Jess3200 t1_jb1qvlg wrote on March 5, 2023 at 7:43 PM

Reply to comment by ghostxxhile in Žižek Has Lost the Plot by elimial

I did not say the Guardian was transphobic, only that it has a reputation for being so. You keep taking my tempered statements and making them absolute - I wonder why that might be. Doing so once may be a mistake, but repeatedly doing so…

My example isn’t silly. He was a governor of the entire Tavistock service, and not specifically the gender identity clinic - thus, it is perfectly reasonable to posit that he worked in such a position due to his interest in psychoanalysis and not gender identity. He may therefore be motivated by outdated notions of gender development and personal ideology. Again, this is the sort of nuance lost in Zizek and in responses I have received here.

The point is that the majority of patients being see by the Tavistock do not have autism. Their own data indicates that around 15% have a diagnosis of autism, whilst international data indicate between 10% and 25% of young people presenting at gender clinics have autism. This is far higher than the rate in cisgender populations (and would benefit from further research), but still far from being the majority. There’s also no indication that the majority, if any, of these autistic individuals are to be found in the adolescent girls seeking support - they might be, or they might be equally spread out amongst all the young people presenting at the clinic, or only in the boys seeking input. We simply don’t know. Your assumption here again is exactly what I was calling out Zizek for…

As for doing no harm - why is it always about doing no harm to the 3%-5% who might regret and never to the 95%-97% who won’t? There is harm in transitioning when this is not right for you and there is harm in being denied early transition when this is right for you. A ban on all transition related medical intervention for children and adolescents can cause real harm to those who will grow up to live as trans individuals - why no concern for them? Do we need to continue to develop our ability to identify who might fall into each group - absolutely. That doesn’t mean we ban all treatment for young people, however. That approach involves doing as much, if not more, harm than the alternative.

ghostxxhile t1_jb1utgb wrote on March 5, 2023 at 8:10 PM

Differentiate between having a reputation of being x and is x? The two are very comparable and a more accurate way of phrasing would have been that the Guardian has published a few articles that have been deemed transphobic.

Your example of the Christian baker was silly. As to Bell, perhaps you are right but what type of person stays at a clinic for twenty-years whose practice he fundamentally disagrees with and then decided to launch a report at the end lf those twenty-years? Also, what is so wrong about requesting a report? Surely lack of nuance here is noting that the Trust did not want such report to be made at all which far more suspicious than Bell requesting one.

Sidenote: Bell is a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst

The fact that autism is more prevalent in gender dysphoria than cis-gender people is still warrants the question of why that phenomena is the case and to go back to the point you made previously, it’s not about ableism, it’s about properly assessing each INDIVIDUAL, and not a mean, to see if that child is indeed experiencing genuine gender dysphoria before being administered hormonal treatment.

I honestly do not understand why there is retaliation to the idea of being thorough with each patient and ruling out all possible factors before allowing treatment. It’s seems like common sense but somehow lacks nuance.

Why should it cause more harm if they are with an environment where people affirm their gender? Why do we push the narrative to be your preferred gender then you need xyz. If gender is fluid and doesn’t pertain to genitalia then why is it so essential to have hormonal treatment or operation? You cannot have the cake and eat it to. The answer to this is to of course address the dysphoria, to allow them to express their preferred gender, to have their environment and those around them to affirm their preferred gender and take much less hands on approach until they become an adult. A child can note vote at 16 yet we somehow allow them to make a life changing decision? We either deem children responsible at such an age or we do not.