#causally makes them all trans-

[sweetest-honeybee]

Frank could be trans too!

He could! Haven’t decided yet 😂

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Mary Harrington

Published: Feb 19, 2024

A new study challenges the common assertion that gender-dysphoric youth are at elevated risk of suicide if not treated with “gender affirming” medical interventions. If it’s true, it ought to have a seismic impact on the accepted medical approach to gender-confused youth.

Reported in the BMJ, the study examines data on a Finnish cohort of gender-referred adolescents between 1996 and 2019, and compares their rates of all-cause and suicide mortality against a control group. While suicide rates in the gender-referred group studied were higher than in the control group, the difference was not large: 0.3% versus 0.1%. And — importantly — this difference disappeared when the two groups were controlled for mental health issues severe enough to require specialist psychiatric help.

In other words: while transgender identity does seem to be associated with elevated suicide risk, the link is not very strong. What’s more, the causality may not work the way activists claim.

The association between gender dysphoria and mental illness is well-documented by both providers of “gender-affirming care” and trans advocacy groups and clinical psychology research. But one less well-evidenced claim, based on this association, is that these difficulties are caused not by being transgender, but by the political and social stigma associated with it. Gender dysphoria, we are to understand, is not in itself a mental health issue. What causes mental health issues in transgender youth — up to and including suicide — is the wider world’s rejection of their identity, and of the metaphysical frame of “gender identity” as such.

This is the root of the oft-repeated social media assertion that anyone who demurs about trans identity, however mildly, is complicit in “trans genocide”. The same assertion that invalidating trans youth makes them kill themselves is also behind the rhetorical question routinely used to browbeat parents into consenting to social and medical transition for their gender-confused offspring: “Would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son?”

It’s behind the prohibition on “trans conversion therapy” already in force in several countries, and promised by the Labour Party in England too. Such measures forbid therapists from exploring with their clients whether there is any link between their gender dysphoria and — for example — life trauma or other mental health issues. For logically, if the cause of distress and suicidality in trans people is not being accepted for who they are, any therapist who seeks to explore links between gender dysphoria and other biographic or psychiatric issues is complicit in just this kind of non-acceptance, and is thus not helping but harming their client.

But as the study puts it: “Clinical gender dysphoria does not appear to be predictive of all-cause nor suicide mortality when psychiatric treatment history is accounted for.” Rather, what predicts risk in this population is “psychiatric morbidity”. And contra the activists, transitioning does nothing to reduce it: “medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk.”

Every suicide is a tragedy, and leaves grieving loved ones behind. No one wants to be complicit in pushing a young person down that path. So the suggestion that questioning someone’s gender beliefs may have this effect serves as a powerful emotional cudgel. But if the Finnish study is correct, this whole rhetorical, legislative, and medical edifice may be built on sand. If the elevated risk of suicidality in trans youth disappears when you control for other psychiatric difficulties, this suggests strongly that trans youth are not more at risk due to transphobia or invalidation, but due to the well-documented fact that gender dysphoria tends to occur in people who are disturbed and unhappy more generally.

It ought to follow from this that the way to manage suicide risk in trans-identified young people is not to affirm their gender identity and whisk them off for medical interventions, but to watch for and treat psychiatric comorbidities. Ultimately, though, the claims of gender ideology are less scientific than metaphysical. So don’t expect scientific evidence that contradicts its prescriptions to have much impact on trans advocates. Even if “following the science” would make a real difference to suicide risk in gender-dysphoric youth.

==

History will view "gender affirming care" advocates the same way we view lobotomy advocates.

[bibones]

Here, have some unedited, stream-of-consciousness ideas about transmasc Triumvirate for Pride Month 🏳️‍⚧️

McCoy came out the youngest - when he was around 7 or 8, and started HRT young enough that top surgery wasn't necessary for him, any chest growth was negligible. Apart from keeping up with his hormonal implants, being trans hasn't much affected him; his family are modern, 23rd Century people goddamnit, they ain't gonna throw a fuss at their tween naming himself Leonard if that's what makes him happy.

He never bothered with bottom surgery, and he donated his eggs when he and Jocelyn went through IVF. Jocelyn carried Joanna, but McCoy wouldn't have been fully opposed to being a seahorse dad if it was more convenient for them at the time - needless to say, he's still relieved when it's not something he needed to go through to be a father.

All the same, he is very reticent of sharing the fact that he's transgender. It don't matter one bit to nobody but those who share his bed, thank you very much.

Kirk came out as a teenager, sometime around the age of 16. Overcoming the trauma of Kodos and Tarsus IV was something he had to make some sort of peace with first before he realised the discomfort he felt in his body and the perception of himself by other people wasn't any sort of lingering dysmorphia related to childhood food insecurity. He has what some would consider the stereotypical tomboy-to-butch-to-FtM pipeline. He's always been charming with the ladies, and gaining confidence in his identity as a trans man just made him all the more magnetic.

He had top surgery prior to joining Starfleet, and bottom surgery prior to his first posting on a starship.

He's more open and causal about his transition than McCoy is; if other people happen to bring it up, he'll proudly talk your ear off about his gender journey, but he wouldn't disclose at the drop of a hat, either.

Spock came out the latest of the trio. He was an adult, he was already in Starfleet Academy, and it took him a few years after realising his gender identity to start any sort of medical transition. He's on HRT, but hasn't had top surgery or bottom surgery.

Being transgender isn't stigmatised on Vulcan, however Spock was more reluctant to explore his experience with gender incongruity than he would otherwise have been due to being half-Vulcan - either because of internalised shame at deviating from the norm and having these feelings, or as a result of prior medical trauma from being closely studied and monitored as the first human-Vulcan hybrid.

McCoy gives him the what-for the first time he realised Spock binds unsafely during away missions ("And no, sir, it is not 'logical' to purposefully put yourself at risk because you happen to have more durable bones than a human! You still have lungs that gotta breathe, man!")

He is, however unexpected, the most candid of his status as a transgender man.

[librarycards]

The term “social transition” has a non-trans history in the psychology of adolescence. In the 1980s, it was an operative metaphor for describing adolescence through the American trope of a rocky period of self-making, what one psychologist in 1978 termed “the difficulty of adolescence as a transitional period.” The primary “transition” that concerned psychologists at the time was school, where social shifts in friend groups and hierarchies from middle school to high school affected a young person’s self-esteem and mental integrity, resulting either in positive self-actualization or, if the social transition went poorly, “problem behavior.”³

The term “social transition” was only later adopted by psychologists and psychiatrists looking to powerfully expand their jurisdiction over trans youth to include entirely non-medical practices that often spur parents to reject or harm their kids: wearing a dress, cutting or growing out hair, wearing a binder or a bra, wearing makeup, or adopting a new name and pronouns. Making those banal but concrete practices of changing gender into psychiatric events was intended to convince anxious and angry parents that they shouldn’t put down their children. By the same token, tying practices of clothing and self-description to healthy development overinflated them with a pathological degree of significance, upping the ante and creating a lucrative target, both for parents of trans youth who wanted to stop their children from transitioning and, now, politicians.

I don’t mean to imply that psychiatry directly caused HB 2885, just that it clearly holds one part of the blame for inventing the root vulnerability that Gragg has taken advantage of in Missouri. If anything, the attachment of sex offender felonies to a teacher complimenting a teenager’s haircut exposes, once and for all, how fraudulent the medicalization of transition has been all along. Gragg can claim the right of the state to control children’s dress and speech (masquerading as the rights of parents) through teachers and counselors, in part, because psychiatry and medicine first claimed the right to regulate trans youth’s practices of transition.

Still, the causal events that led to HB 2885 run far deeper than the shallow history of “social transition” as an especially foolish psychiatric fiction. Here lies the far bigger problem raised by this bill. Not only will psychiatrists prove to be the least effective political allies of trans youth in Missouri, but contemporary queer and transgender culture’s elevation of the private right to dress as the sine qua non of politics is also quite useless as a political strategy.

Part of what I gather stuns in bills like HB 2885 is their audacity. The law would target the most conservative, least politically subversive of all transgender practices: individual style, identification, and language-use. In the case of minors, “social transition” is also a cheap compromise offered to young people who are refused blockers and hormones by disapproving parents and doctors, but that compromise is offered in a broader queer and transgender culture that has elevated self-identification through style as the ultimate arbiter of being transgender, making it much harder to advocate for a genuine right to transition for anyone, teenager or adult.

[...]

Students have very limited First Amendment rights on school campuses, meaning that they cannot present themselves as private individuals enjoying the right to dress as they please.⁷Their self-expression is governed from the outset by a competing set of custodians, from parents to schoolteachers, to psychiatrists and doctors, to the Missouri House of Representatives. Trans youth’s interests are therefore materially extraneous to the mainline of contemporary queer and transgender culture, whose architects were wealthy, college-educated adults whose prior enjoyment of full-citizenship was the very reason they demanded only the affirmation of a right to dress.

I suspect that part of the genuine shock of bills like HB 2885 is that most people reasoned that LGBT liberalism’s elevation of the private individual over all other political concerns would inoculate dress and language from state interference. It evidently has not. What perhaps has been misunderstood, then, is how the state exercises power. The law cannot prohibit being transgender, for there is no such state of being. The state has no need to target people’s interior selves, either, for the law can seize people where it always has, in concrete social practices that it simply declares are the undesirable traits of transgender people—namely, practices of transition.

Jules Gill-Peterson, The Unimportance of Wearing Clothes. [emphasis added]

[scientia-rex]

Hi Dr. Kristophine!

So I'm in nursing school and something one of my instructors said about obesity really bothered me and IK you're a doctor who Actually Knows about weight as it pertains to health so I wanted to see if you'd weigh in (pun not intended)

She said, in reference to cancer risk factors,

"poor nutrition, especially one that is high in saturated fats, increases your risk for obesity which increases your risk for cancer... Physical activity, again obesity is a risk factor for multiple disease processes, cancer being one of them... So being immobile increases your risk for obesity which increases your risk for certain cancers."

When I heard that in our lecture vids, to me it seemed like she was using the wrong variables to connect poor diet and lack of exercise to cancer

[disclaimer: this instructor is dangerously incompetent, often wrong in her lectures, no one ever does well on her exams because she doesn't teach properly, and my other instructors for that class are accumulating evidence to get her removed from that position] so I don't take much of what she says as legit, but I'd like to know WHY its illegitimate, if it is

If you don't feel like addressing this all yourself, I'd also appreciate you throwing some resources at me to read

What she’s doing is looking at a set of interconnected variables and assuming a causal relationship. This is dangerous—I would cover why, but I don’t teach psych stats labs anymore—and what she should probably be saying instead is that being sick tends to go with being fat, rather than that being fat causes being sick. To the best of my knowledge, no one has proposed a clear pathway by which being fat would lead to cancer. Now, fat tissue does make estrogen, which raises risk for some cancers—but lowers it for others, and protects bone density, so it’s always a personalized discussion in patients I’m looking at putting on estradiol.

Now, there are definitely dangerous things you can do with diet. Trans fatty acids are more likely to lead to vascular health problems than good old fashioned natural butter. But “diet—>fat—>cancer” is just bullshit, and if any of my beloved haters out there want to produce high-quality and compelling evidence to the contrary, go right ahead.

[mactiir]

something strange happens when you do a thing every day just because you believe it matters. Cuz on day -900 an election result comes back that makes you realize you can't live another day without giving back to the world and you start looking for a career change.

Day 0: is teacher school orientation and it's terrifying. The people around you seem blisteringly competent, too smart to keep up with. You don't know half the words coming out of their mouths. Eventually you can fake the classes and wonder if the whole career will be like this, a fake it till you make it kinda deal. Think maybe you can at least pretend to be good at it.

Day 1: you walk onto the job and u realize that the people who made it look easy made it look that way not because it WAS easy, but because they were very very good. Not pretending to be good. Legitimately VERY good. And for you, who is not good, the job is very very very hard.

Day 100 you walk out crying because you're not cut out for this.

Day 314 too. And days 585, 586, 587 (that was a hard week). You never quite identify with being "a teacher". Teaching is just a thing you do for a paycheck.

Somewhere around day 660 you start talking at a staff meeting and realize that, somehow, you now sound exactly like the people who intimidated you so much at the start. Like an actual bonafide teacher.

Day 800: a kid who screamed at you fifteen days before shakes your hand and thanks you for a great year -- the same one who pulled you aside to quietly discuss gender identity a few months back, because he wasn't sure who else to talk to. You get notes sincerely thanking you for teaching them how to be better at something they hated. A kid who didn't talk for 90 straight days because they were so shy causally tells you about a picture they drew you. A boy who can't use his chosen name with his parents and had never written a story before your class shows you the outline for the novel he's writing about a group of trans vampires.

There was a shitty ex, once, who loved to turn her cruelties around. Tell you that you were the bad one, the abuser, the manipulator. She doesn't live in your head anymore, or so you thought, but on the last day of school, day 800, when a student asks why you're crying, all you can think is i did a good thing. I did a good thing. I don't know if I'm good at this but I think I did a good thing. I made a kid smile. I gave a kid a safe place to be themself. I was, for a shining instant, the person i needed when I was their age.

What you say, though, is, "I'm just gonna miss you guys, is all."

[damnfandomproblems]

This is the person who wrote fandom problem 3657 about gn!readers

Love how everyone assumed I hate gn/nb!reader fics rather then taking five seconds to think and realize that I hate the fact no one tags them -_-

I'm not mad that people are making gn!reader fics--make them all you want, if if makes you happy then hell yeah keep doing it--I'm mad that they won't show and ounce of consideration and just tag the fucking thing as a gn or nb!reader! I have to fight every goddamn day to get people use she/her for me because people will constantly undermine my gender and use they/them instead as a way to advoid fully calling me a women, so yeah, they/them pronouns being used to refer to me in any way is triggering because they are used to constantly to misgender me!

I am not asking people to stop making gn!readers, I am asking people to tag them! How the hell does me complaining about people not tagging their shit correctly in anyway make me a bad guy?

"Oh you're a loser!" HOW!? I JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO READ X READERS WITHOUT GETTING SUICIDAL BECAUSE NO ONE WARNED THAT THIS WAS OR TAGGED IT AS A GN!READER!!!

WORSE YET SOME PEOPLE WILL PURPOSEFULLY TAG IT AS A FEM AND/OR MASC READER BECAUSE IT CAN "be read either way" or "it's gn so it's technically both"!!! How the hell am I suppose to avoids those!?!?! Why should I be expected to magical know and avoid those fics rather then the writers being expected to just tag it as a gn!reader???

"Oh but how do you keep reading so far in if it causes you dysphoria" a causally use of they or them is fine, but once I realize that's all that is being used, I feel like stupid idiot who just been misgendered for the past X minutes that I was reading and was too fucking dumb to realize it, and that is what makes me dysphoric! It's the realization itself that cause the dysphoria, not the actually reading of it!

I lost count of how many times i went into a fem!reader x fem character tag only to realize that it's actually a gn/nb!reader x fem character fic and get so upset (because y'know dysphoria is inherently a nonsense but extreme uncontrollable feeling but go off on how I'm over reacting, it really helps /tone tag:fuck you), and have to go on a walk so I don't hurt myself because I despite looking into the fem!reader tag, blacklisting nb/gn!reader tags, I still got some prick decided to post their gn!reader fic untagged and unwarned in the fem!reader tags because its "inclusive"

Guess transfems who have dysphoria over being misgendered with they/them pronouns constantly shouldn't be reading x readers though, my fucking bad. how dare I want people to just tag their shit correctly though, so lame and selfish and weak of me. So fucking lame and childish of me for not feeling included in these 100% amazing "inclusive" fics and wanting them to be tagged

Fuck all the pricks who help confirmed my beliefs on how fandom refuses to accept "undesirable" queers. God forbid not every trans person is comfortable with they/them

Just fucking tag your gn/nb!readers, I'm not a bad person for wanting that

And in advance, double fuck you to anyone who still wants to agrue about how inclusive gn!readers are and that it isn't a big deal when they're untagged because they're so super duper inclusive even though they are often dysphoria inducing and unavoidable when not tagged. shit in your hand and swallow it asshole

Posting since this is a response to a previous problem.

[simplepotatofarmer]

Hi! Sorry if this is a bit deep and ramble-y but it’s just something that’s been on my mind. Have you ever doubted defending dream?

Sometimes I feel like I’m wrong for feeling bad for him. I feel like I get where some ppl are coming from when they say why they hate him but then am horrified by what they do with that hatred.

I keep telling myself that it’s normal to feel empathy for someone that you could see was facing a lot of shit. I felt bad for him in April, but also felt bad for feeling bad because everyone was saying how he was a horrible person who deserved horrible things. Looking back, and reading some ppls reflections on it, it’s much more obvious how April specifically was just an obscene hate campaign, but even then I have moments of doubt just because of how universal the idea of dream always being in the wrong seems to be, especially in this community.

Even with the most recent incident, where I did step away for a while, I felt bad for him and his friends for the things their fans were doing. But then I also felt bad for feeling bad because so many ppl on here say that the extreme means are necessary.

Even though I am more of a causal fan, I don’t want to live in an echo chamber and I think the ppl in the fandom who I do follow (like you) are pretty rational about everything. I’ve tried following other ppl but there’s just this everpresent hatred of him that I don’t like seeing everyday on my dash. But I again feel wrong for feeling that way. It’s all just frustrating.

i was going to sleep but this is actually a really important ask, in my humble opinion.

the short answer is no.

the long answer is absolutely not, i've never regretted defending him over the things i have defended him over because even if he was a terrible person and not like, a dude none of us know personally who is not perfect and makes mistakes and is sometimes a fucking idiot, those would still be things i would defend him for.

defending someone against absolutely vile queerphobia is never something i'd regret because it's quite simply just the right thing to do. erasing someone's identity because you don't like them is wrong, point blank. blair white or caitlynn jenner are no less deserving of respect as trans women than any other woman.

defending dream against ableism is always gonna be the right thing because you don't have to be a good person to deserve not to be treated awfully due to your neurodivergence.

and like, there's been things i've defended dream on where i don't completely agree with him. i think he's been a little baby sometimes when it comes to mcc but when people were saying shit like he was '''manipulating''' us and noxcrew because he said he didn't want to play in mcc if he had to play buildmart, yeah i'm going to point out that's a batshit take. someone venting and being frustrated isn't manipulation, he was just throwing a tantrum. touch grass yada yada.

and when it comes to my belief that people can be racist in the past and change, that still applies! i still think dream actively tried to be better! he grew up in a bigoted environment, is open about his racist past (and fucking uses the word racist/bigoted, thank god) and is actively working to be better.

that's always going to be true and frankly, i think it's not only weird but extremely telling that a LOT of white people who had formerly defended him suddenly switched up. it just shows that it was never about the harm done and poc but whether or not you liked some white boy.

but i digress.

the thing is, anon, i get why you feel this way. this fandom and online culture as a whole lately is wrought with the belief that consumption of media is a reflection of your morals. that consuming the right media and being a fan of the right sort of person is akin to activism.

it's not. it doesn't fucking matter. there's no righteousness in hating dream. you can certainly be valid in hating him! there's a lot of reasons to dislike him or hate him or feel he shouldn't have a platform. i might not agree with it all but i can see it.

the problem is.... i see why you feel like this and that is genuinely so sad and messed up because how did we get to the point where queerphobia or ableism or body shaming is totally okay as long as it's a certain group and to where people doubt themselves when they think it's wrong! it is wrong but i completely understand why anyone would second guess themselves.

as it stands right now, i don't regret it because i feel it's right. i'm always going to feel it's right.

if something comes out tomorrow and it turns out that it really is more than some instagram dms and the questionable choice of giving out his private snapchat, then i won't be defending him.

but i still wouldn't regret any of my past defense because my defense isn't conditional, my belief that people can grow isn't conditional, and my opinion on things like fandom's queerphobia and misuse of terms like 'grooming' would still stand.

[beanieman]

My YTTD Yearly Pride Headcanons Because My Opinions Change With The Moon Cycle

Sara Chidouin - Sara is a bisexual demigirl.

Joe Tazuna - Joe is pansexual and accidentally genderfluid. They just started causally referring to themselves with all pronouns and Sara never questioned it. He didn't even realize he was doing it.

Gin Ibushi - Gin doesn't think about dating so he isn't sure of his sexuality. He doesn't care much about pronouns either. He'd respond to anything.

Keiji Shinogi - Keiji is bisexual and refers to himself with he/him pronouns. However, he does not care enough to correct you if you use she/her or they/them with them.

Alice Yabusame - Alice is trans and pansexual. He'll date any gender, but needs to have an emotional connection with them first to feel any attraction.

Reko Yabusame - Reko uses any and all pronouns while being the queen of the lesbians.

Nao Egokoro - Nao identifies as WLW but it stresses her out to consider putting an exact label like lesbian or bisexual on herself. Instead she simply dates who she wants to with no further explanation. She uses she/they pronouns.

Kazumi Mishima - Mishima is unlabeled. He thinks life is a very complicated thing and therefore doesn't want to confine himself in a box. He uses he/him pronouns in reference to himself, but wouldn't shy away from using other pronouns if someone used them on him.

Q-taro Burgerberg - Q-Taro is gay but hasn't had enough romantic experience to fully realize it. He thinks the "deep connection" he's had with some men is a good friendship when really it's been a crush on his end. He uses he/him pronouns.

Kai Satou - Kai is gay and gender nonconforming.

Kanna Kizuchi - Kanna is a she/they lesbian if I've ever seen one.

Shin Tsukimi - Shin is asexual and gay. He's only ever used he/him pronouns, but it would hit differently if someone referred to him with they/them pronouns.

Dolls

Ranmaru Kageyama - Ranmaru is trans and bisexual. He tends to be more interested in women, but a few men have caught his eyes before.

Naomichi Kurumada - Naomichi is asexual and gay. He uses he/him pronouns.

Anzu Kinashi - Anzu is pansexual and doesn't realize that everyone else isn't. She uses she/her pronouns.

Mai Tsurugi - Mai is a lesbian who's not above flirting with men to get her way. The song "Money, money, money. Must be funny. In a rich man's world." is ringing in her head every time she seduces a man into making a sale. She also uses she/her pronouns.

Shunsuke Hayasaka - He's the token cishet and a confused but supportive ally. He's the "She uses they/them pronouns :)" type. He's trying his best and will get there in time.

Hinako Mishuku - Hinako does not want her sexuality or pronouns to be perceived.

[wanderingwittch]

Transgender - Spiritual Pillars of Humanity

Within the tapestry of existence, souls weave threads of genderless spirits, embodying harmony beyond earthly realms.

Though eunuchs and transgenders can be used interchangeably, my focus will be more on transgender people who have the ability to master their feminine and masculine energies within their causal bodies. Many pagan and indigenous cultures, including my own, place great importance on transgender individuals, seeing them as essential for human growth.

What makes them so revered by ancient saints?

Is it their dualism that makes them special considering them to be a gift to humanity?

On my spiritual journey, I have been mesmerised by transgender also known as “trutiyapanthi” in my culture. I have always loved to believe that they can experience spirituality more profoundly than others due to the merging of masculine and feminine energies within them. Many light workers, healers, and spiritualists I know confirm that the higher realms have no distinction between masculine and feminine energies, since both of them are consumed and worked equally. Perhaps this is why higher beings, beyond our current understanding, feel humans cannot yet match their consciousness.

I have also been deeply influenced by Carl Jung, a psychologist who integrated spirituality and psychology, showing how they can coexist harmoniously. Jung’s theories such as Hero’s Journey helped me explore the tarot in much more profound way - the craft that I had been working for a long time. Through him I understood the shadow and through him I learnt about Anima and Animus. Anima being the personification of all female tendencies in a man while animus being the male psychological tendencies in a female. It proved that we can have this polarised form only in physicality but inside we manifest both the energies.

There have been real examples of transgender who have inspired me beyond the spirituality. Gauri Sawant embodies motherhood and compassion, helping me connect with my divine mother energy. Manabi Bandopadhyay, a professor and also a principal to an educational institutes helped me understand how to be authentic as well as knowledgeable, teaching me the value of liberation. Naaz Joshi, trans model showed me that beauty can be found in unexpected places. It doesn’t end here. Sushant Divgikar who became my personal favourite, a singer who can perform in both male and female voices, represented the perfect blend between of divine masculine and divine feminine energies.

Historically, transgender people have also played important roles in society. In the Mughal empire, infamously in Ottoman empire men were castrated to guard the women of royal courts; but their significance dates back even further. They were also revered in ancient times, serving as political advisors, generals and administrators.

I remember a story being told in Ramayana capturing their essence. Lord Rama was being asked to leave royal court and banished for 14 years instructed his followers - men and women to return the city. However the transgender community didnt bound to the directions and chose to stay with their lord due to which Ram blessed them with power to confer blessings on people during auspicious occasions. Native Americans have their two spirit theory — a name given to transgenders indeed valuing them for their roles as healers, mid-wives, leaders in spiritual communities.

This duality not only makes them great spiritually but also paves a dense and transformative path. While the internal focus is to balance, they live a life overwhelming with challenges on the physical level. Continually challenging societal norms, they transform themselves and the world around them. They do so by simply existing - by being truthful to themselves.

In my country, they also value profound connection between teacher and disciple — as seen in ancient Gurukul system. Amidst their journeys, they achieve success but also give back to their communities, sharing the compassion and love they have cultivated despite being treated as a dirt. Their ability to operate with innate divine wisdom and offer kindness to others, even after enduring immense hardship, is profoundly inspiring to me.

They do help us understand the complexity of human existence, power of duality and boundless potential in human spirit. Acting as a living testament to harmonious blend of masculine and feminine, they challenge the close-mindedness of societal norms. We can open ourselves to at-least acknowledge their presence rather than denying their individuality because they are different than us. Divine can manifest in countless, wondrous form - and they are the perfect example.

[tanadrin]

I read your post about like reactionary politics and while I think I agree with you mostly I think it’s a bit of a stretch to equate “antis” to the current surge of anti transphobic rhetoric, esp when that term is so nebulous. Like are we talking about people being weird about kink at pride shit, or people being upset about the production of fictional csem? I think that while def the first person has an internalized reactionary view of sexuality, I don’t see how the second person does beyond like a generalized fear of child exploitation. There’s def like a middle ground between those two positions but I feel like this is not a great example compared to the very cut and dry “trans people are child abusers”

Well, part of the thesis I'm trying to stake out (more or less successfully, depending on how well I did it and whether or not you agree with me) is that there may be differences of degree but similarities in kind between mildly and more severely reactionary/censorious forms of affect-driven fear-based politics, and even socially acceptable forms (like true crime fandom) will tend to correlate with surprisingly vicious reactionary strains in people's otherwise progressive politics, if not even encourage the intensification of these strains over time.

I think it's risky to speak in straightforwardly causal terms, which is what the "pipeline" imagery does: if you hold views X and engage with other people with similar views, over time you will (or are overwhelmingly likely) to progress to certain other views. The Hertzsprung-Russel diagram from astronomy really is a useful metaphor here, I think. If you don't know, if you take all the stars in the sky we know about, and you plot them on a graph where one axis is their luminosity and the other axis is their color, you get an image that looks something like this:

It's hard to observe stellar evolution because it's rarely noticeable on human timescales (outside of the odd supernova), but you can notice patterns in the graph itself. Some of these, like the asymptotic giant branch or the Hayashi track, are reflective of diachronic relationships: how stars evolve over time. Others, like the main sequence, represent a synchronic relationship: stars at the opposite ends of the main sequence don't evolve to the other over the course of their lifetime (a large, bright O star at the top left of the main sequence will never become a red dwarf at the bottom right), but there is a real physical relationship here, about the relationship between mass, luminosity, and color of a star.

I think (to make the metaphor explicit) if you could chart people's tendency to indulge or even cultivate certain kinds of fear-driven ways of thinking, ones which are prone to dehumanizing the other, tickling our collective purity taboo, and exaggerating the threat to oneself and one's ingroup, against their political beliefs, a distinctive track or sequence would emerge: one not necessarily representing a full-blown evolutionary path all people with such tendencies are on, but nonetheless showing a useful relationship between the underlying thought process and the expressed opinions. I think this correlation is especially fertile in some quarters of American politics where it's often heightened by a racial dimension--witness what happens when you try to integrate school districts full of otherwise progressive, white, middle-class parents--but it's by no means solely an American phenomenon. British TERFs and the German anti-nuclear movement are both relevant here.

Now, to be clear, this is just a metaphor. I'm not sure you can give people's political beliefs an easily-agreed-upon Reactionariness Rating (though various dubious experiments in psychometry have tried) or Panickiness Rating. And similar instrumental beliefs can emerge from distinct frameworks about the world: to run with the trans example, person A has fearful and disgust-based responses to trans people bc they have their own hangups around gender and have cultivated an attitude of threat and disgust toward the outgroup; person B just has a cognitive tendency to sort the world into immutable categories, applies this to people also, and so has decided a priori trans people must be wrong about their self-reported experiences, and hasn't given it much thought since then. Both views are bad; but it requires something like the former to turn into Graham Linehan, a real obsessive asshole on a single issue, whereas the latter seems like the default starting position of most cis people before their beliefs are challenged in any way.

So I'm not positing the origin of all reactionary political beliefs here. Just one (I would argue) interesting trend. That said, yeah, I do think a lot of people's objection to (for example) the more fucked-up parts of AO3's archive stems from this impulse. It's hard, when society is increasingly converging on a roughly-though-not-entirely consequentialist understanding of the law and social mores, to make a purely deontological argument against the existence of pure fiction; thus, a lot of censorship regimes, or proponents of those regimes, work really hard to invent consequentialist reasons to support their censorship policies, and one of the only way I've seen these lines of argument really gain traction is by relying on our old friend, this kind of affective fear-driven reactionary politics I do not have a good concise name for. The relative popularity and perceived social acceptability of a particular flavor of affective fear-driven reactionary politics doesn't make it not an example of affective fear-driven reactionary politics.

I think you betray your own biases by your use of terminology: it seems to me that definitionally nothing that is fictional is CSEM. CSEM is used as a term for a very specific reason, because the common parlance, "child pornography," seems grossly inappopriate to, you know. Evidence of an actual crime, whose most central examples (i.e., not teens texting each other pictures of their butts) are records of acts of brutal violence. If I take to twitter and threaten the life of President Jack Ryan, it would be weird to classify those threats as an act of political terrorism, because Jack Ryan is a Tom Clancy character I just picked off a list of fictional U.S. presidents. And depictions of acts of political terrorism in the novels of Tom Clancy are not, themselves, political terrorism, just more schlocky political thriller that makes for decent beach reading. So "fictional CSEM" seems a contradiction in terms, at least in the sense that drives the reason for using the term in the first place.

Trying to censor things which only incidentally resemble other things because of that resemblance is usually bad, IMO! And some people seem to think that recognizing that something can be repellent and offensive to you while not meeting any reasonable criterion for censorship is the same as endorsing it--or, to be more accurate, they pretend to think that, hoping you will forget there are positions besides "think a thing is wholesome and good" and "think a thing should be made illegal."

More importantly, there is a more hard-nosed reason for us to go full "censorship is bad, eat my entire ass" in response to this kind of attitude, which is that censors lie about what they want to censor. "I only want to ban things we all can objectively agree are gross as hell" is a pretty popular position, historically. But then the Parents' Fanfiction Council or whatever gets involved, people try to shift the Overton window on what counts as gross as hell, and--as happened with Hollywood under the Hayes code--the space of acceptable expression contracts until the most vocally censorious are satisfied. The result is that eventually any kind of non-normative self-expression is considered objectionable (because someone somewhere can hammer out a Jesuitical logic whereby a theoretical innocent may come to harm)--and you're not going to protest that, are you? Because surely no decent person would want to read that disgusting filth, right? And you're a decent person.

[freestyle-crocodile-trashpile]

Master list 4

Cod

Summary: while you were impersonating them they walk in, but instead of being embarrassed you kept doing it

Summary: How Alejandro and Rodolfo cuddle you

Summary:Your a very good passing trans guy

Summary:Your a foxy person with sharp teeth, one day you accidentally bite them alittle to hard and help clean the bite

Summary:Part Two to Face

Summary: You got alittle too drunk causing you to join the strippers on the pole

Summary:Soap has a boyfriend... who's an eldritch god

Summary:On the outside your a super fun and cheerful guy but in the inside your hurting and you slowly start to lose your cheerfulness

Summary:You're loud, kind, funny, and caring, and even though Ghost always said he didn't like you cause you were "obnoxious," yet he falls for you

Pokémon

Summary:All your eevees evolved into sylveo

Supernatural

Summary:Dean always looks at the girls, well, until you come along

Summary:A lazy day for the brothers is the best kind of day with their boyfriend

Summary:The brothers get help from Narayan (changed Tanakas' name to that since he isn't Japanese) who knows a Reaper, but the brothers aren't hunting the one he knows

Summary:They find you mid-workout

Fnaf

Summary:The family has to go through two deaths at once, you and Elizabeth

Summary:One night, sneak into the pizzeria with your older brother without him noticing

Summary:One day, while working the night shift, you snap, all the stress and pressure of school really makes your snap

Summary: You are super causal about your job even though you could die

Summary:There's been a few...deadly incidents in the pizzeria lately

Dragon age

Summary:You have big hands to go with your bigger build

Summary:You walk into the main hall for the inquistor to judge you

Summary:You somehow figured out how to make a dragon not kill you, not necessarily tame

Summary:Your a single dad, while also inquistor

Summary:No matter the situation, you always have a hand on their thigh

Summary:You have massive horns all over yourself

Obey me

Summary:The brothers see a change in Lucifer, and that chance was a him being a bit cautious around you

Summary:The majority of devildom still treated the brothers horribly, calling them fallen angels. But there was a chef, a demon chef, who didn't care. And he was a damn good chef

Summary: It's movie night, and you love to mess with Belphegor

Summary:Satan charges at the wrong guy

Summary:What the MC protection group is like

Summary: You zone out while staring at Luke since you remember when he knew you

Summary: Part 2 to "face down"

Summary: Part two for "6-armed chef"

Summary:You get a little drunk off the wine Diavolo had at a party and offer the brothers to sit on your lap

Summary:You're not only half demon, but a prince from a large and stronger kingdom than devildom

Summary: Not everyone who walks into devildom is fearless, especially not humans.

Summary:Part 2 to royalty reader

Summary:You're the new exchange student, and you happen to be mcs best friend

Demon Slayer

Summary:You're a demon, but a harmless one. You go out looking for food for your non demon siblings and the trio heae about you from their crows

Summary: You're a hashire to truly fear

Summary:While you were watching TV with your cat, you suddenly had a burning feeling in your chest.... It only got worse and worse

Summary: These triplets aren't that friendly, especially when your a demon

Summary:You're the Kyofu Hashira

Summary:You die to save them

Summary:She comes home after a long mission to see you baking

Summary: After Mitsuri was rejected, she lifted something very heavy and got a boys attention from it

Summary:What the hashiras think of the Kyofu hashira

Summary: Everyone has a day off at the hot springs in the swordsmith village

Mha

Summary:You take forever in stores

Summary:You fall asleep just about anywhere, a lot

Summary:You notice that Midoriya shared his location while at Hosu City and headed to the location, but you and the hero killers quirks both revolve blood

Summary:Your trans and don't know which locker room to go to

Atsv

Summary: You get the wrong idea of when your roommate vents their problem to you

Summary:Their kids have a little crush on you

Summary:In another universe, they found out their gay for a dude

Summary:You drive them to a different state on accident

Summary: You didn't understand why you felt so bad while at Miles house

Summary:Being spiderman and a trans teen was too much for you, especially when Miguel was pissed and yelling at you

Bg3

Summary:When your tired you can't keep your hands off them

Summary:Your glad you can't see yourself in the mirror, but it's all Astarion wants

Summary:You bring them the head of their enemy

Summary:You made the deal with Rapheal so your daughter wouldn't have a mindflyer dad

Summary:You take forever to wake up, and is to heavy of a sleeper to wake up

Summary:Orin was nothing compared to your fists

Summary:Kids love to put marshmallows on your horns.

Summary:The touch of a devil is more comforting than your family

Summary:You're drunk and crying at the tiefling party while snuggling with Scratch. Why? He's just that cute

Summary:You called us, brain baby, and your keeping it as if it's your child

Summary:You gave them a ring you found

Summary:Raphael takes you out on a date in baldurs gate

Summary:Astarion saw how much his plan worked, and now, he can't help but regret it

Summary:Raphael makes a deal, but you can't believe him

Summary:After all this time, you finally break from all the stress. Right infront of them.

Summary:They get a surprise visit from you, since you need their bodyheat for the harsh cold nights

Summary:You're extremely underweight.

Summary:Modern Au hcs

Summary:Astarion looked everywhere for Gale, only to find him in your bed

Summary:Youve never been one to worship, at least, not to any gods

Tnmn

Summary: You refuse to let go in the morning

Jjk

Summary: Sukuna walks in at the perfect time.

Summary:You wake up to the most unexpected thing.

Summary:Your sweet looks hid your insanity, which Sukuna took advantage of.

Summary:The laugh of a hyena scared you more than Sukuna

Summary:Yuji asked you on a date! Yet you can't wrap your head around why he would

Summary:Your feeding Sukuna without Yuji realizing

Summary:You stuggle to unlock the door

Summary:Sukuna uses your hatred and fear to his advantage

Summary:They have to babysit a curse

Summary:There wallet gets stolen by a bird

Summary:You love Nanami! It's so weird he doesn't acknowledge you at work..

Summary:Waking up to Hakari and Kirara

[toscanoirriverente]

Hannah Barnes’s book about the rise and calamitous fall of the Gender Identity Development Service for children (Gids), a nationally commissioned unit at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London, is the result of intensive work, carried out across several years. A journalist at the BBC’s Newsnight, Barnes has based her account on more than 100 hours of interviews with Gids’ clinicians, former patients, and other experts, many of whom are quoted by name. It comes with 59 pages of notes, plentiful well-scrutinised statistics, and it is scrupulous and fair-minded. Several of her interviewees say they are happy either with the treatment they received at Gids, or with its practices – and she, in turn, is content to let them speak.

Such a book cannot easily be dismissed. To do so, a person would not only have to be wilfully ignorant, they would also – to use the popular language of the day – need to be appallingly unkind. This is the story of the hurt caused to potentially hundreds of children since 2011, and perhaps before that. To shrug in the face of that story – to refuse to listen to the young transgender people whose treatment caused, among other things, severe depression, sexual dysfunction, osteoporosis and stunted growth, and whose many other problems were simply ignored – requires a callousness that would be far beyond my imagination were it not for the fact that, thanks to social media, I already know such stony-heartedness to be out there.

Gids, which opened in 1989, was established to provide talking therapies to young people who were questioning their gender identity (the Tavistock, under the aegis of which it operated from 1994, is a mental health trust). But the trigger for Barnes’s interest in the unit has its beginnings in 2005, when concerns were first raised by staff over the growing number of patient referrals to endocrinologists who would prescribe hormone blockers designed to delay puberty. Such medication was recommended only in the case of children aged 16 or over. By 2011, however, Barnes contends, it appeared to be the clinic’s raison d’etre. In that year, a child of 12 was on blockers. By 2016, a 10-year-old was taking them.

Clinicians at Gids insisted the effects of these drugs were reversible; that taking them would reduce the distress experienced by gender dysphoric children; and that there was no causality between starting hormone blockers and going on to take cross-sex hormones (the latter are taken by adults who want fully to transition). Unfortunately, none of these things were true. Such drugs do have severe side effects, and while the causality between blockers and cross-sex hormones cannot be proven – all the studies into them have been designed without a control group – 98% of children who take the first go on to take the latter. Most seriously of all, as Gids’ own research suggested, they do not appear to lead to any improvement in children’s psychological wellbeing.

So why did they continue to be prescribed? As referrals to Gids grew rapidly – in 2009, it had 97; by 2020, this figure was 2,500 – so did pressure on the service. Barnes found that the clinic – which employed an unusually high number of junior staff, to whom it offered no real training – no longer had much time for the psychological work (the talking therapies) of old. But something else was happening, too. Trans charities such as Mermaids were closely – too closely – involved with Gids. Such organisations vociferously encouraged the swift prescription of drugs. This now began to happen, on occasion, after only two consultations. Once a child was on blockers, they were rarely offered follow-up appointments. Gids did not keep in touch with its patients in the long term, or keep reliable data on outcomes.

A lot of this is already known, thanks largely to a number of whistleblowers. Last February, the paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, commissioned by the NHS, issued a highly critical interim report into the service; in July, it was announced that Gids would close in 2023. But a lot of what Barnes tells us in Time to Think is far more disturbing than anything I’ve read before. Again and again, we watch as a child’s background, however disordered, and her mental health, however fragile, are ignored by teams now interested only in gender.

The statistics are horrifying. Less than 2% of children in the UK have an autism spectrum disorder; at Gids, more than a third of referrals presented with autistic traits. Clinicians also saw high numbers of children who had been sexually abused. But for the reader, it is the stories that Barnes recounts of individuals that speak loudest. The mother of one boy whose OCD was so severe he would leave his bedroom only to shower (he did this five times a day) suspected that his notions about gender had little to do with his distress. However, from the moment he was referred to the Tavistock, he was treated as if he were female and promised an endocrinology appointment. Her son, having finally rejected the treatment he was offered by Gids, now lives as a gay man.

As Barnes makes perfectly clear, this isn’t a culture war story. This is a medical scandal, the full consequences of which may only be understood in many years’ time. Among her interviewees is Dr Paul Moran, a consultant psychiatrist who now works in Ireland. A long career in gender medicine has taught Moran that, for some adults, transition can be a “fantastic thing”. Yet in 2019, he called for Gids’ assessments of Irish children (the country does not have its own clinic for young people) to be immediately terminated, so convinced was he that its processes were “unsafe”. The be-kind brigade might also like to consider the role money played in the rise of Gids. By 2020-21, the clinic accounted for a quarter of the trust’s income.

But this isn’t to say that ideology wasn’t also in the air. Another of Barnes’s interviewees is Dr Kirsty Entwistle, an experienced clinical psychologist. When she got a job at Gids’ Leeds outpost, she told her new colleagues she didn’t have a gender identity. “I’m just female,” she said. This, she was informed, was transphobic. Barnes is rightly reluctant to ascribe the Gids culture primarily to ideology, but nevertheless, many of the clinicians she interviewed used the same word to describe it: mad.

And who can blame them? After more than 370 pages, I began to feel half mad myself. At times, the world Barnes describes, with its genitalia fashioned from colons and its fierce culture of omertà, feels like some dystopian novel. But it isn’t, of course. It really happened, and she has worked bravely and unstintingly to expose it. This is what journalism is for.

[aliorsboxostuff]

Hey! I was hoping for a like teen male reader with Joel Miller? Platonic father-son type of relationship obviously. Just one where the reader is kinda a stand in for Ellie plot wise but come's out to Joel as trans(ftm)

No pressure ofc:] <33

A/N YK ITS BEEN A WHILE FOR THAT FATHER!JOEL FIC BUT HEY I FINALLY GOT AROUND TO DO IT and thank YOU so much friend for requesting it and putting my gears to work! Little reminder; a lot of this is based off of HBO tlou more so than the game, and i will also add bits of my experience as a trans teen needing an actual good father figure! (don't we all-). Btw, i don't know how guns work and how trucks work so please enjoy my misinterpretation of them, and i have this image of Joel in my head where he’s supportive in a toxic masculine way, sorry! Anyhow, as usual I apologize for any mistakes, english is my second language. Enjoy the fic friends! <3

Cargo.

Tags: HBOJoel and Male!reader, Joel and teen!reader, Father!Joel, Tess, Marlene, Platonic Relationship, ftm!reader, Misuse of Pronouns, coming out, Canon-Typical violence, sarcastic!Joel, Sassy!Reader, Joel cares in a southern way.

It wasn't your brightest idea, really, but it beats being chained to a radiator. And you do miss Tess and hope she’s up there fighting and being the strong woman she is, but now you're stuck with Joel and a boring road ahead of you.

—

All of this is so dumb.

Joining the Fireflies was dumb. Thinking the Fireflies would help you was dumber. 

Now you're currently stuck, well, held captive in an apartment room, handcuffed to a radiator that won't budge, and a constant Firefly guard outside the room. Awesome, wonder how you got into this situation. And worse of all, those bland food they give you really isn't their deal. Seriously, you'd think they know they're keeping a kid and not a hamster inside a cage. 

You huff, turning to try and pull at the chains again. Putting all of your body weight into it, you lean back and grunt, before a stale water droplet lands on your face. "Ugh! You fucker!"

You huff, opting to sit down again and mumble more curses to whatever leaked upstairs. Obviously, it won't work, but the scraping of metal is enough to keep you entertained. And the possibility of escaping is even more entertaining, you scoff. 

Suddenly, you hear the lock on the door turn, keys dangling, thinking it was one of the guards here to check you, you begin counting.

"One, two, three, four…" Before a lady with curly hair, sharp eyes and an unreadable face walks in instead of the guys. Your eyes quickly dart to the bag she's holding, your backpack. 

She walks in causally, stopping on the arch in the middle of the room. You level her with a stare, hand ready to grab at anything. She throws the pack to your legs and you quickly scramble for it, pulling out the blade you stashed inside and pointing the business end to the woman making her way closer. 

She sits beside you, and you shift just a bit away. 

"You're not scared." As a statement. she gives you a small shake. "Then unlock me."

"How about we start with a 'thank you'?" 

"For what?" I roll my eyes, she quickly interjects, her voice level. 

"For saving your life. I am the one that told them not to shoot you, if you recall."

"Yeah, yeah…" I grumble, putting my switchblade back into its safety. But that's exactly what you've been wondering all those days, her choice. "Why did you stop them?"

"We'll get to that," She reaches for your hand and you quickly pull away, both hands on your blade. She sighs, revealing the small key to your line of sight, and you glare at her, before reluctantly giving her the hand with the chains around. She twists the key, releasing you of your bind, and you instinctively rub the marks it left. 

"So, Evan, how're you feeling?" You wince slightly. That name shouldn't really be the one you blurted out when those guards questioned you, beats your birth name at least.

"The same," You shrug. a beat passes, a heavy silence in the room making you squirm. "Is it gonna happen?"

"No," She answers simply.

"So can I go?"

She shakes her head. "No."

"I won't tell anyone about this, I swear." You push, making eye contact with her, trying to get your point across. 

"Then where would you go? Back to FEDRA military school?" You huff. "What, you're that anxious to be a soldier?" 

"You think I chose that place?" You bite back. "They put me there since I was a baby. It's for orphans."

"'They' didn't put you there," She glares at you, making you retract slightly. "I did. Ellie." 

Then she uttered the name you loathed. You roll your eyes, lips turned into a snarl before you snapped back "You're my fucking mom or something?"

"Do I look like your mom." You don't know, many possibilities to maybe be it. Maybe not. 

"Nooo, you do not." You opted instead. "And no, it's actually…" You gave her your name. Your actual preferred name, not whatever your parents decided was best. She only stared, almost like she wanted to retort, like she knew something you didn't within her dark eyes. 

"Alright, sure," Instead, she answered. "My name is Marlene. I'm the leader of the Fireflies in the Boston QZ." 

"Why would a terrorist dump me with FEDRA?" You snarl.

"Because that's where you’ll be safest, and you were safe, until you decided to sneak out." She quickly retorted. "And 'Terrorist'?"

"Was Riley a terrorist?" Your eyes snap to her, another boiling rage almost simmers over. It would be so easy to embed the blade you're still holding onto her neck, maybe slice it and watch as warm blood flows and paint your hands red. She'd probably deserved it. In what way was she allowed to bring up the only person who loves you for you like that?

but instead it simmers down to pain. Another twist at the knife already pushing at those deep wounds. Your eyes break away from Marlenes to around the room, to the floorboard that chips away from neglect. You gulp, blinking the annoying tears making their presence known, taking in shaky lungfuls. Exhaling slowly, you could see the edges of your vision blurring, before you look at Marlene again. Your mouth opens, yet pushing your vocal cords to work seems harder than it used to. You take another inhale, gulping down those dead feelings, then finally meet her steel eyes again. She has the gall to look mildly sympathetic. 

"Why won't you let me go home?" Your voice wavers slightly. 

She exhales, eyes softening slightly. It hurts for you to see. "Because you have a greater purpose than any of us could've ever imagined." she says.

"So we're leaving tonight, and were taking you with us," 

The door opens again, and that familiar Firefly voice calls. "He's here."

"Five minutes," Marlene requested, and they nodded, closing the door. She turns back to you She shifts so her body is angled towards you, and you sit up straighter against the steel bars behind you. 

"What I'm about to tell you can not be repeated to anyone. Because if you do, I assure you," She stares. "You will die."

—

"Ow! Fuck…" The man stands before you, gun aimed at your head as you huff back the breath he knocked out of you. Steps behind her, a woman with pulled-back hair stands, the same cautious eyes scanning you, then back to Marlene at the end of the hallways. Maybe ambushing him wasn't your brightest idea, now that he's stepped on your blade. They seem to know each other. 

Marlene calls your name, her tone a try of soothing. Then she calls again, demanding, finally breaking eye contact with this 'Joel' guy and turning to her. That's when you spot the wound, bleeding at her side and it looks bad. "Oh shit-"

"No, it's okay. I'll be alright." She reassures you. "And you can't be stupid like this," She scolds. 

"So this is who Robert screwed us over with?" You turn to see a woman as she stands steps away from the man. "The Che Guevara of Boston?" 

"Well war must be pretty shitty for you to be buyin' from scumbags like him." Marlene replies with an eerily steady tone. 

"Yeah it kinda has been," She calls back. "The merch was bad, and he obviously didn't take 'Fuck off' for an answer." All the while you glared daggers at the man, eyeing your blade still beneath his boot.

"Gimme my knife back." You snarl. 

"What do you need a car battery for?" The man asks, before I try to steal my blade back and the cock of a gun startles me, he's back to aiming at me. "Don't." I quickly raise my arms up-

"Not at her," Marlene calls, both her gun and the lady beside her aimed at the man.  "Point it at me." 

Joel raises his brows in warning, before he slowly turns and aims back to Marlene. “And to answer your question, i need it for a better reason than you do,”

“No offense but Tommy’s just one man, It's our business to know things-”

“‘Know things’,” Joel bites. “You're the cause of it. You turned my own brother against me.”

“Okay Joel, that was a lot of gunfire- FEDRA’s gonna be on the way.” Kim reminds. “I know.” Marlene looks away, then down to you where you pull slightly at the definitely strained shoulder from the fall earlier. She bites her lip. “We're gonna move her out of the zone tonight. But we won't make it anywhere like this, not for a while.”

Joel looks down at you, scruffed hair and a scar jutting from his brow. “So now I'm thinkin’, you're gonna do it.”

“The hell we are.” Joel says in unison as you say;

“I’m not goin’ with them!” You shout back.

Kim turns to Marlene, holding her wound. “Let me take her.”

“Tess, we don't have time for this.” The man turns to ‘Tess’.

“Oh you don't have time-” 

“What is she to you?” Tess calls.

“To you? She’s cargo.” Marlene interjects.

“We don't smuggle people. Sorry.” Joel replies sharply.

“I can do it-”

“Kim, you don't have a fuckin’ ear on your fuckin’ head, could you please?” Marlene scrunches her face, Kim deflates as she meets eyes with you, before she looks away again. Marlene inhales a ragged breath, before she sighs. “There's a team of Fireflies waiting for her at the old State House-”

Jeol opens his mouth but Marlene continues; “I know what's out there. We were going with an entire squadron for that very reason.” She takes a breath. “But now we don't have a truck, i don't have a squadron, FEDRA’s five minutes away, what i do have is you.” She pauses, eyes fleeting from Joel's to Tess’.

“And I know what you're both capable of. For better or worse.”

Joel’s hand tightens around the gun, making you gulp, looking back at the woman she’s ready to pull her claws out too. You turn to Marlene, a shake in your voice as you say, “What are they capable of?”

“You get her there safely, and they’ll give you what you need. Not just the battery, the whole thing. Fueled up trucks, guns, supplies, all of it.” Marlene regards them both. “I swear.”  

You watch as the man blinks, then he turns to Tess for a brief moment before she nods her head, angling behind her, he nods curtly. Joel stares you down again, and as he lifts his leg it was your chance to swiftly reach and cut- before he kicked your knife far from your reach. “Asshole!”

Marlene regards you with a stare, when you only huffed and rub at your shoulder again.

The two strangers whisper from the other end of the hall, too far away for you to hear anything coherent. They share looks and assess both you and Marlene, before they turn back to their circle. The scene reminds you of something out of FEDRA school, back when those girls would whisper rumors about you or Riley, about you in particular usually. You narrow your eyes when Joel glances at you. He only narrows his and returns to Tess. 

“Y'all talk it through but please remember I'm bleeding out!” Marlene announces. The pair pauses, before Tess turns.

“Okay, here's the deal.” She walks languidly and stands by your side. “We’ll get her to your crew at the state house, but before we hand her over, they give us everything we want.”

“If not, we kill her, then and there.”

“Deal.” Marlene nods. You snap at her, eyes wide. 

“Really? That fast?”

“You are all that matters. The team won't jeopardize that.” You sigh, breaking eye contact with her. “Remember what I told you? Now go get your backpack.”

You huff, looking back at the woman that promises you safety, a pinch of pain snaps through your heart. “Now.” She adds your name, at which you grumble and stand to retrieve your pack.

Hauling the thing onto your back, you stand in the corridor again, now closer to the pair. “Okay, let's go.” Tess turns, already making her way out.

You stare back at Marlene, angry and disappointed and hurt but she nods, encouraging you to follow the woman you’ve only seen threaten your ticket out of here. You narrow your eyes, before you turn and shoulder-check Joel before grabbing your knife, pocketing it and not looking back. You briefly hear Marlene's fading voice, “Joel, don't fuck this up. Please.”

Before heavy boots follow behind you and you reach the door with Tess.

—

You find yourself missing Tess already. It didn't take long for you to bury the grief down, in a world like this there's no reason to get sentimental. But with the little time you and her got along, better than you got along with Jeol at least, she reminds you of that older student that was nice to you. The one that offered gum once and told you she liked your hair. She then got admitted to join FEDRA’s soldiers. That was the end of that, and so was Tess.

Through your time hiking with Joel, he’s told you about his scar and the reason you two are going to Frank and Bill’s, he explains to you about the remnants of a plane you two passed. He explains the mundanity of it, the expensive sandwich people would buy but your eyes only sparkle with wonder. He rolls his eyes as you two continue walking to the run-down gas station where he kept a stash of supplies. 

Once the two of you arrived at the fenced little town, Joel told you to get cleaned up while he started the car. So you snagged the body tape that was laying in the medicine cabinet and took the first hot shower since forever ago.

You sigh as the water hits your skin, scrubbing the grime and dirt from days of buildup into the drain. You made sure to wash your hair too. As you dry off and make sure your hair is in a towel, you put on the body tape before grabbing the shirt and hoodie you pulled from the clothes boxes. The layers keep your chest hidden and you smile as you take in yourself from the mirror. Clean and dry hair, flat chest and clean face. Though the scar makes you look tougher, you grin to yourself. Lastly, you put deodorant on before putting on the jacket you set aside earlier.

When Joel was finished with the car and took his shower, you checked around the place, pulling and prodding at furniture that piqued your interest. Your eyes widen when you pull down a drawer to reveal a loaded gun. You quickly stuff it inside your bag when you hear Joel coming down the stairs.

“Well don't you look nice,” You grin, making the older man huff.

“Come on,”

—

When the two of you take off from the guarded houses, it takes another 2 hours before the car reaches an abandoned gas station and Joel pulls to the side.

“I'm going to get fuel, you.” He stares at you. “Don't wander off, stay close,”

“Sure,” You huff, jumping out of the car to look around. The station seemed to host a convenience store, the broken glass door both inviting and menacing. 

Looking back as Joel picks out a fuel canister from the trunk, you begin walking to the abandoned building. You can feel Joel's eyes following your back, knowing he's putting you in his line of sight. 

Careful with the glass door, you walk through the threshold and look around. Empty shelves, scattered and definitely expired products, old posters that are peeling. You gander at the opened register, sighing knowing that someone probably stole from it before running off somewhere. reaching the back of the store, a bathroom door peeks open. 

The hinges creak as you step inside, cautious for any infected until your eyes track to the exposed ceiling, sunlight cascading through the giant hole and the cracks surrounding it.

"Cool…" You grin, amazed by the rays that have made their way inside. The humidity from the toilets must've generated the amount of foliage that grew inside the stalls, judging from the green bushes and fungi that grew—who knew FEDRA school actually gave you some information. 

When you turn, you jump a bit when you see your reflection, a cracked mirror in front of you. You scoff, looking into the glass where you stand. There you are, a thick jacket over your body while your hair has started to ruffle a bit. You drop your bag and reach for the gun, pulling it out. The safety is in place, and you did check the bullets earlier when Joe wasn't looking. It felt heavy in your hand, the piece of metal capable of taking lives, and saving them. You mull over it, before you pull it in front of you, the mirror reflects back the image of you holding the gun against yourself, a hardened face like all those soldiers had. You pull the safety back.

“Pew, pew,” You mimic a gun firing. “Pew.” 

Staring back into your eyes, darkened from the minimal lighting in the environment. There's a bit of your hair covering your face before you huff it away and bring back the gun. Clicking the safety back, you pull out the cartridge to find it full, of course. The barrel is a bit harder to pull, but when it does go off a bullet clatters to the ground. It clangs and you hurry to pick it up, hearing for any indication that Joel might hear it. 

A beat passes and you release a relieved sigh. Putting the bullet and cartridge on the sink, you stare at the empty gun, before clicking the safety off and aiming at yourself again. You grin, closing one eye as if aiming and clicking.

Nothing shoots out, but you triumphant smile either way. 

Putting the bullets back in and making sure the safety was on, you stuff the gun back inside your bag before you head outside. 

You approached a hunched Joel, shoving a plastic tube into a car’s fuel tank, already acknowledging you in front of him. “We have to do this every hour?”

“Gas breaks down over time,” He continues to feed the tube in. “This stuff’s almost water.”

“Back in the day, we’d drive ten, twenty hours on one tank. You could go anywhere,”

“So where’d you go?” You watch Joel stuff a ball of fabric into the hole. He pauses for a second, meeting your eyes before he looks back down.

“Pretty much anywhere,” Then he blows into another tube. The clear tube fills with gas and it flows into the canister that’ll hold it. You stare at the technique with fascination.

“Nice! How does that work?” You approach the can.

“It's a siphon. It’s when liquid… travels against gravity,” Joel pauses as he watches you smirk. “Because pressure-”

“You don't know,” You grin.

“I know it works.” He insists, making you chuckle as you turn your back to him. “No wanderin’.” 

You groan, returning in front of Joel where he's still ‘siphon’-ing the gasoline. He’s busy with his work, when you get a bright idea. “Okay,” You grin.

You pull out the one book that’ll cure your boredom. “Your fault then,” 

“Doesn't matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationary,” Joel fixes you with a stare, a little dent between his brows when you giggle. 

“‘No Pun Intended, Volume too,’ By Will Livingston. Get it? ‘T-o-o’, like two O’s,” 

“Jesus,” Jeol grunts when you laugh again. 

“What did the mermaid wear to her math class?” You grin widely while Joel straightens his shirt, staring blankly back at you as you slowly lean forward, urging him to answer. “An algae bra!” 

You continue to laugh, both at the joke and at Joel's face, before you continue. “I stayed up all night-”

“No-”

“Wondering where the sun went, and then it dawned on me!”

Joel sighs and leans on the deserted car. “Feel free to wait in the car.”

“Okay, but just know,” You display the book to the exasperated man. “You can't escape Will Livingston. He’ll be back,” 

He only rolls his eyes as you giggle and haul your pack, walking to where the truck is parked. Another half an hour passes before you hear the crunch of Joel's boots and the shift as he puts the canister on the truck's trunk, and slides back inside. You were lounging in the back seat when he started the engine, then drove out of the abandoned station. 

The car moves past a couple of massive trucks, where you quickly sit up and stare at them as you both pass by. 

“Must’ve been some truck,” You stare, intrigued.

“Yeah, they used to stick big-ass plows on them and clear the roads for their tanks and such,”

“Whoa! I wanna see a tank!” 

“You will,” Joel replies, a bit bitten off as he stares out into the road. You prompted to look around instead, pulling a shiny something from the back of the passenger seat. A tape, ‘Hank Williams’ was written on top.

“Got somethin’,” You tap Joel's shoulder with it as you lean between the seats. “Here, this make you all nostalgic?”

Joel takes the tape, looking it over, tapping on it. “This is actually before my time,”

“Great,” You sit back when you spot Joel putting the tape into the player. 

“It’s a winner though,” He presses play and a guitar melody starts to strum, filling the car. You grin as the music starts, before you start to look around again, pulling another thing from the floor.

“Oh man, go somethin’ else,” You grin, flipping it open. You spotted Joel's eye from the rearview and he seems to have spotted the front of the magazine.

“It’s uh- light on the reading, But it has some interesting pictures,” Joel could practically break his neck with the way he turns, eyes wide as he sees you flipping away.

“No, no, no put that back. That’s not for- kid come on-” 

Your eyes scan the pictures, pulling an extended one where your jaw dramatically stops. “How would he even walk around with that thing?!” 

“Please get rid of it.”

“Hold your horses, I wanna see these cool ‘examples’!” You giggle, flipping to another page when Joel only sighs. His eyes are back on the road when you smirk with an idea. “Why are all these pages stuck together?”

“Uh…” The man is either worried he’ll say the wrong word or confuse you more with an answer, faltering and searching for more words only for you to grin.

“Oh i’m just fuckin’ with ya,” You smack the back of his seat lightly. You pull down the window, feeling the gust of wind as the car drives through the dried fields, before you throw the magazine out of the window and into the wild. “Bye-bye dude!” 

Time passes and so does the scenery. From dried fields, to cows roaming the pastures, to abandoned roller coasters. And Joel was right, you did pass by tanks, abandoned and vines had made their home in it, a somber reminder of the past. You feel a shiver run up your arm when the car passes those big and rusted weapons, before you look away and focus on the road instead. The car passes rows and rows of trailers, a resting area for truckers back in the day, Joel explained when you asked. 

Soon, the road turns into a forest, and the last of the cassette dies down, filling the car with silence. “Alright, that's enough for today,” 

Joel presses at the radio where the tape escapes and he puts it back down, then he turns into a clearing where the truck treks through green grass, no doubt leaving tire tracks. He stops it as the surrounding trees cover the car, but the treeline is just visible. 

—

You emerge from your cocoon of a sleeping bag to a rattling, slowly blinking the sleep from your eyes before you quirk your nose with an unfamiliar smell. Inching your way to the stove, you wiggle until you stand on your knees and pull at the boiling thing on top of it, the smell suddenly stronger which makes you cringe back. “Ugh! What the fuck is that?!”

“You don't like coffee?” Joel calls back from the trunk, brows raised, clearly shocked.

You only stared back at the pot, a tinge of disgust yet fascination, before flipping the lid back on and throwing yourself to your earlier curled position, opting to ignore the stink.

After putting all of your supplies back and securing them, Joel starts the car as you sit in the passenger seat. He instructs you to pull out a map and you do just that as he drives back into the paved road. When the both of you are on solid road, Joel pulls out a black bottle, and sips at it.

“Is that seriously what those Starbucks in the QZ used to sell?” You grimace, looking at the man beside you.

“Well, theirs was a lot fresher than what Bill saved up, but yeah this is what they sold.” 

You stare at the bottle again. “Smells like burnt shit.” 

Joel ignores you, only sipping coffee again, this time visibly louder before he fixes you a stare. “Eyes on the map.”

You huff, putting your attention back on the paper laid out in front of you. “76 West, and then… 70 West, for like, ever.” You sigh.

“Where in Wyoming did you say your brother was?”

“Last contact came through a radio tower close to Cody,” Joel turns to watch you as you flip the paper, eyes searching.

“Cody… Cody, Cody! Ah man, that's deep in there,” Your finger traces the many lines and roads etched into the paper. 

“Yeah,”

“And if he's not there?”

“Then odds are, he’ll be near a settlement, probably close to another city out there, ain't too   many of ‘em in Wyoming,”

You squint at one of the names on the map. “Chee-yen?”

“Cheyenne.”

“Che- Really?” Joel nods. “Cheyenne, Laramie…. Casper?” You hum, continue to read the map.

“What's his name?”

“Whose name?”

“Your brother,” This time you're focused on Joel, choosing to put the map on your lap instead. After a pause, Joel answers.

“Tommy,”

“Younger or older?”

“Younger,”

“Why isn't he with you?” Another curious question.

“A long story.”

“Is it longer than 25 hours? ‘Cause I think that's what we got,” You shrug, looking at Joel while he only blinks, before his eyes are back on the road. He huffs, then begins to tell about Tommy and how he came to be.

The story ends with a closing remark about the Fireflies, and you had to agree they were dumb. Trying to save a dying world is useless, though there is still hope. It ends bitterly as it reminds you of Marlene.

“If you don't think there's hope for the world, why bother going on?” Your eyes track the road outside. “I mean, you gotta try right?”

Joel stayed silent, then; “You haven't seen the world so you don't know.”

“You keep goin’ for family, that's about it,”

“I’m not family,” You almost flinched with how little your voice sounds.

“No,” Joel shakes his head. “You're cargo.”

“I made a promise to Tess, and she was like family.”

You nodded slowly, resting your head on the seat as your eyes passed the fields outside. You think back to Riley, to the days you’d spend with her, to the way she made you feel as if the world was only worth the two of you. She was family, she made you feel like family. Then that was over and next thing you know you ran away from Marlene despite promising Riley you’d join them.

“Y’know… about Marlene,” Joel turns to you for a second, realizing how quiet you got, before he turns back to the road. You chewed at your bottom lip a bit, before huffing and turning to the road beside you, letting the morning wind breeze through your hair. 

“She said this old name, Ellie,” Your brows frown a little, trying to blink as you feel your eyes gloss over. “That was the name my parents apparently gave me before they left me with FEDRA.” 

“Marlene told me that, the name,” When you turn, Joel’s eyes are trained on you, soft on the edges and it makes you gulp. “I hated it. I always did,” 

“You don't go by that.”

“No, I don't.” You huff, looking away and outside your window again. The wind is soothing over you. “I never had a family, Marlene wasn't family she was just a Firefly, and the only one i had was…”

“So I changed it. Never felt like mine anyways, Ellie- Feels like a dead girl's name,” Grass and trees pass by. “And I'm not a girl, so…”

“No?” This time, you notice the hint of confusion and curiosity in the man's tone. 

“Nope,” You popped the ‘p’. “Never was, never will be,” 

“So you’re…?” You scoff, turning back to Joel.

“I’m a dude, dumbass,” You stared at Joel as he looked out at the road, then back at you, eyebrows scrunched together. “What?”

“Marlene said-”

“Marlene doesn't know shit.” You cross your arm, trying to bury yourself into the seat. “She left me, just like my parents. So I make my own rules. I made it myself. Got a problem?” 

Joel only stares, silence filling the void, only the light hum and sometimes gravel underneath the road made noise. You huff, looking out into the world, contemplating your choice. What went through your head thinking this man, who considers you ‘cargo’ was worth sharing a bit of yourself with? He wasn't someone worth dying for, worth saving for, he didn't earn this personal information about you. Fuck this, fuck your stupid heart, fuck your damn feelings and mushy-

“Sure kid, whatever,” Now that made you snap at him. The last time someone said that to you was when you told Riley about it. Albeit less cold and distant, but still. Your brows arch, assessing the man next to you.

“You don't care?”

“Why should i? That doesn't matter,” He shrugs, eyes trained on the road. “What matters is i don't need to carry your dead weight if you got your ass bitten, ‘cause you're a man,”

You blink, slightly confused and worried if Joel got hit in the head or not. Maybe it was that coffee… Either way, you felt a sense of warmth blooming in your heart, elevating your breath, before you scoff and look away, a smile making its way to your lips. “Yeah, whatever old man,”  

Requests are opened!

[lunarsilkscreen]

NA: Extraordinary Forgetfulness

When I was young I was extraordinarily forgetful. It was just how I was. Later I learn that this is related to some sort of ADHD or Autism. BUT. That's not the whole story.

I'm a Video Game enthusiast. One day I was requested to bring in a SNES-Mini to work for a holiday party. Normally I would be all over this. A chance to play games at work.

And I completely forgot... This isn't something I had done since before I enlisted... I've experienced mental fatigue and fog before, but this kind of forgetfulness isn't something I experienced in... Forever. When did it start back up?

My youth had a slurry of negative influences, and in all my self-examination I couldn't nail down any single thing. And my family and whomever else had an influence couldn't solve it.

I was expected to figure out how to solve a lot of problems most kids shouldn't've. My family members can tell you just how routinely forgetful I used to be. And to an extent, I still am.

But during depressive episodes it's so much worse.

Some a* said: "You forget youre a men all the time." Butch, I'm more manly than you and I rejected my manliness...

So what is *this* depression? Vitamin-D deficiency? I don't think that's the whole story. It's a part of it. Going from a mainly outdoor job to an indoor job is. But I was also really depressed when I was younger, and outdoors more.

Somebody said it's puberty. Puberty makes you depressed especially when it initially boots up.

That doesn't explain the entire first 24 years of my life. As many as 4 years of my life, maybe. But the other twenty? That's a drop in the bucket.

Let me clarify: Depression isn't being unhappy. It's not being sad. It's the inability to feel most emotions. This includes a commonly noted observation of people unable to feel the *reward cycle* from a completed job.

Depression looks closer to that *robot persona* stereotypically linked to autistic people. I'm not saying that depression and autism have a causal link. I'm noting an observation.

Because you can't feel and process any emotions, that leaves you in a perpetual fugue state. Not one where you lost your identity, but one where you can't build one.

If I was to suggest a link between the Trans and Detrans experience, it would be this perpetual depressive state that doesn't clear up ever. And being told that it's just typical. "Life is perpetual suffering, if you're not depressed, you're doing it wrong."

Simultaneously, that's why people will cling to which ever depiction that shows people *happy*. Something I've seen from teens cling Youth-Ministries, Drugs, or any other *promise* that the pain *can* end.

It's not the promise of being perpetually happy, it's the promise of being able to experience [not suffering] for a moment. And there's a difference.

That doesn't afford a one-size fits all solution. This could be abuse, oppression, or just life experiences (death). This could be internal, such as clinical depression and being trans, or having a hormonal or dietary imbalance. Even a lack of sleep that relates to your circadian rhythm.

So the question really is; When did *that* depression clear up for me the first time? That would be from the stability and security offered to me by the military, as well as the ability to pursue self-substantiation.

To be clear; it didn't go away--it only eased everything else that prevented me from being able to address it. I still had social anxiety and an inability to confirm without intentionally suppressing emotions to do so.

And those emotions didn't stay at that level, they increasingly got worse and worse as I dealt with them the only way I knew how. Especially as my level of responsibility rose.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Rachel Cooke

Published: Feb 19. 2023

Hannah Barnes’s book about the rise and calamitous fall of the Gender Identity Development Service for children (Gids), a nationally commissioned unit at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London, is the result of intensive work, carried out across several years. A journalist at the BBC’s Newsnight, Barnes has based her account on more than 100 hours of interviews with Gids’ clinicians, former patients, and other experts, many of whom are quoted by name. It comes with 59 pages of notes, plentiful well-scrutinised statistics, and it is scrupulous and fair-minded. Several of her interviewees say they are happy either with the treatment they received at Gids, or with its practices – and she, in turn, is content to let them speak.

Such a book cannot easily be dismissed. To do so, a person would not only have to be wilfully ignorant, they would also – to use the popular language of the day – need to be appallingly unkind. This is the story of the hurt caused to potentially hundreds of children since 2011, and perhaps before that. To shrug in the face of that story – to refuse to listen to the young transgender people whose treatment caused, among other things, severe depression, sexual dysfunction, osteoporosis and stunted growth, and whose many other problems were simply ignored – requires a callousness that would be far beyond my imagination were it not for the fact that, thanks to social media, I already know such stony-heartedness to be out there.

Gids, which opened in 1989, was established to provide talking therapies to young people who were questioning their gender identity (the Tavistock, under the aegis of which it operated from 1994, is a mental health trust). But the trigger for Barnes’s interest in the unit has its beginnings in 2005, when concerns were first raised by staff over the growing number of patient referrals to endocrinologists who would prescribe hormone blockers designed to delay puberty. Such medication was recommended only in the case of children aged 16 or over. By 2011, however, Barnes contends, it appeared to be the clinic’s raison d’etre. In that year, a child of 12 was on blockers. By 2016, a 10-year-old was taking them.

Clinicians at Gids insisted the effects of these drugs were reversible; that taking them would reduce the distress experienced by gender dysphoric children; and that there was no causality between starting hormone blockers and going on to take cross-sex hormones (the latter are taken by adults who want fully to transition). Unfortunately, none of these things were true. Such drugs do have severe side effects, and while the causality between blockers and cross-sex hormones cannot be proven – all the studies into them have been designed without a control group – 98% of children who take the first go on to take the latter. Most seriously of all, as Gids’ own research suggested, they do not appear to lead to any improvement in children’s psychological wellbeing.

So why did they continue to be prescribed? As referrals to Gids grew rapidly – in 2009, it had 97; by 2020, this figure was 2,500 – so did pressure on the service. Barnes found that the clinic – which employed an unusually high number of junior staff, to whom it offered no real training – no longer had much time for the psychological work (the talking therapies) of old. But something else was happening, too. Trans charities such as Mermaids were closely – too closely – involved with Gids. Such organisations vociferously encouraged the swift prescription of drugs. This now began to happen, on occasion, after only two consultations. Once a child was on blockers, they were rarely offered follow-up appointments. Gids did not keep in touch with its patients in the long term, or keep reliable data on outcomes.

A lot of this is already known, thanks largely to a number of whistleblowers. Last February, the paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, commissioned by the NHS, issued a highly critical interim report into the service; in July, it was announced that Gids would close in 2023. But a lot of what Barnes tells us in Time to Think is far more disturbing than anything I’ve read before. Again and again, we watch as a child’s background, however disordered, and her mental health, however fragile, are ignored by teams now interested only in gender.

The statistics are horrifying. Less than 2% of children in the UK have an autism spectrum disorder; at Gids, more than a third of referrals presented with autistic traits. Clinicians also saw high numbers of children who had been sexually abused. But for the reader, it is the stories that Barnes recounts of individuals that speak loudest. The mother of one boy whose OCD was so severe he would leave his bedroom only to shower (he did this five times a day) suspected that his notions about gender had little to do with his distress. However, from the moment he was referred to the Tavistock, he was treated as if he were female and promised an endocrinology appointment. Her son, having finally rejected the treatment he was offered by Gids, now lives as a gay man.

As Barnes makes perfectly clear, this isn’t a culture war story. This is a medical scandal, the full consequences of which may only be understood in many years’ time. Among her interviewees is Dr Paul Moran, a consultant psychiatrist who now works in Ireland. A long career in gender medicine has taught Moran that, for some adults, transition can be a “fantastic thing”. Yet in 2019, he called for Gids’ assessments of Irish children (the country does not have its own clinic for young people) to be immediately terminated, so convinced was he that its processes were “unsafe”. The be-kind brigade might also like to consider the role money played in the rise of Gids. By 2020-21, the clinic accounted for a quarter of the trust’s income.

But this isn’t to say that ideology wasn’t also in the air. Another of Barnes’s interviewees is Dr Kirsty Entwistle, an experienced clinical psychologist. When she got a job at Gids’ Leeds outpost, she told her new colleagues she didn’t have a gender identity. “I’m just female,” she said. This, she was informed, was transphobic. Barnes is rightly reluctant to ascribe the Gids culture primarily to ideology, but nevertheless, many of the clinicians she interviewed used the same word to describe it: mad.

And who can blame them? After more than 370 pages, I began to feel half mad myself. At times, the world Barnes describes, with its genitalia fashioned from colons and its fierce culture of omertà, feels like some dystopian novel. But it isn’t, of course. It really happened, and she has worked bravely and unstintingly to expose it. This is what journalism is for.

==

When even the Guardian stops pretending it isn't real.