Irish state now will now accept a trans persons own declaration of their gender

nokia69 wrote: »

I more or less agree with McInnes

This is the second time I've seen right wing troll and Fox News talking head Gavin McInnes being brought up on boards. I'd like to say I'm shocked at that, but considering the way things are going here lately, it's more a sad inevitability that someone who thinks that women shouldn't vote is being held up as someone with an opinion to listen to by a few posters here. But lets pretend for a moment that what he has to say is actually worth considering, rather than being yet another ridiculously offensive thing he says because it makes for good controversy and being anti-PC is a thriving business.

Reminds me of the Iona crowd screaming from their platform on national television and columns in national newspapers about being "silenced" and poor Breda who talked herself hoarse she was silenced so much. Likewise McInnes is so silenced he's a regular guest on Fox News, he's a published author, writes controversy baiting articles for right wing websites. All this silencing is even going on here on boards, so much folks rabbiting on about how silenced they've been, sure I couldn't get a word in edgewise with all the silence. Anyway, lets get to the bones of the slur-filled article you link.

The main thing that he references in support of his opinions is what Paul McHugh has to say on the matter, in fact almost every right wing idealogue who rants against transgender people uses McHugh as support for their claims. Now, something interesting I noticed is that McInnes erronously reports in his ramblings this:

While explaining why he no longer performs sex-change operations, surgeon Paul R. McHugh...

He was not a surgeon and never performed 'sex changes', he was a psychiatrist. What he did was shut down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopskins after becoming head of psychiatry in the 70's. I find it odd that McInnes misreported him as being a surgeon, not just because this is easily fact checked, but because McHugh is a rather infamous and controversial character himself. I'm not saying that McInnes is being deliberately misleading here, just that he's a bad journalist and doesn't know crap about the subject he's ranting about.

Now, a little bit about McHugh because this is important.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2002/aug/21/20020821-041050-7378r/

If you found the clergy sex abuse scandal shocking, prepare for another jolt: the Catholic bishops are getting their "expert" advice on pedophilia from people who have covered up or even defended sex between men and children.

The bishops recently chose Dr. Paul McHugh, former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, as chief behavioral scientist for their new clergy sex crimes review board. Yet Dr. McHugh once said Johns Hopkins' Sexual Disorders Clinic, which treats molesters, was justified in concealing multiple incidents of child rape and fondling to police, despite a state law requiring staffers to report them.

"We did what we thought was appropriate," said Dr. McHugh, then director of Hopkins' Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which oversaw the sex clinic. He agreed with his subordinate, clinic head Fred Berlin, who broke the then-new child sexual abuse law on the grounds that it might keep child molesters from seeking treatment. Dr. Berlin admitted he had covered for the sex criminals, angering legislators, child-advocacy groups and state officials. But his actions were not surprising, because "at least eight men have been convicted of sexually abusing Maryland children while under [Dr. Berlins] treatment there," according to the March 23, 1988, issue of the Capital.

This is a man who famously said that the child rape commited by members of the clergy was "Homosexual predation on catholic youth", so just take a moment and let the enormity of that quote sink in, because according to Paul McHugh this is something gay people are doing to catholics. The man is deeply anti-gay, calling it an "erronous attraction", he supported Prop 8 in California and filed an amicus brief stating in his professional opinion that sexuality was not an innate characteristic like race and gender. Now, I could give way more examples of just what a piece of work this guy is, but that would take days and I think you get the idea of his character. He's a deeply religious anti-gay bigot.

So now, lets get to what McHugh has been saying about transgender people, he's who people refer to when they say that trans related healthcare actually increases suicide rates. What does he have in way of proof? Well, he cites a report from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, but grossly misrepresents it. You can read it for yourself here.

What the study does, is compare post operative trans people to non-trans people, it does not however compare post-op with pre-op trans people. The authors even go as far as saying this:

It is therefore important to note that the current study is only informative with respect to transsexuals persons health after sex reassignment; no inferences can be drawn as to the effectiveness of sex reassignment as a treatment for transsexualism. In other words, the results should not be interpreted such as sex reassignment per se increases morbidity and mortality. Things might have been even worse without sex reassignment. As an analogy, similar studies have found increased somatic morbidity, suicide rate, and overall mortality for patients treated for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. This is important information, but it does not follow that mood stabilizing treatment or antipsychotic treatment is the culprit.

It is good science, and they are calling for better care for trans people after surgery. But it couldn't be further from what McHugh is claiming the study says, he's utterly misrepresenting it. If you want to see pure agenda pushing and pseudo-science, there you have it, it's McHugh and the folks who quote him to bolster their own bigoted viewpoints.

On the other hand, if you want to know what the actual science says, look to what the American Psychological Association has to say on the matter, or the American Psychiatric Association. Or here is a study on the impact of hormone treatment on the mental health of trans people:

Psychiatric distress and functional impairment were present in a significantly higher percentage of patients before starting the hormonal treatment than after 12 months (50% vs. 17% for anxiety; 42% vs. 23% for depression; 24% vs. 11% for psychological symptoms; 23% vs. 10% for functional impairment). The results revealed that the majority of transsexual patients have no psychiatric comorbidity, suggesting that transsexualism is not necessarily associated with severe comorbid psychiatric findings.

The amount that medical science knows about transgender people just in the past decade has increased exponentially, there are absolutely loads of studies showing good outcomes for trans people, there are more and more studies showing that being trans is biological and something that someone is born with. It is no longer considered a disorder since 'gender identity disorder' has been removed from the DSM, and the APA has stated that being trans fails to meet the criteria of a mental disorder. This is where we are because this is where the science has lead us, if there was validity in what right wing anti-LGBT idealogues have been saying then that would be reflected in medical science and the outcomes of trans people, but it isn't.

The thing about McInnes is you get the sense that he doesn't even believe half the **** he comes out with, that he says outrageous and offensive things just to be controversial because it pays, and people buy into it because he un-PC and gives it to the liberals. I've said before, he's the journalistic equivalent of the Human Centipede 3's marketing campaign.