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World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Files

1404143454659

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 8,106 ✭✭✭plodder


    Nah I get you man, but that’s kinda the point - you have to go looking for this stuff to be offended by it, whereas it just doesn’t map to reality for most people under normal circumstances and conditions. That’s why I could completely understand where you were coming from in it occurring to you when watching the RTE news piece that they’re not nailing down the issue to only refer to as you put it - real women*.

    Not offended by it. Just pointing out the inconsistencies in terminology all while in the background, the erasure of the female sex continues. On the gender studies student, why is the term "biological women" verboten anyway? It is a clear descriptive term. It would give the impression that gender studies rejects biology.

    Meanwhile, I see this happened. Tough situation for this person. It seems like a potential problem when patients are sent abroad for procedures with complex aftercare requirements. By the way. I don't have a medical background professionally since you asked.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2024/09/06/transgender-woman-was-unable-to-receive-basic-healthcare-at-dublin-hospital-after-gender-surgery/

    “Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt” - Carl Jung



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 260 ✭✭tarvis


    why not use the correct terminology? It’s Woman and Trans woman -



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 8,106 ✭✭✭plodder


    The correct terminology … So, are "people with a cervix" etc gone now? I must have missed the memo.

    In any case, I don't have a problem with using the term "trans woman". I have done frequently on this forum. I don't like the notion of "correct terminology" though.

    “Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt” - Carl Jung



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,487 ✭✭✭Vote4Squirrels


    Looking at a programme about Amy Downden who appeared on Strictly and is currently battling breast cancer. A really moving programme and quite informative until the end, making sure women are checking ourselves for anything that might need looking at:

    "Check Your Chests"

    So I assume that when I next get my mammogram call it will be from "ChestCheck Ireland" ???

    Stop erasing women!



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 260 ✭✭tarvis


    I too have no problem with trans women - the title or the life choice.
    however I do not like being referred to as a biological woman or a cis woman.

    I think there is a need to prevent young people receiving life altering drugs and treatments before the age of consent.

    I think it is necessary to retain and preserve safe refuges and prison spaces for women. Often wonder how so called trans prisoners have so little empathy for the abused among the gender they claim to be.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,190 ✭✭✭✭volchitsa


    Interesting thread here from a clinical psychologist about the effects of puberty blockers on the developing brain:

    The hypothesis of PBs as a neutral "pause" to allow gender-distressed teens "time to think" is being/has been completely disproven, because that was based only on the effects of blocking the physical aspects of puberty. Which is fine for precocious puberty - you don't want the brain of a four year old going into teenage rebellion mode.

    But unsurprisingly - if you think about it for more than 30 seconds - all the personality and attitude stuff that occurs along with puberty is a necessary part of growing up and becoming an autonomous adult. It's a period of massive brain as well as bodily changes, and blocking it during that "window of opportunity" that occurs at adolescence is very likely to have permanent effects on the brain that may not be able to be undone by allowing the hormones to kick in a few years later.

    Same as babies who don't learn language during the early window of opportunity for language development, eg because of untreated deafness, can be left with a language/communication deficit all their lives - and that's despite a well-developed system of speech therapists. There's no real equivalent for delayed pubertal brain development, and anyway, we don't deliberately make kids deaf for a few years. That would be an ethical nightmare.

    And then there's the effect of the body never going through that physiological puberty, but instead being put straight onto cross sex hormones - which is what the vast majority of kids put onto PBs do.

    We don't let them smoke or have tattoos at that age because they may come to regret those decisions as adults - but people warning about the experimental nature of blocking a child's natural puberty are treated as "phobes" and have been fired from their jobs, when that can be achieved by the activists.

    "If a woman cannot stand in a public space and say, without fear of consequences, that men cannot be women, then women have no rights at all." Helen Joyce



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 18,387 Mod ✭✭✭✭CatFromHue


    The Dutch, who first started all this off, didn't use PB's to give the kids time to think. It was actually the opposite, they were starting them on a medical pathway intentionally, blockers, cross sex hormones, surgery. Their idea was that because male puberty made it harder for adults to pass as the opposite sex that if they stopped it it would be easier to pass as an adult. It was only years later after they started the process that they came up with the idea that PBs could be used as a diagnostic to give the kids time to think. They never explained how this would work.

    The Dutch had criteria (dysphoria from a young age, no co-morbidities (eg autism), a supporting family, and the kids were told they were changing gender not sex) to get recommended for the process which the WPATH has removed. They're a disgrace of an organisation.

    It's amazing how we've gotten from their study, which was highly flawed, to where we are now. Their study wasn't suitable to be scaled up because of all the flaws in it's methodology and then the results also made it not suitable to be scaled up.

    If you want to read more about it there's a good paper on it linked below.

    Full article: The Myth of “Reliable Research” in Pediatric Gender Medicine: A critical evaluation of the Dutch Studies—and research that has followed (tandfonline.com)

    A key part of doing an experiment is how did you validate your results. Usually that's done through controlled trials but it's not uncommon that in some cases that's not possible. When this happens you proceed slowly and collect as much data as possible. The WPATH have done the opposite and seem to operating as if they'd done controlled trials and have very favourable results. A good example of the lack of data collection is what you mention about brain development.

    They do seem surprised that giving a drug to block puberty actually blocks puberty!



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,190 ✭✭✭✭volchitsa


    I think I'd missed the fact that the Dutch protocol wasn't originally about "time to think", I had just assumed it was. That's even worse then - changing your fundamental hypothesis in hindsight invalidates the whole study. You should never do that. You take your new hypothesis and start a new set of tests for a new study. That definitely hasn't been done - and follow-up information is almost universally terrible in these studies anyway.

    "If a woman cannot stand in a public space and say, without fear of consequences, that men cannot be women, then women have no rights at all." Helen Joyce



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,779 ✭✭✭Hamsterchops


    Totally agree with you, and isn't it sad (and mad) that in the current climate that you can't just say …

    IF it was only that…….they are not stupid and know full well the advantages men have over women, they do not care an iota about females and less about their safety.

    So many biological linguistic hoops people feel they must dive through nowadays, incase they annoy or upset those who police our language through the trans lens.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 18,387 Mod ✭✭✭✭CatFromHue


    I don't think they changed their mind. I think they just came up with the idea that PBs could also be used for giving "time to think". They still carried out the rest of their study as they set at the start.

    If you want to read more about it here's another paper

    Full article: The Dutch Protocol for Juvenile Transsexuals: Origins and Evidence (tandfonline.com)

    Don't worry, I won't be examining you afterwards :P



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,190 ✭✭✭✭volchitsa


    Right, but there’s a massive difference in hypothesising that you’re able to identify the “right” teens to treat, and blocking their puberty because they aren’t going to ever want to go through it, and saying that these children need time to think and so we want a reversible treatment that can let them go either way at the end of it.

    From a quick read of your link (thanks for that - and I’m nearly ready for the QCM!) it seems it was a way of getting around the ethical problem of treating a young teen with a treatment that might not be fully reversible. And f you declared that it was reversible you avoided the question altogether.

    Which would be ok if they really were reversible. But unsurprisingly they aren’t.

    "If a woman cannot stand in a public space and say, without fear of consequences, that men cannot be women, then women have no rights at all." Helen Joyce



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,190 ✭✭✭✭volchitsa


    That’s a really good article, @CatFromHue . I’m reading the bit about the London Clinic and how patient pressure led to the original head of the clinic being removed and replaced by someone who was happy to drop the original watchful waiting approach for children in favour of Polly Carmichael and enthusiastic adoption of the Dutch Protocol, despite the absence of evidence.

    "If a woman cannot stand in a public space and say, without fear of consequences, that men cannot be women, then women have no rights at all." Helen Joyce



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 260 ✭✭tarvis


    I fear this denigrating of female is only just at its beginning. Most women , their parents, relatives and their partners and children are not sufficiently interested to study what being pushed- they settle for the “be kind “ platitude and think no more thought is needed. .

    Afghanistan was a progressive country which years of war destroyed and allowed the Taliban to reign supreme. What propaganda facilitated the entire female population to be consigned to silent, non productive, spirit killing lives?

    And now the western world is in a state of unrest, full of false information and an anti womens rights /male superiority movement is being given even more of a foothold by authorities who don’t/ won’t/ can’t be bothered doing joined up thinking, talking or God forbid LISTENING?



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 18,387 Mod ✭✭✭✭CatFromHue


    A lot of claims made in gender paediatric medicine don't really make sense when you think about them.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,190 ✭✭✭✭volchitsa


    Another thing that makes me think it's getting worse is with all the talk about banning countries from this, that or the other, there's been no suggestion that, for instance, the Afghan cricket team should not be allowed to play in the current championship. So many countries seem positively eager to enable the Taliban, or at the very least are not particularly bothered.

    "If a woman cannot stand in a public space and say, without fear of consequences, that men cannot be women, then women have no rights at all." Helen Joyce



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 8,106 ✭✭✭plodder


    Just on the term “biological woman” I can understand why people (women) don’t like it. But, it’s just that the ideology is a rejection of biology, there seems to be no alternative but to use it sometimes. Brenda Power touched on it on Brendan O’Connor’s radio program yesterday and in her article in the Sunday Times. They were mostly talking about that astonishing (almost unbelievable) story about the SPHE schoolbook, and as an aside Power mentioned that the rest of the book needs to be looked at as well, especially on foot of the statement in it that sex is assigned at birth, when biology tells us, in fact it is determined at conception.

    “Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt” - Carl Jung



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 3,917 ✭✭✭Enduro


    A follow on from an earlier discussion point about the BMA (The British Doctor's Trade Union) rejecting the conclusions of the Cass Report. There is now a lot of pushback from a number of Doctors against the "official" BMA position. It looks like a repeat of the usual clash between TRA ideology and medical science, along with the climate of intimidation and fear being repeated yet again.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,108 ✭✭✭✭One eyed Jack


    They’re all authoritative medical and scientific bodies Enduro 😁

    It’s just a question of which body carries the most authoritative political, social, economic and legal clout, with each body vying for recognition, representation, validation and legitimacy.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 3,917 ✭✭✭Enduro


    That's just plain wrong. The BMA is a trade union, not an authoritative scientific body.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,108 ✭✭✭✭One eyed Jack


    How tedious 🙄

    They’re all authoritative medical and scientific bodies Enduro 😁



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 3,917 ✭✭✭Enduro


    The British Medical Association (BMA) is the trade union and professional body for doctors in the UK.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,108 ✭✭✭✭One eyed Jack


    You cite the name of the organisation, who they represent, and the description of the organisation… what’s your point?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 3,917 ✭✭✭Enduro


    They are a trade union. They are not an authoritative scientific body. I suggest you contact them and tell them they are wrong about themselves if you think otherwise.

    Do you realise that your inability to admit when you are incorrect is not a sign of intellectual strength?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,108 ✭✭✭✭One eyed Jack


    Third time, seeing as that’s twice now you’ve ignored the fact that I said authoritative medical and scientific bodies, in response to your post about how:

    It looks like a repeat of the usual clash between TRA ideology and medical science, along with the climate of intimidation and fear being repeated yet again.

    They’re all authoritative medical and scientific bodies Enduro 😁

    It’s just a question of which body carries the most authoritative political, social, economic and legal clout, with each body vying for recognition, representation, validation and legitimacy.

    The BMA are an authoritative body for doctors in the UK, as they say themselves. I don’t need to contact them at all, I don’t care what authority they give themselves, because I’m not a member of their organisation. The complainant in the article you linked to however, is:

    Writing in the Observer, Davis, who has been a member of the association’s council for 18 years, says: “The BMA now finds itself isolated in its opposition to Cass, and with its reputation and integrity damaged.”



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 3,917 ✭✭✭Enduro


    It doesn't matter how often you repeat it. You're still provably incorrect.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,108 ✭✭✭✭One eyed Jack


    It doesn't matter how often you repeat it.

    Clearly.

    You're still provably incorrect.

    You haven’t proven anything, let alone that I am incorrect.

    Your point was that -

    It looks like a repeat of the usual clash between TRA ideology and medical science, along with the climate of intimidation and fear being repeated yet again.

    My point is that the BMA are just one medical body among many medical and scientific bodies clashing over differences of opinion with regard to their own interpretation of medical and scientific evidence and the authority which they assume in their respective fields. Some of their members are both TRA, and anti-TRA, and a whole bunch who couldn’t care less about the whole thing.

    For example outside of the UK, the British Medical Journal points out that the Cass Review is largely ignored by medical bodies in the US:

    Yet the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and Endocrine Society have stood by their guidelines, while the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have remained largely silent about Cass.

    https://bmjgroup.com/cass-review-on-gender-medicine-largely-ignored-in-the-us/#


    Scientific bodies too, don’t have much interest in the whole debacle, and those that do, are more interested in arguing over the research being conducted, how it’s conducted, what criteria should be considered, what policies should be applied, etc, etc, all the while suggesting that more research is required and in order to do that, more funding is required (quelle surprise? 🤨):

    McHugh has gained a following among social conservatives, while incensing LGBT advocates with comments such as calling transgender people "counterfeit."

    Last year he co-authored a review of the scientific literature published in The New Atlantis journal, asserting there was scant evidence to suggest sexual orientation and gender identity were biologically determined.

    The article drew a rebuke from nearly 600 academics and clinicians who called it misleading.

    McHugh told Reuters he was "unmoved" by his critics and says he doubts additional research will reveal a biological cause.

    “If it were obvious," he said, "they would have found it long ago."

    https://www.reuters.com/article/world/born-this-way-researchers-explore-the-science-of-gender-identity-idUSKBN1AJ0EG/



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 3,917 ✭✭✭Enduro


    Shifting the goalposts does not make your incorrect assertion that the BMA is an authoritative scientific body any more correct, when they are as a matter of fact a trade union, as defined by themselves. Feel free to contact them to let them know they are incorrect if you think otherwise. I will continue to accept their own definition of themselves in the meantime. However, if you manage to get them to change their own definition of themselves please do return an update us with the new information.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,108 ✭✭✭✭One eyed Jack


    I didn’t shift the goalposts, they’re still where they are. I didn’t claim the BMA are a scientific organisation either. They are a medical organisation, and my point was that what the whole debacle looks like to you is one thing (a repeat of the usual clash between medical science and TRA ideology), whereas what it actually is, and what it always was, and what it will continue to be, are authoritative medical and scientific bodies clashing over a question of which body carries the most authoritative political, social, economic and legal clout, with each body vying for recognition, representation, validation and legitimacy.

    I’m still not shifting the goalposts when I give you (because it is only you, and not ‘us’) an example of the same effect demonstrated by two more authoritative bodies - WPATH and Intersex Human Rights Australia, where basically the IHRA told WPATH in no uncertain terms to naff off when WPATH tried to subsume intersex under the transgender moniker in the WPATH SOC8:

    https://ihra.org.au/39498/submission-wpath-soc8-2021/



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 3,917 ✭✭✭Enduro


    And you are still incorrect to assert that the BMA is an authoritative medical body. They are a trade union for Doctors, as defined by the BMA themselves. It doesn't matter how often you repeat your incorrect assertion that they are an authoritative body. It is not something they themselves claim, so if you feel that you are correct and they are wrong I suggest you contact and let them know why they are wrong. I've no doubt that the BMA understand the difference between themselves and the likes of the GMC though.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,108 ✭✭✭✭One eyed Jack


    It is something they claim, given that they are an authoritative medical organisation with authority vested in the councils of both organisations to represent the interests of their membership, which is something at least one of the members of the organisation in question takes issue with - the position of the organisation of which she is a member:

    Doctors on the BMA’s ruling council who have dared to challenge its criticism of the Cass review have been subject to “abuse” and its decision-making body is now shrouded in “a climate of fear and intimidation”, Davis claims.

    Writing in the Observer, Davis, who has been a member of the association’s council for 18 years, says: “The BMA now finds itself isolated in its opposition to Cass, and with its reputation and integrity damaged.”

    Clearly the BMA does not find itself isolated in its opposition to Cass, as I have been able to demonstrate that the organisation is not on their own in their opposition to Cass. Rather it is Ms. Davis who finds herself in an isolated position in her opposition to the position of the BMA, with other council members only talking on condition of anonymity, and claims that the refusal by the BMA to endorse Cass’s findings means the reputation of the entire medical profession is now threatened:


    Other council members, talking on condition of anonymity, have shared similar concerns about the organisation’s standing, and the potential harm it could suffer over its internal strife on trans issues.

    The “toxic atmosphere” around BMA council debates has left some of its 69 members fearful of speaking up to share their views on the issue, Davis says. Its refusal to endorse Cass’s findings means the reputation of the entire medical profession is now “threatened”, she adds.

    I’d suggest Ms. Davis is, to use an expression she’s familiar with - over-egging the pudding.

    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/over-egg-the-pudding#



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