If you find yourself wondering about my thoughts on supporting gender nonconforming youth, please see the Cass Review, commissioned by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service in 2020, whose recommendations I support: https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/
EDIT (Jan 30 2025): to be clear, I fully support publicly funded access to gender-related healthcare for adults.
Really? That’s interesting, because the Cass Review isn’t about gender nonconforming youth, and makes no recommendations about them. It considers transgender young people.
It does have some seemingly more reasonable recommendations like offering puberty blockers at a developmentally appropriate age rather than an arbitrary age cut-off, or assessing mental health issues as part of gender-affirming care, which is already and recommended by international professional bodies etc. But it also recommends using an untested, unproven form of therapy to encourage trans young people that they aren’t trans. Not the kind of gender exploration that is already recommended by international organisations, and should be a part of gender-affirming care, but something that looks a lot like conversion therapy light.
Add to that the anti-scientific views and promotion of conspiracy theories (without any evidence) while dismissing most of the available evidence as poor quality, and the catastrophic effect that has had for the ‘debate’ about trans people here. Or the fact that it secretly recruited members of anti-LGBTQ hate groups to its board, or that Cass was promoting anti-trans literature before being hired to lead the review.
I know kids that have been harmed by the wider cultural fallout from the Cass Review. It has been widely critiqued for its methods, and instead of responding to or addressing these critiques (as actual science should) Cass has dismissed anyone with valid points as keyboard warriors and mere activists.
The Cass review is opposed by just about every LGBTQ charity and advocacy group here. It is hated, as is Cass, by the LGBTQ community in the UK.
To say that you support it is pretty shocking. I get that transition wasn’t for you, but since you’ve said yourself that you don’t and never had dysphoria, it comes off as a bit condescending to say you support something which doesn’t concern you, and is harming the people it does concern. What you’re effectively saying, whether you realise it or not, and whether you intend to or not, is that you support what the Cass review set out to achieve, and the harm it is causing.
Perhaps you have not noticed, the world has woke up to the harms and the lies that are the trans-cult and the cabal of researchers feeding the false narrative. Lets not argue, simply give me a number. How many youth need to die during a course of treatment before you 1. stop the experiment 2. consider the treatment a failure? I am sincere. Here is an example. Two suicides during a study of "life saving care". Apparently the number is greater than two.
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
It's not just a cabal of activist researchers. It's a cabal of billionaires- throwing their money and power behind institutions, hospitals/clinics, politicians, schools. We've all been played - thinking this a human rights issue - when it's a money issue.
Humans do not exist in a lab. What you are doing is called causality manipulation. Transgender youth have extremely high rates of suicidal ideation prior to receiving gender affirming care. We will never know how many of these kids would be alive without treatment. But we DO know that their self-hate is mostly due to attitudes like yours.
Your caustic manipulation related to claims of suicide have been disproven - we know its just one more lie in the bag of tricks. What you fail to realize is persisting in this manipulation of children is going to impact people who really just want to be left alone and were a lot happier before activist decided to make children their target. Today, the trans community is becoming trapped as an insult to humanity. When you persists in this notion that children as young as five should transitioned or girls at 14 should have their breasts harvested you are on a losing side. Worse, are the lies that when a boy goes on blockers that you make a claim he isn't really on a pathway to being castrated. His micro penis is just his gift from his gender journey. Too many have lost their lives but please don't take what I say as an insult. Hoist in the words of Yarden Silveira:
“I wish I never listened to the medical and psychiatric community when they told me it was possible to change my sex. What a lie. Very dangerous and unethical…No one is truly there for me. There's no need to pretend. I have a gaping hole in my genital area with my colon spilling out… What hurts me the most is the loneliness and the inability to find a partner. I can't have a normal sex life. I'm a loser and I probably deserve this deception. This is what I get for messing with nature"
Shortly after he posted these words on 20 May 2021, Yarden ended his life, he was 23. The words are now immortalized in a YELP review of Align Surgical Associates. Yarden's last act is to provide a cautionary tale and as much as Align Surgical wants to take the comments down they can't. Yarden posted his medical record so, as he says, his killers can't hide.
I am much more interested in actual data versus the emotional claims of children. Chase Strangio admitted at the Supreme Court that there is no evidence to demonstrated that Gender Affirming Care reduces completed suicides. Chase forgot to mention that the evidence is actually the opposite. Transition increases suicide.
Chase forgot to mention Chen et al (2023). This is the study documents two completed suicides while participating in the study. The question I asked if WHEN is enough ENOUGH. How many suicides are required before a study might suggest there is a cause for concern? The Chen study is below. In addition, I have Van Cauwenberg (2021). 10 years of data from Belgium. The impact of transition is not good:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
Van Cauwenberg, G., Dhondt, K., & Motmans, J. (2021). Ten years of experience in counseling gender diverse youth in Flanders, Belgium. A clinical overview. International Journal of Impotence Research,
Ten years of experience in counseling gender diverse youth in Flanders, Belgium. A clinical overview
Here are the figures
• 5 of 177 trans patients over the 10 year period committed suicide, this translates into a suicide rate of 2,824 per 100,000. Astronomical.
•Belgium's whole population suicide rate over this same ten-year period: 200 per 100,000
I mean you no harm. You are free to hold onto your beliefs, but you do so locked in a classic case of belief preservation. Where I am not impressed is the continuation of the emotional terrorism related to the topic of suicidality. It is a cheap, pathetic and a horrifically weak argument to suggest one must sacrifice a child's future on the transgender alter. No children should not be put on a path to a sex change to avoid suicide. The trans-ideologues have created a cult grounded in the hysteria of a false and toxic narrative.
Perhaps you missed Chase Strangio during the Skrmetti oral arguments at the US Supreme Court in December. Chase was asked directly by Judge Alito "There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide." Forced to confront this Chase could use a false narrative. Here, is the complete response:
"What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some --
in the studies that this treatment [Gender Affirming Care] reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them."
My kids threaten suicide when I takeaway their cell phone, this is a reflection of emotional maturity. A six year old surmises they might as well be dead when they can't get their favorite ice cream. The evidence is clear, small children are unable to delay gratification. The data is in. Suicide isn't elevated at younger age groups - IT LOWER.
I was hoping you might tell me how many subjects have to die during research before it is considered a failure? In medical trials people get really concerned when people die during the trail. If you we trailing an anti-depressant or an anti-psychotic medication and two people commit suicide their might be a requirement to pause the human experimentation. Usually there is a protocol for encountering adverse effects. In the case of Chen et al (2023) it appears that two suicides was acceptable, "a sacrifice for the greater good". After all the authors even tried to characterize their results as good. Which is itself a joke. Fortunately, they put their names to the study.
I could ask you the same. When do we consider how many trans people need to be killed as a consequence of your hateful lies before you stop spreading them? How many trans people need to beg you to listen before you will?
Don’t bother answering. I know you have no interest in trans lives at all.
I am saddened to read that comment. You can easily fact check everything I post. I am also sure you can appreciate the importance of a controlled research study. Following the fetal malformations that stemmed from failures of the drug thalidomide, clinal trials became mandatory in the United States. Credit Canadian Frances Oldham Kelsey who prevented lots of malformed babies in the United States by standing firm refusing to approve the drug without evidence demonstrating the intervention was safe and effective. The drug was being used for other purposes. The drug was used in Canada and 30+ other countries. It was not tested on pregnant women. To bad. Once you see the catastrophic effects it is pretty clear they were adverse enough to stop any further human trials.
My point for engaging is to share information and hopefully provide something that might make people ask questions. I am more concerned with the parents coerced into putting their child on a path to sex change. They do it with the best of intention but its clear they are providing uniformed consent - the result they were trying to avoid (loss of a child) ends up happening. The result is not good long term.
I understand belief perseverance is a strong thing to overcome. One such person who did overcome is Davina Anne Gabriel. Davina spent a good part of life, decades, as a loud and leading activist voice in the transgender/ transsexual movement in the United States. The following is an excerpt of a letter written by Davina. On 28 February 2016, Davina committed suicide. Davina was 62 years of age:
"If you are reading or hearing this, it means that I am dead.... Please do not remember me for any of my activism on behalf of transgender causes... I refute and repudiate all of that now, as I no longer believe in any of it… Rather than alleviating the tremendous pain and suffering that I was already feeling, all that it has done is to magnify that pain and suffering by a hundred-fold... being a transsexual has prevented me from living a truly fulfilling life… I no longer believe that anyone is in the “wrong body,” or is the “wrong sex” ....I also regret all of my previous activism on behalf of transgender causes, because I regret doing anything that might have encouraged anyone to follow in the same mistaken path that I have taken."
How do you propose we tell the difference between gender-role-nonconforming youth, and trans youth? Respectfully, but there is no medical or psychological or neurological test that can accurately determine whether someone’s belief that they are somehow the opposite sex, or both sexes, or neither sex, will persist for life, or else go away with maturity, or cognitive behavioral therapy (which is already established as the only effective form of treatment for all forms of body dysmorphic disorder).
There is no developmentally appropriate age to prevent a child from going through puberty. Children need to go through their bodies’ natural puberty, which means their biological sex’s natural puberty, so that they can be healthy and functional adults physically, mentally, emotionally, and someday sexually, regardless of how they view their bodies now or later.
I want to respectfully offer you my opinion that 99% of people who have read the Cass review support its conclusions and recognize that Hilary Cass is not motivated by bigotry towards those who identify as transgender, and thus that your opinion is extremely outside the norm.
Stopping the puberty of children is just not a feasible political goal. Diverse groups of people, from gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women, to feminists, to right-wing christians, to muslims, to atheist scientists, profoundly oppose these procedures that harm children’s reproductive systems, and these strange bedfellows have set aside their serious differences for the moment to all come together to stop what they view as the worst global medical scandal in the past century.
Again, no personal insult to you, but you calling people “transphobic” isn’t going to stop anyone from trying to fight tooth and nail to stop healthy kids from being permanently castrated and sterilized.
99% sounds like a number you pulled from you ass to try and improve your claims. This review is absolutely devoid of lived experiences. I’ve worked with and have friends in the trans community who have all stated that early hormonal intervention was life saving.
I agree with you on one thing, stopping the puberty of children (adolescents) isn’t a political goal, it’s a medical one. And it’s been happening for decades, to both cis and trans kids (the latter of whom haven’t faced a ban - why, if these medications are so dangerous?)
We have been using assessments to determine the difference between gender nonconformity and transgender identity for decades. This is pretty well documented, the assessment for gender dysphoria screens out gender nonconformity. They are very different things. Gender identity is different from whether or not someone follows gender norms about clothing or appearance. If you can’t understand the difference, I’d suggest you don’t really understand what you’re talking about.
In most cases we get that assessment right, if the multiple studies on transition satisfaction going back years are anything to go by. But you don’t care about those, just the Cass Review, because it confirm your bias - and that’s kind of the point if the Cass Review: a report designed and delivered to uphold cissexist and transphobic beliefs and defend norms about sex and gender.
There are many similar tests and assessments for things like depression or other conditions which don’t show any external physical signs. And before you say it isn’t the same - antidepressants made me infertile. But they also saved my life. Transition also saved my life, and would also have affected my fertility had antidepressants not done the job. Do you have an issue with young people taking antidepressants? Or is it just with gender medicine you have concerns about fertility?
Your view that healthy kids are being turned into unhealthy kids (that’s the implicit assumption behind your words) is deeply transphobic. It belies the fact that you view being transgender as inherently negative, as a bad outcome to be avoided. This view is also inherent to the ideology of the Cass Review.
Your view is also inherently cissexist. For people like me, the possibility of infertility is nothing compared to having to live our lives in misery by being denied transition. There is also an implicit pronatalist concern rooted in white supremacy to this “worry” over fertility. Why is it only ever “healthy” white, often middle class, adolescents that anti-trans activists seem to worry about or feature in their campaigns? Why is reproductive ability such a concern when adoption is possible? It’s about genetics, eugenics, the continuation of the “white race”, issues which are also linked to white, patriarchal norms around binary sex and its alleged inextricability from gender.
Fertility preservation methods exist. If your issue is fertility, then why aren’t you arguing for better fertility options to be offered to trans you? Why, instead, are you arguing for life saving treatment to be denied, against the available evidence that it helps the vast majority - with far higher satisfaction rates than most other medical treatments and procedures?
I would respectfully suggest that it’s because you have no idea about what trans young people go through. You have no idea what dysphoria is like. You have no way to understand, except by listening to trans people, but you don’t want to because they contradict your ideology, the norms you’ve been inculcated with. You are unable to see beyond your own bias. Like many cis people, you think you know what’s best for trans people, but you are wrong. And your insistence that you know better is harmful to us.
Instead of listen to trans people you would rather listen to the Cass Review. A methodologically flawed and biased report written by a woman who pushed anti-trans literature and recruited members of anti-trans hare groups to the board of the review, secretly. A report that has been torn to pieces by medical and legal experts, experts on transgender healthcare, and trans people themselves. Yet another damming, peer-reviewed critique of the report was published this week.
And yet Cass and the government reject all that, and refuse a review of Cass’s findings to address critique. That’s not science, it’s ideology. Science responds to critique, ideology dismisses critique out of hand.
Have you read the Cass Review, and it’s “studies” (really just biased literature reviews - not original research)?
Moreover, have you ever spoken to a transgender person, or a transgender child or adolescent?
What is your knowledge of this issue, really, beyond what a group of privileged cisgender people in media, politics, and anti-trans organisations have told you?
Considering all my questions, do you honestly think you’re informed enough to argue for the denial of life-saving treatment to a vulnerable, bullied, voiceless population who are now these screaming from the rooftops that they need it? That, in some cases, are choosing to end their own lives rather than go through puberty or exist in a world where people like you work to deny them the care they deserve?
Do you prefer a a miserable or in the worst cases dead “cis” child to a trans child? Because whether you want to admit it or not, that is what you’re arguing for.
Your view that healthy kids are being turned into unhealthy kids (that’s the implicit assumption behind your words) is deeply transphobic.
~
Please keep it up with the cheap lazy and dishonest slurs against the 98% of people who have legitimate medical and moral reasons for objecting to you groomers and your criminal child abuse.
about 10% of this is arguments that may deserve serious consideration. The rest is ad hominem abuse mingled with woke clichés. if you’ve got links to criticisms of the Cass review, you should please include them. I’m still trying to make up my mind on this issue , and your speculations about peoples motives don’t give me any information that is useful to that goal.
Keep asking questions and use your instincts in the absence of GOOD quality evidence. If something seems odd in the data - question it. There is mounds of low quality (useless) data. Here are three questions to guide your thinking and a link to another recent study that tracked the use of hormones among a adolescent group for two years. This is a short period given the typical euphoria that comes with an initial change, regardless, during the study two youth undergoing "life-saving" protocols committed suicide?? This is typical, individuals who transition have a significantly higher rate of suicide. Here are the questions:
1. Can we be absolutely (100 percent) certain about diagnosing gender identity in children and that this identity will remain unchanged throughout their lives?
2. Must we accept the risk for misdiagnosis of children and its life-altering consequences so that some children can get treatment early? (consider: infertility, lost sexual function and irreversible physical changes)
3. Is it ethical to continue performing gender reassignment on minors, especially if there is a loss of life in the process?
Note: in the study below two lives were lost to suicide. How many people need to die before you stop a trial. Apparently two lives is acceptable:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
>I agree with you on one thing, stopping the puberty of children (adolescents) isn’t a political goal, it’s a medical one. And it’s been happening for decades, to both cis and trans kids (the latter of whom haven’t faced a ban - why, if these medications are so dangerous?)
We have been stopping normal kids from entering puberty for decades?
Yes, we prevent early on-set puberty but it was never done to prevent puberty which is a normal part of human development. The mystical transgender application is to avoid a normal process from running its course. In so doing it clarifies normal development. Blockers do no allow an individual to chose a different puberty - it prevents a body from developing as it should. Blockers result in lots of issues after their prolonged use with becomes devastating when followed with cross-sex hormones - which will happen in most cases.
I appreciate there is mounds of low quality (useless) data extolling the virtues of blocking puberty. Dah, puberty is a hard and a very difficult part of normal human development. You don't realize what it means until you have come through the other side and further develop. I would suggest you consider three things about the ethics of blockers:
1. Can we be absolutely (100 percent) certain about diagnosing gender identity in children and that this identity will remain unchanged throughout their lives?
2. Must we accept the risk for misdiagnosis of children and its life-altering consequences so that some children can get treatment early? (consider: infertility, lost sexual function and irreversible physical as well as socio-emotional changes)
3. Is it ethical to continue performing gender reassignment on minors, especially if there is a loss of life in the process?
Note: in the study below two lives were lost to suicide. How many people need to die before you stop a trial. Apparently two lives is acceptable collateral damage from a "life-saving" treatment. You will note there is no rating scale required here. We simply count the bodies and the overwhelming evidence is if you transition you have a increased risk of completed suicide:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
Your last question is based on manipulating the results of an already weak study. I will never forgive people who continually perpetuate that debunked lie. (I will absolutely forgive people who acknowledge the falsehood and stop perpetuating it. In fact, I was one of those people who believed it.)
Suicidal ideation is not suicide. Please stop conflating them. Plenty of teens ideate. Mental anguish, regardless of the cause, is part and parcel of adolescence. Using that is like calling a politician with whom you disagree "Hitler" or telling your spouse with whom you disagree, "If you don't stop doing that I want a divorce." It's emotional blackmail of the vilest kind.
As for knowing trans-identified people? I do. Starting with my daughter. She said she's trans over four years ago. This despite declaiming the same a few weeks earlier. And despite an entire life of nothing out-of-the-ordinary related to "gender" expression. But I was there was she was born--she wasn't assigned female, she had been observed female, in utero, post partum, and every step of the way since. So when she said she's a boy it was reality-shaking because it is simply not true.
She still persists in the act, but not when she's at home. And she's past the age of majority now, so she can choose to not come home, break ties with us, etc. But she also knows that, despite our vehement disagreement with her self-ID, we love her. Love isn't affirming a lie, it's being in relationship despite the lie. It's continuing to be in relationship in the good times and the bad times. It's continuing to speak truth despite the lies shared by fear-mongers, knowing that, regardless of the outcome, I will never be complicit in a lie, and she knows she can always trust us to speak the truth, even if she doesn't like it.
As a result of being in relationship with her, we have met other trans-identified people. And I have "online" friends who are trans-identified or who have been and since desisted or detransitioned. And what I gather is that the vast majority of trans-identified people have comorbidities that are the likely root cause of the discomfort they feel, exacerbated by online influences and a desire to belong.
Earlier I put "gender" in quotes because it's at best a regressive notion rooted in stereotypes that ultimately causes harm to people through an insistence on participating in a fantasy. As the author of this piece pointed out, she's more comfortable being stereotypically masculine. But she's still a woman. And I will not win her over, but I don't do preferred pronouns. The simple claim that, "It's just about kindness and respect," sounds really, really good on the surface. But anytime you ask somebody else to pretend something that is not true, there is nothing kind nor respectful in that.
I 100% acknowledge that people WANT to be the opposite sex, for a whole variety of reasons. But they are not, and never will BE, the opposite sex. It is a far better outcome for the majority of people to learn resilience and learn to adapt to their sexed bodies and then work to express their own individuality given that concrete constraint.
Finally, it's incredibly ironic and tone deaf to claim studies like Cass to be ideology. Transgender is an ideology. The science has evolved since the Dutch Protocol to show that outcomes are not what they were originally thought to be. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are not reversible. Even something as "benign" as social transition has iatrogenic effects that, if followed to their end state, will result in long-term suicides of 19x higher than "normal." The ideology has zero basis in science or reality, and rather is rooted in emotion, feeling, and self-ID. If it was science, the critiques that are levied would have already dismantled it, like lobotomies so many years ago.
Woof. Cue the “my child won’t talk to me” in several years post as you complain bitterly about the consequences of your treatment of them. You don’t get to determine who they are, no matter how much gas lighting and manipulation you attempt.
Well stated! Take a cell phone from a kid and they will quickly suggest "I might as well kill myself". In the trans-ideology this is another tick in the suicide column. Thanks for sharing the personal experience. I would suggest three things about the ethics of these protocols:
1. Can we be absolutely (100%) certain about diagnosing/declaring gender identity in children and that this identity will remain unchanged throughout their lives?
2. Must we accept the risk for misdiagnosis of children and its life-altering consequences so that some children can get treatment early? (consider: infertility, lost sexual function and irreversible physical as well as socio-emotional changes)
3. Is it ethical to continue performing gender reassignment on minors, especially if there is a loss of life in the process?
Note: in the study below two lives were lost to suicide. How many people need to die before you stop a trial? Apparently two lives is acceptable collateral damage from a "life-saving" treatment. You nailed it - the overwhelming evidence is if you transition you have a increased risk of completed suicide and there are several good quality studies including in the Cass Report:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
Thank you for sharing your opinions with me. I’m afraid I'm not interested in continuing engaging with a person who insults me. If you wish to apologize, I’m willing to accept that apology and continue discussing this issue with you. But in the meantime, please understand that I will not be verbally abused in person, or on the internet, by anyone. Without respect, productive dialogue can't occur. Goodbye.
I’m curious why you’re so intimidated when it has nothing to do with you? You’re not being held down and forced to take estrogen. It’s telling you are so desperate to control other people though.
Transgender people have different genders than you. We also have sexualities - of all kinds. To suggest we have any negative feelings about gay people is laughable because many of us ARE queer.
Perhaps you could learn something about us prior to speaking about us.
You insulted the entire trans community with the underlying disrespect and bigotry of your original comment. I responded in kind. Just because you use “respectfully” a few times and use nice-sounding words to mask your transphobia doesn’t mean you’re actually being civil or respectful, so stop kidding yourself. Your desire to dictate the tone of the debate is a further example of your privilege and your patronising, harmful attitude.
Your demand for an apology is so arrogant it’s almost funny. You’ll get no apology from me for calling out transphobia. Go and clutch your pearls elsewhere.
The trans community insults humanity when it persists in this notion that children as young as five should transition or girls at 14 should have their breasts harvested. Worse, are the lies that when a boy goes on blockers he isnt really being castrated. His micro penis is just his gift from his gender journey. Too many have lost their lives but please dont take what I say as an insult. Hoist in the words of Yarden Silveira:
“I wish I never listened to the medical and psychiatric community when they told me it was possible to change my sex. What a lie. Very dangerous and unethical…No one is truly there for me. There's no need to pretend. I have a gaping hole in my genital area with my colon spilling out… What hurts me the most is the loneliness and the inability to find a partner. I can't have a normal sex life. I'm a loser and I probably deserve this deception. This is what I get for messing with nature"
Shortly after he posted these words on 20 May 2021, Yarden ended his life, he was 23. The words are now immortalized in a YELP review of Align Surgical Associates. Yarden's last act is to provide a cautionary tale and as much as Align Surgical wants to take the comments down they can't. Yarden posted his medical record so his killers can't hide.
I speak to many people with different experiences than me, and who view the world in a way that differs significantly from how I view the world, from transgender people, to muslims, to vegans, to christians, to orthodox jews, to communists, to Trump supporters, to anti vaxxers, and to polyamorists, and my civility to them is never a cover for hatred or disrespect. My civility is me granting them dignity, respect, and empathy. I feel sorry for you that you would choose to believe that someone disagreeing with you on a political issue means that they hate you. What a horrible way to live.
Thank you for naming this. I don’t even need to look into how local community groups see this bc I can tell how blatantly fascist the Cass Review is just by reading it. I’m horrified that I wasted my time reading this condescendingly eugenicist take. Anyone who agrees with the author needs to do some deep reflection. This does not support queer and trans youth, and these are conservative arguments.
Yike, you need to get out more and find some new friends. You are in a very dark place if you think the Cass Review is " blatantly fascist" and an attack on the notion of trans people. Cass gave the ideologues far more respect that they deserve. Capturing children is never going to happen and the harms that have been inflicted are clear and becoming even clearer.
I support the Cass Report too. Truth is always criticized by people whose agenda is damaged by it. Who cares what the LGBTQ community says about it, even assuming they are all of one opinion.
I am with you but I am less inclined to think this is a blight against the entire LGBTQ "community". Some of the loudest voices in this arena are the people in the sexual orientation side of this group (the LGB's). There are even some in the "identity side" that are horrified with how the trans-radicals have spun this. Also, some of the most demonic are very fine "straight" people who are making big bucks harvesting the breasts of 14 year olds.
Here is an example. On 28 Feb 16, Davina Anne Gabriel died by suicide. Davina was 62, and at one time a leading edge of transactivist whose work included publishing the periodical, "TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism". Davina became shocked, dismayed and disillusioned by the growing attack directed at children and left this note:
"If you are reading or hearing this, it means that I am dead.... Please do not remember me for any of my activism on behalf of transgender causes. If that is what I am most remembered for, then I will consider my life to have been wasted. I refute and repudiate all of that now, as I no longer believe in any of it. The fact is that I utterly despise everything about being a transsexual, and I consider having been one to be a curse on my life that has brought nothing but pain and misery into it, and prevented me from realizing my full potential as a human being.....Rather than alleviating the tremendous pain and suffering that I was already feeling, all that it has done is to magnify that pain and suffering by a hundred-fold... being a transsexual has prevented me from living a truly fulfilling life... I no longer believe that anyone is in the “wrong body,” or is the “wrong sex.” The body into which nature places persons, and the sex it gives to them is always the right one....I also regret all of my previous activism on behalf of transgender causes, because I regret doing anything that might have encouraged anyone to follow in the same mistaken path that I have taken."
Your academic credentials are completely undermined when you suggest that the Cass review is only relevant to UK transgender children, and that anyone else’s opinion is irrelevant.
The Cass Review is essential reading to anyone concerned with children’s health and rights.
I would be curious to know what evidence or data would cause you to think twice or reconsider your position. Perhaps you are so convinced the world is flat there is nothing we can do.
Evidence or data that contradicts the vast body of evidence that attests to the benefit of gender-affirming care. It’s very simple actually. Cass didn’t produce anything like that; it simply dismissed the existing evidence out of hand. It didn’t produce. Single piece of original research. I’m not aware of a single reputable study that shows that gender-affirming care is harmful, Cass certainly didn’t find or produce any. All the available evidence shows that for the vast majority of people who reveice gender-affirming care, usually in the region of 90% or more (higher than for most treatments or surgeries in any other area of healthcare), benefit from it and have no regrets. That’s research going back decades. Which begs the question, what evidence would you accept to change your opinion, given that so much already exists to disprove it?
As a student of qualitative research methods in a Women’s Studies department (as it was called a couple decades back), I am aware of the unscientific approach to research. Specifically, embrace bias, formulate a conclusion and then shape your study design and data analysis to produce the desired conclusion. Its all rather corrupt. For me I would just like to see people stop committing suicide, Show me the genuine longitudinal studies (10 years after completing medical transition) that individuals are happy, health and pulling their weight in society and I am onside. There are lots of people that transition and appear to be doing very well. Did they need to transition to be doing well? That’s a good research question. I do not care about adults that transition, thats a personal choice. I am only interested in the younger cohort thrown on an affirming transition pathway (blockers at Tanner 2) and become set for life. There are at least three studies that could be drawn from to get a read as to “where are they now”. I dont want to see failures. Failure is not an option in terms of regret and suicide,
On that topic. I go back to 28 Feb 16, Davina Anne Gabriel died by suicide. Davina was 62, transitioned as an adult and was at one time a leading (radical) transactivist. Davina’s work included publishing the periodical, "TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism". Davina became very disheartened by the shift in the focus towards minors and small children. You can find lots of Davina’s writing on the internet:
"If you are reading or hearing this, it means that I am dead.... Please do not remember me for any of my activism on behalf of transgender causes. If that is what I am most remembered for, then I will consider my life to have been wasted. I refute and repudiate all of that now, as I no longer believe in any of it. The fact is that I utterly despise everything about being a transsexual, and I consider having been one to be a curse on my life that has brought nothing but pain and misery into it, and prevented me from realizing my full potential as a human being.....Rather than alleviating the tremendous pain and suffering that I was already feeling, all that it has done is to magnify that pain and suffering by a hundred-fold... being a transsexual has prevented me from living a truly fulfilling life... I no longer believe that anyone is in the “wrong body,” or is the “wrong sex.” The body into which nature places persons, and the sex it gives to them is always the right one....I also regret all of my previous activism on behalf of transgender causes, because I regret doing anything that might have encouraged anyone to follow in the same mistaken path that I have taken."
Given the body of evidence that actually counts the dead bodies, I am not so sure you are being genuine. Cass rejected evidence that isn't evidence - it is manufactured qualitative garbage - the bias is baked in. For evidence to be good it needs to be valid and reliable. The fundamental problem is the inability to replicate the initial Dutch protocol studies. This should have been concerning for the studies that followed. BUT of course, we didn't know how bad this situation was given both in the UK and in the USA attempts to replicate the Dutch Model both failed AND worse the results were concealed and suppressed. GIDs in the UK suppressed data for nine years until forced to reveal the results and Johanna Olson-Kennedy's multi-million dollar US study also went unpublished. Dr Olson-Kennedy is spending time in civil court over her standards of care and hopefully the criminal court proceedings will follow.
I have an academic degree as well, and I don't trust your eviction of the Cass review and the critique of it. Non-biased people have another eviction. And you're the one harming children.
Wonder if you would have reported people for witchcraft, supported people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens, persecuted parents whose children “recovered” memories of ritual abuse? Or recommended liposuctions for young girls with anorexia?
There so many reasons for psychological distress. None of them are “a wrong body”. And the earth is not flat, by the way.
We have stories of transgender people from hundreds of years ago. They didn’t have phones, it wasn’t a fad. They have always existed. Die mad about it.
Do not assume the Cass Review is scientific. It has been widely discredited by every major medical association and psychological association. The data was purposely distorted and incorrectly gathered. This is a review that transphobic people hold up that actually has no scientific value.
Pointless! Regardless of your distorted and incorrect view, it no longer matters. The CASS Review's effect is world wide!! It was discussed and introduced into the US Supreme Court as evidence. That is ALL that matters now, and that works for me because it compels even the most ardent transactivist to get real: Does Gender Affirming Care does not reduce suicides?
JUSTICE ALITO: …. "on page 195 of the Cass report, it says: There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide."
MR. STRANGIO: "What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some -- in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is COMPLETED SUICIDE, thankfully and admittedly, IS RARE and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them."
You are correct about Cass. Don't assume. Look at the report, look at the systematic reviews and look at the individual studies. Start with Chen et al (2023), only two yourh commited suicide while undergoing life saving care.
Assuming would lead one to think you might have something intelligent to say.. One needs to look at the Cass Review for oneself. That will confirm the problems with gender ideology. I am disappointed she tried too hard to be accomodating. There is no room for accomodating the sick minded that put children on a path to a sex change. We have jails for those people. Yes - Read the Cass critical articles. It shows how flimsy these psychopaths are. These are people so bound to their ideology it's painful. I am impressed they have the time these days given so many are now fighting lawsuits for the harms they have done. I just wish they were elevated from civil to criminal.
On May 10, 2022, the first detransitioner lawsuit was filed, against the Permanente Medical Group in California. Seven months later, Camille Kiefel filed a similar lawsuit in Oregon against the Quest Center for Integrative Health, which had performed a double mastectomy on her. Now, the number of detransitioner and wrongful death lawsuits has increased eight-fold, (according to Transition Justice).
No I read the Cass Review myself. I looked at their data. The data they collected was not only a small sample but it was incomplete.
If you run a study over a period of years and you start off with let’s say ten people and you were only able to follow up with five of those people after a year you have to drop the data from your study or say that you were unable to follow up. They did not do that. They intentionally tampered with the data by saying that those who they could not get back in touch with de-transitioned.
They can’t know that. Nobody can know what actually occurred so a scientific approach would have been to throw out the data because you can not draw any conclusions from it. Adding it back in and saying that the result of those 5 unknown people was this or that is unscientific because you can make the data say whatever you personally want. The data said 5 unknown. You should either try harder to find your study subjects or note the lack of result. This is the reason you should have as large of a sample size as possible because you will have some follow up loss.
The second thing that they did was, this study was supposed to be about trans kids but they included kids who did not identify as trans but instead identified as gay or lesbian and enjoyed dressing more masculine or feminine. When they followed up with these subjects they unsurprisingly found that they did not go on to transition. So they marked them down as those who de-transitioned except they never transitioned in the first place.
Thus all of the data is useless for what they were originally trying to measure, which was the rate of de-transition. That’s why I don’t consider it scientifically accurate and neither does any serious scientific orientation.
Not only have you not read the 350+-page Cass Review, I question whether you’ve even read a description of it.
- The Cass Review did not “run a study.” It was a systematic review of other studies.
- The Cass Review did not “collect data.” It was a systematic review of other studies. It did not collect its own original data.
- The Cass Review was not able to follow up with study subjects lost to follow-up. (The fact that so many studies lost a large portion of subjects to follow up is one of the major flaws in those studies.)
- The Cass Review reviewed data from studies of trans-identified kids, not simply gay or lesbian kids.
- If you think “all of the data is useless,” that’s actually not far from the Cass Review’s own conclusions.
- I’m curious which “serious scientific organizations” (I assume you meant that instead of ‘orientations’ ) don’t consider the Cass Review “scientifically accurate.” Note: Erin Reed does not count as a scientific organization.
Well get over it - Cass Review is your ideological downfall and regardless of what you think, it was discussed and introduced into the US Supreme Court as evidence. That works for me because it compels even the most ardent trans=activist to get real:
Does Gender Affirming Care does not reduce suicides?
JUSTICE ALITO: …. on page 195 of the Cass report, it says: There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide.
MR. STRANGIO: What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some -- in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them.
You can literally present any document of any background in the courts. This is no way increases its credibility. This is on par with anti- vaccine autism “research” being peddled around the country.
Yeah, the fact that the US Supreme Court accepts the Cass Review is almost proof of how transphobic and poor quality it is, given the shit show you guys have over there. If that’s your source of validation rather than, you know, all the actual scientists and clinicians who’ve denounced it because they’ve actually read the research and see that science backs gender-affirming care, then you’re admitting you have no single clue what you’re talking about and you’re just a transphobic ideologue.
The Supreme Court isn't my source for validation. I can't help you with your confusion on the evidence. I have already post several studies in this thread. If being concerned about the loss of life puts me in the transphobic camp - count me in - but I am afraid that grasping at the "transphobe" slur is typically the last straw for an ideologue once there is no points left. I will simply refer you to GENSPECT and SEGM among many others that raise serious concerns. By the way, have you seen the WPATH clinicians discussing "informed consent" and "making children happier in the moment"? These videos are online and they are devastating but I digress.
When it comes to the US Supreme Court they will have the final word when it comes to this woke mind virus contributing to the madness in the United States. One of these days even the left leaning justices will be forced to confront the ethics. The three part test:
1. Can we be absolutely with 100% certainty believe in diagnosing/declaring gender identity in children and that the identity will remain unchanged (persist) throughout their lives? We know the finality of a tooth extraction and a hysterectomy.
2. Must we accept the risk for "misdiagnosis" of minors and its life-altering consequences so that other children can get treatment? (consider the risks for: infertility, lost sexual function and irreversible physical as well as socio-emotional changes)
3. Is it ethical to continue performing gender reassignment on minors, including social transition and the indoctrinating effects of "teaching gender", especially if there is evidence this can lead to confusion and result in premature loss of life? The callous disregard for the growing body count among those who are on their gender journey is disturbing. We know this is a very long list. Once the judges are presented with the evidence their is an ethical responsibility. It is the one the bodies overseeing healthcare are failing to live by.
Note: in the study below two lives were lost to suicide. How many people need to die before you stop a research trial? Apparently two lives is acceptable collateral damage for what is otherwise "life-saving" treatment. Today, the overwhelming evidence is if you transition you have a increased risk of completed suicide and there are several good quality studies including those documented in the Cass Review:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
The British Medical Association has specifically taken a neutral position on the Cass Review while it considers the issue further. The British Psychological Society commended Cass for her work on the Review. You may be thinking of US groups, but they do not represent the entirely of scientific thought on the matter, nor are they the most relevant to a review of an NHS service.
Cass Review is going to be a big part of the ideological downfall. I was disappointed the report advocated for studying the use of blockers. This is a massive error given we know the near term euphoria and "gratification" effect comes into play with stopping something that is uncomfortable. Puberty isn't fun so if you stop it, of course it will be a positive outcome in the mind of a child.
Its the adults that are supposed to be thinking about long term consequences. Sadly even the medical professionals have lost their collective minds and you can even find WPATH's Dr Dan Metzger and Dr. Dianne Berg on You Tube talking about making a kid "happier in the moment" despite the regret that comes later and they even admit "informed consent" is NOT really informed or meaningful.
Regardless, the CASS Review's effect is world wide!! It was discussed and introduced into the US Supreme Court as evidence. That is ALL that matters now and that works for me because it compels even the most ardent transactivist to get real: Does Gender Affirming Care does not reduce suicides?
JUSTICE ALITO: …. "on page 195 of the Cass report, it says: There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide."
MR. STRANGIO: "What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some -- in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is COMPLETED SUICIDE, thankfully and admittedly, IS RARE and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them."
Your link basically says that the BMA acknowledges that the Cass Review wasn’t scientifically accurate and that they will have to do their own review WITH the input of lived experience from transgender people.
Is that the same British Psychological Society that recently had members of several anti-trans groups and a sociologist who was outed by his university as running an anonymous account that specifically existed to abuse and troll trans people speak at their conference in the issue of trans healthcare? That British Psychological Society?
And the same Cass who has been widely criticised for promoting anti-trans literature prior to being hired to lead the Cass Review, who met with US anti-LGBTQ groups, and secretly hired members of designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups to the board of the Cass Review? The same Cass that has contradicted the less extreme recommendations of her own report since it was published to fit the government’s narrative and ensure she got her peerage? The same Cass that had zero prior expertise in transgender healthcare, and was suspiciously the only person considered for the role, by government ministers who later admitted they did so as part of a wider recruitment of anti-trans individuals into government positions to ensure their ideological viewpoints informed the review? The same Cass that, instead of responding to methodological critique from relevant experts from around the world, as any good scientist should, dismissed them as keyboard warriors? That Cass?
Do you actually know anything about Cass or her review beyond mainstream media headlines?
Some pretty bold claims in there, but I have no desire to get into them with you. Simply pointing out that arguments from authority don't work very well when authorities disagree — clearly people are allowed to disagree with authorities, as you disagree with the BPS — or when you pick and choose which authorities matter based on how closely they agree with you.
If the authorities you do like changed their tune on this, would you change your mind? If not, don't expect others to change theirs.
Would love to hear an example of a specific thing that was wrong in the Cass review. Do you have one to give so I can get a sense of what it got so wrong?
The BMA calls for a review of the Cass Review because of “…its unsubstantiated recommendations driven by unexplained study protocol deviations, ambiguous eligibility criteria…”
Ironically, existing protocols in place and trans-affirming “evidence” are unsubstantiated themselves.
If you reject the Cass Review for poor quality research, you must also reject current trans-affirming research and treatments for the same reason.
Until research has been done that satisfies both sides of the argument, which is likely impossible, then all treatments should be stopped except in emergency cases. Although what an emergency case looks like, I have no idea.
So, you think trans people talking about a subject that they have extensive personal experience with and knowledge about is “biased” and you would rather NO transgender people talk about transgender rights? Should we just leave it to cisgender people to talk ABOUT us rather than TO us?
The person you linked supports experimental surgeries for children and medicine that results in sterility. And supports men in women’s sports. They are not a serious resource.
I'd go so far as to describe it as a propaganda piece couched in scientifically sounding language and misappropriated, googleable scientific terms - so it *looks* like science for the gullible public and politicians. Which especially easy when people already have confirmation bias.
It's scientific forgery and should be handled as a medical scandal, especially because of the damage it already has done.
Thank you for this. I work with disabled kids and kids from immigrant cultures, many of whom have experienced trauma. They them pronouns in practice can be very hard for people with language disabilities to adapt to, as well as for English second language learners.
In addition, they can be anxiety producing because in practice they sometimes provide less information. I had a client come to me in a panic after receiving a text from a NB roommate stating they were going to bring other NB people over to the house later that day, all of them used they/them. There was no way to tell from the text how many people were coming or who they were. So my client, who grew up in a chaotic home environment, didn’t know whether he was going to have one femme guest or 8 masc guests, which made a huge difference to him in terms of feeling safe in his own home.
I really appreciate you sharing your lived experience. As a lifelong feminist all I've ever wanted was for women to be confident in how and who they are, regardless of how they physically present, sound, or act. I blame misogyny for defining women by traditional femininity to the extent that she/her pronouns make a person (understandably) feel out of place and unsafe.
This was a thoughtful piece on your experience. It didn’t seem to me that you were advising any particular course of action. You still have some pretty nasty comments in the replies. I don’t know enough to judge the report you cited; perhaps someone with more knowledge should give advice on its validity. You have had an interesting journey so far and have found a way for yourself. Good!
I agree with you. I’m an older lesbian and can tell you that your thoughtful reflections about your years long journey is very down to earth and found it pretty relatable. When I came out in 1974, I didn’t have the vocabulary or sense of things that young LGBT folks do now. But I did join the movement to dispel stereotypes and fight for change in America. Here we are. The history but also the radicalized viewpoints expressed by younger generations now is something I find so historically, emotionally, politically and psychologically complex I get absolutely exhausted to the point that I get turned off and tuned out. Your thoughtful article caused me to tune in however. I wish more folks,especially younger queer etc folks would stop be so damn aggressive and mean and nasty though I have to admit I’m sure that’s how we young activists back in the day were also judged? We had the AIDS crisis, Christian Nationalists of all kinds, Anita Bryant, Harvey Milk, Matt Sheppard, etc and it just breaks my soul and heart to see the community both being torn apart and torn down all over again. The LGBT community better unite again like back in the day else we will all be shipped off to the El Salvadoran gulag.
I used to use she/they pronouns and have since defaulted to she/her. It used to be a way for me to affirm I didn’t feel in place with traditional femininity. Which I’ve now grown to realize many women don’t. That feeling of being born a woman and somehow still feeling like an alien pretending to be one is a byproduct of a society that is typically very restrictive of what a woman can/should like and grow up to be. I’m a butch lesbian, there’s very little about me that is traditionally feminine and because of that I’ve felt the same kind of alienation my whole life from “the girls”. It wasn’t until I started hanging out with “the girls the gays AND the theys” that this alienation was quelled. I feel as though our experiences run parallel and I appreciate hearing it from another persons point of view. At the end of the day people are people and people can be anything they damn well please.
I’m so sorry. You are a woman, and any discomfort you had or have with that is not the least bit your fault. We defined “woman” incorrectly, in a way that excluded you. “Woman” does not define you; you define “woman”. Whoever you are, just as you are.
Just wanted to say that I've had a similar journey to you (apart from i do have gender dysphoria). I've worked in hospitals for over a decade and there is zero chance of me ever being referred to as they/them by everyone! And honestly it's kind of insane to ever expect it.
I know who I am, I know my own identity, and I don't want or need to try and forcer someone to perceive me this way.
I agree that misleading is rarely malicious and i kind of enjoy being perceived as different to every person! I get called every pronoun and, truly, I kind of love it!
I have heard many trans and non binary people over the last few years say things along the lines of “other people’s perception of me is not my problem” and “it does not do anything to me if you don’t use my pronouns”. And I think that’s a healthy way to view it. The people in your circle who truly love and respect you will always try, but you don’t have to spend your energy fighting everyone who doesn’t understand. This isn’t a call to disrespect anyone’s preferred pronouns, but a reminder that we are not defined by the language other’s use for us. We are all the people we are, multifaceted and unique, with our own sense of identity, unaffected by whatever lens we are being viewed through.
If you find yourself wondering about my thoughts on supporting gender nonconforming youth, please see the Cass Review, commissioned by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service in 2020, whose recommendations I support: https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/
EDIT (Jan 30 2025): to be clear, I fully support publicly funded access to gender-related healthcare for adults.
Really? That’s interesting, because the Cass Review isn’t about gender nonconforming youth, and makes no recommendations about them. It considers transgender young people.
It does have some seemingly more reasonable recommendations like offering puberty blockers at a developmentally appropriate age rather than an arbitrary age cut-off, or assessing mental health issues as part of gender-affirming care, which is already and recommended by international professional bodies etc. But it also recommends using an untested, unproven form of therapy to encourage trans young people that they aren’t trans. Not the kind of gender exploration that is already recommended by international organisations, and should be a part of gender-affirming care, but something that looks a lot like conversion therapy light.
Add to that the anti-scientific views and promotion of conspiracy theories (without any evidence) while dismissing most of the available evidence as poor quality, and the catastrophic effect that has had for the ‘debate’ about trans people here. Or the fact that it secretly recruited members of anti-LGBTQ hate groups to its board, or that Cass was promoting anti-trans literature before being hired to lead the review.
I know kids that have been harmed by the wider cultural fallout from the Cass Review. It has been widely critiqued for its methods, and instead of responding to or addressing these critiques (as actual science should) Cass has dismissed anyone with valid points as keyboard warriors and mere activists.
The Cass review is opposed by just about every LGBTQ charity and advocacy group here. It is hated, as is Cass, by the LGBTQ community in the UK.
To say that you support it is pretty shocking. I get that transition wasn’t for you, but since you’ve said yourself that you don’t and never had dysphoria, it comes off as a bit condescending to say you support something which doesn’t concern you, and is harming the people it does concern. What you’re effectively saying, whether you realise it or not, and whether you intend to or not, is that you support what the Cass review set out to achieve, and the harm it is causing.
Perhaps you have not noticed, the world has woke up to the harms and the lies that are the trans-cult and the cabal of researchers feeding the false narrative. Lets not argue, simply give me a number. How many youth need to die during a course of treatment before you 1. stop the experiment 2. consider the treatment a failure? I am sincere. Here is an example. Two suicides during a study of "life saving care". Apparently the number is greater than two.
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
It's not just a cabal of activist researchers. It's a cabal of billionaires- throwing their money and power behind institutions, hospitals/clinics, politicians, schools. We've all been played - thinking this a human rights issue - when it's a money issue.
Humans do not exist in a lab. What you are doing is called causality manipulation. Transgender youth have extremely high rates of suicidal ideation prior to receiving gender affirming care. We will never know how many of these kids would be alive without treatment. But we DO know that their self-hate is mostly due to attitudes like yours.
Your caustic manipulation related to claims of suicide have been disproven - we know its just one more lie in the bag of tricks. What you fail to realize is persisting in this manipulation of children is going to impact people who really just want to be left alone and were a lot happier before activist decided to make children their target. Today, the trans community is becoming trapped as an insult to humanity. When you persists in this notion that children as young as five should transitioned or girls at 14 should have their breasts harvested you are on a losing side. Worse, are the lies that when a boy goes on blockers that you make a claim he isn't really on a pathway to being castrated. His micro penis is just his gift from his gender journey. Too many have lost their lives but please don't take what I say as an insult. Hoist in the words of Yarden Silveira:
“I wish I never listened to the medical and psychiatric community when they told me it was possible to change my sex. What a lie. Very dangerous and unethical…No one is truly there for me. There's no need to pretend. I have a gaping hole in my genital area with my colon spilling out… What hurts me the most is the loneliness and the inability to find a partner. I can't have a normal sex life. I'm a loser and I probably deserve this deception. This is what I get for messing with nature"
Shortly after he posted these words on 20 May 2021, Yarden ended his life, he was 23. The words are now immortalized in a YELP review of Align Surgical Associates. Yarden's last act is to provide a cautionary tale and as much as Align Surgical wants to take the comments down they can't. Yarden posted his medical record so, as he says, his killers can't hide.
Your story is sad but it is anecdotal. I am not being caustic, you are.
Read some actual statistics about trans youth. ALL of them. Don’t cherry pick.
72% of trans teens have considered suicide, more than 40% say it has been in the past year.
And, since anti-trans legislation has become the norm, suicidal ideation among trans teens has increased by 72%.
I don’t need to speak about one person. I speak for us all. You? You speak against us all.
I am much more interested in actual data versus the emotional claims of children. Chase Strangio admitted at the Supreme Court that there is no evidence to demonstrated that Gender Affirming Care reduces completed suicides. Chase forgot to mention that the evidence is actually the opposite. Transition increases suicide.
Chase forgot to mention Chen et al (2023). This is the study documents two completed suicides while participating in the study. The question I asked if WHEN is enough ENOUGH. How many suicides are required before a study might suggest there is a cause for concern? The Chen study is below. In addition, I have Van Cauwenberg (2021). 10 years of data from Belgium. The impact of transition is not good:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
Van Cauwenberg, G., Dhondt, K., & Motmans, J. (2021). Ten years of experience in counseling gender diverse youth in Flanders, Belgium. A clinical overview. International Journal of Impotence Research,
Ten years of experience in counseling gender diverse youth in Flanders, Belgium. A clinical overview
Here are the figures
• 5 of 177 trans patients over the 10 year period committed suicide, this translates into a suicide rate of 2,824 per 100,000. Astronomical.
•Belgium's whole population suicide rate over this same ten-year period: 200 per 100,000
I mean you no harm. You are free to hold onto your beliefs, but you do so locked in a classic case of belief preservation. Where I am not impressed is the continuation of the emotional terrorism related to the topic of suicidality. It is a cheap, pathetic and a horrifically weak argument to suggest one must sacrifice a child's future on the transgender alter. No children should not be put on a path to a sex change to avoid suicide. The trans-ideologues have created a cult grounded in the hysteria of a false and toxic narrative.
Perhaps you missed Chase Strangio during the Skrmetti oral arguments at the US Supreme Court in December. Chase was asked directly by Judge Alito "There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide." Forced to confront this Chase could use a false narrative. Here, is the complete response:
"What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some --
in the studies that this treatment [Gender Affirming Care] reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them."
My kids threaten suicide when I takeaway their cell phone, this is a reflection of emotional maturity. A six year old surmises they might as well be dead when they can't get their favorite ice cream. The evidence is clear, small children are unable to delay gratification. The data is in. Suicide isn't elevated at younger age groups - IT LOWER.
I was hoping you might tell me how many subjects have to die during research before it is considered a failure? In medical trials people get really concerned when people die during the trail. If you we trailing an anti-depressant or an anti-psychotic medication and two people commit suicide their might be a requirement to pause the human experimentation. Usually there is a protocol for encountering adverse effects. In the case of Chen et al (2023) it appears that two suicides was acceptable, "a sacrifice for the greater good". After all the authors even tried to characterize their results as good. Which is itself a joke. Fortunately, they put their names to the study.
I could ask you the same. When do we consider how many trans people need to be killed as a consequence of your hateful lies before you stop spreading them? How many trans people need to beg you to listen before you will?
Don’t bother answering. I know you have no interest in trans lives at all.
The answer is always as many as it takes so their world view can be safe.
I am saddened to read that comment. You can easily fact check everything I post. I am also sure you can appreciate the importance of a controlled research study. Following the fetal malformations that stemmed from failures of the drug thalidomide, clinal trials became mandatory in the United States. Credit Canadian Frances Oldham Kelsey who prevented lots of malformed babies in the United States by standing firm refusing to approve the drug without evidence demonstrating the intervention was safe and effective. The drug was being used for other purposes. The drug was used in Canada and 30+ other countries. It was not tested on pregnant women. To bad. Once you see the catastrophic effects it is pretty clear they were adverse enough to stop any further human trials.
My point for engaging is to share information and hopefully provide something that might make people ask questions. I am more concerned with the parents coerced into putting their child on a path to sex change. They do it with the best of intention but its clear they are providing uniformed consent - the result they were trying to avoid (loss of a child) ends up happening. The result is not good long term.
I understand belief perseverance is a strong thing to overcome. One such person who did overcome is Davina Anne Gabriel. Davina spent a good part of life, decades, as a loud and leading activist voice in the transgender/ transsexual movement in the United States. The following is an excerpt of a letter written by Davina. On 28 February 2016, Davina committed suicide. Davina was 62 years of age:
"If you are reading or hearing this, it means that I am dead.... Please do not remember me for any of my activism on behalf of transgender causes... I refute and repudiate all of that now, as I no longer believe in any of it… Rather than alleviating the tremendous pain and suffering that I was already feeling, all that it has done is to magnify that pain and suffering by a hundred-fold... being a transsexual has prevented me from living a truly fulfilling life… I no longer believe that anyone is in the “wrong body,” or is the “wrong sex” ....I also regret all of my previous activism on behalf of transgender causes, because I regret doing anything that might have encouraged anyone to follow in the same mistaken path that I have taken."
How do you propose we tell the difference between gender-role-nonconforming youth, and trans youth? Respectfully, but there is no medical or psychological or neurological test that can accurately determine whether someone’s belief that they are somehow the opposite sex, or both sexes, or neither sex, will persist for life, or else go away with maturity, or cognitive behavioral therapy (which is already established as the only effective form of treatment for all forms of body dysmorphic disorder).
There is no developmentally appropriate age to prevent a child from going through puberty. Children need to go through their bodies’ natural puberty, which means their biological sex’s natural puberty, so that they can be healthy and functional adults physically, mentally, emotionally, and someday sexually, regardless of how they view their bodies now or later.
I want to respectfully offer you my opinion that 99% of people who have read the Cass review support its conclusions and recognize that Hilary Cass is not motivated by bigotry towards those who identify as transgender, and thus that your opinion is extremely outside the norm.
Stopping the puberty of children is just not a feasible political goal. Diverse groups of people, from gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women, to feminists, to right-wing christians, to muslims, to atheist scientists, profoundly oppose these procedures that harm children’s reproductive systems, and these strange bedfellows have set aside their serious differences for the moment to all come together to stop what they view as the worst global medical scandal in the past century.
Again, no personal insult to you, but you calling people “transphobic” isn’t going to stop anyone from trying to fight tooth and nail to stop healthy kids from being permanently castrated and sterilized.
99% sounds like a number you pulled from you ass to try and improve your claims. This review is absolutely devoid of lived experiences. I’ve worked with and have friends in the trans community who have all stated that early hormonal intervention was life saving.
I agree with you on one thing, stopping the puberty of children (adolescents) isn’t a political goal, it’s a medical one. And it’s been happening for decades, to both cis and trans kids (the latter of whom haven’t faced a ban - why, if these medications are so dangerous?)
We have been using assessments to determine the difference between gender nonconformity and transgender identity for decades. This is pretty well documented, the assessment for gender dysphoria screens out gender nonconformity. They are very different things. Gender identity is different from whether or not someone follows gender norms about clothing or appearance. If you can’t understand the difference, I’d suggest you don’t really understand what you’re talking about.
In most cases we get that assessment right, if the multiple studies on transition satisfaction going back years are anything to go by. But you don’t care about those, just the Cass Review, because it confirm your bias - and that’s kind of the point if the Cass Review: a report designed and delivered to uphold cissexist and transphobic beliefs and defend norms about sex and gender.
There are many similar tests and assessments for things like depression or other conditions which don’t show any external physical signs. And before you say it isn’t the same - antidepressants made me infertile. But they also saved my life. Transition also saved my life, and would also have affected my fertility had antidepressants not done the job. Do you have an issue with young people taking antidepressants? Or is it just with gender medicine you have concerns about fertility?
Your view that healthy kids are being turned into unhealthy kids (that’s the implicit assumption behind your words) is deeply transphobic. It belies the fact that you view being transgender as inherently negative, as a bad outcome to be avoided. This view is also inherent to the ideology of the Cass Review.
Your view is also inherently cissexist. For people like me, the possibility of infertility is nothing compared to having to live our lives in misery by being denied transition. There is also an implicit pronatalist concern rooted in white supremacy to this “worry” over fertility. Why is it only ever “healthy” white, often middle class, adolescents that anti-trans activists seem to worry about or feature in their campaigns? Why is reproductive ability such a concern when adoption is possible? It’s about genetics, eugenics, the continuation of the “white race”, issues which are also linked to white, patriarchal norms around binary sex and its alleged inextricability from gender.
Fertility preservation methods exist. If your issue is fertility, then why aren’t you arguing for better fertility options to be offered to trans you? Why, instead, are you arguing for life saving treatment to be denied, against the available evidence that it helps the vast majority - with far higher satisfaction rates than most other medical treatments and procedures?
I would respectfully suggest that it’s because you have no idea about what trans young people go through. You have no idea what dysphoria is like. You have no way to understand, except by listening to trans people, but you don’t want to because they contradict your ideology, the norms you’ve been inculcated with. You are unable to see beyond your own bias. Like many cis people, you think you know what’s best for trans people, but you are wrong. And your insistence that you know better is harmful to us.
Instead of listen to trans people you would rather listen to the Cass Review. A methodologically flawed and biased report written by a woman who pushed anti-trans literature and recruited members of anti-trans hare groups to the board of the review, secretly. A report that has been torn to pieces by medical and legal experts, experts on transgender healthcare, and trans people themselves. Yet another damming, peer-reviewed critique of the report was published this week.
And yet Cass and the government reject all that, and refuse a review of Cass’s findings to address critique. That’s not science, it’s ideology. Science responds to critique, ideology dismisses critique out of hand.
Have you read the Cass Review, and it’s “studies” (really just biased literature reviews - not original research)?
Moreover, have you ever spoken to a transgender person, or a transgender child or adolescent?
What is your knowledge of this issue, really, beyond what a group of privileged cisgender people in media, politics, and anti-trans organisations have told you?
Considering all my questions, do you honestly think you’re informed enough to argue for the denial of life-saving treatment to a vulnerable, bullied, voiceless population who are now these screaming from the rooftops that they need it? That, in some cases, are choosing to end their own lives rather than go through puberty or exist in a world where people like you work to deny them the care they deserve?
Do you prefer a a miserable or in the worst cases dead “cis” child to a trans child? Because whether you want to admit it or not, that is what you’re arguing for.
Your view that healthy kids are being turned into unhealthy kids (that’s the implicit assumption behind your words) is deeply transphobic.
~
Please keep it up with the cheap lazy and dishonest slurs against the 98% of people who have legitimate medical and moral reasons for objecting to you groomers and your criminal child abuse.
about 10% of this is arguments that may deserve serious consideration. The rest is ad hominem abuse mingled with woke clichés. if you’ve got links to criticisms of the Cass review, you should please include them. I’m still trying to make up my mind on this issue , and your speculations about peoples motives don’t give me any information that is useful to that goal.
Keep asking questions and use your instincts in the absence of GOOD quality evidence. If something seems odd in the data - question it. There is mounds of low quality (useless) data. Here are three questions to guide your thinking and a link to another recent study that tracked the use of hormones among a adolescent group for two years. This is a short period given the typical euphoria that comes with an initial change, regardless, during the study two youth undergoing "life-saving" protocols committed suicide?? This is typical, individuals who transition have a significantly higher rate of suicide. Here are the questions:
1. Can we be absolutely (100 percent) certain about diagnosing gender identity in children and that this identity will remain unchanged throughout their lives?
2. Must we accept the risk for misdiagnosis of children and its life-altering consequences so that some children can get treatment early? (consider: infertility, lost sexual function and irreversible physical changes)
3. Is it ethical to continue performing gender reassignment on minors, especially if there is a loss of life in the process?
Note: in the study below two lives were lost to suicide. How many people need to die before you stop a trial. Apparently two lives is acceptable:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
>I agree with you on one thing, stopping the puberty of children (adolescents) isn’t a political goal, it’s a medical one. And it’s been happening for decades, to both cis and trans kids (the latter of whom haven’t faced a ban - why, if these medications are so dangerous?)
We have been stopping normal kids from entering puberty for decades?
How about a citation for this crazy claim?
Yes, we prevent early on-set puberty but it was never done to prevent puberty which is a normal part of human development. The mystical transgender application is to avoid a normal process from running its course. In so doing it clarifies normal development. Blockers do no allow an individual to chose a different puberty - it prevents a body from developing as it should. Blockers result in lots of issues after their prolonged use with becomes devastating when followed with cross-sex hormones - which will happen in most cases.
I appreciate there is mounds of low quality (useless) data extolling the virtues of blocking puberty. Dah, puberty is a hard and a very difficult part of normal human development. You don't realize what it means until you have come through the other side and further develop. I would suggest you consider three things about the ethics of blockers:
1. Can we be absolutely (100 percent) certain about diagnosing gender identity in children and that this identity will remain unchanged throughout their lives?
2. Must we accept the risk for misdiagnosis of children and its life-altering consequences so that some children can get treatment early? (consider: infertility, lost sexual function and irreversible physical as well as socio-emotional changes)
3. Is it ethical to continue performing gender reassignment on minors, especially if there is a loss of life in the process?
Note: in the study below two lives were lost to suicide. How many people need to die before you stop a trial. Apparently two lives is acceptable collateral damage from a "life-saving" treatment. You will note there is no rating scale required here. We simply count the bodies and the overwhelming evidence is if you transition you have a increased risk of completed suicide:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
Your last question is based on manipulating the results of an already weak study. I will never forgive people who continually perpetuate that debunked lie. (I will absolutely forgive people who acknowledge the falsehood and stop perpetuating it. In fact, I was one of those people who believed it.)
Suicidal ideation is not suicide. Please stop conflating them. Plenty of teens ideate. Mental anguish, regardless of the cause, is part and parcel of adolescence. Using that is like calling a politician with whom you disagree "Hitler" or telling your spouse with whom you disagree, "If you don't stop doing that I want a divorce." It's emotional blackmail of the vilest kind.
As for knowing trans-identified people? I do. Starting with my daughter. She said she's trans over four years ago. This despite declaiming the same a few weeks earlier. And despite an entire life of nothing out-of-the-ordinary related to "gender" expression. But I was there was she was born--she wasn't assigned female, she had been observed female, in utero, post partum, and every step of the way since. So when she said she's a boy it was reality-shaking because it is simply not true.
She still persists in the act, but not when she's at home. And she's past the age of majority now, so she can choose to not come home, break ties with us, etc. But she also knows that, despite our vehement disagreement with her self-ID, we love her. Love isn't affirming a lie, it's being in relationship despite the lie. It's continuing to be in relationship in the good times and the bad times. It's continuing to speak truth despite the lies shared by fear-mongers, knowing that, regardless of the outcome, I will never be complicit in a lie, and she knows she can always trust us to speak the truth, even if she doesn't like it.
As a result of being in relationship with her, we have met other trans-identified people. And I have "online" friends who are trans-identified or who have been and since desisted or detransitioned. And what I gather is that the vast majority of trans-identified people have comorbidities that are the likely root cause of the discomfort they feel, exacerbated by online influences and a desire to belong.
Earlier I put "gender" in quotes because it's at best a regressive notion rooted in stereotypes that ultimately causes harm to people through an insistence on participating in a fantasy. As the author of this piece pointed out, she's more comfortable being stereotypically masculine. But she's still a woman. And I will not win her over, but I don't do preferred pronouns. The simple claim that, "It's just about kindness and respect," sounds really, really good on the surface. But anytime you ask somebody else to pretend something that is not true, there is nothing kind nor respectful in that.
I 100% acknowledge that people WANT to be the opposite sex, for a whole variety of reasons. But they are not, and never will BE, the opposite sex. It is a far better outcome for the majority of people to learn resilience and learn to adapt to their sexed bodies and then work to express their own individuality given that concrete constraint.
Finally, it's incredibly ironic and tone deaf to claim studies like Cass to be ideology. Transgender is an ideology. The science has evolved since the Dutch Protocol to show that outcomes are not what they were originally thought to be. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are not reversible. Even something as "benign" as social transition has iatrogenic effects that, if followed to their end state, will result in long-term suicides of 19x higher than "normal." The ideology has zero basis in science or reality, and rather is rooted in emotion, feeling, and self-ID. If it was science, the critiques that are levied would have already dismantled it, like lobotomies so many years ago.
Woof. Cue the “my child won’t talk to me” in several years post as you complain bitterly about the consequences of your treatment of them. You don’t get to determine who they are, no matter how much gas lighting and manipulation you attempt.
Well stated! Take a cell phone from a kid and they will quickly suggest "I might as well kill myself". In the trans-ideology this is another tick in the suicide column. Thanks for sharing the personal experience. I would suggest three things about the ethics of these protocols:
1. Can we be absolutely (100%) certain about diagnosing/declaring gender identity in children and that this identity will remain unchanged throughout their lives?
2. Must we accept the risk for misdiagnosis of children and its life-altering consequences so that some children can get treatment early? (consider: infertility, lost sexual function and irreversible physical as well as socio-emotional changes)
3. Is it ethical to continue performing gender reassignment on minors, especially if there is a loss of life in the process?
Note: in the study below two lives were lost to suicide. How many people need to die before you stop a trial? Apparently two lives is acceptable collateral damage from a "life-saving" treatment. You nailed it - the overwhelming evidence is if you transition you have a increased risk of completed suicide and there are several good quality studies including in the Cass Report:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
Thank you for sharing your opinions with me. I’m afraid I'm not interested in continuing engaging with a person who insults me. If you wish to apologize, I’m willing to accept that apology and continue discussing this issue with you. But in the meantime, please understand that I will not be verbally abused in person, or on the internet, by anyone. Without respect, productive dialogue can't occur. Goodbye.
You can’t argue facts with the transgendism cult. It’s a new form of gay extermination, conversion therapy, to medicalize and eliminate gay people.
I’m curious why you’re so intimidated when it has nothing to do with you? You’re not being held down and forced to take estrogen. It’s telling you are so desperate to control other people though.
Transgender people have different genders than you. We also have sexualities - of all kinds. To suggest we have any negative feelings about gay people is laughable because many of us ARE queer.
Perhaps you could learn something about us prior to speaking about us.
Because that’s what it is?
You insulted the entire trans community with the underlying disrespect and bigotry of your original comment. I responded in kind. Just because you use “respectfully” a few times and use nice-sounding words to mask your transphobia doesn’t mean you’re actually being civil or respectful, so stop kidding yourself. Your desire to dictate the tone of the debate is a further example of your privilege and your patronising, harmful attitude.
Your demand for an apology is so arrogant it’s almost funny. You’ll get no apology from me for calling out transphobia. Go and clutch your pearls elsewhere.
The trans community insults humanity when it persists in this notion that children as young as five should transition or girls at 14 should have their breasts harvested. Worse, are the lies that when a boy goes on blockers he isnt really being castrated. His micro penis is just his gift from his gender journey. Too many have lost their lives but please dont take what I say as an insult. Hoist in the words of Yarden Silveira:
“I wish I never listened to the medical and psychiatric community when they told me it was possible to change my sex. What a lie. Very dangerous and unethical…No one is truly there for me. There's no need to pretend. I have a gaping hole in my genital area with my colon spilling out… What hurts me the most is the loneliness and the inability to find a partner. I can't have a normal sex life. I'm a loser and I probably deserve this deception. This is what I get for messing with nature"
Shortly after he posted these words on 20 May 2021, Yarden ended his life, he was 23. The words are now immortalized in a YELP review of Align Surgical Associates. Yarden's last act is to provide a cautionary tale and as much as Align Surgical wants to take the comments down they can't. Yarden posted his medical record so his killers can't hide.
I speak to many people with different experiences than me, and who view the world in a way that differs significantly from how I view the world, from transgender people, to muslims, to vegans, to christians, to orthodox jews, to communists, to Trump supporters, to anti vaxxers, and to polyamorists, and my civility to them is never a cover for hatred or disrespect. My civility is me granting them dignity, respect, and empathy. I feel sorry for you that you would choose to believe that someone disagreeing with you on a political issue means that they hate you. What a horrible way to live.
You are a boss and thank you ❤️
Thank you for naming this. I don’t even need to look into how local community groups see this bc I can tell how blatantly fascist the Cass Review is just by reading it. I’m horrified that I wasted my time reading this condescendingly eugenicist take. Anyone who agrees with the author needs to do some deep reflection. This does not support queer and trans youth, and these are conservative arguments.
Yike, you need to get out more and find some new friends. You are in a very dark place if you think the Cass Review is " blatantly fascist" and an attack on the notion of trans people. Cass gave the ideologues far more respect that they deserve. Capturing children is never going to happen and the harms that have been inflicted are clear and becoming even clearer.
More drama queen nonsense.
I support the Cass Report too. Truth is always criticized by people whose agenda is damaged by it. Who cares what the LGBTQ community says about it, even assuming they are all of one opinion.
“Go away” ooof.
I am with you but I am less inclined to think this is a blight against the entire LGBTQ "community". Some of the loudest voices in this arena are the people in the sexual orientation side of this group (the LGB's). There are even some in the "identity side" that are horrified with how the trans-radicals have spun this. Also, some of the most demonic are very fine "straight" people who are making big bucks harvesting the breasts of 14 year olds.
Here is an example. On 28 Feb 16, Davina Anne Gabriel died by suicide. Davina was 62, and at one time a leading edge of transactivist whose work included publishing the periodical, "TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism". Davina became shocked, dismayed and disillusioned by the growing attack directed at children and left this note:
"If you are reading or hearing this, it means that I am dead.... Please do not remember me for any of my activism on behalf of transgender causes. If that is what I am most remembered for, then I will consider my life to have been wasted. I refute and repudiate all of that now, as I no longer believe in any of it. The fact is that I utterly despise everything about being a transsexual, and I consider having been one to be a curse on my life that has brought nothing but pain and misery into it, and prevented me from realizing my full potential as a human being.....Rather than alleviating the tremendous pain and suffering that I was already feeling, all that it has done is to magnify that pain and suffering by a hundred-fold... being a transsexual has prevented me from living a truly fulfilling life... I no longer believe that anyone is in the “wrong body,” or is the “wrong sex.” The body into which nature places persons, and the sex it gives to them is always the right one....I also regret all of my previous activism on behalf of transgender causes, because I regret doing anything that might have encouraged anyone to follow in the same mistaken path that I have taken."
Your academic credentials are completely undermined when you suggest that the Cass review is only relevant to UK transgender children, and that anyone else’s opinion is irrelevant.
The Cass Review is essential reading to anyone concerned with children’s health and rights.
Your bias and arrogance are front and centre.
This is what you sound like:
“Who cares what Jewish people think of Nazis?”
I would be curious to know what evidence or data would cause you to think twice or reconsider your position. Perhaps you are so convinced the world is flat there is nothing we can do.
Evidence or data that contradicts the vast body of evidence that attests to the benefit of gender-affirming care. It’s very simple actually. Cass didn’t produce anything like that; it simply dismissed the existing evidence out of hand. It didn’t produce. Single piece of original research. I’m not aware of a single reputable study that shows that gender-affirming care is harmful, Cass certainly didn’t find or produce any. All the available evidence shows that for the vast majority of people who reveice gender-affirming care, usually in the region of 90% or more (higher than for most treatments or surgeries in any other area of healthcare), benefit from it and have no regrets. That’s research going back decades. Which begs the question, what evidence would you accept to change your opinion, given that so much already exists to disprove it?
As a student of qualitative research methods in a Women’s Studies department (as it was called a couple decades back), I am aware of the unscientific approach to research. Specifically, embrace bias, formulate a conclusion and then shape your study design and data analysis to produce the desired conclusion. Its all rather corrupt. For me I would just like to see people stop committing suicide, Show me the genuine longitudinal studies (10 years after completing medical transition) that individuals are happy, health and pulling their weight in society and I am onside. There are lots of people that transition and appear to be doing very well. Did they need to transition to be doing well? That’s a good research question. I do not care about adults that transition, thats a personal choice. I am only interested in the younger cohort thrown on an affirming transition pathway (blockers at Tanner 2) and become set for life. There are at least three studies that could be drawn from to get a read as to “where are they now”. I dont want to see failures. Failure is not an option in terms of regret and suicide,
On that topic. I go back to 28 Feb 16, Davina Anne Gabriel died by suicide. Davina was 62, transitioned as an adult and was at one time a leading (radical) transactivist. Davina’s work included publishing the periodical, "TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism". Davina became very disheartened by the shift in the focus towards minors and small children. You can find lots of Davina’s writing on the internet:
"If you are reading or hearing this, it means that I am dead.... Please do not remember me for any of my activism on behalf of transgender causes. If that is what I am most remembered for, then I will consider my life to have been wasted. I refute and repudiate all of that now, as I no longer believe in any of it. The fact is that I utterly despise everything about being a transsexual, and I consider having been one to be a curse on my life that has brought nothing but pain and misery into it, and prevented me from realizing my full potential as a human being.....Rather than alleviating the tremendous pain and suffering that I was already feeling, all that it has done is to magnify that pain and suffering by a hundred-fold... being a transsexual has prevented me from living a truly fulfilling life... I no longer believe that anyone is in the “wrong body,” or is the “wrong sex.” The body into which nature places persons, and the sex it gives to them is always the right one....I also regret all of my previous activism on behalf of transgender causes, because I regret doing anything that might have encouraged anyone to follow in the same mistaken path that I have taken."
Given the body of evidence that actually counts the dead bodies, I am not so sure you are being genuine. Cass rejected evidence that isn't evidence - it is manufactured qualitative garbage - the bias is baked in. For evidence to be good it needs to be valid and reliable. The fundamental problem is the inability to replicate the initial Dutch protocol studies. This should have been concerning for the studies that followed. BUT of course, we didn't know how bad this situation was given both in the UK and in the USA attempts to replicate the Dutch Model both failed AND worse the results were concealed and suppressed. GIDs in the UK suppressed data for nine years until forced to reveal the results and Johanna Olson-Kennedy's multi-million dollar US study also went unpublished. Dr Olson-Kennedy is spending time in civil court over her standards of care and hopefully the criminal court proceedings will follow.
I have an academic degree as well, and I don't trust your eviction of the Cass review and the critique of it. Non-biased people have another eviction. And you're the one harming children.
Wonder if you would have reported people for witchcraft, supported people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens, persecuted parents whose children “recovered” memories of ritual abuse? Or recommended liposuctions for young girls with anorexia?
There so many reasons for psychological distress. None of them are “a wrong body”. And the earth is not flat, by the way.
We have stories of transgender people from hundreds of years ago. They didn’t have phones, it wasn’t a fad. They have always existed. Die mad about it.
Do not assume the Cass Review is scientific. It has been widely discredited by every major medical association and psychological association. The data was purposely distorted and incorrectly gathered. This is a review that transphobic people hold up that actually has no scientific value.
Pointless! Regardless of your distorted and incorrect view, it no longer matters. The CASS Review's effect is world wide!! It was discussed and introduced into the US Supreme Court as evidence. That is ALL that matters now, and that works for me because it compels even the most ardent transactivist to get real: Does Gender Affirming Care does not reduce suicides?
JUSTICE ALITO: …. "on page 195 of the Cass report, it says: There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide."
MR. STRANGIO: "What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some -- in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is COMPLETED SUICIDE, thankfully and admittedly, IS RARE and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them."
Sure thing, Will.
You are very persuasive.
You are coming to a gunfight with a plastic spoon.
Thankfully, the public is waking up to the evil of gaslighting children and their clueless parents that the only solution is a sex change.
You are correct about Cass. Don't assume. Look at the report, look at the systematic reviews and look at the individual studies. Start with Chen et al (2023), only two yourh commited suicide while undergoing life saving care.
Assuming would lead one to think you might have something intelligent to say.. One needs to look at the Cass Review for oneself. That will confirm the problems with gender ideology. I am disappointed she tried too hard to be accomodating. There is no room for accomodating the sick minded that put children on a path to a sex change. We have jails for those people. Yes - Read the Cass critical articles. It shows how flimsy these psychopaths are. These are people so bound to their ideology it's painful. I am impressed they have the time these days given so many are now fighting lawsuits for the harms they have done. I just wish they were elevated from civil to criminal.
On May 10, 2022, the first detransitioner lawsuit was filed, against the Permanente Medical Group in California. Seven months later, Camille Kiefel filed a similar lawsuit in Oregon against the Quest Center for Integrative Health, which had performed a double mastectomy on her. Now, the number of detransitioner and wrongful death lawsuits has increased eight-fold, (according to Transition Justice).
“It has been widely discredited”
Ha ha what?
This is absolutely false. Did you hear this on TikTok or something?
No I read the Cass Review myself. I looked at their data. The data they collected was not only a small sample but it was incomplete.
If you run a study over a period of years and you start off with let’s say ten people and you were only able to follow up with five of those people after a year you have to drop the data from your study or say that you were unable to follow up. They did not do that. They intentionally tampered with the data by saying that those who they could not get back in touch with de-transitioned.
They can’t know that. Nobody can know what actually occurred so a scientific approach would have been to throw out the data because you can not draw any conclusions from it. Adding it back in and saying that the result of those 5 unknown people was this or that is unscientific because you can make the data say whatever you personally want. The data said 5 unknown. You should either try harder to find your study subjects or note the lack of result. This is the reason you should have as large of a sample size as possible because you will have some follow up loss.
The second thing that they did was, this study was supposed to be about trans kids but they included kids who did not identify as trans but instead identified as gay or lesbian and enjoyed dressing more masculine or feminine. When they followed up with these subjects they unsurprisingly found that they did not go on to transition. So they marked them down as those who de-transitioned except they never transitioned in the first place.
Thus all of the data is useless for what they were originally trying to measure, which was the rate of de-transition. That’s why I don’t consider it scientifically accurate and neither does any serious scientific orientation.
Not only have you not read the 350+-page Cass Review, I question whether you’ve even read a description of it.
- The Cass Review did not “run a study.” It was a systematic review of other studies.
- The Cass Review did not “collect data.” It was a systematic review of other studies. It did not collect its own original data.
- The Cass Review was not able to follow up with study subjects lost to follow-up. (The fact that so many studies lost a large portion of subjects to follow up is one of the major flaws in those studies.)
- The Cass Review reviewed data from studies of trans-identified kids, not simply gay or lesbian kids.
- If you think “all of the data is useless,” that’s actually not far from the Cass Review’s own conclusions.
- I’m curious which “serious scientific organizations” (I assume you meant that instead of ‘orientations’ ) don’t consider the Cass Review “scientifically accurate.” Note: Erin Reed does not count as a scientific organization.
It's been discredited by those journals that cannot define what a woman is?
Oh no!
Anyway.
“It has been widely discredited by every major medical association and psychological association.”
This is an extraordinary, and incorrect statement. Please provide evidence of ‘every’. Your hyperbole undermines anything that follows.
Well get over it - Cass Review is your ideological downfall and regardless of what you think, it was discussed and introduced into the US Supreme Court as evidence. That works for me because it compels even the most ardent trans=activist to get real:
Does Gender Affirming Care does not reduce suicides?
JUSTICE ALITO: …. on page 195 of the Cass report, it says: There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide.
MR. STRANGIO: What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some -- in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them.
You can literally present any document of any background in the courts. This is no way increases its credibility. This is on par with anti- vaccine autism “research” being peddled around the country.
Yeah, the fact that the US Supreme Court accepts the Cass Review is almost proof of how transphobic and poor quality it is, given the shit show you guys have over there. If that’s your source of validation rather than, you know, all the actual scientists and clinicians who’ve denounced it because they’ve actually read the research and see that science backs gender-affirming care, then you’re admitting you have no single clue what you’re talking about and you’re just a transphobic ideologue.
The Supreme Court isn't my source for validation. I can't help you with your confusion on the evidence. I have already post several studies in this thread. If being concerned about the loss of life puts me in the transphobic camp - count me in - but I am afraid that grasping at the "transphobe" slur is typically the last straw for an ideologue once there is no points left. I will simply refer you to GENSPECT and SEGM among many others that raise serious concerns. By the way, have you seen the WPATH clinicians discussing "informed consent" and "making children happier in the moment"? These videos are online and they are devastating but I digress.
When it comes to the US Supreme Court they will have the final word when it comes to this woke mind virus contributing to the madness in the United States. One of these days even the left leaning justices will be forced to confront the ethics. The three part test:
1. Can we be absolutely with 100% certainty believe in diagnosing/declaring gender identity in children and that the identity will remain unchanged (persist) throughout their lives? We know the finality of a tooth extraction and a hysterectomy.
2. Must we accept the risk for "misdiagnosis" of minors and its life-altering consequences so that other children can get treatment? (consider the risks for: infertility, lost sexual function and irreversible physical as well as socio-emotional changes)
3. Is it ethical to continue performing gender reassignment on minors, including social transition and the indoctrinating effects of "teaching gender", especially if there is evidence this can lead to confusion and result in premature loss of life? The callous disregard for the growing body count among those who are on their gender journey is disturbing. We know this is a very long list. Once the judges are presented with the evidence their is an ethical responsibility. It is the one the bodies overseeing healthcare are failing to live by.
Note: in the study below two lives were lost to suicide. How many people need to die before you stop a research trial? Apparently two lives is acceptable collateral damage for what is otherwise "life-saving" treatment. Today, the overwhelming evidence is if you transition you have a increased risk of completed suicide and there are several good quality studies including those documented in the Cass Review:
Chen et al (2023) Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 19, 2023.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
This is not true.
Here in NZ as well I was so hoping this was a nuanced and honest conversation based on the OP but then I saw the Cass report mentioned 😔
LOL
What are you trying to say here? Is it that you put your trust in tiktok videos?
The British Medical Association has specifically taken a neutral position on the Cass Review while it considers the issue further. The British Psychological Society commended Cass for her work on the Review. You may be thinking of US groups, but they do not represent the entirely of scientific thought on the matter, nor are they the most relevant to a review of an NHS service.
Cass Review is going to be a big part of the ideological downfall. I was disappointed the report advocated for studying the use of blockers. This is a massive error given we know the near term euphoria and "gratification" effect comes into play with stopping something that is uncomfortable. Puberty isn't fun so if you stop it, of course it will be a positive outcome in the mind of a child.
Its the adults that are supposed to be thinking about long term consequences. Sadly even the medical professionals have lost their collective minds and you can even find WPATH's Dr Dan Metzger and Dr. Dianne Berg on You Tube talking about making a kid "happier in the moment" despite the regret that comes later and they even admit "informed consent" is NOT really informed or meaningful.
Regardless, the CASS Review's effect is world wide!! It was discussed and introduced into the US Supreme Court as evidence. That is ALL that matters now and that works for me because it compels even the most ardent transactivist to get real: Does Gender Affirming Care does not reduce suicides?
JUSTICE ALITO: …. "on page 195 of the Cass report, it says: There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide."
MR. STRANGIO: "What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some -- in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is COMPLETED SUICIDE, thankfully and admittedly, IS RARE and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them."
I can tell that you did not click on or read the article 🙄 So I should conclude that you are not interested in facts or science.
This is more recent than your link: https://www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/bma-confirms-support-to-undertake-its-evaluation-of-the-cass-review-from-a-position-of-neutrality
Your link basically says that the BMA acknowledges that the Cass Review wasn’t scientifically accurate and that they will have to do their own review WITH the input of lived experience from transgender people.
Yeah, no it doesn't. I do hope you have a good day, though.
Is that the same British Psychological Society that recently had members of several anti-trans groups and a sociologist who was outed by his university as running an anonymous account that specifically existed to abuse and troll trans people speak at their conference in the issue of trans healthcare? That British Psychological Society?
And the same Cass who has been widely criticised for promoting anti-trans literature prior to being hired to lead the Cass Review, who met with US anti-LGBTQ groups, and secretly hired members of designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups to the board of the Cass Review? The same Cass that has contradicted the less extreme recommendations of her own report since it was published to fit the government’s narrative and ensure she got her peerage? The same Cass that had zero prior expertise in transgender healthcare, and was suspiciously the only person considered for the role, by government ministers who later admitted they did so as part of a wider recruitment of anti-trans individuals into government positions to ensure their ideological viewpoints informed the review? The same Cass that, instead of responding to methodological critique from relevant experts from around the world, as any good scientist should, dismissed them as keyboard warriors? That Cass?
Do you actually know anything about Cass or her review beyond mainstream media headlines?
Some pretty bold claims in there, but I have no desire to get into them with you. Simply pointing out that arguments from authority don't work very well when authorities disagree — clearly people are allowed to disagree with authorities, as you disagree with the BPS — or when you pick and choose which authorities matter based on how closely they agree with you.
If the authorities you do like changed their tune on this, would you change your mind? If not, don't expect others to change theirs.
Would love to hear an example of a specific thing that was wrong in the Cass review. Do you have one to give so I can get a sense of what it got so wrong?
Read this and check out the citations. You will find your answers 👇
https://open.substack.com/pub/erininthemorn/p/british-medical-association-calls?r=2cgrub&utm_medium=ios
“Read Erin in the Morning” 😂
The BMA calls for a review of the Cass Review because of “…its unsubstantiated recommendations driven by unexplained study protocol deviations, ambiguous eligibility criteria…”
Ironically, existing protocols in place and trans-affirming “evidence” are unsubstantiated themselves.
If you reject the Cass Review for poor quality research, you must also reject current trans-affirming research and treatments for the same reason.
Until research has been done that satisfies both sides of the argument, which is likely impossible, then all treatments should be stopped except in emergency cases. Although what an emergency case looks like, I have no idea.
Talk about an unbiased source lmao
So, you think trans people talking about a subject that they have extensive personal experience with and knowledge about is “biased” and you would rather NO transgender people talk about transgender rights? Should we just leave it to cisgender people to talk ABOUT us rather than TO us?
The person you linked supports experimental surgeries for children and medicine that results in sterility. And supports men in women’s sports. They are not a serious resource.
I'd go so far as to describe it as a propaganda piece couched in scientifically sounding language and misappropriated, googleable scientific terms - so it *looks* like science for the gullible public and politicians. Which especially easy when people already have confirmation bias.
It's scientific forgery and should be handled as a medical scandal, especially because of the damage it already has done.
“…so it *looks* like science for the gullible public and politicians.”
No, that’s what Stonewall did in the UK, and ACON in Australia.
Thank you for this. I work with disabled kids and kids from immigrant cultures, many of whom have experienced trauma. They them pronouns in practice can be very hard for people with language disabilities to adapt to, as well as for English second language learners.
In addition, they can be anxiety producing because in practice they sometimes provide less information. I had a client come to me in a panic after receiving a text from a NB roommate stating they were going to bring other NB people over to the house later that day, all of them used they/them. There was no way to tell from the text how many people were coming or who they were. So my client, who grew up in a chaotic home environment, didn’t know whether he was going to have one femme guest or 8 masc guests, which made a huge difference to him in terms of feeling safe in his own home.
late to this party, but wow - so humane and profound; thank you
This has really put into words a feeling that I've been having for the longest time. Thank you for writing this.
I really appreciate you sharing your lived experience. As a lifelong feminist all I've ever wanted was for women to be confident in how and who they are, regardless of how they physically present, sound, or act. I blame misogyny for defining women by traditional femininity to the extent that she/her pronouns make a person (understandably) feel out of place and unsafe.
Thanks for sharing your experience and perspective. I found this really interesting and thoughtful. Appreciate you putting it out there.
This was a thoughtful piece on your experience. It didn’t seem to me that you were advising any particular course of action. You still have some pretty nasty comments in the replies. I don’t know enough to judge the report you cited; perhaps someone with more knowledge should give advice on its validity. You have had an interesting journey so far and have found a way for yourself. Good!
I agree with you. I’m an older lesbian and can tell you that your thoughtful reflections about your years long journey is very down to earth and found it pretty relatable. When I came out in 1974, I didn’t have the vocabulary or sense of things that young LGBT folks do now. But I did join the movement to dispel stereotypes and fight for change in America. Here we are. The history but also the radicalized viewpoints expressed by younger generations now is something I find so historically, emotionally, politically and psychologically complex I get absolutely exhausted to the point that I get turned off and tuned out. Your thoughtful article caused me to tune in however. I wish more folks,especially younger queer etc folks would stop be so damn aggressive and mean and nasty though I have to admit I’m sure that’s how we young activists back in the day were also judged? We had the AIDS crisis, Christian Nationalists of all kinds, Anita Bryant, Harvey Milk, Matt Sheppard, etc and it just breaks my soul and heart to see the community both being torn apart and torn down all over again. The LGBT community better unite again like back in the day else we will all be shipped off to the El Salvadoran gulag.
I used to use she/they pronouns and have since defaulted to she/her. It used to be a way for me to affirm I didn’t feel in place with traditional femininity. Which I’ve now grown to realize many women don’t. That feeling of being born a woman and somehow still feeling like an alien pretending to be one is a byproduct of a society that is typically very restrictive of what a woman can/should like and grow up to be. I’m a butch lesbian, there’s very little about me that is traditionally feminine and because of that I’ve felt the same kind of alienation my whole life from “the girls”. It wasn’t until I started hanging out with “the girls the gays AND the theys” that this alienation was quelled. I feel as though our experiences run parallel and I appreciate hearing it from another persons point of view. At the end of the day people are people and people can be anything they damn well please.
I’m so sorry. You are a woman, and any discomfort you had or have with that is not the least bit your fault. We defined “woman” incorrectly, in a way that excluded you. “Woman” does not define you; you define “woman”. Whoever you are, just as you are.
Thank you for such a beautifully written piece of hard won wisdom.
Just wanted to say that I've had a similar journey to you (apart from i do have gender dysphoria). I've worked in hospitals for over a decade and there is zero chance of me ever being referred to as they/them by everyone! And honestly it's kind of insane to ever expect it.
I know who I am, I know my own identity, and I don't want or need to try and forcer someone to perceive me this way.
I agree that misleading is rarely malicious and i kind of enjoy being perceived as different to every person! I get called every pronoun and, truly, I kind of love it!
Thanks for this article 🙌
I really enjoyed reading every bit if this. Thank you 🩷
I have heard many trans and non binary people over the last few years say things along the lines of “other people’s perception of me is not my problem” and “it does not do anything to me if you don’t use my pronouns”. And I think that’s a healthy way to view it. The people in your circle who truly love and respect you will always try, but you don’t have to spend your energy fighting everyone who doesn’t understand. This isn’t a call to disrespect anyone’s preferred pronouns, but a reminder that we are not defined by the language other’s use for us. We are all the people we are, multifaceted and unique, with our own sense of identity, unaffected by whatever lens we are being viewed through.
S
Brilliant! Thank you for this.