Category: Transgenderism

The main justification for “gender-affirming care” for minors in the United States has been that “all major U.S. medical associations” support it. Critics of this supposed consensus have argued that it is not grounded in high-quality research or decades of honest and robust deliberation among clinicians with different viewpoints and experiences. Instead, it is the result of a small number of ideologically driven doctor-association members in LGBT-focused committees, who exploit their colleagues’ trust. Physicians presenting different viewpoints are silenced or kept away from decision-making circles, ensuring the appearance of unanimity.

Perhaps because it has never really depended on evidence, this doctor-group consensus has shown remarkable resilience in the face of major system shocks, including several whistleblowers, revelations from court documents that WPATH manipulated scientific evidence reviews, the Cass Review, a bipartisan commitment in the U.K. to roll back pediatric medical transition, and a growing international call for a developmentally informed approach that prioritizes psychotherapy over hormones and surgeries.

But the U.S. consensus now appears to have its first big fracture. In July, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, a major medical association representing 11,000 members and over 90 percent of the field in the U.S. and Canada, told me that it “has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria.” ASPS acknowledged that there is “considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions” and that “the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”

Malpractice premiums in this area are already rising, and some insurers outright exclude under-18 gender-transition procedures from their coverage policies.

A key question for these lawsuits is the degree to which surgeons are responsible for determining the medical necessity of the procedures that they are asked to perform.

Nazarian, the Beverly Hills surgeon, told me that surgeons in her professional network who perform gender surgeries typically defer to mental-health professionals and endocrinologists to determine for them whether minors should receive procedures like double mastectomy. That approach, she believes, is misguided, and reduces surgeons to mechanics.

Source: A Consensus No Longer | City Journal

Dozens of children aged under 10 have been referred to Scotland’s controversial NHS gender clinic, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Two youngsters were under five-years-old when they were referred to the Sandyford Clinic in Glasgow.

In total, 53 children under 10-year-old have been referred to the Sandyford – the only facility for ‘gender identity’ treatment for Scottish children.

Campaigners say they should never have been put forward by doctors or parents for gender assessment at such a young age.

The shock figures – obtained under Freedom of Information by the Scottish Mail on Sunday – sparked concern among campaign groups.

They also come as a potential ban on referrals of under-7s to gender services in England is being considered.

Research led by Dr Andreas Kyriakou, of the department of paediatric endocrinology at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow, also found a ‘disproportionate’ number of those attending the clinic had autistic traits, and that a third of patients had a diagnosis of a mental health disorder.

Source: Dozens of children under the age of 10 – and some as young as five – referred to Scotland’s controversial gender clinic | Daily Mail Online

Sarah Kate Ellis took over America’s most respected gay group and turned it into a pro-trans money making machine. Her hubris led her to attack the New York Times and now her reputation is in tatters.

The recent New York Times exposé of the CEO of GLAAD, the vast ex-gay organisation that surrendered to the trans agenda a decade ago, is a moral tale for our time. It’s a story that mixes hubris, revenge, sabotage and treachery. Oh and money. Lots of it.

On August 1st the Old Grey Lady (so called because of the paper’s reputation for being a stickler for factual accuracy) published the results of a major investigation that alleged mis-spending tantamount to fraud by GLAAD’s CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.

The paper claimed Ellis combined lobbying at the likes of Davos (where else?) with personal pleasure including the odd ski trip and dwelt in exquisite detail on one top dollar trip to Zurich where a chauffeur drove her to a seven bedroom chalet that cost half a million dollars a week to rent.

The Hollywood Reporter focused its attention on the suggestion Ellis receives a basic salary of $441,000 with automatic 5 percent increases every year. They speculated bonuses mean she could receive from $700,000 to $1.3 million a year. GLAAD disputes the figures.

So what makes this story more than just another case of alleged inappropriate behaviour at yet another charity?

What the New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter do not explain is that GLAAD had a special place in the affections of American lesbians and gays. Like Stonewall here in the UK, GLAAD was set up as a response to a crisis and quickly became one of the most effective and respected gay organisations in history. Until that is Ellis took it over in 2014.

Ironically, she was appointed as head, the same year as Ruth Hunt (now a Baroness) was at Stonewall and used almost identical tactics to force through the shift to the trans agenda. Like Hunt, Ellis would ruthlessly weaponise her organisations’s status and influence to try to silence anyone who disagreed with that agenda; especially women.

Source: America’s LGBTQ+ Queen Is in Big Trouble

I am a lifelong progressive, a radical feminist, and a Democrat who has followed your career closely. . . .

Just like the vast majority of America, you know that the word “women” means adult humans who are female — and you know that the difference between women and men matters.

So why is it that (apart from your advocacy for abortion rights, which I support enthusiastically) you and other Democrats are leaving it to the GOP to stand up for women’s hard-won and extremely popular sex-based rights? Why allow Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to be the voice of reason questioning a federal judge who sent a convicted rapist to a women’s prison? Why let former President Donald Trump reap applause at the Republican National Convention by guaranteeing an end to men in women’s sports? . . .

Every day, I hear from rank-and-file Democrats (and, importantly, former Democrats) about how disgusted they are with the party’s complete abandonment of women and girls (including lesbians) at the sexist, regressive, authoritarian, homophobic altar of “gender identity.” We have been begging you to change course. We want to vote for Democrats in November.

To date, our concerns have mostly been ignored.

I cannot tell you the number of people who have told me that they plan to vote for Donald Trump this year because of this issue. . . .

It’s not too late. You can still prove Democrats are reality-based, not ridiculous. Stand up at the Democratic National Convention and say that a woman is an adult human female and a lesbian is a female homosexual. Say that sex is real and that it matters. Say right out loud that sex is immutable and no man is ever a woman — even if he claims to be one, even if he adopts the traditional stereotypes of femininity, and even if he has his penis surgically removed. Apologize to women and girls for that utterly embarrassing letter you sent to “transgender” activist Dylan Mulvaney celebrating his “365 days of girlhood.”

You profess to care about American women and girls. It’s time to walk the talk. Many of us will be watching and hoping you do the right thing.

Source: An open letter to Kamala Harris from a Democratic woman – Washington Examiner

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges is mindful that some members of the medical profession are questioning the validity of the evidence and consequently the findings of the independent Cass Review of gender identity services for children and young people. Our view is that further speculative work risks greater polarisation on this matter which is not helpful and our focus should be on implementing the recommendations of the Cass Review by providing the most appropriate treatment for children and young people with gender dysphoria or gender related distress. It is important that treatment is holistic and based on strong and up to date medical evidence and the Academy continues to train clinicians on that basis. This means they can provide the best possible care to a group of often vulnerable children with confidence and compassion.

Source: Academy statement: Implementation of the Cass Review – AOMRC

The NHS is to launch its first ever service for transgender patients wanting to return to the gender they were born as.

The move comes in the wake of the Cass Review, an independent report into transgender services, which found that children were being hurried down “affirmative” pathways involving powerful drugs and medical interventions.

The review made a series of recommendations to the NHS, including to provide care for people who had changed their minds after transitioning, and warned health leaders not to use the same medics previously involved in their care.

Source: NHS to launch first service for trans patients who want to return to birth gender

Planned Parenthood was founded a century ago to promote birth control. Today, its nearly 600 clinics nationwide make it the largest single provider of abortion, contraception, reproductive care, and sex education in the U.S. It has also, in less than a decade, become the country’s leading provider of gender transition hormones for young adults, according to insurance claim data.

Hineman, who went from identifying as “nonbinary” to “agender” to “trans” over the course of a year, now considers herself a “detransitioner”—someone who, if possible, has returned to living as their birth sex, often with medical side effects.

Today, reported exclusively in The Free Press, she is a plaintiff in the first detransitioner lawsuit against Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In the medical malpractice suit, filed in April, she’s seeking unspecified damages for negligence and failure to obtain informed consent from all the health providers—including those at Planned Parenthood—who facilitated her medical transition: from therapists who “encouraged” her desire to change genders, to the plastic surgeon who removed her breasts after a superficial consult when she turned 19, to the nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood who wrote Hineman the prescription for testosterone. (In June, Planned Parenthood filed its answer to the complaint, disputing Hineman’s claims.)

She joins more than a dozen young people who, in separate lawsuits across the country, are alleging medical malpractice by institutions such as Kaiser Permanente as well as individual practitioners, and are seeking compensation for the harm they claim has been done to them.

Her suit comes as the U.S. is increasingly alone in championing hormonal and surgical interventions to swiftly transition gender-distressed young people. A growing list of European countries, including Sweden, Finland, and the UK, are restricting these sometimes irreversible treatments for young people and favoring an approach that encourages therapy to address all the causes of a patient’s distress.

In response, about two dozen Republican-led states have passed laws restricting this treatment for minors.

Trading one biological sex hormone for the other has a multitude of profound impacts: on metabolism, on risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, on bone health, on mood stability, on cognition, and on sexual function and fertility. Female sex organs thrive on estrogen, which the ovaries cease to produce under the sway of testosterone. After a few years, atrophy may affect the entire reproductive tract.

Planned Parenthood’s materials for clinicians state atrophy can begin within just 3–6 months of exposure. But on the brief patient consent form—it’s about three pages long—that both Hineman and Anna signed, this was referred to only as “genital dryness.”

Dr. Nicole Chaisson said that side effects are part of the conversation, but acknowledged that some may go unmentioned, saying it would be wrong to point patients to things that might happen 10 or 20 years down the road when “they’re having lifesaving care right now.”

Chaisson is referring to a claim often repeated by gender practitioners: that without access to “affirming” treatments, young people will commit suicide. This is a threat that’s been commonly held over parents reluctant to approve transition for their child.

Fortunately, there is now good evidence to refute this dire claim. Researchers in Finland recently published the largest study to date looking at suicide in gender-distressed patients and found that suicide is rare, and the greatest predictor of it is previously diagnosed psychiatric conditions.

Hineman now regrets that she put off college to transition, and spent her life savings, about $9,000, on a mastectomy. She has gone public because she wants young people like herself, their parents, and the providers who are pushing ideology over good care to know that there are safe and humane ways to address the kind of distress she suffered. “The answers are not just transition or suicide. There are ways to work through these feelings without altering your body,” she says.

As for Planned Parenthood, she says, “Honestly, I want them to focus on women’s health. That’s what they exist for.”

Source: How Did Planned Parenthood Become One of the Country’s Largest Suppliers of Testosterone? | The Free Press

A High Court judge has upheld the British government’s emergency ban on puberty blockers. Justice Beverley Lang says in a ruling that a review commissioned by England’s National Health Service found “very substantial risks and very narrow benefits” of the treatment.

The group TransActual and a youth who cannot be named under a court order sought to challenge the decision of former Health secretary Victoria Atkins to ban prescribing hormones that can pause the development of puberty. They are sometimes prescribed to help children with gender dysphoria by giving them more time to consider options that could include gender reassignment.

The judge threw out the challenge, saying the ban was lawful. The ban restricts the NHS from providing the medication outside of clinical trials and prevents it from being prescribed by private suppliers.

The NHS stopped prescribing puberty blockers last year, saying there was not enough evidence about the benefits and harms.

Source: High Court judge in the UK upholds the government ban on puberty blockers | AP News