Because you've immediately announced your judgment that the vast majority of one side is arguing in bad faith, how can anyone on that side accept that your opposing arguments are coming from a place of good faith, when you've literally telegraphed that you essentially don't trust anything the other side has to say on the issue.
They can't reliably determine that your posts are coming from a place of genuine argument.
This is a medical issue though. The Cass Interim Report has gone to great lengths to highlight that the evidence base supporting these treatments is simply not there.
No one is claiming that his is an example of "anti-science" but it does show that the science is not there to support these medical interventions, which we should expect for any sort medical intervention being practiced freely.
In all honesty, I regret posting that page, but I'll leave the link up as it's there now. I generally treat pretty much all of the US medical organisations with a degree of suspicion anyway, as I don't think they can be relied upon to avoid influence from the pharmaceutical giants, and ended up posting that because it was a link I hadn't yet posted, had readily to hand and I was growing increasingly frustrated with stepic's refusal to engage with any of the points put to him, or indeed present anything remotely resembling evidence to back up his own points. As I said, I disagree with a lot of what they stand for, if not pretty much everything they stand for, and you're absolutely right that the motives behind their stance on the issue are extremely questionable given their track record on other issues. However, I think that the Tory party, by and large, is a reprehensible, bordering on dangerous institution. That does not mean that I find every policy and statement they make reprehensible and/or dangerous, and I may actually agree with the odd one from time to time. The specific page I linked, while sensationalist in its heading (which I acknowledged) and while it definitely uses some certainly dodgy language at times to discuss the issue (which I also acknowledged), was not just full of baseless conjecture from their end, and was largely in line with the findings of Cass Interim Report in that there is not an evidence base supporting the currently used medical interventions.
Back to the point about trusting research. It's not a case of blindly trusting all research. Again, the Cass Interim Report has highlighted the gaps and flaws in this research, and this of course applies to the research in support of both sides, because no side is able to definitively state what the outcomes and long-term effects are. However, as a medical issue, you cannot ethically advocate for treatments with poor research foundations to be used, let alone on children.
Surely you have to acknowledge the massive ethical issues in your example?
I find it very difficult to accept that the ability for transwomen to compete alongside biological females in competitive sports is remotely comparable to the complete ethical minefield that, as you've described, would be using children in potentially life-altering, irreversible medical trials.
The fact also remains that within the Tavistock Clinic at least, there has been opportunity to collect data on early transitioners, and they've simply not bothered doing so.
As I said, you don't get to baselessly accuse me of being a transphobe without actually responding to my posts, and the fact that you'll freely admit that all it's taken is a couple of posts that you disagree with for you to make such an accusation, is frankly quite gross.
One of the consistent messages throughout my posts has been a desire for these children to receive proper care and support so that they, and their parents, can navigate what is undoubtedly a very difficult situation with as much information as possible. Having concerns about the care currently being provided, a concern echoed by medical professionals, does not make me a transphobe.
Within the context of this discussion, in which the idea of parents ultimately controlling the consent for these treatments has barely ever, if ever, been mentioned, you decided to make a post about how the choice was entirely yours for an elective, potentially crippling back surgery. You did not acknowledge at any point that your parents were the ones that would have actually had to sign off on it, and actually presented the entire thing as if this was not the case.
It was argued by multiple posters, yourself included, that children and young people do indeed have the capacity to make informed decisions on this specific issue themselves, despite the many other things that they are not able to make informed decisions about until they reach a certain age. Parents were not mentioned once.
While we're broaching "missed points", has it escaped your notice that these treatments do not have the foundation of research and review that you would expect? Minors do undergo irreversible treatments all of the time, but these treatments have a strong foundation of research and review to support them. This is the key point. Not that other treatments are irreversible. When minors receive these treatments, at least where elective treatments are concerned, their parents/guardians will be the ones signing off on them, precisely because these minors have an inability to consent themselves.
