Dr David Bell

[impossibletoday]

Perfect....

https://x.com/genspect/status/1868132862463250719?t=BwpDbkB2hoVGIXu0OUQavA&s=19

Full presentation

https://x.com/genspect/status/1868132864182878319?t=a98hu3qjP6LLGdPmnZ67vg&s=19

Thank you. He's so good isn't he?

“Siding with someone is not an act of kindness. An act of kindness is to be able to hold a neutral position, a sympathetic position, and maintain that neutrality, which is costly and difficult.”

"having someone on your side without siding with you"

Just to wet the appetite

Was this the guy from another department that never actually treated any of us?

Actually there are several of those, come to think of it, so it doesn't really narrow it down much.

This is an article by Dr David Bell for those who are unsure who he is.
https://can-sg.org/dr-david-bell/

Interesting note on anorexia/bulimia there:

'Many of the detransitioners I have spoken to had suffered from anorexia/bulimia (although the GIDS clinicians had not made the obvious link to disturbance in relation to their sexed bodies). There is evidence that as gender dysphoria rises, anorexia bulimia is falling.'

Jon Arcelus, of WPATH and the NHS Nottingham gender service, worked in eating disorders before moving into 'gender'.

Ah yes, it is that one who thinks that there are no actual trans people, we're all apparently repressing our true and pure homosexual souls or <insert condition here>, and if only we had a bit of wholesome conversion therapy then we'd soon be making our bodies available to the LGB dating pool without any of that nasty complicated treatment getting in the way.

"That one" is in fact Dr David Bell - a "distinguished psychiatrist & practising psychoanalyst" as the Guardian described him. Article about him from the Guardian back in 2021 in the aftermath of Keira Bell's case.

His focus is children and he's been been a powerful advocate for them. He's one of the reasons the corruption and bad practice at GIDs was revealed. Not surprising that extreme transactivists don't like him.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/02/tavistock-trust-whistleblower-david-bell-transgender-children-gids

That man has been responsible for the destruction of so many lives and is one of the main reasons that the UK is now decried by human rights organisations worldwide for not providing healthcare to transgender youth.

Hate hides behind kind words and a veneer of benevolence, and the way he has shamelessly weaponised the complex difficulties of vulnerable detransitioners is nothing short of chilling.

He'll get away with it, too. He and his fellow cabal of anti-trans zealots who infested our healthcare system will never face justice for the immense harms they have caused. They've denied the kids who follow in my footsteps a future and are busy doing everything in their power to isolate themselves from the consequences.

‘Delulu’ was shortlisted as one of Collins’ Word of the Year 2024.

Yet again @ButterflyHatched you are completely wrong dr bell has saved countless children from being harmed by the same medical malpractice that you claim to have endured.
No child should be denied the right to go through puberty and the brain development that comes with it, nor should a child's wish to be something that they never can be used as a reason to put them on a medical pathway that results in sterilisation and an early death. That's not health care that's at best a medical scandal and when you look at the number of autistic and gay kids involved at it's worst it's a eugenics program going on in plane sight.
If anyone belongs in jail it's the drs who have been running gids, gender gp and wpath

Yeah, well, butters, when you are a world leading psychoanalyst and and psychiatrist, authoring umpteen highly rated books and receiving numerous awards, or have taken four years out to gather evidence that no one can refute about the harm of puberty blockers, maybe people will listen to you.

As it is, your description of your life spent in 'crushing isolation' due to your transition and having the sword of Damocles hanging over you for your numerous trans health issues doesn't really inspire much confidence in your opinion of wanting lots of children to 'follow in your footsteps.'

Butterfly appears to have hatched into a parallel universe.

Meanwhile in the real world, his actions are helping to ensure that children's futures are safeguarded from immense physical and psychological harms.

People - children and adults - with psychological and emotional problems need psychological and emotional therapies. Not dishonesty, gaslighting, empty promises only backed up by strong, untested, inappropriate drugs that cause irreversible harm to them.

Agreed!

and if only we had a bit of wholesome conversion therapy then we'd soon be making our bodies available to the LGB dating

Like lesbian women should be making their bodies available to 'lesbian' transwmen?

Also this!

Very wise, thoughtful and compassionate words

Crushing silence and isolation in congruence, never being able to talk about your past vs a lifetime of inescapable daily transphobic abuse

What a choice!

"You should not transition because of how we will treat you if you do."

"How dare you find a way to transition that means we can't find you."

We are so desperate for this treatment because a. It is the second-best route we have to lifelong congruence and b. It lets us escape from you

There appear to be many people with such a massively deep sunk cost in either transitioning, or transitioning their children, they are incapable of acknowledging the ideology that drives it.

What's notable, however, is the effort many will go to garner sympathy on the one hand, about what an awful life they've had, with the complete denial that their 'treatment' has had any part in it.

Which leads to the other thing I try to keep in mind. And that is if people have taken puberty blockers, it's not just their physicality that's been arrested. It's highly likely that their emotional and mental maturity will not have been unaffected.

Come on Datun, don't mince words. Say what you really mean.

You can't discredit us any other way so I suppose this is all you have left.

Amen to that

I think she's been very clear.

What part are you struggling with?

Just caught up on this thread.

@ButterflyHatched I'm sorry you feel so angry at the "transphobes" who want children to have access to good therapeutic support that helps them understand and address why they might be feeling distressed about their bodies.

Perhaps they are autistic girls experiencing breast development and periods as difficult sensory issues. Perhaps they are girls who have experienced sexual abuse, who are identifying out of their "weak" bodies so that they won't experience this again. Perhaps they are boys or girls who have heard children mocking gay and lesbian people, who are concerned at emerging feelings of same-sex attraction, sadly disgusted and/or scared at thoughts of themselves as gay. Preferring instead to see themselves as "straight", but "trapped in the wrong body".

Watching you dismiss all this, dismiss Dr Bell and others who are putting children's mental and physical health first is as concerning as it is frustrating.

Hopefully anyone new to MN, or still lurking while getting their head around it all, can see the glaringly obvious flaw here: it makes no sense whatsoever for anyone to advocate for children to have their puberty stopped. Forever. There is no puberty of the opposite sex, there's just puberty or no puberty. Brains that have been fully developed through adolescence, or brains whose development has been impacted. Forever. Children growing into adulthood with permanently altered brains, bones and endocrine systems.

It makes even less sense when we already know that at least 80% of children who feel this type of distress grow out of it without this life-altering medicalised pathway, that they are too young to comprehend anyway.

I truly hope that you are at peace with the decisions you made about your own body. From everything you've said, it sounds like you are. But that doesn't mean it makes any sense at all for you to dismiss the concerns of medical professionals like Dr Bell. Please stop.

It makes even less sense when we already know that at least 80% of children who feel this type of distress grow out of it without this life-altering medicalised pathway, that they are too young to comprehend anyway.

I made a couple of edits in my post above for typos/clarity.

I wanted to pick up on this point separately too. I added an "at least" in here because this figure is based on the previous cohort of children and young people who entered this medicalised pathway. At that time almost all were boys who identified as girls, having done so from a relatively young age. Since this time, the demographic has shifted significantly. It's now mostly girls, most of whom experience this distress at adolescence. It's also notable that anywhere between 35% (Cass Report) and 48% (research within the Tavistock, published by two clinicians there) are autistic. The previous cohort didn't have anything like this pattern. The desistance rate would likely be much higher if these girls can have their distress unpicked and addressed in a neutral therapeutic way.

Here's the paper from the Tavistock with the 48% autism estimate:

https://repository.tavistockandportman.ac.uk/1910/

It's a small sample size, so probably not considered enough to draw statistically significant conclusions. However, it's enough to give food for thought when you consider that, according to the National Autism Society, only 1% of the population is autistic.

It simply doesn't make sense.