UK Politics: Not even a Penny for a new Prime Minister

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

You said:

This seems like fear rhetoric.  Why?  Because why shouldn’t those with autism or mental health issues be afforded the same health care as everyone else?  Why are you singling them out?  Why is it apparently a problem that they “were just waved through” as opposed to every other kid?

I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that the reason you’re emphasizing that aspect of the population is due to some type of lack of understanding or willingness on behalf of those kids.  Otherwise, considering them in a different manner to the rest of the population is by definition bigoted.  

Further, acting as if everyone that is challenging your claims is “ideological” while you somehow aren’t is the height of comedy.

I would have thought the obvious point is that these children are having mental distress due to trauma or underlying undiagnosed autism, but are claiming the need to change sex. 
 

Worth reading the whole article because it just seems like you are coming to the topic completely cold.
https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids

Quote

The statistics are horrifying. Less than 2% of children in the UK have an autism spectrum disorder; at Gids, more than a third of referrals presented with autistic traits. Clinicians also saw high numbers of children who had been sexually abused. But for the reader, it is the stories that Barnes recounts of individuals that speak loudest. The mother of one boy whose OCD was so severe he would leave his bedroom only to shower (he did this five times a day) suspected that his notions about gender had little to do with his distress. However, from the moment he was referred to the Tavistock, he was treated as if he were female and promised an endocrinology appointment. Her son, having finally rejected the treatment he was offered by Gids, now lives as a gay man.

 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

I would have thought the obvious point is that these children are having mental distress due to trauma or underlying undiagnosed autism, but are claiming the need to change sex. 

Nope, it’s not obvious and really gross to stigmatize an entire group in such a way for the benefits of your ideological argument.  Nor is your suggestion that those with autism are just “waived through.”

The implication here is frankly offensive to those with autism as well as anyone close to them.  The suggestion is that some differences in the percentages in terms of referrals to Gids is because kids with autism apparently are less capable than everyone else to determine their gender identity.  Which is what you’re asserting, whether you realize it or not.  

You keep on employing bad faith tactics that make it really hard to consider your arguments in any way credible.

[karaddin]

You insist that these numbers are larger than can be explained by societal change but the only evidence offered for why is "big scary numbers" and "trust me bro".

Even if these numbers are the true "new trans people within a yearly cohort" that's within prior estimates of the rate of trans people within the general population which were roughly 0.5-1% so these numbers shouldn't be "obviously" too large to be explained by removed barriers to treatment. If it continues at an exponential rate for another couple of years then the concern would make more sense at that point.

[Heartofice]

Just now, DMC said:

Nope, it’s not obvious and really gross to stigmatize an entire group in such a way for the benefits of your ideological argument.  Nor is your suggestion that those with autism are just “waived through.”

The implication here is frankly offensive to those with autism as well as anyone close to them.  The suggestion is that some differences in the percentages in terms of referrals to Gids is because kids with autism apparently are less capable than everyone else to determine their gender identity.  Which is what you’re asserting, whether you realize it or not.  

You keep on employing bad faith tactics that make it really hard to consider your arguments in any way credible.

Ok, this is tiresome. 
 

im just going to ask you. Did you bother to read the article I posted? Have you bothered to read any part of the Cass review? Do you know even the basics of what you are talking about because right now you are just throwing out accusations with zero basis. 
 

Im not going to bother to engage with you any more, i should have learnt after what the last.. 5 times?

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

im just going to ask you. Did you bother to read the article I posted? Have you bothered to read any part of the Cass review? Do you know even the basics of what you are talking about because right now you are just throwing out accusations with zero basis. 

I read the article.  I strongly suspect I read more of the Cass report than you have at this point.  And this began with me reading and citing an article you posted that you yourself couldn’t or wouldn’t back up with basic data.  If you want to take your ball and go home, by all means, but it is because your arguments suck.

[Zorral]

Well BREXIT has proven itself to an even worse catastrophe than everyone who knew better knew it would be so these jerkwaddies got nothin' but to try to rile up people with stupid hatreds about other stuff that isn't a problem either.

 

[Fragile Bird]

4 hours ago, Maltaran said:

Big Tory donor and the chairman of JCB

I looked up his name for news about him “absconding” but there’s nothing that I can find except news of his resignation, and some stories about the investigations going on that are a couple of years old. Has he actually absconded?

[Heartofice]

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

 stuff that isn't a problem either.

 

You do realise we are talking about a medical scandal in which vulnerable children have been mistreated, given medication for which there little evidence would do any good and may well permanently harm them.

At some point you have to wonder what goes through people's head when they can just handwave this stuff away. It can only be ideology. Someone earlier mentioned the toxic debate, but you have to question who is really toxic here, I suggest its the people who don't care about children's welfare.

This would be a good opportunity to go stare at the 'Are we the bad guys?' meme and contemplate things for some people.

[Heartofice]

This from the British Medical Journal:

https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q837
 

Quote

 Cass, a past president of the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, seeks to provide better care for children and adolescents on one of the defining issues of our age. Her conclusion is alarming for anybody who genuinely cares for child welfare: gender medicine is “built on shaky foundations” (doi:10.1136/bmj.q814).2

That verdict is supported by a series of review papers published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, a journal published by BMJ and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (doi:10.1136/archdischild-2023-326669 doi:10.1136/archdischild-2023-326670 doi:10.1136/archdischild-2023-326499 doi:10.1136/archdischild-2023-326500).3456 The evidence base for interventions in gender medicine is threadbare, whichever research question you wish to consider—from social transition to hormone treatment.

The poor quality of PB studies:

Quote

For example, of more than 100 studies examining the role of puberty blockers and hormone treatment for gender transition only two were of passable quality.

And on the interventionist approach:

Quote

A spiralling interventionist approach, in the context of an evidence void, amounted to overmedicalising care for vulnerable young people. A too narrow focus on gender dysphoria, says Cass, neglected other presenting features and failed to provide a holistic model of care. Gender care became superspecialised when a more general, multidisciplinary approach was required

And on my final point, where after pages and pages of discussion on the topic, not one person has shown an ounce of concern about the scandal, probably because it doesn’t sit well with their worldview , I think this is appropriate 

Quote

 The Cass review is an opportunity to pause, recalibrate, and place evidence informed care at the heart of gender medicine. It is an opportunity not to be missed for the sake of the health of children and young people. It is an opportunity for unity.

 

[BigFatCoward]

7 hours ago, karaddin said:

 If it continues at an exponential rate for another couple of years then the concern would make more sense at that point.

This. 

I agree HoI is being unnecessarily alarmist since the numbers are still incredibly low. But if that trend continued over the next decade they are no longer low. And the higher the numbers get, the more mistakes will be made on individual cases, if the medical experts are already overwhelmed, the situation could become completely unmanageable. 

It's going to be a very hard sell with the gen pop, for any political party to increase funding in this area. 

Edited April 13 by BigFatCoward

[Heartofice]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

This. 

I agree HoI is being unnecessarily alarmist since the numbers are still incredibly low. But if that trend continued over the next decade they are no longer low. And the higher the numbers get, the more mistakes will be made on individual cases, if the medical experts are already overwhelmed, the situation could become completely unmanageable. 

It's going to be a very hard sell with the gen pop, for any political party to increase funding in this area. 

Well the existing numbers were already at a level that clinics couldn’t cope with,  because they were so far above what was a pretty steady number for a very long time. Also the nature of the patients changed almost over night, going from mostly biological males to overwhelmingly biological females. 
 

The real point about the numbers is that the rate of change is a signal for wider issues. Why did biological females suddenly start having gender confusion around the same time across the western world? 

Edited April 13 by Heartofice

[Heartofice]

The Observer view on the Cass review: children were catastrophically failed by the medical profession

“Clinicians and managers must be held to account for the travesty in which adult beliefs were allowed to drive healthcare for children”

 

Just how badly wrong things went at the gender identity development service (Gids) is evidenced in the fact that Cass felt she had to explicitly state that, while some people argue that clinical care for children should be based on a “social justice” model, “the NHS works in an evidence-based way”. That should never have been up for debate: as the British Medical Journal argued in its editorial on the Cass review last week, it is deeply unethical to provide untested medical interventions for children that lack evidence of benefit, yet are life-altering and come with potentially very significant harms.

 

 

[TrackerNeil]

On 4/13/2024 at 2:56 AM, Heartofice said:

Well the existing numbers were already at a level that clinics couldn’t cope with,  because they were so far above what was a pretty steady number for a very long time. Also the nature of the patients changed almost over night, going from mostly biological males to overwhelmingly biological females. 

That's another curiosity, one that is so far unexplained, as far as I know. I'm not crying "social contagion", though; I'm saying that it's not unreasonable to wonder why the patient population has changed so notably in a relatively short period of time.

[Heartofice]

2 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

That's another curiosity, one that is so far unexplained, as far as I know. I'm not crying "social contagion", though; I'm saying that it's not unreasonable to wonder why the patient population has changed so notably in a relatively short period of time.

What a lot of people might say is that there were simply a lot of biological females who were not coming forward but suddently felt able to. 
 

Honestly I don’t think that passes the smell test and Cass doesn’t think so either. There might be a number where that applies but the huge shift doesn’t get explained by that. I’d be reticent to use the term ‘social contagion’ too ( if only because for some reason it seems to set some people off) but social pressures definitely played their part. 
 

The very close correlation with a time when kids and teenagers started to get phones, were exposed to social media and the related social pressure I think definitely contributed to a slew of mental health issues for young girls.

No doubt a lot of them started to get very confused and unhappy about their bodies and sexuality.At the same time you started getting trends online telling them what those answers might be. 

Again, the numbers by themselves are not the alarming part, the alarming part was the failure of GIDS when they started seeing these girls. 

[Zorral]

Pollution including hormonal and other enzymes saturating the environment has had dysmorphism effects  in various amphibian and other species that have been studied.

Girls are reaching puberty (though not emotional and intellectual maturity) years earlier than previously -- 10 and 11 are not unusual now, when up through much of  the 19th century the age was at 15 - 16, and 13 was the age by mid 20th.  That's not peer pressure.

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Pollution including hormonal and other enzymes saturating the environment has had dysmorphism effects  in various amphibian and other species that have been studied.

Girls are reaching puberty (though not emotional and intellectual maturity) years earlier than previously -- 10 and 11 are not unusual now, when up through much of  the 19th century the age was at 15 - 16, and 13 was the age by mid 20th.  That's not peer pressure.

So it’s something in the water???

[Heartofice]

48 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Pollution including hormonal and other enzymes saturating the environment has had dysmorphism effects  in various amphibian and other species that have been studied.

Girls are reaching puberty (though not emotional and intellectual maturity) years earlier than previously -- 10 and 11 are not unusual now, when up through much of  the 19th century the age was at 15 - 16, and 13 was the age by mid 20th.  That's not peer pressure.

Ok well I’m for once going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you weren’t comparing children to the 3 eyed fish in The Simpsons.  I’m sure that wasn’t your intention , no matter how it sounded.

I do think that there is something in the idea that girls hitting puberty early will be a contributing factor. Mainly because a disparity between physical and emotional maturity will surely leave a lot of girls uncomfortable with their changing bodies and more likely to struggle at that age. 
 

Having said that, that trend has been going on for some time and the exponential growth in GIDS referrals shot up recently over a small period of time.

So it probably plays a part, but it’s not the whole story. 

[HexMachina]

7 hours ago, Heartofice said:

What a lot of people might say is that there were simply a lot of biological females who were not coming forward but suddently felt able to. 
 

Honestly I don’t think that passes the smell test and Cass doesn’t think so either. There might be a number where that applies but the huge shift doesn’t get explained by that. I’d be reticent to use the term ‘social contagion’ too ( if only because for some reason it seems to set some people off) but social pressures definitely played their part. 
 

The very close correlation with a time when kids and teenagers started to get phones, were exposed to social media and the related social pressure I think definitely contributed to a slew of mental health issues for young girls.

No doubt a lot of them started to get very confused and unhappy about their bodies and sexuality.At the same time you started getting trends online telling them what those answers might be. 

Again, the numbers by themselves are not the alarming part, the alarming part was the failure of GIDS when they started seeing these girls. 

its hard to take you in good faith when you say things like this. Surely its obvious that the term "social contagion" is very loaded with unpleasant implications. Words should be chosen carefully, especially where the subject matter is sensitive and if you can't see why the term social contagion in this context would set someone off you're either being wilfully obtuse or coming from a position of bad faith.

I'll also add that this isn't exclusive to you, and is part of a much broader problem I've observed reading this thread and the articles that have been linked. A lot of the language used seems particularly loaded to lead to fear mongering and hysteria. "Alarming for anyone who genuinely cares for a child..." And then concluding with "...is an opportunity opportunity for unity." Did the author proof read this article before posting?

 

Eta: To be clear, I'm not weighing in with my opinion on the subject matter here. I have one, to no surprise its the opposite to HoI, but I'm not interested in arguing it. I'm more concerned with the language being used in the discussion here and elsewhere on the internet which I think has the potential to be very dangerous and stir up a lot of emotions against a group many are already hostile towards

Edited April 14 by HexMachina

[The Anti-Targ]

I would credit arguments raising concern at a surprising increase in trans referrals being indicative of a problem in the medical and psychological field as long as the people making that argument first acknowledged the objective truth that trans people really do exist and they have a right to be who they see themselves to be, and to be respected, accepted and loved. If we can settle on that as an objective reality perhaps there can be good faith discussion absent suspicion of having a transphobic or trans-grooming agenda.

It may seem like people who are trans, and people who see themselves as trans allies, have an ideological agenda with the Cass report. But really to me it's that there is worry about the ideological agenda of people raising this as a thing that should cause significant concern and thereby seeking to further marginalise and persecute a minority group. It's not like legitimate scientific research with legitimate conclusions hasn't been removed from context and weaponised for ideological purposes to demonise and marginalise minorities before. The first thing that needs to be determined is whether the conclusions of the scientific report are valid (i.e. the conclusions themselves are not compromised by ideology), I doubt any of us here are capable of coming to an expert conclusion on that point. The second thing is that the report is not used for invalid ideological purposes.

The medical community (and science in general) is not free from bias and ideology, especially when it comes to controversial social issues. The only people who don't have an opinion about trans people are people who have never heard of the concept or come across trans people. The more emotive any written material is about the topic the more likely the material is shaped by the bias of the author(s) and thus has diminished objectivity. A report on exactly the same data will read very differently if written by JKR vs being written by Natalie Wynn. 

[Tears of Lys]

This seems like a topic that deserves a thread of its own, not jerry-rigged into the UK Politics discussion.  I'm sure all of us have opinions on the topic of the apparent increase in people who are experiencing gender dysphoria. 

I've known several trans folk in my life.  Some I like and others, not so much, just like . . . I don't know the term for those who don't experience gender dysphoria, so forgive me.      

I'd like to learn more.  I, myself, have often felt more "male" than "female," which is perhaps why I'm so interested.