babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Cheri DiNovo wants Ontario to ban 'conversion therapy' for LBGT youth
May 30, 2015 - 7:39am
;
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cheri-dinovo-wants-ontario-to-ban-...
I had no idea Ontario payed for that stupid shit, I agree 100%
Full disclosure: I used to work at Addiction Research Foundation, which is now part of CAMH, but my job was in the addiction medicine side of things and I had nothing to do with the gender identity clinic that is the direct target of this legislation.
In fact, "conversion therapy" is not explicitely paid for by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan because there is no working definition of what constitutes "conversion therapy."
http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/1325388/prominent-psychiatrist-speaks-o...
"Conversion therapy" is a term originally coined to describe a "treatment" that attempts to turn gay kids straight as promoted by fundamentalist Christians in the US. It is an unconscionable practice that has been completely discredited, and I'm not sure it was ever done in Ontario. But "conversion therapy" has now come to mean trying to convert transgender kids, a process that is much less studied and well-defined. This particular campaign is an international effort by a small group of trans activists who adhere to the "born this way" narrative of transgender, a theory that is widely disseminated in popular culture, but disputed even within the transgender community.
In fact, 80% of kids claiming to be transgender grew up to be not trans, a study found:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-sol...
As a health care professional, I am concerned about legislation being written on the basis of the assertion of activists who lack the evidence on which they base their claims.
Which activists are you talking about?
There are people with an agenda on both sides of this, and even if a study finds only one quarter of people had persistent feelings they would be better served by therapy that supports choice rather than suppressing it. It can take people years to sort out things like orientation, too.
Certainly this is a complex issue, doubly so because it involves children. But how honest is it to have this in the hands of a doctor who only recognizes one view of this simply because it is not something which is completely understood?
It wasn't that long ago that non-straight orientation was considered disease, and plenty of people in all camps still refuse to recognize bisexuality.
Manitoba has banned the practice
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/05/22/manitoba-bans-conversion-therapy
It's use on minors is already banned in a number of US states [calling it child abuse] while there is a push to enact Leelah's Law, named after Leelah Alcorn, to ban it nationwide.
I've read this thread and have very little idea what this is all about.
The Toronto Sun article keeps saying Manitoba has "banned" "conversion therapy". I'm quite sure that's absolutely false. I'm quite sure all they've done is said, "don't bill Medicare for it". You have to read the caption on the photo to get a hint of that.
A province can't "ban" someone talking to people and encouraging them to be straight or cis. Otherwise, they could start by banning most religious education. And anyway, a "ban", to be effective, would have to involve criminal sanctions, which are not within provincial jurisdiction.
So, what is it, exactly, that Cheri DiNovo wants to "ban", and how? Is she speaking out against parents forcing their minor children to attend public Catholic schools? Or will her bill ban those schools from encouraging kids to follow the teachings of the Church about LGBTQ issues? Or is it the word "therapy" which bugs her?
I'll await more clarity, but Sineed's post seems to be pointing me toward asking more questions.
Apparently the political problem is not whether Ontario's parties support it (all do) but how:
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-bill-outlawing-conversi...
Oh, ok. So, DiNovo's bill would:
1. Not allow any health professional to bill OHIP for services aimed at changing anyone's self-identified sexual orientation or gender identity.
2. In the case of patients under 18, not allow a regulated health professional to seek to change a patient's self-identified gender identity or sexual orientation as part of providing health care services.
[My emphasis]
In other words, anyone is free to set up a private practice to offer "conversion therapy" - as long as they don't do it as "health care services" - including to minors.
The Catholics and others are free to carry on preaching their homophobia and transphobia in schools. In fact, I don't see what stops them from offering straight-up "conversion therapy" in school.
I was shocked (my ignorance) that such medieval practices are still funded by Medicare in some provinces (like to see the list, actually!) - so defunding it is a good step.
Unionist - agreed that the pic and the text of the article do not agree. The pic says "shouldn't be billed" while the text says the province will "work to ensure that it's not practiced in the province".
The billing comment is going to be almost impossible to enforce since there is no specific billing code and, even if there were, I'm sure it would be easy to simply bill it as some sort of generic counselling.
BTW, Sineed's post links a WSJ article that references Paul McHugh - since that particular article is behind a paywall I can't access it in its entirety. However, this article is publicly available and seems to be pretty much a summary of the WSJ one.
Paul McHugh is the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry and he shut down the gender reassignment clinic at John Hopkins. He justified that in part based on a study he commissioned where he told the author what conclusion he wanted.
Before we go on it's probably worth noting that this is the guy that defends Catholic priests facing sex abuse charges
But back to Dr McHugh and the WSJ article
http://www.transadvocate.com/clinging-to-a-dangerous-past-dr-paul-mchugh...
BTW, interesting reading on the subject of aligning transgendered childrens minds with their bodies.
@ VOTD
I don't think it is Burgess's Ludovico Technique, in this case anyway, but it is bad enough that a doctor should work from an an assumption that transgenderism is a negative outcome caused by underlying problems that need to be cured. If this is going to all fall back on science and research (and I don't think it should, necessarily, because this is not all about sickness) I'd say at least some of the burden of proof is on whether there is any foundation for that one-sided idea.
According to that CBC article some people definitely did not get the help they needed.
Thanks for that additional info, abnormal.
Doctors shouldn't work from any assumptions that haven't been validated in some way. It's unequivocal that fundamentalist Christians who try to force gay kids to be straight are abusing these kids by misusing therapeutic processes developed to help people.
But this:
Gender identity is not the same as being gay or straight. Small kids may declare themselves to be the opposite sex just as they may say they are a cat, a dinosaur, or like that one patient of Dr. Bradley, who claimed to be a number that he changed all the time. Gender identity is not as fixed or immutable as being gay, and it may be a social construct on the basis of how we are forced into one gender straightjacket or another since birth.
If a child is defined as trans, this sets them up for a future of livelong hormone supplementation that may shorten their lives, and the possibility of fertility-destroying surgeries. If doctors are going to be prohibited by law from questioning whether a troubled young person really is trans, is that really an appropriate level of care for making decisions that have such significant and potentially life-long consequences?
Have to say that I was actually surprised that Fox aired something that was this balanced
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/04/24/psychiatrist-sheds-light-on-tra...
Back to Sineed's post for a minute.
She links to an article about Drs Zucker and Bradley at CAMH - in the middle of that article there is a link to this
Of particular note is the statement that
Since CAMH is the only center in Ontario that is authorized to evaluate individuals to see if their treatment should be covered by OHIP that's not exactly a good thing.
I don't know if there's any other trans people on this forum but CAHM for many years has become an internationally reviled name in I'd say about 90% of the transgendered community. Never had any personal experience with CAHM myself but high profile psychologists there such as Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard at one point were basically Satan amongst trans people (or at least activist minded ones). Haven't heard much about them for many years, and am kind of surprised it took this long for this controversy to reach the halls of the Ontario legislature. Also doubly surprised CAHM's still the only place (for children at least. Not sure if it extends to adults still) to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis in all of Ontario! I mean it's a big place...
I think you're missing out on an important factor. Folks like Kenneth Zucker, an important figure in the gender identity portion of CAHM have stated on record that being transgendered is a "bad outcome" and try their best to reconcile the mind with the body, as opposed to the body to the mind. It'd be one thing to be more neutral and have an approach that tries to figure out whether the child is really trans or not, and then go from there, it's another to work from the opposite assumption you're decrying.
http://www.npr.org/2008/05/07/90247842/two-families-grapple-with-sons-ge...
The NPR story is worth reading IMO, really goes into the two approaches into great detail on dealing with this issue.
Yes, and the reason for the aggressive villification of CAMH by some members of the transgender community is CAMH psychologist Ray Blanchard's autogynephilia hypothesis, which suggests that some male-to-female transgender individuals are motivated by the paraphilia he dubbed, "Autogynephila," in which men are sexually aroused by the idea of having a female body. For some transwomen such as Lynn Conway or Andrea James, the autogynephilia hypothesis is offensive because it suggests that their identities as women are rooted in a fetish rather than an identity that may have a strictly biological basis.
The pertinent history: in 2003, psychologist Michael Bailey wrote a book that in part discusses Blanchard's work, "The Man Who Would Be Queen: the Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism." I'm reading this currently; it's a scholarly treatise with some dated ideas, and it discusses autogynephilia at length. Transwomen activists Andrea James and Lynn Conway were so offended by this book, they started a witch hunt against Michael Bailey that was so vicious, another transgender researcher, the bioethecist and college professor Alice Dreger, wrote a book about it called, "Galileo's Finger." The Wikipedia page provides a nice summary of the controversy:
Lynn Conway's hatchet job on CAMH may be read here:
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/The_War_Within_...
So the controversy and this proposed legislation basically comes out of the activism of a small number of highly aggressive transwomen who are offended by the "autogynephila" hypothesis, and who also object to CAMH treating gender variant children in any way that doesn't validate their transgender identities. Since the autogynephilia hypothesis proposes that some transwomen are motivated by a sexual fetish, the existence of pre-pubertal children who identify as trans may help render it invalid.
The autogynephila question aside, I'd like to say a few brief words on the drug treatment of trans children. There has been an explosion in the number of children given potent drugs to stop their puberty and eventually destroy their fertility. They are given a very expensive drug called Lupron, a hormone blocker originally developed to treat hormone-dependent prostate cancers and also used for endometriosis. It's also known as "chemical castration" when we give it to sex offenders (something I have happily personally done). Its use in adolescents is off-label and experimental. When Lupron is followed by a cross-sex hormone, the child's fertility is likely to be permanently destroyed. From the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, a website that promotes this treatment:
http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=protocol-youth
Normally, we give such potent drugs to children in the context of serious illnesses such as cancer or autoimmune diseases. Considering that most children who identify as trans grow up to be not trans, though frequently gay or lesbian, I think we need to be a little more cautious about administering treatment that permanently destroys children's fertility and gives them a lifelong dependence on hormones. This sort of cautious approach is what CAMH advocates, and for which they are villified.
thank you sineed.
Yes, but some people going way overboard in protesting, and taking it to the point of personal attack has no bearing on the need for good, unbiased therapy.
And while one needs to be careful about a process like this (and I believe that care is taken in any case) how fair is it to have that process be done with the assumption that transition is a negative outcome?
I'll trust the lived experiences of trans people over the theories of cis doctors and other medical professionals any day of the week, because;
What Kind of Operation is This?: An Illustrated Guide to the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic Surgery Process
and
Is the assumption that transitioning is "bad" in and of itself? No matter the specifics? I'd agree that that can't work.
But if, statistically, it has a four out of five chance of being the wrong outcome, how does one proceed with optimism and encouragement?
I have to say I do find it a bit odd that there's such acceptance of the idea that a three year old "knows" what gender they are already. I say this in light of all the ink that's been spilled pointing out that even teenagers aren't ready to make some decisions, and that they maybe can't be held accountable for their choices and actions because they're cognitively just not ready any more than a toddler is ready to do calculus. And I see no harm in parents treating even a three year old as they wish to be treated, seeing as that's non-permanent -- but fairly aggressive hormone treatments and similar? Isn't that kind of like a tattoo for every cell in your body? I'm not out on the streets fighting against it or anything, but I definitely have questions and doubts.
I would suggest that people read the actual work of Blanchard rather than the second-hand accounts of what people think he means. For instance, Blanchard himself actually says that autogynephilia should present no barrier to transition even though many transwomen say he invented the term in order to function as a gatekeeper and prevent people from transitioning.
The trouble with the whole "lived experience" thing is it basically shuts down conversation. After all, each of the 6 billion of us has our own individual "lived experience."
Speaking of the "lived experience" of trans people, here's one example:
http://ommadusk.tumblr.com/tagged/feminist-current
Should we also turn sexual preference into a numbers game? We used to beat right-handedness into people for the same reason. Who cares what the percentage is? If there are some for whom it is valid, then going into it with only one acceptable outcome is wrong-headed.
And while the validity of Blanchard's research isn't my point, I do wonder why it apparently only applies to MTF transsexuals.
I'm assuming that if 80% of children who believe they're misgendered are, in fact, not misgendered then that has some negative outcomes for that 80% too. If that negative outcome is just "for three months, when I was seven, I wore a dress to school" then I don't really have an issue with that. If the negative outcomes is "I was given regular hormone injections to stave off mis-puberty and now I'm infertile and need MORE hormone injections to replace what my body forgot how to make" then I think that's worth a consideration.
And again, if counsellors are telling anyone -- kids, pre-teens, teens or adults -- that transitioning is just wrong then I can't support that. But how do you counsel a gender-conflicted kid if you know that there's an 80% chance that they've got it wrong, and that encouraging and supporting this transition will be leading them down a totally wrong path?
Can someone tell me, in a nutshell, why this is so urgent that it has to be addressed at three years of age?
Not all 6 billion of us have lived experience being a trans person (or female, or a POC, or disabled, or queer, or poor). That's why conversation isn't nearly as important as listening. When it comes to the lives and experiences of trans people, I don't need to be a part of any conversation. I have nothing to impart to trans people. The best I can hope to offer is to challenge other cis folks on our transphobia and transmisogyny.
Magoo, I don't think anyone is suggesting someone has to start a round of surgery and hormones at age three. And I am sure most people concerned with this suggest proceeding with caution.
Two points. It isn't anumber's game, and despite the temptation to treat it like one, going into the process with the perception that one option is by definition the wrong one seems to be what is screwing this up for some people.
But you selectively only listen to the voices of some trans people. Is it not symptomatic of your "cis privilege" that you do not listen to all of them?
I don't personally identify as "cis."
This legislation endeavors to ban the practice of treating gender-variant children with anything other than an affirmation of a transgender identity. It tries to meddle in medical practice. Do we really want to set the precedent of politicians dictating standards of medical care?
OK. At what age do they start? Are hormones ever administered to a minor?
ed'd to add:
But do you identify as orthocephalic? i.e. born with an average sized cranium, as opposed to those who are microcephalic?
Or do you make a special note that you you've been diagnosed with duosomy-21? i.e. you don't have Down syndrome, as opposed to those with trisomy-21?
If those rare statistical outliers get a special word, shouldn't we all get a special word?
That might be reading a bit too much into the legislation - that is to say, I think you might be scaremongering there.
Anyone considering transition is going to go through a process to determine if that is what they really want. The point here is that it be a fair process, not one which treats transgenderism as a negative product of illness.
No. Perhaps that's your approach, but it's not mine. If a trans person wants to share their experience, I'll listen.
imv sineed's observation is a truthful one. your comments indicate a one position reality.