r/unitedkingdom • u/PinkNews Verified Media Outlet • 5d ago

Keir Starmer says he doesn’t want schools teaching young people about transgender identities ...

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/06/25/keir-starmer-trans-education-general-election-2024/
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u/AJFierce 5d ago

This is an anti-trans line of attack.

Asking people to use a different name for you and different pronouns for you is what social transitioning is, and it is reversible and changeable.

It IS unlikely you want to do that unless you're pretty sure you want to transition already. Pushing back against people insisting it's just a phase is also solved by... not insisting it's just a phase. A sort of unbothered acceptance is the best way to give a kid a chance to explore what it feels like to be called her instead of him, or Kevin instead of Kaylee, without forcing them into a defensive posture.

The idea that trying out a new name and new pronouns is in itself a sort of cognitohazard is an anti-trans line of attack, and whether you're repeating it without knowing it or actively using it it's important people reading this see it identified as such.

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u/Darq_At 5d ago

A sort of unbothered acceptance is the best way to give a kid a chance to explore what it feels like to be called her instead of him, or Kevin instead of Kaylee, without forcing them into a defensive posture.

Exactly. All these people saying "we must protect our children from this thing by telling them it is bad and wrong".

Have they ever met a child?! I can think of no way to make something sound cooler than to insist that it's bad.

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u/hobo_fapstronaut 5d ago

Best way to truly test your child's commitment to a trans identity. 100% support bordering on parental cringe. If the kid still commits after their parents tell them it's "the coolest thing ever totally lit skibbidi toilet yo" then that identity is absolutely locked in.

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u/Saiing 5d ago

This is an anti-trans line of attack.

No it's fucking not. He/she/they are just saying two different things are not the same, which is true. I'm so fucking tired of everything-all-the-fucking-time being classified as transphobic. It completely damages the trans-positive argument with this endless crying wolf for no logical reason.

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u/AJFierce 5d ago

Imagine how tired we trans people are. "Using a different name and pronouns is psychologically damaging!" Is nonsense and it's a new line of attack, from the last year or so, that has no evidence at all behind it and that well intentioned people are swallowing whole.

I'm not saying this person is anti-trans, just that they have- quite possibly inadvertently- regurgitated an anti-trans attack line they were probably sold as an interesting fact.

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u/Saiing 4d ago

What they said is NOTHING LIKE you represented their argument as. They said once you've committed to change and everyone has started calling you by different names, pronouns, identified you as a different gender etc. it's not an easy thing to just to go back. It was a simple and fair observation about false equivalence.

At no point did they mention anything about "Using a different name and pronouns is psychologically damaging!". Your words and your ideas.

If you want to stop being tired, stop looking for evil in everything and then being upset about your own wrong interpretation. That's just fucking tiring for everyone and sadly when it comes to trans rights it's absolutely pervasive.

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u/AJFierce 4d ago

It's only as big a deal to change back as we make it to change the first time. If people cry and wail and gnash their teeth and you had to fight for it, maybe a little harder to eat crow if it turns out you'd be happier as you were.

I can spot an anti-trans attack line in the wild, so I think I'll keep going as I am? But thank you for coming online and telling me that I'm overreacting and should calm down and stop making myself upset. What a freah approach! I'd simply never considered it before.

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u/Saiing 4d ago

I  can spot an anti-trans attack line in the wild

That's the whole point. You can't, but you think anyone who makes a general point is against you. The ridiculous thing about the rabid pro-trans mindset (and I mean people like yourself and not most people who just accept trans people and are happy for others to be whoever they want to be) is that you think everything is an attack and you massively damage the cause by wailing about it all the time, when it's not there.

Delusional paranoia is such an appealing way to be, right? But if it's your chosen path, who am I to argue?

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u/AJFierce 4d ago

Thank you, for "rabid" and your expert opinion on how we trans folk might best organize and react for our cause of liberation.

If I might offer feedback? Stamping in like a petulant child to tell me I'm an idiot doing things like an idiot does not endear you to me, or make me seriously entertain your opinion. You have angry chihuahua energy. I feel yipped at.

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u/Saiing 3d ago

Thank you, for "rabid" and your expert opinion on how we trans folk might best organize and react for our cause of liberation.

You're welcome. It might help the move things forward a lot more if you actually took the advice instead of crying wolf and using inflammatory language about being "attacked" every time someone makes a general point which isn't even intended or even means what you think it does. It happens over and over again in this debate and it achieves nothing for you except turning people off from an otherwise valid cause.

to tell me I'm an idiot doing things like an idiot does not endear you to me

The fact that you think I care about endearing myself to you or whether you will "entertain" my opinion says everything about your perceived sense of self-importance. Tone it down a bit, get some perspective, stop with the kneejerk persecution complex and you might find people actually take your views MORE seriously.

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u/AJFierce 3d ago

Honestly shove off, will you? Coming in here giving it the big I am telling me I'm hurting my cause and you think I'm being both oversensitive and overaggressive. I do not carenfor or want your advice. You are a stranger on the internet and you immediately insulted and belittled me in message one. I don't have any reason to believe you're trying to help; I mean, you're clearly not.

There is, I believe, no way for me to be trans and advocate for trans rights you would accept. So why should I care about your uninformed opinion? About your angry, angry, angry yapping at my ankles? You say you don't care if I like you but what, you also expect me to respect some nobody's opinion about how I conduct myself when you walk into my mentions and knock over my drink and wave your finger in my face?

Tone it down a bit, buddy. Get some perspective. Stop with the kneejerk superiority complex, this utter fiction you have of yourself as the last rational man, and maybe people will consider your views at all.

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u/Crowf3ather 5d ago

Yes, and children are not capable of socially transitioning as they are not mature enough. Just as many kids will be legitimately thinking they are actually a Samuel instead of a Samantha, s kids who are doing it because they think its cool, or they're just taking the piss, or they think it'd be something interesting to do.

Now how are we meant to sort between the children who are doing it for legitimate reasons, and those who are not?

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u/AJFierce 5d ago

Hear me out: we let them all do it.

If they are just thinking it's cool, it'll cause gender dysphoria rather than alleviate it and they'll stop. If they're just taking the piss, they'll eventually lose interest in the joke. If they just think it would be interesting then why not let them try it? Most kids are firmly opposed to the idea of it. Maybe let the ones you aren't find out a bit about themselves.

There's nothing wrong with a kid being trans or growing up into a trans adult.

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u/Bellebaby97 3d ago

I dressed as a goth for a large part of my teenage years, turns out, I am not in fact, a goth in my adult life. Do you know who I damaged by dying my hair red, wearing eyeliner to my eyebrows and insisting people called me 'raven'? Absolutely no one, and as an adult we get a giggle out of how we all acted as teens when we tried out new identities and made our hobbies our whole personality.

Let kids cut or grow their hair and try out a new name, it's nothing new in the slightest, doesn't take maturity and it doesn't damage them. And if a trans teen decides they're not in fact trans as an adult then that's totally fine too. However regret rates for transition are tiny, certainly less than regret rates for being a goth or getting Justin beibers haircut

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u/Ok-Blackberry-3534 5d ago

I've got nothing against them actually teaching trans-identity in schools if that's best, but "unbothered acceptance" sounds like a lower bar than that, if anything. It's more like 'don't teach it and if someone wants to use a different name or pronouns, respect it'.

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u/gophercuresself 5d ago

Unbothered acceptance is how you should treat people, it doesn't refer to what kids should be taught in school

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u/Logical_Hare 5d ago

This is a silly hair-split. You have to talk about these things. Kids will ask why a kid who "used to be a girl" wants to be addressed as a boy, or vice versa, and how that all works. Refusing to talk about it is just asking for confusion and bullying.

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u/Ok-Blackberry-3534 5d ago

How is this a response to what I wrote?

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u/Logical_Hare 5d ago

Don't teach it and if someone wants to use a different name or pronouns, respect it.

Kids won't respect others' new names or pronouns if we refuse to explain what that's all about, which necessarily involves teaching some basics about gender and acknowledging that trans people exist. 'Don't teach about it, but tell the kids to respect it' simply won't work.

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u/ItsFuckingScience 5d ago

This is an anti-trans line of attack.

I disagree. I’d identify as a pro-trans person for what it’s worth. I hate that the response to any civil disagreement on this issue is to label it as an attack

Asking people to use a different name for you and different pronouns for you is what social transitioning is, and it is reversible and changeable.

Yes I agree. I never said it wasn’t changeable. But what I am saying is that socially transitioning at a school should be considered equivalent to a psychological / medical intervention and should not take place without the child being seen or under supervision of a psychologist/ medical professional.

Personally if an adult friend or colleague asked me to call them by a different name and pronouns I’d be happy to

The idea that trying out a new name and new pronouns is in itself a sort of cognitohazard is an anti-trans line of attack, and whether you're repeating it without knowing it or actively using it it's important people reading this see it identified as such.

I think you’re significantly downplaying a social transition as “trying out a new name and pronouns”.

Socially transitioning “may have significant effects in terms of psychological functioning and longer term outcomes” - Cass Review 2024

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u/AJFierce 5d ago

First: I am not saying you are anti-trans, glad you're on our side. What I'm saying is you have repeated a fairly new anti-trans position that I am familiar with that has started cropping up over the past few months- if you're taking it seriously you have been duped.

It absolutely should not be considered a medical intervention requiring the sign-off of a medical professional. That is, respectfully, bonkers. Nobody needs permission from a doctor to try a new name. No trans person needs permission from a psychiatrist to say "hey would you call me she/her, like a girl, for a bit? I wanna see how it feels" and it is bananas to suggest that it should be otherwise. Should we also have psychiatric interventions when a person with a doctorate chooses to use the gender-neutral title of doctor?

Oh, the Cass review is where you got it! That's where this mad idea started! Right, that makes sense. Allow ne to be entirely clear: the goal of the Cass review was to justify treating trans people worse. Trans people warned about this from the getgo, the evidence was cherry picked and the review worked woth Ron Desantis's team and anti-trans "charities" but no trans charities.

If you support the Cass review you're neither pro-trans nor neutral on trans people, I'm afraid. You are against our freedom, our liberation and our existence.

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u/ItsFuckingScience 5d ago

Have you even read the Cass Review?

For you to give that assessment of it is just so completely inaccurate from what I understand of it

It seems entirely reasonable and focused on a review of available evidence

Have you even read the recommendations or conclusions?

To just out of hand dismiss it as an extreme right wing plot to attack trans people is just wild.

The British Psychological Society commended the review as "thorough and sensitive", in light of the complex and controversial nature of the subject.[77]

The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the main professional organisation of British psychiatrists, welcomed the report and strongly agreed with its recommendations. They supported the emphasis on a holistic and person-centred approach and research to improve the evidence basis for treatment protocols.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the professional body for British paediatricians, thanked Cass and her team for their "massive undertaking".

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u/AJFierce 5d ago

Yes, I have read it. Front to back. I'm a politically active trans woman in the UK.

World Professional Association for Transgender Health:

“Regardless of what Dr. Cass’ intentions may or may not have been, the Cass Review process itself intentionally and explicitly excluded any oversight from patients and their families and trans healthcare experts, and its content is not supported by a robust methodology. The Cass Review relies on selective and inconsistent use of evidence, and its recommendations often do not follow from the data presented in the systematic reviews. The Cass Review deprives young trans and gender diverse people of the high-quality care they deserve and causes immense distress and harm to both young patients and their families.”

European Professional Association for Transgender Health:

"...while waiting for research results, not providing transgender adolescent care that may include puberty blockers and hormones to adolescents who experience gender incongruence is not a neutral act given that it may have immediate as well as lifelong harmful effects for the young transgender person. Also, asking transgender adolescents to participate in research as the only way to receive puberty blockers, as Cass recommends, is unethical.”

Endocrine Society:

“NHS England’s recent report, the Cass Review, does not contain any new research that would contradict the recommendations made in our Clinical Practice Guideline on gender-affirming care. […] Although the scientific landscape has not changed significantly, misinformation about gender-affirming care is being politicized.”

American Academy of Pediatrics:

“The AAP’s gender-affirming care policy, like all our standing guidance, is grounded in evidence and science. […] What we’re seeing more and more is that the politically infused public discourse is getting this wrong and it’s impacting the way that doctors care for their patients. […] Politicians have inserted themselves into the exam room, and this is dangerous for both physicians and for families.”

(There's more and links to primary sources here: https://ruthpearce.net/2024/04/16/whats-wrong-with-the-cass-review-a-round-up-of-commentary-and-evidence/)

I don't think it's extreme right wing. I think Britain's politics and institutions are much more transphobic across the board than you'll find on other countries, left wing and right wing.

Like I'm sorry to be the one to tell you but the Cass review is not, and has not been received as, a neutral document. It makes up in particular that "fact" you dropped, that social transition is a dangerous, risky, and untried medical intervention that could warp a kid's mind forever and send them down a dangerous path (the path that leads to a healthy, happy trans grown-up).

You want section 12 of the Cass Review, and I want to draw your attention to how a trans kid possibly growing up into a healthy happy trans adult is framed:

"There are different views on the benefits versus the harms of early social transition. Some consider that it may improve mental health and social and educational participation for children experiencing gender-related distress. Others consider that a child who might have desisted at puberty is more likely to have an altered trajectory, culminating in medical intervention which will have life-long implications."

An altered trajectory, and a lifetime of nasty trans medicine, if you don't stick to your guns and refuse to call your Sandra Steven instead. This is how the Cass Review talks about citizens like me.