The trans debate

[CEB]

[Dunners]

The fact that this even needs saying tells you everything about the madness that has gripped people:

[CEB]

I’ll be very interested in whether the activists and the organisations either hastily recalibrate to “well this is what we’ve ALWAYS said!” or whether they instead go full on for the “well Hilary Cass is a TERF” angle

[Proposition Joe]

Already seen a lot of focus on studies that apparently weren't considered by Cass because they didn't support the predetermined findings of the review (possibly because they were bollocks, who knows?).

[Dunners]

Yeah, the current mood amongst the loons and their most ardent enablers appears to be to try and discredit a clinical report because reasons, feelings and conjecture.

[Proposition Joe]

Indeed. Discrediting rather than challenging seems to be the agreed line at present.

[CEB]

As you can imagine, I tend to keep up with this sort of thing - studies designed by trans activists are usually fundamentally flawed in several important ways, most of which would mean they couldn’t be considered for inclusion in a serious report.
Usually several of the following - failing to define terms, over reliance on self reporting from within an activism, without verification, failure to follow up, an assumption amongst trans people that whatever they’re experiencing is an alternative to a much worse fate had they not transitioned (despite absence of evidence), irresponsible references to suicide as the likely outcome of preventing transition, reframing detransition as part of an ongoing exploration of gender identity rather than potentially signifying regret…

[Proposition Joe]

As a side point, if detransitioning were just 'part of an ongoing exploration of gender identity' should the same not be said for transitioning in the first place?

[CEB]

just going to say that I feel genuinely incredibly relieved by the publication of this report.
Finding myself to be immediately incredibly out on a limb with many people I know and liked when I did the well intentioned action (not knowing where it would lead) of making sure I understood what trans people were saying before fully adopting their opinions, then finding some very concerning stuff, was a pretty awful experience - people like MB Gold here sneeringly referring to me as “drifting to the right” or accusing me of being “aligned with the far right” was the least of it. Lost some friendships, some entire groups of people I had to not socialise with because I’d been immediately branded an unapologetic transphobe (this was waaaay before I was sure enough of my footing to be as strident as I am - this was at my “but I don’t understand - this doesn’t seem to make sense?” phase, where a follow up question was me exercising my cis privilege and making a community unsafe for trans people)

As Dunners demonstrates with his screengrab, the position I advocated for should not ever have been controversial on the left.
Even if I were wrong about all of this stuff, the questions I ask and the concerns I raised (as on this thread) would all be ones that the activism should have good answers for.

It didn’t.

Huge respect and gratitude, genuinely, to those on here who either engaged with me in good faith in disagreement, to those who eventually thought “maybe there’s something in what he says”, and to those who have privately messaged me on this subject despite staying out of it here.

[CEB]

As a side point, if detransitioning were just 'part of an ongoing exploration of gender identity' should the same not be said for transitioning in the first place?

You’ll find that on page 263 of “internal inconsistencies within trans activism”

[Long slender neck]

York academics, as part of their research, tried to document the outcomes seen among the 9,000 young people who the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust’s gender identity development service (Gids) treated between 2009-2020. However, it was “thwarted by a lack of cooperation from [six of England’s seven NHS] adult gender services”.

This refusal to cooperate “was coordinated”, she told the Guardian. “It seemed to me to be ideologically-driven.”

Covering their arses?

[CEB]

Let’s just say that the word “thwarted” won’t have been used lightly

[Dunners]

just going to say that I feel genuinely incredibly relieved by the publication of this report.
Finding myself to be immediately incredibly out on a limb with many people I know and liked when I did the well intentioned action (not knowing where it would lead) of making sure I understood what trans people were saying before fully adopting their opinions, then finding some very concerning stuff, was a pretty awful experience - people like MB Gold here sneeringly referring to me as “drifting to the right” or accusing me of being “aligned with the far right” was the least of it. Lost some friendships, some entire groups of people I had to not socialise with because I’d been immediately branded an unapologetic transphobe (this was waaaay before I was sure enough of my footing to be as strident as I am - this was at my “but I don’t understand - this doesn’t seem to make sense?” phase, where a follow up question was me exercising my cis privilege and making a community unsafe for trans people)

As Dunners demonstrates with his screengrab, the position I advocated for should not ever have been controversial on the left.
Even if I were wrong about all of this stuff, the questions I ask and the concerns I raised (as on this thread) would all be ones that the activism should have good answers for.

It didn’t.

Huge respect and gratitude, genuinely, to those on here who either engaged with me in good faith in disagreement, to those who eventually thought “maybe there’s something in what he says”, and to those who have privately messaged me on this subject despite staying out of it here.

And, while it's probably not the most important thing right now, we can all agree that we won this thread.

[CEB]

1: you haven’t answered my question

2: advocating less medical interventions is based entirely on centering the child. Centering a child does not mean blindly adhering to any assertions a child makes

3: I would suggest that a school should not gender their uniforms, and that if a mixed sex school has skirts as part of its uniform, they should be available to male children and female children alike. I would tell the child that I would do everything I could to make sure he could wear skirts if that’s what he felt comfortable in, but that it was very silly to believe that skirts are only for girls

1. I challenged the binary nature of your questions.

2. I still can't hear the child's voice in your answer. You even devalue their input by labelling them " assertions"

3. Aye right.

Was thinking about whether to answer MB Gold’s question then remembered this exchange.

Standard.

[CEB]

Its a complex issue which I have differing opinions on, depending on the element.

If it was my child I would do my absolutely very best to support them and help them into being themselves. But I'd also try to do the very hard job of convincing them to wait. Your body and your mind changes so much before and after puberty. The things I wanted at 10 were very different at 16, as were the things i wanted at 23 are different today, ten years later. It's hard to understand that when you are young though and ultimately it's very difficult for anyone if they cant be themselves, no matter what age. I think you need to balance listening, understanding and your responsibility as a guardian.

This is still one of the most interesting, and revealing posts on this thread.

It shows how the instincts and reservations of a well meaning intelligent man can be hacked by ideologues given an assumption of authority.

As I said on the last page, I’d be interested in whether RTW would stand by this or whether he’d take a different approach, or view it from a different angle

[Max B Gold]

Strange comment. Have hospitals and doctors, in the age of austerity, stopped keeping medical records?

[CEB]

Again you reveal that you engaged in this argument without ever once giving any space to the possibility that your opponent was opposing you in good faith. Page 83 and you don’t know that gender clinics often did no follow up whatsoever on the young people who used their services? Page 83 and you don’t know that “poor record keeping” was endemic at the Tavistock? Page 83 and you don’t realise that arse covering is normal practice with gender ideologues? Page 83 and you don’t realise that the Cass report itself talks of being thwarted by the organisations it was investigating?

Unfortunately Max, you made a fool of yourself on this thread from the start.

[Hoover Attack]

just going to say that I feel genuinely incredibly relieved by the publication of this report.
Finding myself to be immediately incredibly out on a limb with many people I know and liked when I did the well intentioned action (not knowing where it would lead) of making sure I understood what trans people were saying before fully adopting their opinions, then finding some very concerning stuff, was a pretty awful experience - people like MB Gold here sneeringly referring to me as “drifting to the right” or accusing me of being “aligned with the far right” was the least of it. Lost some friendships, some entire groups of people I had to not socialise with because I’d been immediately branded an unapologetic transphobe (this was waaaay before I was sure enough of my footing to be as strident as I am - this was at my “but I don’t understand - this doesn’t seem to make sense?” phase, where a follow up question was me exercising my cis privilege and making a community unsafe for trans people)

As Dunners demonstrates with his screengrab, the position I advocated for should not ever have been controversial on the left.
Even if I were wrong about all of this stuff, the questions I ask and the concerns I raised (as on this thread) would all be ones that the activism should have good answers for.

It didn’t.

Huge respect and gratitude, genuinely, to those on here who either engaged with me in good faith in disagreement, to those who eventually thought “maybe there’s something in what he says”, and to those who have privately messaged me on this subject despite staying out of it here.

It’s not about you.

[Hoover Attack]

Its a complex issue which I have differing opinions on, depending on the element.

If it was my child I would do my absolutely very best to support them and help them into being themselves. But I'd also try to do the very hard job of convincing them to wait. Your body and your mind changes so much before and after puberty. The things I wanted at 10 were very different at 16, as were the things i wanted at 23 are different today, ten years later. It's hard to understand that when you are young though and ultimately it's very difficult for anyone if they cant be themselves, no matter what age. I think you need to balance listening, understanding and your responsibility as a guardian.

This is still one of the most interesting, and revealing posts on this thread.

It shows how the instincts and reservations of a well meaning intelligent man can be hacked by ideologues given an assumption of authority.

As I said on the last page, I’d be interested in whether RTW would stand by this or whether he’d take a different approach, or view it from a different angle

I’d stand by this. This would be exactly my take if I found myself in this position.

(I’d then expect to explore the subject fully and no doubt arrive at the same conclusions you have).

[Max B Gold]

Again you reveal that you engaged in this argument without ever once giving any space to the possibility that your opponent was opposing you in good faith. Page 83 and you don’t know that gender clinics often did no follow up whatsoever on the young people who used their services? Page 83 and you don’t know that “poor record keeping” was endemic at the Tavistock? Page 83 and you don’t realise that arse covering is normal practice with gender ideologues? Page 83 and you don’t realise that the Cass report itself talks of being thwarted by the organisations it was investigating?

Unfortunately Max, you made a fool of yourself on this thread from the start.

I accept that you are acting in good faith and you raise many interesting objections but its the roping in of all trans people and labelling them all up as "activists" that strikes me as very unfair because it undermines the lives of many people who are nothing like what you are so vehemently opposed to.

Also, the veil slips when you refuse to address transwomen in the way they prefer. Your insistence on calling them he is bigoted. Its the sort of thing uber bigot Rowling does all the time.

I was only asking a question. Do you think for one minute I actually read reports?

[CEB]

Its a complex issue which I have differing opinions on, depending on the element.

If it was my child I would do my absolutely very best to support them and help them into being themselves. But I'd also try to do the very hard job of convincing them to wait. Your body and your mind changes so much before and after puberty. The things I wanted at 10 were very different at 16, as were the things i wanted at 23 are different today, ten years later. It's hard to understand that when you are young though and ultimately it's very difficult for anyone if they cant be themselves, no matter what age. I think you need to balance listening, understanding and your responsibility as a guardian.

This is still one of the most interesting, and revealing posts on this thread.

It shows how the instincts and reservations of a well meaning intelligent man can be hacked by ideologues given an assumption of authority.

As I said on the last page, I’d be interested in whether RTW would stand by this or whether he’d take a different approach, or view it from a different angle

I’d stand by this. This would be exactly my take if I found myself in this position.

(I’d then expect to explore the subject fully and no doubt arrive at the same conclusions you have).

Interesting.

I’ll outline my issues with it, curious to know what you think.
The first point where it seems to me that activist vocabulary and framing is present is

“Help them into being themselves”

It’s not a neutral statement, because it suggests that becoming “oneself” is a *process* with an end goal (and does this within a context where organisations who advocate for the idea of the “trans child” believe that “transition”, involving hormonal and surgical intervention, is crucial)

Would you agree that rather than affirming the idea that a child is on a journey towards becoming themself, a more neutral, and a less drastic, intervention is to reassure the child that finding out what sort of person they are is something every child does, and that the wisest thing to do at that stage is to maintain that children’s interests (in toys, games, who they’re friends with, how they have their hair etc) are not bound by stereotypes associated with their sex, and as such it’s a parents duty to weaken the link between their sex and the idea of gendered traits, not reinforce them?


The other issue is where RTW describes it as a “hard job” of convincing the child to wait.
That’s where trans activism has popularised the idea that what they call “trans children” know what’s best. If you read the cass report, or the summary, it’d probably become apparent that the parent needs to be the authority at that stage, and be confident saying “no” - that a belief that they are the opposite sex is not something that should be neutrally supported, but is likely a symptom of underlying issues that need exploring

[CEB]

Again you reveal that you engaged in this argument without ever once giving any space to the possibility that your opponent was opposing you in good faith. Page 83 and you don’t know that gender clinics often did no follow up whatsoever on the young people who used their services? Page 83 and you don’t know that “poor record keeping” was endemic at the Tavistock? Page 83 and you don’t realise that arse covering is normal practice with gender ideologues? Page 83 and you don’t realise that the Cass report itself talks of being thwarted by the organisations it was investigating?

Unfortunately Max, you made a fool of yourself on this thread from the start.

I accept that you are acting in good faith and you raise many interesting objections but its the roping in of all trans people and labelling them all up as "activists" that strikes me as very unfair because it undermines the lives of many people who are nothing like what you are so vehemently opposed to.

Also, the veil slips when you refuse to address transwomen in the way they prefer. Your insistence on calling them he is bigoted. Its the sort of thing uber bigot Rowling does all the time.

I was only asking a question. Do you think for one minute I actually read reports?

Sigh. At every stage o have maintained that I’m referring to mainstream trans activism.


And yes, I now refuse to use incorrect sex pronouns for male people who claim to be women.

Of course I know you don’t read reports. I’d settle for reading posts.

I don’t actually care whether you believe I’m acting in good faith; Ive been shown to be right on every substantive issue around this debate. In 83 pages you haven’t come up with a single insight

[Max B Gold]

Again you reveal that you engaged in this argument without ever once giving any space to the possibility that your opponent was opposing you in good faith. Page 83 and you don’t know that gender clinics often did no follow up whatsoever on the young people who used their services? Page 83 and you don’t know that “poor record keeping” was endemic at the Tavistock? Page 83 and you don’t realise that arse covering is normal practice with gender ideologues? Page 83 and you don’t realise that the Cass report itself talks of being thwarted by the organisations it was investigating?

Unfortunately Max, you made a fool of yourself on this thread from the start.

I accept that you are acting in good faith and you raise many interesting objections but its the roping in of all trans people and labelling them all up as "activists" that strikes me as very unfair because it undermines the lives of many people who are nothing like what you are so vehemently opposed to.

Also, the veil slips when you refuse to address transwomen in the way they prefer. Your insistence on calling them he is bigoted. Its the sort of thing uber bigot Rowling does all the time.

I was only asking a question. Do you think for one minute I actually read reports?

Sigh. At every stage o have maintained that I’m referring to mainstream trans activism.


And yes, I now refuse to use incorrect sex pronouns for male people who claim to be women.

Of course I know you don’t read reports. I’d settle for reading posts.

I don’t actually care whether you believe I’m acting in good faith; Ive been shown to be right on every substantive issue around this debate. In 83 pages you haven’t come up with a single insight

Para 2 contradicts para 1

[Max B Gold]

just going to say that I feel genuinely incredibly relieved by the publication of this report.
Finding myself to be immediately incredibly out on a limb with many people I know and liked when I did the well intentioned action (not knowing where it would lead) of making sure I understood what trans people were saying before fully adopting their opinions, then finding some very concerning stuff, was a pretty awful experience - people like MB Gold here sneeringly referring to me as “drifting to the right” or accusing me of being “aligned with the far right” was the least of it. Lost some friendships, some entire groups of people I had to not socialise with because I’d been immediately branded an unapologetic transphobe (this was waaaay before I was sure enough of my footing to be as strident as I am - this was at my “but I don’t understand - this doesn’t seem to make sense?” phase, where a follow up question was me exercising my cis privilege and making a community unsafe for trans people)

As Dunners demonstrates with his screengrab, the position I advocated for should not ever have been controversial on the left.
Even if I were wrong about all of this stuff, the questions I ask and the concerns I raised (as on this thread) would all be ones that the activism should have good answers for.

It didn’t.

Huge respect and gratitude, genuinely, to those on here who either engaged with me in good faith in disagreement, to those who eventually thought “maybe there’s something in what he says”, and to those who have privately messaged me on this subject despite staying out of it here.

It’s not about you.

He's lost a lot of friends along the way though in this battle to be right about an obscure minority.

[CEB]

No it doesn’t.

1: My argument is with mainstream trans activism

2: male people are not female people, and the prevalence of mainstream trans activism has led me to conclude that using incorrect sex pronouns supports the belief that some male people are female people


We’ve done this already. It’s tiresome