Roe v Wade

That is my reading of the Keira Bell case, where she claimed in the High Court (and won) that the NHS "should have challenged her more over her transition". She underwent a double masectomy and other surgery as a result.

If I'm wrong in my conclusion, then I've no problems discussing and/or acknowledging that.

Is it an edge case? The David Bell whistle-blowing report and the Keira Bell case led to the Cass Report, and I've previously quoted the section in it where the same mindset is evidenced from other patients (the idea that they felt there was no way out of transitioning once they had been diagnosed). The Keira Bell case may be the worst case scenario from this mindset, but I don't believe that undermines the case in any way. Bell herself (in the same link) says "What happened to me is happening across the Western world".

And of course none of that is in any way an objection to proper evidence-based treatment for such cases.

But if you want to choose not to engage, then I absolutely respect that decision.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Well, technically that's exactly what this case is about. (I think it originated as a test case in Scotland to see whether a male identifying as a female could count as a female on a board with quotas)

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It's led to trans people not being able to exist as who they are.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Are they male? Sounds fair if so. Bear in mind the ruling is almost certainly going to end the practice of males-identifying-as-females ending up in female prisons, which is more of a danger to female inmates than a safety to the prisoner.

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Then that's what should have been addressed, not this blanket ban

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Drag queen readings to young kids, to be clear. I'm quite ok with that not being a thing to be honest.

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For the record, as long as everyone present is properly vetted, I've no problem with anyone reading/training/etc with children.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

But you can't really use that to argue against what's happening here. They're two completely separate things. I'm completely against homosexuality being outlawed here, for example. If that happens, I'll argue against it as much as I've argued for the Cass Report, etc, here.

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We're unlikely to see something as blunt as "homosexuality is illegal", but it'll be death by a thousand cuts to the culture, e.g. banning pride marches in Hungary

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

ut here's the thing - it's a separate point. Completely separate. You can't argue against Point A by saying "Yeah, well Point B might happen at some stage".

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I don't see it as a separate thing, as evidenced by posting the comic strip. It's the same fight.
BTW some of the people who were campaigning for the legal definition of women have moved on to protesting immigration. Wonder how the immigrants/second gen people that joined them in the campaign feel about it.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

nd not once in your posts have you addressed the real issues here - people being mis-diagnosed, being badly advised from a medical point of view and given unnecessary invasive surgery, etc, etc. And in fact, to the litany of disgraceful things that have happened in the name of this cause in the past few years, you can add the link between puberty blockers and cancer and infertility, particularly in males. None of this was explained of course - in fact, so far as I'm aware it wasn't even tracked.

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I don't know enough about the case to discuss it

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

It's led to trans people not being able to exist as who they are.

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In what way?

And to be clear, I don't believe I can simply identify as female and have the right to enter female spaces as a result, even if that means I don't get to exist as I am. I think that's the central part of the Supreme Court ruling.

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

For the record, as long as everyone present is properly vetted, I've no problem with anyone reading/training/etc with children.

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OK - I don't think children should be exposed to overt sexualisation at such a young age. These are two different views - but neither are relevant to trans issues as far as I can see.

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

but it'll be death by a thousand cuts to the culture

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I don't think that fear has any real basis in reality though. There'll always be cultures that are less tolerant than others (and ironically, DEI calls for us to be inclusive of these) but I genuinely don't see it being an issue here. There's likely an element of extreme over-reaction, and if some of the sillier trans policies were rowed back on (in UCD for example, there's signs on the toilets saying "Please use the toilets corresponding to the gender you feel most comfortable with", which is silly - as indeed Crafty has shown with his real-world example, which to me shows that the argument for trans rights can often be at the expense of the rights of others) and if people were accepting of that fact, then the counter-reaction would also die down.

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

I don't see it as a separate thing, as evidenced by posting the comic strip. It's the same fight.

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I don't agree. They're two very separate issues. Do you not think that you can be supportive of homosexuality while at the same time have issues over the very real concerns that have arisen in trans treatment, etc? Your cartoon would argue that you can't. It argues that anyone who opposes the more liberal interpretations of trans is almost de facto homophobic too. That's why I think it's too simplistic to be helpful in a debate like this.

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

I don't know enough about the case to discuss it

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Have a read of them (plural - there's more than one case). I've provided plenty of links.

This would be the ruling that makes it simultaneously a requirement that transmen use the toilet of their birth gender (women's toilets) and simultaneously allows transmen to be banned from women's toilets for being too masculine? That ruling? I suppose it's unreasonably tolerant to expect those people to have somewhere to ****. There are already morons in the US who are obsessed with accusing women of being transwomen on spurious grounds, very often incorrectly. This leads to incidents like the one I linked earlier, where a woman was harassed by police in a public toilet.

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Morton said that when she exited the bathroom stall, she lifted her shirt to prove to the deputies that she was a woman. But, she said, one of the deputies continued to insist she “looked like a man.”

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But the really, really telling thing for me is that in a Roe v Wade thread, there's now almost twice as much on this trans topic as on the thread topic, which ruling has seen previously very stable maternal death rates up 27% in just a few years. It's the greatest political cat toy I've ever seen.

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Originally Posted by John83

But the really, really telling thing for me is that in a Roe v Wade thread, there's now almost twice as much on this trans topic as on the thread topic, which ruling has seen previously very stable maternal death rates up 27% in just a few years. It's the greatest political cat toy I've ever seen.

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What I find really, really surprising is that the trans content hasn't been removed and put into a separate thread. :rolleyes:

You'll have to ask the mod.

Is there no women’s thread it can be amalgamated with?

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Originally Posted by SkStu

Is there no women’s thread it can be amalgamated with?

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The WNT one on the main board MNT section.

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Originally Posted by John83

This would be the ruling that makes it simultaneously a requirement that transmen use the toilet of their birth gender (women's toilets) and simultaneously allows transmen to be banned from women's toilets for being too masculine? That ruling? I suppose it's unreasonably tolerant to expect those people to have somewhere to ****. There are already morons in the US who are obsessed with accusing women of being transwomen on spurious grounds, very often incorrectly. This leads to incidents like the one I linked earlier, where a woman was harassed by police in a public toilet.


But the really, really telling thing for me is that in a Roe v Wade thread, there's now almost twice as much on this trans topic as on the thread topic, which ruling has seen previously very stable maternal death rates up 27% in just a few years. It's the greatest political cat toy I've ever seen.

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I think part of the argument here is we need to ignore what morons in the US are doing - and possibly the language/cultural ties make that harder than we realise. Other countries (the Nordics for example) quietly moved away from WPATH advice years ago. America seems a messed up place culturally (and its police doubly so) and I don't think anyone is arguing we follow what they're doing. In fact, quite the opposite I would say. There more than one way to skin a cat.

I don't mind the thread being split. I think there's general agreement the Roe v Wade decision (and indeed US healthcare in general) is just wrong and that doesn't make for productive debate. It's also not relevant in Ireland so there's probably less interest from that point of view too.

I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss this as a cat toy. Anyone with an interest in trans health should be really concerned by the issues with WPATH and those raised in the Cass Report - and again, can be really concerned about other things too. The problem is the debate polarises for some reason. Partly I think because of a lack of engagement with the other side of the debate (which happens on both sides, generally). Nobody's acknowledged Crafty's real-life experience (there's a better way of phrasing that I think) for example. Heck, nobody seems to have acknowledged the Cass Report raises serious medical questions. I think if that were to change, there'd be a much stronger debate.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

But if you want to choose not to engage, then I absolutely respect that decision.

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I'm not pstu, because while I generally have great respect for you, on this particular topic I consider some of your comments homophobic and anti-trans on a level not far off the likes of the MAGA posters in this forum, deliberate misunderstanding and misuse of facts and science, which again I think it beneath you. Your comments about drag queens in schools just cemented this, a viewpoint I find almost tragic. I'll leave it at that.

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Originally Posted by John83

You'll have to ask the mod.

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It was said in jest, with a nod and a wink to the standards in the Ireland section.

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Originally Posted by The Fly

What I find really, really surprising is that the trans content hasn't been removed and put into a separate thread. :rolleyes:

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Seemingly, this was meant in jest to some extent, but I'd be happy if the trans discussion was indeed moved into its own thread, leaving the abortion discussion to its own thread.

I'm happy to split out this discussion, I just couldn't find a suitable cutoff point the last time I was here, and I'm up the walls. Anyone care to give me a post number?

53 is the first trans post I think.

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Originally Posted by John83

But the really, really telling thing for me is that in a Roe v Wade thread, there's now almost twice as much on this trans topic as on the thread topic, which ruling has seen previously very stable maternal death rates up 27% in just a few years. It's the greatest political cat toy I've ever seen.

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Good to see you've changed your tune anyway.

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Originally Posted by John83

I don't think it adds much to a debate to argue over which of two bad things is worse. We can agree that they're bad. It's not a competition. It's little more than a nasty little rhetorical trap, and anyone who brings up such comparisons should take a good hard look at themselves.

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

It's led to trans people not being able to exist as who they are.

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Gender dysphoria is a mental illness according to some, so if trans people are by definition mentally ill, there's no way you can have a reasonable debate on this issue imo. I've learned this the hard way.

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Originally Posted by dahamsta

I'm not pstu, because while I generally have great respect for you, on this particular topic I consider some of your comments homophobic and anti-trans on a level not far off the likes of the MAGA posters in this forum, deliberate misunderstanding and misuse of facts and science, which again I think it beneath you. Your comments about drag queens in schools just cemented this, a viewpoint I find almost tragic. I'll leave it at that.

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I mean, again, while I will reciprocate that I generally have had great respect for your views down the years, you've not really put anything in that post I can really argue against. It is somewhat an "Attack the post, not the poster" sort of post. And I'm genuinely surprised that the tipping point seems to be the issue of drag queen story hour, which isn't a trans issue at all.

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Originally Posted by Real ale Madrid

Good to see you've changed your tune anyway.

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The first was to say there was no reason to derail the thread, and the second was a criticism of how the thread was derailed. But sure, take them out of context if it suits your purposes.

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Originally Posted by John83

The first was to say there was no reason to derail the thread, and the second was a criticism of how the thread was derailed. But sure, take them out of context if it suits your purposes.

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Nah - we were both making the same point. I've taken nothing out of context and whole-heartedly agree with your observation and what you've taken from the discussion re. the trans discussion v what the thread was originally about. That was the exact point I was making when referencing hate crimes against the transgender's community. Nobody cares about that either.

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

What could possibly go wrong?
https://gaysifamily.com/wp-content/u...04/pride1.webp

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What indeed

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

What indeed

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Well - no.

This for me is the problem with using memes in place of discussion. You posted that in response to comments about the UK Supreme Court ruling. I would be fairly sure that had absolutely nothing to do with Trump's decision, so it doesn't prove the point you think it does.

The thing is - Trump is an idiot; we all know that (well, most of us anyway). There may be a good reason for cutting the service btw - there were good reasons for cutting the NHS' gender unit for example - but I don't think Trump has done anything in his time in office to have earned any benefit of the doubt.

But the problem is there's damaging activists on both sides. The discussion here I think started with me criticising people putting pronouns in their emails, on social, etc (while Real Ale, on the other side, said he could fathom a case where it should be compulsory). I recently read Time to Think by Hannah Barnes, the BBC investigative journalist who did a lot of work in the GIDS/Tavistock case. It was in my reading pile anyway; I didn't read it because of this thread - though that said, I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in this area, which presumably is everyone on this thread. The referrals to GIDS were skyrocketing before it was shut down - but there were people being referred who were using pronouns or identifying as something they weren't simply because it was the trendy thing to do at school for example. There's people who found pronouns were helpful for transitioning - but then very unhelpful for detransitioning, when they realised it was simply a phase they were going through. (In fact, pronouns became a sort of confirmation bias, shutting down discussion on other solutions for the patients)

There was a significant change in treatment outcome - originally there was something like 80% of people presenting were successfully treated with psychological advice in coming to terms not just with their body and changes during puberty, but also with the various comorbidities they had experienced (autism, depression, domestic abuse, sexual abuse - and excessive social media use was often in there too, though I'm not sure if that could count as a comorbidity), but that changed to a situation where staff are bullied for not giving diagnoses of gender dysphoria, and where almost 100% of people put on puberty blockers (which are proscribed to allow people time to think) went on to surgery, which is unheard of in medicine - it implies a clear bias towards pushing people down a pre-ordained path, and a path with pretty much no scientific basis either. (Indeed, there's a class action lawsuit in the brewing)

Interestingly, not only did the Tavistock have big issues with activist staff (effectively they bullied disagreement out of the place such that only activists were welcome), but there was also a strong air of homophobia there too - so no real consideration of the fact that many young people identifying as trans are actually struggling to come to terms with being gay, and indeed many identify as trans because they feel it's more socially acceptable to be trans than to be gay.

That all factors in to a situation where it can be very hard to challenge people who identify as something they're clearly not - and that leads to Crafty's very real-world example he gave earlier, which no-one has engaged with.

So when (reasonable) people criticise the trans movement, those are some of the reasons why. It's not to deny that there are trans people - but it is to say that those who push pronouns, who shut down criticism, who make false equivalences and so on are doing just as much harm as the Trump side of things. And this is a movement which needs to be criticised, for the benefit of those it purports to help.

(The US is much worse btw, as the US tends to be - they'll operate at the drop of a hat, which has obvious repercussions for the patient. In medicine, you pretty much never want to become like the US. Which, of course, is where the pronoun trend started.)

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

That all factors in to a situation where it can be very hard to challenge people who identify as something they're clearly not - and that leads to Crafty's very real-world example he gave earlier, which no-one has engaged with.

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Nobody.
Because it is only being discussed from lofty legal, moral, political, medical and philosophical standpoints.

And what I omitted, or forgot to include, was as well the problem of clearly non, non binary males demanding access to the Ladies, you now have the boyfriends maintaining a clear line of sight to the bathroom while their girl is in there to protect them. Now when they observe the behaviour I'm highlighting, they don't want to discuss rights or pronouns, they want to take teeth out and to be honest I don't blame them. But I don't want that in my place of business, because its bad for business, that simple. You can potentially have a scene where the boyfriend becomes aggressive so has to leave, while the other fella stays calm, and stays in the venue.

Have a think about that lads, is that right ?

As a late night venue, we have semi regular meetings with police and licencing I asked the current licencing PC about this, about a year ago, how to play it, and he couldn't answer me, which is why I welcomed the ruling. Not because of where I am on this morally or personally.

Where I am on this personally, my business partners teenage grand daughter who I have known since she was born, is transitioning. She's not rebelling, she's not on a crusade, she hardly speaks about it, she prefers not to. I have spoken to her once about it when I said, look, I can't pronounce your newly adopted (male) Greek name, so she sat with me until I had the hang of it, I call her / she / they / them / he .... whatever .... I call her that now instead and the world hasn't ended. Sometimes I fcuk up, forget, and call her the name I used for her for well over a decade, the world doesn't end then either. We smile and get on with it.

She is definitely taking it slow and isn't rushing to go down any roads which are difficult to travel back on, but says she will when its time. I believe she will transition, and it will be what is right for her. She is half Greek, her father is Greek Orthodox, not particularly religious, but very traditional, family wise. This is killing him, but he's handling it. He loves his child & we all do, she's with us, loved, supported, accepted and safe.

Everyone should be safe, so now tell me again why this toilets / changing room philosophical debate by people it doesn't really involve is so important ? A safe for all, bathroom / changing room, dressing room is the aim here, or at least it should be.