Thread by @TwisterFilm

1./ At the heart of tomorrow's Bell v Tavistock appeal is the claim doctors MUST medicate children otherwise suicide rates will rise. But as this thread recently revealed...one of the world's leading trans thinkers Jack Halberstam has long rubbished this claim. 👇

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1376701009540608006

2./ At a roundtable in 2018 the famous transman author explains how concerned he was about the way social media now increasingly tutors young susceptible people in how to make claims which put their doctors and parents under pressure to provide drugs.👇

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1376702076168851458

3./ He says adult trans people have long known how to "manipulate doctors" to get what they want, citing the work of Sandy Stone who said "I knew exactly what to tell the doctor to get what I wanted". Social media and peers now teach kids to do the same.👇

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1376706356368044042

4./ Halberstam points out when heterosexual so-called "cis" girls feel suicidal no one says "it's because they're straight". ALL girls face a litany of psychological pressures but our society has been gaslit into concluding "trans teens" are most at risk?

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1376710579658895362

5./ The evidence for this claim is wafer-thin and produced often by advocates for puberty blockers who commercially benefit from them. @TheEndoSociety a party in the case will testify but their policy was devised by Dr Norman Spack. What rhymes with Spack?

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1357468999672553476

6./ You can read more about the shoddy work of the Endocrine Society on trans issues here. In their justification for being involved in this case they even cite the work of Dr Jack Turban who is to medical science what Einstein was to hairdressing. 👇

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1357468529340145666

7./ You can read my takedown of Turban's ridiculously dodgy paper on puberty blockers here. He claimed they prevented suicide when in fact rates of recent serious attempts at suicide and hospitalisation from suicide were much higher in kids who took them.

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1222662566624866317

8./ Here's Dr Joshua Safer (who organised the Endocrine Society's intervention tomorrow) speaking to an audience of fellow doctors and admitting that one of the key pieces of evidence that gender identity is biologically innate is really weak. 👇

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1357481905621524481

9./ Here's @will_malone (an eminent endocrinologist) discussing how the Endocrine Society was captured by pushers for puberty blockers despite an almost total lack of evidence or discussion. gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/episode/hormon…

10./ Halberstam says the emphasis on suicide, is dangerous for trans people. It means transition is embarked on too early. He asks how can a young person really know their own body if they haven't lived in it fully? "You have to know what works or doesn't"

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1376710976838459392

11./ Halberstam cites a friend who decided not to have top surgery. They'd grown to love their breasts. A 17 year old might not know that yet. Slow down, he argues, don't change bodies dramatically until people are really sure. Isn't this common sense?

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1376711752914718725

12./ On one side tomorrow is a woman, @KLBfax who's stood up against a year of bullying, character-assassination and conspiracy theories. Against her: dodgy science, captured institutions, commercial interests, and a lobby that will say anything, defame anyone, to get its way