Thread by @JLCederblom

This will be a thread thinking out loud about the 60 minutes segment. It was all over the place, and I need to go over it bit by bit to figure out what just happened.

The opening sentence actually contains an error. The Arkansas law does not prohibit the facilitation of medical transition of youth for "transgender youth", but any youth. It will later cover a number of cases where people who considered themselves "transgender youth" weren't so.

The second sentence opens "as part of a new culture war", an extremely simplistic view which fails to take into account not only international developments and the incredibly short history of this field. This is not serious reporting.

The idea that Erica Anderson is a "highly respected gender psychologist" is also not very true to reality. This person has been caught lying many times, even fails to deceive the 60 minutes crew (which is seemingly not hard), and is clearly unfit for any accolades.

"It's a very ominous development, it's a bad sign."

Strange choice of words - these things suggest something bad is going to happen later, not that the thing itself is bad. I wonder what the exact question was.

"Clearly they are demonstrating their ignorance, and prejudice."

Ignorance of what? Prejudice of what? Vagueness here is not useful. The mere act of legislating medical practice is neither of those two by definition so this is just throwing words out there and hoping they stick.

"[Medical transition of minors] is based in scientific literature, in decades and decades of expert experience and backed by a number of major medical organizations."

Well, first of all this is not true. The first significant study is only now 10 years old.

I also like the series of cuts here, clearly she was stumbling on her own bullshit and struggling to get it out. If there were decent studies here, we would have heard no end of it. Instead it's just vague appeals to authority.

"Is there any medical rationale for this legislation in your opinion? No."

Perhaps the unknown long term impacts on bone health? Brain development? Cardiovascular issues? That suicidality has not been shown to decrease? I can certainly think of a medical rationale.

Mentioning that there are 50 times more youth gender clinics than in 2007 is a decent piece of reporting, at least. It only took two minutes of nonsense to get to it.

The WPATH Standards of Care 7 do not say "should have parental consent", they say "preferably with parental consent", depending on local laws. "Have seen a therapist" is technically not required for hormones, so that's another error.

The one thing they called out Anderson on was "is there an accreditation to work on this field", which they barely deserve credit for since it went roughly like this:

"License and registration, please."
"I will have a license later."

When Anderson says the problem is doctors not following the guidelines, they're conveniently skipping over the fact that those guidelines are incredibly vague. For example, the SoC7 criteria for most treatments go like this:

- Persistent, well-documented gender dysphoria;
- Capacity to make a fully informed decision and to consent for treatment;
- Age of majority;
- If significant medical or mental health concerns are present, they must be reasonably well controlled.

What is "persistent" and "well-documented"? What constitutes "fully informed decision" for something where the long term consequences are unknown? How well controlled is "reasonably well controlled"?

These are not pillars doctors can lean on to provide quality care.

"WPATH guidelines call for affirming but careful evaluation" is somewhat true.

The document also states "Neither puberty suppression nor allowing puberty to occur is a neutral act."

It also has the header "Sex Reassignment Surgery Is Effective and Medically Necessary".

So it's "somewhat true" only in the sense that it wants to have its cake and eat it. WPATH hedging its bets with unclear and contradictory language does not help doctors either, but Anderson still wants to pretend this is not a problem with the system.

"It is clear that there are many trans children who are helped by the kinds of interventions we're talking about here."

Other than not defining what "trans children" means, this doesn't actually tell us anything.

If there were ten children right behind me, I would describe that as "many children". How many is it? As a proportion? And how much does it help? And why do studies not show that?

Anderson saying "I'm not satisfied with 6 months" is interesting, because it completely breaks the argument that the guidelines are fine. And the show just glosses over that.

The @HormoneHangover segment was pretty straight forward, although I obviously can't verify the details, it was just her story and no false statements about the general state of things.

Edwards-Leeper stepping up and saying "we can't be honest, we are scared" was interesting. It's not news here in our little Twitter world, but probably unknown to the world at large that even "long-time servants" like her have to fall in line.

Hearing detransitioners views on gender is among the most interesting things you can do in this area, and I'm glad they didn't cut the whole thing, even if it means they had to platform a series of lies from unethical doctors.

Although I will say that cutting @HabituallyFemme is a disservice to humanity. @dmchadra and @detransgayguy were plenty eloquent. The level of introspection from these young people never ceases to amaze.

Alphonso David explaining that they see detransitioners as a threat was not news, but always good to get it on video, I suppose. And 44 killed is not an "epidemic of violence" for the US given the size of the population, it's actually far lower than the average.

As for "trans youth attempting suicide at a rate of 4 times that of their peers", this is not from generalizable data, so it's very irresponsible to present it as if it was. We don't know what the rate is.

The "needs of those trans people" dance that Anderson does is very confusing. Is the word detransition cursed? As for "my heart goes out to them", I'm unsure on if Anderson has one. At least in the figurative sense - there's probably a literal one somewhere in there.

Overall the piece leaves me with the feeling that they really failed to say anything coherent and meaningful. They had all the pieces of the puzzle but failed to put it together. I wonder how it originally looked, before they came down with an urgent case of re-education.