My latest for UnHerd: How does a professional organisation respond when a scandal breaks? Some issue smooth denials, leaving not so much as a seam for critics to pick at. Some finger bad apples. Others dare to admit faults and strive for transparency. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) took a rather different tack,
The comment about not being a “threat to the global gender binary” is infuriating. Nobody cares about the “gender binary.” We care about people being irreversibly harmed. Doctors are supposed to care about that too. Instead they have blinded themselves to the needs of their individual patients in service of a political goal. Whenever that has happened in human history the outcome has been terrible.
"Gender, like genitalia, is represented by diversity." If one's genitalia are, supposedly, irrelevant in determining one's gender, why such emphasis on them? Or specifically, having cosmetic operations to change them?
The people in charge of WPATH are so narcissistic they believe that every patient is just an opportunity for the doctors to relive their own lives through their patients. "Oh, if only someone had cut off my penis when I was 10, I would be able to pass as a woman now!" People who have unresolved psychiatric disorders of this kind should never be in charge of the psychiatric care of other people who have the same problems.
Note the circular nature of the authority granting: Major medical associations justify their gender-affirming care practices by deferring to WPATH standards of care; WPATH, in turn, defends itself by saying major medical associations adopted their standards of care.
"WPATH is and has always been a science- and evidence-based organization whose recommendations are widely endorsed by major medical organizations around the world."
I pose, based on my experience divorcing a man like Mark/Marci Bowers, that the estrogen has affected his brain and cognition, critical thinking and capacity for reality bites. These dudes are constantly stroked and affirmed, which sends the logical brain on vacation. The glorification (remember, he's the "Jazz surgeon" all over television) and the worship of him within WPATH gave him years of smooth sailing, no need to reflect on dissent or wrestle superior studies like the Swedish study of death records showing a much higher rate of death by suicide or seriously consider the detransition of so many young women. Thanks, Eliza! The reactions to the stark truth of medical malpractice are extremely telling.
It still seems to me that changing the mind would be a better option. Unless the surgeons are tempted to do brain transplants, of course.
Since gender confusion is a delusion, why not try psychiatric drugs.
I read an article about children from states that have banned the treatment and have to move to states that don’t ban the treatment, the whole family picks up everything and it’s a huge, stressful change for everyone, new schools, new jobs, new home etc. Or they can drive 800 miles to a different state, or take a plane for free offered by volunteer pilots who are committed to the cause.
No wonder these tranny kids think the world revolves around them! It does! They are so trapped in that delusion they couldn’t get out of it if they tried.
How on earth can the AMA, APA back this unscientific protocol?
"For years, {WPATH's] conferences and events have promoted the narrative that gender clinicians are a misunderstood and persecuted vanguard within medicine who will be vindicated in the future but must suffer heinous accusations in the here and now."
This is not an abstract matter. In Oregon, at least, the progressive lawmakers who wield so much power seem to be aware of the "heinous accusations" that are being leveled against the gender-affirming care establishment, a contingent that would surely include WPATH. In 2023, the Oregon legislature approved, and the Oregon governor signed into law, a bill [1] that shielded a wide variety of Oregon-licensed medical and mental health care providers of gender-affirming care. The same bill also contained similar protections for providers of reproductive health care services. The latter were a response to the US Supreme Court's Dodd decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
The types of providers who are covered by the law are protected from having their Oregon licenses suspended or revoked under certain circumstances. They're shielded if they were convicted in another state for providing gender-affirming services that are unlawful in that state but legal in Oregon. Providers' Oregon licenses are protected also if another state suspends or revokes the provider's license in that state for having provided gender-affirming services that are unlawful in that state but legal in Oregon.
However, that protection is only available if the services provided were performed in accordance with the standard of care applicable to the services.
To put this in context, if a provider of health care or mental health care is licensed in multiple states, being convicted of professional misconduct or having his or her license suspended or revoked by one state can be grounds for the licensing board in the other state or states to open a disciplinary investigation that can result in in the same or similar penalties there.
Oregon law is now hostile to states that have regulated, restricted or banned gender-affirming medicine and gender-affirming mental health care. It prevents those states from harming providers' professional standing in Oregon just because they were punished professionally in that state for practicing illegal gender medicine there. All the the gender-affirming licensed care provider has to to is make sure he or she uses the standard of care applicable to the services they are providing. And what would that standard be? Well, would any gender-affirming mental health or heath care provider cite any standard of care besides WPATH's?
Note: This is not legal advice and I am not your lawyer or anyone else's. Please consult a qualified attorney if you need legal advice. Certain details of the law have been simplified for clarity.
I think Bowers is referring to the Joan Rivers joke about looking down at your old-lady labia and wondering how that dirty gray sock got there...Or maybe that's about nullification surgery?
I'm reading through the files and trying to work out how big this is, how much it will impact the practices and social phenomenon generally. So far, I'm thinking it's like turning an oil tanker. Those of us still connected to reality will have our view confirmed, while those captured by queer theory will also have theirs confirmed - yet another reactionary hater is trying to stop progress.
I've got to a discussion of an "interview study" of clients who are "trans" and (in the new lingo) "plural". The naive uber-progressive participant says, "(what may have been called DID or multiple in the past)." Despite acknowledging that there's a lack of knowledge on "this topic" and more training is needed, there's the obvious subtext that "dissociative identity disorder" was an awful slur, as are all mental diagnoses. Someone who believes they're several people is right, not suffering from some cognitive malfunction, so it's important to get all their various parts to agree on what gender they'll adopt, just as someone who believes they're a different sex from that of their body is right. And I began to wonder where these people's lines might be. Do any of their clients claim to be a different species, and do they accept that as factual? Do any of them claim to be extra-terrestrials, or ghosts? Do these people have any limits on their affirmation of untenable claims? If they would doubt the latter examples, do they ever ask themselves what the difference is? "I've got a penis and I'm beginning to grow a beard, but I'm a girl!" versus "I'm a rabbit from Mars!"
The problem seems to be that mental illness is denied, so goes untreated, because the clinicians are mentally ill.
WPATH alleges it is being persecuted by the haters, who urge medical caution.
Similarly, my daughter alleges I am hateful because, when she asked what I think of her friend’s mother who socially transitioned the friend at 8 - a chubby girl with some academic and social challenges - and then skipped puberty blockers but put her on testosterone simultaneously with a double mastectomy (she might have benefitted from a breast reduction as her breasts were quite large and unwieldy) around her 16th birthday, I said I believed she was “misguided.”
From discussion, it is clear the mother would say I am hateful and bigoted for wanting my daughter to try to live in her healthy female body - and dress and act any way she is comfortable with.
So, when anyone indicates that those who are medically altering healthy bodies of young vulnerable individuals due to distress over their sexed bodies might be making a major mistake or be misguided, that is hateful.
Yet anyone who thinks it might be a mistake to medically alter those same young vulnerable individuals with healthy bodies and distress over their sexed bodies can be called hateful bigoted monsters, and such accusations are not hateful at all.
What am I missing? This seems like a very distorted double standard to me - or a gross misunderstanding of what it is to be hateful and bigoted.
This would be a great time for some quiet, behind the scenes discussions with Ms. Rowling to request her financial help in order to fund the initiation of a massive class action lawsuit against these amoral clowns posing as "professionals" - AND - against the many organizations using WPATH's baseless unscientific "protocols" to justify chemically castrating and mutilating young people.
The sentence you chose for the title is my favourite sentence in the entire letter, even more so than the bit about the earth or the bit about the gender binary. 😅
The narcissism is disturbing. You can hear the grandiosity. How WPATH believe themselves to be special and uniquely gifted. World leaders in their field. Giving themselves a devine right to mutilate more vulnerable children. They will never believe they have done anything wrong. There is a long fight ahead (begun a long time ago by many courageous people) to stop this ideological cult. To cut of the Medusa's head with all the snakes of different NGOs and charities that have helped to create the power behind this vile monster.
The comment about not being a “threat to the global gender binary” is infuriating. Nobody cares about the “gender binary.” We care about people being irreversibly harmed. Doctors are supposed to care about that too. Instead they have blinded themselves to the needs of their individual patients in service of a political goal. Whenever that has happened in human history the outcome has been terrible.
"Gender, like genitalia, is represented by diversity." If one's genitalia are, supposedly, irrelevant in determining one's gender, why such emphasis on them? Or specifically, having cosmetic operations to change them?
The people in charge of WPATH are so narcissistic they believe that every patient is just an opportunity for the doctors to relive their own lives through their patients. "Oh, if only someone had cut off my penis when I was 10, I would be able to pass as a woman now!" People who have unresolved psychiatric disorders of this kind should never be in charge of the psychiatric care of other people who have the same problems.
Note the circular nature of the authority granting: Major medical associations justify their gender-affirming care practices by deferring to WPATH standards of care; WPATH, in turn, defends itself by saying major medical associations adopted their standards of care.
"WPATH is and has always been a science- and evidence-based organization whose recommendations are widely endorsed by major medical organizations around the world."
I pose, based on my experience divorcing a man like Mark/Marci Bowers, that the estrogen has affected his brain and cognition, critical thinking and capacity for reality bites. These dudes are constantly stroked and affirmed, which sends the logical brain on vacation. The glorification (remember, he's the "Jazz surgeon" all over television) and the worship of him within WPATH gave him years of smooth sailing, no need to reflect on dissent or wrestle superior studies like the Swedish study of death records showing a much higher rate of death by suicide or seriously consider the detransition of so many young women. Thanks, Eliza! The reactions to the stark truth of medical malpractice are extremely telling.
But the trans community will insist that everyone else is obsessed with genitalia though.
It still seems to me that changing the mind would be a better option. Unless the surgeons are tempted to do brain transplants, of course.
Since gender confusion is a delusion, why not try psychiatric drugs.
I read an article about children from states that have banned the treatment and have to move to states that don’t ban the treatment, the whole family picks up everything and it’s a huge, stressful change for everyone, new schools, new jobs, new home etc. Or they can drive 800 miles to a different state, or take a plane for free offered by volunteer pilots who are committed to the cause.
No wonder these tranny kids think the world revolves around them! It does! They are so trapped in that delusion they couldn’t get out of it if they tried.
How on earth can the AMA, APA back this unscientific protocol?
Gender, like genitalia--this is the twaddle-riffs of Queer poetry.
"For years, {WPATH's] conferences and events have promoted the narrative that gender clinicians are a misunderstood and persecuted vanguard within medicine who will be vindicated in the future but must suffer heinous accusations in the here and now."
This is not an abstract matter. In Oregon, at least, the progressive lawmakers who wield so much power seem to be aware of the "heinous accusations" that are being leveled against the gender-affirming care establishment, a contingent that would surely include WPATH. In 2023, the Oregon legislature approved, and the Oregon governor signed into law, a bill [1] that shielded a wide variety of Oregon-licensed medical and mental health care providers of gender-affirming care. The same bill also contained similar protections for providers of reproductive health care services. The latter were a response to the US Supreme Court's Dodd decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
The types of providers who are covered by the law are protected from having their Oregon licenses suspended or revoked under certain circumstances. They're shielded if they were convicted in another state for providing gender-affirming services that are unlawful in that state but legal in Oregon. Providers' Oregon licenses are protected also if another state suspends or revokes the provider's license in that state for having provided gender-affirming services that are unlawful in that state but legal in Oregon.
However, that protection is only available if the services provided were performed in accordance with the standard of care applicable to the services.
To put this in context, if a provider of health care or mental health care is licensed in multiple states, being convicted of professional misconduct or having his or her license suspended or revoked by one state can be grounds for the licensing board in the other state or states to open a disciplinary investigation that can result in in the same or similar penalties there.
Oregon law is now hostile to states that have regulated, restricted or banned gender-affirming medicine and gender-affirming mental health care. It prevents those states from harming providers' professional standing in Oregon just because they were punished professionally in that state for practicing illegal gender medicine there. All the the gender-affirming licensed care provider has to to is make sure he or she uses the standard of care applicable to the services they are providing. And what would that standard be? Well, would any gender-affirming mental health or heath care provider cite any standard of care besides WPATH's?
[1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwju8diUoeOEAxUTFjQIHctzBiAQFnoECA0QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Folis.oregonlegislature.gov%2Fliz%2F2023R1%2FMeasures%2FOverview%2FHB2002&usg=AOvVaw1HmFPEkOSeqav45gzlB_Q3&opi=89978449
Note: This is not legal advice and I am not your lawyer or anyone else's. Please consult a qualified attorney if you need legal advice. Certain details of the law have been simplified for clarity.
I think Bowers is referring to the Joan Rivers joke about looking down at your old-lady labia and wondering how that dirty gray sock got there...Or maybe that's about nullification surgery?
I'm reading through the files and trying to work out how big this is, how much it will impact the practices and social phenomenon generally. So far, I'm thinking it's like turning an oil tanker. Those of us still connected to reality will have our view confirmed, while those captured by queer theory will also have theirs confirmed - yet another reactionary hater is trying to stop progress.
I've got to a discussion of an "interview study" of clients who are "trans" and (in the new lingo) "plural". The naive uber-progressive participant says, "(what may have been called DID or multiple in the past)." Despite acknowledging that there's a lack of knowledge on "this topic" and more training is needed, there's the obvious subtext that "dissociative identity disorder" was an awful slur, as are all mental diagnoses. Someone who believes they're several people is right, not suffering from some cognitive malfunction, so it's important to get all their various parts to agree on what gender they'll adopt, just as someone who believes they're a different sex from that of their body is right. And I began to wonder where these people's lines might be. Do any of their clients claim to be a different species, and do they accept that as factual? Do any of them claim to be extra-terrestrials, or ghosts? Do these people have any limits on their affirmation of untenable claims? If they would doubt the latter examples, do they ever ask themselves what the difference is? "I've got a penis and I'm beginning to grow a beard, but I'm a girl!" versus "I'm a rabbit from Mars!"
The problem seems to be that mental illness is denied, so goes untreated, because the clinicians are mentally ill.
WPATH alleges it is being persecuted by the haters, who urge medical caution.
Similarly, my daughter alleges I am hateful because, when she asked what I think of her friend’s mother who socially transitioned the friend at 8 - a chubby girl with some academic and social challenges - and then skipped puberty blockers but put her on testosterone simultaneously with a double mastectomy (she might have benefitted from a breast reduction as her breasts were quite large and unwieldy) around her 16th birthday, I said I believed she was “misguided.”
From discussion, it is clear the mother would say I am hateful and bigoted for wanting my daughter to try to live in her healthy female body - and dress and act any way she is comfortable with.
So, when anyone indicates that those who are medically altering healthy bodies of young vulnerable individuals due to distress over their sexed bodies might be making a major mistake or be misguided, that is hateful.
Yet anyone who thinks it might be a mistake to medically alter those same young vulnerable individuals with healthy bodies and distress over their sexed bodies can be called hateful bigoted monsters, and such accusations are not hateful at all.
What am I missing? This seems like a very distorted double standard to me - or a gross misunderstanding of what it is to be hateful and bigoted.
One of my petty joys in life is whenever the words "gender medicine" appear in something I quote, I "[sic]" them.
:D
This would be a great time for some quiet, behind the scenes discussions with Ms. Rowling to request her financial help in order to fund the initiation of a massive class action lawsuit against these amoral clowns posing as "professionals" - AND - against the many organizations using WPATH's baseless unscientific "protocols" to justify chemically castrating and mutilating young people.
The sentence you chose for the title is my favourite sentence in the entire letter, even more so than the bit about the earth or the bit about the gender binary. 😅
The narcissism is disturbing. You can hear the grandiosity. How WPATH believe themselves to be special and uniquely gifted. World leaders in their field. Giving themselves a devine right to mutilate more vulnerable children. They will never believe they have done anything wrong. There is a long fight ahead (begun a long time ago by many courageous people) to stop this ideological cult. To cut of the Medusa's head with all the snakes of different NGOs and charities that have helped to create the power behind this vile monster.