2./ This demands any child referred to a counsellor with gender issues must be met with affirmation. But parents want their kids to have care from experts who don't see their job as affirming every idea that happens to have lodged itself in the chaos of a 12 year old's mind.
3./ For the gender identity lobby like Pink News though therapy by someone gender critical is an evil akin to gay conversion therapy. Forget for a moment that most gay conversion therapy isn't carried out by professionals and is usually associated with evangelical Christians.
4./ The idea of a gender critical database isn't about setting out to convert kids anyway; it's to provide options other than instant affirmation. Many kids referred to GI clinics have other issues than gender. Those need to be explored rather than subsumed under 'trans'.
5./ In its attempt at a takedown Pink News cites ....wait for it....science. Since Pink News is to science journalism what I am to hair extensions let's have a look at that "science". At first it sounds promising. They link to a story by NBC about a real scientific paper.
6./ The study compared transgender people who'd undergone 'gender conversion' therapy with those who didn't. The news report is by the LGBTQ correspondent at NBC. I know. Here's his report:- nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-ou…
7./ But 'Gender conversion' therapy isn't what anyone is advocating here. So comparing getting other options than instant affirmation with out and out 'gender conversion' where there's a premeditated attempt to deny trans identity is blatantly unfair. But it gets worse.
8./ The report linked to by Pink News carries dubious quotes from the scientists. One says,"The rate of previous suicide attempts among transgender people in the United States is extremely high, with 41 percent reporting that they have had that experience." But..
9./ ...another of the paper's authors is quoted saying people who were subjected to the practice of gender conversion before age 10..."were four times more likely to report lifetime suicide attempts than the general transgender population" Err...
10./ But 4 x 41% = 164% which is rather on the high side even for the exaggerrated suicide stats the trans lobby likes to churn out. So let's look at the science paper itself. And blow me down, the lead author is Dr Jack Turban, that gung ho promoter of puberty blockers.
11./ He recently claimed these can lower suicide rates but his own work actually revealed people who'd taken puberty blockers had higher rates of attempted suicide by some measures and that's after they were all screened for mental health issues before being given them.
12./ It turns out his paper on gender conversion therapy is just as unconvincing. It too is based on that vast exercise in confirmation bias, the US Transgender Survey organised by transgender lobby group NCTE. This time too Jack does nothing more than analyse their stats.
13./ We have learned not to believe Volkswagen's data on its own cars' diesel emissions. So why would we believe the stats collected by a lobby group that has an existential need to raise funds and lets its own founder and fund-raiser co-author its survey? Jack tho has no qualms.
14./ Using these likely rather biased stats he manages to produce a graph which shows in some cases the suicide attempt figures for those who experienced 'conversion therapy' are indeed double those who didn't. 
15./ But here's the thing. These stats include all attempts at conversion including religious not just therapeutic. And as Dr Turban himself points out there was no information at all about the duration or intensity of that therapy. Pears and apples for all we know.
16./ And then there's a final kicker just like there was in his puberty blockers paper. It turns out ...duhh...that people who are mentally troubled by their 'gender identity' are more likely to seek out therapy that tries to change it. Or as Turban says himself :-
17./ "It is possible that those with internalised transphobia may have been more likely to seek out conversion therapy...suggesting that conversion therapies themselves were not causative of these poor mental health outcomes".
18./ So there you have it: the scientific proof that Pink News says shows gender critical therapy would harm kids has nothing to do with therapists who are gender critical but is only about full on US style conversion including the religious versions.
19./ The stats are unreliable because they come from a lobby group. Its author admits there's no proof of causation anyway. All it does show is that people who are so unhappy they tried to change their identity are more likely to stay unhappy than those who never did.
20./ What this survey of the transgender population couldn't capture and nor could Turban's study based on it was how happy or unhappy were those people who received some form of therapy that did help change their mind. As ex-trans people they wouldn't be surveyed.
21./ Every follow up study of trans kids shows that a majority do not continue to feel trans when older. The figures vary but do imply that gentle therapy that helps assist those kids come to the conclusion they'd have reached anyway but sooner may be a positive contribution.
22./ The joke on Pink News and its gay readership is that the new model of complete affirmation of gender identity which the G I lobby now advocate is itself one of the biggest and most organised misuses of psychiatry in history: and gays are among its biggest victims.
23./ Thousands of kids who are gender non conforming, are being referred to gender identity clinics on the flimsiest evidence. There these tomboy girls and feminine boys are put on a conveyor belt towards transition. Many would probably have grown up to be lesbian or gay.
24./ The latent homophobia of parents, academics and institutions colludes in pushing them towards potential medicalisation including life-long hormones and double mastectomies. That's the real scandal that faces gay people if only we had a gay press that could see it.
