Links - 11th May 2020 (1) (Trans Mania)

NHS gender clinic 'should have challenged me more' over transition - "A 23-year-old woman who is taking legal action against an NHS gender clinic says she should have been challenged more by medical staff over her decision to transition to a male as a teenager.A judge gave the go-ahead for a full hearing of the case against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust.Lawyers will argue children cannot give informed consent to treatment delaying puberty or helping them to transition... She was referred to the Tavistock GIDS clinic at the age of 16. She said after three one-hour-long appointments she was prescribed puberty blockers... A year after starting the puberty-blockers she said she was prescribed the male hormone testosterone, which developed male characteristics like facial hair and a deep voice. Three years ago, she had an operation to remove her breasts... "I was allowed to run with this idea that I had, almost like a fantasy, as a teenager.... and it has affected me in the long run as an adult."I'm very young. I've only just stepped into adulthood and I have to deal with this kind of burden or radical difference - in comparison to others at least."... NHS England is an interested party in the legal case. It has already announced an independent review of its policies on the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones."
This is probably the first of the lawsuits. But over the next decade many more will follow

De-Transitioners Inspire States to Fight Child Sex Surgeries - "Bills are pending in statehouses all over the country that would make it a felony for minors to undergo a medical transition.The lines are clearly drawn, with support for the legislation coming from gender critical feminist groups and conservatives, and opposition being waged by trans rights activists and the mainstream media. While Republican lawmakers in South Dakota, Colorado, Missouri, Florida, Illinois, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Kentucky work to criminalize and ban the surgical and medical sterilization of minors, they are being vilified in the press, their motives reframed as bigoted and hateful.What these brave legislators have done, however, is to actually listen to those who have undergone transitions before reaching a mature developmental age. In some cases, these victims of trans advocacy in medicine opted for surgery and drugs to alter their brains, bodies, and appearances before going through puberty... puberty is stressful. Every human being who has reached the age of maturity knows this. It’s a stress we must all learn to cope with so that we can become adults, not ignore it—or cut it out—so we can keep our children’s bodies forever. “Trans affirming care” could just as easily be called Peter Pan care, where kids who fear adulthood in their own God-given bodies can be medically prevented from ever having to grow up... “We can all be sure that humanity hasn’t suddenly developed a new type of child that needs their sexual function removed before adulthood,” Chart said. “Though sadly, I’ve now seen years of press coverage of girls who sound much like I was, saying they want to be boys, and damaging their bodies to prove it. Doctors shouldn’t help kids take out their sadness and anger on the only bodies we can ever have.” She urged lawmakers to vote yes to “forbid the sterilization of these young people.”An attorney who was formerly with the ACLU and is now with WoLF testified as well, taking the constitutional approach. “If this bill is enacted into law, and if it is ever challenged on constitutional grounds,” Dansky posited, “one question will be whether the law is protecting a legitimate state interest. In other words, does South Dakota have a legitimate interest in protecting the integrity of the bodies of minors? And the answer must be that of course it does.”... “Those who advocate an unquestioning ‘affirmation’-based approach to trans-identified children often will claim that any delay or hesitation in assisting a child’s desired gender transition may cause irreparable psychological harm, and possibly even lead to suicide,” Evans writes. “They also typically will cite research purporting to prove that a child who transitions can expect higher levels of psychological health and life satisfaction. None of these claims align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.” Detransitioners are out there, and they are telling their stories. While trans advocates have tried to silence them, saying that those who detransition were never really trans in the first place, their stories show why a practice of “watchful waiting” is far superior to one that injects cross sex hormones and surgically butchers healthy bodies... Guidelines are now being drafted as to how to take kids away from their parents if the parents are not on board with transitioning. These offer “three potential avenues for providing gender-affirming care over parental disagreement: legal carve-outs to parental consent, the mature minor doctrine and state intervention for neglect.”"

Teenage transgender row splits Sweden as dysphoria diagnoses soar by 1,500% - "For several days this week the veteran Swedish journalist Malou von Sivers will cover the same topic in every episode of her nightly TV chat show: the extraordinary rise in diagnoses of gender dysphoria among teenage girls... the fact that a mainstream programme is devoting so much time to the issue demonstrates just how much the debate has shifted in Sweden over the past year. “It’s been a very big change and very sudden,” Romson adds. “Everyone – but especially young people – feels worse because of what they perceive as the media’s hatred of them.” The immediate trigger for Von Sivers’s themed week is a report from Sweden’s Board of Health and Welfare which confirmed a 1,500% rise between 2008 and 2018 in gender dysphoria diagnoses among 13- to 17-year-olds born as girls... In the autumn of 2018, the Social Democrat-led government, under pressure from the gay, lesbian and transgender group RFSL, proposed a new law which would reduce the minimum age for sex reassignment medical care from 18 to 15, remove all need for parental consent, and allow children as young as 12 to change their legal gender. Then in March last year, the backlash started... the programme turned its fire on the team at Stockholm’s Karolinska University hospital, which specialises in treating minors with gender dysphoria. The unit has been criticised for carrying out double mastectomies on children as young as 14, and accused of rushing through treatment and failing to consider adequately whether patients’ other psychiatric or developmental issues might better explain their unhappiness with their bodies... Filter magazine profiled the case of Jennifer Ring, a 32-year-old trans woman who hanged herself four years after her surgery. An expert on psychosis who was shown her medical journal by her father, Avi Ring, was quoted as saying that she had shown clear signs of psychosis at the time she first sought treatment for gender dysphoria.Indeed, the first clinic she approached refused to treat her, citing signs of schizotypal symptoms and lack of a history of gender dysphoria. But the team at Karolinska went ahead. “Karolinska don’t stop anyone; virtually 100% get sex reassignment,” says Ring... "Now more and more parents have found the courage to question what the doctors say.”The recent report from the Board of Health and Welfare also found that 32.4 percent of 13 to 17-year-olds with gender dysphoria registered at birth as women also had diagnoses for anxiety disorder, 28.9 percent had depression, 19.4 percent had ADHD, and 15.2 percent had autism. One of the most surprising changes has been the growing divisions between trans activists. While Romson warns that children will have even more anxiety because of the change in the debate, Aleksa Lundberg, a trans woman and longstanding activist, is backing the call for more research.Last October she apologised for not having been sufficiently open about the depression she had felt after her operation. “I would probably not undergo corrective surgery if I had the same choice today,” she wrote. “And I want to apologise to those who perhaps needed to hear that story earlier.”"
Trans activists claim that transition is necessary to stop "trans" people from killing themselves. But if transition is what results in suicide...

Starbucks to pay for all transgender staff's surgeries
If you're making a lot of money...

M&S apologises to non-binary transgender shopper after they were asked to leave men's changing room - "Marks & Spencer apologised to a transgender non-binary shopper after a sales assistant refused to let them use the men's changing room.Myla Corvidae, 30, was born female and now identifies as transgender non-binary using they/them pronouns.They explained they were shopping in Marks & Spencer in Aberdeen city centre and wanted to try on clothes in the men's changing room. However the staff member turned them away, saying the facilities were 'only for men'... 'She told me I couldn't use the changing rooms there as they were "only for men" and said that I had to use the changing rooms downstairs which are for women.'I was utterly shocked and the only thing I could think of to say was "I'm not female" to which she looked me up and down, apologised and walked off.""
But if you're neither male nor female, you shouldn't be using the men's changing room either
It is interesting how we are told that sex and gender are not the same thing - but slippage is prevalent in transgender activist discourse

After same-sex marriage victory, OutFront Minnesota pivots to transgender rights | OutFront Minnesota - "Same-sex marriage was a landmark victory for staffers and volunteers of OutFront Minnesota, the nonprofit organization that fought for marriage equality for decades and in 2012 beat back a proposed constitutional amendment to ban it in Minnesota.Since then, the public spotlight on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group may have dimmed a bit. But OutFront’s executive director said it’s pivoting to focus on the safety and rights of transgender individuals.“The cultural change still has to happen. There is still work to be done,” said Monica Meyer. “There are dozens of anti-transgender bills in state legislatures across the country every year.”... “We can’t sit back and say we’ve got this law passed and now we are done,” said Meyer, noting that years were spent fighting exceptions proposed to the state Human Rights Act. OutFront’s Monica Meyer said “there is still work to be done” in the evolving fight for culture change."
On the 'myth' of the slippery slope
Is the slippery slope still a fallacy, and a right wing conservative delusion, when it is openly proclaimed?
Keywords: gay marriage, proclaim, Stonewall, pivot

Yoni and the Steamers band banned, split over transgender row - "A rock musician says she was bullied, blacklisted and ultimately had her band broken up because she expressed concern at material normalising child abuse being provided to transgender children... Bass player Katie Warren said the problems started after she posted her outrage on Facebook about a book for transgender teens that appeared to normalise children as young as six performing oral sex.There was a backlash from some in the transgender community. Warren insisted she was not anti-trans — rather, opposed to sexualisation of children — but complaints led to the band dropping off the bill at Hobart’s FemFest feminist festival, last November... Feminist group Women’s Speak Tasmania is seeking legal advice on whether Warren has a case for discrimination, viewing it as a national test case in defence of free speech in the transgender rights debate."
Being against child sex abuse is transphobic
And those people who say trans mania is about promoting pedphilia or that trans activists are pedophiles are transphobes

Militant activists have left us with a dangerously poor understanding of trans issues - "The most shocking thing about an Oxford professor of history being given security guards for fear of attack by students angry at her views on transgender issues is that it’s not really shocking. Anyone familiar with the way this issue has been handled in academia and elsewhere won’t really be surprised at the appalling situation Professor Selina Todd finds herself in today. It is sadly normal for women – and women really are treated differently here – who ask questions about transgenderism to face threats and abuse. Such things naturally have a chilling effect, discouraging others from speaking. That includes MPs, many of whom stay quiet on an issue that they know is of public interest... it is common to hear campaign groups (and, sadly, some uncritical politicians) tossing around bleak-sounding figures about how many young trans people attempt suicide. These figures are used to demand more NHS support (a reasonable request) but also as a weapon against those who question trans orthodoxy. Those figures are not the result of rigorous study. They dominate public conversation despite being the work of campaign groups.  I’ve spoken to many academics and medics who worry about those statistics. Some fear that a narrative of self-harm might be self-perpetuating. Others note that trans teenagers often have “co-morbid” mental health problems and are probably no more likely to self-harm than others in the much larger population of troubled children. Given that decisions about policy may be made partly on the basis of those suicide figures, this area needs serious and rigorous research. But any academic entering this field must think very hard about the risks... The real free speech issue is about intellectual inquiry, the freedom of academics to test ideas and assess evidence. Selina Todd’s case is so troubling because the threats she faced weren’t a reaction to something she said on Twitter or at a public meeting. She needs bodyguards because trans activists don’t like her academic research. Todd suggests that many of the women who are now claimed as “trans” by activists were in fact lesbians pretending to be men to avoid stigma. That’s a challenge to the narrative that trans people have been present in western societies for centuries, a claim that campaigners use to rebut suggestions that the growing numbers of trans youngsters are driven by social media trends. Work like Todd’s isn’t abstract intellectual diversion. It is essential to understanding one of the biggest social questions of the day. Yet some people are threatening to harm her for it, and she is not alone in that.The trans issue desperately needs better research and evidence, not least for the sake of trans people themselves. Yet a toxic combination of aggressive activism and political neglect has created a vacuum of evidence that risks being filled with propaganda. Free speech for Selina Todd and others like her is anything but academic."