This isn’t how it’s done:

Critical thinking and open debate are pillars of scientific and medical research. Yet experienced professionals are increasingly scared to openly discuss their views on the treatment of children questioning their gender identity. This was the conclusion drawn by Hilary Cass in her review of gender identity services for children this week, which warned that a toxic debate had resulted in a culture of fear.

Why are the professionals scared? Why is the debate toxic? Why is there a culture of fear?

We all know. We’ve been watching it for years. It’s because of the staggering level of bullying that the rah-rah-trans side goes in for.

Her conclusion was echoed by doctors, academic researchers and scientists, who have said this climate has had a chilling effect on research in an area that is in desperate need of better evidence.

Some said they had been deterred from pursuing what they believed to be crucial studies, saying that merely entering the arena would put their reputation at risk. Others spoke of abuse on social media, academic conferences being shut down, biases in publishing and the personal cost of speaking out.

It’s another loop of futility. The area desperately needs better evidence but can’t get it because they will be fiercely punished if they try, so the area needs better evidence even more desperately, and on the cycle goes. The area was founded on nonsense and is enforced by inquisitors, so the nonsense keeps getting more nonsensical and the inquisitors keep getting more ferocious and dishonest.

Another senior researcher in endocrinology, who wished to remain anonymous, said medical professionals had resorted to sharing concerns and views on anonymous WhatsApp groups.

“The bad-mouthing and the social media destruction of people’s reputation and careers is so damning,” the academic said. “Professional people are worried about how they will be characterised on social media and cannot express dissent without it resulting in very aggressive, inappropriate behaviours. It’s causing people to stop talking and just move away from it and not get involved.”

She added: “This isn’t how good scientific debate happens – it happens when people can talk honestly and without fear.”

So the debate will continue to get worse and worse and worse, and thus more ferociously enforced, and thus worse again, rinse and repeat.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on 14 when he knew.

The BBC has gotten so used to the mantra that (clap) trans (clap) kids (clap) are (clap) who they say they are (clap clap clap) that they can’t shake it even when reporting on a story about how the medicine actually doesn’t say that.

Imagine if a report came out that said that it appeared that oncologists were over-prescribing chemotherapy, and that the medical evidence strongly shows that it’s not appropriate in many cases in which it’s being used.

Would the BBC rush to interview cancer patients for their “opinions” on the medicine? No doubt some patients would have opinions (“I had chemo, and I think it saved my life!”), but would they be newsworthy? Would they be relevant to a story about what the medical practice should be?

When mainstream media outlets report on anti-vaxxers, they usually make an effort to draw the contrast. It’s not “immunologists and virologists and public health experts say the COVID vaccines are safe and effective, but American football star Aaron Rodgers says otherwise, so who can say?”

The Beeb rushes to chat with a “trans man” about how hurty it all is.

Trans young people say they feel “disappointed” and “ignored” by the Cass Review into gender care.

No, really??!

They’ve been taught to feel that, Beeb. They’ve been taught by you among others. You’re teaching more people by writing this stupid story.

Sean Donovan was 14 when he knew he had gender dysphoria, but was not able to access puberty blockers which he said could have saved him “so much trauma”.

Or could have wrecked “his” life.

The review recommended a “holistic assessment” of a child’s needs, including “screening for neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder, and a mental health assessment”. Mr Donovan said none of this would have helped him, he just needed transition support.

And of course Mr Donovan knows that with absolute certainty and there is no way “he” could be wrong about any or all of it.

Another win for magic gender:

The German parliament has passed a law making it easier for citizens and residents to legally change gender. It’s also introducing hefty fines – in specific circumstances – for disclosing someone’s prior registered name or gender without consent.

Hefty fines for mentioning someone’s actual sex? Really? So men can force themselves on, say, women’s hostels or refuges or rape crisis centers and no one is allowed to “disclose” the fact that he’s a man?

Previously, changing your registered gender required a doctor’s certificate and the approval of a family court. Now over-18s can change to male, female or diverse, a third gender option that already exists under German law…The intentional and harmful disclosure of someone’s prior name or legal gender could attract a fine of up to €10,000.

Despite the fact that women often need to know who is a man and who isn’t. Yawn; women don’t matter.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “We show respect to trans, intersex and non-binary people – without taking anything away from others. This is how we continue to drive the modernisation of our country. This includes recognising realities of life and making them possible by law.”

Recognizing what “realities of life”? Not the reality that men are not women, for one.

Nyke Slawik, from the Greens – who is transgender – said it was a “first step” towards a society which allows self-determination for trans people.

But we can’t have that kind of “self-determination.” It’s not possible. We can’t self-determine ourselves into raccoons or planets or airports or an endless list of things we’re not. We can’t make ourselves into reptiles or fruits or furniture. Our scope for self-determination is sharply limited. Sentimental airy glurge about unlimited “self-determination” is infantilizing. Knock it off.

Trans ideologues refused to show their evidence.

The NHS’s most senior adviser on transgender health refused to share data about his clinic’s patients with the Cass Review. Dr Hilary Cass said efforts to track the journeys of around 9,000 children who went on to be seen by adult services were “thwarted” by the refusal of clinics to provide evidence.

Researchers were trying to establish the long-term consequences of medical interventions by seeking data from adult clinics, which take patients from the age of 16. Six of the seven clinics which run adult gender services refused to comply with the request.

Thus revealing themselves to be not “clinics” at all but political headquarters. Transitude is all in the head, so evidence is beside the point; all that matters is loyalty, determination, omertà.

They include the Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health, one of the leading centres in the country. Dr Derek Glidden, its clinical director, refused to comply despite being NHS England’s gender dysphoria national speciality adviser.

He chairs the NHS England Clinical Reference Group on gender dysphoria, while another of its five members, Dr Laura Charlton, the clinical lead at Leeds Gender Identity Clinic, also refused to participate in the research.

Why would they refuse to share data? Why would they handicap the research?

My guess is because at bottom they don’t see it as a matter of research but as a political movement. If trans is political rather than medical then data and research are beside the point; loyalty and commitment are all.

Labour Quislings stand by their hatred of women:

Angela Rayner has declined to apologise for endorsing a charter describing feminist organisations that raised fears about the treatment of trans children as “hate groups”.

When Ms Rayner stood to be the deputy Labour leader in 2020, she backed a trans rights charter that described bodies including Women’s Place UK, which campaigns for single-sex rape refuges for women, as “trans-exclusionist hate groups”.

In other words, prominent Labour woman backed a charter of “rights” for men who pretend to be women while she called women who defend women’s rights “hate groups.” In other other words she’s a contemptible traitor to women.

High-profile Labour figures have previously made remarks endorsing the views of trans activists, including Sir Keir Starmer, the party leader, who in 2022 said that “trans women are women”.

And he’s not taking it back now.

Two years ago he said: “A woman is a female adult, and, in addition to that, trans women are women, and that is not just my view, that is actually the law.”

On Wednesday, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said he had been wrong to say in the past that “trans women are women, get over it”.

Labour is full of assholes, get over it.

The charter signed by Ms Rayner called on signatories to “organise and fight against transphobic organisations such as Woman’s Place UK, LGB Alliance and other trans-exclusionist hate groups”.

In short women are politically homeless. We have to unplug feminism and restart it, and it’s going to take years.

The Guardian thinks it needs to inform us that

CEO of female-only app would not address trans woman as ‘Ms’, Sydney court hears

That’s because he’s a man, Guardian. What’s your point? (I mean that in the largest possible sense, as well as the ordinary one.)

A court has heard that the founder and CEO of a women-only social media app will not address a transgender woman as “Ms”, saying “I don’t think it’s kind to expect a woman to see a man as a woman”.

It’s not “kind” and it’s also not reasonable.

[Tickle’s counsel, Georgina Costello KC] asked Grover if she would “call her Ms Tickle in real life?”

“No,” Grover answered. When asked if that was kind, Grover said: “I don’t think that it’s kind to expect a woman to see a man as a woman.”

What does that even have to do with anything? They’re in a courtroom, not nursery school. Since when are adults supposed to be showily dramatically “kind” to each other? Or rather since when are female adults supposed to be showily dramatically “kind” to men who claim to be women? How about men being kind to women for a change?

As part of her argument, Costello described a transgender woman who had a female birth certificate, hormone therapy, breasts, gender affirmation surgery, wore makeup and women’s clothes, had a woman’s hairstyle and used women’s facilities.

“I suggest to you that that is a woman in our society,” said Costello.

Oh ffs. I could describe a giraffe that had a female birth certificate, hormone therapy, breasts, gender affirmation surgery, wore makeup and women’s clothes, had a woman’s hairstyle and used specially-made women’s facilities. None of that would make the giraffe a woman. This stuff is so childish. Playing dressup does not make you the thing you dress up as. It’s great fun to pretend it does when you’re a child, but doing that as an adult is a whole different kettle of giraffes. We used to know this. Really: we did.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Send us your best.

In reality, the problem has never been disagreement about how to care for trans children and young people.

Bullshit. If you can’t define it, how do you treat it? In reality, the problem has been in immediately deciding children with any degree of dysphoria are “trans,” desistance and detransitioners be damned. How do you decide who qualifies as “trans”? What’s the test? What are the criteria? Desistance and detransition are huge red flags showing that somebody has got it wrong. They should be a valuable source of refinement and calibration of “trans” diagnoses, not shameful failures to be swept aside and demonized. If someone “wasn’t really trans to start with,” how do you decide who is?

Quite apart from the determination of the correct target group of patients, the “treatment” itself is flawed and problematic. Puberty blockers are not a “pause button” that allows children or youth to “make up their minds.” Given the evidence of stunted cognitive development, puberty blockers literally prevent their minds from being made. There is no “wrong” puberty, just the one and only one your body has been aiming for since conception. If you miss the train, or fail to hit the mark, there is no other puberty available to you. These children can never have a “choice” of which puberty they will have; it’s one per customer, take it or remain unfinished and malformed. Treating puberty as a preventable disease, or like a flavour of ice cream, is not a very good idea. The body’s gonna do what the body’s gonna do. Interfering with that (without an actual disease or disorder being present) is not going to end well. Selling someone an impossible fantasy is not “care.” Better a difficult truth than an easy lie. So yes, there’s always been disagreement, because your idea of “care” is a ticket to life-long body horror.

Another Guardian piece today from the same reporter, Robyn Vinter:

Trans children in England worse off now than four years ago, says psychologist

As if it’s just settled fact that there are “trans children.”

Transgender children are being left in a “far worse position” than before the Cass report, with a service that is “going backwards instead of forwards”, according to a psychologist who has set up a private gender service.

Dr Aiden Kelly, a clinical psychologist specialising in gender who was part of the team at the Tavistock and Portman NHS mental health trust’s gender identity development services (Gids), said he was “very, very worried” about the NHS’s ability to deliver a suitable gender service based on the findings of the Cass review.

I wonder if this reporter has an agenda at all.

“We’re in a far worse position than we were four years ago,” he said. “The Cass review and NHS England’s policy updates, and the kind of measures and decisions they’ve made in terms of what to do with services, how to set up services – or not, as the case may be – means we’re in a far worse position.”

Got that? Should she have said it a third time?

Kelly, who now runs an independent gender service, Gender Plus, with some former colleagues, said there was an “unjustifiable” level of caution from the Cass report that did not match his experience in the service and that poor outcomes had been overemphasised, leaving England “out of step” with the rest of the world.

He said: “It’s important to remember that people carrying out this expert review have never worked in gender. The people who actually know the work, and have been doing the work for a long period of time, don’t hold that level of caution and fear.”

Ah yes. And people who work in, say, the tobacco industry don’t hold that level of caution and fear about the health effects of smoking, because their livelihood depends on their not holding it.

The Guardian is distraught.

While the Cass report’s 400 pages will be pored over and debated, one thing is certain – young trans people face an anxious future.

Because of the report’s 400 pages? So without the Cass report young trans people would have faced a happy calm confident future? Because pretending to be the opposite sex and trying to force the world to pretend along with you is such an easy simple fun way to live?

The mother of a 17-year-old trans girl who was a patient at the now-shut Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust said she had initially welcomed Cass’s inquiry, but had been left “disappointed”.

She had believed the Tavistock was “fundamentally not fit for purpose” as a specialist clinic set up to handle a small number of patients, but the “hysterical environment” surrounding the report was leading to young people losing out on healthcare.

This isn’t the Guardian talking, you understand, this is just this one mother, who just happens to think that pretending to be the opposite sex is “healthcare.”

Her daughter’s gender dysphoria diagnosis finally came in 2022, six years after they first saw a clinician. She began puberty blockers a year later.

“Puberty blockers have been really good for her. As she entered puberty, she was really, really dysphoric about her shoulders, her facial hair growing her voice deepening. She was very distressed by it and very sad.”

The woman said the Cass report represented “an agenda from up on high that things need to be more difficult”. “It’s hard enough as a parent without having the entire society or media pointing at transgender people as if they’re some aberration or as if they threaten us.”

So not blocking puberty is an agenda while blocking puberty is just what happens.

Does this useful “the woman” really exist?

Mermaids says what now?

Really? Gosh, I could have sworn…

Absolute, total, shameless lies. Your ex-CEO referred children to the Tavistock gender clinic. Mermaids has repeatedly claimed puberty blockers are reversible, sent out breast binders to girls as young as thirteen and insisted publicly that unless children are affirmed in their trans identities they’ll kill themselves. Your fingerprints are all over the catastrophe of child transition, and those who funded you, campaigned for you and allowed you to embed yourselves in healthcare systems need to be held to account.

I think there’s quite a lot of documentation of that claim.

The Guardian sees fit to publish this brainless glurge from a Trans ActivIst:

Based on the coverage in the UK’s rightwing media, where equality for trans people is most loudly and regularly opposed, you might have been convinced that Hilary Cass agrees with them and them alone…

There’s brainless and then there’s lying. Nobody opposes “equality for trans people.” That’s a ridiculous claim. Trans ideology has nothing to do with equality.

Cass criticises the lack of broader mental health care provision, including treatment for eating disorders. The community agrees, as would anyone who knows the first thing about NHS mental health provision. Cass cites the lack of autism awareness and assessment. Again, the community – well aware and unafraid of our propensity for neurodivergence – agrees. Cass calls for more and more local Gids service provision. Unsurprisingly, the trans community agrees.

So there’s an entity called “the community” and it has but one opinion on everything and Freddy McConnell knows what that opinion is in every instance?

Nonsense. What he means is: “here are the things trans people are supposed to think, and I’m claiming that they all do think exactly those things.” But he can’t know what they all think.

This one mistake might help explain all the mistakes. If you haven’t learned to pay attention to that kind of dopy generalization then trans dogma may seem entirely sensible and reasonable to you.

In reality, the problem has never been disagreement about how to care for trans children and young people. Rather, individuals genuinely motivated to create such services have been effectively sidelined by an overwhelmingly more powerful coalition of politicians, journalists and, indeed, healthcare workers who are motivated by an anti-trans ideology – a need to assert and somehow “prove”, to exclusion of all other possibilities, that trans people like me do not, in fact, exist.

There again – just a crude, dumb, basic mistake. No, nobody is saying that people who call themselves trans “do not exist.” The issue is the ideology they apply to themselves.

Take Dr David Bell, the psychiatrist behind a critical report of the Tavistock centre, and who has welcomed the Cass review. Bell is often presented as a moderate critic of Gids and yet has argued that trans children do not exist in nature but have been invented…

Same mistake all over again.

Giving Cass the benefit of the doubt, perhaps simply stating that trans children and adults exist seemed too basic – but in the clinical and cultural context we’re operating in, it remains vital.

And yet again. Description is not existence; existence is not description.

So why does the Guardian publish a think piece based on such a fatuous misunderstanding or misrepresentation?

Having enough.

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins says she has had “enough” of a “culture of secrecy and ideology” around gender care for children. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she criticised NHS England practitioners, in response to a landmark review into gender care practices.

It is a very weird culture for a medical issue. We’ve been saying that all along. It’s more like a religion than it is like normal medical practice. There are taboos, heretics, inquisitions, expulsions, lies, bullying, slogans, blasphemy laws – none of which you want in a medical issue.

The Cass review said children had been “let down” by a lack of research on the use of puberty blockers. It called for gender services to match the standards of other NHS care.

As opposed to being a special, sacrosanct service all its own.

The paediatrician behind Wednesday’s report, Dr Hilary Cass, said clinicians were also affected by the “toxicity” of public debate around transgender identities. “There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop,” she wrote.

And you know what? It needs to stop everywhere. Healthcare yes, but also education, politics, entertainment, social media – you name it.

Favorite headline of the hour:

Honestly, of all the times for a power outage to force me to take a day off, did it really have to be the day when everyone was talking about the Cass review? How can I possibly catch up?

I can’t, so I’ll just go with what I find amusing or absurd or both.

Like a pronouns fool getting told she’s a pronouns fool.

“I’m not a single woman though, I’m a very special non-binary trans person.”

Sorry! The power went out. Blammo at 5:45 a.m. It’s now 8:45 p.m. – the power blinked back on about 5 minutes ago. Whew. It was getting grim – the light fading, no ability to warm up food, freezing cold. I went out for a little walk, to have something to do and to see if I could sense any progress. There were a lot of City Light trucks lined up and several guys in a hole in the sidewalk – more guys than you would think would fit. I did a broad loop and on the homeward stretch there were four people playing fiddle music on a porch – playing it really well. Cheered me up a good deal. And then finally ping and a light came on and the fridge started up. Fooooood.

Ahhhhhhhhh that makes all the difference.

That’s fine then. That’s how it works. He doesn’t use the term “nigger” on all Black people, just the ones who do something he dislikes. That’s absolutely fine, and very fair and helpful and above all progressive.

What does Desmond in San Francisco say to women who say something he dislikes?

This:

The glorious future looks brighter with every day, wouldn’t you agree?

Scottish DARVO:

A senior SNP politician has accused JK Rowling of wasting police time and attacking Scottish “societal values” by testing new hate crime laws.

Rowling is wasting police time? I’d say it’s the SNP lawmakers who are wasting police time.

Karen Adam, who is convener of Holyrood’s equalities committee, launched a thinly veiled attack on the Harry Potter author in a defence of Humza Yousaf’s controversial legislation, which she hailed as an “incredible example of our commitment to justice”.

It’s incredible all right, but not as an example of any kind of commitment to justice.

On the first day that the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into force, Rowling deliberately “misgendered” a series of high-profile trans women, calling them men and challenging Police Scotland to arrest her.

You mean Rowling called some men “men.” What’s your point?

Writing in her column in The National, a pro-independence newspaper, Ms Adam took aim at “deliberate provocations seen in recent times where individuals had tested the boundaries of the legislation”. She added: “[They] do more than just waste police time, they strike at the very core of our societal values. These actions aren’t just about challenging a legal framework, they question our collective resolve to build a community where hatred finds no home.”

Hatred finds lots of homes in Scotland: hatred of women who know what a man is and won’t shut up is rampant there. Ms Adam is demonstrating it herself.

More on Tickle v Giggle:

The case is the first time alleged gender identity discrimination has been heard by the federal court and goes to the heart of how gender identity – and being a woman – is interpreted.

I can remember when being a woman – the brute fact part of it – didn’t require interpretation. A tree is a tree, a bird is a bird, a woman is a woman. What follows from that is infinitely discussable, but the mere word, not so much.

On Tuesday, federal court justice Robert Bromwich heard Tickle has lived as woman since 2017, has a birth certificate stating that her gender is female, had gender affirmation surgery and “feels in her mind that psychologically she is a woman”.

But what does “has lived as a woman” mean? Especially when it’s a man who claims to have done so? You can pretend to be a woman, you can fantasize being a woman, you can live according to your ideas of how a woman lives, but just plain “has lived as a woman”? The meaning is somewhat opaque. Seeing as how that’s what the case is about, such opaque claims should be avoided.

In her opening remarks, Tickle’s barrister Georgina Costello KC said that “Ms Tickle is a woman” but that “the respondents flatly deny that fact”.

That’s because it isn’t a fact. The respondents flatly deny it because it’s not true. A mere twenty years ago everyone knew it wasn’t a fact that this guy here is a woman. Now we’re required to lie about it. We refuse.

Making it look a little too easy there, Sport. People are bound to get suspicious.

Random person says “I was beaten up” and shares random photo. Is the photo of the person who claims to have been beaten up? I see no reason to think so. I see no reason to believe what random person says, either. I don’t even believe random person is in Coventry! When I get skeptical I don’t mess around.

And then the instant follow-up with “Here’s where to send me money” doesn’t make it more believable. It provides a motive, you see – a motive beyond mere attention-seeking. If people are gullible, why not slap random photos of bruised faces up on Twitter and then give directions on where to send $$$? It’s like taking candy from a baby, but without the drool.

Furthermore, if you read some replies, you find that this jessica has done it before, and not once but several times. Ooh ahh ow I got beaten up send me money.

It’s kind of trans ideology summed up, in a way. “Hello I’m trans I’m special reward me now.”