1./ How BAD is the science employed by the trans lobby? Terrible, if we're to judge by the UK govt's recent study into Conversion Therapy which argues for an affirmation only model for "trans youth". It's only the latest in a tradition of awful, pseudo-science trans research.👇
2./ The tax-payer funded report makes huge claims but was based on interviews with a grand total of 30 people. Remember how much the trans lobby complained about that BBC article based on interviews with "just 80" lesbians? Maybe lesbian experiences count for less at Oink News?👇
3./ The absurd thing is the UK govt is taking seriously a report that opines on "Gender Identity Conversion Therapy" which examined only 4 previous studies, none of which were conducted in the UK. Incredibly, the report interviewed only SIX trans or "non-binary" people. Six?👇
4./ And of those 6 people only 3 claimed their "Conversion Therapy" was an attempt to change their gender identity. So the UK govt is considering interfering in the practice of psychotherapy based on THREE interviews. You couldn't make it up. But it gets even worse.
5./ The report admits interviews were sourced thru groups like @OzanneFoundn which have made madly exaggerated claims about Conversion Therapy in the UK. It even quotes "journalist" Patrick Strudwick as a source; someone whose work has never knowingly been confused with facts.👇
6./ No govt that cared about evidence would give this Report the time of day. But it's just the most recent example of bizarrely bad research in support of the trans lobby. Who can forget Jack Turban's pathetic paper in support of puberty blockers?👇
7./ Turban used a self-selecting group drummed up by trans activist lobbyists and only admitted in the small print that kids who got puberty blockers were screened for mental health so...of course they should have better mental health outcomes than those who didn't get blockers.
8./ Except they didn't. There were IN FACT more attempts at suicide among those who got blockers than those who didn't and double the rate of hospitalisations from suicide attempts. Yet Turban didn't bother to correct headlines from inveterate fibbers like this. 👇
9./ The trans lobby's "science" began in the 1920s when medic Magnus Hirschfeld set up a clinic in Berlin. But err...Hirschfeld recommended crackpot testicle transplants to "cure" homosexuality and his clinic was mired in colonial racism.👇
10./ The LGBTQ+ movement celebrates the fact Hirschfeld's clinic championed the first vaginoplasty. They don't mention the surgeon, Gohrbrandt, became a leading figure in the Nazi sterilisation of the disabled; and commissioned disgusting and deadly experiments at Dachau.👇
11./ In time, another Hirschfeld admirer, Harry Benjamin, tried to turn the dark world of backroom sex change surgery by Nazis into a respectable discipline by developing "protocols" that would become the basis of oft-quoted trans health body, @wpath .👇 wpath.org
12./ But don't be fooled. WPATH remains a shady lobby group that promotes dubious "science". How could it not be? It was - as the now renamed Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association - the brainchild of one of the most eccentric trans activists in history, Reed Erickson. 👇
13./ Erickson was a lesbian who in the 1950s decided "he" was a man, had surgery, kept a pet leopard called Henry, hoovered up ketamine and poured vast sums of money into "his" pet causes including the "science" of gender identity and "transsexualism".
14./ As trans activist Morgan Page recently pointed out without Reed "we would not have trans health care period." The vast sums of money Reed poured into founding gender dysphoria clinics in the US created the model that has now metastasised across the world.
15./ But what beneficiaries of Reed's largesse such as WPATH don't admit is just how cranky were his interests. The miracle of sex change was not "his" only pseudo-science obsession. Reed was a huge believer in telekinesis and telepathy using dreams.👇
16./ Reed also lavished funds on John Lilley, a biologist and fellow ketamine fiend, who claimed he'd learned to speak dolphin language. His experiments ended in scandal when his research assistant admitted she'd been having sex with one of the dolphins.👇 theguardian.com/environment/20…
17./ If that isn't bizarre enough for you, Reed was also obsessed by latter day religious miracles. "He" funded 'A Course in Miracles', a book that would go on to become a best-seller by the author Helen Schucman who claimed every word was dictated to her by ...Jesus. Okay.....
18./ @wpath is now endlessly quoted as some sort of scientific authority. It isn't. When you're told that remember it was brought into being by a rich transman who believed in dolphin-human communication, telepathy, revelation through ketamine and books dictated by Jesus. 👇
19./ The whole "discipline" of trans health care is still rooted in the values of its Reed Erickson origins. What else explains the incompetence of the Tavistock whose own research shows puberty blockers lead to more self-harm and behavioural problems?👇
20./ What else explains the threadbare evidence cited by puberty blocker enthusiasts like Dr Joshua Safer who pushed the Endocrine Society into appealing against @KLBfax's victory in the courts? Here he admits the evidence for gender identity is "weak".👇
21./ How can anyone take seriously someone like Dr Norman Spack who first popularised puberty blockers? Here's his distinctly unscientific take on how "beautiful" kids seemed once they were on the blockers that kept them so very pre-pubescent.👇
22./ The sad truth is the govt's Conversion Therapy Study is a mess on gender identity because the whole subject has become a morass of ill-defined terms, unscientific assertions and misrepresentations by activists who fiercely protect them from normal scrutiny.
23./ The only sensible plan would be to disconnect 'sexual orientation' in the Bill from 'gender identity' and commission robust research into the latter. Trans people deserve protection from those who would try to convert them. But not at the expense of insisting on affirmation.
24./ A ban on Conversion Therapy makes sense. But such a ban can't be driven by pseudo-science which aims to stop good therapists exploring gender dysphoria humanely. It's time for the trans lobby to invest in rigorous research and leave the obsessions of Reed Erickson behind.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1./ 🧵What does 'Queer' mean? In its new show the Tate claims Leigh Bowery is a queer icon. In my latest article I argue the designer's life and work suggest his kind of pathological narcissism defines Queer. I first met Bowery when I was filmed in a sex scene in his flat. Really.
2./ It was 1984 and I was having a fling with dancer Michael Clark who was being celebrated in a Channel 4 film following his life. He asked me to play a bit of rough trade. Typecast again. We would be filmed in Bowery's flat where he lived with his boyfriend Trojan.
3./ We are told now Bowery's provocative behaviour and wild designs represent an explosion of 'queer' creativity. Yet it's interesting, to say the least, the Tate ignores his casual racism. He called one of his favourite clubbing costumes 'Queer Pakis in Space'. How creative.
1./ 🧵Why was media coverage of the Supreme Court's ruling on sex so biased? My latest article tells the emblematic story of one channel's capture by the trans lobby. Channel 4's subversion is partly down to the social circle its staff move in. Guess who's this guy's best mate.👇
2./ Last week Krishnan Guru-Murthy gave two idiot trans activists the chance to malign the Court's ruling with all the critical challenge we might expect from some blowhard champion of the trans agenda like the SNP's John Nicolson. Funny you should mention that poltroon. 👉
3./ Guru-Murthy and Nicolson regularly describe each other as their closest friends. Nicolson says GM is "one of the people in the world who likes me most." A low bar. They met when Guru-Murthy was a 15 year old schoolboy during filming for a TV show Nicolson was presenting.
1./ Apologies. It’s welcome that
Mark Smith has said, “men like me need to say sorry”. Everyone makes mistakes. A democratic culture only works if we accept people’s views evolve. There are tho some lessons to be learned from Mark’s original stance. 👉 heraldscotland.com/politics/viewp…
2./ In his column in early 2020 after the launch of @AllianceLGB, Mark opined on our “horrible website”. He complained images of women had been deliberately chosen to look as feminine as possible to emphasise trans male exclusion. Uh? 👀 They really weren’t. Worse was to come. 👉
3./ Smith went on to compare @AllianceLGB’s concern over child safeguarding to Section 28. “Dangerous to children is a phrase that appears on the LGB Alliance website along with multiple uses of the word ‘threat’. We have been here before.” Indeed we have. Heard of PIE anyone?
1./ 🧵On a female hero. It’s typical of @HotchkissRhona to hand out well-deserved plaudits to women who helped prepare the ground for the Supreme Court triumph. But no one who went to early public meetings of @ForWomenScot can be in any doubt Rhona herself deserves thanks. 👉
2./ I first met this pocket rocket at a @ForWomenScot meeting in early 2020. In those days all gender critical events were by word of mouth or carefully vetted such was the level of fear. I’d come to talk about @AllianceLGB and was amazed to find a secret, feisty army of women.
3./The first speaker was @HotchkissRhona who talked, as an ex prison governor, about how trans identified men often acted out in sickening ways in women’s jails. Her jaw dropping speech was spiced with Rhona’s biting wit. She then introduced a young woman sitting beside me.
1./ How deep does homophobia run in the trans psychosis? There's a clue in the story of Sofia Taloni, one of the Arab world's most famous trans activists who's now detransitioning back to the bloke he always was. If Sofia looks a bit of a lunatic there's a reason for that. 👉
2./ Taloni was born in Morocco where homosexuality is illegal. Though as many a tourist can attest it's not exactly unknown dans la casbah. Shame and the threat of a jail sentence has led many gay Moroccans to embrace trans, which is not illegal. So here's Taloni not being gay.👇
3./ Taloni's internalised self-hate erupted in 2020 when he told his 700K Insta followers to download Grindr, create fake profiles and expose closet gay men. Taloni urged his followers to post the men's images online and then publicly berated them. attitude.co.uk/news/world/as-…
1./ 🧵Why is the debate about Trans so overdue? It's great to see the landmark book by @HJoyceGender discussed at a Festival at long last and by the legend that is @bindelj. There was though a tragic irony about the location that reminds us why this debate is urgently necessary
2./ In the early hours of the 25th July 2021 a slightly-built 30 year old Spanish engineer Jorge Martin Carreno was separated from his friends and sat down, tipsy, beside the architectural wonder that is the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford where today's debate was held.
3./ What Jorge did not know was a 23 year old trans identified male, who called himself Scarlet Blake, was at that very moment scouring the streets of Oxford looking for someone to kill. He was wearing a hooded jacket that hid his face. And then he spied...Jorge.