One of the scandals associated with the Tavistock Clinic was that child safeguarding was basically thrown out of the window in large part because various transgender promoting organisations such as Mermaids, had far too much influence over clinical practise. Now the National Health Service is trying to clean up its act a little bit with regards the gender transitioning of young people.
These new rules and new approach regarding paediatric gender reassignment, which will take into account much more than the Tavistock did a child’s mental health conditions and cut back on the prescription of puberty blockers, don’t in my view go far enough, but are a step in the right direction. Personally rather than continuing with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for existing minor patients, who are currently on the Tavistock’s patient books, I’d like to have seen all under 18’s who were placed on puberty blockers or cross sex hormones during the period when the Tavistock and the gender ideologues were calling the shots, have these medicines tailed off, so that these children and young people can have their bodies heal somewhat. This has been the decision of some US states who have banned paediatric gender reassignment and it’s maybe a decision that we in the UK should have copied.
Although I would have wished to see a policy regarding gender reassignment that could be roughly described as ‘piss off until you are at least 25’ in place and which would have ensured that anybody whose brains had not finished developing would not get gender reassignment in any form, this is at least a baby step in the correct direction.
Here’s the NHS press release on these new changes to the NHS’s approach to paediatric gender reassignment.
and the more detailed plan as to how the NHS is going to proceed, including the NHS recognising that most young people who have an incongruent gender self identity, grow out of this feeling.
Let us hope that this new approach to this issue by the NHS also marks the point when safeguarding came back into this area of NHS activity.
Hat Tip James Esses
I’m still not sure about this one, i.e. what powers should the state have to remove children from parents on grounds of abuse if the parents are affirming gender exploration and possible change.
We seem to be going down a ‘nudge’ approach in the UK to hope for desisting but there is also a sizeable group of parents of trans children who are not going anywhere and are fighting for their right to do what they think is best for their children.
Do we really want to go down the alleged Florida route to take these children away from their parents and send them to foster parents or institutions for ‘detranstioning’.
It’s a serious question and logical conclusion I think to how far we can claim a right to interfere into another person’s private business if it doesn’t directly affect us. There are also more important political issues going on rather than a small minority being ‘trans’. Is there something else being hidden?
OK I’ll bite on this one. As a bit of a minimalist I’d prefer that the State kept out of people’s lives as much as possible but I recognise that in some circumstances the state should intervene and one of those circumstances is when parents are deliberately harming a child. In my view a lot of the treatment aimed at gender non-conforming children looks very much like child abuse as kids are being put on paths that will end up with the child being sterilised, mutilated and unable to as an adult have any sort of sexual pleasure. We quite rightly no longer castrate boy singers in order to preserve their pre-pubertal voices as we see it as morally wrong now. We should take the same view regards under 25s going through gender transition.
This ‘sizable group’ of parents are as deluded as their children are. They and their children need help to reconcile their bodies with their minds and not be fixated on mutilation.
Florida has banned gender transition for minors. If parents insist on defying this law and continuing to send their kids to abusive ‘gender Mengeles’ then of course there’s the chance tht child protective services would step in. However this is not what is happening but the law change may well affect cross state custody battles See https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2023/05/31/no-florida-cant-kidnap-trans-kids-new-law-may-affect-custody-disputes/
I’m all in favour of the State fucking off out of people’s lives but when you have an ideology targeting kids then it changes the picture somewhat