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Comment by _cenw | Hacker News Reader

If you want to know where things are going, watch how politics are treating their most vulnerable population. It's not going too well.

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I’m shocked to hear that I am apparently living under totalitarianism, and would love to see some concrete examples of this dramatic shift in Labour party policy, rather than vague gesturing.

the continued decline of transgender rights and support of the same in civil society. the UK has always been jokingly referred to as TERF Island, but more recently, after the made-to-order Cass review that goes against all known research in the field and was authored by a biased party (even consulting with the architect of the florida ban on transitioning), organizations that'd usually staunchly support transgender rights like Stonewall and Pink News are pulling back. newspapers have turned up the anti-trans rhetoric to 11 as well, and especially in England no mainstream party is refusing to participate in the moral panic. it has ceased to be a culture war, and is now much more of a cultural consensus. the common punching bag.

that looks pretty dire for civil society to me. i didn't call it totalitarian, but it sure looks like a precursor to it.

Oh, yeah, the UK has big problems. Brexit more or less broke it (I’m half convinced that the Tory trans obsession was borne out of a need for distraction after Brexit was no longer looking so good for them…)

Totalitarian is pushing it tho.

It's a worrying direction if the forth estate is this defunct and populism is at an all time high. How the UK treats trans people (not sure if they're the most vulnerable, but they're vulnerable and easy targets) is just one very poignant example of the shift.

Cass and her team did an excellent job assessing the available evidence and current clinical practice. Anyone who has read the Review with an open mind, and considers the wellbeing of children first and foremost, can see that.

There's a great deal of ideologically-driven pushback to her team's work, mostly from people without expertise in the field. But that can be safely ignored due to not being based upon evidence nor reason.

That's why the British Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the Canadian Pediatric Society all were in total agree-- wait they weren't.

And the Cass Review cites a lot of studies in alignment with the study quality in a minority population -- oh wait, it disregards over 100 studies outright, putting a bar where it can't possibly be met, and then ignored that requirement for the body of studies that agree with her preexisting ideas.

Because it's so easy to defend the Cass review, you used your established HN account and not a sockpu-- wait you didn't.

And Cass totally didn't consult with Patrick Hunter. Almost like she wanted advice on how to replicate the ban in Florida. Not at all.

If you want the cherry on top, before the review, Cass supposedly recommended clinicians read the culture-war work "Irreversible Damage" - a book that compares doctors providing gender affirming care with nazi human experimentation (godwin's law in full force here), completely eliminating the notion that she was a neutral party when the review started.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate you addressing the actual problems with the work instead of a blind reaffirmation that it is scientific and everyone else is paid off by big pharma or something (or what's the implication here?)

A telling response. I can see which bubble of social media complainers you've been listening to on this, based of which of their talking points you've picked up.

Yep, keep it vague. Keep attacking me and my supposedly biased media diet instead of the actual points listed. Totally makes you look reasonable and logical and enlightened.

So, did you sign up for HN just for this? Do you have a Google Alert for "Cass review"? Can one follow (block) you on X?

I'm english and although everything is a bit run down and creaking, we're not going through totalitarianism, in fact, we just had an election which unlike the US preceded an orderly transfer of power.

the most vulnerable populations in the UK look to be doing a heck of a lot better than the most vulnerable populations in other areas of the world.

not sure how you're concluding totalitarianism is running the show in the UK.

How do they treat immigrants and racial minorities? Unless you're implying those aren't the most vulnerable?

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