Keira Bell

At the end of the documentary “Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender? the case of Keira Bell was briefly touched upon. This may represent a turning-point as more legal action on behalf of adolescents and children who have de-transitioned becomes widespread. As surely it will.

Keira has decided to tell the Mail what happened to her, in order to highlight her plight and, she says, serve as a warning to others. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the protagonists in the legal action, her moving story gives us a piercing insight into the emotive area of transgender treatment
Keira Bell

In the High Court last year Keira Bell’s legal team successfully litigated her case against the UK’s child Gender-Identity clinic, The Tavistock Centre. Next stop was the Appeals Court, which just heard the appeal in June but has yet to rule on the appeal byTavistock.

This was not widely reported in the American press, but the ramifications for Transgender Ideology could be huge.

At the end of “Trans Mission” we were told that maybe lawsuits would finally stop this outrageous experiment on our children. One can only hope and pray so.

The details of Keira’s case are in this article by the DailyMail.

It may look like a tabloid piece with all the sensational adverts and other “stories” vying for your attention, but it’s not. It’s well worth your time to understand not only the details of Bell’s case but the cultural force of Gender Ideology.

Quotes from Keira:

'I felt I was not being listened to at school and blamed it on being a girl,' she explains. 
'I did not feel respected as a young woman compared with young men. I thought life would be better for me if I changed my sex.'

This is part of our problem! We’ve got to change this impression. I don’t have all the answers. But I don’t believe blaming “patriarchy” or teaching our young girls with our words and actions that men get all the breaks in the 21st Century Western world is going to help them much. You’ll just increase their sense of victimization. Individual young girls may in fact have been victims of abuse or broken single parent homes, or have other psychological stresses. And that’s tragic. And should be taken into account. But women in the Western world today have never been more liberated, more free to pursue goals they desire. So many women I know say it’s great to be a women & mother living in the Western world today. Tell our girls that, especially the ones who are toying with the fantasy of sex or gender change. (The vast majority of whom are white and/or come from economically secure backgrounds.) Help them in their brokenness. But tell them, also, the world has changed. We’ll keep sensibly advocating for more change where it is needed. But don’t throw in your sex card. That’s not the solution.

The “victimization trap” may play well in the world of radical politics, which is the animating force behind Gender Ideology. But it’s not a recipe for personal or social growth. Just grievance.

Also, we need to teach our young children it’s okay if they don’t conform to expected boy – girl behavioral type. It doesn’t mean they are not a boy or girl. We must stop propagating that fiction! And stop the bullying associated with that fiction too. There are only two sexes or two genders, and a variety of ways for individuals to express themselves. For example, parents with a sensitive boy who likes to read and doesn’t particularly like rough and tumble stuff should find other parents with boys like yours. Otherwise, in today’s world, he might get the erroneous idea that he’s a girl. That’s a road you don’t want to travel.

Same with “tomboy” girls.

Let them play with the opposite sex if they want to as well. But show them other same sex examples like them.

And for God’s sake, parents, let’s do what we can to keep these girls and boys from viewing degrading online porn. If young girls see that crap they might desire to opt out of “being a woman.” Especially after being “properly” trained in Gender Identity theory from Kindergarten! [See this post for details.]

Smartphones, the Internet, & Social Media are part of the problem too. Take control of the devices you pay for! And ask other parents in your circle to do the same. This matters.

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The Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) has with permission published an article by The Economist about the the High Court’s ruling in favor of Keira Bell. The article also helpfully explores the issue. Here’s the link (important reading).

Important graphs:

“The first duty of medicine is ‘Do no harm’,” says a Canadian paediatrician. “In any other branch of medicine, if you were causing permanent sterility with body-altering surgery and cross-sex hormones, you had better have some pretty strong data...But we’re already going down that road with no strong data at all.”

A revealing statistic and comment by The Economist about the issue of “desistance(realigning with biological sex) and social contagion here:

Such “desistance” appears to be common. At least half a dozen medical studies show that between 61% and 98% of children presenting with gender-related distress were reconciled to their natal sex before adulthood. However, all these studies looked at children with early-onset dysphoria. One recent study on adolescent dysphoria among girls suggested that in many cases it is brought on by the influence of the internet, by female friends who have transitioned and by the miseries of puberty. [emphasis mine]

And yet we keep chopping up our children and altering their bodies irreversibly with surgery & hormones. God help us. Once someone reaches the legal age of maturity (18 in most countries) then they will be free to do what they feel they must. But not before.

In May the Karolinska Institute, the same institute that awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine, advised its hospital to stop hormone treatments and surgery for young people under 18!

Is this another turning-point?
In Australia the capital, Canberra, and the state of Queensland have outlawed “conversion therapy” in relation to sexual orientation or gender identity. So too have some American states. Canada is considering a similar law. This conflates two separate issues. Many people would say it is wrong to try to convert gay people into being straight. But the implicit definition of trans conversion therapy risks outlawing any counselling that helps children decide whether their dysphoria is permanent or a phase, and what to do about it. [emphasis mine & please read my post "Who Is The Conversion Therapist?"]
“I think there is going to be an avalanche of lawsuits,” says Dianna Kenny, recently retired professor of psychology at the University of Sydney. “But they won’t be in time to save a generation of adolescents who have been wrongly diagnosed as being trans.[emphasis mine]

READ THE WHOLE THING.

Link Disclaimer :1 Links from this blog to online resources don’t necessarily mean I support everything found on these sites. But as adults we should embrace viewpoint diversity. And make alliances where we can.

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If you’ve just found my blog and are intrigued about this issue, and want to learn more, I highly recommend a book by Abigail Shrier.

Shrier is a graduate of Columbia College who went on to earn a bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford and a JD from Yale Law School.  Her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters was named a “best book” by The Economist and The Times of London. [2020, 2021]

[As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.]

Trans Mission

Ok. I promised to show some parents and their children caught up in the “matrix” of Gender Identity and Expression Ideology. Two videos below.

First is a fine documentary that hits most of the bases I’ve covered in the last 3 months. And it’s still running on YouTube! You’ll find Parents, Gay Rights Activists, Radical Feminists, Doctors, Psychiatrists etc…raising the alarm. It finishes with a suggestive answer to the question, how and when will this end?

Tell others about this video!

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Next is an interview of Jennifer Lahl the documentarian of “Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender?” by Benjamin Boyce. A word of caution to my Gay & Lesbian readers. Don’t be thrown off by the comments about “Pride Month.” Pride Month has mushroomed, shall we say. The acronym was getting quite unwieldy. Which is why you now find the + at the end (LGBTQ+).

Boyce interviews homosexuals on his channel about this topic. And they are horrified at how Gender Ideologues have hijacked their movement. Many Lesbians who are also radical feminists are raising their voices: “Wait, biology is not bigotry! ” They believe the Trans, Gender Fluid movement is hurting women.

I agree.

Lahl’s and Boyce’s discussion of our technological future around the question of what it means to be a human is a conversation we need to have. Focus in on that discussion. We often don’t see the big picture because of the immediate images right in front of us. It’s the “forest for the trees” kind of thing. But the Radical Disembody Movement has virtual legs. It’s going somewhere.

Transhumanism may be where it’s going.

Transhumanism is a class of philosophies that seek to guide us towards a posthuman condition. Transhumanism shares many elements of humanism, including a respect for reason and science, a commitment to progress, and a valuing of human (or transhuman) existence in this life. [...] Transhumanism differs from humanism in recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting from various sciences and technologies [...].1More, Max (1990). "Transhumanism: a futurist philosophy"

In that future world, reproductive tech and genetic engineering may “liberate” us from our biological constraints.

Small wonder that we find Big Tech largely aligned with Gender Ideology.

Do you want to live in that world?

LINK DISCLAIMER :2 Links from this blog to online resources don’t necessarily mean I support everything found on these sites. But as adults we should embrace viewpoint diversity. And make alliances where we can.

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If you’ve just found my blog and are intrigued about this issue, and want to learn more, I highly recommend a book by Abigail Shrier.

Shrier is a graduate of Columbia College who went on to earn a bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford and a JD from Yale Law School.  Her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters was named a “best book” by The Economist and The Times of London. [2020, 2021]

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As a Classic Christian I encourage everyone to “Embrace, Don’t Affirm.” Individuals with a Gender Identity Disorder (Gender-Dysphoria) need Truth-filled Love. Please read this post for more details.

Suicide Shock & Study Correction

Transgender activists often claim if the “affirmative care model” is not followed the mental health of those suffering from gender dysphoria will worsen and increase the likelihood of suicide.

Parents are shocked into action when told by health professionals that puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, and eventually “gender affirming surgery” may be the only way to prevent their children from committing suicide. Starting them on a medicalized pathway from their “sex assigned at birth” to the sex they now identify with is the most beneficial and humane course of action, parents are instructed.

[Please view this post which rebuts the “assigned at birth” fiction]

In 2019 one of the few major studies on this issue released its findings. The study analyzed health records of 2,679 Swedes diagnosed with gender dysphoria between 2005 and 2015 to determine whether hormonal or surgical treatments improved their mental health over time.  This was one of the first longitudinal studies done about the efficacy of cross-sex hormonal therapy and sex reassignment surgery. And the largest population study to date. Plus it was done in perhaps the most Trans-friendly country on the planet, Sweden.

The original study conducted by a researcher from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and a researcher from the Yale School of Public Health was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2019. (The Karolinska Institute is the same institute that awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine and in May advised its hospital to stop hormone treatments and surgery for young people under 18!) The study concluded that “Transgender individuals who undergo gender-affirming surgery are significantly less likely to seek mental health treatment for depression and anxiety disorders or attempt suicide in the years following the procedure.”

Still from the perspective of the “affirmers” the results were decidedly mixed.

We learned two things from this study.

The main finding of the study was that hormonal transition showed no signs of mental health improvement for “gender incongruent” patients. This “no improvement” finding was largely ignored by the news media and trans-activists.

Administering cross-sex hormones to gender confused folk did not improve their mental health.

But the 2019 study did show that gender affirming surgery improved the mental health of those in the study. Patients from 2005-2015 who underwent surgical procedures to assist their transition to the opposite sex showed an overall 8 percent improvement.

This was widely reported as evidence that the “affirmative care model” works!

You may think an 8% improvement for those who underwent radical irreversible surgery is not a lot to “hang one’s hat on.” But this result was widely used to denounce Gender Critical viewpoints like mine as anti-science. (read on)

Study Correction

That was then. This is now. (as of August 2020)

After criticism for the study’s flawed methodology, the American Journal of Psychiatry was forced to retract those findings. What was the flawed methodology? For starters: No control group! The researchers looked at a large group of transgender patients over a 10 year period, making it a good longitudinal study. But they failed to compare those results with a control group of transgender patients who had not undergone body altering surgery. Once that was done the rather small 8 percent improvement evaporated.

“the results [of the reanalysis] demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts” - AJP correction

Surgery did not improve psychological well-being. It did not decrease suicide attempts relative to those transgender patients who went the non-surgical route. (Remember this is a study of Swedish patients in the most trans-friendly country on Earth so blaming unaccepting social factors as a cause for continued distress doesn’t work.)

Hormones & mutilating surgery did not improve outcomes for transgender patients!

Here’s a link to the correction. And here is an assessment by the Society For Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) an international group of over 100 clinicians and researchers. Their assessment is worth your careful attention. For those of you interested in the details of the flawed methodology make sure you click on the “click here for more” link in the section labeled “Vigorous Debate Leads to Correction of Key Finding.”

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So, after the retraction how did the media respond?

Crickets….

Journalists, like scientists can be biased too.

But sadly parents are still being pressured by pediatricians, gender clinics and Trans-activists into accepting a single medicalized pathway if they want to prevent their kids from committing suicide.

In my research this past year I’ve noticed parents and confused young people hear the following statement all the time from social media influencers and medical professionals:

“Do you want a live “son” or a dead daughter?

That will cause any parent to sit up and take notice! But that is a bald assertion with no evidence to support it. Yes, there is a much higher incidence of suicide among this population but that is because they are psychologically troubled to begin with. Social transitioning, hormones and surgery doesn’t change that reality. My recommendation to parents is get non-affirming treatment and “hold your ground.” Your children and teens are confused.

You’ll meet some of those parents in my next post. They are distraught over the advice they and their children have been given by health care providers.

Obviously, it’s hard to know whether the flaws of the above study were just human error or whether the scientists involved desired a preferred outcome. If you read the end of my last post you’ll find one of our top Psychiatrists admitting that when it comes to questions about “Sex and sexual behavior” many scientists who view humans as infinitely malleable would rather not look too hard for empirical evidence to back up their claims. Ideology drives some of them, just like the activists.

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If you’ve just found my blog and are intrigued about this issue, and want to learn more, I highly recommend a book by Abigail Shrier.

Shrier is a graduate of Columbia College who went on to earn a bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford and a JD from Yale Law School.  Her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters was named a “best book” by The Economist and The Times of London. [2020, 2021]