The cranks and misfits behind 'trans healthcare'

A Malcolm Clarke thread on the bad science behind the UK Govt's Conversion Therapy study

Reed Erickson

How bad is the science employed by the trans lobby? Terrible, if we're to judge by the UK govt's recent study into Conversion Therapy which argues for an affirmation only model for "trans youth". It's only the latest in a tradition of awful, pseudo-science trans research.

The tax-payer funded report makes huge claims but was based on interviews with a grand total of 30 people. Remember how much the trans lobby complained about that BBC article based on interviews with ‘just 80’ lesbians? Maybe lesbian experiences count for less at Oink News?

The absurd thing is the UK govt is taking seriously a report that opines on "Gender Identity Conversion Therapy" which examined only 4 previous studies, none of which were conducted in the UK. Incredibly, the report interviewed only SIX trans or "non-binary" people. Six?

And of those 6 people only 3 claimed their "Conversion Therapy" was an attempt to change their gender identity. So the UK govt is considering interfering in the practice of psychotherapy based on THREE interviews. You couldn't make it up. But it gets even worse.

The report admits interviews were sourced thru groups like @OzanneFoundn which have made madly exaggerated claims about Conversion Therapy in the UK. It even quotes "journalist" Patrick Strudwick as a source; someone whose work has never knowingly been confused with facts.

No govt that cared about evidence would give this Report the time of day. But it's just the most recent example of bizarrely bad research in support of the trans lobby. Who can forget Jack Turban's pathetic paper in support of puberty blockers?

Turban used a self-selecting group drummed up by trans activist lobbyists and only admitted in the small print that kids who got puberty blockers were screened for mental health so...of course they should have better mental health outcomes than those who didn't get blockers.

Except they didn't. There were IN FACT more attempts at suicide among those who got blockers than those who didn't and double the rate of hospitalisations from suicide attempts. Yet Turban didn't bother to correct headlines from inveterate fibbers like this one.

The trans lobby's "science" began in the 1920s when medic Magnus Hirschfeld set up a clinic in Berlin. But err...Hirschfeld recommended crackpot testicle transplants to "cure" homosexuality and his clinic was mired in colonial racism.

The LGBTQ+ movement celebrates the fact Hirschfeld's clinic championed the first vaginoplasty. They don't mention the surgeon, Gohrbrandt, became a leading figure in the Nazi sterilisation of the disabled; and commissioned disgusting and deadly experiments at Dachau.

In time, another Hirschfeld admirer, Harry Benjamin, tried to turn the dark world of backroom sex change surgery by Nazis into a respectable discipline by developing "protocols" that would become the basis of oft-quoted trans health body, @wpath

But don't be fooled. WPATH remains a shady lobby group that promotes dubious "science". How could it not be? It was - as the now renamed Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association - the brainchild of one of the most eccentric trans activists in history, Reed Erickson.

Erickson was a lesbian who in the 1950s decided "he" was a man, had surgery, kept a pet leopard called Henry, hoovered up ketamine and poured vast sums of money into "his" pet causes including the "science" of gender identity and "transsexualism".

As trans activist Morgan Page recently pointed out without Reed "we would not have trans health care, period." The vast sums of money Reed poured into founding gender dysphoria clinics in the US created the model that has now metastasised across the world.

But what beneficiaries of Reed's largesse such as WPATH don't admit is just how cranky were his interests. The miracle of sex change was not "his" only pseudo-science obsession. Reed was a huge believer in telekinesis and telepathy using dreams.

Reed also lavished funds on John Lilley, a biologist and fellow ketamine fiend, who claimed he'd learned to speak dolphin language. His experiments ended in scandal when his research assistant admitted she'd been having sex with one of the dolphins.

If that isn't bizarre enough for you, Reed was also obsessed by latter day religious miracles. "He" funded A Course in Miracles, a book that would go on to become a best-seller by the author Helen Schucman who claimed every word was dictated to her by ...Jesus. Okay.....

WPATH is now endlessly quoted as some sort of scientific authority. It isn't. When you're told that remember it was brought into being by a rich transman who believed in dolphin-human communication, telepathy, revelation through ketamine and books dictated by Jesus.

The whole "discipline" of trans health care is still rooted in the values of its Reed Erickson origins. What else explains the incompetence of the Tavistock whose own research shows puberty blockers lead to more self-harm and behavioural problems?

What else explains the threadbare evidence cited by puberty blocker enthusiasts like Dr Joshua Safer who pushed the Endocrine Society into appealing against Keira Bell's victory in the courts? Here he admits the evidence for gender identity is "weak".

How can anyone take seriously someone like Dr Norman Spack who first popularised puberty blockers? Here's his distinctly unscientific take on how "beautiful" kids seemed once they were on the blockers that kept them so very pre-pubescent.

The sad truth is the govt's Conversion Therapy Study is a mess on gender identity because the whole subject has become a morass of ill-defined terms, unscientific assertions and misrepresentations by activists who fiercely protect them from normal scrutiny.

A ban on Conversion Therapy makes sense. But such a ban can't be driven by pseudo-science which aims to stop good therapists exploring gender dysphoria humanely. It's time for the trans lobby to invest in rigorous research and leave the obsessions of Reed Erickson behind.