Open Letter to Dr Hilary Cass

[Sexnotgendah]

Cass did great work but this puberty blocker trial is a huge mistake
https://genspect.org/an-open-letter-from-genspect-to-dr-hilary-cass/

Four of them are, but one every child must have this one: A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.

Which according to you, is a strong desire to be the socially determined category of man or woman. So stereotypes.

Wouldn’t a trans child want to take part in the activities associated with their gender identify?

What ARE activities for children that are associated with particular “genders”? What makes an activity “gendered”? Again, stereotypes.

The diagnostic criteria does not say that any child that takes part in stereotypical dress or play of the opposite gender is automatically trans

No, but a diagnosing clinician has to to one of two things. Either:

a) apply stereotypical behaviours to the child in order to meet the diagnostic criteria or
b) believe that only the body distress matters, stereotypes don’t matter, and fail to meet the diagnostic criteria.

Either way the process is flawed. Either the diagnostic criteria is regressive, or it’s not fit to describe the problem properly.

So which is it?

And again, back to the thread: if we are still determining what is going on with children and struggling to accurately describing the problem, why are children being given irreversible treatments, either inside or outside of a trail?

Thank you Stella O'Malley for an excellent letter.

Thank you ByCraftyMaker for saying that you believe it's only possible to "be" transgender if you have gender dysphoria. Even though I don't believe in gender identity myself (i.e. I don't believe anyone has one), I do agree that it's a reasonable requirement. Otherwise all the AGPs and fetishists get to tag along too.

And thank you PPs for clearly articulating why a belief in gender identity can only be upheld by internalising sex-based stereotypes.

In this country, we're inconsistent when it comes to how we manage beliefs and their impact on children's bodies and lives. We ban (most) childhood FGM, yet allow circumcision. Why? Yes, circumcision is less harmful than FGM but it's still removing a part of the body in accordance with a belief, often backed up by unproven reasoning that it's apparently healthier. We allow some FGM: 16 year old females can take testosterone (if they believe they are boys), leading the clitoris to grow outside the body and most likely be permanently painful.

We should not be allowing a belief in gender identity to lead to further medical experimentation on children. We've already done enough of this.

Let's track down the 9000 ex-GIDS patients and get data on their cognitive functioning and bone health now, being clear to separate out which ones had PBs and/or cross-sex hormones and which did not. Let's compare that data to the average population at the same current age. On the assumption that most who had PBs likely also had cross-sex hormones, let's also compare the data to adults who received PBs for less time as a child, for precocious puberty, stopping at the age when puberty should be expected to start.

What's next, an experiment to give Catholic children transubstantiated wine as blood transfusions, as long as we track the results?

A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender

Loads of teenagers have strong desires, and insistences, but we don't just let them stop their puberty and end their growing up normally on their say so. Growing up IS part of living. We shouldn't be able to put a stop to it for any kids, for any reason. Just because activists have infiltrated the establishment doesn't make the made up bullshit any less nonsensical.

Well, there is the existence of detransitioners, the findings of the Tavistock staff that existing m/h conditions were ignored as soon as ‘trans’ was mentioned, the mental health stats that show a worsening after medical ‘transition’ and general observation of the state of mind of many ‘transgender’ people that we see around. Many do not come across as happy or well adjusted people.

In children, waiting for puberty/brain maturity resolves 80% + of cases so that is pretty effective to start. Therapy/counselling/autism diagnosis/dealing with internalised homophobia will help many others that are known to have underlying m/h conditions leaving a tiny core of adults who can make an adult decision to present as the opposite sex when they are ready.

If you are the exception then I am delighted for you.

Out of interest, why did you gave a particular desire to develop deeper friendships with women? That seems like quite an odd target.

Do you think you are any more able to develop deeper friendships with women now? I presume you don’t tell them you are a woman as such a huge deception is not conducive to friendship?

What is it about being ‘trans’ make it easier for you to make friendships with women? I do know that some women like to ‘rescue’ people they perceive to be ‘less’ than them.

When you talk about someone wanting to remove a limb you’re talking about Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). Again something different to gender dysphoria. BIID is about a desire to have a limb amputated and become disabled. They both involve distress, but the causes and treatments are different.

They aren't always treated differently. There was a surgeon in Scotland who amputated the limbs of a few people with BIID. He claimed that they were much happier after the surgery.

And it's not clear that the causes of gender dysphoria and BIID are different. Some people, like Chloe (Clive) Jennings White, claim to have both conditions.

https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/spinal-column-no-truck-with-transableists-r3qrr3glx73

https://anonw.com/2012/04/22/eat-your-heart-out-chloe-jennings-white/

This article also explores the similarity between the two conditions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/

Do you think you are any more able to develop deeper friendships with women now? I presume you don’t tell them you are a woman as such a huge deception is not conducive to friendship?

Given some comments on a thread yesterday I can't see how Crafty can develop deeper friendships as it appears Crafty doesn't tell them. A friendship built on lies is not a true friendship. And how can you develop a deeper friendship when you are concealing such a massive part of who you are.

Social categories, stereotypes, wanting to get closer to women.

Shocked.🙄

Not forgetting that apparently it's innate, and little kids feel the same

Four of them are, but one every child must have this one: A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.
I had that, persistently, from when I was very young until it was finally resolved, after a lot of therapy, in my early 20s. I was convinced I’d grow up to have a hairy chest, beard, deep voice, and broad shoulders like my Dad, and I was utterly distraught when I discovered this wasn’t the case. I dressed like a boy throughout my teens and early 20s, hid my body, desperately wanted to have my breasts removed because they marked me as female and I hated them so much, and I was convinced something must have gone wrong somewhere because I just didn’t ‘fit’ with other girls, but I seemed to get on easily with the boys. Luckily, I grew up during a time when being transgender wasn’t presented to me as a possible explanation for feeling like this.

I would have been an excellent candidate for a puberty blocker trial, with my distress around gender starting so young and persisting for so long. That would have been a terrible mistake though, wouldn’t it? Affirmation would have prolonged my distress and harmed my mental health because - despite meeting all of these dangerously woolly criteria - I wasn’t actually a trans kid. I’d be fucking furious if I hadn’t been able to have my children because poorly-informed medical professionals had taken the self-assessment of a child as gospel, then gambled with my fertility by offering a totally inappropriate ‘treatment’.

Through therapy that addressed the underlying issues causing my distress, I was able to get on board with the body I’ve got, decide that “gender identity” was a load of oppressive bollocks that didn’t need to affect me in any way, opt out of outdated stereotypes, and live my life without ever having to agonise over what it means to be a woman ever again - I am a woman because I have a female body and I’m an adult: no further definition required. You decided to demand that the world perceive you as if you have the body you wished you were born with, requiring external validation to affirm that the perception of others matches your perception of yourself. You’re spending time attempting to explain - to women - what “feeling like a woman” means, and trying (but failing) to do this without resorting to sexist stereotypes. You seem to be aware that your explanations don’t resonate with most biological women, which must be hideously invalidating for you. My way of dealing with these issues appears to have been easier, healthier, and far more effective than yours.

The part where I am genuinely shocked, is that no one ever seems to nail down what bloody gender means, and therefore what gender incongruence means, the actual thing they're being studied for.

We ask that question on here all the time, and the answers are always exactly the same. It's basically woman envy based on stereotypes. And/or a fetish.

Wanting to fit in the social category of women (stereotypes), and wanting deeper friendships with women?

All based on compelled speech and deception?

I am a woman because I have a female body and I’m an adult: no further definition required

💯

Yes — why can’t a man develop “deeper friendships with women”?

It sounds very much here as if women aren’t actual people, but some kind of skittish animal tribe that have to be captured by dressing up like a wildlife photographer with a bunch of feathers on his head, trying to get closer to this elusive beast who might scarper if it smells the wrong scent.

As opposed to having a normal friendship with another person based on shared interests or outlook or ideas.

Hmmm I am quite sute I am going to get slammed for this but what does being born female mean to you ? For most of us natal females what defines us is the ability to gestate, give birth and lactate. I cannot understand how you can know what that might feel like not having a uterus.

It's just weird. Women are individuals. Some selfish, or cruel, or boring, others are happy, interesting, lighthearted.

You're quite right, they're just seen as a big blob of stereotypes.

Which, pound to a penny, will involve things like support human, nurturing, good listener...

Gender is the social category (man or woman) that people are recognised as.

So when we don’t recognise a man as a woman, even if he really wants it, he’s still a man?

Social recognition that is entirely subjective is a pretty rubbish definition tbf.

I, as a born female, wish to announce that I have had many many close deep friendships with men who did not wear dresses whilst having a close deep friendship with me.

Wanting to have close deep friendships with women is not a signifier of having a 'female gender'.

Honestly, are we back to the 'I can't open a jam jar' nonsense again?

I want to have deep friendships with women, based on the fact that I will deceive them about my sex, violate their boundaries, and take all their stuff! (And still fondly imagining that I'm even inhabiting the stereotype of a woman!)

If only it was friendships they wanted, and not for women to provide a service.

Uncomplaining, compelled if necessary. Sometimes preferably.

The goal should be to make the individual truly question their feelings to determine whether medical intervention will help or harm. The subject should have to be confronted with the realities that irrespective of however extreme the medical/surgical intervention that they will never be able to change sex and will have no expectations of being treated as the opposite sex. Subjects need to know that irrespective of their own internal self image they cannot control how others see them. We need to move away from the unreasonable and unrealistic expectations that thousands of young people have who end up filming TikTok clips in their cars bawling their eyes out because they have been correctly sexed.

Doctors must be convinced that the subject understands the realities before clearing anyone for irreversible treatment.

"Wanting to have deeper friendships with women" seems like a bit of an odd goal.

Women are all different. Friendships with women (and men) are all different.

"Wanting to have deeper friendships with women" sounds like it's based on a fantasy (i.e. an imaginary idea) of what friendships with women are like.

I’m not convinced that there is a mental issue which is about rejecting your sexed body for which the best/only treatment is transition - while recognising ByCraftyMaker‘s experience.

However, even if this were clearly demonstrated, at the moment we have no way of telling which children reporting gender dysphoria would go on to this experience, and which would naturally desist through puberty. The number desisting is reported to be very high (>80%?) and the negative physical impacts of medical transition are significant. Added to this, prepubescent children are clearly not able to give informed consent to things like future infertility and lack of sexual function.

So, even if transgender children do exist, it is only possible to identify them in hindsight…..

Let's track down the 9000 ex-GIDS patients and get data on their cognitive functioning and bone health now, being clear to separate out which ones had PBs and/or cross-sex hormones and which did not. Let's compare that data to the average population at the same current age. On the assumption that most who had PBs likely also had cross-sex hormones, let's also compare the data to adults who received PBs for less time as a child, for precocious puberty, stopping at the age when puberty should be expected to start.

Yes this is the key point. These experiments have already been carried out on children. They know who they are. Why are they not being followed up?* - they would be a goldmine of useful data.

*don’t worry I know the answer to this.

I'd like to acknowledge the fact that ByCraftyMaker has responded thoughtfully to questions and challenges.

The definition of gender as
Gender is the social category (man or woman) that people are recognised as. Gender identity is a person’s internal sense of which of those categories fits them.
is unsatisfactory - the social categories 'man' and 'woman' are identified by the biological fact of sex, not the social construct of gender.
This was re-affirmed by the UKSC - 'sex' is the biological sex into which a person is born, regardless of how they feel about that fact.

In other words, a person’s internal sense of which of those categories fits them is a personal matter - 'a person’s internal sense' does not change the reality of whether they are a man or a woman.

How that is dealt with has been at the centre of some drastic social changes - a whole legal, medical, linguistic, educational etc structure has been set up which sidelines biological fact and favours bolstering the 'internal sense' of a very, very small number of people who believe they can 'transition' away from the sex they were born into.

This is something that will fascinate future students of society - how did the immaterial 'internal sense' of so few affect the material lives of so many?

I'd like to acknowledge the fact that ByCraftyMaker has responded thoughtfully to questions and challenges.

Seconded 👍

Yes, women are very much being 'othered'...whether that is by gay men or by heterosexual cross dressers.

I've mentioned a number of times now a Netflix documentary called 'Regretters' about two older men who transitioned a long tome ago and were now detransitioning. One was clearly of the AGP variety and expressed his desire to transition arose because he found that the women he wanted to be in relationship with didn't seem to want him...so he decided to become a woman himself.

Trying to make a relationship with the 'feminine' is what seems to motivate AGPS, whereas for gay men it is more the fear and social dissaproval of homosexuality. Assuming/adopting a feminine role/identity is seen as preferable to simply being an effeminate man.

Neither really understands or has empathy for actual women.

Yes, it is more about developing a relationship with their own perceived 'feminine' self.