97.5 per cent
The Telegraph on the Tavistock:
The Tavistock clinic ignored evidence that 97.5 per cent of children seeking sex changes had autism, depression or other problems that might have explained their unhappiness, a new book claims.
Not to mention the general confusion and partial information and rudimentary critical faculties that go with being very young.
Staff at the NHS facility were so determined to push a pro-transgender policy that children who might not have been trans were treated as “collateral damage” by clinicians who labelled doubters “transphobic”, a whistleblower says.
So the question becomes “why?” WHY were they so determined to do that? What is it about the trans ideology that was so attractive to people at a medical facility?
Seven in ten children had more than five “associated features” such as abuse, anxiety, eating disorders or bullying, and a social worker estimated that as few as 1 in 50 children treated at the clinic would have stayed transgender for life if they had not been given controversial drug therapy.
Well I can estimate that as few as 0 in 50 children would have even thought of being “transgender” before this social contagion came whirling down out of the Bullshit Mountains.
The claims are made in Time To Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children, by Hannah Barnes, a BBC Newsnight journalist, which is published on Feb 23.
Time to think indeed. Way past time to think if you ask me.
Less than two per cent of children in the UK are thought to have an autism spectrum disorder, but according to Gids’s own data, around 35 per cent of its referrals “present with moderate to severe autistic traits”.
Among such traits could be literal thinking, which could make it hard to grasp that people can’t literally change sex, especially when crowds of people are assuring you they can.
It’s very appealing to the autistic mind, trained from young childhood to believe that all difficulties in understanding and communication, and following unspoken rules, are entirely the fault of the autistic person. Why wouldn’t it be our fault that we don’t understand and don’t want to follow sex-based rules of dress and behaviour? If we can’t change our minds, and someone tells us that we can fix everything and fit in by changing our bodies, why not?
And then there are all the abused and otherwise distressed children being offered a lifeline which is actually nothing of the sort.
It’s evil.
It might not be just trans ideology. I imagine that doctors offering lobotomies offered to “treat” plenty of people who they might have considered edge cases, “just to be on the safe side.” We’ll ignore the fact that such generousity is self-serving and more to the benefit of the clinician than the patient. It’s a variation on “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” Or, to put it another way, “The answer is transition. What was the question?”
Any similar service will likely seek to increase their “customer base.” If throughput of bodies is one of the measures of “success” and “effectiveness,” then finding (or creating) more clients will be seen as “good,” letting them put a bigger number in their annual report. Did they do proper screening, evaluation and follow-up? Fuck no, but “Look at all the trans kids we treated! We’re justifying our existence!! YAY, go us!!!” I wonder how many children who entered their doors were deemed to be poor candidates for the “treatment” on offer? I’m thinking it would be in single digits. There were probably powerful incentives and institutional forces encouraging the maximization of recruitment. If there are no clear guidelines, standards, or protocols, then anybody and everyone is a potential candidate. If they look at someone long enough, symptoms will be found.
tigger @#1:
Very well put. That problem is being countered, and people diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum given a morale boost at the same time, by their being informed that they are in rather distinguished company. (See link below.)
https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisprograms.com/historys-30-most-inspiring-people-on-the-autism-spectrum/
To paraphrase Jurassic Park: “We were so preoccupied with whether we could, that we didn’t stop to think if we should.”
Why were the medical professionals so determined to transition children & teens?
I believe that one of the major driving factors was the children & teens themselves. They were almost always in anguish, almost always expressing certainty about what was wrong with them, almost always begging and pleading. When the doctors relented on anything, these young patients almost always greeted it with relief, gratitude, and glowing accounts of improvement. But they needed more. Still in anguish, still certain, still begging and pleading. And then relief, gratitude, reports that they’re better. Rinse, repeat. Stick and carrot, carrot and stick.
Put that together with an explanatory narrative that being trans is just like being gay and a supportive environment of peers and experts and it’s operant conditioning. They truly care about the kids. The behavior that’s “punished” by patients is avoided and the behavior that’s “rewarded” by patients is repeated. The line between child and adult is blurred, as is the line between doctor and patient. I’ve more than once come across medical and psychiatric professionals saying that they “learn” from the trans kids. Yes. They do.
As an asbestos surveyor I often find myself in two minds when doing a survey. On the one hand I am sure that the client would be happier to know that there are no dangerous materials in their building that need to be managed or removed, at great expense. But, on the other hand, I feel internal pressure to justify my time and the fee that we charged to conduct the survey. You almost feel like you have cheated the client if you don’t find anything.
These clinics are armed with hammers and everyone coming through the door has to be a nail or why on earth are they even there?
As for pressure from the children themselves, @Sastra #5, I read that at least one of those interviewed said that he was there more to please his parents than for himself. The medical profession seem to have worked out that parents sometimes invent ailments in children due to their own need for attention (Munchausen by proxy) but, for some reason, they haven’t applied that knowledge to gender ideology.
Sastra, I think you’ve hit on it. I don’t think it was malicious, I think that they believe that they are doing their best for them as therapiists because most of society has accepted that transness is a real thing and that transition is the effective treatment.
Something needs to break through the “NO DEBATE” barricade that has been erected and maintained by professionals who should know better and dig into the issue of why so many kids are being directed this way. Non-Conformity is a real thing, and GNC people have always been with us. But the idea that they are of a trans spirit is new, and just accepted because its easier than addressing the harms of gender as understood by radical feminists.
When we accept wholesale that the “Science is settled” on any topic, we are in trouble. And the science has never been defined, let alone settled, to prove that there are trans people. It’s awful convenient for those who prey on women, for those who are AGP, and for pedophiles, that society accepts it. But, very few people execpt we bigots, will examine the harm.
My sister was like that. Which is one reason why I don’t jump on the bandwagon of praise for adoptive parents. Most of them probably are great, but my experience with what she did to her kids, and why she adopted them, sours pretty much everything.
Call me cynical, but I think that there is at least one very simple underlying reason: money. I mean, the entire point of the Tavistock Centre was to trans kids, and if “gender identity” is ultimately just a load of horseshit then that point is lost. No point, no funding, no clinic.
Just chiming in to say that I think Sastra’s diagnosis is correct. It’s another example of where the right-wing is very unhelpful, because their framing of everything as “woke lefty communists want to molest your children and turn them into gay communist eunuchs!” or whatever strikes most people as implausible and not serious.
It makes the conversation really difficult because of the framing, doesn’t it, Screechy Monkey?
What’s funny is that the RW would embrace transgenderism if they thought about it for more than 10 seconds, too. For them, it’s the “Ick” factor that they’ve always expressed about gender non-conformity. If they realised that Gender Ideology confirms the roles of men and women, boys and girls, being fixed somehow biology, Tucker Carlson would be all over it as the greatest new thing. “We knew all along that effeminate boys are really girls!” This would allow them to declare that malehood is as strong as ever, and women in the home are following their God-made destiny.
But, they’re confused by the cloudiness, so they just go “ick.” I think this is why gender criticals should steer fairly clear of the men like Matt Walsh, even if he makes fun of trans ID males.