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If you would like to learn more about Therapy First, to support our work, or to find a therapist for you or your child, please reach out: www.therapyfirst.org. Go to their website and check them out – they are mental health resource that puts therapy instead of the farce that is gender affirming care in the spotlight.
I have been a practicing psychologist for over two decades and this is, by far, the most difficult work I have ever engaged in. I can understand why many therapists do not feel equipped to work with young people who are convinced that the only way for them to live in their bodies is to transition socially and medically.
It is challenging to sustain a meaningful connection with someone who is stuck in a black/white mindset and who is exquisitely attuned to whether you participate in the culture and language of social justice and gender affirmation.
Depending on how committed an individual is to a transgender identity, he or she may not tolerate the slightest indication that the therapist questions or is agnostic with regard to the existence of “true trans”. They may see you as a good, kind, caring person for months and then, if in a moment of crisis, they don’t perceive you to be fully aligned with their belief system, they will reject you without hesitation.
At the same time, frightened and exhausted parents are putting their faith in you to loosen the vice-like grip that trans identification has on their child and, by extension, on every member of the family. Having been such a parent myself I feel enormous empathy.
I also know that most of the work has to happen at home, in the family. I am more than willing to offer guidance and support, and even clear instructions in real time on what to do and say when escalations happen.
When things go wrong, what rage parents and children cannot safely direct at each other will get directed at me. As a process-oriented clinician that’s what I sign up for.
In truth, I don’t possess skills or knowledge that any well-trained and experienced mental health practitioner doesn’t have or isn’t capable of acquiring. Therapy is still just therapy.
What’s different is the real damage that medicalized transition can do to young people who are in emotional pain and in need of thoughtful care and attention. What’s also different is the urgency with which families approach us hoping we might hold the key to pulling their children out of harm’s way. There’s so much on the line.
Clinicians who work with trans-identifying teens and young adults feel a pressure that we do not experience when faced with other issues that are no less serious than gender dysphoria. Moreover, we are doing this work in a professional and political climate that is hostile to the very ethical principle that we vow to live and work by, to first and foremost do no harm.
The good news is that since its establishment three years ago Therapy First (formerly GETA) has grown from a small handful of clinicians to now almost 400 strong. We are here for each other so that we can be there for you and your family. While the treatment of gender dysphoria has become weaponized, our aim is to move the focus away from the political and back to the clinic, back to the work we are confident and passionate about.
If you would like to learn more about Therapy First, to support our work, or to find a therapist for you or your child, please reach out: www.therapyfirst.org.
This is a full repost of Amy Eileen Hamm’s article from the New West Times.
It is important that news like this gets proper exposure and to illustrate how the MSM is not doing its job. Plus it gets it on Facebook around the stupid news censorship in Canada.
By now, every Canadian has heard the news out of Alberta. Although depending where you get your news, you’ve either heard that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has announced a forthcoming genocide camp for LGBT youth or—for those who’ve not lost their grip on reality—you’ve heard that Smith is taking an evidence-based stance on transgender healthcare for minors, protecting female athletes in sports, and ensuring parents have the right to safeguard the well-being and best interests of their children.
There will be no more puberty blockers or cross sex hormones for children under 16. No gender surgeries—such as double mastectomies or penile inversions—for minors under 18. No more teachers changing under-16 students’ names or pronouns without parental permission. No more leaving parents in the dark about gender-identity school lessons. Parents can continue to opt their children out. For female athletes, they will have sports leagues of their own: no males can identify their way in.
Smith is bringing safety, fairness, parental rights, and reason back to her province. She is bringing Albertans exactly what the majority of Canadians support, as per a recent Angus Reid poll that shows parents expect to be notified if their kids suddenly identify as transgender at school. (What loving parent wouldn’t want to be?) Similarly, a 2021 poll reveals that Canadians want sports segregated by sex, not gender self-identification.
There’s no denying that Smith’s new legislation is reflective of majority Canadian sentiment. So naturally, Canada’s activists and hard left, plus their sycophant Liberal and NDP bootlickers—fringe minority that they are—had a Chernobyl-level nuclear meltdown, with a fallout zone well beyond Alberta’s borders.
Notably, our national broadcaster trotted out vile misogynist Fae Johnstone, slapped an “expert” label on the transgender-identified male, and hit “publish” on another gaslighting piece of state propaganda. They quoted Johnstone on Smith’s new rules: “This is interfering ideologically in the provision of medically necessary healthcare for trans and gender diverse young people.” He also claimed the new legislation “flies in the face of establishing medical best practice.”
All of what Johnstone said is demonstrably—and infuriatingly—false. The only ideology at play is his. Gender “affirming” healthcare for minors is being globally outed as the medical scandal that it is, with numerous Scandinavian and European countries implementing restrictions or bans on the treatment of children. The World Health Organization just released trans care guidelines that do not include standards for youth or minors; they cite a lack of evidence to support childhood transition guidelines.
Persons like Fae Johnstone are desperate to bury the truth. When not lying via our government-funded media platform, Johnstone can be found trolling and threatening women with differing political opinions online. “I actually do want a political environment in which TERFs are so vilified they don’t dare speak their views publicly,” he once wrote. Because if you can’t beat them, shut them down.
And then there’s Canada’s Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on LGBTQ2 issues, Randy Boissonnault, who took the good news from Alberta particularly poorly. In a presser, the man insisted that joining your school’s chess club or debate team is no different than changing your gender and going on Lupron, the puberty-blocking drug used off-label for trans kids and also to castrate sex offenders.
“Nobody calls your parents when you join the debate team. But now, if somebody thinks you’re questioning or queer, they’re gonna tell the teacher and the teacher’s gonna call the parents,” said Boissonnault. “This is our NATO moment as an LGBTQ community. An attack on one of our communities is an attack on us all.” Boissonnault, a gay man, seems blissfully unaware that childhood medical transition is disproportionately inflicted upon gender-confused kids who, if left alone to go through puberty, would simply end up gay. What Canada is doing to “trans” kids, in many cases, is “transing the gay away”; it’s a modern form of conversion therapy. It must stop. We are an international embarrassment on several fronts, most appallingly so for ignoring the global demise of gender ideology and destroying the bodies and minds of untold numbers of vulnerable children.
In response to Premier Smith, legal group Egale Canada has called her proposed legislation “unconstitutional” and claims they will launch a court challenge. It’s possible that the federal government will, too. Minister Boissonnault is promoting a rally to protest Smith’s proposed changes at the Edmonton Legislature this weekend.
Premier Smith is not backing down. Good for her. Canada needs an enormous dose of reality, and our petulant gender activists need their tantrums to go ignored. Let them stamp and shout and lie—the adults in the country are finally having a conversation.
It is glorious. People actually discussing trans ideology and not being shut down or cancelled for daring to speak for female rights, boundaries, and safety.
2024 is off to a fine start.
Former teacher, Carolyn Burjoski, is taking legal action against the Waterloo Region District School Board after being censored in a public school board meeting because she raised concerns about the age-inappropriateness of library books for children.
Trouble started when she turned to a book called The Other Boy by M.G. Hennessey and a scene that depicts a meeting between Shane, a transgender boy (born a girl), and a doctor. He voices excitement about starting on testosterone and when the physician says it would mean he likely wouldn’t be able to have children, he says, “It’s cool.”
As Burjoski remarked that such books make it seem overly straightforward to take cross-sex hormones, Piatkowski interjected to warn she may be violating the code.
The teacher said the book was misleading “because it does not take into account how Shane might feel later in life about being infertile. This book makes very serious medical interventions seem like an easy cure for emotional and psychological distress.”
At that point, Piatkowski told her he was “ending the presentation.”
The human rights code bars discrimination based on gender identity and other grounds in the areas of housing, employment and providing services.
Article contentThe widely used “affirmation” approach to children who identify as transgender has raised some concerns in several countries, and not just among obvious critics. Two leading psychologists in the transgender medical community, one of them a trans woman, complained in a recent article about sloppy and dangerous assessment of young people presenting as trans, with overly hasty resort to hormones.
In a statement, Burjoski said was relieved by the ruling.
“It is a significant victory and vindication, not just for me, but for everyone who dares to voice their valid concerns publicly,” she said. ”I hope this decision sends a strong message to school boards that the weaponization of human rights codes against concerned citizens is an undemocratic abuse of the code.”
Canadians are guaranteed the freedom of expression by our Charter of Rights. The self appointed sacred caste of trans has issues with people critiquing and discussion their vacuous ideology. The TQ+ community, because it doesn’t have a rational argument to stand on, then must rely on defamation, coercion, and social shaming to freeze out any debate of transgenderism and what its effects are on society.
“An Ontario judge has declared that human rights legislation “does not prohibit public discussion of anything,” in a free-speech victory for a teacher who was shut down when she raised concerns at a school board meeting about transgender-themed books in elementary school libraries.
“What happened here should not happen in a democratic society,” Ontario Superior Court Justice James Ramsay said in the case of now-retired teacher Carolyn Burjoski
“The Human Rights Code does not prohibit public discussion of issues related to transgenderism or minors and transgenderism. It does not prohibit public discussion of anything.”
Finally, one institution in Canada that isn’t kowtowing to gender ideology.
“Piatkowski later told a local CTV station, however, that Burjoski’s comments were actually transphobic and “questioned the right to exist” of trans people. He said he had no choice but to expel the teacher from the meeting. He told 570 News radio that Burjoski was “disrespectful” towards transgender people and was “not promoting healthy debate” at the meeting. The organization took down its recording of the meeting — a regular, public session of elected officials — and had YouTube remove another copy of the video for alleged copyright infringement.”
Ah. The right to exist. This is one of the favourite motte and bailey rhetorical dodges of the transgender ideologues. The question at hand was should books that present a false narrative of ‘transition’ be available to elementary school children. Nothing to do with existence or ‘erasing’ trans people.
“She launched a defamation lawsuit, which the board sought to have thrown out. In a Nov. 23 ruling, Ramsay dismissed the bid and ordered the board to pay Burjoski $30,000 in costs. He said her claims have merit and should be allowed to proceed, adding the comments made against her were “defamatory.”
“They accused her of breaching the Human Rights Code, questioning the right of trans persons to exist and engaging in speech that included hate. She did not do any of those things,” the judge said in his ruling.
“The chairman of the board acted with malice or at least, with a reckless disregard for the truth. He had made an embarrassingly erroneous and arbitrary decision to silence a legitimate expression of opinion and he was widely criticized for it. It is not a stretch to infer that, realizing that, he tried to justify himself with the public by assassinating the plaintiff’s character.”
The judge said he saw no prospect Piatkowski will be able to prove his statements were based in fact, since he accused her of saying things she did not say.
Hopefully our Supreme Court won’t overrule this correct decision in favour of free speech in Canada.
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