UK politics, Truss me, I really am that mental.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, BigFatCoward said:

If he did it would be an issue. But he didn't. 

He said ‘you are openly Jewish’. So his being Jewish was a problem apparently? So there is either a problem with what the officer said or a problem with people who might be provoked by the mere presence of a Jewish person. 

[Fragile Bird]

I just looked up that story. The police regret the words, but the cop’s not a media expert. A person approaches a pro-Palestine rally wearing a yarmulke, what do you think his motivation was? Maybe he didn’t want to set himself on fire, but wanted to commit suicide in another manner. Ok, the officer perhaps should have said “I’m afraid you might provoke a negative reaction because of the what you are wearing”, he shouldn’t have been so blunt.

[Heartofice]

32 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I just looked up that story. The police regret the words, but the cop’s not a media expert. A person approaches a pro-Palestine rally wearing a yarmulke, what do you think his motivation was? Maybe he didn’t want to set himself on fire, but wanted to commit suicide in another manner. Ok, the officer perhaps should have said “I’m afraid you might provoke a negative reaction because of the what you are wearing”, he shouldn’t have been so blunt.

I think the officer was really put into an awkward situation and yes, agree he could have phrased it better, but he's been done for basically telling the truth.

What is revealing here is the idea that a Jewish person might fear for their lives by going near a pro Palestine march because they look Jewish, and that it's so easy to just say that without being wholly outraged. 

Just imagining a scenario where someone is told they are clearly muslim so they need to move. 

[Maltaran]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I think the officer was really put into an awkward situation and yes, agree he could have phrased it better, but he's been done for basically telling the truth.

 

From what I read it was a bit more than just the “visibly Jewish” wording, apparently the officer threatened to arrest him because being “visibly Jewish” near a pro-Palestine march is “causing a breach of the peace”.

[TrackerNeil]

On 4/18/2024 at 6:21 AM, Heartofice said:

Not going to restart it either, but it's good news. Scotland seemed to want to ignore Cass and say it didn't apply to them, but clearly it does. 

For all that some have said the Cass Review is just a shrug, it's sure in line with the policies being enacted in other northern European nations: the UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Maybe these nations are simply in thrall to transphobia, but that explanation seems facile to me. If a bunch of people start seeing the same thing, you've got to ask yourself is perhaps they're seeing something you don't. 

[Conflicting Thought]

Just now, TrackerNeil said:

If a bunch of people start seeing the same thing, you've got to ask yourself is perhaps they're seeing something you don't. 

thats such an obvious slippery slope is not even funny, you are not thinking critically or scientifically if you belive that

[TrackerNeil]

25 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

thats such an obvious slippery slope is not even funny, you are not thinking critically or scientifically if you belive that

No, that's not a "slippery slope" argument, at least not by any definition I've ever heard.

It is, however, an advisory that intellectual humility is vital; in fact, I think it's the very basis of critical thinking. Those who can't think they might be wrong aren't thinking very well at all.

[Conflicting Thought]

A bunch of people can start seen all kinds of things, and talk to everyone about it, countries can start implementing policies based on this, and they can still be very wrong. I say its a slippery slope because that can lead to very bad thing. and it has led to very bad things, so i dont see how it is a good argument that allot of people are talking about something.

They still should work to provide the best care they can to people, and that requieres investigating and researching and all of that.

But i think we have to be careful not to fall for narratives that promote a sort of satanic panic with respect to trans people, and a form of transpanic is to think that there is some sort of gender dismorphia contagion, a very dangerous and unscientific view of what is happening.

[Heartofice]

2 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

A bunch of people can start seen all kinds of things, and talk to everyone about it, countries can start implementing policies based on this, and they can still be very wrong. I say its a slippery slope because that can lead to very bad thing. and it has led to very bad things, so i dont see how it is a good argument that allot of people are talking about something.

They still should work to provide the best care they can to people, and that requieres investigating and researching and all of that.

But i think we have to be careful not to fall for narratives that promote a sort of satanic panic with respect to trans people, and a form of transpanic is to think that there is some sort of gender dismorphia contagion, a very dangerous and unscientific view of what is happening.

I’d be very curious for you to tell us what you think the scientific view of what is happening is. 

[Ran]

6 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

A bunch of people can start seen all kinds of things, and talk to everyone about it, countries can start implementing policies based on this, and they can still be very wrong. 

As Sweden and Finland were mentioned up thread, I think it's relevant to remark that the review has been in the news here as our countries were cited as outliers.

Why? Well, per the Cass review, the Endocrine Society and WPATH collaborated with one another on their guidelines, which when released were unsurprisingly complimentary to one another. Then various countries adopted protocols based on their readings of those guidelines. And then when WPATH released WPATH 8, it cited these various countries' protocols and the Endocrine Society's guidelines (which were based on WPATH 7 and the Endocrine Society recommendations written in association with WPATH) as support for their latest guidelines. The Cass review cited thie circularity of this as an obvious issue.

Sweden and Finland stood out for doing fully independent systematic reviews with a high level of rigor, and were also the only examined national health institutes that included ethical reviews as part of their process in determining their recommendations.

So, yes, a bunch of nations could indeed very easily have found themselves in a position of recommending care with a very low evidence base. That's I think the main point of the review's findings.

 

Edited April 21 by Ran

[mormont]

I think it's important also to note that the Cass Review does not conclude that puberty blockers are an unsafe treatment.

We know this because they have said so, explicitly.

https://thekitetrust.org.uk/our-statement-in-response-to-the-cass-review-report/
 

Quote

Does Dr. Cass believe puberty blockers are unsafe drugs? If so, why is OK for them to be prescribed to cis kids and not trans kids?

The Cass Review Report does not conclude that puberty suppressing hormones are an unsafe treatment. The report supports a research study being implemented to allow pre-pubertal children to have a pathway to accessing this treatment in a timely way and with suitable follow up and data collection, to provide the highest quality of evidence for the ongoing use of puberty suppressing hormones as a treatment for gender dysphoria.  

In the data the Cass Review examined, the most common age that trans young people were being initially prescribed puberty suppressing hormones was 15. Dr. Cass’s view is that this is too late to have the intended benefits of supressing the effects of puberty and was caused by the previous NHS policy of requiring a trans young person to be on puberty suppressing hormones for a year before accessing gender affirming hormones. The Cass Review Report recommends that a different approach is needed, with puberty suppressing hormones and gender affirming hormones being available to young people at different ages and developmental stages alongside a wider range of gender affirming healthcare based on individual need.

 

Edited April 21 by mormont

[Heartofice]

28 minutes ago, mormont said:

I think it's important also to note that the Cass Review does not conclude that puberty blockers are an unsafe treatment.

We know this because they have said so, explicitly.

https://thekitetrust.org.uk/our-statement-in-response-to-the-cass-review-report/
 

 

Yes the response has always been that the body of evidence being used to advocate for the use of puberty blockers was weak and that more research needs to be done. She also says the benefits of them are also still unknown too.

The main finding from her is that “Gender medicine is an area of remarkably weak evidence”, so of course more research is needed, rather than the previous approach, which was deeply unscientific.

 

Worth calling out what Hillary Cass has gotten for her troubles of doing this research too:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/20/doctor-hilary-cass-warned-of-threats-to-safety-after-vile-abuse-over-nhs-gender-services-review
 

Threats to her safety and being advised to not travel on public transport. 
 

That’s not to mention her report being misrepresented by people like Dawn Butler in parliament, spouting flat out disinformation as to what the report says. I don’t doubt many people still believe the claptrap Butler was saying.

Edited April 21 by Heartofice

[mormont]

There certainly is a lot of disinformation about what the Cass report says, but you would agree that a large chunk of that disinformation comes from the anti-trans side?

As I said when the report was published, if the report has a flaw, it is that Cass was - at best - naive about how the report would be received and used. It was commissioned for political purposes and is being used for political purposes. Largely, ones that are unsympathetic to the idea that trans people should have dignity and equality.

I believe Hilary Cass when she says she wants to see more services and more support for trans kids. But nobody's interested in discussing what care trans kids should receive - only what they shouldn't get. As is the case with so many issues about young people, sadly.

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, mormont said:

There certainly is a lot of disinformation about what the Cass report says, but you would agree that a large chunk of that disinformation comes from the anti-trans side?

Given you keep saying stuff like there is an ‘anti trans side’ I’m not sure I agree. Who are these ‘anti trans’ people?

The phrase itself is just a smear and pretty dishonest 

Edited April 21 by Heartofice

[Bironic]

Seriously? There are many people that go from disliking to pure hatred of Transpeople. Lots of them come from a religious background (Christianity, Islam, Judaeism etc), some come from a (far) right/conservative background and others just jump the bandwagon because it’s an issue that galvanizes voters/subscribers and hating/disliking a certain subgroup is a centuries old phenomenon with a multitude of sociological and psychological studies about it. It used to be Jews and certain Christian denominations, then homosexuals, Africans and now it’s transpeople…

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, Bironic said:

Seriously?

Yes seriously. Not denying there aren’t some bigots out there who don’t like the idea of there being any transgender people at all.
 

But ‘anti trans’ has been a smear used to label basically anyone with any concerns about anything from gender medicine to putting male rapists in female prisons.

So if someone is going to use that term they need to be damn specific about who they mean. Is it JK Rowling? Is it Helen Joyce? Maya Forrester? Then you need to back up those claims

[Derfel Cadarn]

54 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Yes seriously. Not denying there aren’t some bigots out there who don’t like the idea of there being any transgender people at all.
 

But ‘anti trans’ has been a smear used to label basically anyone with any concerns about anything from gender medicine to putting male rapists in female prisons.

So if someone is going to use that term they need to be damn specific about who they mean. Is it JK Rowling? Is it Helen Joyce? Maya Forrester? Then you need to back up those claims

Oh please! It’s a bit suspect that many of the people screaming about protecting the children from puberty blockers are silent about child poverty, malnutrition, cold mouldy homes, no homes at all, rundown schools, lack of teachers etc

But mention kids being trans, and all of a sudden we need to protect the children

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

1 minute ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Oh please! It’s a bit suspect that many of the people screaming about protecting the children from puberty blockers are silent about child poverty, malnutrition, cold mouldy homes, no homes at all, rundown schools, lack of teachers etc

But mention kids being trans, and all of a sudden we need to protect the children

Or just also being many of the same people who have generally voiced suspicion and skepticism towards of a variety of other trans-related issues, which is surely just a total coincidence. 

[Bironic]

53 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Not denying there aren’t some bigots out there who don’t like the idea of there being any transgender people at all.

Some bigots?!?!? I am a heterosexual male and really do not care all that much about the whole LGBTQIA+ movement and certainly don’t have a personal steak in that issue, but to say that Anti trans sentiment is just some random bigots is a massive understatement. A vast majority of right wing politicians / media personalities / religious figures from Trump to Ron de Santis to Wladimir Putin from pope Francis to patriarch Kyrill to the Taliban are against transpeople to various degrees. And these are not some lone wolf bigots who no one takes seriously, they are influential and numerous. Discriminate against transpeople is one of their main „brands“ to galvanize their base… there’s numerous cases of transpeople suffering from all kinds of discrimination, mobbing, to outright hate crimes against them…

I guess antisemitism and all the other versions of hatred against certain groups are also just some bigots… \irony off

[Heartofice]

19 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Oh please! It’s a bit suspect that many of the people screaming about protecting the children from puberty blockers are silent about child poverty, malnutrition, cold mouldy homes, no homes at all, rundown schools, lack of teachers etc

But mention kids being trans, and all of a sudden we need to protect the children

How is this an argument? You are basically saying nobody can ever been concerned about anything unless they are equally concerned about everything else and loudly talk about it. Did you even think before you typed that?