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The Tavistock Centre is being closed down

having been found to "not safe" for children.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/28/nhs-closing-down-london…

 

Not sure how this escaped RoF tbh.

This is fantastic news. Next step is to investigate and where appropriate strike off or prosecute the doctors involved for mutilating children in pursuit of ideology. 

It is great news.  The main reason the report found the current situation not safe was that there was not enough resources for treating transgender children.  The NHS have accepted the report and made the welcome decision to significantly expand services with specalist centres in London and the North.  They are also tightening up on reporting, oversight and guidelines, which will inevitably improve services and research into new treatments and refining existing ones

So thankfully many more children will get the help they need and deserve, in particular to block puberty as a physical sex that does not match their actual gender.  A great result for the trans community, and indeed everyone who believes in human rights and helping those in need.

I was pondering a thread on whether it is ever ethical to prescribe new drugs which are not fully approved to children especially where the effects may be irreversible.

Imagine this from the NHS’s own website being used to describe treatment for anything else, and yet still being done.  With drugs that were never researched or approved for this purpose.

Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones

Puberty blockers (gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analogues) pause the physical changes of puberty, such as breast development or facial hair.

Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.

Although GIDS advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be.

It's also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children's bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations.

From the age of 16, teenagers who've been on hormone blockers for at least 12 months may be given cross-sex hormones, also known as gender-affirming hormones.

These hormones cause some irreversible changes, such as:

  • breast development (caused by taking oestrogen)
  • breaking or deepening of the voice (caused by taking testosterone)

Long-term cross-sex hormone treatment may cause temporary or even permanent infertility.

However, as cross-sex hormones affect people differently, they should not be considered a reliable form of contraception.

There is some uncertainty about the risks of long-term cross-sex hormone treatment.

So thankfully many more children will get the help they need and deserve, in particular to block puberty as a physical sex that does not match their actual gender.  A great result for the trans community, and indeed everyone who believes in human rights and helping those in need.

I have reported this as offensive. And will continue to report anyone advocating the chemical castration of children suffering from persistent delusional beliefs. Puberty blockers for children are a disgrace, and those responsible will end up struck off/in prison.

Can't we have a separate board for all this pish? 

It's really annoying, cluttering up the board.

 

No. We should integrate all participants like the Commonwealth games.

Can't stress enough how much credit the whistelblowers deserve for this

It's hell being a whistleblower, and comes with tremendous risk It can be catastrophic for the person themself

Kudos to Sonia Appleby and David Bell

Very few people have such depth of character

What happened to David:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/02/tavistock-trust-whistle…

What happened to Sonia:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/04/gender-identity-clinic-…

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And, of course, huge kudos to Stephanie Davies-Arai, who we can never say enough thanks to, for all she does to safeguard women and children, for never being silent when it mattered, for standing up to be counted in court cases and in private, for making a true difference

If you can. please donate or fundraise for that work, so it can continue It relies entirely upon donations

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All public institutions will need to be reformed, since all feel under this propaganda, showing they are not tethered to ethics nor research, and will fall again, whilst the same unethical people, structures and processes remain in place

I haven't mentioned what it means, but your stablished behaviour is to follow me around, insulting me, instead of fostering conversations

I'll be ignoring your posts from this point, as I've no interest in feeding your need to garner attention through abusing me

I’d have thought you would appreciate the opportunity to increase your scientific knowledge, as someone who is definitely a real scientist in real life and everything.

Worth a read, too

Kemi in The Times

The Tavistock scandal shows the dangers of civil service groupthink

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0df1a300-1022-11ed-b7aa-67f5549661eb…

More in the article, these are just bits I noted:

Whitehall has solutions for ministers wishing to dodge difficult decisions: issue another call for evidence for information you already have; publish a consultation that is captured by campaigners or form a new working group of “stakeholders”. However, the work of government is all about making difficult decisions, even if it makes us unpopular.

I write not to take credit for this result — my part in it was very minor — but to give an insight into the numerous obstacles that slow down even the most determined minister from finding out the truth and making the right decisions.

Others were more influential. I could not have done anything without being empowered by my senior minister, Liz Truss, to challenge advice, meet whoever was relevant and do my job as I saw fit. Not everyone is that lucky.

Even more credit should go to health secretaries such as Matt Hancock who in the midst of the pandemic commissioned the review by Dr Hilary Cass that led to the closing of the Tavistock and also his successor, Sajid Javid, who provided support when I raised numerous concerns that the Department of Health refused to prioritise.

It would be wrong to portray the entirety of the civil service as hostile on these issues. Far from it. A small minority of activist officials are the tail wagging the dog, often to the dismay of their colleagues and the hand-wringing of far more senior officials. This includes some permanent secretaries who are too scared to challenge their own staff and instead see ministers as obstreperous.

A lot of the hard work was done by gender-critical journalists and a feminist grassroots movement informing the public of what was going on at great personal cost.

I was astonished that in trying to help mostly gay children whose childhoods were being destroyed by experimental treatment, I was misrepresented by mischief-makers and their friends in certain media outlets as being anti-LGBT with slurs gleefully retweeted by Labour politicians such as Angela Rayner and Chris Bryant.

But it was clear that many women in today’s workplace were paying a much bigger price for telling the truth while doing their job. Journalist Lucy Bannerman exposed the Tavistock’s ideology and practices only to have a mob picket her workplace with placards labelling her work “transphobic”. Online trolls routinely sent her death threats. Professor Kathleen Stock was hounded out of Sussex University by students. Maya Forstater and Allison Bailey are two heroic women who have been vindicated through our legal system. But their struggle for justice came with unimaginable hardship simply for asserting that biological sex was real.

The reason it took this long for the Tavistock to be shut down is that activists succeeded in creating an environment in which critics and journalists felt unable to interrogate the dogma that youngsters should be able to medically transition in the way overseen by Tavistock. The treatment of these women showed the heavy price to pay and many people including MPs on all sides of the house simply didn’t want to get involved.

There is a wider problem of campaigning groups making life difficult for those who have to make tough decisions by creating a toxic atmosphere on social media where many MPs engage with their constituents. A Conservative MP in a marginal seat told me she was not confident discussing the matter publicly for fear of being branded a bigot by her Liberal Democrat opponent. A Labour MP told me in private she was grateful her party was not in power because they would not be able to face down the large number of activists online that Labour relies on to push its message.

The country owes so much to Dr Cass and her impartial and evidence-based work. Being external to the Whitehall machine partly explains her success in getting it completed.

https://t.co/UIUacNWL8t

From The Times

Tavistock gender clinic ‘to be sued by 1,000 families’

The Tavistock gender clinic is facing mass legal action from youngsters who claim they were rushed into taking life-altering puberty blockers.

They are accusing the gender identity development service [GIDS] at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust of multiple failures in its duty of care.

This includes allegations it recklessly prescribed puberty blockers with harmful side effects and adopted an “unquestioning, affirmative approach” to children identifying as transgender.

The law firm Pogust Goodhead has since announced it is pursuing a group litigation order against the trust, which has treated 19,000 children with gender dysphoria (the feeling that one’s emotional and psychological identity differs from one’s birth sex) since 1989.

Tom Goodhead, chief executive of Pogust Goodhead, told The Times: “Children and young adolescents were rushed into treatment without the appropriate therapy and involvement of the right clinicians, meaning that they were misdiagnosed and started on a treatment pathway that was not right for them.

“These children have suffered life-changing and, in some cases, irreversible effects of the treatment they received . . . We anticipate that at least 1,000 clients will join this action.”

The country owes so much to Dr Cass and her impartial and evidence-based work. Being external to the Whitehall machine partly explains her success in getting it completed.

Easy to agree with this.  Dr Cass identified that a lack of resources and geographical barriers to accessing treatment were resulting in a danger to children.  The Government has listened, and now not only will many many more trans children get the treatment they deserve, there will be additional reporting and research checks and balances to ensure that this treatment will be as holistic, safe and effective as possible.  Great stuff.   

Your summary is false, as I mentioned on the other threads to you, and no doubt will need to again

You're spreading misleading info again

The Tavistock has been closed, because the multiple failings were considered so serious, that The Tavistock was closed to protect patient safety

What I posted to you on the most recent other thread:

You haven't understood what's posted, and it's an important distinction, as an expression of "I am trans" is a statement; it is not a condition, nor indicative of a diagnosis Again:

  • The interim report recommended a new service model which acknowledges multiple routes in and out of gender dysphoria.
  • Dr Cass reported that ‘diagnostic overshadowing’, using gender as the primary clinical lens, had led to such wider issues being relatively neglected.

You haven't actually read the report have you.  Sorry chap, bottom line is that under-resourcing was identified as the main underlying problem which led to narrow treatment focus and options, and problems with reporting and oversight, leading thus to safety concerns. 

That's being put right, and lots and lots more children will get more access to higher quality treatment, and more options for treatment.  Got to be a good result for trans children and the wider community surely?  Why so desperate, you and others, to make it out as a victory for transphobics?  

 

Another brave whistleblower speaks about about children having been irreversibly harmed, this time in America, Jamie Reed

More in the article on thefp.com, just posting snippets

I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle.

I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply shaped my career. I have spent my professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations: children in foster care, sexual minorities, the poor. 

For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt.

One of my jobs was to do intake for new patients and their families. When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When I left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school. 

This concerned me, but didn’t feel I was in the position to sound some kind of alarm back then. There was a team of about eight of us, and only one other person brought up the kinds of questions I had. Anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe. 

The girls who came to us had many comorbidities: depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity. Many were diagnosed with autism, or had autism-like symptoms. A report last year on a British pediatric transgender center found that about one-third of the patients referred there were on the autism spectrum.

Frequently, our patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had. We had patients who said they had Tourette syndrome (but they didn’t); that they had tic disorders (but they didn’t); that they had multiple personalities (but they didn’t). 

The doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion. They even acknowledged that suicide has an element of social contagion. But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate.

To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. 

That’s all it took. 

When a female takes testosterone, the profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months. Voices drop, beards sprout, body fat is redistributed. Sexual interest explodes, aggression increases, and mood can be unpredictable. Our patients were told about some side effects, including sterility. But after working at the center, I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor. 

All medical treatments develop over time, always a good thing to see scrutiny of any such treatment so that it can be improved to deliver better results for patients.  If the very rare cases of people who go on to regret transitioning can be weeded out at an earlier stage, then that is good news for everyone involved.

 

nothing to see here….. settled views of the medical profession ….childrens’ human right to choose to irreversibly mutilate their minds and bodies once gender priest affirms their delusions - go team warren/chill!

”very rare cases…. who go on to regret “transitioning”” heh! not if your cultish thinking has any influence. 

Lol, the Cass report looked very carefully and critically at the whole business as you know, and although it mirrored some of the concerns Jamie Reed raises and made recommendations for more early scrutiny and consideration of other potential diagnoses and treatments, all in all the current treatment of trans children was upheld and the main recommendation was that more resources should be committed so that access to it be enhanced, enabling more children to be helped at an early stage. 

See, the difference here is that you scum don't really care about children - you just love to see a child harmed as you can use it as an excuse to push your actual agenda of bigotry against innocent trans people, who are already dealing with a difficult condition made worse by the irrational hate they have to face.  On the other hand people like me actually want to see the best outcome for everyone involved, so action like this that identifies problems and corrects them is welcome and should be encouraged. 

Tell the truth now - if the medical establishment refined these treatments, got in loads of therapists and explored all the alternatives before prescribing hormones, tested the drugs so that they were totally safe and there was absolutely nothing to complain about from a child safety perspective - you'd still peddle your hate and oppose treatment of trans children, now wouldn't you?    

Yes Warren - your truth, your lived experience as a kind person, is just as valid as objective facts. It looks like trans zealots are joining the frontal lobotomists in the medical freakery hall of shame so we will not need these tedious threads for much longer. 

Yes Warren - your truth, your lived experience as a kind person, is just as valid as objective facts. It looks like trans zealots are joining the frontal lobotomists in the medical freakery hall of shame so we will not need these tedious threads for much longer. 

Unsurprised you don't have the character to face up to the question posed.  Do jog on, serious people are trying to deal with serious issues in society, and your kind's childish irrational prejudices don't help.

Lies, as usual, Warren You refuse to accept the reality of the harm that has been caused in the desire for money and attention, at the expense of women and children

It should never, ever have been possible to willfully harm women and children in these ways

Just posting snippets, more in the links

 

"A fundamentally different service model is needed" The Cass Review's interim report - findings submitted to NHS England

https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/

The Cass Review has submitted an interim report to NHS England, which sets out our work to date, what has been learnt so far and the approach going forward. The report does not set out final recommendations at this stage.

Key points – context

  • The rapid increase in the number of children requiring support and the complex case-mix means that the current clinical model, with a single national provider, is not sustainable in the longer term. 
  •  We need to know more about the population being referred and outcomes. There has not been routine and consistent data collection, which means it is not possible to accurately track the outcomes and pathways that children and young people take through the service.  
  •  There is lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response. 
  •  Because the specialist service has evolved rapidly and organically in response to demand, the clinical approach and overall service design has not been subjected to some of the normal quality controls that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced.   

Key points – moving forward

  • Children and young people with gender incongruence or dysphoria must receive the same standards of clinical care, assessment and treatment as every other child or young person accessing health services.  
  • The care of this group of children and young people is everyone’s business. Our initial work indicates that clinicians at all levels feel they have the transferable skills and commitment to support these children and young people, but there needs to be agreement and guidance about the appropriate clinical assessment process that should take place at primary, secondary and tertiary level, underpinned by better data and evidence.  
  • Addressing the challenges will require service transformation, with support offered at different levels of the health service.
  • The Review’s research programme will not just build the evidence base in the UK but will also contribute to the global evidence base, meaning that young people, their families, carers and the clinicians supporting them can make more informed decisions about the right path for them.    

A fundamentally different service model is needed which is more in line with other paediatric provision, to provide timely and appropriate care for children and young people needing support around their gender identity. This must include support for any other clinical presentations that they may have.

It is essential that these children and young people can access the same level of psychological and social support as any other child or young person in distress, from their first encounter with the NHS and at every level within the service.

The Review team will work with NHS England, providers and the broader stakeholder community to further define the service model and workforce implications.

At this stage the Review is not able to provide advice on the use of hormone treatments due to gaps in the evidence base. Recommendations will be developed as our research programme progresses.

Criticism of the British Psychological Society, 14 signatories call for ‘recovery and redemption’ following new model and services recommendation from the Cass Review

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/time-honest-reflection-not-defence

The closure of the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock has attracted significant public and media attention.

Closure resulted from the Cass Review of children and young people’s gender services in England. The interim report recommended a new service model which acknowledges multiple routes in and out of gender dysphoria. Elevated rates of same-sex attraction, autism spectrum disorders, mental health issues, and looked after children were noted amongst the – now majority female and hugely increased – GIDS cohort. Dr Cass reported that ‘diagnostic overshadowing’, using gender as the primary clinical lens, had led to such wider issues being relatively neglected. Inadequate records and data were highlighted, particularly regarding puberty blocker outcomes. The new model intends to re-centre the young person’s needs, taking a holistic view of their difficulties.

These constitute serious criticisms of a flagship psychology-led service, resulting in its closure to protect patient safety. In this context, the statement issued by the BPS is profoundly inadequate. It offers no acknowledgement of the severity and range of these problems, or of the harm done to some children and young people. There is no reflection on mistakes made or lessons to be learnt.

Defence, not reflection, has been a theme throughout the story of GIDS. Many clinicians, parents and patients have raised repeated concerns about the practice model. Ex-patients have discussed feeling rushed into body-altering interventions which some have come to regret. Criticism has grown louder recently, following a 2018 internal report, a judicial review in 2020, damages awarded to the Trust safeguarding lead and an ‘inadequate’ CQC report in 2021, plus increasing media coverage. Concerns that GIDS was operating outside usual clinical practice were first raised, however, in 2004. Critics have consistently been labelled bigots or transphobes and ostracised.

This is a sobering moment for psychology. We need to take seriously that damaging practice was enabled for so long. Hundreds of psychologists worked at GIDS – highly trained scientist-practitioners skilled in reflective practice. Hundreds more have watched this unfold from the outside. Why did it take an external review to address the widely aired problems? Why was the service not able to reflect and change itself, instead vilifying critical voices? These are questions that psychologists should be well placed to answer, as experts in human meaning-making, embodied distress and group processes. We know that as a profession we are fallible, because we know that mistakes are made by all humans and all groups – yes, even by ‘me’.

We also know about recovery and redemption. Difficult things can be tolerated, made sense of and moved beyond. First, we need to acknowledge what has happened and the risks that have been taken with young lives. Some children have been badly let down and may not be forgiving. Nor should they have to be. Trust in psychology has been damaged by this episode and our collective failure to address the emerging scandal. Rebuilding trust requires accountability, honesty and reflection. We must not retreat into the comfort of defensive denial at this crucial moment.

The fact that Warren genuinely seems to believe he is a decent human being is astonishing - really Putin-esque levels of self delusion.  As is the fact that he is apparently oblivious to just how deeply creepy and repugnant it is to see a (presumably) grown person be quite so droolingly gleeful about the idea of using what is essentially experimental therapy to arrest puberty.  So many levels of wrong and grotesque about this poster - if his RoF persona is genuine (and not just some twisted form of performance art), he should be on a watch list somewhere, he is not safe to be around people.

To answer your question, Warren:

That will not happen, because it cannot happen. As a matter of principle, no drug treatment, much less surgery, to confirm of a child's confusion can ever be "totally safe with absolutely nothing to complain about from a child safety perspective". Because the harm is baked into the approach itself.

The only healthy way to help a child who is confused about his sex is to support him in accepting his healthy body. You would not understand because you are a deluded zealot. You cannot fathom how it is a bad idea to teach children that the right reaction to a feeling of dissatisfaction or alienation with your body is to live a lie. There is nothing compassionate about your ideology and your only argument is a claim to a fake notion of decency that falters under the slightest scrutiny.

So fvck off.

Agree with Unwalt's well-articulated, thoughtful post

 

A clinical psychologist, with over 15 years of experience of working with adults, children and families, explains the inevitable consequences.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/A-childhood…

Childhood social transition is portrayed as ‘kind’ and ‘affirming.’ But what are we setting a child up for when puberty hits, if we pretend they are the opposite sex for the best part of their childhood? A clinical psychologist, with over 15 years of experience of working with adults, children and families, explains the inevitable consequences.

A childhood is not reversible. It was when it happened the third time in a week that I started to really wonder. The parent would be telling me about their teenager, about their mental anguish, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and then they’d drop something in, so casually that I’d almost think I’d missed it, ‘Oh, and he’s a transboy (or girl), transitioned when he (or she) was five (or six or seven), but that’s all fine’. And with that, I knew I’d been warned off. Nothing to see here.

I’m a psychologist, my job is to explore, to look for meaning. I work with families and young people. I try to understand why people behave and feel the way they do and to share that understanding. I ask uncomfortable questions sometimes, particularly of parents, about how everyone’s behaviour in the family is inter-related and how children can sometimes show the distress for the whole family. Usually I’m curious about any big change in a child’s life. I’d ask, so how did that happen? What was going on about that time? How was that decision made?

Not with this though. I can’t really ask about their gender identity for fear of being seen as transphobic, and of being accused of practicing conversion therapy. I’m meant to celebrate their trans identity, use the preferred pronouns and definitely not ask any questions at all about what this might mean. I know what is expected of me.

Social transition isn’t reversible, because what we tell our children for years can’t be reversed. When we disconnect them from their biological sex, we set up patterns of denial and secrets. We set them up to hate their bodies at puberty, to beg for blockers and binders, because for years we told them they could change sex, and they believed us.They are desperate to go back to the years when no one knew any different, but that time will never come again. Time is not reversible.

They don’t know any different. They think that could go on for ever, that they will wake up one day transformed into a male body. They live in a world of fantasy and magic.We know better.We owe it to them to hold that space.

We need to tell them that they can dream of being everything they want to be, express themselves however they want, but we know they can’t change their sex. We have to tell them this, even if they find it distressing. We need to be able to hold that distress and listen, whilst holding onto reality. For our only other option is to betray our children’s trust in us, and the consequences of that will be lifelong.

if the medical establishment refined these treatments, got in loads of therapists and explored all the alternatives before prescribing hormones, tested the drugs so that they were totally safe and there was absolutely nothing to complain about from a child safety perspective

Hasn't your position so far been that this IS the current situation?  Surely shome mishtake?

Monumental

Kudos to everyone actively campaigning for the safeguarding of kids

 

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/gender-d…

 

Latest update: June 2023

Today (Friday 9 June) NHS England has published an interim service specification for specialist gender incongruence services for children and young people to support Phase 1 providers in developing their new services. The public consultation on this draft interim service specification ran on the NHS England website for 45 days from 20 October to 4 December 2022. It received 5,183 responses in total. We would like to sincerely thank all those individuals and organisations who took the time to submit responses to this consultation. Read more about the consultation feedback and NHS England’s response.

We have previously made clear, including the draft interim service specification we consulted on, the intention that the NHS will only commission puberty supressing hormones as part of clinical research. This approach follows advice from Dr Hilary Cass’ Independent Review highlighting the significant uncertainties surrounding the use of hormone treatments.

We are now going out to targeted stakeholder testing on an interim clinical commissioning policy proposing that, outside of a research setting, puberty suppressing hormones should not be routinely commissioned for children and adolescents who have gender incongruence/dysphoria.

Aw sorry to disappoint, it's a bit misleading.  The Cass review supported puberty blockers but wanted their long-term effects better monitored, so recommended they be prescribed as part of formal clinical trials.  So what's happening is all the trans kids currently benefiting from puberty blockers are being moved to clinical trials as a requirement for further prescriptions.

Which seems pretty sensible to me, but hey, I'm just interested in what's best for vulnerable and already marginalized children subject to an ongoing hate campaign by retarded bigots, so what do I know.  If the trials show they do on balance more harm than good for the thousands and thousands treated apparently overwhelmingly successfully so far over many years, so be it. 

 

If the trials show they do more harm than good for the thousands and thousands treated so far over many years the NHS is utterly fucķed. And thus the country too.

It will be Birmingham Council  times billions. 

 

There was a good interview on the Radio 5pm news programme on this although the interview as ever with the BBC was slightly pushing his own agenda by the end of the interview. However the basic points were made - that these children often have depression, autism and all sorts and due to ideology were just shoved on to pills. That is not usual in the NHS   - in general GPs will put patients on pills because therapy is so time consuming and expensive. It is a known quick fix model but clearly even worse when perpetrated on teenagers.

Completely in keeping with the rest of his character no doubt Marshall. And like the loathsome Campbell, plays the mental health card when it gets too hot for him on here

always a bit weird stumbling across one’s old posts but glad to see I was right about which way things were going. thank god. 
“Yes Warren - your truth, your lived experience as a kind person, is just as valid as objective facts. It looks like trans zealots are joining the frontal lobotomists in the medical freakery hall of shame so we will not need these tedious threads for much longer. ”

My observations

  • It seems to me that all the key posters above are genuinely interested in the welfare of children and have actually looked at some of the underlying materials
  • So any chance you could stop being so damned aggressive to each other and acknowledge its a complex issue in relation to which people have different views?
  • So 19,000 in the GIDS cohort and 1000 are joining a class action. Does anyone know the view of the othet 18,000 - how many are happy with theor outcomes? Surely there is enough data/time here foe a fairly effective longitudinal study? What infor do we have here and can amyone link to it?
  • Does seem like standards were sloppy and too many kids pushed into this too readily. But it seems far from clear that this means the treatment is always innappropriate?

Lydia, while I accept your point, I think the way it's framed is a bit unfair on GPs. You said:

 "in general GPs will put patients on pills because therapy is so time consuming and expensive. It is a known quick fix model but clearly even worse when perpetrated on teenagers."

From a GP's perspective, they will put a patient on pills because there's no availability of therapy unless they can pay privately or are in the most extreme distress. (Because it's time consuming and expensive.) 

  • Does seem like standards were sloppy and too many kids pushed into this too readily. But it seems far from clear that this means the treatment is always innappropriate?

Listen to Hannah Barnes and Dr David Bell, who worked at the Tavistock for 20 years, here, from 5 minutes 30 seconds https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001x4l9

Evan Davis having an absolute mare.

Oh, and who could possibly have predicted that Warren would go through the following phases:

  • "Children aren't being prescribed puberty blockers at all!  This is all right wing bigotry!"
  • to "OK children might be being prescribed puberty blockers but they are all totally safe and it's totally reversible" to
  • [NHS ends puberty blockers being prescribed to children except where they have already been started] "It's totally fine to carry out clinical trials to establish safety and efficacy which I've always argued have already been demonstrated"

The mental gymnastics required are spectacular.

 

Young peoples brains and bodies are still developing and each individual may have other issues. Anyone who tries to disagree with these unproven interventions and treatment was bullied.  

Agreed- but then the mental gymnastics required to conclude that we can change sex are spectacular - ever tried reading Julie Butler?

Canary - in the real world I’m far less provocative but 1) this is rof; and 2)  “acceptance without exception” fanaticism is challenging. Different views is fine but views based on magical thinking are not amenable to rational debate and, in the end, need to be called out.

Warren has alluded to being personally invested in the matter and, as ever, that usually leads to pressure vessel doubling down before physics takes over and the thing blows - like escaping a cult. 

 

FACT ALERT FACT ALERT JUST SOME FACTS, LADS

The finding was that it was unsafe and not sustainable to only have one provider for these kinds of services. Not that the Tavistock Centre itself was “unsafe for children”. Hope this demolition of Amit Hesucker’s Tory lies is of assistance to u.

Yes. The headline says "Tavistock gender clinic ‘not safe’ for young children, report finds", as per the OP. 

Look forward to seeing "Sir Woke" apologising for his outrageous outburst.

Well, not exactly - they say "After assessing how its gender identity development service (GIDS) operates, Dr Cass found the treatment of young people identifying as transgender was below normal quality controls."

It does suggest that the reason for that may be because, as the single such provider, it is overwhelmed by the number of referrals, and so there need to be more providers to ensure the safety of the young people seeking treatment.

Agree with what cruella said - it also says:

“In a letter which prefaces the report, Dr Cass insists that she is not calling for services to stopped or reduce.

“I have heard that young service users are particularly worried that I will suggest that services should be reduced or stopped,” she said.

I want to assure you that this is absolutely not the case – the reverse is true.

“I am advising that more services are made available to support you.”

 

I don’t particularly have a dog in this fight (other than, in skimming the thread, that the Rumpole poster appears quite unhinged) but your OP is pretty misleading given the article you posted, I think 

Didn’t we do this at the time?

The transphobes leapt on it in their usual slavering manner, misleading people by saying what they are this to be rather than what it was.

The TRAs wanted anyone and everyone to have access, anytime an any place.

And normal people pointed out the actual position, as per Laz above.

 

These are experiments on children and young people in that their outcomes have not been proved. It is not a political issue. Normal people lol. 

 

"... (other than, in skimming the thread, that the Rumpole poster appears quite unhinged)"

Never a truer word spoken.  Warren is also rather less than sane when it comes to this topic.

surprised that some of you are unable to decode Cass’s words - it’s a political minefield and she’s using diplomatic language to best navigate a way out while causing minimal damage to the young patients and to avoid harm to the potential new patients. she’s running the crazies into the sand while ensuring there is support for the patients :

“I am advising that more services are made available to support you.“

you kids have got problems and you need help - “more” as in not what you’ve previously been offered and recognising the complexity of each individuals issues. 
I think she’s done a great job but unfortunately her subtle approach has just left enough room for the crazies to hold up the roll out of the new clinics because they will not agree to an evidenced based scientific method led approach - still pushing for “affirmative” care in defiance of all evidence - so the roll out is stalled. 

All you need to do is look at the WPATH files. Doctors specifically saying to each other that teens can’t really understand what they’re being prescribed and so can’t consent, but it doesn’t matter and they should go ahead

Bullace - if that’s to me, that may all be true, I was just going off the article AITS posted which (sorry I didn’t post the relevant quote earlier) said:

“The interim report also concluded that the facility, which is England’s only specialist service for children and young people who identify as transgender, is overwhelmed by the number of referrals it has to deal with.

It said: “It has become increasingly clear that a single specialist provider model is not a safe or viable long-term option in view of concerns about lack of peer review and the ability to respond to the increasing demand.”

Which clearly implies what Sir Woke said above about the criticisms of the Tavistock, i.e. they want more providers (because only having one is unsafe)

I just wanted to say the OP was poorly worded. 

“i.e. they want more providers (because only having one is unsafe)”

unpacking that: it’s complicated and sensitive and there are a lot of vulnerable children in the system who don’t need more trauma - fingers crossed the least damaging way of lancing the boil is to close the Tavistock, stop the worst abuses (dress it up a bit), and make a proposal for new providers and, having had a bit of light shone on them, hopefully the loons will drop out of the system. as I say unfortunately cass’s approach was a bit too subtle and the loons are just clinging on and holding up the roll out of the new services. 

 

(Photo of Judith Butler by Paco Freire via Getty Images)

 

It’s telling, it seems to me, that we’ve begun to see a shift in the tactics of critical queer and gender theorists. They are beginning to make actual arguments in the public square, instead of relying on the media, the government, and the courts to impose their ideas by fiat. The two most prominent examples of this are a new cover-story in New York Magazine by Andrea Long Chu, “Freedom of Sex,” and a new book by Judith Butler called Who’s Afraid of Gender? Butler has even gone so far as to write this book in decipherable, if inelegant, English for the first time in her career.

Reading her again after a few years, it becomes clearer and clearer why she is so hard to engage. This is a work so embedded in neo-Marxism it’s impossible to grasp it without accepting its collectivist and revolutionary premises. For Butler, in matters of sex and the body, nothing is as it appears, the individual has no independent existence or capacity for reason outside social and cultural forces, and even the basics of anatomy, like a penis, are just socially constructed all the way down. There is no independent, stable variable like nature or biology or evolution that can help us understand our bodies, and our sex. Everything is in our heads, and our heads are entirely created by others in the past and present:

Nature is not the ground upon which construction of gender happens. Both the material and social dimensions of the body are constructed through an array of practices, discourses, and technologies.

The material dimensions of the body are just ideas: “Anatomy alone does not determine what sex a person is.” You might think, for example, that when a baby is born with a vagina, we are observing her sex. But for Butler,

sex assignment is not a simple description of anatomical facts, but a way of imagining what they will mean, or should mean. The girl continues to be girled; the boy continues to be boyed; sex assignment, understood as an iterative process, relays a set of desires, if not fantasies, about how one is to live one’s body in the world. And such fantasies, coming from elsewhere, make us less self-knowing than we sometimes claim.

Later on, Butler warmly approves of this quote from Catharine MacKinnon:

Women and men are made into the sexes as we know them by the social requirements of heterosexuality.

This is Blank Slatism in its ultimate form, a denial of any independent biological influence on human nature or behavior. The fact that we are a species of mammal, organized around a binary reproductive strategy for millions of years, in which we are divided almost exactly into male and female, and in which there are only two types of gametes, eggs and sperm — and no “speggs” — is, for Butler, irrelevant. It is not even a fact. The sex binary is, rather, a human invention — specifically, a product of American “white supremacy.” I kid you not:

The hetero-normative framework for thinking of gender as binary was imposed by colonial powers on the Global South, to track the legacies of slavery and colonialism engaged in brutal surgical and sexological practices of determining and “correcting” sex in light of ideals of whiteness … Gender norms were created through surgical racism. Black bodies were the experimental field from which white gender norms were crafted. Dimorphism serves the reproduction of the normative white family in the United States.

The golden rule of the woke applies: everything is a product of white supremacy! But of all the things you could call “socially constructed,” the sex binary is the least plausible. It existed in our species before we even achieved the intelligence to call it a sex binary. It existed before humans even evolved into the separate and mostly distinct genetic clusters we now call race. How’s that for pre-cultural! It is in countless species that have no access to an array of “practices, discourses, and technologies.” It structures our entire existence. Not a single cell in the body is unaffected by our sex. Our entire reproductive strategy as a mammal is rooted in it. If you can turn even this into a human invention — malleable and indeterminate and a “spectrum” — there is nothing real outside us at all.

This is the anarchy and nihilism intrinsic to critical theory in all its toxic forms. It deconstructs everything and constructs nothing. It is a negation of humanity’s signature mixture of the earthly and the divine, the instinctual and the intellectual. In this grim, neo-Marxist dystopia, the individual is merely a site where various social and collective powers impose their will.

Science therefore has no autonomy beyond politics; art becomes a mere expression of power dynamics; there are no stable truths — which is how critical theory has destroyed the humanities, replacing them with nihilist word-games. So the penis is female. Yeah, you heard that right, bigot. And the proof that it is female is that some people with penises say it is. And that’s it. No other form of evidence is allowed. Orwell presciently described this grotesquery:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

But this party command is the central message of Butler’s work, 40 years after 1984. Here she is on why a dude with a beard, a rock-hard cock, and a luxuriantly hairy back is actually a woman:

[Gender-critical] feminists would claim that being a woman is not a feeling, but a reality. For trans women and men, though, being a woman or a man is also a reality, the lived reality of their bodies. The category of “woman” does not say in advance how many people can participate in the reality it describes, nor does it limit in advance the forms that that reality can take. In fact, feminism has always insisted that what a woman is is an open-ended question, a premise that has allowed women to pursue possibilities that were traditionally denied to their sex.

But if the open-ended question of what a woman is includes being its opposite, a man, then both categories, male and female, effectively evaporate into thin air. It is like saying that white must include black if it is to be white. That is why Butler and the TQ+ movement are trapped by their logic into being homophobic: they have to deny that gay men can exist at all, because mencannot exist at all, unless they include women in the definition of man.

That’s why the Trevor Project, the massively-funded TQ+ organization, now tells troubled young gay kids that a gay man is defined as someone who has sex with biological womenas well as with men. A gay man is not attracted to the same “sex” but to the same “gender” and that now includes biological women. Trevor has abolished homosexuality! It’s why woker-than-woke Grindr, formerly an app for gay men, is now full of straight dudes with profiles that say “NOT INTERESTED IN MEN just don’t bother,” “I don’t like men,” “Str8 4T”, “do not message me if you’re cis or a man,” “Fems and Them No Men,” “No gay men u will be blocked,” and “Im straight not gay.” Just another part of the straight “queer” community.

In the postmodern world where we invent reality hour by hour, depending on how we feel, being gay now includes heterosexual sex — and by far the biggest group in the “LGBTQIA+” umbrella are bisexual women in relationships with straight men. At some point, gay men will wake up and realize that they have abolished their own identity — indeed merged it into its opposite. But they have another tea dance to get to and another Instagram vacation pic to post. Most are pathetically uninformed, or programmed by tribal insecurity to follow the queering herd.

On the most blazing practical issues of our current gender debate, Butler has little to say. Can children really give informed consent to irreversible re-ordering of their entire endocrine system before they’ve gone through puberty or even had an orgasm? She offers this non-answer:

Of course, there are serious discussions to be had about what kind of health care is wise for young people, and at what age. But to have that debate, we have to be within the sphere of legality. If the very consideration of gender-affirming care is prohibited, then no one can decide which form is best for a specific child at a certain age. We need to keep those debates open to make sure that health care serves the well-being and flourishing of the child.

This is an evasion worthy of the most craven politician, not an argument by an honest intellectual. What about the fact that 60 - 90 percent of kids grow out of gender dysphoria, as JK Rowling has noted? Another non-answer from Butler: “She does not tell us whether those referenced are tomboys, sissies, genderqueer people, cross-dressers, trans people, or something altogether different.” This is pedantic whataboutism. Almost all of them are gay, as Butler surely knows.

Is it fair to have trans women who went through puberty as men compete against women in athletics? Butler cites a single outlier study using unreliable markers claiming that among top athletes, there is considerable overlap in testosterone levels between men and women. But of course, there is no such overlap in any other study — and there are countless of them. The highest testosterone levels among women are far below the lowest for men. They differ so much in degree they differ in kind.

Is the insistence by doctors that if you don’t trans your child he will kill himself, ethically defensible, as Rowling has asked? Butler responds: “She acts as if the claim is unfair or untrue, but what if it is true?” Memo to Butler: it isn’t true 99.7 percent of the time, making the “do you want a dead boy or live girl?” blackmail all the more ethically despicable. This easily found fact is something that Butler didn’t even feel the need to research.

She also straw-mans her opponents over and over again. She claims we’re creating fear to exploit and distract from the genuine anxieties about climate change (not kidding); and we want the re-imposition of “patriarchy”, which will be news to JK Rowling or Julie Bindel. Our views are “phantasmatic”, a word Butler loves, resting on a “psychosocial fantasy that the loss of patriarchal, heteronormative, and white supremacist social orders is an unbearable one.” She describes feminists like Rowling and pioneering campaigners for gay rights like me as “fascists” and “moral sadists.” She says we are trying to “strip” gay people “of their fundamental rights, protections, and freedoms,” when of course we originally helped bring about those rights in ways she never did, and are merely trying to protect them from being defined out of existence by her pomo madness.

Butler says we practice “shameless forms of racial hatred, and controlling, demeaning, caricaturing, pathologizing, and criminalizing [marginalized] lives,” and that we “do not hold [our]selves to standards of consistency or coherence.” For fook’s sake. No doubt some nasty characters on the right are transphobic, but to turn all of us dissenters into the theocrats we’ve spent our lives countering is beyond dishonest. She says we never read the works of the critical theorists, which will be news to James Lindsay and those of us who had to slog our way through her concrete brutalist East German-style prose in grad school and since. And, of course, she smears:

Recruitment into the anti–gender ideology movement is an invitation to join a collective dream, perhaps a psychosis, that will put an end to the implacable anxiety and fear that afflict so many people experiencing climate destruction firsthand, or ubiquitous violence and brutal war, expanding police powers, or intensifying economic precarity.

Actually, Ms Butler, we are just trying to make sure that kids aren’t medicalized irreversibly; that homosexuality is defined by attraction to the same sex, not the opposite one; and that trans people should have full civil rights (as they do), alongside a tiny number of sane, pragmatic accommodations to, yes, reality: in sports, in intimate spaces, and in the English language. That’s all. I favor aggressively tackling climate change, preventing violence and crime, opposing war, and adjusting economics to benefit the working classes more. If someone calls that “phantasmatic fascism,” it’s her sanity that needs inspection, and not my moral compass.

Which brings me to New York Magazine’s “moral case” for allowing children “regardless of age” with no parental consent, to change their sex, simply because they want to. The sub-hed — “The moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies”— undersells the piece: it’s actually a case for letting any kid for any reason undergo sex reassignment. It’s not a “moral case” because simply stating a want and demanding it be realized is not an act of morality; it’s an act of unmediated will. And the implications of this demand are immense. In good queer-theory fashion, Chu destroys any and all distinctions between being a child and being an adult. And he does so with aplomb, as if expecting a wave of snapping fingers in response.

(A word about pronouns. I always respect the pronouns of actual trans people, so won’t in this case. Chu has never “always wanted” to be a woman; he has said rather that “sissy porn did make me trans”; he defines womanhood in grotesquely misogynistic terms (“Getting fooked makes you female because fooked is what a female is”). He is as much a woman as Dylan Mulvaney is, which is to say he is no such thing. He is just a seriously depressed careerist with a new orifice: “Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound.” A decade ago, he declared: “I am straight. I am male. I am white (mostly). I am comfortably middle-class.” He still is all those things — but those things, even when declared in self-hatred, don’t get you a Pulitzer. Hence the current piece of performance shock-art. I see no reason to cooperate in this bullshit. It’s an abuse of good faith interlocutors. And it’s a fooking insult to actual trans people, a mockery of the challenges they face.)

David Haskell’s New York Magazine has been committed to publishing the psychotic on the subject of transgenderism for a while: first by an “asexual gay man with a penis and a vagina” who carved a fake dick out of her thigh to place next to her actual vagina, and luxuriated in her edgy madness; and now an Ivy League porn addict marinated in postmodern nihilism who didn’t get a fake vagina and take female hormones to cure his gender dysphoria, but — prepare yourself for the épater la bourgeoisie frisson — because it made him feel shitty: “I feel demonstrably worse since I started on hormones … I was not suicidal before hormones. Now I often am … I want the tears; I want the pain … There are no good outcomes in transition.” That was in a memorable essay in the NYT a while back: a poem in baller nihilism.

For good measure, Chu in his new essay rejects any notion of the Hippocratic Oath in medicine. Almost in an aside! That’s how far he’ll go to make sure there are no limits on child transition, even if it destroys a kid’s life, even if informed consent is impossible, even though the treatment is experimental and off-label. If a patient demands a treatment, and a doctor believes it will be harmful, Chu believes the patient should be able to demand being harmed, just as he did.

Then there are the grave implications of abolishing any distinction between children and adults. Or to put it more baldly: New York Magazine has a cover story implicitly defending sex with children. That’ll get a National Magazine Award! But think about it for a millisecond: if a child of any age can demand to have his own genitals removed with no safeguards at all, why can’t he demand to have his genitals played with by an adult as well? Who dare impede a child’s total freedom?

Remember: Chu is not justifying child sex reassignment as a necessary medication for a serious illness; he is justifying it simply because a child wants it for any reason, specious or fantastic or real. Any editor reading this piece as a draft would ask the writer to grapple with this obvious, massive implication. I’ve been edited by New York Magazine and “fact-checked” by their social justice activists. I know how thorough they can be in demanding a writer address unintended implications. But not this time. Matt Taibbi compares direct quotes from Chu and from NAMBLA pamphlets. They are indeed hard to tell apart. And so we’re back to the pomo French intellectuals of the 1970s petitioning against age-of-consent laws. In fact, queer theory’s core pioneers — Michel Foucault, Gayle Rubin, and Patrick Califia — all once defended adults fooking kids. Foucault defended sex with infants. This is not extraneous to queer theory; it is intrinsic to it. The point of queer theory is that there are no limiting principles. Defending the integrity, dignity and safety of children makes you un-queer. It’s a label I will gladly wear.

Chu’s cover-story also contains such gems as: “the belief that we have a moral duty to accept reality just because it is real is, I think, a fine definition of nihilism.” So we live in fantasy instead? And this: “Let trans girls play sports, regardless of their sex status. If they excel, this means only that some girls are better at sports than others.” Did no editor ask Chu to explain why he both believes sex is real, as he states, and yet denies the core reality of sex differences? Nah. Did anyone inquire what exactly Chu means by “changing sex,” when that is of course impossible at a cellular level. Nah. Did anyone edit this at all?

Or we get statements like this: “If children are too young to consent to puberty blockers, then they are definitely too young to consent to puberty, which is a drastic biological upheaval in its own right.” So a healthy natural process is equated with premature sterilization, using an off-label, non-FDA-approved experimental medicine with unknown side effects. But remember: making kids happy is not the point. Making them adults is. There is not much more to say about this moral excrescence — except that publishing it is deeply revealing of what New York media types, including Pulitzer Prize back-slappers, find unutterably cool. In a word, it’s sickening.

The truth is: we have come a long way in understanding and respecting the unique human experience of being transgender. In the US, trans people are protected by the gold standard of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They are everywhere in our popular culture. An entire generation has even been told that being trans is the most glamorous thing you could possibly be. But none of this is sufficient for the transqueers. What they want is an abolition of biological sex for everyone; the end of men and of women as separate categories; the sex reassignment of children on demand; the destruction of the nuclear family; an end to the Hippocratic Oath; the abolition of homosexuality; the presence of male bodies in women’s showers, prisons and shelter; the creation of fantastical post-everything genders and pronouns; and the criminalization of anyone who would ever question this cultural revolution.

They are not winning, but it is not for lack of trying. The pseudoscience behind child transition is beginning to be exposed and puberty blockers are now banned in the UK outside clinical trials. A new lawsuit is being filed against the NCAA for destroying women’s sports. Public opinion has responded to the transqueer ideology by moving in the opposite direction, and now gay people are being caught in the queer crossfire.

Newspapers like the NYT have refused to be intimidated into suppressing coverage of the debate. Detransitioners are increasingly public about the medical abuse they were subjected to and still suffer from. Leaked files from WPATH have proven that doctors know full well their patients can’t give informed consent and still trans them. Comedians have poked fun at the entire mountain of incoherence and emotional cray-cray of the transqueer. And even gay men and lesbians are beginning to cotton on to the homophobia implicit in all of it.

Butler’s and Chu’s contributions will, in my view, only confirm this changing of the tide. Too late to save many, but never too late to protect our children — gay and straight and trans — from his nihilist abuse of their bodies and souls. Know hope; and pray for the victims. One day this madness will appear to be exactly what it is. And that day cannot come too soon.

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