Over the Easter break, I travelled around following Brian on his tour in Eastern Europe. We visited 7 countries in 12 days. A few of the things we did: we visited a Communist dictator's house, underground ruins of a Roman Christian church, an 80s Museum, went on a walk for a few hours with an historian who detailed the 100 year history leading up to the Yugoslav/Homeland Wars, crossed the Danube a LOT, we saw loads of churches, visited Communist era venues, saw Socialist art, ate dinner in a Communist era television tower, were driven around in a Trabant, marched with gendarmes, walked through a WW2 bomb shelter, saw some of Tycho Brahe’s books, went on a boat ride on a river and ate a LOT of food.
Anyway... because of all of that, I’ve not been following closely everything that’s been going on with The Cass Report. For those of you who mightn’t know, The Cass Report is The Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People, researched and written by Dr. Hilary Cass - former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health- over four years for the NHS.
You can read The Guardian about the results here.
And another Guardian article.
Andy Lewis, who writes about pseudoscience and ‘alternative medicine’, has some good posts on it: Part 1, Part 2
The results of the Cass Report come as absolutely no surprise to any of the women who have been talking about this topic for over a decade now. In short, Cass has said that child transition “is an area of remarkably weak evidence”. The report recommends that the NHS needs to care for the whole child who presents with gender issues, including screening for other neurodevelopment conditions such as autism (because a disproportionately large percentage of children presenting with gender issues are autistic)(there’s also an incredibly high percentage of same-sex attracted kids, too, but that’s a different issue…), producing a full mental health assessment, taking into account other adverse issues such as a history of abuse or being adopted or in foster care and providing help, therapy or care for those issues before any kind of ‘gender therapy’ is even thought of. Puberty blockers have already been effectively banned by NHS England, but should a clinician feel they are an appropriate treatment for a child, that child will be enrolled in a medical trial studying puberty blockers (hopefully this will mean that parents will now understand that they are allowing their child to be experimented on). The NHS should have a “follow-through service for 17-25-year-olds”, so that kids who are receiving care for their ‘gender distress’ don't get thrown straight into adult clinics (I feel this is about acknowledging that brains don't mature until 25, which means that kids can make a LOT of dumb choices when they are younger). The NHS needs to provide care for detransitioners (of which I expect there will be more and more in the coming years)... and on and on.
Again, none of this is a surprise to me or anyone else who took a fricken MINUTE to look at the topic dispassionately and to bravely face the facts that might contradict their (leftwing political) beliefs.
Because of this, it seems loads of ‘gender critical’ people have been shouting on social media about how they've been “vindicated”... but... I think they’re being foolish. Those of us who were looking at this over a decade ago know that no one will clear us of blame, no one will apologise for their treatment of us, no one will come to us and say ‘You were right; I was wrong’, no one will even say ‘I misunderstood what you said, sorry’, no one will change their opinions of us as ‘evil people’.
I saw this the other day from one of my friends on Facebook:
Yup. Ironically, the woman who posted this was someone who had a ‘trans identity’ and hated me years ago. One day, she'd decided to hate-read some of my tweets about growing up as a tomboy... and… she changed her mind. She desisted. She realised that she was not ‘a man’, but was an awesome, non-feminine, lesbian woman. We met. She told me her story. I cried. I felt like I’d ‘saved’ someone from a lifetime of being a medical patient, from irreversible effects of cross sex hormones, from surgical removal of her breasts, ovaries and uterus. At the very least, I ‘saved’ someone from spending their life hating the fact that they are female. That really matters.
But she is the only person in over a decade that has come to me to tell me that they were sorry for thinking I was evil.
Not one other person has done that, including a lot of people who I have known for a very long time who have ‘disowned’ me. People who pride themselves on being “curious” or “understanding science” or actually BEING a scientist yet refusing to engage their brains even once and instead deciding that I am ‘evil’. People who were total normies for their whole lives, while I was politically and socially engaged in the LGB ‘community’, who suddenly (in their comfortable 40s or 50s) claimed to understand LGBTQQII++ “identities” far more than I possibly ever could and decided that because I don’t believe in magic gendered souls that I must be a rightwing bigot.
And here’s the thing: each time one of those people in my life refused to listen to or discuss this with me, each time they distanced themselves from me, each time they decided that my position wasn’t worth understanding or worse that it was reprehensible, I felt like they were standing right next to and encouraging the hundreds of people who had violently threatened me, libelled me, harassed me, bullied me. In the frenzied chaos of the on-going process of ‘being cancelled’, when hundreds-but-felt-like-millions-of trans activists were saying I should have my throat slit and be set on fire, one trans activist told me I deserved to be curb stomped. It was so violent and repulsive that I haven’t been able to remove that image from my mind. And every time I think about it, I see the faces of my (former) friends and family members just standing there and dispassionately watching it happen. The synapses have been burned in… Consequently, it’s going to take a lot more than them saying ‘well, I don’t think you should be threatened with violence’ or just quietly changing their minds eventually and thinking that makes it all OK with me.
It won’t.
I will not allow those people into my life in any way at all until they acknowledge their complicity in the harassment and abuse of women like me who were simply canaries in the coalmine. A bunch of unhinged, mentally disturbed people didn't like hearing our warnings, so they stamped us down into the ground and many of our friends and family members effectively supported the abuse because they just wanted to be seen to be “kind”. Yes, you watched as a mob stamped us into the dirt because you wanted the people doing the stamping to think you are “nice” (wtf???!!!). That isn’t something that is easily forgotten.
And now Cass has found that when (we leftwing, feminist) women were urging caution about medically and surgically transitioning (mainly gay, lesbian, bisexual and autistic) children, we were actually talking sense.
Have any of you had anyone apologise to you about this? Or do I just have weak and terrible (former) friends and family members?
WATCH THIS
Because I've not been online much, I don't know if everyone is talking about Baby Reindeer on Netflix, but oh my goodness I loved it. I binged the whole thing because I just couldn't stop watching it. It's ostensibly about a man who is stalked by a woman, but that's only one insane, disturbing, moving and profound part of it. If you are someone who doesn't like intense shows that cover extremely difficult topics or if you require ‘trigger warnings’, maybe read about the series a bit before deciding to watch it. The rest of you: jump in without learning much about it and go with it. If you’re like me you will spend most of it watching with your mouth open, alternately laughing and crying. Then thinking about it LOADS afterwards.
Richard Gadd’s and Jessica Gunning’s outstanding performances are so nuanced, the characters so complex that I never quite knew how I felt about them. I felt sympathy and, yes, pity for both of them, but also thought they were absolute stupid pricks. At the same time. Brilliant writing, brilliant performances.
Without spoiling anything, I found the acknowledgment of ‘complicity’ in the story to be profoundly moving. It feels to me that Richard Gadd (who, along with starring in it, wrote it) has had some really very, very good therapy over the years.
LISTEN TO THIS
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Anyway, again, I’d love to hear if any of you have had anyone apologise to you for harassing you or disowning you for your position on ‘gender’ stuff…
This is great and sums up so much of how I feel. I'm not a public person so the impact was very local - in friendship groups, schools & family. One friend did apologise - genuinely and openly - but not because of Cass. He was decent enough to apologise on email - cc'ing the rest of the people at a particular party where this subject had come up (including a couple who'd actually shouted at me). No one else followed up his email but I'll be forever grateful to him. No one since Cass has said "wow you were right all those years ago". It's permanent fault line in some familial relationships I suspect. I've shared this on my Facebook - so I've let you do the talking for me ;)
Perfectly put, I haven't seen any apologies yet either. Reminds me of a Tweet I saw this morning where antivaxxers were coming up with multiple theories as to why more people weren't dropping dead after the COVID vax, they would rather look stupid than admit the truth. As for the former Yugoslavia, my Bosnian friends are to this day proud of the fact that Iggy Pop got a bigger crowd in Sarajevo pre war than Elton John.