Safeguarding trans issues

[Hamiltonfan]

My friend is the most amazing mum. Her son has started to identify as female which she doesn't accept . He is neurodiverse with multiple issues going on and she believes this is a phase he is going through to try and fit in. She found out today that she has been flagged as a safeguarding risk and social services are being involved. To say she is devastated is an understatement. Please be kind. Can anyone offer any words of support or legislation around this? Thank you.

Unfortunately butterflyhatched is quite an example of the harm pb do with development. There is no subtlety to what should be persuasive arguments it comes across as manipulative instead. Ok I don't actually believe there are persuasive arguments but it very much is if you don't regret not doing as they say you are very very lucky.

I beg you to show compassion for the desperate children whose dysphoria doesn't resolve itself and who don't have a nice comfortable road ahead.

They now have no options for timely immediate treatment and still have to face a culture war trying to ban their rights and protection from discrimination alongside future avenues for treatment.

Well, it seems that some children were lying to clinicians, having been coached by Mermaids about what they should say to get the medication. So it's much better that the risk of this happening has been removed, and these children can now grow up to be healthy adults and can choose whatever path they wish as adults when they are capable of fully understanding the consequences.

And they haven't been having this treatment for three decades - GIDS only launched their Early Intervention Study in 2011. Only a couple of years before that, Susie Green had to take her child to the US to get those drugs, since they weren't available here.

As for the children's needs, what they need is proper evidence based care, not harmful medication peddled by gender zealots to prop up the fantasy of middle-aged crossdressing men that they were 'trans kids' themselves.

How many children who would naturally grow out of their cross-sex identification do you think it is appropriate to harm in order to 'help' these "desperate children whose dysphoria doesn't resolve itself"?

Since the vast majority outgrow their trans phase, how do you justify harming the majority in order to 'help' a tiny minority of children?

I have said 'help', because I'm not convinced, that even in the case of those who don't outgrow this phase, the positive effects of the puberty blocking drugs outweigh the negative.

Edited because I got my negative and positive the wrong way round.

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There was a strict criteria for referral for GnRH agonist treatment. It was only prescribed in cases of clear need - remember that this was the concessionary measure used to keep gatekeepers happy.

That almost all of those prescribed them went on to take CSH is a testament to the quality of the initial filtering process - these were kids who were asking for CSH treatment and got given a concession instead.

OP is it that the child wishes to be the opposite sex, or that they believe they are a girl/woman in gender terms, with "girl"/"woman" meaning something other than female-bodied?

Afaik Butters is one of those people who believe women are female, so I'm not sure whether the child would agree with them on that.

There's no doubt that the desperate children who've been gaslit that changing sex is the solution to their pubertal angst are being pushed to the front of this debate by the cynical adults driving all this. It's hard to say no to a weeping teenager who believes the tale they've been sold that puberty isn't essential, that mental & physical health aren't vital for a fulfilling life and future fertility issues can be resolved via surrogacy.

Society is finally seeing the manipulation for what it is and are now taking on the middle aged men behind all this. As we've seen, these people will continue to emote about children in the hope that people don't look at what's really going on.

Their demands are dangerous for children & women and toxic for society. If you're in doubt about this, just take a look at the writings of those pushing this. The words I, me and my will be repeated incessantly. This is not about children's needs - it's about disappointed men's demands.

Which is why it was only available as a treatment after an initial multi-stage assessment process and with ongoing monitoring.

If they'd left you well alone you would more than likely have grown out of it and gone on to be a normal man.

Yet multi stage assessment wasn't what was happening.
And TRAs actively had it banned as "conversion therapy".

Peple are showing compassion.......and they are doing that by not wanting for children to go down an irreversible path; one which will not ultimately resolve their issues.

The only treatment for a mental health issue is a mental health treatment. Your post illustrates this perfectly. Who would wish any of this on anyone?

So even after pumping your body full of synthetic hormones, castrating yourself and butchering your genitals to make a cavity/fake vagina your gender dysphoria still wasn't completely alleviated? Don't you find that really disturbing? Why would you ever encourage other children down that path?

What does identify with the female sex mean? Surely it just means liking girls stuff? Why do you need to damage yourself so badly just because you like girl stuff? Don't you think there could have been a better, healthier alternative for you?

It's a sad and depressing story IMO, gender dysphoria should be treated as a mental disorder along the lines of body dysmorphia and i don't understand for one minute why it's not. When did it become acceptable for doctors to cut off healthy, functioning parts of their patients bodies?

The doctors themselves admit that they have no way of telling which children will grow out of it and which won't. But the statistics do suggest that most children who are left alone do grow out of it, whereas having puberty blockers appears to make the outcome a foregone conclusion.

That means that by prescribing puberty blockers, doctors would be condemning a majority of their patients to a lifetime of poor health and being something of an outcast, for no reason.

You actually have no way of knowing whether you would have grown out of your dysphoria or not, given the chance to grow out of it. That chance was taken away from you. It shouldn't be taken away from any more children.

It's worth noting that the child in the OP has an entirely different presentation than Butterflyhatched describes. Neurodiverse, multiple co-morbidities, no suggestion that the gender dysphoria is long-standing. Give this, it is unreasonable to conclude that the clinical treatment Butterflyhatched describes receiving would be in any way appropriate for the child in the OP. To assume otherwise is a bit like declaring someone with appendicitis needs the same treatment as a woman in labour, simply because they both present with abdominal pain.

It is always concerning to see and adult who did not have, from their own personal account, a normal puberty giving advice about giving PBs to a child who has a completely different experience with such strength of conviction. Especially since giving these drugs to children for identity issues has been consistently found to not provide the evidence of improving the long term mental health for that group of patients.

However, Operation: Let them speak has been going well it seems.

Which is why it was only available as a treatment after an initial multi-stage assessment process and with ongoing monitoring.

If that wasn't so tragic, it'd be laughable. 30 minutes to an hour on the phone, followed by a prescription and "There you go," is nothing like what you assert.

What about detransitioners? Keira Bell, for example? What about the complete lack of follow up records, highlighted in the Cass Report?

You're taking complete rubbish.

It's a sad and depressing story IMO, gender dysphoria should be treated as a mental disorder along the lines of body dysmorphia and i don't understand for one minute why it's not. When did it become acceptable for doctors to cut off healthy, functioning parts of their patients bodies?

Indeed, @Gem359 We don’t put those children suffering from anorexia on Ozempic.

Not giving an anorexic teen an ozempic prescription is DENYING THEM BODILY AUTONOMY YOU BIGOT!

Well, it would be, according to trans logic.

You really can't see it, can you?

You'd be able to if you understood what it was like for us. The rate of people going on from PB's to CSH is an indication of how good the initial filtering/diagnostic process is. It's a feature - the people prescribed PB's are the ones who have persistent acute gender dysphoria and want CSH. They get PB's as a concessionary gatekeeping measure just in case they do change their minds. A tiny fraction do. The rest are the same kids who have been forced to wait to start CSH - but at least they haven't been forced to also accept the changes they'll spend the next decade trying to undo.

When I was a persistently gender dysphoric but not depressed,

But isn't gender dysphoria supposed to cause depression and inability to function properly, hence necessitating the major intervention that transitioning is?

not autistic

Wouldn't you recognise being autistic lends itself to a distorted perception of reality, sex roles and self identification?

How do you feel about the version of the DSM that excluded those suffering from more extreme forms of schizophrenia from a gender dysphoria diagnosis being "superceded" by a version which did not?

Is an undisturbed sense of self and perception of reality necessary for a gender dysphoria diagnosis, in your opinion?

I'm also still waiting on your explanation as to how your female (lesbian? butch?) friends were perceived as having been born male, in your company, while you, observed as male at birth, did not get perceived as male.

I'm also a lesbian, very definitely not feminine, and still unable to get kicked out of a female loo. What am I missing?

But that's just a secondary question, I'd appreciate comment on my previous post.

So a small update. As the child concerned is 16 they are now being referred for gender counselling. No thought is being given to the comorbid psychiatric issues that have been ongoing for many years. Mum is beyond devastated. I have passed on everyone's advice for which she is truly grateful, and am gently suggesting she contacts the organisations mentioned. This poor family have had so much to deal with already. This is such an unnecessary, painful step too far.

No, YOU really can’t see it.

You think this current day teenager, with a completely different presentation to the historical one you constantly wang on about is exactly the same as you and should receive the same drastic medical and surgical interventions as you, despite describing your own health problems as a ‘Sword of Damocles’ and without any of the careful assessments or long term psychotherapeutic input that were part of the gender services 20 years ago. Anyone who concluded they were trans before the advent of the smart phone had an entirely different experience to the kids of today.

Stop projecting your own backstory all over other people’s children.