This is from a bonus episode of Weekly Skews we do for our Patreon supporters. We covered all the crazy election news from this week (some of which was actually good!). If you’re into that (we do a couple a month), or just like Skews and wanna support the show, go to http://www.Patreon.com/TraeCrowder
The little girl, Alaa Qadooum, and her father were on a motorcycle passing the Palestine Towers building, on their way to buy some groceries. He was also killed, leaving his wife Rasha and three other children without a breadwinner.
Israel has imposed an economic and military siege on the Gaza Strip since 2007, limiting the densely populated region’s imports and interfering with the building and repair of infrastructure. Under international law, Israel is the Occupying power in Gaza, which it seized by main force in 1967, and may not treat Gaza’s inhabitants in a brutalizing way, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Rome Statute of 2002 that underpins the International Criminal Court.
The strike on a civilian apartment building in a densely packed city was not reported on any of the US cable news channels I checked in on today. But were a retaliatory strike by some Gaza-based Palestinian group to manage to hit something in Israel, now that would be a news segment. It is one of the propaganda effects of US television news that correspondents very seldom are allowed to report on Israeli aggressive actions, so the reaction of Palestinians always comes out of the blue and looks like unprovoked barbarism.
Contrast the American reaction (yawn) to this Israeli bombing of the Palestine Towers apartment building, where civilians lived, with the outrage in this country when Russia behaves similarly in Ukraine.
[Russian] “Attacks have struck people in bread lines and on playgrounds, as well as apartment blocks, theaters and hospitals. After each one, Russia has denied or deflected responsibility, often accusing Ukraine of attacking its own people to sway domestic and global opinion against Moscow. Russia has claimed that it aims only at targets of military value — even though some were hundreds of miles from the front lines — and that whenever a civilian facility did get hit, it was one that the Ukrainian military had co-opted for use as a command post, a shelter for foreign fighters or storage for weapons.”
So Russia sounds exactly like Israel. They had to hit the apartment building because terrorists were hiding out in it, even (gasp) members of the feared 800-strong Azov Brigade.
The authors refuse to let Russia off the hook, going through one by one and examining the bombing of apartment buildings, and questioning the Russian rationale.
No paper of record in the US treats the Israelis the way the NYT treated Russia in this article, even when Israeli leaders order army snipers to shoot Palestinian civilians in Gaza for demonstrating, unarmed, near an Israeli security fence. They killed 266 protesters or medics and journalists over two years of weekly demonstrations, and wounded an unimaginable 30,000, many of them doomed to lose a leg.
Of course Israel has a right to defend itself from attack, as does everyone, though it is dreary that the US State Department stops once it has said that. But it doesn’t have the right to use force recklessly in disregard of innocent civilian life.
The Israeli propaganda machine, like that of the US far right, is very good at depicting them as beleaguered victims. Of the thousands of rockets from Gaza you’ve heard about, almost all land uselessly in the desert, though occasionally they do property damage and very occasionally hurt someone. The latter is extremely regrettable and condemnable, of course. Since the rockets have no guidance systems and are fired at civilian Israeli areas, their use is a war crime,
Proportionality matters, however, in the laws of war. Newsweek reports that “38 Israeli civilians have been killed between 2000 and 2020 by Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza.”
From 2008 until May of this year, Israel killed 5,298 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the UN. B’Tselem says that from 2000 until 2007, the Israelis killed 2,997 people in Gaza.
So that is 8,295 killed by Israel to 38 civilians killed by rockets from Gaza. Admittedly, some of the 8,295 Palestinians killed in Gaza since 2000 were combatants, whose killing might be lawful. In 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, the UN said that Israel killed 2,104 Palestinians including 1,462 civilians, of whom 495 were children and 253 women. After that 2014 assault on Gaza, Israeli authorities boasted that they had killed “1,000 terrorists.” Well, they actually killed 642 combatants and the rest of the over 2,000 dead were civilians, fully one-third of them children.
That is roughly a 70% civilian death toll. If we extrapolate that out to the total number of Palestinians killed in Gaza over the past 22 years, that would yield 5,806 civilian deaths.
38 killed Israeli civilians. 5,806 killed Palestinian civilians. In two decades.
Each Israeli is worth 152 Palestinians.
And that is about the right ratio for US television news reporting on the Palestinians, who seem to be about 152 times more invisible than the Israelis. It is also just about the ratio of outrage at the squandering of innocent life.
Members of the state medical board have agreed to initiate rules that could ban physicians from providing gender-affirming care to transgender people under the age of 18, while also limiting access to care to adults.
The vote by the Board of Medicine on Friday means the Board will begin a several month process that Chairman and Winter Park physician David Diamond said would include public meetings across the state.
Board of Medicine Vice Chairman and Fort Lauderdale physician Kevin Cairns was the only Board member to oppose the rulemaking, which was sought by Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo last appeared on JMG earlier this week when he cast doubts on the efficacy of the monkeypox vaccine.
Ladapo, who has refused to disclose his own COVID vaccination status, is affiliated with the far-right anti-vax group, America’s Frontline Doctors.
Early this year the Florida Senate approved him as state surgeon general despite reports that he lied about having treated COVID patients while working at UCLA’s hospital.
During his confirmation hearing, he repeatedly refused to say if he believes that COVID vaccines are effective.
“I think this whole thing is dehumanizing to trans people.” One of the many transgender activists speaking to the Florida Board of Medicine today before they voted to initiate the rule-making process to consider restricting gender-affirming care. #transpic.twitter.com/xjNo3EN6nG
Still thinking about how @PatrickHunterMD , a pediatrician and sitting member of the Florida Board of Medicine, called transgender people a “social contagion” today.
Which came after their “expert witness” claimed that COVID isolation made young people transgender. 🙃
DeSantis replaced an elected Dem DA with an unelected GOP prosecutor because of his and his party’s culture wars on abortion and LGBTQ people https://t.co/qYyuPL4CcI
There’s also this shit. LGBT folks in Tampa now have a Federalist Society bigot as the top DA for their area. I wonder how she’ll be in interacting with LGBT folks?
I think it’s time for CA, OR, WA, HI, NY, NJ, VT, MA, CT, MD, etc. to officially declare Florida to be a “shithole country” (especially the parts immediately around Merde-A-Lardo and wherever Ron DuhSantis is at the moment) and require visas and vaccinations to travel to/from there.
This mofo DeathSentence won election by just four-tenths of one percent — just by 33,000 votes. And he governs as if he had an overwhelming popular mandate to drag Florida back into the Middle Ages.
This is one of the big differences between RepubliQans and Democrats.
Yes, and it’s a relevant one. Another big difference – they fall in line and goosestep down to vote. We have to fall in love before we even think about maybe showing up at the polls. If there’s nothing better streaming.
We have a bunch of fake Christians and far-right fascist idealogues promoting the end of personal freedom and the beginning of a theocracy for Florida. Hold onto your hats–it’s going to get very ugly there.
In response to the Texas school shooting that left 19 children dead May 24, a local school system and Sheriff’s Office are rolling out some beefed up security measures in 2022-23, including putting AR-15 rifles in every school.
Madison County Schools and Madison County Sheriff’s Office are collaborating to enhance security in the schools for the upcoming school year.
“Those officers were in that building for so long, and that suspect was able to infiltrate that building and injure and kill so many kids,” Sheriff Buddy Harwood said. “I just want to make sure my deputies are prepared in the event that happens. We were able to put an AR-15 rifle and safe in all of our schools in the county.”
Read the full article. Madison County, population 21,000, has six public schools.
What problem are these North Carolina sheriffs solving? The hundreds of officers in Uvalde had access to AR-15s but chose not to engage a gunman with an assault rifle and a death wish. “MORE GUNS” is not a solution – keeping guns away from kids/teens is. https://t.co/rxq4JSAmfH
From the article at the link above. That guy will do anything to keep kids safe … except restricting guns in the US and having sensible gun control safety laws. Hugs
I do not want to have to run back out to the car to grab an AR, because that’s time lost. Hopefully we’ll never need it, but I want my guys to be as prepared as prepared can be.”
Harwood said he feels while the optics of the SROs potentially handling AR-15s in schools may be discomforting to some, it is a necessary response given the state of the country.
“I’m a firearms instructor. We carry a (9 mm) 135-grain bullet,” Harwood said. “We’ve got the maximum 50 rounds that my SROs are carrying throughout the school to protect that school.
“I hate that we’ve come to a place in our nation where I’ve got to put a safe in our schools, and lock that safe up for my deputies to be able to acquire an AR-15. But, we can shut it off and say it won’t happen in Madison County, but we never know. I want the parents of Madison County to know we’re going to take every measure necessary to ensure our kids are safe in this school system. If my parents, as a whole, want me to stand at that door with that AR strapped around that officer’s neck, then I’m going to do whatever my parents want as a whole to keep our kids safe.”
Notice that all of these have some LGBTQ+ content or characters. It doesn’t even have to be explicit as the rhyming book of babies shows. The goal is to remove representation of LGBTQ+ from society. As if you don’t see it then it won’t exist. Got news for these people, it is straight people that create gay kids. I never read a book with gay characters when I was growing up, but I was gay from birth. This is what was done in Russia and other authoritarian countries, and the maga parents want to have that kind of authoritarian government here. The thing is these vocal groups are the minority. They are a small group of religiously motivated people. Yet they scream that any mention of LGBTQ+ offends them. OK well any mention of religion or the bible offends me. So can we get a don’t say Jesus law for schools, and a warning sticker for the bible that it is not suitable for students. Hugs
Golden Gate High School in Naples, Fla.Google Maps
A southwest Florida school district added warning labels to more than 100 books, many of which touch on issues related to race or the LGBTQ community.
Collier County Public Schools, a district that includes part of Naples, added the labels both on physical copies of the books and in Destiny, the district’s online catalog, according to the nonprofit Florida Freedom to Read Project. The top of the label, according to a photo shared with NBC News by Florida Freedom to Read Project, says “Advisory notice to parents” in capital letters.
An advisory notice to parents placed on over 100 books in public schools in Collier County, Fla.Courtesy Stephana Ferrell/Florida Freedom to Read Project
“This Advisory Notice shall serve to inform you that this book has been identified by some community members as unsuitable for students,” the label states. “This book will also be identified in the Destiny system with the same notation. The decision as to whether this book is suitable or unsuitable shall be the decision of the parent(s) who has the right to oversee his/her child’s education consistent with state law.” A sticker of the notice is on the front inside cover of the books, according to Stephana Ferrell, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which advocates against censorship in Florida schools. Ferrell said a media specialist in the school district shared photos of the labels with her in June.
After a series of public records requests about the labels, challenged books and the district’s creation of a committee that reviews school materials, Ferrell said she received a phone call from Elizabeth Alves, associate superintendent of teaching and learning for Collier County Public Schools.
Ferrell said Alves told her the district began adding the labels in February, after the district’s legal representative spoke with the Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group that last year issued a “Porn in Schools Report.” The report included a list of books that “promote gender self-identification and same-sex marriage” as well as titles that include “indecent and offensive material,” according to the group.
Alves defended the decision as “a compromise,” Ferrell said.
“I said, ‘It’s unfortunate, because this is a literary work. The sticker that they chose to put on there, the language that they chose, would make any reader who would otherwise pick up the book based on the cover and the description, it would make them think twice about reading the book,’” Ferrell said of her response to Alves.
Chad Oliver, a spokesman for Collier County Public Schools, confirmed that Alves spoke to Ferrell but denied that the warning labels were added in response to a conversation with the Florida Citizens Alliance.
“Based upon advice from the General Counsel, we placed advisory notices on books about which parents and community members had expressed concern and in accordance with the recently passed Parents’ Bill of Rights Law (HB 241),” Oliver said in an email, referring to a state law that allows parents to object to instructional materials.
A total of 110 books feature the advisory labels, according to PEN America, a nonprofit group that promotes free speech. This list, which PEN America shared with NBC News, has significant overlap with a list of at least 112 books that the Florida Citizens Alliance inquired about in a Dec. 11 email sent to Collier County Public Schools. Ferrell, who obtained the email through a public records request, shared a copy with NBC News.
Keith Flaugh, CEO and co-founder of the Florida Citizens Alliance, confirmed his group submitted a public records request about 112 novels in the district.
“Many of these contain sexually explicit and age inappropriate content,” which he said in an email is in direct violation of Florida laws on obscenity and the sale of harmful materials to minors. He also citeda 2017 law that the group helped draft that allows parents and any residents of the state to object to instructional materials and provide evidence for why they believe the material is inappropriate.
“Gender Queer” by Maia KobabeOni Press
Some of the titles that appear on both lists — and now have an “advisory notice to parents” warning label in Collier County Public Schools — include LGBTQ- and race-related books that have landed on banned-book lists across the country. These titles include “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. The list also includes literary classics like “Beloved” by Toni Morrison and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.
Also included is the popular children’s book “Everywhere Babies,” a rhyming, illustrated book about what babies do. The illustrations include what could be interpreted as a few same-sex couples, but they are never identified as such in the text. The book first landed on a banned-book list in Walton County, Florida, in the spring, after the Florida Citizens Alliance included it in its 2021 “Porn in Schools Report.”
The labels appear digitally in the library records & physically on the books. They warn: “this book has been identified by some community members as unsuitable for students.” Apparently, a lot is ‘unsuitable’. Even Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers & illustrated by @MarlaFrazee. pic.twitter.com/wA5fT5fjLr
“The labeling of these books risks attaching a stigma to the topics they cover & the books themselves….Every child deserves the right to learn from a diverse set of voices & perspectives & to freely access the books they wish to read.” – @jzfriedman. https://t.co/DSrLhTQf5x
The “Babies, Babies Everywhere” book has a single illustration where there are two dudes sitting on a bench while two babies play nearby. The pairs don’t even look like they’re the same race or ethnicity.
The virulent homobigots decided the only explanation is they must be two gay dads in a blended family, when really there’s no context whatsoever. Could just be a couple of dads who were friends, letting their kids play together.
But somehow this book deserves a warning label stating the book is dangerous.
In truth, these are dangerous times for the entire LGBTQ community. I haven’t seen this kind of non-stop bigoted, slanderous shit since the early 1980s. And in truth, it feels vastly more overtly threatening now.
Great points. The overt threats and vitriol against trans people appears to be growing. If politicians continue to draft and pass laws that target trans people, the physical violence and murder statistics will rise.
I’m so sick of their extremist virtue signaling. They don’t care how much damage they do to children as long as they feel like they triumphed over someone weaker. They are coward bullies.
The fall backwards has been difficult and disturbing. I graduated HS in 92. Without the library, because I grew up pentecostal, I would have had nothing. Putting that label on a book seems like putting a target on those that have checked it out, look at it or maybe put on a list. You can’t put anything past these people I am sad that the freedoms we fought so hard for the ones coming up seems to be disappearing and our compromised Supreme Court along with the radical religious right is ushering us back to the darkness.
I didn’t dare look for anything gay-themed in the school library. This was pre-internet of course. Thank FSM for the college library in town that had a pretty good collection for the time.
The man when asked by the woman how to explain to her young children how she was forced to deliver a stillborn child and his reply was no one is guaranteed another tomorrow and he told her to return to her faith. This is the Republicans telling you who they are. Hugs
The authoritarian fascist right wing government is moving forward with returning the country to a time when they did not think that the LGBTQ+ did not exist or at least were visible in the public. Anyone who thinks they are exempt from what is coming is wrong. Let the destroying of abortion rights be an example of how extreme these people will be. Now it is any book that has LGBTQ+ content or characters, but how soon will it be any book that has content that the maga crowd don’t support? How about the drive to not teach the real racist history of the US? Will those books be banned? What about books that are against religion? Will those books be banned? You fill in the blanks and ask if those books will be banned. This is the US Taliban people! Hugs
Residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted this week to shut down town’s library rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ books
Controversy has swirled around the Patmos Library since patrons began protesting some books with LGBT themes written for young adults. Photograph: Ron French/Bridge Michigan
A small-town library is at risk of shutting down after residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted to defund it rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ+-themed books.
Residents voted on Tuesday to block a renewal of funds tied to property taxes, Bridge Michigan reported.
The vote leaves the library with funds through the first quarter of next year. Once a reserve fund is used up, it would be forced to close, Larry Walton, the library board’s president, told Bridge Michigan – harming not just readers but the community at large. Beyond books, residents visit the library for its wifi, he said, and it houses the very room where the vote took place.
“Our libraries are places to read, places to gather, places to socialize, places to study, places to learn. I mean, they’re the heart of every community,” Deborah Mikula, executive director of the Michigan Library Association, told the Guardian. “So how can you lose that?”
“We are champions of access,” she added, including materials that might appeal to some in the community and not others. “We want to make sure that libraries protect the right to read.”
An anonymous letter Lawrence said was sent to homes in Jamestown. Photograph: Courtesy Matt Lawrence
The controversy in Jamestown began with a complaint about a memoir by a nonbinary writer, but it soon spiraled into a campaign against Patmos Library itself. After a parent complained about Gender Queer: a Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel about the author’s experience coming out as nonbinary, dozens showed up at library board meetings, demanding the institution drop the book. (The book, which includes depictions of sex, was in the adult section of the library.) Complaints began to target other books with LGBTQ+ themes.
One library director resigned, telling Bridge she had been harassed and accused of indoctrinating kids; her successor, Matt Lawrence, also left the job. Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available.
“We, the board, will not ban the books,” Walton told Associated Press on Thursday.
A few months later, in March, an anonymous letter went to homes in the area. It criticized the “pornographic” memoir and the addition of “transgender” and “gay” books to the library, according to Lawrence. “That fired a lot of people up and got them to start coming to our board meetings to complain,” he said. “The concern from the public was that it’s going to confuse children.”
The library’s refusal to submit to the demands led to a campaign urging residents to vote against renewed funding for the library. A group calling itself Jamestown Conservatives handed out flyers condemning Gender Queer for showing “extremely graphic sexual illustrations of two people of the same gender”, criticizing a library director who “promoted the LGBTQ ideology” and calling for making the library “a safe and neutral place for our kids”. On Facebook, the group says it exists to “keep our children safe, and protect their purity, as well as to keep the nuclear family intact as God designed”.
A flyer distributed at the town’s Memorial Day events. Photograph: Courtesy Matt Lawrence
Residents ultimately voted 62% to 37% against a measure that would have raised property taxes by roughly $24 in order to fund the library, even as they approved similar measures to fund the fire department and road work. The library was one of just a few in the state to suffer such a loss, Mikula said: “Most passed with flying colors, sometimes up to 80%.”
The vote came as a “shock” to Lawrence, who left his job in part because of town officials’ criticism of the Patmos library and libraries across the US.
“I knew that there were people that were upset about material in the library, but I figured that enough people would realize that what they’re trying to do with the removal of these books is antithetical to our constitution, particularly the first amendment,” he said.
The vote comes as libraries across the US face a surge in demands to ban books. The American Library Association identified 729 challenges to “library, school and university materials and services” last year, which led to about 1,600 challenges or removals of individual books. That was up from 273 books the year before and represents “the highest number of attempted book bans since we began compiling these lists 20 years ago”, the ALA president, Patricia Wong, said in a press release.
“We’re seeing what appears to be a campaign to remove books, particularly books dealing with LGBTQIA themes and books dealing with racism,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, head of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom, told the Guardian last year. Celebrated books by Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel and Ibram X Kendi are among those facing bans.
“I’m not quite sure what instigated the culture wars that we’re seeing, but libraries are certainly at the front end,” Mikula said. Indeed, as states across the US move to deny LGBTQ+ rights, the ALA’s No 1 “most challenged” book last year was Gender Queer.
“When you remove those books from the shelf or you challenge them publicly in a community, what you’re saying to any young person who identified with that narrative is, ‘We don’t want your story here,’” Kobabe told the New York Times in May.
Each library chooses its own collection, Mikula noted, an intensive process that involves staying abreast of what’s new, listening to what’s being requested, and “weeding out” selections that are rarely on loan.
“Our librarians are qualified. They have advanced degrees,” she said. “We want to make sure that the people who have been hired to do this work are trusted and credible, and that they’re making sure that the full community is represented within their library. And that means having LGBTQ books.”
If community members oppose the inclusion of certain books, there are formal means of requesting their removal, involving a review committee and ascertainment that the person making the appeal has actually read the book in question. But recently, she said, people have been “going to board meetings, whether it’s a library board meeting or a school board meeting and saying, ‘Here’s a list of 300 books. We want them all to be removed from your library.’ And that’s not the proper channel, but they’re loud and their voices carry.”
Let’s face it, Republicans would defund every library on the planet if they had the opportunity, them saying it’s LGBTQ+ related is just trying to score extra points with their knuckle dragging constituency.
This entire clip is projection. He is railing against ‘book burners’ and ‘cancel culture’ when he comes from a state where the GOP governor is banning books and firing attorneys who don’t fall into line. https://t.co/c1pZ0wizop
They want books censored. Books that come with no pictures and require an imagination to illustrate. The books that almost no one reads.
Meanwhile, on the internet you can find videos of the kinkiest sex acts with even the most simple searches. They all carry the internet in their pocket 24/7.
If I had the money I would fully fund the library and turn it in to an LGBTQ resource center and history museum just to explode the heads of these small minded freaks.
Of course the fascists hate the library. Free books and media? People can watch movies, read books and magazines and listen to music without paying anything other than taxes? That’s communism!
MAGAts don’t read anyway, so for them it’s no big loss to close a library.
“Make America Great Again” means keep kids ignorant about human sexuality, like many were in the 1950s, when they were taught that girls could be impregnated by kissing boys and that gay sex was only practiced by devil worshipping atheists and godless commies.
Keeping kids away from science or knowledge was a thing when people sought books on evolution and slavery because white Christianity was the only acceptable belief system, except where Jews were tolerated.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I recall, reading any particular library book is optional. Nobody is going to get held back a grade for not reading the books. Oh, I forgot, conservative dictionaries don’t have the word “choice” in them.
And followed immediate by an article about Senator Rick Scott screeching against Democrats allegedly trying to cancel culture and burn books. Republicans are constitutionally incapable of recognizing hypocrisy.
In a recent comment Tildeb championed an interim report of an inquiry on the best way to serve the needs of trans children in the UK. Almost everything I read said the report only got one thing correct in that much more needed to be done to open more treatment facilities for trans people and that the national health system needed to do more. Then because it seems the thing the report wanted to push was anti-trans propaganda the report tried to say the best treatment would be to deny that kids are trans and would grow out of it and should be treated with affirmative therapy which is another way of saying conversion therapy. Affirmative therapy is saying kids should be treated and forced to see that they are in the right body to match their gender and to accept that is who / what they are. Forget that trans nonsense, just like being gay is a fad, it is just rebelling against your parents and kids will grow out of it. All kids experiment and then they grow up, no one is gay because god did not make mistakes. It is all the same thing of denying it and forcing kids to never admit it. It is something most of the modern world has grown beyond and only the traditionalists refusing to admit times have changed in a way they dislike still cling to. For those wanting to know how bias and slanted the report was here is a breakdown of it. Hugs
This morning people who care about trans kids were reacting in utter dismay to hearing the Secretary of State for Health use the Cass interim review to justify the need to exclude trans people from a ban on conversion therapy.
I’ll link the lovely Olly Alexander linking to a clip of our Health Secretary using Cass to call for conversion therapy for trans kids – see here
Despite evidence that conversion therapy on trans children is particularly harmful, with research showing “For transgender adults who recalled gender identity conversion efforts before age 10 years, exposure was significantly associated with an increase in the lifetime odds of suicide attempts”.
For days now, MPs and commentators have cited the Cass review, in justification of the need for conversion therapy specifically for trans kids.
Of course they do not say conversion therapy for trans kids. They talk of ‘children suffering from gender confusion or gender distress’, they talk of ‘exploratory therapy. They talk of ‘unintended consequences, by which some clearly mean, they fear the law would stop them conducting conversion therapy on trans kids.
Those who want to conduct conversion therapy on trans kids hide behind a new favourite term of ‘exploratory therapy’. It is a friendly sounding rebrand of conversion therapy. It is focused on probing, delaying, questioning and at its heart, problematising trans identities. There is nothing wrong with being trans. Some kids are trans – get over it.
The same people who actually want conversion therapy for trans kids, are trying to create confusion on the meaning of affirmative therapy. They are trying to paint affirmation as a bad thing, as something forced. They are wrong and they know it. Affirmation is about meeting a person where they are, about listening to what they need. It has space for as much talk therapy on identity as a person wants. Without coercion. Without compulsion. Without considering trans or cis as a bad outcome.
Parents of trans kids are today VERY upset. People had put their faith in Cass to help our kids.
Personally, I feel something else other than upset. I feel cross at myself for not speaking up earlier.
Back when the Cass review was first announced, I had serious concerns. Concerns that have continued to mount.
There was Cass’ personal twitter following of a load of highly transphobic groups & no trans people.
There was the Cass review’s initial refusal to even say the word trans kids, in a review aimed primarily at helping trans kids.
There was the lack of any trans people on the Cass team, and the fact that the Cass team explicitly asked for people with no knowledge or experience of trans-ness, as though that was a preferable.
The fact there was no oversight group consisting of respected trans health experts and trans community leaders.
Back at the start I felt deep in my gut that this would go badly and would not serve the needs of trans kids. I seriously considered trying to get parents of trans kids together to stage a boycott until there was some proper trans representation. I didn’t for four major reasons. For one, the biggest reason, I was so tired & out of time and energy. For two, I wanted to give optimism a go – just cos everything else always fails trans kids in the UK, why couldn’t this be different – here we had a paediatrician reviewing trans kids healthcare, something I’d been asking for for years, maybe this time would be different. For three, I hoped having formal peer reviewed publications to feed into the process would make a difference (spoiler – it didn’t – the Cass team had my peer reviewed research article on the UK service from the highly respected international journal International Trans Health and didn’t even bother citing it). For four, I didn’t think things could really get much worse for trans kids in the UK, so I didn’t see how much real harm it could do.
Obviously I was very wrong. I noted my initial reaction to the pathologisation embedded in the Cass report.
The Cass interim report is now being cited everywhere to justify the need for conversion therapy for trans kids. It is being cited to deny inclusion of trans people of any age from a ban on conversion therapy.
The red flags about the Cass process meanwhile continue to grow.
I’ve been interviewed, found Cass on the face of it an empathetic listener who keeps her cards close to her chest.
Other parents of trans kids have been interviewed, again felt Cass had listened with kindness.
Many are deeply upset about the Cass interim report and the way it has encouraged further bigotry.
The Cass interim report couldn’t even take a decision on whether being trans is pathological. It couldn’t even take a decision on whether trans kids are better off being loved and supported or put through conversion torture. It is not acceptable.
I won’t dig into the details of the Cass report itself, but the references and evidence base are deeply biased and flawed. It is yet another total failure for trans kids in the UK.
There are still no trans experts involved in a senior role in the Cass review. There is no trans power at all.
The Cass process seem to think the exclusion of trans people is acceptable, because they have told themselves they are not dealing with trans people at all. They have told themselves they are dealing with healthcare for ‘children suffering from gender distress’. This phrasing has become standard.
Worryingly there are also trans-antagonistic people involved in the research for Cass.
This week, the world respected paediatrician with over a decade of practical hands on experience HELPING trans kids in Australia published a response to the Cass review in the British Medical Journal. That response is not open access to the public, but this is of incredible important to those who are directly affected (and now even threatened) by the Cass outputs, so I will put its text here:
Gender identity services for children and young people in England
Landmark review should interrogate existing international evidence and consensus
Ken C Pang, 1, 3 Jeremy Wiggins, 2 Michelle M Telfer1, 3
1 Royal Children’s Hospital; 2 Transcend Australia; 3 Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
The long awaited interim report of the Cass review was finally published in March this year.1 Commissioned in September 2020, the independent review led by paediatrician Hillary Cass examined NHS gender identity services for children and young people in England. These services are currently provided by a single specialist clinic known as the Gender Identity Development Service. After consulting people with gender diversity, health professionals, and support and advocacy groups, Cass expressed various concerns within her interim report, such as increasingly long waiting lists, the “unsustainable workload” being carried by the service, and the “considerable risk” this presented to children and young people.
Recognising that “one service is not going to be able to respond to the growing demand in a timely way,” Cass used her interim report to recommend creation of a “fundamentally different service model.” Under this model, the care of gender diverse children and young people becomes “everyone’s business” by expanding the number of providers to create a series of regional centres that have strong links to local services and a remit to provide training for clinicians at all levels.1 Although it remains to be seen how and when this key recommendation will be implemented, the proposal will be largely welcomed by gender diverse children and adolescents and their families in England. The shift away from centralised, tertiary, and quaternary centres is already occurring internationally, including in Australia,2 where local services are being enhanced to meet growing demand and provide more equitable and timely care.
Hormonal treatment In what was likely a disappointment to many, the interim report did not provide definitive advice on the use of puberty blockers and feminising or masculinising hormones. Instead, Cass advised that recommendations will be developed as the review’s research programme progresses. In particular, the report expresses the need for more long term data to assuage safety concerns regarding these hormonal interventions. Although additional data in this area are undoubtedly needed, the decision to delay recommendations pending more information on potential unknown side effects is problematic for several reasons.
Firstly, it ignores more than two decades of clinical experience in this area as well as existing evidence showing the benefits of these hormonal interventions on the mental health and quality of life of gender diverse young people.3 -9 Secondly, it will take many years to obtain these long term data. Finally, Cass acknowledges that when there is no realistic prospect of filling evidence gaps in a timely way, professional consensus should be developed on the correct way to proceed.” Such consensus already exists outside the UK. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the World rofessional Association for Transgender Health have all endorsed the use of these hormonal treatments in gender diverse young people,10 -12 but curiously these consensus based clinical guidelines and position statements receive little or no mention in the interim report.
Indeed, there is no evidence, as yet, that the Cass review has consulted beyond the UK. This inward looking focus may be a reflection of how England’s gender identity service has come to chart its own path in this field. For example, its current use of puberty blockers diverges considerably from international best practice. In particular, NHS England mandates that any gender diverse person under the age of 18 years who wishes to access oestrogen or testosterone must first receive at least 12 months of puberty suppression.13 However, many young people in this situation will already be in late puberty or have finished their pubertal development, by which time the main potential benefits of puberty suppression have been lost.11 Moreover, using puberty blockers in such individuals is more likely to induce unwanted menopausal symptoms such as fatigue and disturbed mood.14 For these reasons, puberty suppression outside the UK is typically reserved for gender diverse young people who are in early or middle puberty, when there is a physiological reason for prescribing blockers.
Another possible reason exists for the Cass review appearing to have neglected international consensus around hormone prescribing. While the interim report often mentions the need to “build consensus,” Cass seems keen to find a way forward that ensures “conceptual agreement” and “shared understanding” across all interested parties, including those who view gender diversity as inherently pathological. Compromise can be productive in many situations, but the assumption that the middle ground serves the best interests of gender diverse children and young people is a fallacy. Where polarised opinions exist in medicine—as is true in this case—it can be harmful to give equal credence to all viewpoints, particularly the more extreme or outlying views on either side. Hopefully Cass will keep this in mind when preparing her final report.
(Back to me typing) The authors of the above include some of the most respected paediatricians with decade long expertise in working with trans kids in Australia. The Cass team should have been queuing up to learn from Australian experts. The fact they have totally ignored expertise from outside of the UK and its partner system in the Netherlands, strikes as amazing arrogance. The fact the Australian experts felt the need to write a submission to the BMJ to raise their concerns with the Cass report is again astonishing, and in another less transphobic country would set off alarm bells.
I don’t know where we go from here.
I do know the cards are now on the table. I have zero faith in the Cass process. It has already done more harm than good.
My number one hope for Cass was it would take significant strides in depathologising approaches to trans kids. It has done the exact opposite. 18 months in and they won’t even say the word trans.
I had hoped Cass would educate the public that being trans is not a problem or a pathology. It has done the opposite, and legitimised some incredibly problematising media pieces this week alone.
I had hoped it would move us from psychoanalysis to modern healthcare – instead people are using Cass to justify the need for exploratory therapy, conversion therapy by a different name.
I had hoped it would move trans kids’ healthcare away from a monopoly mental health trust to modern secondary or primary care. Instead, the focus appears to be on talk therapy to problematise trans-ness, without tackling the hostile climate that makes life so hard for trans kids, and perhaps with even less route to medical intervention where needed.
Cass has done nothing to highlight the biggest problem for many trans kids. The climate of societal transphobia. Just this week we have had headlines stating trans people can be humiliated and segregated as the UK tries to bring in a bathroom bill by the back door. Trans kids and adolescents have been in crisis again this week, many are really struggling with mental health. Not because there’s something inherently wrong with being trans, but because the UK is a hostile terrifying place to be trans as our rights are continually debated or taken away. Cass has done absolutely nothing to highlight the crisis in mental health caused by the terrible way our country treats trans people.
Cass has failed us on every level.
The whole process is cis-supremacism in full dominance.
Why do a bunch of cis people continue to debate and dictate whether or not trans kids should be put under conversion therapy.
Why do cis people continue to have all the power, and continue to use it to harm trans kids.
Trans liberation now. Trans kids deserve so much better than this.
Scottie's Playtime 