[ChristmasNeeve]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

In short, the issue is that they push the idea that any study / research into the best mental health approaches when it comes to children expressing gender identity issues is akin to questioning the validity of transexuality... They advocate a "if a child expresses any inclination that they might be trans, immediately consider them trans" approach when there is literally zero evidence base for that being the right approach, and a huge amount of evidence to suggest that pre-adolescent children are very unlikely to have any real concept of gender identity... And these are often not just average pre-adolescents, they're pre-adolescents who are actively engaging with CAHMS services and often have various mental health concerns, trauma, etc. There are some absolutely MASSIVE informed consent issues.

I personally have to draw a hard line there; adults are free to campaign for adult rights on whatever political grounds they want, but people with no qualifications, and not even an evidence base to offer, seeking to influence child mental health policy? Not great. Also some questionable/unprofessional tactics used to try to push the issue.

This is where I have an issue with gender basically replacing sex. Gender is societal "norms" for men/women and is pretty sexist (something women have been trying to quash for years and now it's like a step back into the past thanks to "gender") If we're pushing gender norms as a way to decipher if a person is trans then you're going to have alot of wrong diagnoses.