[slab_happy]

And the author has some pithy things to say about about the response she's gotten from the "gender criticals":

https://twitter.com/kathryn42/status/1670696226986098689

Meanwhile, the government is gearing up to go full Section 28, according to leaked plans, and require that any kids who question their gender get forcibly outed to their parents even if they beg not to be (also anyone who's visibly gender non-conforming, whether they identify as trans or not  -- a "boy wearing a skirt" is one of the things that will require mandatory reporting).

This is absolutely going to result in kids ending up homeless, abused, and/or forced into conversion therapy (which is condemned as abusive and damaging by every single medical association).

It flatly contradicts the NSPCC's rules on safeguarding: https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/safeguarding-child-protection/lgbtq-children-young-people

But hey, who cares about children's safety and wellbeing when you might get a bit of "red meat" culture war action?

If anyone fancies doing something constructive for Pride month, you could try sending a letter to your MP to say you're not a fan of this.

Also, petition to sign: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/636802

[petejh]

Good story from that bastion of trans-rights the Telegraph  . Although it is mostly there as publicity to flog the couple's book (and clicks/advertising for the Telegraph). I note they turned off comments..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/jake-hannah-graf-trans-couple/

[Gritter]

I think the arguments about sports and bathrooms / changing rooms are window dressing to the more important discussion which is affirmative care and transitioning of children. Genspec offers an alternative perspective to WPATH and Mermaids as well as lots of supportive information and resources for parents.

https://genspect.org

https://gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/episode/91-uncovering-the-gids-disaster-dr-dave-bell

[slab_happy]

Genspect promotes conversion therapy and has deep ties to US fundamentalist religious hate groups.

Its director, Stella O'Malley, is on record stating that her goal is to prevent any form of gender affirming care for young people.

She's also stated that teenage trans girls have a "pr0n induced" fetishistic compulsion which is comparable to paedophilia and that people shouldn't have "empathy or sympathy" for them.

https://transsafety.network/posts/fet-conference-may-2022/
https://transsafety.network/posts/genspect-misleading-letters/
https://healthliberationnow.com/2022/04/02/leaked-audio-confirms-genspect-director-as-anti-trans-conversion-therapist-targeting-youth/
https://healthliberationnow.com/2022/06/01/a-new-era-key-actors-behind-anti-trans-conversion-therapy/#Direct_connections_between_Genspect_its_leaders_and_religious_conversion_groups

Genspect promotes the debunked "rapid onset gender dysphoria" theory, even though the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association and multiple other organizations have all issued a statement saying it doesn't exist:

https://www.caaps.co/rogd-statement

They're also very cosy with the Alliance Defending Freedom and have directly collaborated on ADF cases. Context on the ADF:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/19/alliance-defending-freedom-lgbtq-rights-america

O'Malley's a big fan of Kenneth Zucker, who explicitly practiced conversion therapy which involved banning kids from any form of gender-non-conforming behaviour (e.g. banning boys from playing with dolls or even drawing pictures of girls), and also dangled the idea that if you were lucky enough, it might "avert homosexual development" too.

"Zucker’s priority is “helping these kids be happily male or female,” but he also acknowledges that the treatment process does, in some cases, apparently avert homosexual development . And in support of parents’ rights to avert a homosexual outcome for their children, Zucker cites a persuasive quote from Richard Green: “The right of parents to oversee the development of children is a long -established principle. Who is to dictate that parents may not try to raise their children in a manner that maximizes the possibility of a heterosexual outcome?"" -- NARTH (the National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality -- the infamous "reparative therapy" people), March 2007

Lovely people.

[El Mocho]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genspect

"Genspect is an international group founded in June 2021 by psychotherapist Stella O'Malley that describes itself as "gender-critical". Genspect is known for criticizing and opposing gender-affirming care, as well as social and medical transition for transgender people."

Edit: I see slab happy beat me to it...

[spidermonkey09]

Slab happy / El. Mocho, are there any elements of Mermaids/Tavistock you are uncomfortable with/would consider inappropriate? Ie is there anything a gender critical person might think /say which you'd think was fair enough?

I say this as someone clueless on the whole affair and unwilling to read a load of articles to form an opinion, but would be interested if there was any crossover.

[Gritter]

 :uns

A complex subject for all involved as far as children are concerned. I haven’t heard anything from Genspec that would fit in with the accusations above. A Gender Critical perspective meaning agnostic seems the only rational position evidenced by the high volume of detransitioners. To describe a questioning approach as ‘conversion therapy’ seems absurd. One could equally state that for a detransitioner the transition itself was a conversion therapy for internalised homophobia. See Iran for this practice. Add to the mix the risks involved with puberty blocking, hormone treatment and for some the eventual modification and removal of genitalia, it stands to reason that any adult should develop a critical stance before encouraging a child to take these steps.

[yetix]

I haven’t heard anything from Genspec that would fit in with the accusations above.

You just have Nick, slab happy and mocho have both shared examples?

[joel182]

Slab happy / El. Mocho, are there any elements of Mermaids/Tavistock you are uncomfortable with/would consider inappropriate? Ie is there anything a gender critical person might think /say which you'd think was fair enough?

I say this as someone clueless on the whole affair and unwilling to read a load of articles to form an opinion, but would be interested if there was any crossover.

I don't consider the Gender Critical to have anything useful to say on issues of trans rights and gender in exactly the same way that Mens Rights Activists don't have anything useful to say on feminism and mens issues.

It's quite fitting that while typing this a reply has appeared in this thread proving exactly why: nonsense claims that are well rebutted and provably false being thrown around to the exhaustion of everyone else. It isn't worth anyone's energy to engage with.

The best I can do is continue to centre the voices of trans people, and I'm really looking forward to reading Elliot Page's memoir when it gets to the top of my list. I think that Shon Faye's Transgender Issue is essential reading for anyone in the UK trying to understand the topic (and it's shocking how much worse the discourse is now than in 2021 when Shon wrote the book)

[slab_happy]

seems the only rational position evidenced by the high volume of detransitioners.

... except there isn't a "high volume" of detransitioners. The rate of regret in people who've gone all the way to medical transition is incredibly low -- literally a few percentage points, which is way lower than for almost any other medical treatments.

And it's often a lot more complex than the Keira Bell narrative of "I'm 100% cis and this was a terrible mistake which ruined me forever and I should never have been allowed to do this and no-one should be allowed to do this”.  Even for some people who at one point were giving the Kiera Bell speech:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/02/detransition-movement-star-ex-gay-explained.html

One could equally state that for a detransitioner the transition itself was a conversion therapy for internalised homophobia.

... except that the majority of trans people aren't straight.

(Serious question: do you actually know any trans people? Because this fact is not exactly secret.)

The whole premise here is that transitioning is taking kids who were "meant" to be gay or lesbian and converting them into straight trans people -- in which case it's sure as hell not working!

Also, of course, it implies that there are all these people out there in the UK and US who are super-homophobic but somehow not transphobic at all.

Going BUT IRAN is not relevant here. Iran has a (very limited) legal mechanism for changing your legal sex if you've had surgery, largely as the result of decades of campaigning by one trans woman activist who managed to successfully lobby Khomeini, while also banning all sexual activity between people of the same gender. It's still a very bad country to be trans in, as well as a very bad country to be gay in.

And it doesn't say anything about other countries unless you want to argue that kids in the UK are deciding to be trans "instead of" gay because of ... laws banning gay sex in Iran?

I haven’t heard anything from Genspec that would fit in with the accusations above.

You're welcome to read the linked articles.

A Gender Critical perspective meaning agnostic

"Gender critical" is not an agnostic position! It explicitly maintains that there's no such thing as gender identity and that being trans is not "real". It's associated with lobbying against any increase in trans rights (e.g. modernizing gender recognition processes) and in many cases now, with lobbying for the removal of some of trans people's existing legal rights.

To describe a questioning approach as ‘conversion therapy’ seems absurd.

If a therapy is aimed at "curing" someone of being trans and treats being trans as a "bad" outcome, then it's conversion therapy, whether it wants to call itself "questioning" or "exploratory" or whatever.

There were (indeed, sometimes still are) conversion therapies which involved endlessly "exploring" the hypothetical childhood traumas and flawed parenting which might make someone experience attraction to people of the same gender, and "questioning" why they thought of themselves as gay or lesbian.

It's still conversion therapy.

[Gritter]

Just because somebody says something on here or in a book doesn’t make it factual, right or universally true.

[spidermonkey09]

Slab happy / El. Mocho, are there any elements of Mermaids/Tavistock you are uncomfortable with/would consider inappropriate? Ie is there anything a gender critical person might think /say which you'd think was fair enough?

I say this as someone clueless on the whole affair and unwilling to read a load of articles to form an opinion, but would be interested if there was any crossover.

I don't consider the Gender Critical to have anything useful to say on issues of trans rights and gender in exactly the same way that Mens Rights Activists don't have anything useful to say on feminism and mens issues.

It's quite fitting that while typing this a reply has appeared in this thread proving exactly why: nonsense claims that are well rebutted and provably false being thrown around to the exhaustion of everyone else. It isn't worth anyone's energy to engage with.

The best I can do is continue to centre the voices of trans people, and I'm really looking forward to reading Elliot Page's memoir when it gets to the top of my list. I think that Shon Faye's Transgender Issue is essential reading for anyone in the UK trying to understand the topic (and it's shocking how much worse the discourse is now than in 2021 when Shon wrote the book)

Cheers; I guess gender critical people wouldn't agree with the comparison to men's rights activists though, which I guess is part of the issue when one is trying work out what's what.

Is there a name for someone who thinks trans people should be treated with dignity and respect in their daily lives, their rights are human rights, who is dubious about whether trans participation in elite sport is desirable or possible to do fairly, and is dubious about whether transitioning should be possible before one is an adult in the eyes of the law? Off the top of my head that's broadly my position without putting a huge amount of thought into it.

[Gritter]

Very reasoned Spidermonkey, that’s my position too

[petejh]

Is there a name for someone...

The name for the person with those views would be 'the silent majority', I'm guessing.

I think that Shon Faye's Transgender Issue is essential reading for anyone in the UK trying to understand the topic (and it's shocking how much worse the discourse is now than in 2021 when Shon wrote the book)

From the prologue:
''Trans people should not aspire to be equals in a world that remains both capitalist and patriarchal and which exploits and degrades those who live in it. Rather, we ought to seek justice — for ourselves and others alike.''


Instant ignore sorry.

[joel182]

Is there a name for someone who thinks trans people should be treated with dignity and respect in their daily lives, their rights are human rights, who is dubious about whether trans participation in elite sport is desirable or possible to do fairly, and is dubious about whether transitioning should be possible before one is an adult in the eyes of the law? Off the top of my head that's broadly my position without putting a huge amount of thought into it.

Yep, if you are serious that you think trans people and their rights should be respected and are willing to stand up when those rights are under attack then the term is "trans rights activist".

[slab_happy]

Slab happy / El. Mocho, are there any elements of Mermaids/Tavistock you are uncomfortable with/would consider inappropriate? Ie is there anything a gender critical person might think /say which you'd think was fair enough?

I say this as someone clueless on the whole affair and unwilling to read a load of articles to form an opinion, but would be interested if there was any crossover.

N.B. I'm not the parent of a trans kid, so can't comment in an informed way about specific services for children and/or parents.  Just a grumpy gender-non-conforming cis adult with a lot of trans and nb friends.

Don't know Mermaids well enough to comment about them, though a friend worked on their helpline for a bit and speaks highly of them.

As I understand it: the big issue with the Tavistock is that it's utterly overwhelmed by demand and has kids on waiting lists for many years before they even get a first appointment (anecdotally, their reputation is for being somewhat psychoanalytic and gate-keep-y once you do get an appointment). So kids are usually figuring out their gender identity on their own and with their families long before they ever get to see a clinician.

Nobody actually seems to like the Tavistock or think they're functioning well! But the issue isn't that they're rushing kids into transitioning, it's that the service has collapsed under the demand and isn't meeting anyone's needs very well.

Ie is there anything a gender critical person might think /say which you'd think was fair enough?

About Tavistock and/or Mermaids in particular, or in general?

If you're asking what I think about gender affirming care for kids:

I think gender can be complicated, and both kids and adults sometimes need to try out various possibilities before they find what fits best. Nobody wants to see kids funneled into anything before they're ready, or feeling that they can't change their minds!

But empirically, that's not what's happening.

And we have a huge amount of evidence that supporting kids where they are and accepting how they currently identify does extremely good things for their mental health.

There was a fascinating study on kids who were allowed to socially transition early, which found that a small minority did change their minds and returned to the gender they were assigned at birth -- some of them then switched back again, some ended up identifying as non-binary after starting out as binary trans, while a very small minority (2.5%) ended up returning to their birth gender and sticking with it:

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/2/e2021056082/186992/Gender-Identity-5-Years-After-Social-Transition?autologincheck=redirected
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/94-of-transgender-youth-maintain-gender-identity-5-years-after-social-transition

Turns out that environments which are supportive of kids exploring their gender are also supportive of them if they change their minds.

It's really weird that anti-trans people are now starting to treat social transition as if it’s the start of this irrevocable one-way slippery slide all the way to surgery (and therefore, you know, a kid shouldn’t be allowed to cut their hair short or wear a skirt until they have two signed letters from NHS psychologists), when I'm old enough to remember when it was called the "real life test" and the point was to deter people who thought they might be trans.

Because if you're not actually a girl, then having people treat you as a girl and refer to you as "she" and use a girl's name for you and being expected to dress like a girl is going to feel really uncomfortable and weird and bad (as many trans men and non-binary people assigned female at birth could tell you ...).

So experimenting with social transition is a good way to find out if you’re mistaken.

A friend of a friend has got some complicated gender feelings and thought she might be non-binary, so after a lot of consideration she asked people to start using "they/them" and switched to a gender-neutral name.

And then she rapidly found out that it didn't feel good, it felt more uncomfortable and ill-fitting rather than less, and she missed some things about identifying as female -- so after a couple of months she switched back again. Sometimes that's how you find out.

And social transition and all of that happens long before before you get to any kind of medical intervention.

Puberty blockers get used because they’re a “pause button”; they buy kids a few more years to consider their options and what’s right for them before they do anything with permanent physical consequences, whether that’s starting “cross-sex” hormones or going off the puberty blockers and going through their natal puberty.

(Also N.B. that puberty blockers have been used for many many decades on cis kids with precocious puberty, and nobody batted an eyelid or worried that they might have secret permanent side-effects we don’t know about, or that they might somehow turn cis kids trans, which is what some dodgy doctors with no relevant expertise have been claiming.)

It doesn’t seem super-rare for people to start a binary transition — i.e. thinking they’re a trans man or a trans woman — and then find out along the way that they’re some kind of non-binary or genderqueer instead (though I also know at least one person who went in the opposite direction).

So, you know, gender can be complicated! People's sense of themselves can evolve over time, and they can change their minds about what fits them best! That's all true!

And I don't think it's wrong to want people to have a safe space to explore, and to feel able to change their minds if that happens, or to want young people to have enough time to be sure of their choices before any irrevocable physical changes (bearing in mind that going through natal puberty is also an irrevocable physical change) -- as I said, that's why puberty blockers get used, for example.

But if you look at good practice in the field, that's what people are trying to achieve.

[slab_happy]

Is there a name for someone who thinks trans people should be treated with dignity and respect in their daily lives, their rights are human rights, who is dubious about whether trans participation in elite sport is desirable or possible to do fairly, and is dubious about whether transitioning should be possible before one is an adult in the eyes of the law? Off the top of my head that's broadly my position without putting a huge amount of thought into it.

Yep, if you are serious that you think trans people and their rights should be respected and are willing to stand up when those rights are under attack then the term is "trans rights activist".

This. As I've mentioned in other threads, there's a very active campaign going on right now to remove some of trans people's existing legal rights under UK law.

Fingers crossed there's been enough pushback that it'll get kicked into the long grass until the general election, but it is terrifying how rapidly people have shifted from "we don't want to take anyone's existing rights away, we just oppose gender recognition reform" to "yes actually we want to take people's existing rights away."

So, you could take five minutes to drop your MP an e-mail to ask them to stand up for trans people's rights, if you fancied.

You too can be a dangerous trans rights activist with surprisingly little effort!

[Gritter]

Could someone point me to a study which explains in simple terms the physiological / biological explanations behind being in the wrong body. I think if we’re going to ‘pause puberty’ and for example remove the testes or breasts of a teenager there should be a pretty clear cut scientific explanation.

[mrjonathanr]

I’ve always understood this as a psychological state. The idea that there are common physiological markers of a trans identity seems unlikely. Do you think differently?

[slab_happy]

Could someone point me to a study which explains in simple terms the physiological / biological explanations behind being in the wrong body.

"Being in the wrong body" is a phrase which is sometimes used to attempt to communicate the experience of being trans and experiencing dysphoria about your body (though some trans people hate the phrase and don't think it's useful).

It's not intended to be understood as a literal statement that there is a metaphysical entity called the soul which can be placed "in the wrong body" -- it's one of those things called a "metaphor", you know?

We do, however, have a mountain of evidence that says that trans people exist, that it's not a "mental illness" as we understand it, that it cannot be "cured" by any form of therapy, and that the appropriate and necessary treatment for people's health and wellbeing is to allow them to transition.

Every single mainstream medical, psychiatric and psychological association agrees on this. Every. Single. One.

They spent decades and decades trying to "cure" trans people (just like they did with gay people) before they finally concluded that it a) doesn't work, and b) causes a great deal of harm.  So it's not for lack of trying, god knows.

Trans people exist. This is a clear-cut scientific fact.

I think if we’re going to ‘pause puberty’ and for example remove the testes or breasts of a teenager there should be a pretty clear cut scientific explanation.

I'm sure you'll be very relieved to know that no-one is removing the testes of teenagers in the UK or US (unless they're intersex, but that's a whole other issue).

A very small number of trans boys get top surgery at 17 (just as a few cis boys with gynecomastia do), though you can't get it on the NHS.  But nobody's getting genital surgery under 18.

To be blunt, you do seem to be lacking in some fairly basic knowledge about trans people and what gender-affirming care for kids in the UK actually involves.

[Gritter]

Your description reminds me of the Eucharist in Catholicism and the act of transubstantiation. Another metaphor that may also not be a metaphor. There is a powerful faith aspect to all this, which I hold no problem with either metaphorically or spiritually.

‘While the accidents of the bread and wine (taste, texture, appearance) do not change, the substance (the essential “bread-ness” and “wine-ness”) does change. It still looks, feels and tastes like bread and wine, but it has truly become Jesus. This is what the Catholic Church means by transubstantiation’

I like this idea of thinking as gender as an aspect of the soul, and trans as a faith based psychological phenomenon that could be equated to a religious state of being
 

[slab_happy]

I’ve always understood this as a psychological state. The idea that there are common physiological markers of a trans identity seems unlikely. Do you think differently?

It's actually not impossible that there could be physiological correlates -- there's been some early research using brain scans and other tests to compare the brains of trans people with those of people of the gender they were assigned at birth and with those of the gender they identify with, e.g.:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/

But we're miles and miles away from anything substantial, if we ever get there; research on gender differences[and brain stuff even in cis people is hazy and debatable enough as it is.

So we don't have what I think Gritter may be asking for, which is a nice neat way to look at a brain scan and go "See, this person is trans!" -- any more than we can look at a brain scan and determine whether someone's gay.

But there are a lot of reasons to think that gender identity (just like sexual orientation) is hard-wired on some level.

[Duma]

I'd avoid this sort of insulting nonsense if you're hoping to win anyone over slab...

[joel182]

it's one of those things called a "metaphor", you know?

I'd avoid this sort of insulting nonsense if you're hoping to win anyone over slab...

How polite must we be when dealing with bad faith trolls who are attacking our identities?

[abarro81]

I don't consider the Gender Critical to have anything useful to say on issues of trans rights and gender

"Gender critical" is not an agnostic position! It explicitly maintains that there's no such thing as gender identity and that being trans is not "real"

Are you both using "gender critical" in a different way to how I understand it? To my mind I guess it encompasses a fairly broad range of things, but one would be that sex and gender identity are kind of different, e.g. "that sex is biological and immutable, people cannot change their sex and sex is distinct from gender-identity" as per one of the first things that popped up on google (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/employment-tribunal-rulings-on-gender-critical-beliefs-in-the-workplace/#:~:text=Gender%2Dcritical%20beliefs%20include%20the,is%20distinct%20from%20gender%2Didentity. ) This seems to be how it commonly gets used in my experience of radio 4 or similar. But it doesn't fit with either of the above statements. I assume you are both using a more "hardcore" definition? What's wrong with just having sex and gender (or gender identity, I don't really care about the terminology that much) as different categories? (The gov seems to do this now on some forms - I had to fill out a diversity form for some gov funding recently that asked both questions)