The trans debate

[CEB]

This is true too - those early pages have a fair few instances of instinctive kindness towards what they perceive as a no brainer, and many of those (RTW included) have to some extent evolved when realising there’s more to it.
There’s a few who just noped out once their assertions were challenged though. I wonder if the person who called you a f***ing dolt would concede any ground to you on this now?

[CEB]

This is very good on the issue Pammy raises

[CEB]

Full text of the article

NHS puberty blocker ruling will save lives
BY VICTORIA SMITH

'Experiments have been conducted on the bodies of children due to the political cowardice of adults.' Credit: Getty
MARCH 13, 2024 - 7:00AM
Halting the development of children who wish to be the opposite sex is insane. It’s so insane that you could be forgiven for thinking there’s something about it you must have missed. Do bodies and time no longer function in the way that you, and billions of other humans, have always known them to? Are panic-stricken nine-year-olds world experts on gender as a social construct?

When you think back to your schooldays, were your peers dropping like flies due to the absence of life-saving gender affirming care? It’s either that, or the entire concept of puberty suppression — one that has been supported by countless adults and institutions that ought to know better — is ludicrous.

NHS England has just announced it will no longer be prescribing puberty blockers to children with gender dysphoria (a fancy term for distress at being the sex you are, which explains precisely nothing). There is, it turns out, “not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness” of this form of treatment. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, home of “the Dutch protocol”, are now acting with greater caution. It seems as though the doubters — those of us “radicalised” into believing what everyone else believed until six or seven years ago — were right all along.


Even so, I didn’t expect us to be quite so right. For a while, my own position on puberty blockers was rather like my pre-referendum position on Brexit. I trusted my ignorance was making a terrible idea look worse than it actually was. To advocate for something so extreme, those on the other side had to know something I didn’t. While the moral implications of supporting children in their flight from the body seemed devastating, I was prepared to accept that maybe one could “press pause” — not socially, but at least in some cold, hard physical sense.

As I’d often be reminded when I raised objections, I’m not an endocrinologist, or a psychologist, or a queer theorist, or a porn-addled New York writer, or a four-year-old child speaking in gendered tongues. It is hard to pinpoint precisely which field makes you an expert on whether puberty blockers are a good idea, because for so long the only acceptable qualification has been insisting that they are a good idea.

As Hannah Barnes documented in Time to Think, experienced clinicians at London’s Tavistock clinic ceased to be considered experts the moment they no longer toed the line. Whistleblowers such as David Bell and Sonia Appleby were sidelined and vilified. The painstaking work of campaigners such as Stephanie Davies-Arai was wholly dismissed. Anyone who did not approve of blockers was at best a bigot, at worst someone who wanted trans children dead.

It is staggering to realise just how flimsy the evidence in favour of all this was. Experiments have been conducted on the bodies of children due to the political cowardice of adults. Humans cannot change sex. We cannot go through any other puberty than the one our body is destined to go through. This is what makes us adults. It is obscene that so many have lied to children, and by doing so put them at risk of so much long-term damage.

Right now, social media is awash with ideologues insisting that children will die because of this decision. On the contrary: lives will be saved, and it will be due to the work of campaigners who kept naming the madness even when told they had no right to speak.

They will not be thanked for it; far more likely is that they will be blamed for stoking a culture war which made due diligence impossible. Anyone who lies to children about their own bodies will have no difficulty lying about the part they played in this scandal. Still, some part of them will know: it was always insane.

[Hoover Attack]

This is true too - those early pages have a fair few instances of instinctive kindness towards what they perceive as a no brainer, and many of those (RTW included) have to some extent evolved when realising there’s more to it.
There’s a few who just noped out once their assertions were challenged though. I wonder if the person who called you a f***ing dolt would concede any ground to you on this now?

He may have got a few things wrong but the f’ing dolt assertion wasn’t one of them.

[Hoover Attack]

I don't know if I 100% believe in the concept of being trans

How it all started.....

[CEB]

It was prescient in a way: “trans” is a concept to explain a phenomenon, and is absolutely a question of what one believes.

[Hoover Attack]

No it wasn't. It was caca - ably assisted by others - doing their usual schtick.

[Hoover Attack]

we'll lob your cock and balls off and make you a fanny if you and your parents agree

Prescient.

[Hoover Attack]

If my 8-year-old child came to me and said they thought they were the wrong gender/in the wrong body I'd tell them to stop consuming whatever brainwashing sh*t was making them believe that, because no child would genuinely come up with that idea by themselves

[Long slender neck]

No it wasn't. It was caca - ably assisted by others - doing their usual schtick.

I was right

I'd say you're a cowardly enabler but just read back the first 10 pages of this and cant see you get off the fence, so lets just go with coward.

[Hoover Attack]

If my 8-year-old child came to me and said they thought they were the wrong gender/in the wrong body I'd tell them to stop consuming whatever brainwashing sh*t was making them believe that, because no child would genuinely come up with that idea by themselves

Kind of agree. All this is down to age. At 8 i could barely tie my own shoe laces. I would not have had the first clue there was even such a thing as trans or different genders. At that age it is learnt behaviour only and I would also ask them or speak to the school about where they are getting this information from. 11+ it’s a different story.

[Currywurst and Chips]

we'll lob your cock and balls off and make you a fanny if you and your parents agree

Prescient.

Nicely edited

[Dunners]

You say that, but I used to think that I was an Equidae born into the body of the human from a very early age. I think it started back in the school changing rooms, when all the other kids used to refer to me as "donkey boy" for some reason.

Well, this was my first foray into this debate, and I stand by it.

[Currywurst and Chips]

we'll lob your cock and balls off and make you a fanny if you and your parents agree

Prescient.

Nicely edited

The unedited version Conkles didn’t post makes the point we shouldn’t let children make decisions about their health that have long term consequences, I.e smoking

Very prescient though given that, yesterday, the NHS said they agree with me

[Hoover Attack]

Caca and Pammy - the Nostradamus and Mystic Meg of our times.

(I'll let you fight over who's who).

[Long slender neck]

Got anything to say on this apart from accusing whistle blowers of trolling?

[Hoover Attack]

Surely you should know what I'm about to say, oh prescient one.

[Currywurst and Chips]

Surely you should know what I'm about to say, oh prescient one.

[CEB]

Whether Caca and Pammy were sincere or not (my instinct is they were voicing the obvious questions in a context where they knew it would be provocative, but that doesn’t = insincere) the point is that to cut through the obfuscation and the obvious if you think about it for more than a minute idea that it’s not a great idea to prescribe development harming drugs to pre-pubescents based on claiming a gender identity, it required some people to ask the difficult questions.

The shying away from it and assuming all is good is the stuff that’s aged badly on this thread.

[Long slender neck]

Surely you should know what I'm about to say, oh prescient one.

I'm not prescient, I just dont mind starting a discussion about something if it doesnt seem right.

[Hoover Attack]

Whether Caca and Pammy were sincere or not (my instinct is they were voicing the obvious questions in a context where they knew it would be provocative, but that doesn’t = insincere) the point is that to cut through the obfuscation and the obvious if you think about it for more than a minute idea that it’s not a great idea to prescribe development harming drugs to pre-pubescents based on claiming a gender identity, it required some people to ask the difficult questions.

And where would this message board be without Caca asking those difficult questions?

[CEB]

At the risk of missing the joke, the point is that there’s been a serious problem with how society has treated children who have presented with gender dysphoria, and people who should have been asking questions didn’t. The only relevance of this board is that the “im sure it’s all fine, bit weird to ask questions” was reflected across society

[Dunners]

Whether Caca and Pammy were sincere or not (my instinct is they were voicing the obvious questions in a context where they knew it would be provocative, but that doesn’t = insincere) the point is that to cut through the obfuscation and the obvious if you think about it for more than a minute idea that it’s not a great idea to prescribe development harming drugs to pre-pubescents based on claiming a gender identity, it required some people to ask the difficult questions.

And where would this message board be without Caca asking those difficult questions?

It's easy to be cynical, but sometimes there can be interesting debate on this message board on some non-football topics. It's not all p*ss-taking and provocation (although I concede there's a fair bit of that too). There's good examples within this thread, as well as others (i.e. Russia/Ukraine, immigration, Israel, economic stuff etc).

Considering who some of us are, I think quality of content is actually higher than we have any right to expect.

[Long slender neck]

I find that in a lot of other social media, you just cant have these discussions, you'll find yourself banned or they are shutdown pretty quickly. Places like The Guardian rarely even open comments on thorny issues.

[CEB]

The guardian has for some reason completely thrown its lot in with trans activism, and despite that is still called transphobic by trans activists. They’ve so far dealt with the slow car crash of trans ideology coming into contact with reality by looking the other way wherever possible