Both: How do you feel about the High Court's decision in the Keira Bell case?

submitted by worried19 from self.GCdebatesQT

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[–]FlippyKingSadly this sub welcomes rape apologists and victim blaming. Bye! 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

gatekeeping implies keeping someone way from something desirable, where what is truly desirable requires actual informed consent of which minors or the mentally challenged or the mentally ill are not capable of. This is keeping kids away from ruining their bodies, ie themselves, from their mental development to their physical development while messing up their social development as the kids around them go through normal puberty all for an untested and foolish hope that puberty can be put off. Gatekeeping is the wrong term. Protection for harm, or safeguarding, are better terms. The court asked for a range of statistics and the clinic provided none. There was no safeguarding going on, no assessment of how these off-label and experimental uses of drugs affected the kids they were giving them to and no assessment of even how many went on to get SRS. There was no safeguarding and no gatekeeping either. The court simply did what the so-called professionals refused to do.

[–]Porcelain_QuetzalTabby without Ears 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Wether you call it gatekeeping or protection its goal is the sale thing. Keeping minors who don't need to transition away from transition. The only difference here is perspective. Wether you argue from the side of those that have to transition aka transsexuals, or those who desist and thus would be protected by the added burocracy. I could argue your points in reverse for trans kids, but I think you can easily enough imagine that yourself. So regardless of wether you call it gatekeeping or protection, we both agree that some is necessary. Our biggest difference seems to be the kind oand amount of bureaucracy added to the process. Still waiting for any points that adress my concerns regarding this.

[–]FlippyKingSadly this sub welcomes rape apologists and victim blaming. Bye! 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

See, that's that thing: calling it gatekeeping or calling it safe guarding does treat the goals as two different things. That's why "gatekeeping" is the activist's preferred term, because it makes it sound comparable to a narrow-minded member of a fandom keeping out fans the narrow-minded don't like. Calling it safe guarding acknowledges the reality that these are children who have no idea what it means to ruin their bodies and their health in the long term over the very questionable idea that some inner identity can properly conflict with outward reality and that the inner identity is somehow "gendered" in a way that mimics what has always been seen as sexed differences and that uses those terms to abrogate the ability to described sexed differences.

Similarly, you make three assumptions that can not be proved or tested, about: 1) the existence of minors who need to transition; 2) the idea that there is some way to discern those from all other minors; 3) that this sensed "need" to transition can be isolated and assessed from other contributing (comorbidity) factors that may be overriding. The child who could be better off transitioning, where that is the sole or over-riding cause of their dilemma, can not be later shown to have been that even if they choose that path years later (edited for clarity because it's an easy sentence to make very confusing), because the decision made at that later time will be influenced by their experiences over that time. Another bad assumption you make is around the idea that a choice that appears correct and reasonable at one point in a persons life may later turn out to be the wrong choice. Making what may appear to be the best choice at one time may turn out to be the wrong turn, and the simple fact that the impact these drugs will have on a kid's life is not known makes it questionable they are ever the right choice. Trans activists are essentially lying when they say someone turns out to not be truly trans if they change their mind (or if they just reflect badly on their cause), and this reflects the ever-shifting goal posts between the idea of a fixed and gendered inner identity and the idea of a fluid spectrum of gendered identities.

If those somehow describe your points, they can not be addressed because they can not be assessed by anyone in a position to provide safeguarding. But your points willfully ignore the simple fact that the trial shows that there was no safe guarding going on and no data kept so that these experimental treatments were: better targeted towards those who need them, or not thrust upon kids who simply didn't know any better and assumed from what they heard from others about what they needed.

Your point seems to be based around the idea that these drugs should be placed in a public place so that people who want to use them off-label to monkey around with the onset of puberty can just get them in the hopes that those who would benefit from them can get them. Your point seems to have complete disregard for those who would benefit from not getting them. Your point seems somehow ignorant of the fact that these drugs are prescription drugs only given when a health professional determines they are actually needed is the only way to legally get these drugs. Should someone who browses a prostate cancer on-line forum just get luporon if they think what they read describes their situation? No, that would be stupid. But somehow a kid with autism, which Tavistock would have us believe the don't screen for, or who does not conform to gendered expectations of their parents, or who has other mental problems that they can not make sense of, should just get these drugs? Your point seems to ignore what can be known by those who prescribe the drugs, seems ignorant of how little any teenager or younger person can know about themselves and how they fit into the world, and seems ignorant of what "off-label" use of drugs means. So, I don't plan on addressing your points unless you find away to make them in away that can be addressed. Your concerns must be someone's call, and the trial showed that it was no responsible person's call. There was no safeguarding and no gate keeping.

[–]Porcelain_QuetzalTabby without Ears 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Anyways. As I have said the terms gatekeeping and safeguarding describe the same thing: rules that let those in who need it and keep those out who don't. I don't like arguing over semantics, but I think the term gatekeeping is more applicable in this situation, because getting judges involved any time another trans child below 16 seeks treatment just adds another imo unessecsry step. Because what data are these judges going to rely on. They aren't experts in the field and likely don't have the time do an in depth screening. I'm assuming they'll ask actual psychologists. If theyre going to ask them anyway you can just cut out the middle man. I have proposed this in my previous post, since I think that some gatekeeping or safeguarding is necessary. Getting courts involved just doesn't give any significant benefits, besides added costs and a dependency on the political climate in the UK. I'm not as you think, in favor of putting drugs for off label use in a public place so those who want to get access to it. I actually never said anything remotely like that. So that whole last paragraph actually addresses none of my concerns.

Also "off label" doesn't mean a lot. It just means that the manufacturer hasn't paid to test their medication for this use case in this country. In my country off Label drugs [cytotec] are given during child birth, heck all of the ones im currently using are beeing prescribed off label. It's not the big "experiment on harmless children" you make it out to be.

Honestly writing my response I feel like you're misunderstanding the issue I have with the topic. It's not that there was a trial. Its not the court mandated that safeguarding be done. It's the kind of gatekeeping that's beeing implemented, which I take issues with. Something your entire response unfortunately doesn't adress. I can gather from it that you seem to be opposed to children transitioning in any capacity, which I completely disagree with. There is no reasonable assumption that some kids wouldn't benefit from transition and that the issues of screening for them can't be solved in some capacity.

[–]FlippyKingSadly this sub welcomes rape apologists and victim blaming. Bye! 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I really think you are either being disingenuous or you really did not read and understand the reason this legal action was taken by Tavistock's victims nor understand just how badly the defense portrayed themselves.

The side effects of Luporon should make you take the off-label use of that drug more seriously, but you clearly are not interested in that. To dismiss the testing needed to determine if a drug is safe is reckless and it is obvious you don't have any expertise in what that entails. The drug safety does not assess how safe a drug is compared to say a placebo but how safe it is considering that doing nothing might well be expected to lead to death from the disease, such as prostate cancer which Luporon is used for. The damage done by the drug to the older person with prostate cancer is compared to the damage done by the cancer and the age matters. To pretend it is no big deal that a drug used on old people and tested with that in mind is being used on adolescents shows a profound ignorance on your part.

Your issue with the topic is really your own ignorance of the trial and how it showed there was no safeguarding going on. That which you would prefer is what should have been done, but wasn't. The matter behind this was: did the clinic fail in their role of safe guarding Keira Bell when they considered if she should get these drugs. The answer is clearly yes, and more than that the court concluded that there likely can not be any "informed consent" that these kids are capable of. That you obviously ignore. Do you think that the kids are capable of it? The defense didn't even really try to demonstrate that, they put kids up who showed the opposite-- that they were kids thinking like kids.

It most certainly is the big experment on children you pretend it isn't and without testing you can't say it isn't. Basically when you say "It's not the big 'experiment on harmless children' you make it out to be" are are flat-out lying because you can not possibly know that. This experiement on children has not been gone on long enough and Tavistock didn't keep records to find out what the results of this experiment was. If that doesn't bother you, you have your priorities wrong. The bottom line still is, these kids who come in to the clinic because they suspect they are trans (Please, define that. What is trans, what causes it, and what are the solutions, and why is some innner sense of identity "gendered"? That has to be firmly established before giving kids drugs comes close to sounding reasonable) have to assessed to see if that is true and if other factors are not the biggest problems they face. It may turn out that even if the get the drugs and go through all the steps, the other factors may lead to the same disastrous outcome-- suicide-- that is the big fear now. You have to assess which path leads to the most damage physically and psychologically, to the entire population that walks into that clinic: being cautious and assessing and dealing with all the comorbidities, or what is obviously your preference of leave the drugs on a table with a sign saying "take these, you might be fine".

But, you need to accept that there was no gate-keeping nor safeguarding and court is not stepping in to do it on a case by case basis, but they instead concluded that informed consent (which can only be a choice given to a kid after the safeguarding and due diligence is done) is likely not even possible. The court is not doing what you think they are doing. They simply saw nothing was being done and that nothing was being done in spite of the law being clear that safeguarding must be done (otherwise these "professionals" would not be professionals in a profession with professional standards and legal obligations, and it would all be one big hobby) and the court concluded that the informed consent, the end point of the due diligence and safe guarding for any kid that they would consider giving the drugs to, is probably not even possible with this.

But, if you haven't read what actually happened at the trial you probably won't now-- or you're being disingenuous. I think we can agree to disagree though as we're repeating ourselves.