Jumping on to a sinking ship
Carrie Johnson's bad timing
This week the UK prime minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, while flanked by Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley and Crispin Blunt MP, spoke at the Conservative Party Conference to reveal that her husband is committed to ‘extending’ LGBT rights.
She did not reveal what rights LGBT people do not currently have but added “The government he leads is banning conversion therapy”.
Anyone who’s been following the debate around ‘gender’ knows that the fight against ‘conversion therapy’ is a smokescreen, slyly designed to make people think that what is being banned is the practice of converting homosexual men or women to heterosexuality, something which doesn’t appear to be an actual issue in the UK. When applied to’ gender identity’, however, it morphs into the very thing it pretends to oppose by preventing parents, teachers and doctors from questioning why someone feels they are the opposite sex, rather than simply gay. This is the case even though nearly seven in ten children diagnosed with gender dysphoria outgrow it — with many going on to be lesbian or gay adults.
Also this week, two stories have broken which starkly reveal the dangers of the affirmation model. Both have been completely ignored by the mainstream media, much of which is openly campaigning against ‘conversion therapy’ in this muddled, contradictory, phantom form.
The first was a Cambridge study on NHS gender identity clinic users in 2017 and 2018, which found a staggering 43.9% of patients do not complete transgender treatment. To put that into perspective, there is very little data on what percentage of overall NHS patients fail to have the surgery they need, but a 2013 study found 5.19% of patients had their surgery cancelled on the day of it, and that was mostly because there was a lack of beds or they were not fit for the operation - the patient’s failure to attend or an acceptance that the operation was not necessary made up a tiny minority of that tiny percentage. If nearly half of heart or hip replacement patients did not have the surgery on the NHS they needed this would be a national scandal.
The review concludes: “Service users may have unmet needs. Neurodevelopmental disorders or adverse childhood experiences suggest complexity requiring consideration during the assessment process. Managing mental ill-health and substance misuse during treatment needs optimising. Detransitioning might be more frequent than previously reported.”
Nearly everyone (94%) who was on this transgender pathway accessed hormones, which means that nearly half of patients, at least, had access to irreversible and life-changing medication that they did not need, at least partly because they were not challenged on their gender identity beliefs. Carrie Johnson now wants to outlaw those conversations.
The second story involved Marci Bowers and Erica Anderson, two board members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the body that sets global standards for transgender medical care, and revealed that children are being rushed too quickly for their own health into transgender treatment.
Marci Bowers, a male who identifies as a woman, is probably the most famous surgeon of transgender patients in the world, and is an inspiration to Mermaids CEO Susie Green, who once quoted Bowers when she argued that children should not be psychologically assessed for transgender surgery, that there should be no minimum age for that surgery and that the fact that the surgery will sterilise the child is not a sufficient reason to avoid it.
Abigail Shrier’s extraordinary article reveals that Bowers has now disavowed these views. Bowers said “I’m not a fan” of putting children in the early stages of puberty on blockers (citing the inevitable loss of fertility and sexual intimacy), even though this is recommended by WPATH, where he sits on the board. WPATH also states that puberty blockers are “fully reversible”, something that Anderson, also a board member, says “I’m not sure” about.
On the model of providing affirmative care only, which a ban on ‘conversion therapy’ will ensure, Bowers now says: “I think that’s a mistake,” while admitting that there are children who say they are trans because it is currently a “cool” thing to say, before adding, presumably to people like Carrie Johnson: “Wake up here.”
On detransitioning, Anderson, who said there is an “abject failure” to properly evaluate the mental health of people who want transgender treatment, says: “We’re going to have more young adults who will regret having gone through this process … I’m worried that decisions will be made that will later be regretted by those making them.
“When you have a female-assigned person and she’s feeling dysphoric, or somebody decides that she’s dysphoric and says your eating disorders are not really eating disorders, this is actually gender dysphoria, and then they see you for one visit, and then they recommend testosterone — red flag!”
Perhaps the most shocking detail about both these stories is that they’re being covered on Substack and not in the mainstream media.
Perhaps if they were, Carrie Johnson might pause before attaching her name to an ideology from which even some of its biggest proponents are now trying to distance themselves.
I was at Carrie’s speech. There was a fourth speaker - Elena Bunbury, chair of LGBT Conservatives, ostensibly to introduce them. “Trans is beautiful.” “Trans rights are not a debate.” I heckled the word “shame” - once and during the applause. Elena framed the rest of the speech around “the heckler” as I listened quietly. In the interval I was approached with the predictable, farfetched spiel. Claims members’ safety was at risk, that people were too scared to attend with the LGB Alliance stall recognised. Same from other party members, had a lot of threatening language my way later in the night. Zero reports of any abuse coming from LGBA and zero danger yet the myth continues. The vast majority of the many conservatives I met this week held a steadfast conviction for free speech and debate. A tiny few ignore party decision and use their identities to cancel speakers like the snowflakes of left-wing notoriety. Fortunately Liz Truss is fighting strong with Boris and Sajid resisting getting dragged into woke nonsense. Perhaps time for an LGBT chairman more aligned with the cabinet, “getting on with it”.
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