Guardian editorial on Cass, as painful to read as they clearly found it to write

[GenderBlender]

Waaaaay to mealy mouthed to summarise

But this doozy of a line

"Dr Cass advocates moving away from supporting children with gender dysphoria with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones to providing therapy to “alleviate their distress”. Her belief rests on making a connection between the rise in girls experiencing a mental health crisis and the rise of girls developing gender-related distress. Such an assumption lays Dr Cass open to the charge that her suggestions are tantamount to talking people out of their desired gender change. However, she disputes that her intent is to “change the person’s perception of who they are”. The report’s credibility will be significantly undermined if that objective is not met."

So, this thorough, detailed, comprehensive, systematic piece of work will be undone unless it reinforces the idea that gender identity is real. That is the most important thing in all of this according to the Guardian.

Not the children harmed.
Not the brutal and determined silencing of those who have been desperately trying to alert to this scandal.
Not their role in propagating the harm to children and their role in silencing the gender critics.

Nope. Identity Uber alles.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/the-guardian-view-on-the-cass-report-rising-numbers-of-gender-distressed-young-people-need-help

But that editorial is a weasely shit show with McConnell's finger prints all over it

Absolutely, like McConnell’s comment piece it completely fails to define what trans is, other than to come up with equally nebulous guff about gender identities not being the same as sex at birth, and the whole article makes no sense without it. (I realise this is nothing new for trans rights activists, but given the attention this issue has had this week you’d have thought a major national broadsheet newspaper would be able to come up with something better than this.) Where’s Susanna Rustin when you need her?

That link is presented as 'an opinion', rather than being the main editorial comment, though.

When people invest so much emotional energy and life meaning into a particular set of beliefs or dogmas, then they will not let go, easily - no matter what the alternative evidence. And even when, and if, one day they wake up and start to see the issues and faults, may well decide to stay faithful anyway, and make allowances for failures

Generally I think the guardian is a great website and a good reliable news source (free) but it’s the opinion pieces that let it down, stir up discontent and pits groups against each other. It’s the opinion that let it down - a platform for radical activism that’s no doubt there for click bait. It won’t end well.

Has Marina Hyde done the decent thing yet? I can't think of any logic defying belief system that opens itself up more to ridicule for it's inconsistencies than transideology. You'd think she'd have to mention it after Cass...

For a start if tw are literally w, why are the called 'trans' and not just 'women'? What does the 'trans' bit mean?!

Quite. They're like a parody account.

Am late to this thread - but was Dr Luke Munford trying to say that it is the being transgender/living in a hostile social environment that triggers mental illness rather than acknowledging that MH issues are intrinsically part of why people identify as trans? Would he say, then, that being anorexic triggers depression and other physical and mental health issues, rather than accept it is symptomatic of them? Or that the pain and discomfort of open self-harming wounds causes distress, rather than were cause by distress?

Was it upside-down day when he was interviewed?

And now for the Observer editorial. Spot the difference?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/14/cass-review-gender-identity-services-children-young-people

I so very much hope that as well as protecting vulnerable kids, this puts the breaks on the exceedingly tedious, solipsistic self centered identity politics.

That's just so perfect: whoever wrote it clearly gives no fucks about pretending to respect the ideology, and good for them! Looking forward to the letters page.

I stopped buying the Observer when it supported attacking Iraq. I think I might pop out to the paper shop later....

They will not see what is in front of them. The evidence that gender dysphoria abates in the vast majority of cases! That is the whole point! That's why Cass says to not affirm!

On the other hand there have been some excellent editorials in The Times, someone writing the ed pieces is fully unleashing their terf.

I even have a problem with the whole concept of something called 'gender dysphoria'. A terminlogy based on a concept of a self identified thing in the first place, which you are then in a struggle with, with yourself.

Its a nonsensical position

I think until that is removed from this whole discussion, I still worry about the whole thing

And of course the report and light shining on it is about safeguarding in terms of medical/social transition for children. Its not yet shining a light on men wanting to be in women's spaces and why that is.

GenderBlender

I just posted it on the Cass thread and this is what stood out most for me:

Just how badly wrong things went at the gender identity development service (Gids) is evidenced in the fact that Cass felt she had to explicitly state that, while some people argue that clinical care for children should be based on a “social justice” model, “the NHS works in an evidence-based way”. That should never have been up for debate: as the British Medical Journal argued in its editorial on the Cass review last week, it is deeply unethical to provide untested medical interventions for children that lack evidence of benefit, yet are life-altering and come with potentially very significant harms.

Quite how the fact that it needs to be stated that a medical service works, or should work, in an evidence based way, almost beggars belief.

Isthisexpected · 11/04/2024 23:00

Reading that has been the end of my long term readership of the Guardian. I really thought they'd see sense.

I no longer feel an affinity for it and haven't for the last year or so. I'll still read it, I like the science and law pages & I do the crossword, but I haven't bought it for ages. It made me feel quite sad that the paper I'd bought since my early 20s has degenerated into such a propaganda rag.

What did it for me was the way the treated Suzanne Moore and Hadley Freeman.

From the OP's link:

No one is sure why the number of children who identify as transgender has grown exponentially. Many people were disoriented by the sudden simultaneous rise of trans identity in wealthier nations. Some fell back on prejudice to cope with their confusion.

Well, that a mystery wrapped in an enigma, isn't it? But 'no-one is sure', apaz. I've not read the full report, but doesn't Cass talk quite a bit about this?

as painful to read as they clearly found it to write

So true, OP! It’s cringe-making, I don’t want to see them embarrassing themselves. We need the Guardian to grow up and drop this juvenile ideology.

You couldn't make it up!

Well here we go... Cass can say what she likes but she cannot dispute the fact that anyone who says they are trans, is trans.

"Her suggestions are tantamount to talking people our of their desired gender change."

Gender Ideology is right and anyone who questions this is wrong. We haven't mived forward.

We don't need to talk girls out of wearing trousers or out of cutting their hair... those expressions of personality or gender do not cause them long term harm... if we can talk them out of cross sex hormones and breast removal, we can save them from unnecessary surgery, and unnecessary side effects, infertility, inability to orgasm and decreased bone density.

Opening up the meaning of what it is to be a woman should include short, wearing trousers , or what is considered to be masculine behaviours but it should not include changing body parts, or secondary sex characteristics.

The experts can say what they like, but we still think the world is flat.

I would love to know what the criteria are for being trans. The Guardian obviously know, as their podcast from last week on the Scottish hate crime law described how “[JK Rowling] listed sex offenders who describe themselves as transgender, alongside well-known transwomen activists, and described them as men, every last one of them”. So they must know how to differentiate between males like Isla Bryson and Katie Dolatowski who 'describe themselves as transgender’, and therefore by implication are not really trans, and males like India Willoughby and Munro Bergdorf who are ‘well-known trans women.” And yet all gender distressed children are unquestionably trans, and treatment for mental health issues instead of automatic affirmation “lays Dr Cass open to the charge that her suggestions are tantamount to talking people out of their desired gender change". Perhaps The Grauniad could enlighten us.

That Observer editorial is a belter.

(Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/scotlands-new-hate-crime-law/id1440133626?i=1000651373982 about 13 minutes in)