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.

Regarding 'Emily In Everton', I'm also in Liverpool ( and used to teach) and my daughter currently teaches at a large school in Everton. I know quite a bit about what goes on in many schools and how other teachers and pupils feel about it; plus living in Liverpool you get used to political group think and the imagined, self identified and glorified idea of people as radicals and anti establishment figures. That is partly what has kept Liverpool stuck for so long: lost in its own mythologised self characterisation.

Totally not disagreeing in the slightest.

My comment originally was intended to underline that while I understand that Cass (and a pp) think that someday we may be able to identify what makes those tiny number of people who don’t outgrow gender distress not outgrow it, I personally think that gender distress is more of a mental health issue, like anorexia or indeed many other mental health issues.

It wasn’t meant to be more than that.

The battle isn’t over despite the win for women last year.

I saw a hustings for the Gorton and Denton seat. A member of public asked about the Supreme Court decision on what a women is and do they support that and believe it’s now a closed issue.

they were asked to raise hands is they agree.

reform raised by 3 women for Labour, greens and liberals kept hands dems kept hands firmly in lap.

also EU just voted to include trans in any women’s legislation in the future.

the fight isn’t over.

Yes, I think many GC people find Helen Joyce to be a breath of a fresh air because she is so direct, especially when we have to tiptoe around this issue in other areas of life. But, realistically, she is not going to become a regular on the BBC unless she "softens" her tone because it won't work with that audience.

I remember seeing Maya Forstater on Channel 4 news just after the SC ruling, and the presenter, Cathy Newman, nearly fell off her chair with outrage because MF referred to the other guest, a transwoman, as he. And, even though MF was making some really good points, I felt they were lost on the interviewer after that because the interview became so hostile.

Again, many GC people see pronouns as the thin end of the wedge and know that none of this makes sense if you can't point out that a man is a man. But on certain platforms, I think it's better for the GC person to just avoid using pronouns at all (which I think still gets the point across because it is obvious why they are doing that).

We need more GC people on mainstream media. Increasingly, people are coming round to the fact that women and girls need single sex spaces and sports and that children shouldn't be transitioned,.but some people will disengage if they think someone is being unnecessarily "mean". It's just how it is.

All of this TwoLoons. Yes. Thank you for laying it out so clearly.

By stopping the child from going through the natural development of the brain (as well as the body) that happens during puberty, you are almost guaranteeing that they will have no “changes of mind,” as it were, about their view of their sexed body.

This particular part ,especially.

I just cannot get my head around this blatantly obvious aspect being missed- as you say- by the supposedly bright minds in academic research 🤯

My view:

Puberty is a vital part of development in physical, intellectual, emotional and reproductive terms. Going through puberty is a necessary component in the transition from childhood to adulthood.

If you prevent an individual from undergoing puberty, you end up with an incomplete adult. This is not acceptable under any circumstances.

Many individuals have transitioned as adults, never having been given puberty blockers, and claim it alleviates their gender related distress. This should be the protocol adopted for gender distressed people, after careful assessment.

This trial should be stopped. It is morally wrong.

Exactly - all this talk about 'pausing' and 'reversible'.

To put it bluntly, the goal is to prevent puberty ever happening, so in the case of males creating modern day castrati because a boy can more easily pass as a girl.

Apologies if I have missed it, but as far as I can see these studies don't seek to address what happens when humans are permanently prevented from reaching sexual maturity and whether this can ever be a proportionate response, particularly given that after all that, it still isn't possible to change sex.

Yes. But then, I don't consider Helen Joyce 'blunt' in her language. Clear, yes. Blunt, not so much.

This one? This interview where Maya correctly sexed the male barrister, Kane was a classic. I categorise this also as simply using clear and accurate language rather than being 'blunt'. But on watching it again, maybe it is getting towards blunt but with lots of context added.

Interesting Kane has repeated some of the trope we have seen on recent threads here lately about every cell in his body being 'feminised' (or whatever word he used). And that being so feminised there was no way to go into the male single sex toilet, all the while using a sex by deception example to justify his belief that 'people cannot tell' what sex he is. Plus his falsehood that he isn't even a 'transwoman', he is just a 'woman'.

Despite the very obvious cues on that interview that he is very much undeniably a male person. He did highlight the fallacies that some people use though.

The 'I have been a transsexual for decades' and 'I am not a transwoman' fallacies used to describe why a male person is unbelievably a female person.

Yes, that is the one. As an aside, it absolutely warmed my cockles seeing that clip of Lord Hodge reading out the judgement and the elation of the women listening.

Maya was magnificent - accurate and matter of fact. And Kane was talking nonsense. But as soon as Maya said "himself" the presenter jumped on it, and it felt like the tone shifted then, and it ended with Cathy Newman clearly feeling she needed to make the caveat that not everyone would agree with Maya.

I wonder if she would have done that if Maya hasn't said "himself"? And I say that as someone who agrees 100% with Maya, but when I watch things like this, I try to view it through the lens of my "be kind" friends, who probably would have come away from that interview thinking how disrespectful Maya was to poor, sad Kane (and forgetting about all the other really great points she made).

It was the same scenario when Helen Joyce was on Women's Hour and she used the correct sex pronouns for Robyn White, and then the presenter misgendered him too and had to apologise at the end 🙄 I think you said in your previous post that in ten years time it might be different, and perhaps then we will have people using the correct pronouns on mainstream media without it feeling like they've stepped on a landmine. But we're not there yet, unfortunately.

I know what you mean.

However, I also think that the interviewer would have acted that way regardless of whether Maya used pronouns nor not. Because Maya said, that regardless of what Kane wanted people to believe, he was still male (she could have said 'a man', I can't remember). I think that no matter what language Maya used, the point she was making that he was not a woman was enough for the presenter, I believe.

In a way, the presenter also showed the public just how over sensitive the media is towards this. It is far far too late.

I remember having conversations with women who have not been following these issues and who saw the footage of Khelif punching women. They were no longer willing to play along with this obfuscating language.

H Webberley has referred Dr Cass to the GMC based on that interview.
Raising concerns about the professional conduct of Dr Hilary Cass across all four domains of Good Medical Practice 2024

https://www.helenwebberley.com/p/i-have-referred-dr-hilary-cass-to

She's seeing how the "both sides" plays out isn't she? There's only one side trying to get people sacked for voicing concerns about safeguarding children. Her comments were very much about safeguarding, the harms of social media along with how the "charlatans' of gender medicine target children with dodgy drugs and "brutal surgery"

I do regret that she still uses the "both sides" but thinking about it, I can see why she describes children as being weaponised. Even on this thread we've seen a poster wedging Gaza into the discussion 🙄. And there's no doubt that countless dodgy trans activist groups have targeted schools and children. wedging their demands for mixed sex undressing, the removal of children's safeguarding boundaries and making all language referencing women and girls "transphobic".

All downright dangerous but also creating a morass of issues that can divert the attention from the toxic issue of children believing they can change sex so discussions get diverted onto that?
Not sure I've explained that very well....

Over on the other Webberly/Cass thread, there's a quote from Webberly's 'case'

Yesterday, Dr Hilary Cass appeared on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. During the interview, she told the nation that most gender-questioning children “grew out of it and became gay men.” She said that children have been “misled” by social media. She described clinicians who provide gender-affirming care as “charlatans.” She called established surgical procedures “quite brutal.” She claimed that social transition can “lock” a child onto a trajectory that “may not have been the correct natural trajectory for them.”

How kind of Webberly to pick out all the bits of the interview that show how right Cass is about so many things, even though she was wrong to say that both sides are 'weaponising' the debate.

You are wrong. There are pages and pages about murdered children in Gaza on the CITME threads. Interestingly someone will invariably arrive and say if you really cared you would not be talking about Gaza, you’d be talking about Yemen or Syria etc.

Basically you are just trying to shut people down.

You can’t have read much on this board because there are thousands upon thousands of pages relating to the harm to children caused by this gender cult. It is the major reason for being against it. This is mumsnet.

The other perfectly valid reasons are secondary even though they are of course all woven in with effects on children.

I was mulling this over and it crossed my mind that the weaponised and both sides nonsense is because she's a doctor and doesn't think politics should be involved in medicine and that no one should talk about medicine and political agendas. Instead everyone should be good little citizens and just do what the doctors tell them without questioning it.

The trouble with that is everything is ultimately inheritantly political and yes if someone is over stepping and pushing an agenda you have to have those willing to challenge.

My point being she's a doctor not a politician and utterly in her own world.

That is what she said - the extremes are vocal, but the majority in the middle are being quiet and letting the professionals get on with it.

But given we've seen lots of medical malpractices, we should be able to question the rationale without being labelled.

And so many ‘professionals’ from NHS doctors and midwives to social workers, teachers and counsellors are in thrall to the cult.

I could understand the 'both sides' if they'd for example asked one of the Tavistock whistleblowers on; or Hannah Barnes who had done some actual research but they got Billy Bragg?

I've been wondering something. I know the Tavistock didn't keep data to track long-term outcomes of those who had been through the clinic. But what about other countries' gender clinics? Is there no data at all, anywhere in the world, for those who have been prescribed puberty blockers for this purpose?

I found the following about Finland which refers to a study that compares the difference between children treated with blockers vs children wait listed for treatment. Not much detail but seems similar to the proposed UK trial comparing those treated immediately with those who have to wait 12 months before treatment

"The guidelines also mentioned that a key study on puberty blockers, which utilized a comparison group of waitlisted adolescents, failed to show a statistically significant difference between the treated and waitlisted groups at the study end-period at 18 months. Although in the abstract of that study, the authors chose to highlight the small improvements in the puberty-blocked group at 12 months, the actual study conclusion – which remains behind a paywall and hidden to most readers – showed that by 18 months, no significant differences could be found."

Finland probably has quite a bit.

@spannasaurus
I hadn’t read your answer.

Dr Riittakerttu-Kaltiala of Finland is an expert. But she is famous and you’d think Dr Cass and Wes Streeting might already have been in touch.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Riittakerttu-Kaltiala

This article
Evolving national guidelines for the treatment of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: International Perspectives
from Dr Rittakerttu Kaltiala’s website discusses puberty blockers and possibly may go into existing research about them. It says you can download this article. Perhaps someone here with analytical scientific expertise might like to read it.

This is the abstract. (My paragraphs to make it easier to see.):

From the early years of this century, many Western countries adopted the “Dutch Protocol” as a new medical pathway for treating children and adolescents with childhood-onset gender dysphoria. On this approach, gonadotrophin-releasing hormone agonists (GnRHa) were used to suppress puberty, followed by cross-sex hormones (testosterone or oestrogen).

This perspective article traces—in each of the countries where we, the authors, live and work—how the Dutch Protocol came to be incorporated into clinical practice or formally adopted into national guidelines.

Over time, guidelines across different countries were progressively shaped by a rights-based approach that removed previous safeguards and increased availability of gender-reassignment medical interventions for children and adolescents.

From 2010 onward, two developments raised new concerns, generating alternate perspectives and wide-ranging differences in clinical approach.

Numerous countries reported an unexpected increase in adolescent-onset presentations, especially among girls.

During the same period, an increasing number of individuals who had undergone gender-reassignment medical interventions as minors reported harm and regret.

Worldwide, questions were raised about the safety of clinical guidelines for children and adolescents presenting with gender dysphoria. Government bodies in Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. state of Florida commissioned systematic reviews pertaining to hormone treatments and issued formal reports.

In a parallel process, “conversion therapy” laws, passed in many countries, closed access to exploratory psychotherapy that enables exploration of gender-identity issues from a neutral therapeutic stance.

Taken together, these three developments introduced evidence-based and legal considerations into the debate, resulting in tensions that remain unresolved.

Evolving national guidelines for the treatment of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: International perspectives
November 2024

www.researchgate.net/publication/385498967_Evolving_national_guidelines_for_the_treatment_of_children_and_adolescents_with_gender_dysphoria_International_perspectives

This is on North Dorset Green Party's facebook page. It's outrageous. Are they really suggesting that the government has been covering up suicides?