Hillary Cass at Scottish parliamet - live

[ArabellaScott]

This started at 9am.

https://www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/health-social-care-and-sport-committee-may-7-2024

I'm hoping a transcript will be available later, can't see one as yet.

Re the idea that for some few children pbs may have benefits, it struck me that this is basically the 'true trans' argument formalised.

Opinions vary on the validity of it.

Cass talks about peer pressure, social media pressure etc.

If that gets addressed it's going to drastically reduce the number of children going down this path.

That's the opposite of what TRAs want.

They also don't want it highlighted that the biggest cohort is teenage girls.

That really doesn't fit the narrative that every middle-age male cross-dresser was a 'trans child'.

Watching politicians speak politically about middle-aged cross-dressers, whilst being addressed by Cass regarding gender confused children is very clanging.

It is yes.

In response to @ArabellaScott

Thank you @ArabellaScott

I agree that opinions will vary about the point seemingly being made that for some, this will be beneficial. That was the starting point way before most people even knew about any of this. I'm sure whether or not that is the starting point, is something else that there will be a variety of views on.

I think Cass is right to say that there will be some for whom puberty blockers would be a beneficial treatment. If she said an unequivocal no to all puberty blockers I think that would allow accusations of bias when it's clear that there's no evidence either way.

Until proper ethical studies are done on this new cohort we can't tell.

I wish she'd said that it would only be in very rare cases and should be a last resort though.

It's kind of the Jesse Singal position, isn't it? Sometimes Jesse infuriates me with his addiction to nuance, and even though he knows how poor the evidence base is for childhood transition, he isn't willing to definitively rule it out in case there's some kid out there who might benefit...

...but on the other hand, that makes Jesse harder to dismiss when he talks about the poor evidence base.

I think Cass is right to say that there will be some for whom puberty blockers would be a beneficial treatment.

On the current (lack of) evidence base, all we can and should say is that there will might be some for whom puberty blockers would could be a beneficial treatment.

Yes. Agree with your revision to my statement.

They made up this treatment.

It isn't a thing.

It never was a thing.

This should be clarified at every opportunity.

This makes me so mad.

Blocking puberty is such an extreme thing to do that I don’t see there ever being a point where we can definitively say they would be beneficial. For some people, with hindsight, they may have been beneficial, given the choices that they have made.

TRAs seem to think it’s transition or suicide, so that’s why they get upset when people position transitioning as the worst outcome. I don’t think they believe body dysmorphia is something that can be overcome. That doesn’t fit the narrative.

thanks Arrabella for the thread. And thanks to Hilary Cass for all that she’s done.

I'm glad there were some questions about the conversion therapy legislation as it really worries me that we seem to be at a point where alternatives to medical "treatment" of dysphoric symptoms that focus on the sexed body are literally being legislated out of existence.

I've not seen any good studies which look at different kinds of talking therapy, or ways of engaging patients in non-medical therapies. There was a thread on here from a trans man recently where they talked about their inability to engage with therapy as an adolescent, and not feeling that therapy could be at all useful to them as an adult - is this being investigated? Or do services just give up - god knows any kind of mental health intervention is hard to get, so when the service user refuses to engage I guess that's that.

@ArabellaScott thank you for typing all this out.

The response to the first question in this post is really sad. Why is being same sex attracted still such a big deal that being trans is a better option?

Don't like doing the "this" thing but absolutely this.

Unfortunately the above is how it works.

If there is no evidence then you should say that there is no evidence that it will help. Not that there will be some it will.

TRAs seem to think it’s transition or suicide

But this was always a lie and the organisations that promote this know it. The reality is risk of suicide increases multifold after transitioning. They have pushed suicide in order to justify their demands.

*Mochan: Why no trans people included in review team?

Cass: That was 4 or 5 people. We weren't excluding. Nobody trans applied. Tokenist representative not helpful.*

I would have thought, actually, that identifying as trans would be a conflict of interest here. In my experience, even having a family member identifying as trans is enough to make objectivity fly out of the window.

I agree Kilopascal. An impartial review should be carried out by people with no personal interest in the results. This review also concerned children, mostly girls. Not adult males from Malaga airport.

I firmly believe that ‘transition’ is never the right path for a teenager/ young adult, or grown woman. Where are all the middle aged women rushing to ‘live as men’?

we know that a LOT of men get sexual pleasure out of dressing as a woman or even a school girl but that has nothing to do with helping children suffering anxiety about their own bodies.

its as crazy as suggesting for some people suffering from anorexia liposuction is the right treatment.

Well said as ever datun - this is why the TRAs leapt on Helen Joyce saying it would be better if less people medically transitioned. She meant so they would be happy or accepting of their bodies or sexuality without needing lifelong medical intervention, but the loons said she was doing a gEnOcIdE.

Boom.

Yes. Significant and good to see this put so explicitly. Adolescent girls are not middle aged men...

She's a politician. Are you saying that politicians should not be permitted to express their political beliefs?

The bar is very low in terms of what that means these days. Presumably it's too much to expect politicians to go into such an important meeting about the Cass review without signposting their personal allegiance to the trans lobby.

Expecting them to be professional politicians weighing up evidence in a mature way is likely a bit too optimistic. 🙄

A high percentage are same sex attraction, you can see how the issues get conflated, this may have been naive but I was surprised by how much homophobia there still is, as well as transphobia.

the 🌈 lanyard crew have always been affirmation without qualification because be kind and because they are LGBT allies.

Pointing out it might be homophobic is just a little awkward for that.