BBC interview with Cass. 'Both sides weaponised'

[RedToothBrush]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k1vkmxgd6o

Asked if children had been let down by an adult-led debate, Cass said "absolutely", adding they "were also caught up in all the issues about single-sex spaces and sports and safe areas for women which were actually not to do with the children but they were somehow part of a football within it".

This woman is proving herself exceedingly stupid and self serving.

Children were caught up in a debate about single sex spaces and sports which aren't about children?!!!

Wtf?

So let me get this straight. Young girls and teenage girls don't need and use single sex facilities. And issues with sports also don't impact on teenage girls.

Is that what she's saying????!!!!

Fuck off. And keeping fucking off some more.

This woman is proving herself to be an idiot and is trying to desperately make herself look better in the eyes of activists. She doesn't give a fuck about children. She's playing politics here for her own sake.

The issues around kids and single sex facilities are some of the most compelling!

I'm just staggered by this shit show.

Oh and she's doubled down on the puberty blockers trial saying it must go ahead to stop charlatans selling them.

I'm just staggered.

Yeah, I just read that article and was pretty surprised. She says ‘extremists’ on both sides have weaponised children, but only really talks about the impacts of trans extremists. She recognises that many (most?) children desist from a trans identity, but supports the puberty blockers trial - to stop charlatans issuing inappropriate drugs.

Why does the trial not start by quantifying how many children desist and trying to work out how to identify which ones to treat? She says that many children adopt a trans identity in response to social media’s promotion of gender stereotypes, but offers no counter to address this beyond the PB trial.

edited to add; disappointing lack of critical thinking/genuine understanding of the GC position

I know someone who emailed Chris Mason at the BBC after he trotted out the ‘two sides are equally problematic’ line, asking for evidence of violence and law-breaking from the GC side of the debate. He hasn’t said it since!

“Weaponised” suggests using children for some other means within the debate.

No, Hilary, protection of children is the goal.

How can you talk about the damage that is done to children - whether through hormone treatments, sport, or single sex spaces where children have been assaulted - without talking about children?

She’s too determined to be seen as neutral she’s forgotten what she is: a paediatrician where the wellbeing of children is paramount.

Exactly. It's total bullshit.

I fall to understand why being concerned about your kids because exposed to the idea you can change sex, being punished for recognising you can't change sex, being forced to share changing facilities with the opposite sex, promoting sexist ideas of male and female and having to play sports against the opposite sex is 'extremist' and 'weaponising'.

This is grooming and coercion. It's forcing ideology onto others in an inappropriate fashion.

Objecting is not remotely 'extreme' given her own position that you can't actually change sex.

It's nuts. It sounds like she's trying to convince everyone that her ideological position is the one everyone should follow even though it's as incoherently bullshit as saying you can change sex.

I'm just staggered.

She hasn't properly understood this issue at all.

The reason why GI was pushed at kids was so adult AGP men could use them as an excuse to get into women only spaces.

And the reason there are so many women on the GC side is that we have been around long enough to see/ experience the worst these men can do and that many of us have children/ grandchildren and want to protect them from these men. And yet both sides are ‘just as bad’ and ‘weaponising kids’?!!!

I don't understand how a paediatrician does not understand that single sex spaces are part of child safeguarding.

I know, mine are 21 and 18, they are in the group when this peaked, mainly during lockdown. Thankfully, mine were pretty immune to this (two biologist parents might have helped) but I saw several of their peers going down this route, one of them still crowdfunding for surgery. Cass seems to be insulated from all this.

The way to deal with charlatans is to arrest them or prevent them operating not to give more kids drugs that will harm them.

We don't go "Oooh kids can buy heroin online, best prescribe it to them then" which seems to be the premise of her dumb argument for a puberty blockers trial rather than following up on kids who have already gone through the process.

She has just basically weaponised kids herself to appease activists. Nice.

And it won’t work, they hate her.

Yet another person with whom I am massively disappointed.

Surely the discussion about single sex spaces is relevant to the treatment of gender dysphoria. If the children are told (by internet/medics/therapists) that once they take opp sex hormones they are entitled to use facilities of their choice when that is not actually the legal situation, they have not been given the info they need to give consent to the treatment. Similarly, now it has been so clearly demonstrated that they can’t access opp sex facilities, the discussion about how they will go about their daily lives - use facilities of their birth sex, or forever be on the hunt for places with single cubicles. Either way, it should be part of the ‘treatment’ discussion.

I suspect that the BBC article is worse than the interview itself. The fact that they led with the ‘both sides’ headline is very telling.

There were two other reasons.

• That you could normalise AGP (and other fetishes, sexual kinks)
• you create a pool of children who could not have sex, but would be desperate for love, and were now in a very restricted category, very useful to being used by men, in a very demeaning way, including those attracted to children

You and me both.

I’ve said this before - I am genuinely getting the impression that, while she is the face of the study, she had so little to do with the actual research that she doesn’t actually understand it in the depth that the researchers probably do. It’s either that or she is genuinely quite evil. I would prefer to think of her as ignorant.

I've just read this interview and she's so sensible up until the support for the PB trial. She says there needs to be restraint because only a "tiny minority" of kids identifying as trans will end up on a full on pathway of drugs and surgeries. That makes sense.
And that a lot of kids will question for a couple of years or so and then snap out of it , for want of a better expression. That makes sense.
She talks about the unrealistic images kids think they can live up to - this put me in mind of the ex police officer thread from yesterday, there are photos on there of how he portrays himself online and what he actually looks like. I mean all they need to do is follow Dame Katy Denise on twitter and they'd see some realistic trans women!!!
She refers to the kids the Tavistock didn't follow up on and how much info could be gleaned from doing that, but then supports the trial. 🤷🏼‍♀️
I'm not sure how kids have been actively weaponised about the SC ruling practicalities, she'd need to give examples of that.

Victoria Smith did a great piece on the nonsensical idea that you can have a middle ground between something that is clearly morally wrong and something that isn’t.

unherd.com/newsroom/labours-school-trans-guidance-is-a-dangerous-middle-ground/

I agree. I think she just did not grasp the sheer depth and breadth of the whole topic. As a paediatrician she probably had no clue about all the other aspects of this ideology, particularly AGP, and I suppose nobody else involved was going to tell her.

Annoyed and frustrated at how such a senior paediatrician can just not see the safeguarding issues here . Very concerning. I am disappointed to say the least.

Cass: children should have realistic ideas about what is possible with transition
Also Cass: we should validate sexist bullshit and hope that solves the problem and if you don't validate it some how you are being extreme.
Also Cass: we should do a trial on children despite me observing you can't actually transition and knowing that the results of the last attempt were buried because the results are so obviously damning
Also Cass: but it's definitely not about single sex space even though access to them for validation purposes is what I'm ultimately supporting even though the law is saying this isn't an option.

Go away. You are a massive disappointment in your stupidity.

The Cass review was clearly a positive development overall and I wouldn't want to just dismiss its author as an idiot.

However I'm struggling to come up with a good excuse for her making this statement. Maybe like many of us she just struggles to express herself clearly under pressure???

I think she understands perfectly. She's just pretending not to.

She did say that she had had a lot of death threats.