Puberty blockers

[plodder]

Recently treatments have been halted through a court case in the UK. Here's a thread about the people who made the case:

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/statu ... 7015888900

The usual crowd of quacks, fundies and cranks from the look of it, who are also heavily involved in anti-abortion cases. Ace.

[Trinucleus]

A couple of years ago the Lottery made a large grant to Mermaids, a group that helps confused parents and children get to grip with the issues they faced.

The grant was violently attacked by an organised campaign, forcing the lottery to re-eximine their decision. They concluded it was absolutely right to be helping distressed families. I'm guessing it's the same type of people active here, though I can't help thinking the recent decision about young people's ability to make informed judgements on life changing treatment sounded reaonable

[plodder]

Still worth being very aware of the horrors who are organising the campaigns and their creeping agenda for abortion. They are well practiced and demonstrably effective. Trans is such a confusing and emotive subject it’s an excellent foothold for them.

[Fishnut]

Still worth being very aware of the horrors who are organising the campaigns and their creeping agenda for abortion. They are well practiced and demonstrably effective. Trans is such a confusing and emotive subject it’s an excellent foothold for them.

Very much so. I think it's also worth acknowledging the role the Christian right is playing in the anti-trans movement. At a Values Voter Summit in 2017, where Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka were among the speakers, a panel was held titled transgender ideology in public schools during which a strategy of "divide and conquer" was discussed:

For all of its recent success, the LGBT alliance is actually fragile, and the trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them. Gender identity on its own is just a bridge too far. If you separate the T from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success.

So said panelist Meg Kilgannon. She also discussed Hands Across the Aisle, a coalition of "radical feminists, lesbians, Christians and conservatives that are tabling [their] ideological differences to stand in solidarity against gender identity legislation" mostly by opposing legislation that recognises transpeople and provides for their legal protections.

Around the same time the Women's Liberation Front (WoLF), a radical feminist group, joined forces with the Family Policy Alliance, an offshoot of Focus on the Family to oppose Title IX amendments that would protect LGBT students from harassment. WoLF has maintained its links with the Family Policy Alliance in the years since. Last year, for example, they participated in a panel discussion hosted by the Heritage Foundation. This isn't that surprising, though, when you learn that WoLF is funded by the Alliance Defending Freedom which was itself founded by James Dobson and Alan Sears.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is incredibly well-funded. The Guardian reported that they received $55 million in donations in 2018 and,

...claims to have more than 3,400 affiliated attorneys and judges worldwide. In the 25 years since it was founded, it has brought 10 cases before the US supreme court, including some of the most consequential cases of the last decade on contraceptive and gay rights.

ADF is, “an aggressive, strategic legal group that is about Christian supremacy and hegemony in the US and in the world,” said Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst with Political Research Associates. “It’s the world under God’s law.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labelled them a hate group due to their extremism and work against LGBTQ+ people.

This twitter thread from 2018 shows the extensive links (including funding) that US-based Christian right groups have with UK-based radical feminist/TERF groups.

Transgender rights are being used as a wedge issue. One of the co-founders of Hands Across the Aisle is anti-abortion, which comes as no real surprise given that she's an conservative Christian. What is surprising, or at least disappointing, to see so many purported feminists join forces with these groups that have spent decades campaigning against advancing the cause of women and LGBTQ+ people. When the company you keep is the likes of The Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family you've really got to ask yourself, are we the baddies?

[egbert26]

Ah, Jo Maugham. Instead of arguing against what these people said he'd rather discredit them as witnesses. I'm not surprised though, given his tendency to block anyone who questions his ability to weigh up scientific evidence rather than discuss what they've said.

One thing did stand out to me in his devastating 'takedown': his rubbishing of research carried out on animals. I'm not sure if this is just a cheap lawyer's trick or whether he genuinely doesn't understand when and why animals are used in medicine. Why the hell would anyone get the funding to do research giving puberty blockers to sheep? As someone who has been involved in animal research, it pisses me off no end when people try to pull this sh.t.

This neatly summarises Maugham's 'we've had enough of experts':

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/ ... 2902123524

[nekomatic]

It does seem that this might be one of the cases where just because some terrible, terrible people agree with you doesn't mean you're completely wrong.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Blocking puberty is reversible.
Puberty is irreversible.

Preventing teenagers from being able to block puberty in a timely way whilst they resolve and commit to their sense of gender seems to me to be the wrong decision. If, it turns out, they actually did make the wrong decision, puberty can be unblocked and life can continue. But this is a rare outcome for trans people. If you force puberty to proceed and, as is the case the vast majority of the time, the person of concern remains fully of the opinion that they are of a different gender to their sex, then they are forced to live in an adult body they don't want, with expensive, painful and time-consuming surgical processes to correct it, that could have been avoided.

I think this is one of those cases where having some terrible, terrible people agreeing with you does absolutely indicate you're completely wrong.

[plodder]

As I said, it's emotive and complex.

Ah, Jo Maugham. Instead of arguing against what these people said he'd rather discredit them as witnesses. I'm not surprised though, given his tendency to block anyone who questions his ability to weigh up scientific evidence rather than discuss what they've said.

One thing did stand out to me in his devastating 'takedown': his rubbishing of research carried out on animals. I'm not sure if this is just a cheap lawyer's trick or whether he genuinely doesn't understand when and why animals are used in medicine. Why the hell would anyone get the funding to do research giving puberty blockers to sheep? As someone who has been involved in animal research, it pisses me off no end when people try to pull this sh.t.

This neatly summarises Maugham's 'we've had enough of experts':

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/ ... 2902123524

The "neat summary" contains a number of wooly tweets about how the author has been chased by sheep. They also seem to be suggesting that puberty blockers may cause humans to lose spacial awareness capability. To which I'd respond: "In Sheep".

https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice

[egbert26]

As I said, it's emotive and complex.

The "neat summary" contains a number of wooly tweets about how the author has been chased by sheep. They also seem to be suggesting that puberty blockers may cause humans to lose spacial awareness capability. To which I'd respond: "In Sheep".

https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice

And?

Was Jo Maugham right to pretend that this scientist doesn't know what he's on about? Is tax expert Maugham better placed to say whose evidence should and shouldn't be used at inquiries into this issue? Using animals to investigate the effects of hormones on the brain is a) common place, b) the people involved in it are usually very aware of the limitations of their work and c) would much rather do their work on human subjects wherever possible.

One thing that has stood out to me in all this is that trans kids are massively let down. I think most people can see how awful the waiting times are, unfortunately all too common in MH stuff with underage kids. The other thing that how utterly dire the research carried out on the kids/teens is. Besides the obvious problems associated with small studies and the inability to perform gold standard double-blind RCTs, I've had a poke around into some of the research, some carried out by the Tavistock itself, and can see research with no control groups, a 'control group' which consisted of the kids deemed too mentally ill to be placed in the treatment group(!), research where half the participants of an already small group drop out or cannot be followed up once they reach 18. Given how few places deal with trans kids and how long it takes to conduct this research, this is pretty unforgiveable.

[plodder]

yes, it’s difficult and I’m sure there’s loads of science to be done.

but ad homming Maughan doesn’t help: he’s pointing out that fundies are taking animal research, extrapolating wildly to humans, and are getting the law changed as a result, as part of an organised and effective agenda.

[egbert26]

yes, it’s difficult and I’m sure there’s loads of science to be done.

but ad homming Maughan doesn’t help: he’s pointing out that fundies are taking animal research, extrapolating wildly to humans, and are getting the law changed as a result, as part of an organised and effective agenda.

My ad homming is pointing out his ad homming. He hasn't directly said how the fundies managed to sway the courts, which bits of their evidence is untrue or how the case against the Tavistock would have been different if brought by people he approves of. I've had a read of the judgement and would love to know if he thinks the clinic have bathed themselves in glory or where they were wronged. He has stated that the evidence is indisputable, etc. so why isn't he mad that the Tavistock didn't manage to present the indisputable evidence? The ruling states that it is not for them to weigh up one treatment over another and that they are less interested in the evidence supplied by the claimants than that on which the Tavistock bases their claims. Several times in the judgement people from the Tavistock were asked for statistics based on their own patients. In many instances they could not supply it. Some of these questions were pretty key to the case, such as what % of patients given PB go on to take CSH* or whether they have ever denied a patient PB on the basis that they were not Gillick competent. What has this got to do with the fundies? Why isn't Maugham commenting on the fact that the clinic did not have their data? Were they stitched up and not expecting these kind of questions? Many people have asked him these questions, but he is not interested at all.

I'm a great fan of his work on Brexit and investigating the PPE procurement chumocracy, but on this I feel a little bit sad reading his tweets.

*A preprint of a study by the Tavistock, released days after the ruling, looking at pubertal suppression for up to 36 months in 44 patients showed 43 went on to CSH

[plodder]

He’s written quite a lot on the judgement and what he considers to be one-sided evidence and poor quality witnesses. I don’t have an axe to grind, but I am generally a bit concerned when organised groups throw themselves into complex ethical and scientific issues, especially when they’re from pretty extreme political positions.

[egbert26]

A largely agree. But I believe the case was one-sided partly because the Tavistock witnesses didn't seem to have done a particularly good job preparing their evidence. I just hope that if the appeal goes ahead he puts his efforts into getting the Tavistock to get their act together, because if there is no legal reason to dismiss certain witnesses on the claimants' side then the same conclusion will be reached.

[plodder]

From what I've read some witnesses for the Tavistock were prevented from appearing. Agreed, need to sharpen up, especially now they know who they're up against.