Protest being organised outside the UK Green Party Conference from 6th-8th September at Manchester Central.
It’s being organised by Supporters of the Green Women’s Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights (GWD), many of whom have been suspended or expelled from the Party.
Dr. Hilary Cass has published an article in the The British Journal of Psychiatry, called “Gender identity services for children and young people: navigating uncertainty through communication, collaboration and care.”
Thank you, Mostly Cloudy, at comment 2, for the link to the piece by Dr. Cass. It made for very interesting, and sobering, reading. How many thousands of young women have been turned prematurely, by the ideological and unprecedented rush to treatment (a treatment without any evidence of efficacy, and with dangerous effects), into old women? Old women with atrophied and/or surgically removed reproductive organs, damaged hearts, fragile bones? Destroyed forearms and severely damaged urinary tracts? Ugly mastectomy scars? It’s heartbreaking when any one of those things happen to a woman unavoidably, due to injury or cancer; but all of them, without any indication of a life-threatening illness, to one previously healthy teenager? How did the medical profession fall so easily into routine horror?
Trump doesn’t understand gender ideology issues, but once again I find a Republican making more sense on the issue than the left-wing publication reporting on it.
“The transgender thing is an incredible thing,” said a slouching, low-energy Trump. “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child, and you know many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’”
But schools in the US are allowing children to pretend to be the opposite sex and adopt new names, and some places have laws that the schools are forbidden to tell the parents. And there are many detransitioners who have expressed anger at how they were pushed into the transition process; there are lawsuits in progress.
A piece in the Guardian about the BMA rejecting the Cass report has a quote from Dr. Jacky Davis about the lack of rational reasoning behind the rejection.
[Davis] also claims in her piece that those driving the union’s “anti-Cass” policy “are sincere in their beliefs [but] have no hard evidence for their opposition”
Belief without evidence pretty much sums up the entire trans stance: it’s a matter of faith; you just have to believe. The BMA council responded to Davis by taking a leaf straight from the TRA playbook.
We are not aware of any bullying complaints from Dr Davis or supporters of her position through BMA channels or processes.
“This is in contrast to the frankly abhorrent transphobic and homophobic abuse directed at BMA members and staff on social media in response to our work on the Cass review.
“I cleaned up their container because it was choked with silk. They seemed kind of sulky afterwards, but look, clean soil, and I propped up a clam shell to give them a nice shelter. What did they do? They coated everything with silk! I can’t even see into their hiding space because the silk is nearly opaque!”
If ever there was doubt over whether virtue signalling was a thing… Mustn’t offend the gender feels of a spider!
I came across this review in Inverse magazine about a Netflix movie called Uglies. The focus of the review is how this is a 2014-style movie that came out ten years too late, for reasons I don’t understand. Apparently there was a YA (“young adult fiction”) dystopian craze ten years ago?
The movie features a dystopian society in which all citizens are required at 16 to undergo cosmetic surgery to become “Pretty”, after which they move to City, an idyllic community where nothing goes wrong and everyone is happy. The central teen character starts questioning the merits of being Pretty, and the motivations of Dr Cable, the person in charge of the project. She flees and joins a resistance group that has discovered the surgery is more than cosmetic: it affects the brain, making people more docile and less able to think for themselves.
The reviewer thinks the story line is ambiguous enough that people can make of it what they wish, but it screams “transgender ideology” to me. This is enhanced by the fact that Dr Cable is portrayed by Laverne Cox, a well-known trans-identified male actor. The review notes as much:
It’s a great villainous scheme within the story, but from the outside looking in, it’s hard for it not to feel icky: Laverne Cox, a trans woman, is playing the role of an evil mastermind brainwashing children into getting life-changing surgeries without them knowing the true side effects. It doesn’t take that much of a leap to turn this beautiful supervillain into a right-wing talking point.
Perhaps it could be a right-wing talking point, but surely it’s a point for anyone opposed to unnecessary cosmetic surgery done to meet societal demands rather than medical needs, and that’s not unique to one side of the political spectrum.
How did the medical profession fall so easily into routine horror?
I think the better question is how we forgot that the medical profession has always been horrific. Its history is an endless litany of horrors inflicted on patients by clinicians both benevolent and malevolent. Technological advancement by applied atrocity has been the rule and also the reason for the field’s rapid progress.
Here’s a piece at The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel, Elon Musk has Reached a New Low, about Musk “using Twitter as a political tool to promote extreme right-wing agendas and to punish what he calls brain-poisoned liberals.” I agree with Warzel on the premise.
As we lurch closer to Election Day, it’s easy to feel as if we’ve all entered the Great Clenching—a national moment of assuming the crash-landing position and bracing for impact.
And it’s with clenched teeth that I read articles such as these, bracing for the moment when the author inevitably cites “transphobia” among the charges of right-wing extremism. I’m so used to seeing otherwise good articles like these ruined by the inclusion, like a loud, stinky belch in the middle of a hymn, that I was very suprised when my eyes reached the bottom of the page, no belch of “transphobia” within it. I had to double-check that I hadn’t missed anything by searching the page for “trans” and “gender” — zero matches found.
I like to think this is a sign of change, that a journalist can write an entire piece about Musk’s unhinged, right wing Twitter behaviour, and not once mention the most public change he’s made to Twitter’s policy, its permission of gender critical speech.
Protest being organised outside the UK Green Party Conference from 6th-8th September at Manchester Central.
It’s being organised by Supporters of the Green Women’s Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights (GWD), many of whom have been suspended or expelled from the Party.
https://greenwomensdeclaration.uk/women-to-protest-discrimination-outside-green-party-autumn-conference/
Dr. Hilary Cass has published an article in the The British Journal of Psychiatry, called “Gender identity services for children and young people: navigating uncertainty through communication, collaboration and care.”
Link is here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/gender-identity-services-for-children-and-young-people-navigating-uncertainty-through-communication-collaboration-and-care/D0F6B23F37C3D82B38C2470DF65854C9
Thank you, Mostly Cloudy, at comment 2, for the link to the piece by Dr. Cass. It made for very interesting, and sobering, reading. How many thousands of young women have been turned prematurely, by the ideological and unprecedented rush to treatment (a treatment without any evidence of efficacy, and with dangerous effects), into old women? Old women with atrophied and/or surgically removed reproductive organs, damaged hearts, fragile bones? Destroyed forearms and severely damaged urinary tracts? Ugly mastectomy scars? It’s heartbreaking when any one of those things happen to a woman unavoidably, due to injury or cancer; but all of them, without any indication of a life-threatening illness, to one previously healthy teenager? How did the medical profession fall so easily into routine horror?
Trump doesn’t understand gender ideology issues, but once again I find a Republican making more sense on the issue than the left-wing publication reporting on it.
Daily Kos: Trump’s team can’t defend his it about schools and surgeries
But schools in the US are allowing children to pretend to be the opposite sex and adopt new names, and some places have laws that the schools are forbidden to tell the parents. And there are many detransitioners who have expressed anger at how they were pushed into the transition process; there are lawsuits in progress.
A piece in the Guardian about the BMA rejecting the Cass report has a quote from Dr. Jacky Davis about the lack of rational reasoning behind the rejection.
Belief without evidence pretty much sums up the entire trans stance: it’s a matter of faith; you just have to believe. The BMA council responded to Davis by taking a leaf straight from the TRA playbook.
All criticism is transphobia!
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/sep/07/bma-stance-on-cass-review-of-transgender-care-has-damaged-its-reputation
A post from PZM:
“I cleaned up their container because it was choked with silk. They seemed kind of sulky afterwards, but look, clean soil, and I propped up a clam shell to give them a nice shelter. What did they do? They coated everything with silk! I can’t even see into their hiding space because the silk is nearly opaque!”
If ever there was doubt over whether virtue signalling was a thing… Mustn’t offend the gender feels of a spider!
Blocked and Reported Episode #228: “Tranorexia” (with Hadley Freeman) is out this week… I know Ophelia reposts her frequently, so there you go…
I came across this review in Inverse magazine about a Netflix movie called Uglies. The focus of the review is how this is a 2014-style movie that came out ten years too late, for reasons I don’t understand. Apparently there was a YA (“young adult fiction”) dystopian craze ten years ago?
The movie features a dystopian society in which all citizens are required at 16 to undergo cosmetic surgery to become “Pretty”, after which they move to City, an idyllic community where nothing goes wrong and everyone is happy. The central teen character starts questioning the merits of being Pretty, and the motivations of Dr Cable, the person in charge of the project. She flees and joins a resistance group that has discovered the surgery is more than cosmetic: it affects the brain, making people more docile and less able to think for themselves.
The reviewer thinks the story line is ambiguous enough that people can make of it what they wish, but it screams “transgender ideology” to me. This is enhanced by the fact that Dr Cable is portrayed by Laverne Cox, a well-known trans-identified male actor. The review notes as much:
Perhaps it could be a right-wing talking point, but surely it’s a point for anyone opposed to unnecessary cosmetic surgery done to meet societal demands rather than medical needs, and that’s not unique to one side of the political spectrum.
[…] a comment by Sackbut at Miscellany […]
tigger:
I think the better question is how we forgot that the medical profession has always been horrific. Its history is an endless litany of horrors inflicted on patients by clinicians both benevolent and malevolent. Technological advancement by applied atrocity has been the rule and also the reason for the field’s rapid progress.
Here’s a piece at The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel, Elon Musk has Reached a New Low, about Musk “using Twitter as a political tool to promote extreme right-wing agendas and to punish what he calls brain-poisoned liberals.” I agree with Warzel on the premise.
And it’s with clenched teeth that I read articles such as these, bracing for the moment when the author inevitably cites “transphobia” among the charges of right-wing extremism. I’m so used to seeing otherwise good articles like these ruined by the inclusion, like a loud, stinky belch in the middle of a hymn, that I was very suprised when my eyes reached the bottom of the page, no belch of “transphobia” within it. I had to double-check that I hadn’t missed anything by searching the page for “trans” and “gender” — zero matches found.
I like to think this is a sign of change, that a journalist can write an entire piece about Musk’s unhinged, right wing Twitter behaviour, and not once mention the most public change he’s made to Twitter’s policy, its permission of gender critical speech.
Bravo, Charlie.