'Transitioning Teens' - A partly political broadcast on behalf of the trans industry
On Thursday 5th August, BBC 3 began screening its programme, Transitioning Teens.
This documentary, aimed at young people, is another part of a long programming list that demonstrates the BBC’s slavish adherence to the cult of gender. It is a 45 minute advertisement for pushing vulnerable and gender non-conforming kids into hormones and irreversible surgery. It presents an entirely one-sided and wholly uncritical view that affirmation and medical intervention are the only ways to treat gender dysphoria in children.
But then, presented by trans activist, Charlie Craggs, the programme was never going to be objective.
Craggs meets three dysphoric teens who are waiting for treatment. Of course, it is heart-breaking that these young people are not getting the care they so desperately need because the NHS’s youth gender service is at breaking point. However, the programme makes the constant assumption that medical intervention is the only available treatment. Similarly, the reason for the massive increase in young people, especially girls, now seeking help for issues around their gender, is not even considered.
One of the teenagers in the programme is taking hormones purchased from internet sites. While a cursory mention is made of the dangers involved in self-medication, the risks arising from prescribed puberty blockers and hormones are not examined.
According to the NHS, “Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children.” A number of psychiatry papers have been published recently which discredit affirmation treatments for gender dysphoric children. (For example, Griffin et al, published in the BJPsych Bulletin.)
Earlier this year, Sweden’s Karolinska Hospital stopped prescribing puberty blockers to children under sixteen. “These treatments are potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis.”
Much has been written about the experimental nature of puberty blockers and their potential risks. Yet in a programme specifically about the treatment of dysphoric teenagers, it doesn’t even warrant a mention.
Throughout the programme there are numerous references to trans-identified teenagers being ‘in the wrong body’, of going through ‘the wrong puberty’ and of needing medical and cosmetic treatment in order to ‘live in the right gender’.
Breast binding is discussed as ‘uncomfortable’ but necessary with no mention of the serious risks - compressed, fractured, and broken ribs, respiratory problems, damage to lungs, blood vessels, muscles and posture, back problems and even heart attack - associated with the practice.
One of the teens in the programme is taking testosterone bought from GenderGP which it describes as “The only clinic in England and Wales which prescribes hormones to under 16s”. That it does so from an offshore base, is wholly unregulated and has been caught prescribing drugs to minors without their parents’ knowledge and consent are more facts this ‘documentary’ fails to cover.
Craggs speaks to the GenderGP’s founder, disgraced GP, Helen Webberley. She is currently the subject of a GMC tribunal with charges concerning her alleged failure to provide good clinical care to three child patients, inappropriately prescribing drugs to two other patients and attempting to avoid regulations following her conviction for illegally operating a gender clinic.
The programme, however, presents her as some sort of wrongfully pilloried guardian angel, the numerous charges against her skillfully downplayed.
Since it's how she makes her living, Webberley, of course, has no issue with handing out powerful hormones to dysphoric children. “Why do we need big long assessment periods to prove - why should I prove - that anybody else is or isn’t transgender?”
The programme does mention the ruling in the Keira Bell case which Craggs describes with breath-taking hyperbole as “taking our rights away”. On the subject of detransition, the programme presents this spurious ‘statistic’:
It fails to mention that gauging the number of people who detransition is almost impossible due to GIDS’ dreadful data-keeping. As we heard during the Keira Bell case, the children treated at the Tavistock were never tracked into adulthood. So there is no reliable information about the number who may have detransitioned.
The programme references suicide no less than seven times with the clear implication that self-harm is the inevitable outcome if trans-identified teens are not affirmed in their ‘gender identity’ with hormones and surgery.
Craggs shrugs off concerns about the long-term risks and side effects of hormones. “Why are we not talking about the long-term side effects of not being on them? Because, guess what? There is no long-term without them. Look at the attempted suicide rates amongst young trans people…”
His speech is accompanied by this graphic, which quotes a study commissioned by LGBT charity, PACE. Yet another spurious ‘statistic’.
As detailed by Transgender Trend, there are a number of issues with this study, particularly the sample size. The study was conducted by questionnaire, distributed within the LGBT community. 120 questionnaires were completed by transgender people of whom only 27 were under 26 years of age. Of these 27 young trans people, 13 of them, ie 48%, reported having attempted suicide at some point.
The BBC is presenting as fact that 48% of all trans youth attempt suicide based on a study of just 27 people.
The programme’s constant discussion of suicide is in direct contravention of the Samaritan’s media guidelines: “Research evidence shows that certain types of media depictions, such as explicitly describing a method, sensational and excessive reporting, can lead to imitational suicidal behaviour among vulnerable people”.
Furthermore, according to GIDS’ own website, “Suicidality in young people attending the GIDS is similar to that of young people referred to child and adolescent mental health services. It is not helpful to suggest that suicidality is an inevitable part of this condition… The majority of the children and young people we see do not self harm, nor do they make attempts to end their own life”.
The BBC should know better than to keep peddling this dangerous trans suicide myth; it upheld a complaint on this very issue just last week.
The BBC is supposed to uphold strict rules of impartiality and accuracy. Instead, our publicly-funded national broadcaster is pushing an anti-science ideology, lying to adults and grooming children.
If you’d like to make a complaint about this programme, you can do so here.
Well it looks like they learned nothing from when they enabled Jimmy Savile
Absolutely demonstrating a full on gender ideology capture. It’s not only dangerous but it’s lies and pseudoscience mixed with emotive garbage. Any young questioning person watching such rubbish May fixate on medical intervention being the only route to manage their dysphoria. It’s way over time to actually apply proper therapeutic sessions to understand the boom in gender dysphoria rather than pander to kids who are struggling.
Incidentally the way Charlie Craggs posts it’s clearly from the male POV. Speech patterns never change. Aggression never changes. Entitlement never changes. Someone perhaps should have got to the root of their dysphoria too.