It was entirely expected that the media would use the publication of the government’s Transgender Equality Inquiry Report to say terrible things about trans people. Here are a couple of examples of the sort of thing they get up to.
Firstly poor Jack Monroe got ambushed on Channel 4 News last night. Jack turned up expecting to talk about the report, and was instead forced to “debate” a well-known TERF on the subject of whether all trans people are rapists.
Of course Channel 4 billed this as a “debate” between a trans person and a feminist, as if TERFs speak for all feminists. Which is kind of like asking someone to debate Donald Trump and billing it as a debate with “Americans”.
The claim that trans people are rapists comes, initially, of course from Janice Raymond. However, she was talking purely symbolically. She believes that merely by taking on the public appearance of a woman I am “raping” all women. These days the TERFS prefer to quote a Swedish study from 2011 which they say comes to all sort of horrible conclusions about trans women.
Sadly for them, the author of the study doesn’t agree with the TERF interpretation of her work and is rather annoyed about how it is being used. In this interview with The TransAdvocate she explains what her work actually shows.
Nevertheless, this paper keeps on getting cited in anti-trans articles and interviews. Last night it was quoted on Channel 4 by Julia Long, and Jack, having been ambushed, didn’t have the evidence to hand to refute it.
Julia Long, by the way, is one of the TERFs who picketed a London Dyke March in 2014 because Sarah Brown had been invited to speak.
Jack had agreed to appear on the programme for free but Long had apparently asked for a fee:
https://twitter.com/MxJackMonroe/status/687762934081142784
I put out to tweet linking to the TransAdvocate article asking Channel 4 to tweet the link themselves to show how their guest has misrepresented the paper she was quoting. They did not do so. They did link to a Huffington Post article about the show, but that too failed to expose Long’s dishonesty.
Naturally TERFs on Twitter thought they could “disprove” the TransAdvocate piece by quoting the original paper.
Meanwhile I understand that several media outlets have been going on about “sex changes for children”. This, as always, is nonsense. No one gives puberty blockers to a 4-year-old. Unless if course they are actually going through puberty in which case doctors would have no hesitation in prescribing them. Interestingly doctors give out puberty blockers like candy to girls whom they think are developing too quickly, but still claim that the same drugs are too dangerous to give to trans kids.
Also, puberty blockers merely delay puberty. They do not cause a “sex change”, no matter how often tabloid newspapers say they do.
One statistic you will hear quoted in these debates is that 80% of trans kids “grow out of it”. This one is quite dangerous in that it is almost true. The majority of kids who exhibit some sort of gender-variant behavior in childhood grow up to be cis adults. But that includes girls who like playing sport and boys who don’t like playing sport, both of which groups are likely to be viewed as “gender variant” by parents brainwashed by the Pink & Blue nonsense.
If you look only at those kids who express a very strong desire to transition socially, pretty much none of them grow out of it (as far as we can tell, given the small numbers involved). Equally some of the kids who “grow out of it” may end up identifying as non-binary but not want any medical intervention, or may identify as one of LGB. Medical treatment should only be given to kids who need it, and the job of the doctors is to sort out which ones do, not to refuse to treat any of them.
Saying that you shouldn’t treat trans kids because most children who exhibit some gender-variant behavior grow out of it is rather like saying that you shouldn’t treat brain cancer because most patients with a headache can get by on painkillers.
Here’s an actual gender specialist making the same point.
All the work with kids seems to show to me is that trying to fit people into strict binary roles is daft, which those with any observational skills at all already knew.
Poor Jack Monroe indeed, I’ve had that happen to me (over environmental stuff), it’s bad enough trying to get your points across in a normal interview let alone a debate when you feel you must challenge the crap the other person is spouting.
The whole concept of imposing notions of gendered behavior and appearance on children is, in my opinion, harmful. Far better for them to experience a range of roles through play and experimentation. Pressuring them to look and act a certain way only leads to a poisonous accumulation of inhibitions and misplaced feelings of shame.
I think the so called “desistors” may drop out from the clinic for a whole variety of reasons, but they are never followed up and are just assumed to have reverted back to their birth assigned sex. However things like bullying at school, parental resistance and insecurities could make that child “de-transition”. But are they ever followed up to see if they come back into the adult GIC’s later, say in their 20’s – no, because there is no follow up.