Collusion with delusion
Therapists cannot shoulder the whole burden of curing societal psychosis
I spent 5th and 6th July in London at one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended. The subject was gender medicine, specifically as it pertains to children, and the programme was pulled together by CAN-SG and SEGM. I think that in the coming weeks at least some of the talks will go online, and I highly recommend watching when they do.
A pleasing number of attendees I spoke with during the breaks were newbies – unhappy parents of trans-identifying children, young people who were developing serious worries about the ideology or coming out of trans identification themselves, and medical professionals of all stripes. Just a year or two ago, I don’t think these people would have come across the conference programme online, and even if they had, most wouldn’t have dared attend. I was delighted (and a bit embarrassed) by the number who said that they had first started to ask questions when they saw me in a video or podcast; it’s quite something to know that the messages in bottles that get cast to the waters really do get picked up and read.
One of the most interesting things that happened was at the end of a session in which therapists were speaking about their approach to supporting trans-identifying children. They spoke about their open-ended and supportive approach, asking rather than answering questions and seeking not to make decisions for the child or foreclose any options. All standard fare for therapy, but it provoked an angry and upset question from a member of the audience, gay-rights campaigner Mr Menno. When, he asked, would these children be simply told the truth, rather than all this pandering (I paraphrase), namely that they cannot change sex, and that it is stupid and harmful to try?
