Of course Sonia Appleby had ‘an agenda’. It was child safeguarding. This is where ludicrous accusations of ‘transphobia’ will get you. The deliberate abandonment of children’s welfare to serve an adult ideology.
So how did the usual suspects comment on this story? They didn’t. Here’s Mermaids and one of their patrons. How is upholding Gillick competence an attack on it?
Here’a David and John, and the burning issues of the day
Katy wants your validation and your money. But no comment on such a significant development about a failure in child safeguarding.
I would have like to ask Annie Wallace what on Earth she thinks she is blathering on about re Gillick competence - but predictably.
And I can see I have been unfair to Ms Wallace. She did in fact comment. But not on the clear failures to safeguard young children. Because, I suggest, for this group, medical transition from 10 years is seen as an ambition, not a medical negligence action in waiting.
We have to be aware of this. It’s a dangerous false equivalence, pushed by Jolyon Maugham among others. A 15 year girl taking birth control to avoid pregnancy is nothing like a 12 year old girl taking testosterone.
The latter will cause immediate and irreversible consequences to the child’s body and put her future fertility at risk. I do not see how any 12 year old is able to consent to this. But for some reason, a group of adults thinks it’s essential to THEIR validation.
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The child was five years old when she said she wanted to be 'non binary'.
11 years old when she wanted her puberty suppressed. For every.
the doctors say this could be ethical because its congruent with patient well being.
"When Phoenix was 11, they began puberty and became extremely distressed by development of their breast buds and anxious about menstruation commencing soon...."
Happily Phoenix does not - yet - exist outside the minds of the doctors. But this train is most definitely coming down the track
"In this paper, we identify and analyse the key ethical issues relevant to Phoenix’s case, a hypothetical yet realistic case based on clinical experience. Phoenix’s request raises novel ethical questions which have not previously been analysed. The ethical issues associated with puberty suppression for transgender or gender diverse individuals have only been explored in the context of a time-limited first step in a two-stage hormonal treatment pathway for gender binary (predominantly male or female) adolescents whose aim is ultimately to commence testosterone or oestrogen,1 or for non-binary adolescents.2 Here we examine whether puberty suppression should be offered as a stand-alone intervention for non-binary adults (18 or over) who started puberty suppression as adolescents, to affirm their gender identity (defined below)."
And this is the interesting bit. That doctors are moving away from the 'health' pathway - i.e. their goal is to save people from disease - and to see themselves as part of a more general 'good' of self improvement
"The second, ‘desire fulfilment’ theories, hold that well-being entails fulfilling one’s (sufficiently) freely formed and (sufficiently) informed desires. Desire fulfilment theories acknowledge that people have different values which may inform their desires. According to a desire fulfilment theory of well-being, it may be ethically defensible for Phoenix to choose OPS if they have a sufficiently free and informed desire to do so, and OPS is reasonably expected to fulfil this desire.20 The desire fulfilment theory of well-being involves an obvious connection between autonomy and well-being, in that promoting a person’s autonomy (through fulfilling their informed desires) would also promote their well-being."
Made it! Fought our way through the massive protests. #swansea - to the event that is causing ‘on-going’ distress to the LGBT AQIA ++++ 2 spirit community.
We missed the protester getting decked by security and had the swiftest G and T ever to greet the panel with rapturous applause
An attempt first by @akuareindorf to explain how the Equality Act works regarding sex discrimination - it’s complicated and confusing even for lawyers - that’s why it’s in the Supreme Court now. Personal view of AR - ‘it’s unsustainable’ and does particular damage to categories of sexual orientation.
In a truly shocking judgment in the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre para 57 stands out for me - the response to a warm, empathetic email looking for a way forward
“Your email was humiliating, so I feel humiliated. I don’t want to have
any conversations about this with you.”
We have given power to the thin skinned, the narcissistic and the actively dangerous. How many judgements like this will it take to restore sanity? It should not have required ANY.
4102236 - Judgment - 14.05.2024 (redacted).pdf - Google Drive
Para 75 - the point about giving primacy to one minority group inevitably means that others will suffer. Rights ARE a pie.
"There was a staff meeting on 7th July which the claimant attended which was about trans inclusion. There was no space for discussion about getting to the
heart of any of the issues but instead the meeting was essentially based on two questions around “how can we be better at being trans inclusive.” The meeting was very tightly controlled."
Again, para 114, those in charge of disciplinary proceedings did not know of the Forstater case, could not name it. WHO IS ADVISING THESE PEOPLE? Will they ever be held to account?
Gender identity ideology is a virus that eats the brain.
Nothing proves that assertion more neatly than this complaint and subsequent suspension from the @TheGreenParty of yet another member of @GreenPartyWomen.
Remember ladies - the Green Party denies that your sex exists. Any plea for protection of same sex female spaces is a ‘transphobic dog whistle’.
The Green Party encourages unlawful discrimination and defamatory, dehumanising slurs against those with protected belief.
This for me is the key quote from the GMN response to the proposed 'Conversion Practices' Bill, and why I think it such enormous folly to direct attention and vitriol to individual trans identifying men. This is an attempt to capture the entire criminal justice system.
I really hope people will use their finite energies and resources to tackle this, rather than just trade insults on line. This is most definitely not a drill.
"In requiring a court to embrace a politically contested concept where one side of the debate believes in the existence of that concept and one does not, the court becomes, in effect a religious court siding with those who have such a belief."
While some are frothing about 'perverts' THIS is what actual politicians want to see made LAW.
"By way of example, a private counsellor who told a young patient to their professional view was that they were suffering internalised homophobia and manifesting a transgender identity as a result could in theory be prosecuted for a single activity intended and having the purpose of supressing a transgender identity. Given the interim Cass report[15] emphasises the importance of multi-disciplinary intervention, counselling and therapy, it is surprising that such services are placed in jeopardy of criminal prosecution."
I have already criticised the legally illiterate approach to parental responsibility, which then slides into talking about 'treating the child's welfare as paramount concern' . As the GMN point out, this is borrowing the statutory compulsion on COURTS to make decisions with the child's welfare as paramount. It doesn't apply to parents. All they have to do is not subject the children to significant harm or the risk of it. Any higher obligation is impermissible social engineering. If this Bill is made law then the criminal and family courts will diverge in ways that are potentially irreconcilable.
Also, I fail to see why or how PR is relevant for a Gillick competent child. As GMN say
"As children get older, they become more and more competent at law to look after themselves and parental responsibility is thus exercised less. It follows from this that not all Defendants who have parental responsibility under the relevant legislation will necessarily be exercising it."
As I go further down the rabbit hole with regard to how children are treated by those who insist that gender identity is the preferred organising category, I come across this interesting book from 2017.
It’s basic premise is that trans children have always existed and denial of this is - of course - genocide. I had not realised this word had begun to misused as early as 2017, or that we could have such a thing as ‘procedural genocide’.
But what is fundamentally alarming is the constant repetition that to deny children agency is to ‘infantalise’ them, and to muddy the waters by including those over 18 as children. This points to a crucial misdirection that Mermaids also relied upon heavily - if a child says they are trans, they are trans - thus lumping together the 3 year old and the 17 year old who are worlds apart in their ability to process information and understand it.