their names. One was called something like “Zed”, who is NB (female) and works in a school. They want a trans ally in everyone school.

Anna Carlisle was also on the panel- she works at Goldsmiths and is a colleague of Natascha Kennedy.

This panel’s recommendations was to get the pro-gender extremist philosophy in at school governor level and find allies.

Some of their examples of where policy was good but inclusive practise was not good were hilarious. Apparently one of the panelists (who works for a charity) went to a school with an amazingly liberal dress code but none of the kids violated gender norms… so obviously there was a problem!

They want every single policy to be “inclusive”.

Jane Fae chipped in saying how sad she was that Natascha Kennedy got “monstered” in the Times that weekend and asked what could they do about “safety” re: universities with “known transphobic academics” like Kathleen Stock.

One panellist said naming and shaming doesn’t do any good. Anna Carlisle (NK’s colleague) said she was interested in what management’s response to the Times story would be.

One of the other panellists (a recently transitioned TW teacher) described the current events as a “war”.

Zed talked about offering a “safe space” for trans kids who maybe couldn’t be trans at home.. either because parents are unaware or unsupportive so the kids change at school and essentially live a double life.

Helen Webbeley (!!!!) then said she’d seen so much suffering of trans kids and asked about how to help kids who were trans who couldn’t face going to school.

Mermaids are apparently interested in researching the crossover with trans/ autism and also sexual orientation. Also “queering” PE as a lot of trans kids don’t get involved and spend a lot of time online.

Notable misogynist Adrian Harrop then chipped in asking about Transgender Trend’s school pack (which, he was very sad face to say, is the top hit on Google) and how we can stop this sick filth getting into schools.

Anna Carlisle said the Transgender Trend pack “made her sick… it was so mean!”

Zed and another panellist said that their networks (through LGBT sectors in teaching unions) were trying to “make schools aware” not to pay attention to the TransgenderTrend packs. Apparently the Mermaids resources have been ok’d by the Human Rights Commission and will “trump” the Transgender Trend packs.

So 2 years later a Carlisle's PhD student completes research on "trans child inclusion" and begins churning out content.

Which, while I'm on my lunch break roll, is why we need a statutory inquiry.

Major safeguarding failings will only be ensconced in new statutory safeguarding laws if a major review details what went wrong and critiques who was responsible for allowing it to happen.

As with Savile.

It's odd, when I was young we get told about developing good habits, including telling the truth. I mostly tried to do that, or at least to keep schtum and not lie. I also tried not to be judgemental, we all have stuff.

But the people we carefully didn't judge can surprise us. There was the person I would have thought of as generally kind who made a couple of mildly antisemitic comments I found disturbing, who when I next heard of them, a couple of decades later, had just been jailed because of their huge collection of child sex abuse images. No connection to the thing that rang alarm bells, but - did I sense something wrong?

And there was the person I met at a conference, clever, charming, who told a ridiculous story about how they told an elaborate and completely unnecessary lie to save themselves minor embarrassment. And now I read here about that person's signature on the letter opposing Cass. And again I wonder - did the spidey senses pick up on a problem beyond minor dishonesty. Or does dishonesty, and a preparedness to openly admit it, rot ones character. Did dehumanising Jewish culture lead the other person to dehumanise children? I don't know, but it makes me feel I should watch my step and examine my conscience.

And it makes me admire the MNers on here, monuments of moral probity to the last woman.

And it makes me admire the MNers on here, monuments of moral probity to the last woman

I suspect many of us have regularly asked ourselves “Is it me? am I the baddy?” in response to the latest unbelievable nonsense where the world seems to be going a bit mad. The fact that we regularly perform an internal morality check is a good thing - we should never get complacent. This whole thing will end up in textbooks of the future as an example of what happens when people stop thinking critically and/or just unthinkingly follow previously trusted and authoritative sources. And like the Post Office/Horizon situation, it requires us to think and believe the previously unthinkable, which is why it’s taken so long for both to get accepted by the public as being a problem, despite the evidence being there if only people would look at it. So many people don’t want to face it because if they admit that “they” (usually some faceless appeal to an unknown authority) let things like this happen then it means the world is a lot more uncertain and scarier place than they’d like to admit.

The person who signed the letter - who has no expertise in medicine or therapy, but does have a good research degree so presumably a functioning brain, is in their mid 50s now. Surely old enough to have little more intellectual humility.

Anna Carlisle was also on the panel- she works at Goldsmiths

I believe this female academic has had an account on this site in the past, to argue with us, whether she still does I don't know.

Should we be copy pasting posts from here over onto this thread? https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5050436-letter-from-academics-concerned-about-the-cass-review?

Bit worried we’ll mislay some really good stuff by posting it at the end of this older thread (which is supposed to be about a Times article from mid March, I bumped it up a couple of days ago just to check in on Butters!)

Who funds this?

People often have to self-fund higher education (PhDs etc.) unless there are sponsored studentships from the research councils or private funders. I'm baffled.

@TheClogLady yes that did occur to me . Was also thinking about making a separate post about what is clearly an issue in academic methodology these days.

No idea @RethinkingLife.

There obviously was possibly a lot of money floating around for the initial PhD which was I think in education.

Current funding:

Cal is currently primary investigator on the ASPIRE project, tackling barriers to trans retention in STEM careers.
Projects as Principal Investigator, or Lead Academic if project is led by another Institution
▪ Building Lived Experience Accountability into Culturally Competent Health and Well-being Assessment for Trans Youth Social Justice (BLA-HAJ) (01/02/2024 - 31/01/2028), funded by: Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), funding amount received by Brookes: £210,639
▪ Addressing Systemic Precarity: Trans Inclusion and Retention in STEM (01/09/2023 - 30/12/2024), funded by: The Royal Society of Chemistry, funding amount received by Brookes: £65,696

Receipts

I'm jolly hypothyroid and menopausal at the moment; I'm amazed I have sticky memories for this shit.

growinguptransgender.com/2020/02/06/phd-starts-here/

Lack of data is part of the problem – time and again trans kids are left out of surveys or research – they aren’t even considered.
With these challenges in mind, I’ve applied for, and been accepted onto a PhD at Goldsmiths Education department.
My topic: Cisnormativity and the rights, equality and well-being of socially transitioned transgender children under the age of 12. I’ll be supervised by Dr Anna Carlile.
I’ll have a focus on trans children in education, as well as considering families, healthcare and wider rights.

Thanks for posting this. The PP you quote is right: these are really elementary basics. We expect it from our students, let alone ourselves: they should at least be getting a handle on this stuff before they transition into their second year. How on earth can we teach them Wiki/Schmoop etc are not great sources to cite unless they also learn about reliability/researcher bias? They are learning how to construct basic literature reviews by the end of the Foundation year.

How is it even possible to write/research seriously on these issues and get it through an ethics committee? We are past the stage where Humanities scholars could shrug off ethics as being something only applying to the sciences, or studies with live participants. It's relevant to everyone, and universities can be fined huge sums of money for any breach. Apply for UKRI funding these days and there's only a select group of research topics - gender being one of them - which are likely to generate income. Mine isn't one of them. The bulk of my funding has come from the US.

I'm so full of questions about what the hell is being destroyed in our universities aside from the obvious criticality and ability to debate difficult issues. And of course, they are questions some of us can't ask if we want to keep our jobs. Humanities are dying on their feet, and to a point, I can see why. If we've now reached a place where researcher bias and ethics are being glossed over for the sake of blowing with the prevailing winds, the whole system is eating itself.

The expectation seems to be we go against, or conveniently 'forget', everything we've been trained to do from our undergraduate years through to PhD. This is nowhere better demonstrated than in the staff profile upthread which wants to ensure speakers they consider 'controversial' are not invited to their university, coupled with an expectation that pronouns be 'foregrounded'. And then they say they want a more 'nuanced' understanding of sex and gender issues, all said without the faintest trace of irony.

Of late, I'm increasingly wondering WTF I'm still doing here.

@RedToothBrush I am also an arts graduate but the alevel history course we did was 50% methodology. So bloody useful

Not entirely sure what your point is. Trinity College Dublin is the most famous university in Ireland. Nobody refers to it as anything else. And my main point is that Robert Bohan is not from the 'University of Dublin'. which the signature list purports to say. What he is is an artist who is an ex botanical student at Trinity. (natural sciences0

I wonder was he even consulted by his inclusion on the list. He is a well known artist.

WarriorN · Today 13:12

However, what has occurred here differs slightly; their aim wasn’t to boost citation counts, but rather to enhance their own credibility through mutual referencing in the eyes of the public and other medical professionals. Nonetheless, this practice is highly unethical. By engaging in circular referencing, these medical bodies have actively deceived healthcare professionals and the public, leading them to believe in the validity and reliability of recommendations founded on weak evidence.

That's very interesting, I wonder if complaining to their ethics boards would have any result? Depressingly, I think that they are likely to be captured and / or intimidated into not doing the right thing.

Circular referencing and citation laundry sounds like social media techniques- follow loads of people, comment on everything they do. They’ll be doing the same. You fourfold increase visibility by linking your horses to each other’s wagons.

Forgot who Florence Ashley was.

Oh look.

https://www.florenceashley.com/uploads/1/2/4/4/124439164/ashleyadolescenttmedicaltransitionnis_ethical.pdf

Yes and I bet AI does it for you now.

@SinnerBoy, this was published in an ethics journal, so probably captured too...