Often contending with other difficulties
Hannah Barnes in The New Statesman:
[Hannah Barnes is associate editor of the New Statesman and author of “Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children” (Swift)]
The report confirms that the majority of children referred to Gids had complex needs, and alongside their gender-related distress were often contending with other difficulties: anxiety, depression, eating disorder and autism were all over-represented when compared with what you would see in the general children’s population.
It also vindicates what so many former Gids staff have been saying for years: that there was no consistency in its clinical approach; that some assessments – prior to referral for puberty blockers – could be just one or two sessions long; that there was wide variation between clinicians; that “sexuality was not consistently discussed”; that assessments lacked structure; and that “there was a lack of evidence of professional curiosity” as to how a child’s specific circumstances may impact on their gender identity and decisions.
…
Cass describes how several staff in adult gender clinics have “contacted the Review in confidence with concerns about their experiences working in adult gender services”. These clinicians, from NHS gender clinics across the country, describe how a large proportion of patients have “various combinations of confusion about sexuality, psychosis, neurodevelopmental disorders, trauma and deprivation… and a range of other undiagnosed conditions”, yet there was an expectation that they would be started on hormones by their second appointment.
It’s very odd, isn’t it. Wouldn’t you think all these other issues would prompt the medics to be very cautious about prescribing puberty blockers as opposed to prompting them to rush to do so?
Perhaps the most shameful thing detailed in the final Cass review is the revelation that NHS adult gender services – paid for by the tax-payer – have refused to cooperate in sharing data that would improve the evidence base for this group of people. The review had aimed to track what happened to the 9,000 young people who had gone through Gids, with the government even changing the law to help researchers do this. But the gender clinics refused to help. Follow-up is standard practice in the NHS, Cass explains, but “has not been the case for gender-questioning children and young people”. Finding out how thousands of young people had fared after receiving different help represented “a unique opportunity” to provide more evidence to help gender-questioning young people and their families make informed decisions about what might be the right treatment pathway for them.
It is baffling that those working in services purportedly aiming to help these same people have refused to help make their care better, safer and more evidence-based. “I don’t understand the reasons why they wouldn’t cooperate,” Cass told me. Some of the clinics raised issues about ethics – yet the research design had been granted official ethical approval; others raised issues about it requiring extra resources, but NHS England said it would pay for it. “So, it is mystifying to me,” Cass said. “Particularly when you would expect that they would be curious about outcomes for the patient cohort going through, and if they are confident in the management approach, they would want to be able to demonstrate that.”
It has a kind of Jonestown feel to it – that they were all addled by the same bizarre atmosphere as each other, and all bumbled over the same cliff.
Staff from Gids have been making these points for almost a decade. Two decades if you go back to the very first whistle-blower who raised concerns before puberty blockers were given to under 16s. Some in the media have amplified those concerns, too, as have women’s rights activists, former Gids service users, and parents. Those who have spoken out should be applauded. But, we should be asking the question: where has everyone else been?
What about all the others who have not spoken out? Those who were told what was going on, who saw what was going on, and did nothing. The NHS, the government and political classes, the media.
Jonestown is everywhere?
I don’t have anything more intelligent to offer. I’ve never understood the power of this ridiculous ideology. I’ve never understood why so many formerly intelligent people rushed to sign up to it and demonize their friends who said no.
I’m with you on the never understanding part. At least not in the sense of being able to imagine myself as the other person and feel the ideology’s persuasiveness. I can understand how it works as a sociological phenomenon, but for the life of me, I can’t empathize with the belief. It’s just so obviously insane, so internally inconsistent, so sexist, so homophobic, so evil that my mind halts. It’s like running into a mental wall.
Many years ago —probably in the early 00s — I attended an atheist convention which had a trans-identified male as speaker. He was speaking, of course, on trans identities and probably (I no longer specifically recall) connecting opposition to the Religious Right. “Ask me anything” he said. “Here in Q & A or later during the convention. I’m here to help people understand.”
The general attitude of the audience was very respectful. I don’t recollect any overt skepticism or question that wasn’t softball. And then I ended up sitting next to him for lunch (or maybe dinner.) I turned.
“Of course you’re a woman,” I reassured him. “Why would anyone doubt that? Do they really?”
It just seemed so obvious. I wasn’t humoring him, or at least I wasn’t aware of it. The venue, the nature of the convention, my feelings of connection to the other attendees, the respect I had for the other speakers, and of course the usual good-natured people-pleasing extroverted persona my introverted self always assumed like a glove at such functions — all conspired to slip me right in to “nothing unusual to this claim, it’s no different than being gay” territory.
I’d met a trans person. A transwoman who was, in every important respect, just another woman like me. Cool.. I didn’t think any deeper than that. It was such an easy acceptance that I don’t even remember what his arguments were — at an atheist convention, where my mind was always sharp on the lookout for new and intriguing ways to counter complicated apologetics.
Years passed, the ideology grew more popular, came into my and something must have niggled at me. I don’t remember what that was, either. I have a tendency to do that — immediately accept something that sounds nice and plausible on the surface and then slowly start questioning later on. I can usually understand the persuasiveness of almost anything, for there’s usually something nice and plausible waving around.
I’m wondering right now if I was initially bothered by the extreme hostility towards the people who didn’t accept gender ideology. A gender critical response which wasn’t couched in God Hates Fags language would of course also seem plausible — so where was the disproportionate ANGER against it coming from? I must be missing something important, better read what the bigots are saying … and now I’m actually thinking things through. Could have been.
You’d think they’d make sure there actually was such a thing as a “gender identity” before offering to “develop” it, “treat” it, or follow its dictates with regards to the bodies it allegedly inhabits. Why do some people claim to have such an identity, while others do not? Why are most people’s identities “aligned” with their sex, while others are not? What causes this supposed “misalignment”? How is the identity’s presence and nature determined, apart from patient self-diagnosis? How do you screen out people who don’t require your services, and/or those who will not benefit from them? Surely clinicians dealing with this phenomenon would want fundamental questions like this answered before taking any steps, drastic or otherwise, that involve any kind of medical intervention, hormonal, pharmaceutical, or surgical.
Quite apart from practical considerations like those outlined above, what about questions around the origin and evolution of “gender identities”? This is specifically about gender, not sex, so clown fish are not what we’re asking about. We’ve been told that such identities have nothing to do with gametes, so let’s take them at their word, and rule them out from the start. What is your evidence of gender identity outside of the genus Homo? What other species exhibit such an entity, and how does one tell? What adaptive advantages might it confer? These and a host of other interesting questions would make the concept of “gender identity” a potentially fruitful field of study, if such a thing actually existed. But the “knowledge” which its adherents claim to possess smacks more of fan fiction, literary criticism, or theology than anything real or tangible. Belief and obedience are held in higher esteem than curiosity and critical thinking. Like astrology’s unquestioningly confident acceptance of the existence and import of the supposedly contending influence and power of inherently meaningless alignments of planets against the backdrop of completely incidental “constellations” (ascribed to them by ancients who had no idea at all that “planets” were worlds like the Earth, and that “stars” were distant Suns like our own), gender ideology takes the existence and primacy of “gender identities” as foundational and axiomatic, an unreasoned, unjustified, and unquestioned faith position, rather than the end result of hard work and research to confirm an hypothesis.
Neither do I. Not only its power to attract and maintain followers (given the manifest lunacy and contradictions it accepts with a straight face), but also the power and influence it has managed to acquire and wield. This unprecedented level of unaccountable, behind the scenes machinations have allowed it to enact huge parts of its agenda without review or oversight, as well given it the ability to shield itself from criticism, as well as recruit others to isolate, circumvent, and punish anyone it judges to be a critics or opponents. It might pass itself off as scientific, but with regards to power, it certainly behaves much more like religion, from the time when religion had more leverage than it does now. That supposed sceptics, secularists, humanists, progressives, and scientists, all of whom seem to know better in other areas, can fall prey to this unevidenced patchwork of bullshit continues to astound and dismay. For a field in which there’s no there there, genderism has a disturbingly large population of supporters, and an unfortunately well-equipped and active standing army.
I may have to retract my claim that for the TRAs belief is someone else’s job. It’s probably more like everything remotely problematic is somebody else’s job. If you’ve been assured that the right people “have this” then it would be presumptuous and downright rude to enquire further. Demarcation must be respected! It’s not so much that the TRAs have invented a Somebody Else’s Problem field but they’ve certainly perfected it.
A year or two ago I was “unfriended” by a person to whom I have given a great deal of help over the years. Apparently, I didn’t accept her (sorry) their “identity”. I thought I had always accepted her as a person, but the problem was that she had decided that “she” must really be “they”. Or do I mean them? Whatever. When I pointed out (pursuing the discussion) that she dammit they could have one “identity” today and another “identity” tomorrow just because they felt like it they (bugger) she said “Well, what’s wrong with that?”
A problem with identity is deciding what it means. I cannot believe that merely being white or male is “who” I am, because mere scientifically verifiable facts are about what, not who. “I” means the one who is “here”, where no one else can possibly be, the one who occupies “this” space, not your space or some other space. “Here” can only mean the place in the universe occupied by “me”, so anywhere else is “there”. Anything else that passes for “identity” in a person’s mind is either science or a social construct. I know this because there seems no shortage of people who are ready to tell me what my identity is. Of course they are, because they want to be able to deal with the fact of my existence in their world. On the other hand, “what” I am is obviously important, and has to be accepted. And yet the “what” conveys all sorts of constructs (associations) to other people which may not actually be true. Nevertheless, although scientifically verifiable facts are not “who” I am, they are certainly “what” I am, and I must accept them, otherwise how can I hope to be a whole person living in a physical universe? So the conflict here is between the scientific reality and the needs of other people. Perhaps my unfriend wants to change the “what” to become a “better” (more acceptable) who. Very sad if so.
The problem involved in all this is the religious belief that “I” am mind and not body, that the spirit and the flesh can be in conflict, as saith the sainted Paul (though I sometimes think he gets “spirit” and “flesh” the wrong way round). But mind is body, obviously, just as brain is body and gut is body and feeling is body… The one who is “here” is the whole person, but is not a social category. But “identifying with” is social, it’s becoming a “what”, it isn’t just being “who”. And “identifying with” is not the mere accepting of scientifically verifiable facts but the desire to be accepted as a “what” according to one’s understanding of those perceived (personally) to be more influential. Maybe R D Laing was right, and it is society that makes us ill.
If this all sounds confused, it’s because it is, and I am. But there is a real problem here about how we perceive ourselves, about being persons and bodies and social entities. Maybe this is what makes us prey to bad philosophy and manipulation.
Not only its power to attract and maintain followers (given the manifest lunacy and contradictions it accepts with a straight face), but also the power and influence it has managed to acquire and wield. This unprecedented level of unaccountable, behind the scenes machinations have allowed it to enact huge parts of its agenda without review or oversight, as well given it the ability to shield itself from criticism, as well as recruit others to isolate, circumvent, and punish anyone it judges to be a critics or opponents. It might pass itself off as scientific, but with regards to power, it certainly behaves much more like religion, from the time when religion had more leverage than it does now.
It’s a very powerful movement (the current US President signed a proclamation pledging to lift up ” the lives and voices of transgender people” *) yet, the current Anglo-American TRA movement presents itself as a beleaguered, weak movement.
It also presents itself as a left-wing movement not only compatible with but integral to the gay rights movement and feminism – note the endless lectures to feminists to make their “feminism trans-inclusive”.
https://www.hrc.org/resources/5-things-to-know-to-make-your-feminism-trans-inclusive
The TRA movement is an elephant pretending to be a field mouse.
* https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/03/29/a-proclamation-on-transgender-day-of-visibility-2024/
Good comment from detrans male Ray Alex Williams here:
Projection is born from insecurity. The Dutch protocol has been exposed as baseless, people are starting to wake up, and gender ideologues feel cognitive dissonance so they rely on emotive language because they’re incapable of any substantive critique beyond crying “transphobia.”
https://twitter.com/RayAlexWilliams/status/1779290733205229688#m
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