Conservatives Miss Heroic Opportunity with C-4
Virtue-Signalling a Timebomb for Liberal Government if Conservatives Show Courage
We’ve seen explosive developments in the public narrative on Trans Health just in the last thirty days that should have been given consideration by committee before the Anti-Conversion Bill was sent unanimously to the Senate. A significant piece by CTV’s W5 in Canada was released in late October and two major pieces coming from the US have also shocked with damaging revelations about impacts of trans healthcare failures leaving kids vulnerable, missing key treatment, and quite certainly harmed.
It’s clear the Conservatives can’t get their wires straight on this issue. This is a bad sign only days after parliament returned to business following the election.
Multiple Individuals in Senior Leadership at the sometimes embattled and divided global trans health organization, WPATH, revealed that sloppy care and lack of adherence to medical guidelines is negatively affecting children in the US and in Canada.
The authors of the most recent Washington Post article, Edwards-Leeper and Anderson of WPATH point to a recent study that said 50% of gender clinics in Canada do not require a psychological assessment before prescribing puberty blockers or hormones to children with dysphoria.
Source: https://transyouthcan.ca/results/wpath-2020-5/
We might mistakenly believe that we are compassionate to make it easier for kids to get gender affirming medicine, but the significant research tells us that high numbers of kids with gender dysphoria have co-morbid mental-health issues and neuro-diverse conditions.
The study from Trans Youth Canada tells us that fully 50.3% of kids participating had been formally diagnosed prior to treatment with mental health conditions; other studies confirm that kids with dysphoria suffer much higher rates of serious mental health conditions than the general population.
No studies tell us that Dysphoria is caused by any of them. It’s quite possible that gender dysphoria is a symptom of another condition or that it’s made worse by other conditions which are left untreated.
A frequent co-morbid condition to teen onset gender dysphoria in girls is borderline personality disorder - which is a destructive mental health pattern often characterized by identity disturbance and an unstable sense of self. Frequently also present are eating disorders, clinical depression, social anxiety, and autism (Soh). There is zero research that suggests that gender dysphoria causes any of them such that if children medically gender-transition, any of their mental health issues would improve.
Half of clinics in the Canadian study did not require a mental health assessment before they prescribed medications that can cause permanent sterility and sexual dysfunction. There are so many knowledge gaps about this condition that there is no way of knowing if any of these complicated and vulnerable kids are helped or harmed by lowering barriers to medically changing sex characteristics with blockers and hormones.
The Conservatives ran scared on Wednesday instead of taking a stand on the easiest possible political platform - a sincere defense of vulnerable children who don’t know who they are, who have come to believe that their mental distress means they’re born in the wrong body, and who are coming to learn that no-one is going to question them as the make permanent changes to their bodies and their endocrine systems.
The Conservative implosion was the result of running from wedge-issue accusations of being anti-LGBTQ2S+ instead of having the moral courage to show some leadership and make it a wedge issue which they could dominate.
Sadly, with the approval of Bill C-4, members of parliament are unanimously approving a bill that will criminalize conscientious parents who question gender ideology and who push back against rushed, inadequate, incomplete, unproven and sloppy medical care.
There will be long-term fallout from this failure if the bill passes the senate as-is. Instead of taking cover, the Conservatives should be throwing themselves on this issue to protect vulnerable kids. Once more-fully exposed, this scandal could easily bring down the Liberal government.
Shannon B Douglas is the father of a natal female with ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria). They have begun medical gender reassignment.