You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Gender Issues’ category.
People are gaining the courage to call out exactly how harmful transgender ideology is for children and society. We need treatment that follows the evidence and medical best practices, not ideology.
Sir, Dr Hilary Cass’s report marks an important chapter in a long history of mistreatment of children and young people with gender dysphoria who were put on a medical pathway with insufficient exploration and often little consideration of consent (reports and leading article, Jul 29). The complete lack of any follow-up of those who have undergone what can only be regarded as experimental treatment is lamentable. Staff who raised concerns were intimidated. The Cass recommendations are being misrepresented as purely a way of managing the long waiting list. But it was a long waiting list for the wrong treatment. Gender dysphoria in children is complex: many have histories of trauma and are on the autistic spectrum; others are depressed or have family problems. A high proportion are gay and lesbian but are confused about their sexual identity. Our thoughts now must be with the large number of children and young people who are living with the irreversible consequences of having been put inappropriately on a medical/surgical pathway that they now regret.
Dr David Bell
Former consultant psychiatrist and governor, the Tavistock clinic.
Sir, The findings of the interim report on the Tavistock clinic are truly shocking. Children have been subjected to potentially damaging life-changing procedures by a system that allowed aggressive political dogma to take precedence over professional medical practices. While swift action has been taken to close the clinic, we in the gay community should be questioning why LGBT organisations such as Stonewall and Mermaids, along with much of the LGBT media, have supported and defended the activities of the Tavistock clinic.
When I helped to establish Stonewall I never dreamt that one day it would be supporting the practice of encouraging young gay and lesbian people to change their gender rather than helping them to be comfortable with their sexuality. Gay people need to speak up against this aggressive trans-extremism that has taken over our movement and which is so damaging to the lives of ordinary LGBT people.
Paul Barnes
Chairman, Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality 1993-97
Sir, As a former governor of Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust who resigned over the management of the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), and as the husband of Susan Evan, the first whistleblower 17 years ago and the woman who, with mother A, started the judicial review before Keira Bell took her place, I was relieved to learn that the Tavistock gender service will be replaced by regional clinics. Whenever the trust’s managers or the service’s leaders were questioned or challenged about Gids they repeated the mantra that they were a world-class service, even though none of their attitudes or behaviours backed up their claim. There was no long-term research on treatment outcomes and no curiosity about the cultural forces influencing the demographic of those presenting for treatment. The clinic did not encourage discussion within the clinical team about approaches: there was a culture fostering blind devotion to orthodoxy rather than clinical challenge and debate. Thank goodness Dr Hilary Cass, in her report, is now putting clinical governance, debate and research back where it belongs: at the heart of these new services.
Marcus Evans
Former consultant psychotherapist at the Tavistock clinic
Finally some positive news on the gender front. The Tavistock Centre in the UK is to be shut down because they are not adequately helping the children sent there. The BBC reports –
”
“Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been told to shut the clinic by spring after it was criticised in an independent review.
Instead, new regional centres will be set up to “ensure the holistic needs” of patients are fully met, the NHS said.
The trust said it supported plans for a new model due to a rise in referrals.
The changes will take place after an independent review, led by Dr Hilary Cass, said the Tavistock clinic needed to be transformed.
She said the current model of care was leaving young people “at considerable risk” of poor mental health and distress, and having one clinic was not “a safe or viable long-term option”.
Challenging Gender identity is career kryptonite for mental health care professionals. Speaking out against it carries a high social cost as transgender activists and those on board with the anti-reality transgender ideology have made the the scientific debate and conversation around the issue nearly untouchable. The similarities to religious dogma and how heretics were punished/excommunicated is apt in this situation. It took an independent review and court cases to shine the light on dubious practices – gender affirmation therapy for instance – and bring them into question.
“There were rising referrals and a long waiting list but at the same time some former staff were raising concerns about the way it operated.
Then, former patient Keira Bell went to court saying she had not been challenged enough about her decision at 16 to take drugs that began her transition from female to male – a decision she later regretted.
Earlier this year, Dr Cass’s report said there was a lack of understanding about why the type of patients the clinic was seeing was changing, with more female to male patients and more autistic children. Dr Cass also highlighted inconclusive evidence to back some of the clinical decision making.”
Yeah, the gender-magic has run afoul of good evidence based medical practice –
In an interim report earlier this year, Dr Cass said:
-
The service was struggling to deal with spiralling waiting lists
-
It was not keeping “routine and consistent” data on its patients
-
Health staff felt under pressure to adopt an “unquestioning affirmative approach”
-
Once patients are identified as having gender-related distress, other healthcare issues they had, such as being neurodivergent, “can sometimes be overlooked”
Most of the current psychological treatment of gender disorders has been warped by transgender ideology and activists. Gender dysphoria is the only body morphic disorder that has a affirmative care approach.
What does this look like? Well consider Anorexia – the idea behind most treatments is to guide the patient back to a body image that comports with reality and to dispel the illusions and misconceptions of being “fat” while in fact being severely underweight and malnourished. Affirmative therapy would agree with the anorexic’s self diagnosis and would look for ways for them to flourish in their quest to be thin…
Gender affirmation therapy starts with the preordained conclusion that the child or person in question perception of their gender and body are correct and work toward that goal.
Ludicrous.
“Dr David Bell – not related to Keira Bell – is a former consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock NHS Foundation Trust, where he raised concerns. He said it was a “good thing” the service was closing down.
Proper funding was needed for mental health services for children and adolescents, he said.
He told the BBC: “Some children have got the double problem of living with the wrong treatment, and the original problems weren’t addressed – with complex problems like trauma, depression, large instances of autism.”
The tide is beginning to turn against this wave anti-science, transgender ideology, and not a moment too soon.
Why do fellow progressives seem to lose their grounding in reality once gender magic is mentioned? How can one *not* see the enormous problems that go along with enabling men – at their whim – to identify as women?
Really? No problems with that? We just have the evidence of well… since forever about predatory male behaviour and yet, the neo-progressives think that this male behaviour will somehow magically stop?
Get a grip.
I was recently texted by my local NDP office with regards to getting a sign for the upcoming Alberta provincial election. This is how it went:
So no, you cannot count on my vote because you are participating in the erasure of females in our society. Allow me to provide a non-circular reality based definition of the word ‘woman’. A women is an adult human female.
Play stupid identity politics games, win stupid prizes.
Justdad7 has a great article on how the misuse of statistics and bad studies are being used by the gender religious to support their arguments. I highly recommend going to his substack and reading the entire article.
The Appeal to Authority
The people who write gender flap-doodle are not stupid. You need to learn a lot of facts in order to twist them and to get your stuff published you need fairly impressive credentials. Any particularly pointed challenge to a piece of gender woo woo from a lay person is likely to be met with the indignant response along the lines of, “How dare you challenge someone who holds a Doctorate from an Ivy League University and publishes in Peer Reviewed Journals.”
This line of argument is a fallacy which has a fancy Latin name, the argument um ad verecundiam or the appeal to authority.
People with doctoral degrees from prestigious universities have to be very bright and hardworking at least at some points in their careers. However, they can still make mistakes and if someone points out a specific mistake, you need to answer the specific point.
A weak or fallacious argument from an expert does not get any better if it is endorsed by lots of other experts. This is the fallacy of argumentum ad numeram or the appeal to popularity. When someone points out that gender affirming care has been endorsed y the American Psychological Association, the American Pediatric Association, the Endocrine Society and many other medical organizations, it is still legitimate to ask whether any of these groups based their endorsement on a systematic evidence review.
The appeal to authority persists because it serves a social purpose. Questioning everything is good advice in the classroom but in day to day life there simply is not time. We need to be able to rely on expert advice without scrutinizing every detail.
Liberal society has developed a matrix of safeguards to ensure that expert advice is reliable, most of the time. Professionals are licensed and regulated by governing bodies. Scientific papers are subject to peer review. Academic tenure protects researchers from undue government and corporate pressure. The press watches for cases of abuse.
The rise of gender ideology has seen all of these safeguards fail simultaneously. It will take time to rebuild them and the loss of public trust will take even longer to undo.
Check out the rest of Peter Boghossian’s Channel for more demonstrations of how ‘woke-reasoning’ works.
The “Agree” participants in this debate are a case in point for what the gender ideology brainwashing does to your ability to make a coherent reasonable decision based on facts. What they do demonstrate is a new word, let’s take a look:
Bigoterring is precisely what is going on here in the later half of the video. Because gender ideology has no arguments other than hurt feelings and class antagonisms biogterring is almost always the card they play.
Pay particular attention when it comes to the part when Peter asks the Agree crowd to define their terms. Spoiler alert: They do not. Instead, they substitute personal attacks and bluster for arguments. It’s chilling to see supposedly educated adults engaging in such ruthless anti-intellectual behaviour.
Expect this though when you make a stand (and you must make a stand otherwise these confabulators win) for freedom of thought and freedom of speech in our society.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…