In 20 years we'll look back on the rush to change our children's sex as one of the darkest chapters in medicine, says psychotherapist BOB WITHERS

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Let me be absolutely clear: I am in no doubt there are people who feel they are one gender while having the body of the other.

Living with such constant, internal conflict is horrifying for many of those affected, and it should never be ignored.

No one should seek to suppress another person’s genuinely held sexual orientation or gender identity.

But the question we must ask ourselves today is this – how do we decide whose needs are genuine? And how, then, should we treat them?

I have been a psychotherapist for more than 30 years and, in that time, I have worked with a small but significant number of patients who wished to change gender.

For everyone’s sake, I believe that surgery – which is irreversible – should only ever be a last resort. We should always begin by working to help the mind fit better with the body before we start altering the body to fit the mind.

Yet in today’s NHS, professionals are enabling hundreds – possibly thousands – of teenagers to have major surgery to change their gender.

It is being done, almost unchallenged, in the name of transgender rights. But in 20 years’ time, I believe we will look back on this folly as one of the darkest periods in the history of modern medicine.

We will question why we failed to challenge their belief that they were born in the ‘wrong’ bodies.

We will ask why we so readily ignored the clanging alarm bells that many were autistic, or had mental health problems.

What we are faced with today is extremely worrying. While 17 children are transitioning in one secondary school, be in no doubt – it is almost certainly being repeated in other schools. What is happening is this: we are bringing up a generation of children who have quite complex mental health issues.

Identifying as trans can feel like a way to explain that suffering. Rather than understanding where it might be coming from – feeling lonely or isolated, being bullied, having an autistic spectrum disorder or struggling with any number of issues from sexuality to abuse to self-harm – we are allowing them to change sex.

It’s a lazy and damaging solution and one which NHS professionals, teachers, politicians and the law are all too eager to embrace to signal their progressive views.

In 2015, I published a prize- winning but controversial paper examining whether therapy could replace some patients’ perceived need for surgery.

Personally, I believe that as a society we should celebrate gender variance. Some of my patients have been able to live creatively with the mismatch between their mind and body. Where that isn’t possible – and where a patient is obviously suffering – we should always do something about it.

Yet the debate on this issue has been silenced by transgender activists who label as ‘transphobic’ anyone who dares to challenge their dogma.

This blind adherence to ideology has real, dangerous consequences.

In my field, for example, many psychotherapists are now afraid to properly question a patient who identifies as trans: afraid to explore their past, ask questions of their sexuality, or look into their mental health. They won’t go there, for fear of being struck off.

One major problem in today’s blinkered reality is that, if you don’t ‘affirm’ a patient’s claim to be transgender, you can run the risk of being accused of practising ‘conversion therapy’.

Conversion therapy is the practice of trying to convince a homosexual person that they are really straight. It’s abhorrent, and is rightly banned. Now, powerful bodies including the NHS and major counselling organisations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding – an agreement on how to practise – which extends the definition of conversion therapy to cover patients who might be transgender.

And this well-meaning memorandum is being used by trans activists to stop therapists, psychologists and others from asking rigorous questions about whether or not a patient does, in fact, have genuine ‘gender dysphoria’.

A therapist might have good cause to believe that the trans-identifying teenage boy in front of them hates his body because he was abused as a child and feels vulnerable. But they can’t explore that possibility.

They might spot a pattern of several schoolgirls saying they are trans, after witnessing a peer transformed from social non-entity to social butterfly after identifying as a trans-boy.

The attraction of popularity should not be overlooked.

Yet none of these possibilities can now be safely raised by psychotherapists, psychiatrists or teachers. Recently, 650 trans activists signed a letter published in Therapy Today, the house magazine of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, calling on anyone not practising ‘affirmation therapy’ to be booted out. If the Government presses ahead with plans to allow people to ‘self- identify’ as whatever gender they like, without external validation, I fear that would strengthen the hand of those arguing for trans-affirmative therapy.

But in my view, to avoid asking such probing questions of patients who claim to be trans – especially teenagers – is a cowardly dereliction of our duty.

We abdicate our responsibility if we simply become their Yes men, just passing them on to the next stage of the sex-change process.

The danger is that, once on the medical pathway which leads to a sex change, it’s very hard to get off.

Youngsters referred to the Gender Identity Development Service run by The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London undergo just six sessions to assess whether or not they are trans. Several members of staff have told me they are quietly appalled that, too often, no psychotherapy is offered before they start medical treatment.

They are then given ‘puberty blocker’ drugs which halt physical developments – powerful medicines not even licensed for transgender treatment which we know can weaken the bones, perhaps for life. There is little long-term data on their safety yet the NHS routinely hands them out.

Then most will receive cross-sex hormones, which carry their own risks. Giving testosterone to females, for instance, can raise the risk of ovarian cancer.

Exactly how many make the full surgical transition to the ‘opposite’ sex is unclear. Whether it brings lasting happiness is even less so. Short-term studies, usually conducted soon after surgery, suggest patients are immediately happier. But the few long-term studies that exist paint a different picture.

One, which followed men who had transitioned to be women for 15 to 20 years after surgery, showed they had a 20-times higher risk of suicide than others matched for age, social class and mental health problems.

On YouTube, some transsexuals are now posting videos warning young people not to go ahead with reassignment.

The backlash has begun.

It surely can’t be long before more difficult questions will be asked by a new generation. They will ask why nobody stopped them, told them treatment could destroy their sex life – or warned them that it would make them infertile and might not make them happy after all. They might also have lawyers asking the same questions, eyeing millions of pounds in compensation.

We need some honesty now, free from political correctness.

Otherwise, we are heading towards catastrophe.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6402003/Well-look-rush-change-childrens-sex-one-darkest-chapters-medicine.html

*THE Ben Reilly* wrote:

nicko wrote:What the hell is happening to THIS country ?

It has a population of over 65,000,000, and one or two hundred thousand of them are transgender.

The problem is not, nor has it ever been that people are transgender

The problem is how a militant group of transgenders are forcing through beliefs within medical treatment. Through a prism of victimology. That disregards the safe guarding of children. Where they wrongly accuse people of bigotry and transphobia for wanting to safeguard children and try to have them shut down.

Have a read.

‘Wherever I look these days, somebody somewhere is talking about trans issues,” said psychotherapist and author Stella O’Malley at the start of Trans Kids: It’s Time to Talk (Channel 4). It certainly feels that way. The figures are astonishing: in the last nine years, the number of children referred to the NHS’s gender service has gone up by 2,500 per cent. Trans vloggers have become YouTube stars with merchandise ranges and “chest-binding for beginners” videos that attract hundreds of thousands of views.

O’Malley set out to examine whether allowing young people to change gender is doing them harm. She does not come from a position of neutrality. As a child growing up in Eighties Dublin, O’Malley was convinced that she was a boy, trapped in a girl’s body. Yet now, aged 43, she is a mother-of-two (married to a man) and entirely happy with being a woman. In other words: it was just a phase.

She is worried that impressionable teenagers “are being sold a pup”, rushing headlong into the transitioning process without understanding the implications. “I’m haunted by the thought there are kids out there like I was – kids that change their minds,” O’Malley said. “If I had been a child today I’m absolutely certain that I would have transitioned. And where would that have left me?”

O’Malley’s own complex history fuelled the film. Her argument was based on her experience: she grew out of wanting a sex change, ergo other children may do the same – a view likely to infuriate trans activists. Nevertheless, she approached the subject with compassion. Her interviewees included Cole, a vlogger who cheerfully affirmed he was “OK with being a guinea pig” for treatment; and Debbie, who married as a man and waited until middle age to transition – a decision that had clearly taken a toll on her wife and children. Delaying the process brings different problems.

We also saw the parents of Matt, an autistic 13-year-old who was born a girl and diagnosed with gender dysphoria. For two years, he has been taking blockers to delay the onset of puberty. If he continues on this path he will be prescribed testosterone, the long-term effects of which are unknown. His mother was anguished: “Are we doing the right thing? Is Matt going to turn around when he’s 23 and say, ‘I was a child. Why did you do that to me?’”

According to the programme-makers, trans groups were approached to take part but all declined. Instead, they were shown trying to storm a meeting of radical feminists. “What we can hear outside is the narcissistic rage of millennials,” thundered one of the speakers, who did not come out of it well either.

By the end, O’Malley was weeping over her belief that many children are being “led” down a path from which they can never turn back.  

telegraph.co.uk/tv/2018/11/21/trans-kids-time-talk-review-compassionate-divisive-addition/

Thor wrote:

*THE Ben Reilly* wrote:

nicko wrote:What the hell is happening to THIS country ?

It has a population of over 65,000,000, and one or two hundred thousand of them are transgender.

The problem is not, nor has it ever been that people are transgender

The problem is how a militant group of transgenders are forcing through beliefs within medical treatment. Through a prism of victimology. That disregards the safe guarding of children. Where they wrongly accuse people of bigotry and transphobia for wanting to safeguard children and try to have them shut down.

Have a read.

‘Wherever I look these days, somebody somewhere is talking about trans issues,” said psychotherapist and author Stella O’Malley at the start of Trans Kids: It’s Time to Talk (Channel 4). It certainly feels that way. The figures are astonishing: in the last nine years, the number of children referred to the NHS’s gender service has gone up by 2,500 per cent. Trans vloggers have become YouTube stars with merchandise ranges and “chest-binding for beginners” videos that attract hundreds of thousands of views.

O’Malley set out to examine whether allowing young people to change gender is doing them harm. She does not come from a position of neutrality. As a child growing up in Eighties Dublin, O’Malley was convinced that she was a boy, trapped in a girl’s body. Yet now, aged 43, she is a mother-of-two (married to a man) and entirely happy with being a woman. In other words: it was just a phase.

She is worried that impressionable teenagers “are being sold a pup”, rushing headlong into the transitioning process without understanding the implications. “I’m haunted by the thought there are kids out there like I was – kids that change their minds,” O’Malley said. “If I had been a child today I’m absolutely certain that I would have transitioned. And where would that have left me?”

O’Malley’s own complex history fuelled the film. Her argument was based on her experience: she grew out of wanting a sex change, ergo other children may do the same – a view likely to infuriate trans activists. Nevertheless, she approached the subject with compassion. Her interviewees included Cole, a vlogger who cheerfully affirmed he was “OK with being a guinea pig” for treatment; and Debbie, who married as a man and waited until middle age to transition – a decision that had clearly taken a toll on her wife and children. Delaying the process brings different problems.

We also saw the parents of Matt, an autistic 13-year-old who was born a girl and diagnosed with gender dysphoria. For two years, he has been taking blockers to delay the onset of puberty. If he continues on this path he will be prescribed testosterone, the long-term effects of which are unknown. His mother was anguished: “Are we doing the right thing? Is Matt going to turn around when he’s 23 and say, ‘I was a child. Why did you do that to me?’”

According to the programme-makers, trans groups were approached to take part but all declined. Instead, they were shown trying to storm a meeting of radical feminists. “What we can hear outside is the narcissistic rage of millennials,” thundered one of the speakers, who did not come out of it well either.

By the end, O’Malley was weeping over her belief that many children are being “led” down a path from which they can never turn back.  

telegraph.co.uk/tv/2018/11/21/trans-kids-time-talk-review-compassionate-divisive-addition/

Oh wow, so basically, the villain in this problem, just like nearly every other problem in the world, is a SGOWMPWTWTDIFTB*?








*Small Group Of Well-Meaning People Who Think What They're Doing Is For The Best

*THE Ben Reilly* wrote:

Thor wrote:

The problem is not, nor has it ever been that people are transgender

The problem is how a militant group of transgenders are forcing through beliefs within medical treatment. Through a prism of victimology. That disregards the safe guarding of children. Where they wrongly accuse people of bigotry and transphobia for wanting to safeguard children and try to have them shut down.

Have a read.

Oh wow, so basically, the villain in this problem, just like nearly every other problem in the world, is a SGOWMPWTWTDIFTB*?








*Small Group Of Well-Meaning People Who Think What They're Doing Is For The Best

Wow indeed, when you ignore the safeguarding issue here

Again there is nothing wrong with people who are transgender

But what happens, when people have been made to believe they are and actually instead suffer mental health issues.

That pushing through into something claiming they are gender dysphoria, can then lead to life changing alertaions to thir bodies. To the possibility they then cannot concieve children

Hence you are as stupidly as the activists

This is about children being made to believe they are transgender, simple because they are confused

What should happen is the process is long through consultation, until they are of a mentually mature age to decide and that a sex surgery change should be the very last resort, as its life changing

What is not known is whether many end up becoming more suicidal, because they are pushed through such medication

Hence caution is needed, but yet again, because you have the mind of someone brainwashed, you fail to see the safeguarding issues here

Children are not toys to be played with and experimented on