Roe v Wade

[seanfhear]

That this is some kind of Trojan horse, and others (perhaps the real targets) will be next. Or something like that.

How many Trojan horses are there, and which way are they going ?

[pineapple stu]

Lets keep all the gays and transgenders in the closet where they belong eh!

I think it's telling how on one side of this argument, you have experts saying the medical oversight body has been discredited (based on a report which said it had abandoned the Hippcoractic Oath, a fundamental medical concept, and that it was effectively experimenting on kids), you have the NHS section in England being shut down over medical malpractice, you have people being suspended from their jobs for referring to a male as "he" (the patient, btw, repeatedly called the nurse a ****** but that's fine apparently), you have the appalling harassment of people like JK Rowling online (including death threats), you have links to increased suicide and unnecessary invasive surgery based on poor medical advice, you have a comprehensive report from Hilary Cass which backs up much of this and includes comments from actual patients who said they felt railroaded into a process and were given no option to back out. All of that is appalling stuff.

And on the other side you have inane one-liner comments like this, and cartoons.

And yet people are still upset when a Supreme Court makes a ruling like it has done. And I have no idea why, because all you get in defence of their position is inane one-liners and stupid cartoons.

It's beyond mental tbh.

[seanfhear]

I think it's telling how on one side of this argument, you have experts saying the medical oversight body has been discredited (based on a report which said it had abandoned the Hippcoractic Oath, a fundamental medical concept, and that it was effectively experimenting on kids), you have the NHS section in England being shut down over medical malpractice, you have people being suspended from their jobs for referring to a male as "he" (the patient, btw, repeatedly called the nurse a ****** but that's fine apparently), you have the appalling harassment of people like JK Rowling online (including death threats), you have links to increased suicide and unnecessary invasive surgery based on poor medical advice, you have a comprehensive report from Hilary Cass which backs up much of this and includes comments from actual patients who said they felt railroaded into a process and were given no option to back out. All of that is appalling stuff.

And on the other side you have inane one-liner comments like this, and cartoons.

And yet people are still upset when a Supreme Court makes a ruling like it has done. And I have no idea why, because all you get in defence of their position is inane one-liners and stupid cartoons.

It's beyond mental tbh.

Excellent post.

[John83]

I'm pretty liberal on most matters, but on transgender issues prepared to follow the medical community on the most appropriate care for kids in this situation, and hesitant about where lines get drawn in sports. And yet, to characterise the whole thing as Pineapple has done there doesn't sit right with me:
Here a woman was manhandled by police because she was in a public toilet and a bit butch.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/co...an/ar-AA1AsDGJ
Again, I am in favour of sporting fairness all things considered, but various attempts to limit new powers to, e.g. inspect the genetalia of sportswomen accused of being trans (and see above for where that's going), have failed.
https://indianapublicradio.org/news/...er-sports-ban/
Quite a few people have been murdered in the US and elsewhere just for being transgender. Here's one example. He was afraid people would think he was gay for his relationship with her (or him, I really don't give a **** about pronouns). https://www.kark.com/crime/prosecuto...ars-in-prison/
So, whatever about gender affirming care, which certainly has elements that are ideologically driven, transgenderism remains a political carnival sideshow with a bunch of people in the crosshairs for difference to distract as the Americans continue their slide into ever grimer wealth inequality.
Oh, and on the subject of Roe vs Wade, maternal deaths are up 27% in the US. https://people.com/pregnancy-related...study-11713987 I mean, maybe it's worth it, if you're anti-abortion.

[dahamsta]

I still don't see what the point of your post was though?

Do you think complex current affairs topics can be discussed by cartoons and one-liners?

Stu, stop playing the amadán, you know exactly the point they were making. Debate the point or drop it.

[dahamsta]

From a non-mod point of view, the celebrations of the decision are more telling to me than the decision itself. The decision was made on a point of law, there wasn't really a way around it. The celebrations are cringeworthy and, to be perfectly frank, in this day and age, kind of gross. We're going backwards as a species.

[pineapple stu]

Stu, stop playing the amadán, you know exactly the point they were making. Debate the point or drop it.

I genuinely don't Adam. I don't know what the point of the cartoon was. Or RLP's comment "Let's keep all gays or transgenders in the closet where they belong" - that seems to be a strawman, arguing a point no-one has made. The BBC link Stu posted even includes the note "Transgender people still have legal protection from discrimination". So why all the talk about "Who are we going after next?" or "Let's keep all gays in the closet"? Nobody's arguing that.

Or RLP said "Does it directly affect you at all and does it make that person happy? If the answer is no and yes then move the fcuk on" - but that's not an argument. And yet I've addressed it with my posts #174 and #182 on the very real longer-term harm this activist attitude is causing people, yet there's been very little engagement with that.

[SkStu]

From a non-mod point of view, the celebrations of the decision are more telling to me than the decision itself. The decision was made on a point of law, there wasn't really a way around it. The celebrations are cringeworthy and, to be perfectly frank, in this day and age, kind of gross. We're going backwards as a species.

How dare women celebrate something that confirms what a woman is and is not. Kind of gross. Someone posted yesterday about "why worry about whats between someones legs" - which is not what this is about (as this applies to equally to pre and post op) but I think it is fair that biological women worry about that kind of thing when they may be forced into sharing a space with trans individuals e.g. womens toilets. The ruling has the potential to protect biological women across a number of fronts. Why shouldnt they celebrate it?

There is actually some really good debate and points being made on this thread - over the last 24 hours and the preceding pages about the harm that this activism is causing (as well as a sound counterpoint from John83) but it seems like no one who is advocating for a different outcome from yesterday is willing to engage in those points. The glib one liners and cartoons are lowest common denominator stuff to be fair.

[tetsujin1979]

I didn't think strip was funny, or even a glib attempt to lighten the discussion. It was drawn a few years by a cartoonist called Adam Ellis, known online as adamtots. In it, a gay Republican supporter is celebrating getting rid of drag queens and trans people, and is wearing a tshirt supporting the "LGB without the T" movement, ie trans people are not part of the rights that the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community are campaigning for, and vice vera, the LGB community do not support the work of trans people. Now that they've accomplished what they set out to, he wants to know who they're going after next. The red hat wearing republican just stares at him, he repeats the question, and there's still no answer. The implication is that gays are next.

The point is that, for some people, removing the rights of one targeted group isn't where the fight ends, they just move on to the next group.

Since the thread was started, and RvW was repealed, there's been further steps made to remove the rights of minorities around the world. The announcement by the British Supreme Court isn't where it ends for trans people, or any minority for that matter.

Any removal of rights is a danger to everyone.

[Razors left peg]

There are always going to be a small number of cases on any issue where a family or a doctor make a bad decision on something, that is always going to happen whether its in regard to gender or treatments for disease or whatever. Over the summer we had Trump on stage with a big dog whistle literally saying that kids are going to school in the morning as one gender and coming home as another. Its that sort of idiocy that is being believed.

When I said that if it doesnt affect you directly and the person is happy move on, I meant that in the vast vast majority of cases people just want to live their lives and be comfortable in their own skin. If that means they want to dress differently or call themselves something else who fcuking cares.

When I was growing up my mothers uncle would be at all family events. The man was an alcoholic but he was such a nice fella. It was only as I got older I realized that he was quite feminine and was clearly gay. Poor man drank himself to death because of the closeted lifestyle he had to lead. I spoke to my mother about it recently actually and she said that of course they all knew, but yet he still couldnt come out. Now the opposite side of that, is that Im going to Coachella later today. Weekend long music festival known for every type of gender and lifestyle being accepted and celebrated. Anyone that is gay, trans or whatever doesnt have to justify themselves to anyone. In this crowd of people I will be there with my wife and I wont care what someone wants to identify themselves as because their happiness is more important than me knowing whether they are gay, straight, trans or non binary and it really doesnt affect me in any way. I do wish that uncle was able to lead that kind of lifestyle and be able to express himself so that he didnt drink himself to death.

So, yes as I said mistakes will certainly be made but in the main allowing people to make their own decisions about their own bodies should be a no brainer to me. That includes women who need to make a difficult decision whether to have an abortion or not.

If anything there should be legislation that a person doesnt have the right to be a UCD fan because that club shouldnt exist in the LOI

[seanfhear]

From a non-mod point of view, the celebrations of the decision are more telling to me than the decision itself. The decision was made on a point of law, there wasn't really a way around it. The celebrations are cringeworthy and, to be perfectly frank, in this day and age, kind of gross. We're going backwards as a species.

Did you see the celebrations for the Abortion Referendum ~ And I am not against abortion up to certain stages ~ To be honest, I think it is probably an issue that should be decided by women.

But the over the top celebrations, for something as serious as abortion wasn't exactly an edifying scene !

[CraftyToePoke]

So I own a late bar / club in a mid sized UK town and here are my two cents here after some interesting contributions.

I am very liberal, grew up clubbing in Europe late 90s / early 00s and the bar has that ethos, the club floor hosted the first ever LGBTQ night in the towns history something I am proud of. There is a girl who comes in who has transitioned, I knew her before she took those decisions, those decisions were right for her. She's an absolute nightmare of a woman after a few, but she once thanked me for putting a bar she feels safe in in the town, that she used to have to go to cities for a night out safely. That meant a lot to me.

She uses the Ladies, obviously. Then a few years back, certain gay guys, eyeliner and heels guys began using the Ladies. They were quickly followed by guys who to my eye clearly are not non binary, they are men, the very worst kind of men at that who'll use this grey area to get into Ladies loos. And they'd challenge on it, they'd dig in and point at the gay guy coming out of the loo and say why him and not me - I identify non binary and I want to go in the Ladies. There are more than you'd think of these fu ck ers lads, they're out there.

So this is a repetitive messy judgment call me and my staff should not have to face. This is a situation some young wan who has had too much to drink but can now be followed to the ladies by some absolute waste of oxygen should never have to face.
Do I have to hire and find the money for someone checking gender change certs outside the Ladies all the time we are open ? Not viable.

Everybody's rights should be enshrined protected and progressed. Nobody should be made feel uncomfortable or less safe by the progression of another categories said rights. Nobody. But I have seen that happen, have seen guys of ill intent hanging round the Ladies way more than you'd want to believe.

Now there's a rule, & I welcome it. If you have got a dick on you, there's a urinal downstairs, go use it - its perfectly safe, now fu ck off.

[pineapple stu]

The point is that, for some people, removing the rights of one targeted group isn't where the fight ends, they just move on to the next group.

Any removal of rights is a danger to everyone.

Thanks for that post tets - it's a lot more informative than the cartoon was.

But I don't agree with your conclusion. You seem to think the decision here is inherently unfair. But why? In light of all that's happened in this area - medical groups being taken over by activists, people pressured into needless invasive surgery, clinical psychiatrists being bullied by their own colleagues into giving diagnoses of gender dysphoria (in the David Bell report into GIDS in Tavistock), parents being bullied into having their kids diagnosed as trans on the basis that it would reduce the risk of suicide (when it won't - because they're not trans, they're depressed/autistic/struggling to come to terms with being gay, etc) - there's nothing at all unfair about the recent way this is all going. It's absolute common sense.

I am male. I don't have the right to be a woman. That's what the Supreme Court case was about. You can't remove rights of a group that doesn't have them in the first place.

Whatever about America (which is a basket case of a country lately), there's no indication that the recent trends suggest gay people are to be the next target. If anything, I would hope it's some of the medical activists who have been behind a lot of this. They've a hell of a lot to answer for.

And yet, to characterise the whole thing as Pineapple has done there doesn't sit right with me:
Here a woman was manhandled by police because she was in a public toilet and a bit butch.
Quite a few people have been murdered in the US and elsewhere just for being transgender. Here's one example. He was afraid people would think he was gay for his relationship with her (or him, I really don't give a **** about pronouns). https://www.kark.com/crime/prosecuto...ars-in-prison/

Post snipped a bit for brevity - but I don't think this is really relevant. Nobody here is arguing for or defending attacking and/or killing people. That's not even close to what this is about. Attacking and/or killing people is very illegal and remains very illegal. (Unfortunately people have been *****s since the dawn of time and it will continue to happen, over various things.)

I think it's slightly disingenuous to suggest it's part of my view (given you raised those cases as a direct counterpoint to my view)

There are always going to be a small number of cases on any issue where a family or a doctor make a bad decision on something, that is always going to happen whether its in regard to gender or treatments for disease or whatever.

So, yes as I said mistakes will certainly be made but in the main allowing people to make their own decisions about their own bodies should be a no brainer to me.

I don't think this is a small number of cases though. I think the suggestion in the initial David Bell report was the majority of cases GIDS diagnosed as gender dysphoria were actually depression/autism/prior history of brain trauma/struggling to cope with being gay/general teenage angst/what have you. (It's hard to be exact because there is no way of diagnosing gender dysphoria - I think the best they can say is these other comorbidities were also present).

And this is in kids, who do not have the same capacity to make their own decisions - a point explicitly called out in the Cass Report. They're being asked to undergo major surgery while not understanding the implications of it for their sterility, or in terms of what happens if they feel regret and want to detransition (which, again, Cass notes is an option almost never discussed in advance)

[tetsujin1979]

Thanks for that post tets - it's a lot more informative than the cartoon was.

But I don't agree with your conclusion. You seem to think the decision here is inherently unfair. But why? In light of all that's happened in this area - medical groups being taken over by activists, people pressured into needless invasive surgery, clinical psychiatrists being bullied by their own colleagues into giving diagnoses of gender dysphoria (in the David Bell report into GIDS in Tavistock), parents being bullied into having their kids diagnosed as trans on the basis that it would reduce the risk of suicide (when it won't - because they're not trans, they're depressed/autistic/struggling to come to terms with being gay, etc) - there's nothing at all unfair about the recent way this is all going. It's absolute common sense.

I am male. I don't have the right to be a woman. That's what the Supreme Court case was about. You can't remove rights of a group that doesn't have them in the first place.

It's not about male and having the right to be female, or vice versa, it's about trans people being able to exist as who they really are, and being able to do so safely. Since the ruling there's been changes in policy issued by groups in the UK, for example British Transport have said that suspected offenders being searched will be done so according to their biological sex, so a trans woman will now be searched by a male officer. Is that right?

Whatever about America (which is a basket case of a country lately), there's no indication that the recent trends suggest gay people are to be the next target. If anything, I would hope it's some of the medical activists who have been behind a lot of this. They've a hell of a lot to answer for.

Gay people might not be explicitly named as the target, but they are being targetted. A friend of mine from Atlanta was here recently and told me that she and her wife have had to speak with their solicitors to make sure their estate will be handled correctly in case any changes are made to roll back recognition of gay marriage there. And it's not just in the States. As recently as a week ago Hungary banned gay pride marches. There's been protests against drag queen readings in Ireland - despite the readers being garda vetted before being allowed to speak to any child, and the real danger being the protestors. Reports suggest that the US will not enter into trade talks with the UK until their anti-hate speech legislation is rolled back. Libraries have been picketed for having books with LGBT+ themes.

[John83]

Post snipped a bit for brevity - but I don't think this is really relevant. Nobody here is arguing for or defending attacking and/or killing people. That's not even close to what this is about. Attacking and/or killing people is very illegal and remains very illegal. (Unfortunately people have been *****s since the dawn of time and it will continue to happen, over various things.)

I think it's slightly disingenuous to suggest it's part of my view (given you raised those cases as a direct counterpoint to my view)

The two would ideally be considered in isolation. They're not. There are plenty of contentious points in medicine, but this one gets yelled about and legislated far more than most. The fact is that many of the people pushing for and discussing transgender medical care have an agenda driven by revulsion that such people dare exist. The fact that we're discussing this gives the issue a relevance that the news media latches onto. The strong emotions connected with it makes for easy click-bait and rage-bait stories. Someone quoted Trump above using this issue to blugeon stupid people into voting for the chaos he's bringing over there. They're just the most visible example; most authoritarian regimes these days seem to make excellent use of anti-gay and anti-trans propaganda that encourages discrimination and attacks against those people. I can recall Russian and Hungary at it recently enough, for example. So when I see people cheering a result like this, I wonder what other medical stories they're cheering, or whether this one is special because they've drank the wrong cool-aid.

I know a guy, a surgeon. Passionate guy. Talks at length about diagnistic criteria, interventions, all that. I don't know enough to know if he's on the right track, but I know he's constrained by medical ethics, surgical planning meetings, his medical licence, malpractice insurance and law, etc. No one is shouting from the rooftops whether the kids he operates on are getting the right care or not. It's being quietly discussed at medical conferences, constrained by all the stuff we use to constrain medical decisions. Some of the practices in his field are very different from 20-30 years ago. Nobody cares, except the odd parent whose kid did or didn't benefit from what was done to them. But the trans kids, who are a rounding error next to the patient load of this one guy, they need some special public debate? It's not the discussion it pretends to be, even if you mean it completely honestly, which I think you do.

[pineapple stu]

It's not about male and having the right to be female, or vice versa

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)

for example British Transport have said that suspected offenders being searched will be done so according to their biological sex, so a trans woman will now be searched by a male officer. Is that right?

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.

There's been protests against drag queen readings in Ireland

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

Gay people might not be explicitly named as the target, but they are being targetted.

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.

But 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".

And 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.

[pineapple stu]

The fact is that many of the people pushing for and discussing transgender medical care have an agenda driven by revulsion that such people dare exist.

Woah - hold on a second.

The medical governing body in this area, WPATH, has been shown (in reports I've linked in this thread) to have been taken over by activists. Not biased doctors - actual unqualified activists.

The NHS service for kids in this area was shut down in part because one in three (I think it was) psychiatrists at the service reported activist bullying from other psychiatrists when they didn't give a diagnosis of gender dysphoria - the David Bell report.

The actual reality is the opposite to what you say - the people pushing for, discussing and practicing transgender medical care have an agenda driven by their own biases, and it's causing harm everywhere. That's why I've quoted the head of services here (a thankful exception) saying it's a good thing we're moving to evidence-based care because things "aren't as simple as the activists think". Which is an appalling statement to have to make in a medical context.

But the trans kids, who are a rounding error next to the patient load of this one guy, they need some special public debate? It's not the discussion it pretends to be, even if you mean it completely honestly, which I think you do.

Show me another area at present where medical best practice is taken over by activists who "have abandoned the Hippocratic Oath" (WPATH report linked here earlier), who indulge parents in a "trans or suicide myth" (Cass and WPATH reports), who don't offer any way out to patients, who don't track drop-out patients in their medical stats (meaning their data is incredibly biased), and so on.

I really don't understand why the small sample size here is relevant. As I said earlier, there were probably fewer people involved in the Magdalene Laundries scandal, and it was still a scandal.

If there's anger from my side, it's that people are constantly looking for reasons to brush this under the carpet. And to be clear again - this being bad doesn't mean other things can't be bad.

[John83]

You said all of this already. The medical and poltiical establishment is dealing with the issue in its typically torpid, careful fashion. You are pointedly ignoring how this is politicised, routinely used as a wedge issue, and that this results in a fomenting hatred of transpeople, leading to the kind of harm I mentioned above. And that's why people have a bad taste in their mouth about anyone who seems oddly obsessed with the issue.

It's not everywhere, by the way. In Ireland, we're ranked last in the EU for time to first appointment with a specialist, the only country to top 3 years for that stat in a report commissioned by the EU. From the data I've seen and the people I've talked to, it seems that the follow-up is then usually to seek any means possible - deafness was one particularly distasteful example - to insist that you cannot get any further care, or must wait for many years before accessing it. I spoke with one person who had been diagnosed with dismorphia as a teen and was over 30 before they finally were given access to treatment. The perception in the trans community, I'm told, is that the HSE is essentially at the opposite end of the scale to England: ideologically predesoposed to dismiss them. But you weren't interested in that, were you? Why not?

The Magdeleine Laundries, to my recollection, trafficked around 2000 kids to the US and elsewhere over maybe 30-40 years. That's just the kidnapping and adoption side of it. There were - I forget the exact number - around 50~100 transgender kids getting non-reversable interventions last year in the US, a country with, what, 80 times our population? Forgive me if I'm underwhelmed by the scale of the problem.

[pineapple stu]

You said all of this already.

I have, but it gets ignored so you can make your own point instead. That's the issue really. Not one of my points has been addressed, by you or indeed anyone else.

You then introduce a point about the HSE and conclude "But you weren't interested in that, were you? Why not?" I suppose because you never raised the point before? I've never raised any objection to someone getting proper advice and treatment for an issue. (Provided, of course, that advice and treatment is evidence-based and based on properly-researched treatments). There'd be no harm you avoiding setting up strawman arguments to bat away.

About 10k kids were referred to GIDS (including some from Ireland) in the years before it was shut down; another 5k were on the waiting list. I'm not sure how many kids you feel it's ok to expose to the sort of ideology that saw GIDS shut down before it becomes a concern?

[dahamsta]

I genuinely don't Adam.

I genuinely don't believe you stu. You're a smart guy and the point is as clear as day. Sorry, but I just don't. And while you continue to parrot lines like this:

> people pressured into needless invasive surgery

I will not engage with you on this subject. You are trumping with edge cases to prove a general - badly conceived, imo - point. It is beneath your intelligence.