Category: Transgenderism

Medical and surgical interventions for those who wish to live as the other gender have always been controversial. However, a major difference between WPATH’s current standards of care and the very first set of standards (SOC-1) is that the early authors were aware of and open about the difficulties inherent in helping gender-questioning people.

Those first standards, published in 1979, cautioned that hormonal and surgical “sex reassignment” was extensive, invasive and not readily reversible; therefore, it should not be performed on an elective basis; it could be sought by people experiencing short-termed delusions or beliefs which might not persist; and there were known cases of regret.

These strong words of caution in SOC-1 were repeated in standards published by the organisation now known as WPATH in 1980, 1981 and 1994—but this prudence was removed thereafter. Children and adolescents were first included in SOC-4 (1994).

When health professionals first offered what is now known as “gender-affirming” medical and surgical treatment last century, gender dysphoria was considered a mental disorder. However, in the early 2000s, there was a movement to depathologise those whose “gender identity” is different to their biological sex. This began in SOC-7 (2012) with a shift of emphasis in requirements for treatment eligibility.

In 2013, Hidalgo et al, a group of clinicians who worked with gender-questioning young people in the US, outlined what they called the “Gender-Affirmative Model”

In 2018, an argument was made for “informed consent” to be sufficient for adults to access cross-sex hormone treatment with no requirement for a mental health assessment or a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

It is a significant departure from accepted clinical practice to assume, without a comprehensive assessment, a specific outcome for a complex set of signs and symptoms. For this reason, a new narrative to support the model of GAC with informed consent was developed, and this is found in SOC-8.

In contrast to SOC-7, WPATH’s current standards strongly emphasise the risk of suicide, which is weaponised by trans activists and GAC health professionals with the unethical line, “Do you want a dead cis [or non-trans] child or a live trans child?” to convince reluctant parents to agree to treatment. SOC-8 repeatedly stresses that GAC is “medically necessary” and, for the first time in the history of WPATH standards, describes it as “lifesaving”.

To summarise the SOC-8 position on mental health concerns—a person seeking GAC is likely to have significant mental health problems but, ignoring all other possibilities, we should conclude these are most likely caused by untreated gender dysphoria, so mental health problems should not be a reason to withhold GAC.

Significantly, the authors of SOC-8 acknowledge that little research has been conducted to systematically examine variables that correlate with poor or worsened biological, psychological, or social conditions following transition.

Never in my decades working in health care have I experienced such an arrogant refusal to acknowledge flaws in a health policy and to dismiss any adverse outcomes as rare and not worthy of consideration.

Source: Standard variation – Gender Clinic News

This is a report from a discreet delegate to the November 2-4 conference of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH), which is a hybrid professional-trans activist organisation.

The conference was attended by medical professionals, but the majority of those present were people who considered themselves part of the trans community and identified as trans or gender diverse. The field is now dominated by workers with “lived experience”—workers with professional and research degrees focused on their lived experience and workers without professional qualifications relying on their “lived expertise”.

The quality of research presented at the AusPATH conference was surprisingly poor.

Most papers, panels and workshops, however, focused on personal, emotional and subjective accounts of lived experience and/or superficial accounts of studies with poor research bases, methods and analysis.

The toilets at the conference were made gender neutral. This news was delivered as an important announcement at the outset. One bathroom was labelled “toilets” and the other was “toilets and urinals”. The entrances were next to each other. Amusingly, at every break across the three days, there was a line for the “toilets” bathroom. Waiting in that line were women, men in dresses who identified as women, and women in suits who identified as men.

The only people I never saw in line were men wearing pants.

At the conference, the phenomenon of detransitioners was minimised—they were fleetingly mentioned, but glossed over in a way that suggested that denying them acknowledgment would stop them from existing.

Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria was derided as disinformation spread by malicious forces against the trans community.

Young people were presented as fully informed by gender-affirming healthcare workers of the risk to fertility—and as entirely unconcerned by it.

Neither funding sources for the conference, nor connections with government or industry were addressed at any point.

It was recommended that health professionals tell parents that 48 per cent of trans youth have attempted suicide—a statistic from a low-quality online survey—and that the single biggest risk to their child would be a lack of parental support in transition. This approach was described as “empowering” parents to effectively stop their child committing suicide, and not acknowledged as emotional blackmail.

AusPATH did not present as a healthcare professionals’ organisation using its expertise for advocacy; it presented as an advocacy organisation using its healthcare credentials for ideology.

Source: Lived expertise – Gender Clinic News

Exiled MP Moira Deeming is demanding up to $1m in her claim against Opposition Leader John Pesutto, sources have revealed.

Mrs Deeming is planning to lodge formal defamation action in court this week after a final attempt at private mediation failed on Sunday.

It has now been revealed as part of her claim Mrs Deeming had demanded up to $1m in compensation and legal costs.

She also wants a motion to expel her from the parliamentary party rescinded, reinstatement to the party, and a public apology.

In a statement on Monday Mrs Deeming said she would stop at nothing to clear her name.

“Both during and after our rally, I and the organisers publicly condemned the Neo-Nazis, Nazism, antisemitism and bigotry of any kind. I did not know those neo-Nazis and did not arrange for them to gatecrash our event,” she said.

Source: Moira Deeming defamation action against Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto | Herald Sun

Gender-affirming procedures such as chest surgery and genital reconfiguration would be subsidised by Medicare under a push to improve mental health and quality of life for transgender people.

The federal health department will consider an application from the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons that seeks to establish 21 Medicare items for gender-affirming surgeries for people who have gender incongruence, in which a person’s experience of gender does not align with how they were born.

The application to the Medical Services Advisory Committee says gender-affirming surgery – a catch-all term for procedures that align a person’s body with their gender identity – is already being performed in Australia but that the system is fragmented and can have high out-of-pocket costs.

It estimated there would be 64,101 transgender people who were born male and 64,044 transgender people who were born female who could be candidates for the procedures in Australia.

Source: Health department to consider funding gender-affirming surgery under Medicare

The battle over gender affirmative medicine in Australia has intensified with a call to arms by two experienced psychiatrists for their fellow doctors to resist the pressure of activism driving treatment.