UK officially fucks Trans kids over
KarlLB
Shipmate
https://twitter.com/TabitaSurge/status/1670695396547481600
One take home from this - if kids or staff want to abuse trans kids by misgendering them, there's diddly-squat anyone can do about it.
Bullies please form an orderly line...
One take home from this - if kids or staff want to abuse trans kids by misgendering them, there's diddly-squat anyone can do about it.
Bullies please form an orderly line...
Comments
How many suicides is the government willing to accept in its bigoted agenda?
Why do these people hate transgender people so much?
Because they've been forced to shut up about hating brown and gay people so their pent up hatred now gets directed at trans folk.
I think this is depressingly accurate.
I don't have any young people in my life, but I do know from my own life how important it was to have trustworthy adults that I could confide in about other issues. For some school may be the only safe place.
The TERFs and far right on X are getting sticky keyboards over it they're so excited. Draw your own conclusions.
Maggie Baska from Pink News has spoken to Mermaids and has a more context:
https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/03/12/trans-puberty-blockers-nhs-england-prescribe-gender-affirming-healthcare/
Trans news site 'What the trans' haven't done a write up yet but have commented on X/Twitter
(I know Twitter is objectionable but it's still where a lot of the trans journalists are - and where they'll respond before they write pieces later)
comment on ignoring trans voices in consultation
A note from a post quoted on that thread '3492 responses were strongly in favour of blockers, just 180 opposed them'
Evan Urquhart (Assigned Media) is also at the early take on Twitter stage so far but has a different angle:
Trans and non binary run charity TransActual has a statement - partly quoted below...
https://transactual.org.uk/blog/2024/03/12/transactual-statement-on-nhs-englands-decision-to-stop-commissioning-puberty-blockers/
Yes; aforementioned voices on X are already calling for them to be abandoned.
So no puberty blockers except for those who have already gone through puberty. Some folk saying about horses and barn doors comes to mind.
That was my immediate reaction. Just a thought - is it possible that the same drug could legitimately be prescribed for something innocuous?
It's important to keep gender categories neat and tidy for misogynists. I mean, it's important that they know precisely whom to dominate and now. Otherwise we are confusing the power structure.
No, my question (and it was a real question from a position of simply not knowing) was along the lines: "Can this drug also be used to treat sore throats?".
As yet there is NO evidence base of EITHER the SAFETY or EFFICACY of puberty blockers in cases of gender disphoria. There is also no evidence to support the assertion that these are entirely reversible when you stop taking them.
THIS is the outrage, that children who identify as trans are being given drugs with no proven efficacy or safety and some evidence of harm eg significant bone thinning amongst others. These children and their parents have been sadly let down by the system, it is a disgrace. Bring on clinical trials before dishing out drugs.
Giving those who cannot consent drugs on the advice of experts who lack an evidence base and paid for by tax payers as healthcare is not a private matter.
This link might be behind a paywall for you but if you're reading it for the first time you might be able to get in. It gives a basic survey with links to other articles and points out the political nature of attacking these drugs
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-are-puberty-blockers-and-how-do-they-work/
Some snips
The bioethicist consulted in the article Simona Giordano of Manchester University points out that beneficial use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (GnRHas) goes back to the 1960s and that it's a 'mischaracterization' to claim they are experimental drugs.
I don't think your post is accurate. The drugs used as puberty blockers have been used successfully for years in treating children with precocious puberty and I know of no studies which show short term or long term effects from their use for this purpose.
You are right that greater research is needed re long term effects for help with transgender children. The one long term study I know showed no harmful effect but that probably needs more confirmation.
Studies also differ in their assessments of the psychological benefits of the use of puberty blockers; some have claimed significant benefit but others (e.g. NICE) have criticised the methodology of those studies. To that extent it is an open question.
From what I have seen, and particularly by reference to the three decades of use in precocious puberty, there is no identifiable side effect health risk to children in taking the medication. It is not NICE approved in the UK but that seems largely related to disputes over psychological benefits.
So I believe that it is a private matter, not a legal one, and best left to family decisions helped by informed professional advice.
Int J Transgend Health. 2020; 21(2): 113–121.
Is puberty delaying treatment ‘experimental treatment’?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7430465/
Trans people are harmed when these drugs are not available and if you look at what trans people have to say about their own medical treatment they are clear that these drugs are something they want to be available for them as a choice. Attempts have been made to manufacture scares about them but that has a lot more to do with anti-trans motives and prejudice disguised as fake concerns than anything to do with science.
In this case that happens to be inaccurate (others have posted sources) and is used as an anti-trans talking point.
Gwai,
Epiphanies Host.
]
ACPac.org.uk. Say:
It is unconscionable to continue experimenting on children.
The interim Cass report shows what a travesty this is and how badly vulnerable children are being let down by a system that rushes PBs and ignores every other neurological/mental/social vulnerability.
The Southern Poverty Law Centre describes the American College of Pediatricians as a fringe hate group.
I will temporarily close this thread, pending the resolution of the related Styx thread.
Doublethink, Admin
Alan
Ship of Fools Admin
But it isn't entirely clear what the best help is.
I don't have personal experience of gender dysphoria, but I do have some experience of the complexities of another group of vulnerable children. In that situation a large percentage are put into "treatment" that they say, when adults, was destructive for them. It isn't entirely unknown for experimental treatments to be given to children with limited scientific backing for their efficacy.
Again, I don't know the truth here. I dislike the way that hateful conservatives seem to be trying to dominate the conversation by trying to subvert and deny the lived reality of trans people (in a way that I remember some trying to deny that learning disabilities and say that dyslexia was laziness in my school class).
And for me that is the worst thing here, trans kids are continuing to suffer whilst a 'debate' stoked by hateful people swirls around the internet.
(ETA grammar, DT, Admin)
Which interestingly is an example of a form of conversion therapy - "discouraging" autistic behaviour in favour of being "normal".
It stands therefore in stark contrast to affirmative approaches to gender dysphoria. It seems to me that ABA is to autism as conversion therapy is to gender dysphoria.
It's probably wise not to pursue this too far on this thread, but it's an interesting point to ponder.
Fortunately for me I only know ABA by reputation; I'm too old for my presentation of autism to have been recognised as such as a child - I was just a "weird kid".
I'm not even sure I have the energy.
Don't be sorry. It sheds an interesting light on the affirming and conversion approaches to gender dysphoria, and societal attitudes to diversity and difference, and the aims of treatment.
I saw a conservative meme the other day where one person says that such and such needs to be "normalised", and the supposed hero of the meme responds with "if it needs normalising then it isn't normal!" and it struck me that this is how some people think. If you diverge from the statistical norm too much then that's inherently wrong. Most people are straight so gay is wrong and needs curing. Most people are neurotypical so being autistic needs curing. Most people are cis so being trans is wrong and needs curing. If it can't be cured it must be hidden. Calls for acceptance and equity are characterised as calls for special treatment. Persist and you're "ramming it down our throats".
There is a common theme here. Draw attention to it and you're slammed as Woke.
I'm not sure. I don't know if we have enough people with a dog in the fight regarding ABA, but there's possibly a Purg thread in the post here I've just made concerning underlying attitudes to diversity and difference.
I think that would probably sit best in Epiphanies.
Yes similar things happen with autistic kids and behaviourist therapies which I escaped the danger of by being diagnosed so late.
And in the adult community people who've been through that or know people who've been through it are the strongest campaigners against it because people grow up and find their voices - so it becomes obvious that it didn't help.
That's why it's important to look at the adult community whether it be from dyslexia, autism or ADHD and see what most people who have lived these things growing up and experienced them have to say.
In this case - see the links I posted earlier - it's fairly clear where the bulk of trans people are on this being an option for adolescents to consider and there's something like thirty years of experience to draw on - someone who was say 13 in the 1990s would be in their thirties to forties now.
And yet the huge push to attack adolescents having this choice comes overwhelmingly from people who also attack trans people across the board for religious or ideological reasons and not (see previous links) from the community themselves, so this at once suggests to me that something different is going on.
If I may open the discussion here.
One of the criticisms of the Cass report has been that it ignored or discounted the evidence of safe use of puberty blockers in cases of puberty blockers. The argument appears to be that it’s not relevant, since precocious puberty is one thing, trans is another.
My dispute with that viewpoint is that it glosses over the difference between drug safety and drug efficacy. PB drugs have been used safely for over thirty years in precocious puberty cases. The medical effect is to delay the onset of puberty since it be beneficial to the health of children experiencing precocious puberty. PBs are successful in producing that delay. Hence their continuing use for that purpose.
That evidence does not of course confirm the efficacy of using PBs with trans children. That can be debated. But safety is another matter. Why should a drug proven to be safe in delaying puberty with precocious puberty cases by unsafe with trans cases?