March 2024
Newsletter
Roll call of the rational
The list of countries and states that have banned or are investigating the prescription of puberty blockers to gender-distressed children is growing by the week. Here is the latest roll-call:
France 2024 French senators have published a report that expresses alarm at the excesses of child gender transition and have proposed a bill to put an end to it.
England 2024: The NHS will no longer routinely prescribe puberty blockers at gender identity clinics in England and Wales. (Scotland NHS is a separate body.)
The Netherlands 2024: The Dutch government has passed a motion to conduct research into the physical and mental health outcomes of children given puberty blockers.
Denmark 2023 In a marked shift in the country's approach to caring for youth with gender dysphoria, most youth who are referred to the centralised gender clinic now receive therapeutic counselling and support, rather than a prescription for puberty blockers.
Norway 2023 After a review, the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board stated it has serious concerns about the treatment of gender dysphoria in children and that the current ‘gender affirming’ guidelines are not evidence-based and must be revised.
Sweden 2021 The Karolinska Hospital ceased the use of puberty blockers for those aged under 18 .
Finland 2020 revised its treatment guidelines, prioritising psychological interventions and support over medical interventions.
USA 2023-24: A total of 22 states have so far passed laws protecting children from routine medicalisation of gender distress. The laws vary in what they proscribe and in the penalties imposed and some of them are subject to ongoing legal challenges. This interactive map provides state by state details.
New Zealand 2022: In September of that year the Ministry of Health website quietly removed its description of puberty blockers as being “safe and fully reversible” and initiated a review into their safety and efficacy. We are still awaiting that report.
WPATH discredited
A major medical scandal in the UK and US has had almost no media coverage in NZ.
The “WPATH files” are documents leaked from the internal chatboard of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). They shine a light on how so-called “gender-affirming care” or “transgender medicine” is leading to widespread medical malpractice on children and vulnerable adults.
WPATH is extremely influential in shaping UK treatment protocols in the NHS. Thousands of children and vulnerable adults are being treated under these protocols. The leaked files reveal that treatments may do more harm than good, and suggest that some clinicians who are members of WPATH know this. (Sex Matters)
In this Guardian report, Hannah Barnes highlights some of the disturbing content of the files: Elsewhere, there are extraordinary discussions on how to manage “trans clients” with dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called multiple personality disorder) when “not all the alters have the same gender identity”. Surgeons talk about procedures that result in bodies that don’t exist in nature: those with both sets of genitals – the “phallus-preserving vaginoplasty”; double mastectomies that don’t have nipples; “nullification” surgery, where there are no genitals at all, just smooth skin. And doctors discuss the possibility that 16-year-old patients have liver cancer as the result of taking hormones. The problem is not necessarily the discussions themselves, but that the organisation is not so open when speaking publicly.
Sex Matters concludes: WPATH’s influence goes far beyond treatment protocols in gender clinics. Last year we wrote about how some NHS trusts are now using software from the USA that requires all of us to declare a gender identity, even babies. We now know that this originated with WPATH. The software, called EPIC, normalises the highly contested idea that everyone has a gender identity, and that this may be different from their sex. It throws out the basic fact that there are two sexes, each with a predictable set of body parts: instead it has a checklist of reproductive and other sex organs, to be completed for each patient.
The WPATH files show how people with gender confusion are being let down by the body that claims to be protecting them with its expertise. But EPIC shows that its baleful influence goes beyond gender medicine: it is harming us all.
Sign the declaration
In response to WPATH’s dangerously flawed protocols, Beyond WPATH has set up an online declaration for anyone to sign, stating that WPATH has discredited itself. In conclusion, it says:
In response to dramatically rising numbers of gender-questioning youth, a wide range of alternative guidance has become available, embodying professional expertise that is ethical, minimizes the risk of iatrogenic harm, and respects the limitations of our current scientific evidence base. We are signing this Declaration to highlight our grave concerns about WPATH’s Standards of Care, and to encourage parents, schools, psychotherapists, and other health care professionals to utilise the wealth of alternative resources that can be found online and in printed materials that are now widely available.
Please sign the declaration here.
How to approach your child’s teacher
One of our supporters shared her now annual letter to her child’s new teacher about gender identity ideology. She explained her reasons for opposing these beliefs and suggested a better book to read the class than the sexist one recommended in Navigating the Journey. Read the letter here.
Schools in Wales transitioning children in secret
The Telegrah reports that the Welsh Government has promised to publish draft guidance for schools on how to respond to gender-questioning children after a survey showed 100% of schools there would socially transition a child and 68% of them would not inform parents of a pronoun change without the permission of the child. 51% of the schools also allow children to play sport according to their ‘gender identity’.
The father of an autistic child at school in Wales says he only found out that teachers were treating his 14-year-old son as a girl at parents’ evening.
He said secrecy by the school, which allowed his son to change his name, pronouns, and dress code, had damaged his child’s health and put other pupils at risk.
“Robert is autistic so while his understanding is good, he really struggles with social situations,” the father said. “He’s a big strong boy, impulsive. He’s keen to learn, but his social and emotional development have been assessed as being delayed by about seven years, and he has a statement of special needs.”
He added: “On parents’ evening my wife went in and some of the teachers were saying things like, ‘Ruby has done very well in English this year. Oh, sorry, should it be Rob?’
“Stand by for the mother of all April Fools’ jokes”
These words were JK Rowling’s response to suggestions on X that she should delete her posts opposing gender ideology when new hate speech laws come into force in Scotland on April 1st.
The legislation creates a criminal offence of “stirring up hatred” on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity. The Police Scotland website defines a hate crime as, “any crime which is understood by the victim or any other person as being motivated, wholly or partly by malice or ill will towards a social group”. Anyone can make a complaint and the government has made it super easy to complain by setting up hundreds of “snitching” centres, as described in this Spectator article:
From next month in Scotland you’ll be able to drop into a sex shop, make an anonymous accusation of hate crime against someone you dislike and potentially see your bete noir locked up. You think I’m joking – that this is an April Fool come early. I only wish it was. In two weeks’ time, this will be the law of the land in Scotland under the SNP’s iniquitous Hate Crime Act which makes ‘stirring up hatred’ a criminal offence punishable by 7 years in jail.
The sex shop in question is an LGBTQ-friendly establishment in Glasgow’s Merchant City. It is a ‘third-party reporting centre’ set up by Police Scotland to make it easier to accuse someone of hate crime. There will be 411 of these snitching centres across Scotland located everywhere from mushroom farms to caravan sites. Trans activists across the land will be able to accuse JK Rowling, 24/7, of being a transphobe.
Sean Plunket interviews a Drag Queen
In this interview on March 27, Sunita Torrance, the founder of Rainbw Storytime in libraries, admits that drag queens parody women and act as the clown in their events.
RGE asks: how does stereotyping women and mocking them help children to learn not to bully and not to be sexist?
A Dog Stays a Dog
A very appealing new set of online books, designed to provide resilience for preschool to young primary-aged children, is now available.
The books were written by Dr. Tal Croitoru, a BA in Education, and Phd in Social work and can be downloaded here: https://realitybasedpublishing.com/
Payment is by a method called ‘Danna’. You receive the book first and then choose to donate whatever amount you wish in return.
100% of the proceeds are for charity – the money is a donation for the legal fees and health and rehabilitation costs of a male detransitioner post SRS.
Two new recommended books
Stella O’Malley highly recommends both of these books on her substack.
Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier O’Malley asks, “Are we raising a generation of emotional hypochondriacs?”
With meticulous research and unflinching honesty, Shrier exposes the pitfalls and dangers that have emerged in the US after seventy-five years of rapid expansion in the mental health industry. As she points out “Wanting to help is not the same as helping.”
This book offers an incisive and sharp analysis that delves deep into the tangled web of the mental health establishment among young people. She advises caution before sending adolescents to therapy and pulls no punches as she delivers a blistering denunciation of the therapeutic culture that simultaneously reveres compassion and disregards adult guidance and common sense.
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt O’Malley says:
The research is inarguable. With a series of horrifying graphs and corresponding analysis, Haidt demonstrates that young people’s mental health has fallen off a cliff since the early 2010s. While acknowledging the impact of over-diagnosis and self-reported mental illness, the correlation between the arrival of smart phones and social media with soaring numbers of mental illnesses among young people appears to be unmistakeable.
i signed the anti warpath petition thanks to you.