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

We (general 'we') appear to have completely thrown away the idea that having a healthy body that works and doesn't hurt is a good thing that should be cherished. If you live long enough, it probably isn't going to stay that way due to the ravages of time, illness and injury. How is it ever acceptable to damage a child's healthy body in this way?

We really need that 'first do no harm' idea back in both medicine and society.

Following on from Ingenieur's post, let's not forget that the severely, persistently gender-distressed child wants to be a boy/girl - not just look like one. Medical and surgical transition is sold to children as if it can achieve that outcome. It can't. Nothing can. So even disregarding the ethical considerations, that is a major reason why it should not be offered to children.

Oh Snowy... are you saying that it's all a lie?

@Sloejelly You appear quite resistant to the idea of any kind of study involving children, even non-treatment observational studies. What do you suggest should happen to get the best possible quality evidence to support the appropriate course of action for children presenting with “gender distress”?

😁

What IS GENDER DISTRESS?

I’m just reflecting the language of Cass. I’m not going to split hairs on the definitions, we all know we have a sudden increase in children with issues around “gender identity”. And these children are presenting to medical services wanting medical treatment.

That’s the reality, so how do we get the evidence to develop appropriate courses of action for these patients?

What IS ISSUES AROUND GENDER IDENTITY?

You don't want to get into splitting hairs on definitions, and that is because these definitions don't make coherent sense in the first place.

Explore fully the reasons and motivations behind their distress, rather than assuming children grow up in a vacuum - not absorbing dominant cultural memes and tropes around the relatively recent concept of 'gender'?

You seem very resistant to the idea of critical appraisal of study design, of bias and poor quality studies leading to false conclusions. You seem very wedded to the idea that observing a non-randomly selected group of individuals receiving harmful treatments will give us answers that they simply cannot give.

That’s not answering my question. I asked for your proposal on what we should do.

It is possible to use the word of others to reference what they are saying without agreeing with what is being said.
The mere use of those words does not signify agreement, it is reference to what other are saying.
This jumping up and down at the slightest language infraction feel purile and pointless.
If you want to propose better terms that don't upset your delicate sensibilites then do so but for fuck's sake please stop squaking like a chicken having a fit every bloody post. It's not constructive.

Kids are having issues, I believe those issue to be mental problems, the kids express those problems using language around gender and all sort of made up nonsense that they have been fed. Referencing what they say is not agreeing with it.

Stop all medical treatment of children for ‘gender distress’, stop the indoctrination in schools and children’s media, and remind girls that there is nothing about short hair/mechanics/football/leadership/trousers/avengers/physics that stops them being for girls, and remind boys there is nothing about long hair/pink/glitter/dolls/caring that stops them being for boys. But that there are two sexes and it is impossible to change sex.

Great post.
Women on FWR have been pointing out for ever (with many being deleted ) of the impact of this social grooming on children. There's so much evidence about how abused children and young people see abuse as the norm once an abuser has successfully eroded their boundaries.

Professor Alexis Jay who led the Rotherham inquiry into the grooming of young girls and the government's Independent Inquiry into Chile Sexual Abuse said parallels have been drawn between what she discovered and the findings of the Cass Review. Nobody has been allowed to intervene with these children and young people - not even their parents - for fear of allegations of transphobia & bigotry.

https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,scot-who-led-rotherham-inquiry-warns-of-parallels-with-cass-review

In the face of it, I’d agree. We all think here that children have been, and continue to be harmed, and that medical staff should take the most conservative, cautious, do no harm approach. It seems blindingly obvious to us.

however, many other people don’t look at healthy young women having undergone mastectomy and think “harm”, they think “success”, “he’s happy now” “what’s your problem”. We have to accept that’s what some people really think and that our preferred approach is the harmful one. And without properly generated evidence either way the general population are just going to think it’s a shouting match between two bunches of ideologies.

@Sloejelly
You could only say that some appeared harmed less than others. You could not tell if they are in a better position, despite the harms they have suffered, than they would have been had they received alternative treatment (eg psychotherapy) or no treatment.

My hypothetical was tracking the whole group so that you might find subgroups who might potentially benefit from a treatment, e.g., in the hypothetical, 100% of that subgroup of autistic boys who had gender dysphoria and incongruence before age 4 continued to have gender dysphoria and incongruence as adults, Assuming it's a large enough group, once you have identified that subgroup, you can try various treatments on those with the characteristics.

I don't understand what harms you mean since you wouldn't have used any particular treatments on them yet. You're looking at the data you presumably will get from the clinics in order to try to find subgroups that you hypothesize might benefit from future treatment, and only at that point trying treatments on them (e.g., cross sex hormones, psychotherapy, both, neither). That is the point I would look to see if a treatment helped or harmed.

AlisonDonut
Gender distress = wanting to be/thinking they are really the opposite sex; not wanting to be the sex they are and being very unhappy.
It is the correct way of describing the predicament of a child - rather than the phrase "trans child".

It's a real mental health issue but it is a symptom. What's gone wrong is that GIDS treated gender distress as if it was a condition in itself or an indication of incongruent "gender identity" (which is made-up nonsense), as opposed to a warning sign of underlying conditions.

Ah, you mean like the middle aged men, who received no ‘treatments’ as teenagers, who are now transitioning and say ‘if only I had had puberty blockers when I was a child, before I got married had kids and watched them grow up, then I would pass better now’ and taking that data and applying it to the current population attending GIDS services?

I am terribly sorry if my post came across as rude, it certainly wasn't intended that way.

I was expecting the thread to be limited to what Cass said in the parliament and the responses there.
It's evolved into a discussion of the uses of PBs, which would have warranted its own thread.

@Sloejelly
Probably not but possibly if they were seen in NHS clinics for gender dysphoria/incongruence as young children and the records are still available.

They should be keeping good records now and that data should be available to researchers. I was shocked that many of the adult clinics didn't turn over their records for the Cass Review. I can't think of an acceptable reason for that. You'd think that they'd want the researchers to have as much data as possible in order to retrospectively try to learn what worked and what didn't. If something worked, why wouldn't you want others to use that treatment for similar patients? If it didn't, why wouldn't you want others to avoid or at least modify it? (Using those records to learn this and maybe find particular subgroups for which treatment A/B/C was helpful or harmful and in what ways is what I was talking about.) The fact that they didn't willingly turn over the records speaks volumes about their concern for their patients. I was shocked that so many refused to do so.

I’m very glad you enjoyed it and I agree that the interviewer asked very relevant and intelligent questions.

I think that, more than any other interview with Dr Cass that I’ve watched/read, I’ve come away from listening to it with the belief that Dr Cass thinks some people are TruTrans and that for some children the medical route will be the best outcome.

From her answers in this interview she said a few things that seemed to support the idea. I found that concerning because I genuinely believe the medical profession should never mess about with hormones and surgery to 'treat' a mental condition (or satisfy a paraphilia in the case of some adult men).

I’ll be interested to see what others think after listening.

Edited to add: Cass referred many times in the interview to gender non-conforming children and that makes me worry that she doesn’t see the idea of gender stereotypes as being the problem. I think she sees them as a symptom indicating treatment is required rather than a cause of the mental health distress, if you know what I mean.

Are you new to MN? It’s very common for threads to drift as the conversation evolves. And the topic is still very relevant to Cass, as one of her core findings was that there is scant evidence to support the use of PBs.

you may have grounds for complaint if we end up discussing merchandise or edibles but by this boards standard we are very much on topic.

Cass referred many times in the interview to gender non-conforming children and that makes me worry that she doesn’t see the idea of gender stereotypes as being the problem. I think she sees them as a symptom indicating treatment is required rather than a cause of the mental health distress, if you know what I mean.

That is a worry. Children being distressed because they are gender non-conforming shows the problem with gender and a society that enforces it, not with the child. If we look to Afghanistan - how many of the women and girls they are distressed by the expectations imposed on them because of their sex? Does she think the answer is testosterone and mastectomies?