A hot take on the Cass report courtesy of Freddie McConnell

[GenderBlender]

Not quite sure what to make of this one. Freddie welcomes the report and totally agreed with it apparently, but also thinks it has the fingerprints of transphobia on it. Seems vexed that Cass has not unambiguously said that trans kids exist, and that the neurodiversity and mental health challenges are in addition to a teams identity (no explanation given as to why they are so often co morbid).

Seems to be going with the, it's all about waiting lists line that mermaids at al have been spouting.

Totally doesn't get the concept of a systematic review, says lots of research not included, that will be because it was reviewed and found to be shite so not included.

"Cass bemoans the lack of a peer-reviewed evidence base for trans healthcare. Right there with you, Doc (although there is plenty of research you decided to exclude)".

No comment made on the withholding of data by the majority of gender clinics making generating this evidence base impossible.

No comment made on why girls are now presenting much more frequently.

"If the Cass review was held under a black light, we would see the fingerprints of anti-trans ideology. I don’t believe Cass shares this way of thinking, I think she believes in evidence-based healthcare and that trans children exist. However, allowing her review to be so heavily influenced by bias is a critical failure that is hers to own."

So, the battle front is drawn, it isn't actually about gender services, we all totally agree on that apparently. This is about whether we all agree that there is such a thing as trans kids.

I think this is an unwinnable argument, like arguing whether god exists. In my view, from a medical stand point, the starting position has to be that the goal of any treatment for gender confused kids is to help them be more comfortable and live with the body they have. Only when compressive attempts at this have failed, should medical transition even be considered. I don't think this proves that trans kids exist either way, but I think perhaps for a very small number of kids this is the most effective way of relieving their distress.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/hilary-cass-trans-children-review

The Guardian again.

The starting point is that no child is born in the wrong body.

This is like watching wordsmiths use hot air to perform body alchemy.

Children need to explore, not be pigeon holed into labels.

Youtube shows there seems to be tons of reverse ferreting going on now. I could barely believe it when I went on this morning.

The Cass Report - whether McConnell wants to admit it or not - has lifted a stone and revealed a LOT of nasties scuttling away from the light.

This every time. No child is born in the wrong body. If we could get these ghouls away from children and schools who keep selling them this nonsense, then the real challenges for children could be addressed.

There’s always a bogeyman to blame with this kind of contemporary activism.

Don’t engage with the substance in any meaningful way; just make vague conspiratorial claims about ‘transphobia’ and ‘anti-trans’ actors behind the scenes.

see also the ‘right wing’ bogeyman who can be invoked to distract from any discussion of points the activists don’t want to have to engage with.

I totally agree. No one is ‘born in the wrong body’. Our bodies just are - sometimes how we feel about them becomes a big problem.

Of course, there’s plenty of money to be made by ‘fixing’ this wrong-body problem - which isn’t a conspiracy; it’s an explanation for why the incorrect problem definition has gained such purchase. It sounds like it provides a ‘solution’ and can generate an industry of activity to solve it. So, of course, the effort goes there and not elsewhere. The flip side of that is that people and companies have too much invested in the wrong-body idea to have it challenged and dismissed.

Coat all that standard ‘how capitalism works’ in a veneer of ‘be kind’ and a sense of progressivism/championing rights and you get… a situation where people are championing medical interventions that sterilise children and create lifelong medical patients and cannot possibly countenance the underlying problem definition being incorrect.

It is a case where a lot of people need nice, safe ladders so they can put down their shovels, stop digging and climb back out of the hole.

OK then Freddie.

Also, if we are to accept the unprovable concept of trans kids, we must also accept the very evident reality that as a species, we are capable of convincing ourselves of pretty much anything, from faith in mystical and magical deities to frontal lobotomies being a cure all for mental illness. We are so incredibly open to bias on a personal level, and when scaled up to a societal level our propensity for bias is so great that for a thing as blatantly ridiculous and dangerous as giving vulnerable children life altering treatments to align their gendered soul with their physical body, it has taken a four year totally comprehensive report by an unimpeachable woman for the scales to fall from many people's eyes. And this may not even be enough to banish the totemic lived experience. Perhaps we deserve to be wiped out after all. We are so fricking dumb.

The concept of ‘trans kids’ is actively harmful. Children with gender dysphoria undoubtedly exist. Children with genuine troubles, who are having a terrible time and need support.

To read what Cass has written and double down on the ‘denying the existence of trans kids’ line is most definitely missing the point. Tragically so.

The problem is that these children (and the adults they grow into) need the right kind of support. Putting up a flag celebrating ‘trans kids’ and putting them on an ever escalating pathway of medical and surgical intervention while shouting ‘transphobe’ at anyone who suggests exploring other avenues IS dangerous.

I feel sorry for people who have become so invested in this that they simply cannot bring themselves to consider what the Cass review actually found. But in a limited way - because of the harm it does.

I was caught up with other stuff for most of yesterday so has any of TRSOH brigade read the report and publicly admitted they may have been hoodwinked on the everything is fine and safe front? Or has it been 24 hours of "well of course I mainly agree with it but.... "

The "do you believe in trans kids" thing is ridiculous. Mermaids et al have already walked back from the whole "born in the wrong body" definition and so we're now told that trans is simply about "gender identity". If you feel trans then you are trans. If that's the definition then no one could argue that "trans kids" don't exist. However, it also means that for years we have been prescribing life-changing hormones and surgeries to children on the back of a self-reported, untestable, unprovable "feeling". In what other universe of medicine would that be appropriate?!

Seems vexed that Cass has not unambiguously said that trans kids exist, and that the neurodiversity and mental health challenges are in addition to a teams identity (no explanation given as to why they are so often co morbid)

The Tavi's single track process was a product of focussing on identity related issues rather than the distress and the full range of causes.

Identity doesn't need attention from health professional unless it is an identity disorder, which is treated by mental health professionals outside of gender clinics.

I expect this is why Cass doesn't talk about transgender issues. They aren't relevant to her report.

And yet another hot take from Dr Aidan Kelly, SPECTACULARLY missing the point.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/11/trans-children-in-england-worse-off-now-than-four-years-ago-says-psychologist

He said: “It’s important to remember that people carrying out this expert review have never worked in gender. The people who actually know the work, and have been doing the work for a long period of time, don’t hold that level of caution and fear.”

Yes Aidan, if you spend your life immersed in gender you will see trans kids everywhere, but if you spend you life dealing with children as whole and distinct entities, with very specific needs and challenges, then you are much less likely to see trans kids everywhere.

Yesterday must have been a bit stressful for the Guardian but its good to see that they are back in their 'trans must not be questioned' groove.

The glaring omission of the born in the wrong body mantra is, why aren't there a significant number of post pubescent women who are now able to express their true male selves?

What's TRSOH?

TRSOH - The right side of history (I assume)

Maybe if people didn’t use resources to transition, then un transition, then transition, then un transition in order to use the female parts of their body to have children then there would be more resources available to counsel questioning children.

And if ONLY the trans community had actually used their voice and shouted out about their apparent awareness of the inconsistency of a preponderance of young girls with additional mental health, medical, and social needs wanting to transition, instead of using their voice to spread lies and venom about people outside the trans community who were concerned about this anomaly and tried to speak up about it. I am trying my very best to recall articles written in the Guardian by Guardian journalists - who were of course at the forefront of many peoples information about the trans community- highlighting this issue, but am failing to recall a single one.

Re Kelly, he's surely delighted that the NHS can't now give the drugs to the children. All the more money for his private service. As he is dealing with children aged 16+

At least, and thank heavens, Kelly is not prescribing puberty blockers. Which of course means they are being got online.

I heard Kelly mention that Cass was wrong yesterday because German medical trans reports showed the opposite to elsewhere, I think he meant Finland/France etc. Nobody has followed up on what German medical report Kelly was referring to. Anyone know?

Something never commentated on by the media, The Guardian and the BBC, is that Kelly is not actually a doctor. He's a psychologist. but reading the first line it refers to him as Dr. Kelly which means people reading think he is a medical doctor. (he's entitled to use that honorific title, but it should be questioned) His area of study is not any medical discipline, instead he has studied how people think, feel and behave.

The people who actually know the work, and have been doing the work for a long period of time, don’t hold that level of caution and fear.”

That's exactly the problem, isn't it? If they had a bit more caution and a bit more fear we wouldn't be in this mess.

It's not surprising that the Guardian has commissioned Freddy to respond, because Freddy sounds much more reasonable than the (mostly m2f) activists on Twitter.

It seems the party line is not "Cass has got it badly wrong" (which they know looks unhinged) or "Cass is right" (which would mean admitting that they'd spent the past seven years or more peddling lies) but "Cass says what we thought anyway, but has [shakes head sadly] been misinterpreted by transphobes who will use her report to make things worse for trans children."

The thing about ‘gender specialists’
is both the ‘man with a hammer’ problem AND that their entire career and professional identity is grounded in ‘gender identity’ being thing that must be treated as the primary factor in everything.

Lots of people’s careers and sense of place in the world have grown up as part of the institutional infrastructure of gender ideology. And they are so caught up in it that they can’t necessarily see the big picture anymore.

It is a good thing that the review was not done by ‘gender specialists’. All areas need external scrutiny - from people who do have the expertise and experience to properly assess medical evidence and practice. Cass fits the bill entirely. Perspective matters.

Scrutiny from outside your bubble is so important in so many areas. the correct response is to reflect on the ways in which the orthodoxy that has emerged in your particular area may have become problematic and to consider the recommendations in that light. Not double down and moan that the recommendations weren’t made by someone immersed in the orthodoxy.

The same thing happens all the time in academic research. So many tiny, discrete subfields that become echo chambers hostile to any outside perspective. And peer review practices that reinforce the echo chambers, rather than providing the scrutiny and review that would help everyone (well - not if you view the goal as making it easy to publish or reinforcing the orthodoxy). The issue with ‘peer review’ is that it becomes too focused on the (like minded) peer aspect and not enough on the review.

In medicine, these two bubble effects reinforce each other. Gender medicine operates in a self-referential bubble and the evidence base for it is disseminated via the self-referential ‘peer review’ bubble.

You'd think a supposedly left-wing newspaper would be all about analysing why kids present with gender dysphoria.

What do we need to change about our society in order that gay kids, autistic kids, non-conforming kids, don't feel the need to cause permanent harm to their bodies?

Why is a left-wing newspaper not interested in exposing and dismantling the structures of power that benefit from this system?

How can it ever be considered socialist to protect an American concept inextricably linked to private healthcare and big pharmaceutical companies (and therefore all the money made for private investors) at the expense of marginalised groups of people?

Pathetic.

@Cailin66 I am Dr Astariel. But, as you point out, the title itself is misleading. The basis for the title really matters.

He could have a PhD - that would entitle him to use the honorific "Doctor", and would not necessarily be in a medical field.

Maybe he's got one in "Gender Studies" or similar. He could certainly have one in psychology. 🤔

I’d be curious to know, from anyone in Guardian-reading hipster circles, what the general feeling is towards McConnell in their peer-group right now.

No longer part of them myself, I remember there being an element of begrudging sexist tokenism - female words aren’t as important or interesting as male ones, but since we are good, self-repressing allies, we’ll fake an ‘interested face’ in the name of inclusion in (what are essentially just) the warblings of a mother (mums - urgh, boring, uncool).

Has McConnell got any more kudos these days? I find the tone of the article suggests McConnell believes McConnell is perceived as having authority and respect.

Yep,more arse juice from the hard of thinking.

Nice photo of Dai Dull and The Dimwits though.