Do people with severe depression have a right to accurate information about antidepressants? I suspect most people would answer “yes”. There is a general understanding that individuals who suffer from medical conditions are in a vulnerable position, making them susceptible to misinformation. There is also increased awareness of the influence that the profit motive can have on how medical research is funded, undertaken and communicated to the public.
But for some reason, this basic principle doesn’t seem to apply to the hyper-politicised subject of gender medicine. On one side, Republican states are attempting to ban youth gender medicine — and, in some cases, to dial back access to adult gender medicine. On the other, liberals maintain that there is solid evidence for these treatments, and that only an ignorant person could suggest otherwise. . . .
But you’re not being a good ally to trans people if you disseminate shoddy evidence about medicine they might seek. Whatever happens in the red states seeking to ban these treatments, transgender people need to make difficult healthcare choices, many of which can be ruinously expensive. And yet, if you call for the same standards to be applied to gender medicine that are applied to antidepressants, you’ll likely be told you don’t care about trans people.
As Gordon Guyatt, who has done an enormous amount to increase the evidentiary standards of the medical establishment, told me: “You’re doing harm to transgender people if you don’t question the evidence. I believe that people making any health decisions should know about what the best evidence is, and what the quality of evidence is. So by pretending things are not the way they are — I don’t see how you’re not harming people.”
I would love to see Jesse Singal team up with someone like Katelyn Jetelina in assessment of these studies. Jetelina was very good, eg, on the flawed Cochrane study of studies on masks that got a lot of play in the press confusing a whole lot of folks all over again on that issue. The issues here into study design and approaches seem quite similar.
An aside, though of course these things are all related: Lisa, I would be very interested in a post by you expanding on your tweet stream, and particularly this:
“Once gay marriage passed, LGB [advocacy] groups needed new issues to fundraise around. They embraced the T to reinvent themselves, and created a constant panic around it to bring in money. It worked! These former LGB groups now focus almost exclusively on trans issues, presenting preferences and beliefs as rights, lying about the science of gender-affirming care, and likely contributing to anxiety and depression in kids with gender issues and other mental health concerns.”
You reminded me, for one, about how prominent generating panic is in fundraising messages (think, eg, to fundraising emails from politicians, and how panic comes to a crescendo in the messaging as Election Day approaches). As I stopped long ago giving money to any of these organizations for the precise reason that they did not represent my interests as an “L,” I would be interested in learning more about the fundraising and how it creates and heightens panic.
This also led me to think back to what experiences at least some of the organizations drew upon to determine what strategies would be successful and what wouldn’t. As we can see, a lot of the tropes used relate back to pushing to decriminalize same sex attraction and also to get the government to be responsive on allowing experimental medical treatments to be used more widely to treat HIV/AIDS (which was a good thing, BTW, and Fauci was definitely a hero for relenting on that). Now, I fear, all those good organizing lessons and strategies are being misused to fearmonger and to experiment on and harm children who seek to “trans” out of various types of emotional distress and/or homophobia.
Just thinking aloud here, but I would be very interested in learning more about how this aspect of the gender advocacy works.
stacks and stacks around my bed, yet I can't stop spending all of my free time scanning the web for new info. But I just keep buying the books. At least it supports the writers doing the work I want to see.
How terrific! So, even more importantly, if possible for those of us who aren’t zoomers, can a post-zoom video be made available, for example as a download or on YouTube?
Ahhh! So excited. Is it just me? I found this book RIVITING! But i dont read much fiction.
I will put my question in the RSVP but my interest in this topic comes from NOT having a transgender 20yo daughter but having been right along side many families dealing with this as managing my daughters "emerging borderline personality".
For the low low price of $200K (cash) over 4 years we were able to arest the problem and she's doing great today. But we had two things I dont see often, cash and major self advocacy skills. Im curious how this plays out in the UK because they have socialized healthcare. In the US its a "pay to play" system. Map that onto social media causing the teen mental health epidemic (i truly would love to hear another plausible theory besides Haidt and Twenge, et al), and also onto the lack of appropriate/experienced mental health providers in the US, I see this only getting worse regardless of activism.
I see activism as having the perfect petri dish to grow exponentially unchecked in the US healthcare system. And I guess I wonder what kind of road blocks exist in the UK and elsewhere in Europe that we could emulate. On both a policy level and in healthcare, in schools, etc.
Related to Hannah Barnes’s great work, here’s an article by Jesse Singal: https://unherd.com/2023/04/the-media-is-spreading-bad-trans-science/
Some excerpts:
Do people with severe depression have a right to accurate information about antidepressants? I suspect most people would answer “yes”. There is a general understanding that individuals who suffer from medical conditions are in a vulnerable position, making them susceptible to misinformation. There is also increased awareness of the influence that the profit motive can have on how medical research is funded, undertaken and communicated to the public.
But for some reason, this basic principle doesn’t seem to apply to the hyper-politicised subject of gender medicine. On one side, Republican states are attempting to ban youth gender medicine — and, in some cases, to dial back access to adult gender medicine. On the other, liberals maintain that there is solid evidence for these treatments, and that only an ignorant person could suggest otherwise. . . .
But you’re not being a good ally to trans people if you disseminate shoddy evidence about medicine they might seek. Whatever happens in the red states seeking to ban these treatments, transgender people need to make difficult healthcare choices, many of which can be ruinously expensive. And yet, if you call for the same standards to be applied to gender medicine that are applied to antidepressants, you’ll likely be told you don’t care about trans people.
As Gordon Guyatt, who has done an enormous amount to increase the evidentiary standards of the medical establishment, told me: “You’re doing harm to transgender people if you don’t question the evidence. I believe that people making any health decisions should know about what the best evidence is, and what the quality of evidence is. So by pretending things are not the way they are — I don’t see how you’re not harming people.”
I would love to see Jesse Singal team up with someone like Katelyn Jetelina in assessment of these studies. Jetelina was very good, eg, on the flawed Cochrane study of studies on masks that got a lot of play in the press confusing a whole lot of folks all over again on that issue. The issues here into study design and approaches seem quite similar.
An aside, though of course these things are all related: Lisa, I would be very interested in a post by you expanding on your tweet stream, and particularly this:
“Once gay marriage passed, LGB [advocacy] groups needed new issues to fundraise around. They embraced the T to reinvent themselves, and created a constant panic around it to bring in money. It worked! These former LGB groups now focus almost exclusively on trans issues, presenting preferences and beliefs as rights, lying about the science of gender-affirming care, and likely contributing to anxiety and depression in kids with gender issues and other mental health concerns.”
You reminded me, for one, about how prominent generating panic is in fundraising messages (think, eg, to fundraising emails from politicians, and how panic comes to a crescendo in the messaging as Election Day approaches). As I stopped long ago giving money to any of these organizations for the precise reason that they did not represent my interests as an “L,” I would be interested in learning more about the fundraising and how it creates and heightens panic.
This also led me to think back to what experiences at least some of the organizations drew upon to determine what strategies would be successful and what wouldn’t. As we can see, a lot of the tropes used relate back to pushing to decriminalize same sex attraction and also to get the government to be responsive on allowing experimental medical treatments to be used more widely to treat HIV/AIDS (which was a good thing, BTW, and Fauci was definitely a hero for relenting on that). Now, I fear, all those good organizing lessons and strategies are being misused to fearmonger and to experiment on and harm children who seek to “trans” out of various types of emotional distress and/or homophobia.
Just thinking aloud here, but I would be very interested in learning more about how this aspect of the gender advocacy works.
Too many books, too little time. Cue the famous I Love Lucy conveyor belt skit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnHiAWlrYQc
stacks and stacks around my bed, yet I can't stop spending all of my free time scanning the web for new info. But I just keep buying the books. At least it supports the writers doing the work I want to see.
How terrific! So, even more importantly, if possible for those of us who aren’t zoomers, can a post-zoom video be made available, for example as a download or on YouTube?
We've asked permission to record the audio. Haven't gotten a reply yet but will let you know!
To my great surprise, a favorable review of "Time to Think" from the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids
Ahhh! So excited. Is it just me? I found this book RIVITING! But i dont read much fiction.
I will put my question in the RSVP but my interest in this topic comes from NOT having a transgender 20yo daughter but having been right along side many families dealing with this as managing my daughters "emerging borderline personality".
For the low low price of $200K (cash) over 4 years we were able to arest the problem and she's doing great today. But we had two things I dont see often, cash and major self advocacy skills. Im curious how this plays out in the UK because they have socialized healthcare. In the US its a "pay to play" system. Map that onto social media causing the teen mental health epidemic (i truly would love to hear another plausible theory besides Haidt and Twenge, et al), and also onto the lack of appropriate/experienced mental health providers in the US, I see this only getting worse regardless of activism.
I see activism as having the perfect petri dish to grow exponentially unchecked in the US healthcare system. And I guess I wonder what kind of road blocks exist in the UK and elsewhere in Europe that we could emulate. On both a policy level and in healthcare, in schools, etc.
👌👌👌