Puberty Blocker Trial Paused

[CrocsNotDocs]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/e0a6d8e8751dbca8

Good start. Now shut it down.

The writer of toady's Cass article trying to shoe-horn in JK Rowling - for maximum outrage.

"By raising the age limit to 14, it would cut out children who might benefit, which “will make the results invalid”, Cass said. “It would make the design really, really flawed and you should not be subjecting children to a flawed study.”

She said herself the vast majority of children grow out of it. So if you block their puberty how would you know if they would have grown out of it or not?

Absolutely this.

It's clear from the introduction to the report (the bit she actually wrote) that she believes in gender ID. That she believes that there is a truth to the whole 'born in the wrong body' thing seemed at odds with the reviews findings and not objective.

At the time, I hoped that this was an attempt to placate the ideologues. I don't think this anymore.

I agree, she has been fully behind the trial from the off. The NHS minutes I've seen from 2023 show she was the one pushing the trial before the report was published in 2024.

Utterly disgraceful.

She seems to be overly focused on finding proof that some children might benefit from having their puberty blocked, rather than having concerns about harms caused to the majority that don't.

She may have thought that the screening and consent procedures would be guaranteed to exclude all but that very small cohort of “true trans” boys that she believes exist.

This doesn't hold up after Tavistock Scandal and how those very same screenings and consent procedures went out the window due to over zealous and ideologically driven staff!

She acknowledges the issues with gay kids, transhausen parents, sexually abused kids, kids with exceptionally complex issues, autistic kids, coached and brainwashed kids online... And she STILL can't grasp the problem that they were sucked in and continue to be sucked in and raise an enormous number of safeguarding issues.

She still thinks you can distinguish between these kids as to ones who don't have a complex background. There is no evidence that these kids exist! There is plenty of evidence to suggest they don't.

She has a much lower level of understanding than Hannah Barnes on that subject.

She speaks from a position of privilege which is almost in denial of the possibility of abuse of power and safeguarding failure - but it's in the context of this having ALREADY happened. That's the bit that's unforgivable.

It's that arrogant doctor god complex thing going on again, where you can't challenge or question the motives of the profession.

She's just jaw dropping. She embodies the problems within the health service when it comes to criticism from outside the profession. It's automatically dismissed as inferior - even when you can present a credible argument. It's come from outsiders therefore it should be ignored. That's gross and this is why we've ended up with multiple medical scandals (maternity being the prime example here).

Well exactly. It makes no sense whatsoever.

As soon as the Cass Report was released, KJK called out Dr Cass’s belief in True Trans. KJK got a huge amount of flack but she had Dr Cass’s number from the start.

She's always used the language of trans activism having accepted its basic premise.

Yes.

It was such a relief that the report wasn't completely batshit like everything else at the time it was appealing to try and ignore the 'true trans' nonsense in it.

Honestly, you can't give an inch to this BS. It has to be zero.

I do think that this very small group of boys exist. I have no idea why they experience such gender incongruity from a very early age or how it should be managed and treated.

What I totally disagree with is that they should have their puberty blocked as part of that treatment.

There is evidence to say that stopping puberty causes more issues with transition because it complicates surgery and makes it more risky.

This is what's baffling.

Yes, but even labelling it 'gender incongruity' is to buy into the whole concept.
Some boys have always struggled with their nascent same sex attraction ( effeminacy) - usually due to their family expectations or/and other cultural pressures; whilst others have been cross dressing since they were very young. It may have started out openly, but then became a secretive activity as they grew older.

The flaw in the Cass review was always that it didn't challenge the concept of trans or trans kids and just looked at 'evidence'.

But evidence for what? If the thing you are trying to address isn't real, but is a social manufaction supported by obfuscating language, how can we claim we have 'evidence' for addressing 'it' or not?

Which is why the whole concept of a trial is flawed. You shouldn't knowingly damage children to get 'evidence' that a made up thing is made up.

I gave Cass the benefit of the doubt at the time because I thought her scope in the review maybe stopped her from addressing the flawed underpinning of the whole concept and only allowed her to address medical evidence.

But it seems it wasn't just that she was constrained it seems she believes trans is a real thing.

Maybe it has to happen this way: Cass was the initial step necessary to say: everyone stop and look at the evidence.

The next step is: evidence for what? Trans kids don't exist. This is madness.

The madness of it all is maybe for philosophers, feminists, academics, parents, the media and sadly the detransitioners to expose.

The cultural acceptance of the concept as real was never going to be overturned by one paediatrian. That's going to take a cultural, and sadly legal shift, to finally stamp out.

They may well believe that they are the opposite sex. That is clearly possible. I saw a documentary about a woman who believed that she was married to the Eiffel tower.

But this must be an issue with the brain. It definitely isn't that they were 'born in the wrong body'. But Cass seems to be working on the premise that this is the case.

Why wouldn't you be focused on a trial around the thought processes of these young people, starting from reality? Instead she supports a trial that attempts to bend reality.

It's completely backwards.

I was looking at this yesterday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psychosocial_development#:~:text=A%20comprehensive%20psychoanalytic%20theory%20that%20identifies%20a,pass%20through%20from%20infancy%20to%20late%20adulthood.

I was looking at it because these middle aged transitioning males ALWAYS seem to say they knew they were trans since age 7.

I find this a curious point and can't help feeling it's connected with development milestones and influences from parents.

But the key point I'm making here is that it's long been recognised that a sense of identity crisis during adolescence is a normal stage of human development. Not just the physical side of puberty itself.

We run the risk of pathologising normal human development on both mental and physical basis.

We can't intervene with this process because ultimately we can't change sex. That's always going to cause problems at some stage because you can't run away from yourself.

Why does the Observer article mention the puberty blocker trial was from age 11? I thought it was from age 8?

What I find so depressing is that safeguarding mechanisms only seem to kick in under legal threat and after harm.

For me the whole term safeguarding has become just a term thrown around, while the evidence that it's something which really protects against harm is negligible.

I've sadly concluded we can never rely on safeguarding to override the human instincts of group think and self protection which are much more powerful it's dangerous to pretend otherwise.

It's a very depressing conclusion but that's where I've got to.

But it seems it wasn't just that she was constrained it seems she believes trans is a real thing.
Maybe it has to happen this way: Cass was the initial step necessary to say: everyone stop and look at the evidence.

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Spock quotes the old Vulcan proverb that "Only Nixon could go to China".

Seven years old ( round about when the second teeth come in) is when the social identity really starts to develop...up until then it is more about ego development. Children leave the infant stage and move into being a junior.

I was looking at it because these middle aged transitioning males ALWAYS seem to say they knew they were trans since age 7.

Many (most? all?) middle aged transitioning males retcon their childhood to support their fetish.

Yes, what they mean is they have been cross dressing since childhood.

Up until about five or six a boy wearing princess dresses etc will be tolerated, but after that age there is more social pressure and disapproval. The activity will then become secretive.

I reckon lots of gay men have a secret inner drag queen.

Well, you have to call it something. And part of the problem of this issue is the multiplicity of terms, many of which are introduced because of objections to previous ones.
As both biological sex exists and socially constructed gender is acknowledged I don’t have a problem with the concept of gender incongruence. (We now know that babies are socially conditioned pretty much from birth, with remarkable discriminatory abilities.)
(I myself felt a degree of “gender incongruence” when growing up, because I was quite a tomboy, and interested in “boy things”. I was always encouraged to do what I liked, though - the idea of incongruence came from within.)
Why a very small number of children seem to think they have always been, at least in their essence, the opposite of their actual sex, how that idea is formed and/or the distortions of memory that makes them think that way, is certainly worthy of study. But not a justification for blocking the mechanisms that make them functioning adults.

Yes, I see what you mean, I suppose it is just the word 'gender' that is triggering. 😆

Many of us struggled or ,at least, certainly reflected on how we measured up to/or didn't the social or familial expectations of our sex.

I think that the notion of being the opposite to birth sex has to start well before 7, more like at the earliest time that someone has memory of, which is about 3, to put them in the “special” group.