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.

As far as what makes children trans I defer to the experts like Cass…….some maintain a trans identity through out their whole lives

Cass concluded that there are ‘many ways in to a trans identity’, which led her to recommend services that address underlying causes that need addressing (e.g sexual abuse, trauma, mental illness, unmet Austin needs, homophobia). She also recognises that standard gender non conformity and adolescent identity exploration can, because of the zeitgeist, lead to children questioning their gender identity when in another social climate they wouldn’t. Cass has highlighted that, in all of the above cases, support tends to result in desistance.

Clearly, when looking at outcomes for children who have adopted a ‘trans identity’ - whatever that means to them, the best outcome is for them to feel comfortable with their bodies without any physical intervention (hormones, surgery). I expect that better outcomes come from also desisting with their ‘trans identity’ because if they do persist they will have to navigate a world where their internal sense of self doesn’t align with material reality and corresponding laws and social attitudes. It maybe that this misalignment causes less distress than the internal misalignment within their mind, but they should be able to access evidence based treatment for this misalignment - which many want to ban under the guise of conversion therapy.

Cass suggests that there could be a very small number of children for whom there are no obvious or yet discovered underlying causes. These children have not got neurodevelopmental conditions, histories of abuse/ trauma/ mental illness, they aren’t gay etc. yet they struggle with their sexed bodies. If this is the case, and there is a very rare condition leading to this, and if puberty blockers were trialled, one would imagine we are talking fewer than 20 kids per year, and that other treatments should be explored or developed because the costs of PB and cross sex hormones are high. Therefore, you would expect, in addition to a PB trial, money being invested in exploring / developing treatments that enable people with the condition to lead happy lives and retain fertility, sexual function and not be damaged by exogenous hormones that damage organs.

I am not wholesale against trialling PBs. I think, through rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, an ethical study could be conducted. However, when arguments for a trial are made without equal support for developing and trialling other treatments that, ideally, could replace PBs and cross sex hormones, I suspect ideology is at play.

For someone who is berating us for making such a big deal out of something that is so much less important than anything else in the world, this topic does seem to be taking up an awful lot of our visitor’s head space.

Weaponised or not, politicised or not, I don't see how this trial meets ethical requirements to go ahead. "It's been politicised by both sides" (or even by one side) is a not an ethical justification in itself.

First of all, it's not ethical to deliberately mess around with children's health for the sake of proving that something is bad for them. You need something that strongly indicates it's likely to be good for most of them before you start a trial on a treatment that you know might also be very bad for some of them.

And second, it's not ethical to run a short-term study on a treatment whose biggest effects are long term. Just two years isn't enough when the main effects happen over 5-20+ years.

If the data linkage study investigating outcomes for the Tavistock patients who already had puberty blockers over the last 20 years)which the Cass review originally recommended had been completed, and had come up come up with "yes, there is an identifiable group of children who did much better on/after puberty blockers" then there would be some justification for starting the prospective trial that the review also proposed. But even so it would need to be longer than 2 years. And until these data linkage studies are complete I just can't see how a prospective trial could ever be ethical.

Cass suggests that there could be a very small number of children for whom there are no obvious or yet discovered underlying causes. These children have not got neurodevelopmental conditions, histories of abuse/ trauma/ mental illness, they aren’t gay etc. yet they struggle with their sexed bodies. If this is the case, and there is a very rare condition leading to this, and if puberty blockers were trialled, one would imagine we are talking fewer than 20 kids per year, and that other treatments should be explored or developed because the costs of PB and cross sex hormones are high

What was the issue with the Tavistock?

They couldn't find any kids who didn't have significant complex needs. Indeed quite the opposite. It's a massive problem to ignore the experience of a previous trial when proposing another.

It's like proposing a drug for baby unicorns and then giving it to baby horses because one might become a baby unicorn.

There's simply no evidence of these mythical children who have gender dysphoria and dont have complex needs.

The trial itself only has value if you can find enough baby unicorns rather than baby horses. But the existence of the trial itself necessitates and produces pressure to present 200 potential baby unicorns in the hope we might find one.

It's absurd. The whistleblowers at the Tavistock spoke about this pressure and disregard for the complex issues and how they were told to ignore these concerns because it was more important to give the kids and parents what they demanded in spite of that.

This is just more of the same. It's like feeding an addict.

There are no baby unicorns. Just tortured baby horses.

Loath as I am to feed this poster, may I point out that it really is extremely limited thinking to believe that just because someone has a platform, they have to use it to proclaim their thoughts on every major issue in the world.

Also, "Emily", you demonstrate your own prejudice by calling the grooming gangs scandal "an islamophobic one off".

@Brainworm

I am not wholesale against trialling PBs. I think, through rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, an ethical study could be conducted.

But what do you think is being trialled? What hypothesis would be being tested by stopping the puberty of gender distressed children? That it will make them “feel better”? But how? What mechanisms are being changed that we might predict would have the “right” effect? What is the “right” effect anyway?

It is especially important that one be able
to answer those questions given that currently there is no way other than letting them grow up with no intervention to identify the 2% of gender distressed children who might possibly persist in their distress into adulthood.

(I will concede that you agree with Cass that maybe we haven’t yet identified the underlying thing that causes true persistent gender distress. I personally think that it’s not much different from the things that cause anorexia or other body dysmorphic disorders, that we also don’t understand well, but you are right, we don’t know. All the more reason to play this ball unbelievably cautiously, in my mind…)

. I personally think that it’s not much different from the things that cause anorexia or other body dysmorphic disorders, that we also don’t understand well, but you are right,
We do know that anorexia isn't something that is free from comorbidity though. Indeed we are seeing it absolutely is about other issues but this isn't well recognised.

Suggesting that it's like anorexia because there may be no underlying issue is ignorant of what we do know of anorexia.

It would be worthwhile exploring before making the comparison.

Yes, but she is a journalist with an obvious bias ( as far as they are concerned) whereas Baronness Cass is an experienced paediatrician with gravitas and authority.

I think @TwoLoonsAndASprout has managed to properly articulate the thoughts I have had about this trial way better than I ever could:

"If you cannot say to the subjects “you will be given this drug and nothing more, ever” and have them believe you, then you are not testing just that drug - particularly when you are looking at psychological outcomes - you are testing the effect of knowing that they have (finally!, after begging and begging) taken the first of many steps on a path that they have already decided is the right path for them."

These children have been coached and convinced that PBs are simply the first step on a medical and surgical pathway that will enable them to convince the world that they are the opposite sex and it will all be rainbows and glitter.

I remain horrified that this ever gained ethical approval.

”Using children”.

The rest of the thread explains how children aren’t being “used”, they are the core of the issue.

HTH.

According to Cass bone density and brain development will also be monitored and she said if anything adverse was shown then they'd take the children off the blockers.

Let me reframe this.

Our starting argument should be
"Are there any gender questioning children presenting without extensive underlying issues?"

The puberty blockers question should not even be under consideration until we have established part 1.

Apologies. I am aware that there are (I think…?) brain scan studies that demonstrate gross similarities between subjects with gender dysphoria and those with anorexia. The theory that they both involve some underlying body imaging issue was proposed (again, I think - was a while ago that I read the paper).

You’re right though - we do understand much more about anorexia than about gender dysphoria - and that is part of the problem, no? We are allowed to investigate all the underlying possible issues surrounding things like anorexia. We are shut down when we suggest that there are multiple possible reasons that a child may express gender distress.

Do unicorns exist? Comes before we start developing unicorn medicine.

These children have not got neurodevelopmental conditions, histories of abuse/ trauma/ mental illness, they aren’t gay etc. yet they struggle with their sexed bodies.

There's an assumption that children refered to clinics are either trans, or have a underlining condition which makes them use trans as a way to express their discomfort. A misplaced self diagnosis.

But that is a big assumption. It removes the majority of children refered to clinics, but it still isn't a robust diagnosis. Its saying that, because adults are trans and claim to have known since childhood, trans children must exist. Its creating a subset of children that may be trans. And is ignoring the fact that trans awareness is everywhere, these children havent reach this idea on their own.

They certainly are when schools turn their toilets mixed sex. Girls don't like it. And in the U.S ( far more than here) girls are losing out on a daily basis to boys who have encroached on their sports.

Baroness Cass was President of the RCPCH

So was Russell Viner, the guy who was responsible for the first 'Puberty Blocker Trial'. The one that had to go to several ethics committees to get approval and that then disregarded its own age restrictions. The one with no follow ups.

The whole 'experienced paediatrician' with gravitas means nothing these days.

This sub forum exists to discuss 'sex' and 'gender' as it relates to the negative impacts of trans ideology on women and children.

What a joke! You are shadow boxing an imaginary enemy.

There are plenty here who are not only parents, but also teachers, health workers, scientists, doctors, counsellors, women's rights activists, activists of other stripes; ex Labour party or Green party members, trade union activists, sociologists, psychologists...all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds .........who have all taken a step back and looked at what has been going on in the name of trans ideology and 'Gender Identity' theory and the way it operates as a form totalitarian group think with nobody permitted to question it.

Perhaps not in the way you'd personally like, because unlike yourself others are capable of nuance and understanding complexities, and don't automatically wave flags and shout slogans just becauase the rest of their chosen tribe is doing so.

A better example would be the Tavistock whistleblowers. My main point was that plenty of people have been saying that the majority of children desist after puberty.

Thank you. I’m thinking as I go here, so I’m pleased some of it is hitting the right notes.

I did just think of a TL;DR for all of my ranting, which is: puberty blockers were originally introduced to the gamut of gender dysphoria treatment as the first part of a medicalisation pathway. They were to prepare your body - particularly male bodies, they are more-or-less irrelevant in this regard for female bodies - for the next medical stages (wrong-sex hormones and surgeries). They were the equivalent of shaving your arm before getting a tattoo, or being injected with dye before getting some sorts of scans. You would not take them if you were not planning on medicalising.

Why are we even considering that they would have any effect in isolation on the mood of gender distressed kids? That’s a whole completely different issue.

It's a different situation though.No-one is proposing a clinical trial that deliberately puts girls with anorexia on a pathway to sterility and long-term ill health to see if it helps some of them.

I didn't think there was any doubt that there are multiple reasons for gender dysphoria. It's more that it's not terribly relevant to this trial, since there is no identifiable reason or subgroup for which puberty blocking is more likely to be helpful than any other.

And (playing devil's advocate) Az Hakeem has pointed out that at least in adult men a high degree of autism correlates with a high level of satisfaction with transition. So autism might not in itself be a reason not to put children on the pathway to transition if you're going to do it at all which is mad.

This is a clinical trial on children. "Think of the children" is what normally happens in clinical trials, children are treated extra-specially. The question is whether this clinical trial should have lower ethical standards than other trials on children.

Maybe, but as far as most of the public and certainly Laura Kuennsberg were concerned, you'd find it difficult to dispute or argue, with any authority, against what she'd said.

Well, I am long past expecting any journalists doing any journalism any more or ask difficult questions to anyone but surely someone at the BBC must think 'hang on, sterilising kids..what?' and ask the woman with gravitas 'why is sterilising some kids for their clothes choices an appropriate intervention?' or maybe just maybe look into 'how we got here'?