Category: Global

Medscape Registration

Some European countries are changing how they approach gender care in children and young adolescents experiencing gender incongruence/dysphoria. There is a move away from medicalized care to placing more emphasis on providing psychosocial support for this younger age group.

England’s Cass Review Said Evidence Is Weak

On April 10, 2024, the final report of the Cass Review was published following 4 years of meta-analyses of the available literature. The review, carried out by pediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, was prompted by a soaring rise in demand for gender identity treatments, such as puberty blockers, among children and teens in the UK. It found “remarkably weak evidence” to support gender treatments for children. “For most young people,” the review said, “a medical pathway will not be the best way forward to manage gender-related distress.”

In March, England’s National Health Service said it will no longer prescribe puberty blockers to children at gender identity clinics owing to a lack of evidence to support their safety or effectiveness. Instead, they will only be available as part of clinical research trials.

On April 18, Scotland’s only gender clinic announced that it had also paused prescribing puberty blockers to persons younger than 18 years, and new patients who are minors will no longer receive other hormone treatments.

Some Changing Practices in Europe

The Netherlands

In the Netherlands, where the Dutch Protocol originated, practice guidelines have not yet been revised. However, on February 15, 2024, the Dutch Parliament ordered that an investigation be conducted into the physical and mental health outcomes of children prescribed puberty blockers.

Norway

Norway’s Healthcare Investigation Board (Ukom) recommended in 2023 that the Ministry of Health and Care task the Directorate of Health to revise the national professional guideline for gender incongruence in a way that is based on a systematic summary of knowledge. The Ukom report recommended that puberty blockers and hormonal and surgical gender confirmation treatment for children and young people should be defined as experimental treatment. Explicit new guidance from the country has not yet been issued.

France

France’s National Academy of Medicine recommended in 2022 that the “greatest reserve” is required regarding the use of puberty blockers and/or transitioning hormones in children and adolescents. However, their prescription continues to be possible with parental authorization at any age.

Sweden

Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare said in 2022 that the risks of puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone treatments for persons younger than 18 years currently outweigh the potential benefits for the group as a whole. It added that treatment with hormones should continue to be given, but only within a research framework to further understand its impact on gender dysphoria, mental health, and quality of life in this age group. Hormones can also be given to this age group in exceptional cases, the board said.

Finland

Finland’s Council for Choices in Health Care revised its guidelines in 2020 to prioritize psychosocial support over medical intervention but confirmed that initiation of hormonal interventions may be considered in a person before the age of 18 “if it can be ascertained that their identity as the other sex is of a permanent nature and causes severe dysphoria.”

More Data From Europe

One of the studies that informed the Cass Review conducted a survey of European gender services for children and adolescents between September 2022 and April 2023.

It found that Greece, Luxembourg, and Ireland do not have gender services for children and adolescents.

Source: Medscape Registration

Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in Transgender Men on Gender-affirming Hormone Therapy: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study | International Urogynecology Journal

The objective of this research is to explore the effects of hormone therapy using testosterone on pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) in transgender men. We hypothesize that PFD might be prevalent among transgender men undergoing hormone therapy. Therefore, this study was aimed at verifying the frequency of these dysfunctions.

Results

A total of 68 transgender men were included. Most participants had storage symptoms (69.1%), sexual dysfunction (52.9%), anorectal symptoms (45.6%), and flatal incontinence (39.7%). Participants with UI symptoms reported moderate severity of the condition.

Conclusions

Transgender men on hormone therapy have a high incidence of PFD (94.1%) and experience a greater occurrence of urinary symptoms (86.7%).

Source: Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in Transgender Men on Gender-affirming Hormone Therapy: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study | International Urogynecology Journal

New York court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction

A New York court has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction from 2020, ruling that the judge who oversaw the conviction unfairly allowed the testimony of women whose allegations were not part of the case.

The 4-3 decision from the New York Court of Appeals called the case “highly prejudicial” against Weinstein.

Back in 2020, the disgraced Hollywood producer was convicted of a first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has said it plans to retry the 2020 case in the wake of the successful appeal.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the majority opinion “perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability.”

Thursday’s ruling to overturn Weinstein’s 2020 conviction comes more than six years after allegations against him were first brought to light in reports from The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Weinstein has also been convicted of another rape in Los Angeles in 2022. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for this conviction.

Source: New York court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction

Arc International — – felicia rembrandt comments

The Yogyakarta Principles continue to be invoked by governments around the world. What are they? Who created them? And why are governments adopting them? Find out in this repost.

In 2008 the Arcus Foundation, which bills itself as an American philanthropic organization,  gave its first large donation to ARC International, a Canadian corporation located in the tourist town of Dartmouth, NS (pop 92,000).

ARC’s official name is  Allied Rainbow Communities International and it is registered in Canada as a tax-exempt private corporation. Its executive director is Kim Vance Mubanga, who founded ARC in 2003 with John Fisher (now Geneva Director of Human Rights Watch)  to promote “LGBT” rights. Its website states that it:

played a key role in the various phases of the Yogyakarta Principles. We initiated the project, convened a coalition of NGOs to implement it, facilitated meetings of the coalition, worked closely on the preparations for and conduct of the experts’ meeting, worked with partners to successfully launch the Principles, prepared backgrounders and advocacy materials to support regional launch initiatives, developed a website, track the ongoing use of the Principles, are participating in the development of an activists’ guide, and conduct ongoing training and support for organizations using the Principles.

ARC International’s mission, its sole mission, is to spread the document’s influence around the world by targeting top level institutions — policy makers, institutions, courts, parliaments, constitution makers, law enforcement, justice departments as well as influential NGOs.

The company has been wildly successful in its mission.

But who is behind this? The Arcus Foundation is owned by Jon Stryker, heir to the American  medical device company, the Stryker Corporation. Its money comes from the Stryker Corporation. Four years ago the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that Stryker had donated “at least $336.3 million” primarily to his foundation. InfluenceWatch reports that he has given more than $500 million to Arcus.

Arcus donates up to half its money to projects in support of great apes; the rest – 100% of the money it donates to human causes — goes to the sorts of organizations that might provide a market for the family business – LGBTQ centres and charities. This leads to a question that sounds like the start of a very bad joke – what do trans-identified people and apes have in common?

A scroll through the information provided on the Arcus Grantee site for grants given to members of humanity’s closest living relatives — gorillas,  gibbons, bonobos and chimpanzees — reveals repeated references to diseases, including human diseases and covid-19.

The bad joke, then, is that both the ape and human populations served by Arcus require ongoing medical interventions and pharmaceuticals. To regard Arcus as anything other than a marketing organization for the American medical industrial complex – tasked with sustaining and creating markets — is clearly naïve.

Source: Arc International — – felicia rembrandt comments

UK: Implementation of ‘Cass report’ key to protecting girls from serious harm, says UN expert | OHCHR

GENEVA (24 April 2024) – The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, today welcomed the recent commitment by the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to implement recommendations contained in the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people (Cass Review), and announcements by NHS Scotland and the Welsh Government that they would suspend the prescription of puberty blockers to children in the wake of the report’s findings.

Source: UK: Implementation of ‘Cass report’ key to protecting girls from serious harm, says UN expert | OHCHR

Femicides: Belgium still failing to collect data despite pioneering law

Across Europe, more than 14,000 women were intentionally killed for being a woman between 2012 and 2022.

 

However, this figure is likely an underestimation of reality, as few countries recognise femicide, resulting in many deaths being written off as “ordinary” murders. Belgium signed the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (better known as the Istanbul Convention) in 2016, which requires signatories to collect statistical data on gender-based violence.

 

Belgium last year positioned itself at the forefront of the battle against gender-based violence with a new law, the Stop Feminicide Law, in which the legal definition of femicide was enshrined and boosted protections for victims.

 

Recognising that, to fully understand the phenomenon and its scale, more accurate official statistics were needed, the country also vowed to improve the collection of statistics on the phenomenon. Belgium is one of the worst performers when it comes to femicide data collection, but suddenly became one of Europe’s legislative pioneers in the fight against this crime.

 

However, almost one year later, Le Soir reported that, while the Federal Government does collect general data on cases of domestic violence, as well as on suspects of domestic violence and their gender, no figures on femicide victims could be provided, not by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, nor by the Federal Police.

 

Source: Femicides: Belgium still failing to collect data despite pioneering law

The Hidden ‘Genocide’ of the Family Courts | by Bandy X. Lee | Mar, 2024 | Medium

In the U.S. Family Courts, the most heinous human crimes imaginable — the torture, maiming, and murder of innocent children — are occurring at industrial scale, with hundreds of new cases of children per day, day after day, year after year, over decades, in all fifty U.S. states. Yet, these children are not the primary targets, but their loving mothers (and occasionally loving fathers) who, as they witness the destruction of their children — murdered at a rate of one every six days — die from grief, suicide, cancer, heart attack, or “broken heart syndrome.” As happens with systematic genocide, the organizers of these massacres are not punished according to the law with death penalties and life imprisonments but rewarded with promotions and multiple billions of dollars a year.

Every victim litigant was a healthy, normal, and capable, even thriving suburban mother until she entered Family Court; every mother never believed something like this could happen to her, until she found herself entrapped in a predatory system whose goal was complete decimation of her. The obvious purpose is to render her incapable of fighting back or becoming an effective whistleblower.

The recent deaths of Catherine Kassenoff — a former special counsel to the New York State governor — and of Sinéad O’Connor — a highly-successful Irish singer — illustrate that legal competence and talented capabilities make matters worse, not better, for mothers in Family Courts.

Because Family Courts, by enabling or at best not holding accountable abusive personalities, have the effect of ballooning their entitlement, expectations, delusions of grandeur, and unlimited violence. These individuals, able to weaponize the legal system to enslave, torture, disfigure, and decimate their victims under “legal protection,” are actors in the larger Family Court carnage for profit that has now become an industrial organization of genocide.

Source: The Hidden ‘Genocide’ of the Family Courts | by Bandy X. Lee | Mar, 2024 | Medium

U.S. court sides with transgender school athlete against West Virginia ban | Reuters

April 16 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that a transgender middle-school girl (sic) in West Virginia can compete in her (sic) school’s girls’ track and cross-country teams, blocking enforcement of a state law against her.
In a 2-1 ruling the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law, which prohibits any transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams, would illegally discriminate against Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old who has publicly identified as transgender for around five years and takes puberty-blocking medication.
U.S. Circuit Judge Toby Heytens, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, said requiring Pepper-Jackson to compete on boys’ teams was “no real choice at all” and would “directly contradict the treatment protocols for gender dysphoria.”
He said enforcing the law against her violated Title IX, a federal law against sex discrimination in schools. Heytens’ opinion was joined by Circuit Judge Pamela Harris, who was appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Source: U.S. court sides with transgender school athlete against West Virginia ban | Reuters

“Gays Against Groomers”: “Transphobic” Organization, or Mainstream, Moderate Voice for LGBT Rights?| Naomi Wolf

Why is a Fast-Growing Movement of LGBT People Making the Case that Issues Such as the Transitioning of Minors, Do Not Reflect their Core Concerns and Values?

(Ed: Great to see Naomi Wolf finally get the memo).

Source: “Gays Against Groomers”: “Transphobic” Organization, or Mainstream, Moderate Voice for LGBT Rights?