ghostxxhile t1_jb1k8i3 wrote on March 5, 2023 at 6:57 PM

Reply to comment by Jess3200 in Žižek Has Lost the Plot by elimial

Your original comment was in reply to another that says ‘all children were administered testosterone blockers’ and then was followed by other comments stating that no child was given blockers, which may be an honest mistake on my part in that you were replying to the ‘all children’ part of that statement.

You have cited four articles out of many, many pages of pro-trans articles on their website. Hardly enough to describe a the most progressive newspaper transphobic. In fact, it’s quite ridiculous.

Your example is silly. We’re talking about health practitioners who have chosen to purposefully work in a gender dysphoria clinic who are concerned about the methods and practice of the institution applied to children. Is honestly fair to say their concern is out of ideology or malice?

There is no falling into ableism because that isn’t the point. The point is that majority of the patients were young girls who had signs of autism. Now the question MUST be asked, what is the connection with young girls with autism who claim they have gender dysphoria? You cannot ignore that correlation.

A small percent yes however that small percent may never be able to recover back the functions of their birth gender like being able to have a child. Should we really be practising a utilitarian approach to this or should we should try to reduce as much harm as possible? In case of the latter is it not sensible and more consensual and informed to allow these children to make their own decision once they become a consenting adult? This of course does not mean we do affirm the gender they identify but rather halt all life-changing drugs and treatment until they can make a decision as an adult. Many of those who detransition, if you watch their testimonial, blame the adults in their life for pushing them to take these treatments and we simply should allow these children to have face the horror that they will never recover just because we favour the majority.

Again, the majority does mean that the consensus is right nor truthful and we do not know if those staff were scared to loose their job considering the backlash Bell received.

I personally buy Bell having a political ideology against the clinic considering he’s worked there for 20 years and as I said has everything to loose. His main concern was that the clinic became less about care and more about handing treatment to those who came in without proper and thorough evaluation.

Jess3200 t1_jb1qvlg wrote on March 5, 2023 at 7:43 PM

I did not say the Guardian was transphobic, only that it has a reputation for being so. You keep taking my tempered statements and making them absolute - I wonder why that might be. Doing so once may be a mistake, but repeatedly doing so…

My example isn’t silly. He was a governor of the entire Tavistock service, and not specifically the gender identity clinic - thus, it is perfectly reasonable to posit that he worked in such a position due to his interest in psychoanalysis and not gender identity. He may therefore be motivated by outdated notions of gender development and personal ideology. Again, this is the sort of nuance lost in Zizek and in responses I have received here.

The point is that the majority of patients being see by the Tavistock do not have autism. Their own data indicates that around 15% have a diagnosis of autism, whilst international data indicate between 10% and 25% of young people presenting at gender clinics have autism. This is far higher than the rate in cisgender populations (and would benefit from further research), but still far from being the majority. There’s also no indication that the majority, if any, of these autistic individuals are to be found in the adolescent girls seeking support - they might be, or they might be equally spread out amongst all the young people presenting at the clinic, or only in the boys seeking input. We simply don’t know. Your assumption here again is exactly what I was calling out Zizek for…

As for doing no harm - why is it always about doing no harm to the 3%-5% who might regret and never to the 95%-97% who won’t? There is harm in transitioning when this is not right for you and there is harm in being denied early transition when this is right for you. A ban on all transition related medical intervention for children and adolescents can cause real harm to those who will grow up to live as trans individuals - why no concern for them? Do we need to continue to develop our ability to identify who might fall into each group - absolutely. That doesn’t mean we ban all treatment for young people, however. That approach involves doing as much, if not more, harm than the alternative.

ghostxxhile t1_jb1utgb wrote on March 5, 2023 at 8:10 PM

Differentiate between having a reputation of being x and is x? The two are very comparable and a more accurate way of phrasing would have been that the Guardian has published a few articles that have been deemed transphobic.

Your example of the Christian baker was silly. As to Bell, perhaps you are right but what type of person stays at a clinic for twenty-years whose practice he fundamentally disagrees with and then decided to launch a report at the end lf those twenty-years? Also, what is so wrong about requesting a report? Surely lack of nuance here is noting that the Trust did not want such report to be made at all which far more suspicious than Bell requesting one.

Sidenote: Bell is a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst

The fact that autism is more prevalent in gender dysphoria than cis-gender people is still warrants the question of why that phenomena is the case and to go back to the point you made previously, it’s not about ableism, it’s about properly assessing each INDIVIDUAL, and not a mean, to see if that child is indeed experiencing genuine gender dysphoria before being administered hormonal treatment.

I honestly do not understand why there is retaliation to the idea of being thorough with each patient and ruling out all possible factors before allowing treatment. It’s seems like common sense but somehow lacks nuance.

Why should it cause more harm if they are with an environment where people affirm their gender? Why do we push the narrative to be your preferred gender then you need xyz. If gender is fluid and doesn’t pertain to genitalia then why is it so essential to have hormonal treatment or operation? You cannot have the cake and eat it to. The answer to this is to of course address the dysphoria, to allow them to express their preferred gender, to have their environment and those around them to affirm their preferred gender and take much less hands on approach until they become an adult. A child can note vote at 16 yet we somehow allow them to make a life changing decision? We either deem children responsible at such an age or we do not.