Facts so dangerous and beliefs so bizarre
Janice Turner on the closing down of the Tavistock Gender Identity clinic:
Writing on this topic, I’ve often encountered facts so dangerous and beliefs so bizarre, so beyond science or reason, it’s been hard to convey their existence.
Listen, you say, British doctors are prescribing a drug used to chemically castrate rapists to halt puberty in children as young as 11. The drug isn’t even approved for child gender dysphoria. It reduces growth and bone density, sterilises and kills future libido. And, get this, we don’t know what it does to teenagers’ developing brains, or even if it works and they become happy, fulfilled trans adults. Because there’s no data, no long-term research.
Well when you put it like that…
And not only is that happening; people who say it’s a bad idea are compared to or just outright labeled Nazis.
This week has revealed the power of sunlight when shone into dark places. There would be no Cass report if Keira Bell, who regretted her hasty transition when the gender identity development service (GIDS) at the Tavistock put her on blockers at 16 after just three appointments, hadn’t launched a judicial review. In the High Court, I heard incredulity in judges’ voices.
Several years of incredulity now.
I still struggle to grasp why GIDS abhors research. If it cared about dysphoric children wouldn’t it want the best outcomes? If it had faith in its medical pathway, surely it wouldn’t mind testing its efficacy? Isn’t free and open discussion among fellow professionals the best way to improve treatment?
Yet GIDS clinicians who worried that hormones were prescribed too quickly, or to kids who’d simply turn out gay, were vilified, accused of transphobia, forced to conduct any thoughtful, gently questioning therapy in secret. Whistleblowers such as Marcus and Susan Evans were discredited, internal reports such as Dr David Bell’s were suppressed, while staff were blocked from contacting Sonia Appleby, the GIDS head of safeguarding, about their concerns for vulnerable patients.
It sounds more like a cult than a medical clinic. But then it always has, hasn’t it – everything about it is more like a cult than anything else. It’s not like politics or social justice or lesbian and gay rights or science or medicine or psychology or anything along those lines – instead it’s like Aum Shinrikyo or Jonestown or witch-hunting cults. Secretive, doctrinaire, authoritarian, arbitrary…everything you don’t want in a putative medical clinic treating unhappy teenagers.
Not too long ago I compared genderists’ alarmingly incurious approach to that of astrology, wondering why astrologers don’t conduct research into the effects of newly discovered objects within our Solar System, as well as the thousands of exoplanets discovered in other solar systems, on the accuracy of their horoscopes. Surely they would want to improve their performance; it would be a selling point! Never mind that that would entail a hypothesis for why and how the relative positions of celestial bodies to each other and to the Earth has any effect on human personality traits and behaviour, based on their geometry at our time of birth. (I was assigned Aquarius at birth.) Never mind that astrology was invented and developed by cultures that didn’t know that the Earth was a planet, the Sun was a star, and without any at all of the true nature of galaxies. None of this stopped astrologers from coming up with elaborate claims about the “influence” of these bright lights in the heavens on our mundane existence. They held official positions and were called upon to make predictions on the lives of rulers and the course of empire. Why let a slight lack of rigour and an incomplete understanding of the theoretical underpinnings get in the way of a good gig? Gold is gold. They must have been on to something. After all, they’re still at it. Hepatomancers can only look on in envy: no newspapers have columns devoted to predictions of the future based upon reading the animal entrails. No, our ritual practices are more elaborate and diabolical. We create the future and sacrifice children at the same time.
Did GIDS ever have an actual definition of “gender” or “gender identity” or any theory regarding its origins and workings? Any way of distinguishing it from “personality?” Any method to choose between children who were “actually” trans (whatever that might mean) from those who were dysphoric for other reasons? If most children desisted, what were they desisting from? And what of those were immediately medicalized through pharmeceutical intervention, who would have grown out of it, but who were denied any opportunity to desist? How do the claims of “gender identity” differ from those of reincarnation, demonic possesion, witchcraft, and astrology? If there is no working hypothesis of gender identity’s cause and origin, if there is no physiological basis for its existence and nature, how can you even start to treat it? What’s the rational behind injecting chemicals and carving flesh if you have no idea about the connection between the posited “identity” and the body you’re so ready to modify and mutilate? I would think a thorough investigation of the exact nature and material substrate of “gender identity” would be in order before we start breaking out the off-label medications and sharp knives to sacrifice children in an effort to propitiate it. There seems to be a mighty rush to give primacy to a mental phenomena which very well may not exist at all. Call me simple, but wouldn’t it be good to know what precisely it is we’re trying to conform these bodies to before we start lopping bits of them off? But then there’s the irresistable temptation of a guaranteed market with repeat business; a few “consultations” and voila: customers for life. Why let a little unfinished theorizing and tedious book-keeping get in the way of a
good giglifesaving therapy and essential medical treatment? Gold is gold.The Genderists have successfully made trans claims isomorphic with political identity. This is Not Good, as political affiliation currently fills the psycho-social role that religion did–in the 13th century. To suggest that the group should slow down just is to pronounce heresy. Never mind doubting the truth of group doctrine and dogma.
Which brings to mind another analogy: trans dogma as alchemy. They are searching for ways to take the base metal they’re born as (AM/FAB) and turn it into the noble gold of the QUILTBAG.
It’s not alchemy, it’s element-affirming care! That lump of metal assigned lead at birth was always in fact gold. Being gold has nothing to do with vulgar physical or chemical properties such as proton number. TGIG!