The British Medical Association, the professional organization representing doctors in the United Kingdom, has called for a public critique of the review and to bar its implementation.
This is hugely important! Thanks for sharing Erin. This BMA review and position will help us to fight back against the alt right in organized medicine in the US to briefly dismiss the Cass report and stand by WPATH and other expert recommendations in support of GAHC.
Interesting that a court would justify a ban based on " “substantial, albeit unqualified” risks to young patients, using the Cass Review". Doubt that would hold for a criminal case! 🤔
I'm so happy to read this I could cry. Thank you once again, Erin, for your steadfast reporting on issues that affect our community. You're a national treasure 💕
Finally, another authority calling Cass & the other crackpots out on their BS and self-serving agenda! They need to remember that ‘do no harm’ also represents LEAVING ALONE treatment plans that have been working for so many! If it ain’t broke, done fix it!
Seriously, I hope that this helps to encourage non-partisan and accurate research to all sides of the arguments about gender dysphoria and care.
We are on the verge of changing many things, but as it turns out. We are finding that research is, and has historically been lacking about gender and its role in human evolution due to the prejudices to erase trans people.
There are huge prejudices that need changing regarding gender and race, and we are finally beginning to understand that these changes need to be founded in accurate research that has not even started in a conclusive way. From cradle to grave, transgender people have had to suffer the discrimination of people fighting against human evolutionary changes.
Even at 78 years old, I find that any research that exists regarding my treatments in transition, are based on studies done with cis women and hardly any on trans women.
We must have accurate healthcare information to be safe for all ages, and we can all come together on this one fact. Resolutions on our best healthcare is years away from right now, but it must start.
I've done many studies since I began my transition, but none are talking about trans health care. None are studying just us. I wonder why the country doesn't do this? WPATH should start the effort to better understand us. It would be a win-win for both sides.
Race is always an issue, but since this is being covered up by all healthcare providers, they don't want to blow the whistle on current practices that lessen our care. Easily hidden in the psyche & attitudes of healthcare workers. I suppose it's because they're not giving me medication or assistance because I'm Black. They just take my care less seriously and automatically assume stupid things about me.
I was in the VA emergency room a few months ago. When the doctor came in, she asked if I did street drugs. I said, "No, I have almost 41 years of sobriety." She looked at me and 5 minutes later, asked the same question. Then asked again before she tended to the reason I was there. Yes, I was stereotyped by a doctor in the ER. She disrespected my sobriety and asking me that question was annoying AF. I was too sick to dig in her brain for asking that stupid question several times.
I do Ray. You suffer the two sided sword of gender diversity and racial prejudice. Your strong to have made it this far, but I also know that you can see the typical problem from both sides of that sword.
In essence, the fact that I’ve been transitioning for 6 years on Estradoil and want to add a few more typical drugs to enhance and improve my transition, get permission from my other doctors and ask my Endo Nd get an “I’m not sure about that”, leads me to believe that there is no research how are you that covers that request, means that something is missing.
Yes, yes, of course I see both sides. I've been in my transition for almost 8 years. Fortunately, I've had some great doctors at the VA. The one out here where I moved to said, "We don't treat transgenders here." I'm still fighting with them, because they're close to where I live. I couldn't get anybody to address what was done, so I went back to my previous provider over an hour away. I won't tolerate disrespect or discrimination from that place. I take big breaks because I'm tired of fighting for my rights on both sides of the aisle, especially when I'm sick. They broke the laws of the VA with that friggin sentence and yet they won't reprimand them and force them to do right by me? Unreal. I was getting treated rudely online and in person. Ummm, NOPE!
You're in the US or UK? I might keep getting you confused with someone else roaming around Erin's substack who is also a veteran. Is that you? LOL ... my memory is trying to leave me. I'm 66 years old.
I honestly hope the opposition parties in Dutch government (that banked hard extreme right end of 2023 and upped it's transphobia by 700% within 3 months) also use this.
4 Extreme right parties, all massively racist, transphobic and deeply problematic people are part of the coalition (and thus form the cabinet with ministers and state secretaries) have been using the report to try and ban care in the Netherlands.
All of the coalition parties made some politically correct sounding remarks in their election programs about protecting sexual minorities, but have been collectively doing a 180 right from the beginning.
The press? Dead silent on it.
One of the parties that in their program states how "the careful, considerate decision by experts in the field is readily acknowledged by our party. We consider the high waiting times to be problematic and want to propose fixes. Objectivity will remain the leading factor in decision making for those seeking care."
But at the 17th of July, they threw the former Minister of Medical Care in front the train:
Her objectivity was compromised "because of her strong political conviction on the subject".
And the worst part here: this former minister is a former news broadcaster hostess who also used to work on a TV program about medical care, a program that once had 2 episodes about transchildren back in the mid 90's.
As a result, she probably was one of the best educated on the subject in our government as a result.
But she got replaced when the new, extreme-right, racist bunch of transphobes took over.
Those questions, which, from another party include using the disinformation campaign about the leaked WPATH files... have yet to be answered by the new minister.
Seems like they follow the playbook of Viktor Orbán, our PM here in HU. They slowly push out and replace experts with their trustworthy goons who are loyal to the party and its ideology but are dumb as earth. Unless they are stopped it will not stop at trans healthcare. They reduce our human rights and life to 'political opinion', for far-right clowns everything is politics, to serve 'the homeland and the people' which means the oligarchs supporting their power. Their incompetent leadership will influence every facet of daily life, they push out experts from universities - and everywhere - substituting science with their ideological rubbish. As a result the economy and living standard of the Dutch will suffer.
We see what happened in Hungary when these people came to power, we see what these people did in Great Britain. It has to be stopped, it hurts everyone and they make our countries uninhabitable wastelands.
In a way. The problem is that we now have 4 extreme-right parties.
The last of which was right from the beginning but went further extreme-right merely by not excluding a party based on the fascism it preaches, which it previously did with Mark Rutte as a prime minister and leader of the party.
But the thing about political opinion is absolutely true.
We have a party called New Social Contract (NSC) that campaigned hard on the idea the Dutch State should never ever have the ability to retaliate against a group of citizens ever again.
This coming from the situation of how the leader of said party (Pieter Omtzigt, a hard-right Catholic) exposed an AI-driven tax agency scandal along with Lilian Marijnisen (Socialistic Party) that labelled thousands of families as fraudulent receivers of child care benefit.
The decision for this? Merely based on the process programmed to look for fraud by looking for "people with a Middle-Eastern sounding last name".
Previously to this party existing, they already showed that some people do not deserve rights: Pieter Omtzigt used the word transwomen in 1 sentence with the notorious serial pedophile Robert M. Because of course transpeople need to be connected to some of the worst crimes imaginable...
Rosanne Hertzberger, from the party New Social Contract (NSC), filed 2 transphobic motions at 15 February 2024. About 1 month after the House of Representatives was formed.
One of the motions contains the request to revoke patient-doctor confidentiality of transchildren (as everyone knows, extreme-right politicians are experts at healthcare while not even holding a medical degree) and create a list of these children.
NSC as a party abbreviation had some people not-so-jokingly make concerned remarks when the party came to exist (near september 2023 if I recall correctly) that it was problematically identical sounding, and easily misspoken.
The reason for this being that it's just 1 letter different from NSB: National Socialistic Movement. The only allowed political party during the Second World War.
I first thought those were dangerous and problematic remarks to make, but when I heard the "Oh we just want to make a list of children we hate with every vein in our body, don't worry, it's only for research" I thought those NSB-remarks where not far off.
(The NSB helped with creating the citizens-databases that made razzia's so effective, hence the reference.)
In her motion she said "But we see there is also an ethical component to it, and with that, a political one."
Rosanne Hertzberger calls herself "Spokesperson Medical Ethics".
She has been showing up at the anti-trans conference at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam at the 27th of June, where several anti-trans speakers were allowed to increase the distrust, fear and hate of medical care for transminors.
Both her motions were hung up on the Interim Report of Hilary Cass. And who spoke at the anti-trans conference? Hilary Cass.
Hertzberger was denied access, but it still shows how it's not the experts that should be listened to but anyone but experts.
She said (personally, herself, on LinkedIn) "I'm slightly saddened I didn't get to listen to the different experts views."
Experts that all but one never treated transchildren. With the organisation of the conference, one of them being a lawyer (!) having written a piece in 2018 in which they threatened the caregivers with "hypothetical lawsuits for the wide-scale medical malpractice, child abuse and genital mutilation they allowed."
But suuuure, NSC (by word of Rosanne Hertzberger to me personally when I asked her whether she was out to ban care) "is absolutely not out on changing healthcare."
I already did not believe her when she filed the motions but she made herself completely unbelievable in the personal response.
My question was if puberty blockers should be withheld (that's what she asked for "Extreme caution", after all) if there is insurmountable evidence without any new research that not prescribing them will have damaging consequences.
If you read that well, there's 2 things a politician can do:
1. Ask for clarification on what patient group you refer to.
2. Completely ignore it and think that this person is as dumb as you and is talking about transchildren.
Because I was talking about children experiencing precocious puberty, not transchildren, yet she immediately jumped to transchildren.
Which is how I now had a black and white confession that it's not about the drugs, it's about the children, and their hate for them.
Another party filing questions about the Cass report uses Thomas Goodhead's class-action lawsuit against Tavistock, and calls on the minister to take into account that there are "now gender clinics being sued for misdiagnosing people!"
But if you google that for less than 30 seconds, you'll find out this lawyer jumped on the culture-war intercity train, thinking he'd "easily gather 1000 families".
After about 2 years of being able to file a complaint with him and wishing to be represented by him, the first actual lawsuit still needs to happen: his case is suffering extremely low rates of people who want to be represented.
Thomas says it's "because of the toxic debate, people are to afraid", without any proof, of course. That transpeople might actually be incredibly happy with treatment is something he contests, again without proof.
Even with the fact that his lawsuit of "a 1000 families" would mean a massive disparity in regret rate of about 64% compared to his 1000 families, and the actual 1% of people, when you look at the numbers.
When it comes to universities, The Netherlands luckily has the advantage that government can't push out leaders of any of them, because they are explicitly separated from politics.
There is, however, a concern that the new government will abuse a law proposal (still has to be formed, of course) that is meant to "broadens the set of characteristics meant to describe and label an organisation as a terrorist union or group."
Along with "Tightening the rules to determine and decide which organisations with an ideological character in society should still be allowed to receive funding, or whether they should receive government accreditation."
Something that some LGBTQI+ advocacy groups, probably with reason read as: "We want to turn LGBTQI+ organisations into terrorist groups so we can ban them."
Add to that the request that "Sexual education needs to be politically neutral and better geared towards the age of the student", and you can see how there either should be no sexual education at all, or at least only straight- and cis-gender normative education...
The Netherlands is a backsliding democracy, unfortunately.
In the coalition we now have, the number 1 party looooves Orbán. And some of the ideas are identical to the NSDAP of Adolf Hitler.
I really feel sorry for everyone who didn't vote for this mess there, hopefully it will not last... It seems these systems are only stable here in Hungary and Putin's Russia. It is still new in the Netherlands, they are still not stable yet so there is still much hope and opportunity to act. But it is important to act, the time to act is now. You know: Wilders might learn from Orbán but Orbán learned his tactics from Putin. If you have political connections maybe you can tell them to watch out for local and national media, the far-right will try to buy them up one by one to influence public opinion. This phenomenon is important to be tracked and addressed in my opinion.
It's hard to see how anything good can come out of this for Dr. Cass and her career. I already see the alt-right/transphobic bunch and Cass crying out in their persecution complex that they are 'cancelled' and 'punished' for their 'free speech' and the 'evil leftists' censor their 'science'. The fact that the Cass Review was based on unprofessional, biased mistakes with its creator selling her soul to hate groups will never occur to them as a reason for the consequences that may be in store for her.
Her career was already over. She thought she'd be able to retire and do this "as a last job and be done with it".
She has been tone-deaf, dumb and incredibly misguided on what she has done, and is "surprised it is now actually being used to ban care, which wasn't my intention when I reviewed this care at all."
Which is why you advocate for "extreme caution", make note of the extreme-right dog whistle calling for withholding care till the age of 26, says you become transgender from porn, let's the ROGD/social contagion theory run wild throughout the report, contradict yourself.
With some of the worst things probably being that she seemingly has no clue what puberty blockers are meant to do, while calling them dangerous and "not something to be taken permanently", while also saying that it's "difficult to determine if puberty blockers actually work because the time at which children take them is to short and they start taking hormones, which limits our ability to check whether longer use poses any real risks."
Like, I do not like death threats, those cross a border that should not be crossed, no matter if her report will cause deaths (which it seemingly already has done).
But she deserves all the criticism that her report requires, absolutely. And I personally hope that whenever the tides turn for whatever reason, she will be remembered as the transphobe she really is.
I even read something on a reasonably progressive, or, better said, neutral sounding news-platform that there had already been strong concerns within the whole medical field that Cass was called to do this review.
With many doctors explicitly stating how in regular circumstances a non-expert doctor, or even someone without any experience in the field would never EVER be allowed to judge the care of colleagues, but with doctors mostly worried seeing her background in working with children with autism being named as a big positive, along with her general lack of experience with the subject at hand.
When you look at the report, you can see where those concerns come from: the heavy focus on "Oh it's actually autism and not gender dysphoria", as if they can't co-exist is mindnumbingly dumb for a pediatrician to even state as fact.
It's as if she would say to a patient: "Oh you are experiencing bullying and feeling let down because of a malformed part of your body being the reason? That doesn't exist. Let me find the actual real, REAL reason why you are not feeling well."
I wish the word "cancelling" would simply be changed into "Your words or actions having consequences."
" When you look at the report, you can see where those concerns come from: the heavy focus on "Oh it's actually autism and not gender dysphoria" "
Oh my... That speaks volumes of Cass and her so called knowledge... A lot of autistic people are LGBT+ members... It is not either or... So she doesn't even know about autism even though she worked with autistic children. Sad that she was allowed to write that report, even stranger why she agreed to write it in the first place, she have said: "I have no knowledge of this." And that is all.
It's mostly something to throw in the face of transphobes. The numbers of international critiques are already vastly outnumbering Cass as the single person somehow capable of having so much power that she was capable of flat out banning care.
Along with also showing: This much doctors are trying to tell the world her report is bullshit.
Because most of the time, transphobic people will do the "But doctors are now also opposing care!"
I know that those people are completely entangled in the trap set out by big technology companies and can be difficult to even reach and make them snap out of it, but still.
This is hugely important! Thanks for sharing Erin. This BMA review and position will help us to fight back against the alt right in organized medicine in the US to briefly dismiss the Cass report and stand by WPATH and other expert recommendations in support of GAHC.
Britain's doctors aren't generally known for their pro-trans stance.
You know you fucked up when even the BMA calls you out for your bullshit.
Interesting that a court would justify a ban based on " “substantial, albeit unqualified” risks to young patients, using the Cass Review". Doubt that would hold for a criminal case! 🤔
I'm so happy to read this I could cry. Thank you once again, Erin, for your steadfast reporting on issues that affect our community. You're a national treasure 💕
Woohoo! I'll be looking forward to the 'phobes arguing around that one!
...and I hope it will help see WPATH SoC compliant help for transgender people (particularly youth) reimplemented fully in the UK.
Finally, another authority calling Cass & the other crackpots out on their BS and self-serving agenda! They need to remember that ‘do no harm’ also represents LEAVING ALONE treatment plans that have been working for so many! If it ain’t broke, done fix it!
step by step. the fight still continues
Seriously, I hope that this helps to encourage non-partisan and accurate research to all sides of the arguments about gender dysphoria and care.
We are on the verge of changing many things, but as it turns out. We are finding that research is, and has historically been lacking about gender and its role in human evolution due to the prejudices to erase trans people.
There are huge prejudices that need changing regarding gender and race, and we are finally beginning to understand that these changes need to be founded in accurate research that has not even started in a conclusive way. From cradle to grave, transgender people have had to suffer the discrimination of people fighting against human evolutionary changes.
Even at 78 years old, I find that any research that exists regarding my treatments in transition, are based on studies done with cis women and hardly any on trans women.
We must have accurate healthcare information to be safe for all ages, and we can all come together on this one fact. Resolutions on our best healthcare is years away from right now, but it must start.
I've done many studies since I began my transition, but none are talking about trans health care. None are studying just us. I wonder why the country doesn't do this? WPATH should start the effort to better understand us. It would be a win-win for both sides.
Race is always an issue, but since this is being covered up by all healthcare providers, they don't want to blow the whistle on current practices that lessen our care. Easily hidden in the psyche & attitudes of healthcare workers. I suppose it's because they're not giving me medication or assistance because I'm Black. They just take my care less seriously and automatically assume stupid things about me.
I was in the VA emergency room a few months ago. When the doctor came in, she asked if I did street drugs. I said, "No, I have almost 41 years of sobriety." She looked at me and 5 minutes later, asked the same question. Then asked again before she tended to the reason I was there. Yes, I was stereotyped by a doctor in the ER. She disrespected my sobriety and asking me that question was annoying AF. I was too sick to dig in her brain for asking that stupid question several times.
See what I mean?
I do Ray. You suffer the two sided sword of gender diversity and racial prejudice. Your strong to have made it this far, but I also know that you can see the typical problem from both sides of that sword.
In essence, the fact that I’ve been transitioning for 6 years on Estradoil and want to add a few more typical drugs to enhance and improve my transition, get permission from my other doctors and ask my Endo Nd get an “I’m not sure about that”, leads me to believe that there is no research how are you that covers that request, means that something is missing.
Yes, yes, of course I see both sides. I've been in my transition for almost 8 years. Fortunately, I've had some great doctors at the VA. The one out here where I moved to said, "We don't treat transgenders here." I'm still fighting with them, because they're close to where I live. I couldn't get anybody to address what was done, so I went back to my previous provider over an hour away. I won't tolerate disrespect or discrimination from that place. I take big breaks because I'm tired of fighting for my rights on both sides of the aisle, especially when I'm sick. They broke the laws of the VA with that friggin sentence and yet they won't reprimand them and force them to do right by me? Unreal. I was getting treated rudely online and in person. Ummm, NOPE!
You're in the US or UK? I might keep getting you confused with someone else roaming around Erin's substack who is also a veteran. Is that you? LOL ... my memory is trying to leave me. I'm 66 years old.
At last. I had enough that my body and health is the playground of extremists and swindlers.
This is such encouraging news.
Sanity prevails for once!
I hope somebody in your Parliament reads this statement. And I also hope this gets translated to Doctors and our politicians in the U.S.
I honestly hope the opposition parties in Dutch government (that banked hard extreme right end of 2023 and upped it's transphobia by 700% within 3 months) also use this.
4 Extreme right parties, all massively racist, transphobic and deeply problematic people are part of the coalition (and thus form the cabinet with ministers and state secretaries) have been using the report to try and ban care in the Netherlands.
All of the coalition parties made some politically correct sounding remarks in their election programs about protecting sexual minorities, but have been collectively doing a 180 right from the beginning.
The press? Dead silent on it.
One of the parties that in their program states how "the careful, considerate decision by experts in the field is readily acknowledged by our party. We consider the high waiting times to be problematic and want to propose fixes. Objectivity will remain the leading factor in decision making for those seeking care."
But at the 17th of July, they threw the former Minister of Medical Care in front the train:
Her objectivity was compromised "because of her strong political conviction on the subject".
And the worst part here: this former minister is a former news broadcaster hostess who also used to work on a TV program about medical care, a program that once had 2 episodes about transchildren back in the mid 90's.
As a result, she probably was one of the best educated on the subject in our government as a result.
But she got replaced when the new, extreme-right, racist bunch of transphobes took over.
Those questions, which, from another party include using the disinformation campaign about the leaked WPATH files... have yet to be answered by the new minister.
Seems like they follow the playbook of Viktor Orbán, our PM here in HU. They slowly push out and replace experts with their trustworthy goons who are loyal to the party and its ideology but are dumb as earth. Unless they are stopped it will not stop at trans healthcare. They reduce our human rights and life to 'political opinion', for far-right clowns everything is politics, to serve 'the homeland and the people' which means the oligarchs supporting their power. Their incompetent leadership will influence every facet of daily life, they push out experts from universities - and everywhere - substituting science with their ideological rubbish. As a result the economy and living standard of the Dutch will suffer.
We see what happened in Hungary when these people came to power, we see what these people did in Great Britain. It has to be stopped, it hurts everyone and they make our countries uninhabitable wastelands.
In a way. The problem is that we now have 4 extreme-right parties.
The last of which was right from the beginning but went further extreme-right merely by not excluding a party based on the fascism it preaches, which it previously did with Mark Rutte as a prime minister and leader of the party.
But the thing about political opinion is absolutely true.
We have a party called New Social Contract (NSC) that campaigned hard on the idea the Dutch State should never ever have the ability to retaliate against a group of citizens ever again.
This coming from the situation of how the leader of said party (Pieter Omtzigt, a hard-right Catholic) exposed an AI-driven tax agency scandal along with Lilian Marijnisen (Socialistic Party) that labelled thousands of families as fraudulent receivers of child care benefit.
The decision for this? Merely based on the process programmed to look for fraud by looking for "people with a Middle-Eastern sounding last name".
Previously to this party existing, they already showed that some people do not deserve rights: Pieter Omtzigt used the word transwomen in 1 sentence with the notorious serial pedophile Robert M. Because of course transpeople need to be connected to some of the worst crimes imaginable...
Rosanne Hertzberger, from the party New Social Contract (NSC), filed 2 transphobic motions at 15 February 2024. About 1 month after the House of Representatives was formed.
One of the motions contains the request to revoke patient-doctor confidentiality of transchildren (as everyone knows, extreme-right politicians are experts at healthcare while not even holding a medical degree) and create a list of these children.
NSC as a party abbreviation had some people not-so-jokingly make concerned remarks when the party came to exist (near september 2023 if I recall correctly) that it was problematically identical sounding, and easily misspoken.
The reason for this being that it's just 1 letter different from NSB: National Socialistic Movement. The only allowed political party during the Second World War.
I first thought those were dangerous and problematic remarks to make, but when I heard the "Oh we just want to make a list of children we hate with every vein in our body, don't worry, it's only for research" I thought those NSB-remarks where not far off.
(The NSB helped with creating the citizens-databases that made razzia's so effective, hence the reference.)
In her motion she said "But we see there is also an ethical component to it, and with that, a political one."
Rosanne Hertzberger calls herself "Spokesperson Medical Ethics".
She has been showing up at the anti-trans conference at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam at the 27th of June, where several anti-trans speakers were allowed to increase the distrust, fear and hate of medical care for transminors.
Both her motions were hung up on the Interim Report of Hilary Cass. And who spoke at the anti-trans conference? Hilary Cass.
Hertzberger was denied access, but it still shows how it's not the experts that should be listened to but anyone but experts.
She said (personally, herself, on LinkedIn) "I'm slightly saddened I didn't get to listen to the different experts views."
Experts that all but one never treated transchildren. With the organisation of the conference, one of them being a lawyer (!) having written a piece in 2018 in which they threatened the caregivers with "hypothetical lawsuits for the wide-scale medical malpractice, child abuse and genital mutilation they allowed."
But suuuure, NSC (by word of Rosanne Hertzberger to me personally when I asked her whether she was out to ban care) "is absolutely not out on changing healthcare."
I already did not believe her when she filed the motions but she made herself completely unbelievable in the personal response.
My question was if puberty blockers should be withheld (that's what she asked for "Extreme caution", after all) if there is insurmountable evidence without any new research that not prescribing them will have damaging consequences.
If you read that well, there's 2 things a politician can do:
1. Ask for clarification on what patient group you refer to.
2. Completely ignore it and think that this person is as dumb as you and is talking about transchildren.
Because I was talking about children experiencing precocious puberty, not transchildren, yet she immediately jumped to transchildren.
Which is how I now had a black and white confession that it's not about the drugs, it's about the children, and their hate for them.
Another party filing questions about the Cass report uses Thomas Goodhead's class-action lawsuit against Tavistock, and calls on the minister to take into account that there are "now gender clinics being sued for misdiagnosing people!"
But if you google that for less than 30 seconds, you'll find out this lawyer jumped on the culture-war intercity train, thinking he'd "easily gather 1000 families".
After about 2 years of being able to file a complaint with him and wishing to be represented by him, the first actual lawsuit still needs to happen: his case is suffering extremely low rates of people who want to be represented.
Thomas says it's "because of the toxic debate, people are to afraid", without any proof, of course. That transpeople might actually be incredibly happy with treatment is something he contests, again without proof.
Even with the fact that his lawsuit of "a 1000 families" would mean a massive disparity in regret rate of about 64% compared to his 1000 families, and the actual 1% of people, when you look at the numbers.
When it comes to universities, The Netherlands luckily has the advantage that government can't push out leaders of any of them, because they are explicitly separated from politics.
There is, however, a concern that the new government will abuse a law proposal (still has to be formed, of course) that is meant to "broadens the set of characteristics meant to describe and label an organisation as a terrorist union or group."
Along with "Tightening the rules to determine and decide which organisations with an ideological character in society should still be allowed to receive funding, or whether they should receive government accreditation."
Something that some LGBTQI+ advocacy groups, probably with reason read as: "We want to turn LGBTQI+ organisations into terrorist groups so we can ban them."
Add to that the request that "Sexual education needs to be politically neutral and better geared towards the age of the student", and you can see how there either should be no sexual education at all, or at least only straight- and cis-gender normative education...
The Netherlands is a backsliding democracy, unfortunately.
In the coalition we now have, the number 1 party looooves Orbán. And some of the ideas are identical to the NSDAP of Adolf Hitler.
I really feel sorry for everyone who didn't vote for this mess there, hopefully it will not last... It seems these systems are only stable here in Hungary and Putin's Russia. It is still new in the Netherlands, they are still not stable yet so there is still much hope and opportunity to act. But it is important to act, the time to act is now. You know: Wilders might learn from Orbán but Orbán learned his tactics from Putin. If you have political connections maybe you can tell them to watch out for local and national media, the far-right will try to buy them up one by one to influence public opinion. This phenomenon is important to be tracked and addressed in my opinion.
Err, translated? It's the British Medical Association, it's in English.
I guess the word communicate is a better choice, but the word translate or transfer is also correct. Yes, it’s all English!
It's hard to see how anything good can come out of this for Dr. Cass and her career. I already see the alt-right/transphobic bunch and Cass crying out in their persecution complex that they are 'cancelled' and 'punished' for their 'free speech' and the 'evil leftists' censor their 'science'. The fact that the Cass Review was based on unprofessional, biased mistakes with its creator selling her soul to hate groups will never occur to them as a reason for the consequences that may be in store for her.
Her career was already over. She thought she'd be able to retire and do this "as a last job and be done with it".
She has been tone-deaf, dumb and incredibly misguided on what she has done, and is "surprised it is now actually being used to ban care, which wasn't my intention when I reviewed this care at all."
Which is why you advocate for "extreme caution", make note of the extreme-right dog whistle calling for withholding care till the age of 26, says you become transgender from porn, let's the ROGD/social contagion theory run wild throughout the report, contradict yourself.
With some of the worst things probably being that she seemingly has no clue what puberty blockers are meant to do, while calling them dangerous and "not something to be taken permanently", while also saying that it's "difficult to determine if puberty blockers actually work because the time at which children take them is to short and they start taking hormones, which limits our ability to check whether longer use poses any real risks."
Like, I do not like death threats, those cross a border that should not be crossed, no matter if her report will cause deaths (which it seemingly already has done).
But she deserves all the criticism that her report requires, absolutely. And I personally hope that whenever the tides turn for whatever reason, she will be remembered as the transphobe she really is.
I even read something on a reasonably progressive, or, better said, neutral sounding news-platform that there had already been strong concerns within the whole medical field that Cass was called to do this review.
With many doctors explicitly stating how in regular circumstances a non-expert doctor, or even someone without any experience in the field would never EVER be allowed to judge the care of colleagues, but with doctors mostly worried seeing her background in working with children with autism being named as a big positive, along with her general lack of experience with the subject at hand.
When you look at the report, you can see where those concerns come from: the heavy focus on "Oh it's actually autism and not gender dysphoria", as if they can't co-exist is mindnumbingly dumb for a pediatrician to even state as fact.
It's as if she would say to a patient: "Oh you are experiencing bullying and feeling let down because of a malformed part of your body being the reason? That doesn't exist. Let me find the actual real, REAL reason why you are not feeling well."
I wish the word "cancelling" would simply be changed into "Your words or actions having consequences."
" When you look at the report, you can see where those concerns come from: the heavy focus on "Oh it's actually autism and not gender dysphoria" "
Oh my... That speaks volumes of Cass and her so called knowledge... A lot of autistic people are LGBT+ members... It is not either or... So she doesn't even know about autism even though she worked with autistic children. Sad that she was allowed to write that report, even stranger why she agreed to write it in the first place, she have said: "I have no knowledge of this." And that is all.
This seems like a big deal. Question is, how much of one?
It's mostly something to throw in the face of transphobes. The numbers of international critiques are already vastly outnumbering Cass as the single person somehow capable of having so much power that she was capable of flat out banning care.
Along with also showing: This much doctors are trying to tell the world her report is bullshit.
Because most of the time, transphobic people will do the "But doctors are now also opposing care!"
I know that those people are completely entangled in the trap set out by big technology companies and can be difficult to even reach and make them snap out of it, but still.
So happy to hear science and compassionate doctoring are starting to win!
Reading this makes me so happy! Transgender people deserve the same protections, respect and compassion as any cis person does.