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 Courtt 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.
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.
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.
>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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey, who cares what the people being harmed by this review think! These kids and their families are screaming from the rooftops about how the policy fallout from this report is harming them, but they’re trans kids so who gives a shit, right?
Have you read the Cass Review? Or its appendices? Or the dodgy research it was based on? Or the academic critiques of it? Or the research it dismisses?
Or did you just read an NYT article written by another cis man that confirms your prejudice and now you think you’re an expert that knows best?
Are you even in a position to understand the issues with the review’s methodology or the way it introduces unfounded ideological claims? I am, I have a doctorate in sociology and social policy and spent a decade learning research methods and how to critique the kind of studies the review employs, as well as those that review dismisses. I also experience the political fallout from the report among what was already an increasingly shit time for trans people in the UK. But I’m part of the LGBTQ community, so I must be clueless right?
Plenty of non-LGBTQ people have criticised it, too, by the way. Maybe you care about their opinions more? It is it just the ones that punch down at trans kids you listen to?
Have you considered that the truth of trans people’s existence is the thing you’re rejecting because it’s damaging to your agenda, and that of wider cisnormative society?
Since you aren’t affected by the Cass Review (I’m going to assume you don’t live in the UK and you aren’t a transgender child - do correct me if I’m wrong, though), why do you think your opinion is relevant?
Why do you even have an opinion on the Cass Review? Do you just like supporting children and trans people being harmed? Or have you been convinced this is something you should suddenly care about (and by “care about” I mean punch down at trans folks) by yet another NYT article, despite trans kids existing for years without issue.
Do have a very hard think before replying. Or just keep your ignorant opinions to yourself, entirely up to you.
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.
I’ve done my research (I also have a background in research, plus loved experience) and no, I’m not going to change my views on this, because my views are the result of looking at the evidence.
It’s interesting that you mentioned research of five years, since that research literally exists, and found good outcomes for trans patients. Also your mention of identifying all clinics in the e.g. England providing care for trans youth to conduct follow up studies? Yeah, they’ve done that - there only was one, the Tavistock. Again, the research could have been better, but it has been done. It is still being done. It has been done in multiples countries, multiple times. The results are always broadly similar - trans healthcare helps trans people, and has done for years and years. Trans healthcare isn’t new, it has been around for over a hundred years - the first trans clinic was burned down by the Nazis, look it up.
As for your allusion to randomised control trials, there are very good ethical reasons that those haven’t been done and shouldn’t be done when it comes to puberty blockers. The Council of Europe, among others, have highlighted the ethical implications of withholding treatments that have been in use for decades, as well as the practical difficulties. For example c any randomised, blinded study on puberty blockers would very quickly be un-blinded, since the effects of puberty blockers are very obvious, and those in the control group would quickly be revealed as such. Nonetheless, the NHS plans to do these, in a way that breaks multiple ethical guidelines and laws. Essentially, the only way for young trans people to access puberty blockers is to engage in a trial. That’s coerced research participation, through threat of withholding treatment. Those trials were meant to start by now, by the way, but have been delayed again and again. And again, puberty blockers have been used to treat transgender children for decades, they aren’t new treatments. Withholding them is unethical. Withholding them to force people to take part in medical research is disgusting behaviour, especially since it is being done to kids.
I’m not kidding when I say I’ve done my research. I’ve been writing about trans healthcare for years, and I have read almost every paper there is on the subject, going back decades. It doesn’t sound like you’ve done the same, your comments and suggestions bely that fact. You might have a background in research, but if you haven’t read the relevant research on this, your opinion is by definition ignorant of the facts.
Yes, we need more research, we always do. Go and read any of the papers on trans healthcare and they say the same. Yes there are flaws, like loss to follow up, but again these are discussed at length in the literature. Trans people are a tiny population, the number of trans kids that have medical treatment is even smaller, because not all do. Using the same kinds of research methods as are used on much larger cis populations is difficult, and yet these studies have been done where possible. And you are also discounting loved experience - trans people overwhelmingly say they benefit from these treatments, and have said so for decades. If they didn’t work or help, we wouldn’t continue to engage with the treatments or seek them out. Science is important, but so is listening to the subjects - us, trans people, trans kids, our families, our loved ones, who will tell you time and time again how much gender-affirming care helps us and is life-changing for the positive.
As for Cass…
Cass recommends a psychological approach for which there is no evidence, one that borders on conversion therapy and sees being trans as the last, worst possible outcome. That is deeply transphobic.
She dismisses much of the research using a review methodology that has been repeatedly crucifixes by experts in medical research. The review method she used for the literature on gender-affirming care was different than that used to review her preferred, recommended approach, for example. That’s bad research. That’s unethical. That’s bias. Her response? She called those experts keyboard warriors. Does that sound alike an ethical, responsible scientific approach to you? To simply dismiss criticism out of hand. Literally another paper came out this week criticising the Cass Review from a medico-legal point of view. There are several well researched and well-evidenced critiques by experts globally, and Cass has ignored them all, as has the UK government.
She also introduces entirely unevidenced claims, such as the idea that porn turns kids trans, or social media turns kids trans, or being autistic or neurodivergent, or having adverse childhood experiences turns kids trans. There is no evidence for any of this, yet it is stated as if fact in her report. These ideas have been researched, and found not only to be incorrect but to be ableist and transphobic.
Furthermore, her presentation of data is done so in a way as to skew and misrepresent it, while using language that is misleading and unscientific. Again, there are multiple in-depth, peer-reviewed critiques of this. I highly recommend you read them.
It is not a coincidence that many of the claims she repeats, or recommendations she makes are identical to the demands of anti-trans groups like SEGM or Genspect. Her recommendation that trans adolescents over 16 be treated as children - unlike any other patient group in the UK - and that those up to 25 should also effectively be treated as minors who can’t make decisions a for themselves, is straight out of the mouth of Genspect - an organisation that promotes conversion therapy, and is designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
So yes, there are issue with the literature - they are well-acknowledged, and there are good reasons for those issue existing that aren’t easy to overcome.
But there is no evidence for the treatment and approach that Cass has recommended, beyond better mental healthcare - something already recommended by WPATH et al, and demanded by trans people. There is plenty of evidence, existing and emerging, that preventing young people from transitioning either medically or socially, which Cass effectively does recommend (particularly the former), does hurt trans young people.
Cass doesn’t have to hate trans people to hold beliefs that are deeply transphobic, deeply cissexist, and deeply biased. She has no expertise in this area, none. Not in psychology, not in gender care, and that’s why she was hired. She has been criticised for promoting anti-trans literature prior to doing the job. She hired members of designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups to the board - secretly, because she knew it was wrong. Our previous government admitted they put her, and others, in place to achieve their political, ideological goals.
Finally, the idea that charities are pushing for trans healthcare and inclusion for money is just laughable conspiracy theory. For one, many of the most prominent trans rights groups in the UK are tiny, and partly run by volunteers - TransActual, Trans Safety Network, Trans Pride Scotland - are funded in othe part by donations from trans people. The idea that the trans population would vanish if these charities weren’t supporting us is frankly ridiculous. It is the stuff of conspiracy and utterly without evidence - which is interesting given your call for evidence above. As usually, trans people have all the demands for evidence placed on us, whereas those opposed to our healthcare and rights can just make shit up and pretend it’s a fact.
I do agree with you that you’re not that smart. Maybe start from that realisation, and educate yourself on this issue properly before commenting on it in ignorance.
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.
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.
Do you know how to use Google Scholar? It’s literally been criticised by at least three major studies that specifically assessed the review and its methodology, from British and U.S. clinicians and medico-legal experts. In the past couple of months alone it has been criticised and dismissed in expert guidance from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Poland. I’m not going to bother linking to the studies and policy docs, because we both know you won’t read it. But if you actually give a fuck and you’re willing to have your views challenged by actual science there is plenty of scientific critique out there. But again, you won’t bother.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for this thoughtful post. I see a lot of what my trans masculine son has experienced in your writing and I appreciate the ways in which you expressed yourself. As a queer, gender non-conformist of an older generation I also appreciate your writing and the sensitivity with which you approached the subjects.
We older people simply haven’t had the vocabulary to express a lot of what we’ve felt and experienced over the years. For the most part, I’ve been lucky (and personally forceful enough) to be more or less accepted as “well, that’s just the way Virginia is” via an aggressive campaign of not giving a fuck (sometimes defensively, sometimes offensively) about what other people think. However as I’ve grown older and somewhat softer, I think that on occasion, a gentle acceptance might be nice - and definitely something worth fighting for in a larger cultural sense.
I am grateful for your perspective and your clarity here. Thank you for sharing the process you went through so that we can all learn and appreciate the struggle and the insights you share. I know that experiences vary so much, and I am grateful to hear about yours. Peace and best wishes to you!
Thanks for writing this. This part really resonated: “I thought a lot about all of the masculine women that had come before me, and how they were perfectly beautiful just the way they were. Perhaps I could follow in their footsteps, and hold it down for the tomboys still growing up.”
I really disagree with everything you’ve written and honestly I don’t this article will be used for good. I am glad that you’ve discovered what makes you happiest and I think it’s brave that you changed your life twice to live your truth but I think your conclusion is ridiculous. Why don’t we restrict she/her usage by trans women to queer subculture? Why don’t we restrict public displays of affection between gay couples to queer subculture? Life is not restricted to comfortable subcultures. Some people will be what they want to be regardless of social discomfort. It isn’t about waiting for the whole world to understand and lovingly accept. I find your endorsement of the Cass Review appalling. Honestly I wouldn’t have posted this essay publicly.
Thank you for your story. I wish for you to love your being with all it's ecentricities. Pity the narrow-minded, and don't take it personally. But I also think there is the trap of becoming our own kind of narrow-minded person.
Describing the experience as self harm and the removal of breasts as mutilation is really weird. It just shows how much stock is put into the female body. Why should anyone be forced to walk around with things hanging off of them if it feels wrong and uncomfortable? Because you and yours loves boobies?! Self harm is much more common when people try to make others feel bad about who they are or tell them they dont exist.
I really appreciate you being honest about this, because as someone who struggles with gender dysphoria I can tell when others are just making it up. It is insulting to those of us who cannot control feeling this way (not that you were intentionally insulting people), it's true that most kids are just confused around puberty but they grow out of it.
Young adulthood is a challenging time, filled with uncertainty and self-doubt For some, questioning their gender feels like the perfect explanation or solution to their distress. But what many don’t realize is that feelings of discomfort and not quite fitting in are a natural part of growing up—something nearly everyone experiences, though few openly discuss. In that silence, an alternative path emerges.
Unfortunately, that path can lead to choices that are difficult to undo, with lasting effects on the body and future. My heart goes out to these kids. More than anything, I wish they had the chance to understand that they’re not alone—and that they could be embraced however they want to present themselves, without feeling pressured to change who they are.
I speak from experience. As a grown woman, conventionally attractive by societal standards, I’ve never felt a deep kinship with most women. I rarely felt pretty or included growing up, but I’m grateful I never had the option to believe I was born in the wrong body.
I’m sorry your mom didn’t cherish you the way you needed. Your story resonates with me. Though I was older, I remember getting ready for my wedding when a hairstylist chided me for not growing my hair long. I simply told her, I’m not a long-hair kind of woman, thank you very much.
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 Courtt 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.
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.
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.
>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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
Hey, who cares what the people being harmed by this review think! These kids and their families are screaming from the rooftops about how the policy fallout from this report is harming them, but they’re trans kids so who gives a shit, right?
Have you read the Cass Review? Or its appendices? Or the dodgy research it was based on? Or the academic critiques of it? Or the research it dismisses?
Or did you just read an NYT article written by another cis man that confirms your prejudice and now you think you’re an expert that knows best?
Are you even in a position to understand the issues with the review’s methodology or the way it introduces unfounded ideological claims? I am, I have a doctorate in sociology and social policy and spent a decade learning research methods and how to critique the kind of studies the review employs, as well as those that review dismisses. I also experience the political fallout from the report among what was already an increasingly shit time for trans people in the UK. But I’m part of the LGBTQ community, so I must be clueless right?
Plenty of non-LGBTQ people have criticised it, too, by the way. Maybe you care about their opinions more? It is it just the ones that punch down at trans kids you listen to?
Have you considered that the truth of trans people’s existence is the thing you’re rejecting because it’s damaging to your agenda, and that of wider cisnormative society?
Since you aren’t affected by the Cass Review (I’m going to assume you don’t live in the UK and you aren’t a transgender child - do correct me if I’m wrong, though), why do you think your opinion is relevant?
Why do you even have an opinion on the Cass Review? Do you just like supporting children and trans people being harmed? Or have you been convinced this is something you should suddenly care about (and by “care about” I mean punch down at trans folks) by yet another NYT article, despite trans kids existing for years without issue.
Do have a very hard think before replying. Or just keep your ignorant opinions to yourself, entirely up to you.
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.
I’ve done my research (I also have a background in research, plus loved experience) and no, I’m not going to change my views on this, because my views are the result of looking at the evidence.
It’s interesting that you mentioned research of five years, since that research literally exists, and found good outcomes for trans patients. Also your mention of identifying all clinics in the e.g. England providing care for trans youth to conduct follow up studies? Yeah, they’ve done that - there only was one, the Tavistock. Again, the research could have been better, but it has been done. It is still being done. It has been done in multiples countries, multiple times. The results are always broadly similar - trans healthcare helps trans people, and has done for years and years. Trans healthcare isn’t new, it has been around for over a hundred years - the first trans clinic was burned down by the Nazis, look it up.
As for your allusion to randomised control trials, there are very good ethical reasons that those haven’t been done and shouldn’t be done when it comes to puberty blockers. The Council of Europe, among others, have highlighted the ethical implications of withholding treatments that have been in use for decades, as well as the practical difficulties. For example c any randomised, blinded study on puberty blockers would very quickly be un-blinded, since the effects of puberty blockers are very obvious, and those in the control group would quickly be revealed as such. Nonetheless, the NHS plans to do these, in a way that breaks multiple ethical guidelines and laws. Essentially, the only way for young trans people to access puberty blockers is to engage in a trial. That’s coerced research participation, through threat of withholding treatment. Those trials were meant to start by now, by the way, but have been delayed again and again. And again, puberty blockers have been used to treat transgender children for decades, they aren’t new treatments. Withholding them is unethical. Withholding them to force people to take part in medical research is disgusting behaviour, especially since it is being done to kids.
I’m not kidding when I say I’ve done my research. I’ve been writing about trans healthcare for years, and I have read almost every paper there is on the subject, going back decades. It doesn’t sound like you’ve done the same, your comments and suggestions bely that fact. You might have a background in research, but if you haven’t read the relevant research on this, your opinion is by definition ignorant of the facts.
Yes, we need more research, we always do. Go and read any of the papers on trans healthcare and they say the same. Yes there are flaws, like loss to follow up, but again these are discussed at length in the literature. Trans people are a tiny population, the number of trans kids that have medical treatment is even smaller, because not all do. Using the same kinds of research methods as are used on much larger cis populations is difficult, and yet these studies have been done where possible. And you are also discounting loved experience - trans people overwhelmingly say they benefit from these treatments, and have said so for decades. If they didn’t work or help, we wouldn’t continue to engage with the treatments or seek them out. Science is important, but so is listening to the subjects - us, trans people, trans kids, our families, our loved ones, who will tell you time and time again how much gender-affirming care helps us and is life-changing for the positive.
As for Cass…
Cass recommends a psychological approach for which there is no evidence, one that borders on conversion therapy and sees being trans as the last, worst possible outcome. That is deeply transphobic.
She dismisses much of the research using a review methodology that has been repeatedly crucifixes by experts in medical research. The review method she used for the literature on gender-affirming care was different than that used to review her preferred, recommended approach, for example. That’s bad research. That’s unethical. That’s bias. Her response? She called those experts keyboard warriors. Does that sound alike an ethical, responsible scientific approach to you? To simply dismiss criticism out of hand. Literally another paper came out this week criticising the Cass Review from a medico-legal point of view. There are several well researched and well-evidenced critiques by experts globally, and Cass has ignored them all, as has the UK government.
She also introduces entirely unevidenced claims, such as the idea that porn turns kids trans, or social media turns kids trans, or being autistic or neurodivergent, or having adverse childhood experiences turns kids trans. There is no evidence for any of this, yet it is stated as if fact in her report. These ideas have been researched, and found not only to be incorrect but to be ableist and transphobic.
Furthermore, her presentation of data is done so in a way as to skew and misrepresent it, while using language that is misleading and unscientific. Again, there are multiple in-depth, peer-reviewed critiques of this. I highly recommend you read them.
It is not a coincidence that many of the claims she repeats, or recommendations she makes are identical to the demands of anti-trans groups like SEGM or Genspect. Her recommendation that trans adolescents over 16 be treated as children - unlike any other patient group in the UK - and that those up to 25 should also effectively be treated as minors who can’t make decisions a for themselves, is straight out of the mouth of Genspect - an organisation that promotes conversion therapy, and is designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
So yes, there are issue with the literature - they are well-acknowledged, and there are good reasons for those issue existing that aren’t easy to overcome.
But there is no evidence for the treatment and approach that Cass has recommended, beyond better mental healthcare - something already recommended by WPATH et al, and demanded by trans people. There is plenty of evidence, existing and emerging, that preventing young people from transitioning either medically or socially, which Cass effectively does recommend (particularly the former), does hurt trans young people.
Cass doesn’t have to hate trans people to hold beliefs that are deeply transphobic, deeply cissexist, and deeply biased. She has no expertise in this area, none. Not in psychology, not in gender care, and that’s why she was hired. She has been criticised for promoting anti-trans literature prior to doing the job. She hired members of designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups to the board - secretly, because she knew it was wrong. Our previous government admitted they put her, and others, in place to achieve their political, ideological goals.
Finally, the idea that charities are pushing for trans healthcare and inclusion for money is just laughable conspiracy theory. For one, many of the most prominent trans rights groups in the UK are tiny, and partly run by volunteers - TransActual, Trans Safety Network, Trans Pride Scotland - are funded in othe part by donations from trans people. The idea that the trans population would vanish if these charities weren’t supporting us is frankly ridiculous. It is the stuff of conspiracy and utterly without evidence - which is interesting given your call for evidence above. As usually, trans people have all the demands for evidence placed on us, whereas those opposed to our healthcare and rights can just make shit up and pretend it’s a fact.
I do agree with you that you’re not that smart. Maybe start from that realisation, and educate yourself on this issue properly before commenting on it in ignorance.
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.
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.
Do you know how to use Google Scholar? It’s literally been criticised by at least three major studies that specifically assessed the review and its methodology, from British and U.S. clinicians and medico-legal experts. In the past couple of months alone it has been criticised and dismissed in expert guidance from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Poland. I’m not going to bother linking to the studies and policy docs, because we both know you won’t read it. But if you actually give a fuck and you’re willing to have your views challenged by actual science there is plenty of scientific critique out there. But again, you won’t bother.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for this thoughtful post. I see a lot of what my trans masculine son has experienced in your writing and I appreciate the ways in which you expressed yourself. As a queer, gender non-conformist of an older generation I also appreciate your writing and the sensitivity with which you approached the subjects.
We older people simply haven’t had the vocabulary to express a lot of what we’ve felt and experienced over the years. For the most part, I’ve been lucky (and personally forceful enough) to be more or less accepted as “well, that’s just the way Virginia is” via an aggressive campaign of not giving a fuck (sometimes defensively, sometimes offensively) about what other people think. However as I’ve grown older and somewhat softer, I think that on occasion, a gentle acceptance might be nice - and definitely something worth fighting for in a larger cultural sense.
Thank you again.
I am grateful for your perspective and your clarity here. Thank you for sharing the process you went through so that we can all learn and appreciate the struggle and the insights you share. I know that experiences vary so much, and I am grateful to hear about yours. Peace and best wishes to you!
Thanks for writing this. This part really resonated: “I thought a lot about all of the masculine women that had come before me, and how they were perfectly beautiful just the way they were. Perhaps I could follow in their footsteps, and hold it down for the tomboys still growing up.”
I really disagree with everything you’ve written and honestly I don’t this article will be used for good. I am glad that you’ve discovered what makes you happiest and I think it’s brave that you changed your life twice to live your truth but I think your conclusion is ridiculous. Why don’t we restrict she/her usage by trans women to queer subculture? Why don’t we restrict public displays of affection between gay couples to queer subculture? Life is not restricted to comfortable subcultures. Some people will be what they want to be regardless of social discomfort. It isn’t about waiting for the whole world to understand and lovingly accept. I find your endorsement of the Cass Review appalling. Honestly I wouldn’t have posted this essay publicly.
This was such a beautiful and thoughtful read. Thank you for sharing <3
“So before reaching for a fix, consider the possibility that nothing in you is broken.” - Well said!
need to read! thanks.
Thank you for your story. I wish for you to love your being with all it's ecentricities. Pity the narrow-minded, and don't take it personally. But I also think there is the trap of becoming our own kind of narrow-minded person.
Describing the experience as self harm and the removal of breasts as mutilation is really weird. It just shows how much stock is put into the female body. Why should anyone be forced to walk around with things hanging off of them if it feels wrong and uncomfortable? Because you and yours loves boobies?! Self harm is much more common when people try to make others feel bad about who they are or tell them they dont exist.
I really appreciate you being honest about this, because as someone who struggles with gender dysphoria I can tell when others are just making it up. It is insulting to those of us who cannot control feeling this way (not that you were intentionally insulting people), it's true that most kids are just confused around puberty but they grow out of it.
Young adulthood is a challenging time, filled with uncertainty and self-doubt For some, questioning their gender feels like the perfect explanation or solution to their distress. But what many don’t realize is that feelings of discomfort and not quite fitting in are a natural part of growing up—something nearly everyone experiences, though few openly discuss. In that silence, an alternative path emerges.
Unfortunately, that path can lead to choices that are difficult to undo, with lasting effects on the body and future. My heart goes out to these kids. More than anything, I wish they had the chance to understand that they’re not alone—and that they could be embraced however they want to present themselves, without feeling pressured to change who they are.
I speak from experience. As a grown woman, conventionally attractive by societal standards, I’ve never felt a deep kinship with most women. I rarely felt pretty or included growing up, but I’m grateful I never had the option to believe I was born in the wrong body.
I’m sorry your mom didn’t cherish you the way you needed. Your story resonates with me. Though I was older, I remember getting ready for my wedding when a hairstylist chided me for not growing my hair long. I simply told her, I’m not a long-hair kind of woman, thank you very much.