How are you feeling today if you work in healthcare or a captured organisation?

[Citrusandginger]

Following the publication of the Cass report?

I'm a senior HCP and have been carefully emphasising the need to record sex medical accurately for months now, and have received, what I take to be, knowing looks and quietly supportive nods in return.

So I'm not out out, but I am sure that people are aware of my views. I'm also certain that I'm not alone.

Looking at social media today, I've seen people from my network posting media articles, but so far no comments.

My hunch is that a lot of us would like to discuss the issues publicly and in our own names, but are still hesitant because the debate is likely to remain toxic for a while, and could still impact our careers (and distress some patients).

Just wondered what other people's thoughts were and what it would take for you to speak out?

I have retired but worked in higher education for close to 25 years, DH is still there. I’m glad I have retired. He had to sit and do an online test a few months ago about inclusion issues. I looked over his shoulder. It was obvious what answers they wanted and felt all a bit 1984 thinkspeak.

The people who captured the NHS are ready to ignore Cass. The news framing of the stories has helped them to "See the waiting lists and the need" and overlook the evidence.

What struck me about the news coverage yesterday is that none of it was reporting the info on social transition, which to me was the bombshell. I don't envy GC teachers trying to get that discussed at schools but that's the big news imo.

Secondary school.
How are we going to tell the children?
Are we going to tell them?
I already speak out.
It would be really good if the Trust receive letters from parents asking how they are going to respond to the Cass report.

I disagree - I think it IS detrimental to their MH. You are not a qualified therapist. I am.

At risk of sounding like a tin foil hatter - every useful organisation now has a well organised network of individuals embedded, who are prepared to ignore facts, established protocols and safeguarding. They aren't going anywhere, and we need to watch out for whatever ideology they will embrace next.

I work in a children's hospital. I don't work in gender medicine but I regularly encounter children with a trans identity.

I've been quietly speaking up for a while now (e.g our blood transfusion checking system talks about gender when it means sex) and in the last month or so am aware that it isn't just me and a few people worried it's a lot of people. The furtive conversations I've been involved in are now being louder, and in more public places rather than hidden.

My colleagues care desperately about the children we look after, we want to give them high quality care and how to approach kids with pronouns/ two names etc. has been quietly fermenting. There have been various flash points so far with parents/ colleagues e.g pre-op pregnancy tests on trans identified female patients. Both a parent and some staff indicated that they strongly disagreed with biological reality and felt that by persisting to offer one based on the child's biological sex we weren't respecting chosen identity.

Now one of the services I work with has started to include both biological sex and preferred pronouns (for children) on operating lists. I only became aware of this last week and I know that many of those who work in this service don't agree with this decision but were unwilling to speak out for fear of being labelled transphobic and not respecting the EDI principles.

I'm hoping Cass will crystallise some institutional guidance and if it isn't forthcoming I intent to write and ask about it.

Cass would be a good topic for a Grand Rounds (hospital meeting all clinical staff are invited to to discuss a topic). I might suggest that too.

What will also be difficult will be balancing the needs of colleagues who have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and may negatively interpret changes to services in line with Cass.

I feel emboldened. Although I work in an adult service, I will be looking for opportunities to question, for example, the use of gender when they mean sex.

Until recently Ofsted were Stonewall champions. Then the Telegraph unearthed letters from Stonewall moaning that Inspectors weren't talking to primary children often enough about gender identity! Thus revealing Stonewall's tactics to to wedge trans issues into primary schools. Ofsted then dumped Stonewall.
There's now a new head of Ofsted and I would hope that, given the revelations from Cass about the medical abuse and coercive manipulation of children with the wrong body narrative, Ofsted will now be forced to take a child safeguarding approach rather than their previous transactivist line.
Given how many teacher activists are boasting of their intention to continue to break safeguarding law and guidance by transitioning children in secret from parents, it's highly likely that Ofsted will be forced into action.

The CQC is also a Stonewall champion - another captured government regulatory body!
I'm hopeful that Sue Evans's judicial review will expose how their membership of Stonewall has influenced their decision to ignore Cass & the need to safeguard children in favour of the lining the pockets of private gender clinics aimed at children and young people:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5035534-another-legal-challenge-this-time-against-the-cqc#:~:text=This%20time%20against%20the%20CQC,-15%20replies&text=%22The%20psychotherapist%20Sue%20Evans%2C%20who,the%20Gender%20Plus%20Hormone%20Clinic.

@TrishTrix One of the things I just cannot understand is why doctors, especially the older more senior ones, have quietly gone along with gender ideology (or at least not spoken up openly). I work in a very captured university that has a med school. The clinical Profs are famously assertive, demanding and have huge authority, yet none of them has stood up to correct misinformation about sex and gender, “trans kids” and the suicide myth, the dangers of wrong-sex medical diagnosis and treatment, none of it.

These people have been practising medicine for years and they know that TW are not biological women, they know that TW don’t need cervical screening, they know that men can’t get pregnant, that sex is not assigned at birth, and that reassignment surgery doesn’t turn a man into a fully functioning female. Yet they are silent, and way less visible than the young diversity & inclusion officers who were recruited in recent years, and who have been successful in imposing mandatory D&I training for all staff, plus endless other training which people are encouraged to attend in things like how to be a trans ally.

This is the most powerful lobbying movement I’ve seen in my whole life. I’ve seen the senior academics shut down some very high level initiatives, but I’ve seen no resistance to this one.

Presumably @Mudgarden this reflects the extreme levels of coercion and intimidation that accompany the enforcement of these lies on an unconsenting public? If you have no confidence that you'll be supported by your unions, colleagues and will be publicly shamed, then it's not surprising that many prioritise their careers, pensions and "reputations" rather than speak the truth.
From the arrogance of "no debate" to the political manipulation of the useful idiots masquerading as politicians chanting their "some women can have a penis", so many leaders have proved to be a massive disappointment.

It was interesting how many posters objected to the tone of the furious opening post in this thread - people were only doing their job and it's mean to call them out! In the face of the carnage exposed by Cass, women are still expected to mind our language and tone.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5046932-have-you-damaged-the-life-of-a-child?page=1

Yes but @HoneyButterPopcorn, @MrsMurphyIWish has to abide by her school's policy, or get fired. You only have to look at what's happened to teachers who have tried to stand up against their own schools policies to see what happens to them - they get fired, and when they try and bring it to an employment tribunal they lose on the basis that they weren't following their employer's policies.

The fact that the policies are wrong is irrelevant. The teacher still gets the sack.

That's why I'm fighting so hard to change my kids' school's policy, though I saw today in the school calendar that all staff are having an EDI inset training with a trainer with she/they in her bio I fear I will be shut down as the teachers have all now been "trained" to know what the "right" policies are.

There was just a teacher the other week, Kevin Lister - he basically refused to use anything but sex-based pronouns without confirmation from the parents, and the school fired him, saying that by not following their policy he was causing emotional harm to a transitioning student AND he was barred from working with children (in any setting). And then he lost his employment tribunal as well, but unfortunately he self-represented.

He's now appealing, and this time is crowdfunding for a lawyer. You can google his name plus fundraiser to find it.

Really pleased to see your post @TrishTrix - my daughter is in remission now so we have a lot less contact with the children’s hospital but we were pretty much in residence for almost a year (end of 2018-2019)

During the years we were extremely engaged with paeds haemotology/oncology in both hospital and in the community I crossed ‘gender’ out on every form and wrote ‘sex’ in instead.

Was pleased to note that at more recent follow up clinic appointments it hasn’t been necessary, as the paperwork all says ‘sex’ now!

Was always curious as to how the staff would approach a ‘transgirl’ with leukaemia, seeing as for some types there is a big difference in treatment depending on sex (boys have a whole year of additional treatment for ALL, iirc).

Parents like you are invaluable @Xiaoxiong
This is the perfect time to challenge all this. The new draft guidelines (which hopefully will be toughened up given the exposures of harm from Cass) and of course the Cass report itself that's clear that socially transitioning must only be carried out by those with clinical expertise.

I'd be googling that trainer's online presence / social media - checking to see if they're from a trans lobby group or whether they're a balanced trainer promoting strategies for schools around all the protected characteristics. If the former, then that's worth challenging the schools about why that group? I'm sure you already know this but both Transgender Trend and Safe Schools Alliance have done lots of research into those selling gender ideology to children and the dangerous messages they're promoting.

I’m a psychologist in a very captured NHS service. I have spoken out a few times before, when it felt possible and not career-limiting. I feel that Cass will make things a little bit easier to speak up but the ideology is very entrenched here and sex was ditched in favour of self identified gender a long time ago. There’s lots of training about the importance of pronouns etc and I don’t think fundamentally that will change.

My late uncle was a senior child psychologist and lecturer a few years back (before he retired).

I can imagine his reaction to all this - he was definately the type who would have gone down, guns blazing.

Very smart man - a balanced and logical thinker - and the added joy of being at odds with ‘current thinking’ would have been the icing on the cake (he was a contrary so and so who rather enjoyed correcting people or winding them up).

And what happens if a service user asks whether a refuge is for women only and if all the staff are women? Or if a service user asks for a women-only refuge?

Charities need good policies that respect their services users' needs and preferences, and that includes the need for clear information. Lack of those policies led to the employment discrimination case against Edinburgh Rape Crisis. (The case was heard a week or two ago but the outcome is still to be decided.)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4992537-another-gc-employment-tribunal-roz-adams-vs-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-5?page=36&reply=134326602

Also (assuming you are in the UK) legally your charity could be on a sticky wicket if a job in a refuge was offered to a transwoman that is otherwise only available to women, because other men could accuse the charity of discrimination. I am not saying your charity would definitely be in trouble because this is still legally murky, but sex is a protected charateristic under the Equality Act, so is gender reassignment, but gender identity is not. The EHRC have said that for transwomen the comparator for employment discrination is men (not women). Your employer might not want to become the test case.

Of course you might not want to be the bringer of the bad news either. Hopefully when the Edinburgh Rape Crisis case is decided your charity will be told about the implications.

(Sorry, this isn't Cass)

PS Sorry if this is a derail, it isn't Cass.

Well I'm still angry. Sad and angry.

People still don't care, aren't interested in the Cass report, think it's biased, are happily continuing to drive the pharmaceutical and cosmetic surgery juggernaut down the motorway.

There is now a wariness instead of the outright disapproval when I correct gender to sex, and other indications of a gender critical position. It won't stop individuals from scurrying off to report me to HR, but they are too cowardly to challenge me directly.

So many children have been told directly - there is something wrong with you, your 'gender identity doesn't match your sex assigned at birth' - just because they don't match crappy stereotypes.

Even those who haven't been mutilated, made infertile or physically damage have been psychologically damaged by the ideological message that has led to confusion and distress.

So, it's a win, but there is so much more to do and it's really important not to underestimate how far this is accepted in Healthcare settings, and how difficult it still is to challenge.

I'm also a HCP. My organisation is Stonewalled to the hilt but is full of TERFS, even my gay colleagues eye roll at all the LBGTQIA+ stuff.

I posted this on another thread but this article from the BMJ is great.

Couldn't see this posted yet. Great article in the BMJ:

t.co/tSJVPtFKjE

"One emerging criticism of the Cass review is that it set the methodological bar too high for research to be included in its analysis and discarded too many studies on the basis of quality. In fact, the reality is different: studies in gender medicine fall woefully short in terms of methodological rigour; the methodological bar for gender medicine studies was set too low, generating research findings that are therefore hard to interpret. The methodological quality of research matters because a drug efficacy study in humans with an inappropriate or no control group is a potential breach of research ethics. Offering treatments without an adequate understanding of benefits and harms is unethical. All of this matters even more when the treatments are not trivial; puberty blockers and hormone therapies are major, life altering interventions. Yet this inconclusive and unacceptable evidence base was used to inform influential clinical guidelines, such as those of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which themselves were cascaded into the development of subsequent guidelines internationally (doi:10.1136/bmj.q794).7"

And:

"People who are gender non-conforming experience stigmatisation, marginalisation, and harassment in every society. They are vulnerable, particularly during childhood and adolescence. The best way to support them, however, is not with advocacy and activism based on substandard evidence. The Cass review is an opportunity to pause, recalibrate, and place evidence informed care at the heart of gender medicine. It is an opportunity not to be missed for the sake of the health of children and young people. It is an opportunity for unity."

Hit post too soon. No one has mentioned Cass as of yet.