The Royal Children's Hospital (RCH) Melbourne has so far remained silent on whether or not it has a policy to refer teenage female patients to private surgeons for double mastectomies, which are promoted internationally with poorly evidenced claims of mental health benefits.

genderclinicnews.com/p/happy-day?r=… But RCH, or at least the gender clinic, clearly contemplated some time ago that its own surgeons could soon provide trans mastectomies for patients--or at least refer them to private surgeons. You have to cast your mind back some years to the period when the gender clinic was promoted uncritically by The Lancet, our Family Court and most mainstream media--but especially the ABC & The Age newspaper.

Prof @ian_hickie mocked @7NewsSpotlight by suggesting they could come up with just "one doctor" troubled about medicalised gender change for minors. The way Hickie told it, gender clinics reduce suicidality & save lives. #AusPol 1/
One doctor? Dr Jillian Spencer, who appeared on the program, has so far found 155 doctors willing to sign her petition for an inquiry into our children's hospital gender clinics. Willing despite the inevitable activist attempts to smear their reputations & cost them their jobs.

"The mother of a 13-year-old with gender dysphoria has abruptly withdrawn an application seeking a Family Court order to allow the child to take puberty blockers, after trying to have the independent children’s lawyer thrown off the case." 1/
theaustralian.com.au/nation/mother-… This case is another sign of a better informed & potentially more cautious approach to medicalised gender change within Australia's family law system, which has to approve treatment for minors if parents disagree.
More info here genderclinicnews.com/p/its-official…

"Regret after surgery: hard to describe the pain"--frontpage story online today from Norway's mass circulation newspaper VG.
"The last thing Aleksander thinks before the anaesthetic makes him pass out is: 'Help me, I don't want to do this'." #Detransition #GenderClinics Shortly before his interview with VG, Aleksander had uploaded to YouTube his story explaining how "bullying and exclusion made him start taking medication to become a woman."
vg.no/nyheter/innenr…

Paediatrician Dylan Wilson: “I have direct evidence of children treated at [Queensland's gender clinic] who have reported that they genuinely believed they would become the opposite sex. The lack of genuine consent for this is likely to form the basis of future legal action." /1 On Monday, The Australian reported Dr Wilson's call for an immediate halt to any new treatment with puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones at the Brisbane-based clinic. The hospital defends its "evidence-based care" by citing low-quality WPATH & RCH treatment guidelines. #AusPol

@JeremyShawMD Individual psych conditions + mainstream reinforcement of sub-culture + peer/social media influence + anti-reality queer/gender theory + vacuum left by collapse of organised religion + social justice/identity politics/progressivism as de facto state religion +… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… @JeremyShawMD Forgot woke fragmentation & outsourcing of the nuclear family.

Asked about the fairness of trans women, biological males, in women's sport, Australia's prime minister Anthony Albanese says "My view is the sporting organisations should deal with that issue... and they have." Really? #AusPol #Sport

https://twitter.com/msediewyatt/status/1653557871169384448?s=20

Let's go back a bit --- "Australia’s peak sport agency has been rebuked for being evasive, dismissive and insulting to women after it failed to answer basic questions about the effect of transgender players on female sport." The Australian newspaper, 22 June 2020

‘Calls to “protect the children” from drag performers & trans people assume children are, in fact, in need of safeguarding. Such messaging is rooted in a tendency for Western societies to reduce childhood to an idyllic innocence… #ThoughtLeadership theconversation.com/wont-somebody-… … from @UniMelb whose motto used to be Dream Large.

NEW Swedish systematic review of evidence for youth gender medicine.

“Against the background of almost non-existent longterm data, we conclude that [puberty blocker] treatment in children with gender dysphoria should be considered experimental treatment rather than standard… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Update: the journal article & expert commentary are new; they are based on the systematic review leading up to Sweden's new cautious approach announced in 2022. So, the review itself is not new. Summary here ⤵️
socialstyrelsen.se/globalassets/s…

Kudos to ABC @RadioNational & @GeraldineDoogue for Saturday's interview with Hannah Barnes, the BBC journalist whose book Time to Think details the failures of the world's largest youth gender clinic, the London-based Tavistock service.
abc.net.au/radionational/… #AusPol 🧵 Barnes points out that the "albeit limited" evidence base for medicalised gender change with minors is specific to biological boys with gender dysphoria that has persisted since early childhood & who are otherwise psychologically stable.
open.substack.com/pub/genderclin…

“An Australian court hearing a landmark gender dysphoria case was incorrectly told that an international expert had his clinic shut down for unlawful “conversion therapy”, a practice punishable by imprisonment in a growing number of jurisdictions.” genderclinicnews.substack.com/p/wrong-story?… ‘The inaccurate claim against the Toronto-based psychologist and researcher, Dr Kenneth Zucker, known for his nuanced approach to treatment, was made during the Family Court’s 2017 re Kelvin case, which was celebrated as a victory for the dogmatic “gender-affirming”model.’

Brit detransitioner Keira Bell will tell Australian MPs being sold an affirmation-only approach to gender that this sets "children up for a lot of harm". Hear Bell & psychologist Dr Dianna Kenny talk tonight via livestream from Hobart #auspol #FreeSpeech

Kenny will be live, whereas Bell's pre-recorded interview will be broadcast.

‘A school counsellor [in New Zealand] has been labelled transphobic for her “harmful” views on the Ministry of Education curriculum, which she claimed was “deliberately teaching lies to little ones” about gender.’ /1 stuff.co.nz/bay-of-plenty/… [The school counsellor Marli] De Klerk was accused of having “transphobic views” after a Facebook post in which she said: “A significant amount of New Zealand parents are expressing concern and are opposed to the new curriculum from the Ministry of Education …

"They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost? Puberty blockers can ease trans youths’ anguish & buy time to weigh options. But concerns are growing about long-term physical effects & other [outcomes]." 1/

@nytimes on the drugs driving the gender clinic boom

nytimes.com/2022/11/14/hea… "As the number of adolescents who identify as transgender grows, drugs known as puberty blockers have become the first line of intervention for the youngest ones seeking medical treatment.
#health #gender #auspol #politics @BradHazzard @Mark_Butler_MP

Crikey's Guy Rundle: "Many people would have a view that being transgender is real, but that embodied sex is the root of gendered being, that sex/gender congruence is a better state to be in, and that educational assumptions should lean towards that. 1/
crikey.com.au/2022/08/05/gen… "It is reasonable to ask whether the approaches of some schools are de facto transgenic in a manner that is not desirable, & whether — after factoring in specific cultural conditions (cough, inner-city, cough cough) — ...

“While the number of gender clinics treating children in the U.S. has grown from zero to more than 100 in the past 15 years – and waiting lists are long – strong evidence of the efficacy & possible long-term consequences of that treatment remains scant.” reuters.com/investigates/s… I’m late to this special report, which represents a breakthrough in US mainstream media coverage.

"Puberty blocking, hormone, and hormone antagonist therapies for the treatment of gender dysphoria are prohibited for patients under 18 years of age."

Florida Department of Health petition for the state Board of Medicine to adopt a rule on paediatric transition. @HealthyFla 1/ "Sex reassignment surgery or any other procedure that alters primary or secondary sexual characteristics for the treatment of gender dysphoria is prohibited for patients under 18 years of age." #GenderClinics #Health

Petition from P870 ww10.doh.state.fl.us/pub/medicine/A…

“There has been an increase in adjudications regarding reporting on transgender issues [recently],” the Australian Press Council [said]. “… this [likely] reflects growing community awareness of trans issues, & the higher profile of these issues..” /1 theguardian.com/media/2022/jul… This news report in @GuardianAus mentions the 2019 trans reporting guideline adopted by the press council after months of research & consultation.

presscouncil.org.au/media_release/…

"All children who have been treated for gender dysphoria in the past decade [by the UK Tavistock clinic] will have their medical records scrutinised in an effort to find out whether NHS services are harming vulnerable adolescents." 1/ THREAD
thetimes.co.uk/article/gender… Data - or rather, lack of adequate data - is a recurring theme with youth gender clinics internationally. There are headline figures showing unexplained exponential growth in case numbers but often there is scant detail on patients, treatment patterns & outcomes including regret.

"There's a great irony in that the same people chanting 'protect trans kids' are advocating for [puberty blocker drugs] that could permanently impair [kids'] ability to enjoy sex as adults before they're even able to comprehend what that means." US journo Katie Herzog #AusPol 1/ Herzog, who wrote one of the earliest articles on detransition, used to believe that puberty blockers, which interrupt natural sex hormones, may be beneficial in strictly limited cases. She has changed her mind after an admission by top US transgender doctor Marci Bowers.

Why would Australia's prime minister express concern about youth gender medicine? #AusPol #AusVotes2022 #Health #GenderClinics Schools, social media & the wider culture increasingly send impressionable kids the message they can "choose" to be a boy or a girl, or something in between. This adult theory -- with its post-modern denial of biological reality -- used to be confined to the fringes of higher ed.