Jolyon jumps the shark - is trans a cult?

[CantDealwithChristmas]

Jolyon 'fox killer' Maugham has been on one for 6 days straight now. It all started with Streeting's PBs ban and ratcheted up when JoMo sent Streeting a list of 25 questions which Streeting ignored - and on a Sunday too. As of yesterday JoMo, a KC (though Guido Fawkes reported his licence expired in May), was encouraging people to break the law by accessing banned PB drugs from abroad. As of today he has well and truly jumped the shark with the below, horrible post on X.

My question to this board is why do TRAs feel the need to ratchet up the emotional temperature of the debate so high? Why do they so quickly devolve the conversation to death and suicide? It's an ugly strain that runs right through all TRA talking points. I personally think TRA is an eschatological cult and the focus on death is a intrinsic part of that. Others may think it's all about emotional blackmail.

Either way, please use this thread to discuss JoMo, Streeting's unaccounably cruel ignoring of him, and TRA emotional hysteria / threats in general at this crucial time just after the PB ban was announced.

EDIT - could not upload the screenshot of JoMo's post but it reads as follows:

"And don't underestimate the political tail of Wes Streeting's decision. His colleagues will slowly be coming to terms with him locking them into a future of bereaved parents tipping ashes outside Number 10 and a revival of mass die-ins wherever they go."

Is it legal, or was it, for children ( girls) under 18 to be given testosterone, as was suggested in JM'S daughter's case?

Keira Bell was prescribed testosterone at 17.

We know that a considerable number of gender questioning children have Autism. We also know that autism is a condition that can be inherited.

I'm actually not enjoying the spectacle of a middle aged man having a public meltdown, though I will admit it's useful.

Helen Joyce's point about true believers is particularly prescient when it describes people who have a tendency towards obsessive thinking.

That’s an absolutely appalling tweet! He should be ashamed of himself.

I wonder at this point whether he is genuinely mentally unwell. Although part of me finds this kind of deranged outburst funny, there's another part that thinks he is perhaps reaching the stage where he needs professional help. There is nothing normal about this kind of behaviour.

' They can't win ; there's no future in a death cult'. Some prescient soul wrote that about ISIS and I take comfort from that.

A response to selected highlights of ButterflyHatched's long post:

I would also recommend reflecting on how happy you would be to be sentenced to a mandatory course of cross-sex hormones for the next several years.

I would be mentally and physiologically damaged by cross sex hormones; they trash the female body. This is not comparable to going through the normal puberty for your body, which is physiologically the best thing for it.

younger children continuing to be prescribed this exact same treatment routinely

If you mean children being prescribed puberty blockers for the rare condition of precocious puberty, this is evidence-based medicine. The exteme side effects are known, so doctors and parents can factor them into their decisions. As this is "proper" medicine, specialists can constantly review the data without activists making dramatic threats.

a 40 year-old treatment that addresses the permanent changes they are facing

This treatment does not have the evidence-based rigour of other branches of medicine. The shocking lack of follow-on studies at adult clinics, whether deliberate or just slack, means it is dishonest and unethical to pretend to children and their parents that blockers have the same solid evidence base as medication they might be prescribed for asthma or diabetes.

an incredibly dangerous, rash decision forced into place without solid justification

The justification was the 4 year report by an eminent specialist which highlighted the lack of evidence, and indeed the lack of interest in evidence. Who wants to be the Health Secretary that pretends the next Thalidomide isn't happening? The emergency ban was the least worst option.

Describing JK Rowling's defence of women's rights, child safeguarding and evidence-based medicine as a hobby she got carried away with is just embarrassing.

One of the hallmarks of cults and mass movements is their goalpost-moving. If Streeting had come out with a different statement or policy it would not meet with JoMo’s approval because the future and the goalposts of the movement are always changing, and in fact, little would make the TRAs happier than some people committing suicide.

The demand of some parents of trans-identifying children is that their children undergo treatment to change sex. This is impossible. Which means that it is literally impossible to satisfy them and whatever you concede will just lead to a demand for more.

I was puzzled at how Jolly Jolyon arrived at his conclusions. For anyone like me who was puzzled by this, there's a reasonably good breakdown here:
https://archive.is/XI6sR about what's going on and how there are many who would disagree with his information and interpretations.

This is why #NoDebate worked for them for some time and why, now daylight is gradually dawning, this aggressive, over-emotional, and IMO dangerous agent provocateur is publicly losing his shit.

Kind of ironic isn't it really. They wanted No Debate.

What they actually got was this being one of the main debates of the general election this year!

And it's not going away.

I'd recommend not experimenting on children. But there you are.

You have had the use of these drugs for precocious puberty explained to you previously. Or pehaps you have selective reading and ignored it.

Female children using these drugs for precocious puberty do not have the same doses. Plus the negative side effects to female child patients are now well documented. Including the ones that present decades after treatment. And that is the treatment that is for a physical medical condition that has serious future health implications without the drug vs a chemical treatment for a psychological condition.

oh. That is right. They are predominantly female patients that report the life shortening side effects. Nothing like a bit of misogyny in your posts that ignore the needs of female people. We know. We remember.

I think JM does have a gender confused daughter who apparently accessed puberty blockers before she turned 16. I'm really worried that his horrible comments will be self fulfilling and that some poor distressed kid will be influenced to commit suicide.

“the sad truth of the situation is that children are being sent a message by the government that the best - often only - ray of hope they currently have for the future is being actively and comprehensively banned for poorly defined, deeply controversial and highly inconsistent reasons.”

Gosh. Imagine supposedly supportive groups who have recklessly pushed a treatment and who have supported, indeed, promoted a narrative that told children that they could be born in the wrong body and if they ‘felt’ like they were the opposite sex then they were and that drugs that had life shortening side effects were the answer that they needed. And that any adult who disagreed hates that child and destroys ‘the best - often only - ray of hope they currently have for the future’. Even the government!!

“for poorly defined, deeply controversial and highly inconsistent reasons.”

No. The reasons are not poorly defined. They are only deeply controversial because a group of deeply ideologically driven people believe that drugs and surgery are appropriate treatments for a psychological condition. One that IS poorly defined, inconsistent and deeply controversial due to that poor definition and controversy.

Imagine being child and having adults tell you this. Imagine being a child and having a person who celebrates being an ‘elder’ in an advisory position telling you this! Imagine being a female child having an adult male tell you this!

I think we are now getting our own MN special demonstration on what feeds Maugham’s tweets.

This is only a half thought and perhaps not relevant to the thread so forgive me, but I’m struck by the contrast between the view that challenging gender ideology is damaging conversion therapy which should be banned as it risks driving trans identifying people to suicide, and the view that women requesting single sex rape crisis provision are bigots who should be challenged to reframe their trauma. It’s not at all consistent and if anything, shouldn’t it be precisely the other way round? People who identify as trans do need to be challenged because the stakes are so high and being trans is a psychological state and ways of thinking fundamental, but traumatised rape victims should not be challenged because their beliefs - even if they are bigoted- are irrelevant to their experience so their treatment should be therapeutic, compassionate and victim focussed rather than “educational”.

Despite all this hormonal interference with distressed young people, we're still not in a position to say that it does any good. As well as the material reviewed by Cass, here's another one
"Current evidence doesn't suggest that GD (gender dysphoria) symptoms and mental health significantly improve when PB or CSH are used in minors with GD." as it says here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38410090/

it is unfortunately the case that you cannot divorce suicide from the subject of healthcare for gender incongruent youth in the UK in 2024. We have been trying for decades, and came closer than we ever had previously circa-2017 just before the culture war kicked into gear.

When I read these kinds of arguments they feel like something from a more superstitious time, when we knew even less about mental health than we do now, and correlation and causation were always being confused.

sadly, there will always be suicides and some young people will always suffer from depression and mental illness.

I have never seen any real evidence, nor even a coherent argument, to the effect that this is something that needs radically different handling in ‘gender incongruent’ young people compared to other young people. Experimenting on their bodies seems like an insanely brutal and primitive way of managing what must be - if suicide is such a risk - at least partly a mental illness. We know there are ways to reduce suicide risk - we also know that talking about suicide a lot makes it happen more due to social contagion.

I was speaking to an NHS clinician yesterday in a professional context who was having to bite her tongue at what is an astonishingly irresponsible decision made by a man who has no background in healthcare and no relevant experience, in defiance of established international protocol and the advice of subject matter experts with relevant experience, alongside an evident personal conflict of interest.

The 'man' has based his decision on the report complied by Dr Cass, and other equally qualified professional's. Was the clinician you spoke to as qualified? and does your personal anecdote make you as qualified?

the best - often only - ray of hope they currently have for the future

But there is no hope of changing sex. You can only somewhat modify appearance.

Remember when Lisa the social worker said on her videos, waaaayyyy back when that when men start to lose and are told no, they will escalate and that's when they become dangerous.

Well that.

What did Helen Joyce say about it not being about the children's need but about the parents desires?

There are wise women out there.

I was about to post a link to this. I've long thought that the TRAs follower the abuser model to a tee. I'm surprised more people don't see it.

Who knows what horrors the trans-humanist Frankensteins will come up with in the future, though?

Oh this is fun.

Would you ban an enhanced treatment protocol that had been given decades of large scale well documented studies and was, through the combination of leading new technologies, able to completely, reliably and safely reverse pubertal physiological changes without the developmental time pressure factor?

Can you provide any links to those large scale well documented studies

I think this is like one of those Netflix series, @spannasaurus , where there's another time-frame thirty years in the future...