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

[karaddin]

1 minute ago, Tears of Lys said:

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. 

Bolded - yup, we've got our nice people and assholes like everyone else. By "those who don't experience gender dysphoria" do you mean people who aren't trans, or trans people who know themselves without experiencing the psychological distress of dysphoria?

The former is just "cisgender" and often shortened to "cis" following the ancient Greek naming convention for "same side" / "opposite". The latter I don't think there is a name for it, or at least certainly not one I'm aware of - if I was feeling flippant I'd probably just call them lucky lol. Its a minority of people under the trans umbrella but its certainly a group that does exist and are valid.

5 minutes ago, Tears of Lys said:

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

I'm guessing this is informing the prior question about name for those who don't feel dysphoria - I certainly wasn't aware I was experiencing it for most of my life before my brain decided to crack my egg, but it is hard to really describe what it felt like. The part I can articulate most clearly is what did crack through my subconscious denial. You're right that this is drifting way off topic for the UK politics thread though, I'm happy to continue the conversation in another thread - probably easiest to just necro the LGBTQ one if you want.

/tangent

[Tears of Lys]

@karaddin  I haven't formulated enough of a cogent thought to make any meaningful post to resurrect that thread.  But I guess you would consider me "lucky"  since it hasn't bothered me enough to actually DO anything about it.  

I do want to take this opportunity to say that your posts are invariably well considered, nicely written, and most importantly, kind.  I always take the time to read them.    

[Heartofice]

6 hours ago, HexMachina said:

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

Yes that’s why I said I was reticent to use the term. However, I’ve said up above what I think is causing the huge upsurge and change in nature of referrals. 
 

One of the big conclusions of the Cass Review is that we have seen a period where ideology has taken over science in medicine. We have to get away from being scared of being challenged by uncomfortable facts. We need to be able to look at the causes of what is going on without feeling afraid. 

6 hours ago, HexMachina said:

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?

So I would question why anyone reading the Cass review isn’t alarmed by it? What does that say if you are reading about the story and shrugging your shoulders? 
 

If even one person on this thread who for the past few years has been spreading disinformation on the topic had even the slightest level of mea culpa, then maybe talk of unity would be appropriate. I haven’t seen anything so far, all I’ve seen is either indifference or people desperate to find an angle that allows them to push back and save face. 
 

It’s more like people still have their hands over their ears the entire time. 
 

 

Edited April 15 by Heartofice

[karaddin]

Nothing I've read in your posts explicitly demonstrates confirmed harm. There has been assertions that the safeguards in place as part of the process are inadequate, but inadequate safeguards doesn't actually mean that any (let alone all) children received improper treatment as a result of that. I don't deny that some people do regret and detransition, so I'm sure there are some of them but I haven't seen any solid numbers for that.

So a question that is probably illuminating on the difference in our underlying perspectives - how do you prioritize how bad these two scenarios are?

• Cis kid receives treatment they don't need, and shouldn't have received resulting in permanent damage to their fertility (so we're talking more than simply receiving puberty blockers - I'm giving you a more serious case)
• Trans kid is refused treatment that they do need, undergoing the wrong puberty and receiving permanent damage to their bodies development

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Nothing I've read in your posts explicitly demonstrates confirmed harm. There has been assertions that the safeguards in place as part of the process are inadequate, but inadequate safeguards doesn't actually mean that any (let alone all) children received improper treatment as a result of that.

Really? We know harm has been done because detransitioners like Keira Bell have come forward to sue the Tavistock for their mistreatment. 

https://www.persuasion.community/p/keira-bell-my-story

 

Quote

"The consequences of what happened to me have been profound: possible infertility, loss of my breasts and inability to breastfeed, atrophied genitals, a permanently changed voice, facial hair. When I was seen at the Tavistock clinic, I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body. But it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naïve hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery."

There are certainly more, but one of the reasons we are not sure how many detransitioners there have been is because another major criticism coming out of the Cass review is that the clinics were just not keeping that data or bothering to follow up. 

Quote

In their ruling, the judges repeatedly expressed surprise at what had been going on at the Tavistock, particularly its failure to gather basic data on its patients. They noted the lack of evidence for putting children as young as 10 years old on drugs to block puberty, a treatment that is almost universally followed by cross-sex hormones, which must be taken for life to maintain the transition. They also had concerns about the lack of follow-up data, given “the experimental nature of the treatment and the profound impact that it has.”

 

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

So a question that is probably illuminating on the difference in our underlying perspectives - how do you prioritize how bad these two scenarios are?

• Cis kid receives treatment they don't need, and shouldn't have received resulting in permanent damage to their fertility (so we're talking more than simply receiving puberty blockers - I'm giving you a more serious case)
• Trans kid is refused treatment that they do need, undergoing the wrong puberty and receiving permanent damage to their bodies development

Well the first question is whether it is genuinely possible to diagnose with any accuracy which children would be helped by having PB and sex hormones, and then the next question is whether those treatments are safe, and actually whether they do in fact promote the benefits that have been claimed. We don't actually know if those treatments have positive outcomes because the evidence is so shaky.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/14/hilary-cass-review-gender-trans-young-people-children-nhs-evidence
 

Quote

Cass finds a childhood diagnosis of gender dysphoria is not predictive of a lasting trans identity and clinicians told the review they are unable to determine in which children gender dysphoria will last into adulthood. If this is indeed impossible, is it ever ethical to put a young person on a life-altering medical pathway? If there are no objective diagnostic criteria, on what basis would a clinician be taking this decision other than a professional hunch?

So what we are talking about is experimenting on children for unknown benefits and potential, quite likely harms. Can we really think that children going through puberty are able to accurately self diagnose what is going on in their bodies and minds? What age is it appropriate to put children on this treatment? 

Well from the Bell ruling we know what the court found:

Quote

The ruling does not completely prevent a minor from beginning a medical transition. But the judges recommended that doctors consider getting court permission before starting such treatment for those 16 to 17; they concluded it was “very doubtful” that patients aged 14 and 15 could have sufficient understanding of the consequences of the treatment to give consent; and that it was “highly unlikely” for those aged 13 and under.

So yes, I think the potential harms are worse for the first than the second, but the real question is why advocate for a treatment that isn't tested, that does bring harm to children and can cause catastrophic damage if given to the wrong children. 

Edited April 15 by Heartofice

[karaddin]

Because at no point in the very long history of us talking about this have you ever accepted that the status quo without treatment is grossly harmful, and tragically often deadly, to trans kids. It's a difference in perspective so fundamental that each of our arguments do not make sense to the other. 

So I'll spare this thread another pages long detail of us arguing past each other. Just wanted to make sure everyone reading the thread understands the context of the claims being made.

[Heartofice]

5 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Because at no point in the very long history of us talking about this have you ever accepted that the status quo without treatment is grossly harmful, and tragically often deadly, to trans kids. It's a difference in perspective so fundamental that each of our arguments do not make sense to the other. 

So I'll spare this thread another pages long detail of us arguing past each other. Just wanted to make sure everyone reading the thread understands the context of the claims being made.

Because of two obvious facts:

1. We don’t actually know the harms lack of this treatment have, we don’t know even know the benefits of this treatment. The evidence for it is incredibly weak. 
 

2. The harms for this treatment when misused are clear. 
 

Im not sure why you continue to argue against those facts. 

[karaddin]

Oh I dunno, maybe something to do with having lost over a decade of my life and almost killed myself due to lack of treatment that I've now had which fixed all those problems?

ETA: I know many of you won't accept my first hand experience as giving me any kind of insight into the question as a whole, but to ask why I'd have this perspective is utterly baffling

Edited April 15 by karaddin

[Heartofice]

I'm sorry to hear that and I'm not advocating for the prevention of treatment. I'm advocating for treatment based on evidence. The evidence currently is not strong for these treatments and that's why I am shocked by the findings of the report and the way GIDS has behaved. 

[karaddin]

If you argue for perfect research to be done before providing treatment when that research is literally impossible to do according to modern ethics guidelines, then you're advocating against treatment.

[Heartofice]

Just now, karaddin said:

If you argue for perfect research to be done before providing treatment when that research is literally impossible to do according to modern ethics guidelines, then you're advocating against treatment.

This has been covered elsewhere, but nobody is arguing for perfect research. A lot of false claims have been made about what Cass has actually said, but the reality is a lot of children were treated with life changing drugs based on very flimsy, poor quality research. In any other field of medicine this would be seen as outrageous. 

[Rippounet]

41 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

1. We don’t actually know the harms lack of this treatment have, we don’t know even know the benefits of this treatment. The evidence for it is incredibly weak.

I call bullshit on this. Even without being particularly interested in the topic I've seen some very good studies on this topic.
The idea that "the evidence is weak" is ideologically-based, not fact-based. Doctors didn't start treating kids without knowing what they were doing ffs.
You're using evidence of abuses to claim this was always the rule, but I doubt you know what you're attacking exactly.

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I call bullshit on this. Even without being particularly interested in the topic I've seen some very good studies on this topic.
 

Sure. I'm sure you know better than the authors of the Cass review, people who have spent years researching the topic. you being 'checks notes' someone not even interested in the topic.

Here is a thread that might be a useful summary:

 

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

If even one person on this thread who for the past few years has been spreading disinformation on the topic had even the slightest level of mea culpa, then maybe talk of unity would be appropriate. I haven’t seen anything so far, all I’ve seen is either indifference or people desperate to find an angle that allows them to push back and save face. 

Perhaps the “indifference” you are encountering is due to the fact nobody wants to engage with someone that unwarrantedly demands a mea culpa and admission to propagating disinformation as a prerequisite to discussion.  Particularly when such a discussion is dominated by someone intent on blatantly pushing their own ideological agenda and is initially hostile to anyone even simply asking questions.

I’ve always liked the saying - if you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole.  If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.

[karaddin]

You linked a thread which aims to summarize the study on cross sex hormone treatment of minors when we'd been talking about puberty blockers which doesn't exactly smack of good faith HoI, but I decided to click through and find the thread summarizing the PB findings from your own source for you

https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1779232332508971409

I once again need to give the disclaimer that I haven't read the full report myself, my judgements are based on the summaries that I've read here and in other locations. The Cass review, from those summaries, has utilized fundamentally incorrect metrics for assessing the existing research on puberty blockers and this has been the case in every snippet of it I have seen. The purpose of puberty blockers is not to resolve the gender dysphoria, it is to prevent biological changes that will worsen it and cause undesired changes that will last for life. It's not expected to accomplish a positive outcome, its to prevent a negative one. So a review that looks as these studies and says "there's lack of a clear positive outcome here" has missed the point of them.

That thread also discusses findings that indicate a risk of several negative outcomes - damage to fertility, loss of bone density and shorter height. Despite being presented like this is new information, those all strike me as risks that were known and part of undergoing the treatment is accepting the risk of them. Now its possible that the implementation of the process did not adequately inform children and their parents of this risk and that is of course a problem that needs to be fixed - being informed is a central pillar of informed consent. That said the 3rd one is pretty shaky to actually call a negative effect - being taller isn't an objectively good thing, but it obviously is a side effect when it happens.

And that's basically the entirety of this thread's summary of the problems with PB treatment - it wants better quality research (which I don't opposite - I just oppose halting treatment while waiting for it) and flagged the above issues. Nothing here is a burning red flag that says treatment needs to be abruptly halted, nor does it say the entire body of research is junk. Its worth noting that some of the aspects aren't included in the studies on trans kids taking them because they're a known factor from initial research on the drug being used full stop - of course you won't expect to see that repeated.

So I fail to see how this review proves definitively that I've been "spreading disinformation" and that "ideology has taken over science in medicine", I just see a whole bunch of people trying to help kids that are stuck in shitty circumstances while the doctors have inadequate resources (high quality research to inform their treatment is in a resource doctors use). 

Oh and from earlier HoI:

3 hours ago, karaddin said:

I don't deny that some people do regret and detransition, so I'm sure there are some of them but I haven't seen any solid numbers for that.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Really? We know harm has been done because detransitioners like Keira Bell have come forward to sue the Tavistock for their mistreatment. 

When I've already conceded that some detransitioners exist, providing the one single detransitioner you know of hardly strengthens your point. I suspect that if we were balancing "trans kids not receiving treatment" vs "cis kids incorrectly receiving treatment" your honest answer would be "all trans kids should be denied treatment if we can't guarantee a single cis kid won't receive incorrect treatment". 

[TrackerNeil]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

The idea that "the evidence is weak" is ideologically-based, not fact-based. Doctors didn't start treating kids without knowing what they were doing ffs.

I think this really sums up the disagreement here; you either think the Cass Review is credible or you don't. Those who don't can accuse those who do of confirmation bias, and vice-versa, and around it goes. I don't know what else there is to say.

[BigFatCoward]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

The idea that "the evidence is weak" is ideologically-based, not fact-based. Doctors didn't start treating kids without knowing what they were doing ffs.

I don't disagree with your central premise, but people will do a whole lot to avoid being criticised, one area that most moderate people are almost terrified of speaking out is on trans issues. 

The BBC did an anonymous survey last week about elite sportswomen, IIRC almost all of them were strongly or fairly opposed to trans athletes competing against them, none of them spoke out because they were scared of the backlash.  Medical professional's have no more backbone than anyone else. 

The biggest issue with the current report is I can't find anywhere where it shows - Are more people getting treatment who shouldn't, or would more people who should be getting treatment be failed if any recommendations were brought in.  

 

 

Edited April 15 by BigFatCoward

[karaddin]

20 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I think this really sums up the disagreement here; you either think the Cass Review is credible or you don't. Those who don't can accuse those who do of confirmation bias, and vice-versa, and around it goes. I don't know what else there is to say.

I mean, my post is right above you - I tried to keep an open mind while reading the summaries and I'm not assuming bad faith or an ideological agenda on the part of Cass. I just think the review fundamentally misunderstands the important questions around this treatment.

[TrackerNeil]

2 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I mean, my post is right above you - I tried to keep an open mind while reading the summaries and I'm not assuming bad faith or an ideological agenda on the part of Cass. I just think the review fundamentally misunderstands the important questions around this treatment.

I accept that. I hope you can accept, in turn, that those who take the report seriously may be just as earnest, and may have approached the review with an equally open mind.

[karaddin]

3 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I accept that. I hope you can accept, in turn, that those who take the report seriously may be just as earnest, and may have approached the review with an equally open mind.

Yes? Much like my opinion on the review asking the wrong questions, I can simply disagree with people. My questions to HoI were an attempt to demonstrate our views are so far apart we functionally don't share a common frame of reference when reading the review.