In Praise of Ignoring Experts

Advanced Degrees Don't Fix Stupid, Especially Globalist Stupid

Experts are supposed to know more than we do, and we are supposed to respect their superior understanding of whatever they are experts about. They get to tell us what we are supposed to know, think and believe because, experts.
In our modern, post-scientific era, experts on somebody’s highly burnished team are such very valuable experts that they get to have a very, very special relationship with science through special verbs that they get to use because, experts:

They get to OWN the science:

Anthony Fauci gets to REPRESENT the science (scrub to 4:49 if you are short on time):

But Florence Ashley, a talented, Mult focused science verb user, gets to INVALIDATE the science and, while he is at it, shred the rule of law, bioethics and rational thought all at the same time:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1743999902726709709

Mr. Ashley is a self-described “transfeminine jurist and bioethicist” whom the floridly insane WHO (whose policies make it clear that it should actually be called the World Holocaust Organization) has just appointed as an expert to help it develop a guideline on “the health of trans and gender diverse people.” [1]

As an aside, all 21 members of the expert panel are long-term transgender rights advocates and more than half of them appear to be transgender people so the likelihood of foundational questions being asked and answered in this process is pretty low.

Before we get to Mr. Ashley’s astonishing invalidation of science, and, while he is at it, of law, bioethics and logic (fitting him perfectly for the task the WHO has given him), let me state my position on the whole transgender nonsense (there: most of it is already stated, but I’ll finish the rest and then go back to Mr. Ashley’s breathtakingly ignorant “expertise”.

My post graduate training after medical school is in adult, child and adolescent psychiatry. I believe that if an adult finds love with anyone, they are fortunate and I do not care whom they find that love with so long as children are not involved in their sexual life. It is, frankly, not my business (nor yours) whom a grown person loves and is loved by.

However, from where I sit, transexuals are a nonsense category of people who either consciously pretend to be the other gender (spoiler alert: there are only two genders, male and female, no extras or spares) or are delusional.
If they are pretending, that is, in my estimation, sort of weird, but, hey, as long as they are not damaging anyone else, that’s OK with me. If they are delusional, that would be more of a problem, but, again, just how much depends on what they are doing with their delusion.

Despite what the gender ideologues tell you and tell our children, by the way, doctors do not “assign” gender at birth, they IDENTIFY it based on physical characteristics.

Back to Mr. Ashley, whose credentials, as listed in the WHO press release about his appointment to the guideline development [2] read: “Florence Ashley is a transfeminine jurist and bioethicist whose work focuses on trans issues in the legal and healthcare systems. Florence is an assistant professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law in Canada. They [sic] have obtained a doctorate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Joint Centre for Bioethics. They [sic] hold law degrees and a master's from the McGill University Faculty of Law and served as the first openly transfeminine law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada. [Which translates, in my understanding, as ‘Mr. Ashley was the first man to go to work dressed as a woman at the Supreme Court of Canada and get away with it.’] They [sic] are widely published, with over 30 refereed publications in law, bioethics, healthcare, and social sciences. Florence is the author of Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis (UBC Press, 2022).

Let’s look at some of those publications, shall we? All of the works cited can be found on Mr. Ashley’s page [3]

Mr. Ashley tells us that since the science does not support his position that gender “affirming” (which really means gender contradicting since gender cannot be changed, although bodies can be mutilated) “care” [sic] and the studies that have been done show that it frequently has disastrous outcomes in terms of mental and physical health and degraded quality of life, we just throw science out the window. His paper, Randomized-controlled trials are methodologically inappropriate in adolescent transgender healthcare, [4] says that in these special matters, we don’t need no stinkin’ randomized-controlled studies because “The scientific value of RCTs is severely impeded when studying the impact of gender-affirming care on the mental health of trans adolescent. [Why? What makes the impact of this kind of “treatment” so special that rigorous science is tossed in the trash?] Gender-affirming interventions have physiologically evident effects and are highly desired by participants, [Since kids are fixated on something, no science is necessary to find out if it is actually good for them or massively destructive? Say what?] giving rise to concerns over adherence, drop-out, response bias, and generalizability. [Wait! What? If we do a real study, people will drop out of the study and it won’t be useful in understanding the same population? How does that work, exactly?] Complementary and well-designed observational studies can instead be used to ground reliable recommendations for clinical practice and policymaking in adolescent trans healthcare, without the need for RCTs. [Because you said so, Mr. Ashley? No need for confirmation of anything, once you, the expert, have so said. This is worthy of Tony Fauci!] The lack of RCTs on the mental health impacts of gender-affirming care for trans adolescents does not entail that gender-affirming interventions are based on insufficient evidence. [Which translates as. “Just because there is no science showing what I want to believe it is true does not mean that I can’t believe it anyway. I decide what is science because I am an EXPERT and I have an aggressive and in your face on my arm tattoo and therefore we do not, as noted above, need no stinkin’ science! So there!”]

In another of his anti-science screeds, Mr. Ashely, a WHO expert, asserts that letting kids figure out if they want to alter their bodies permanently by giving them a chance to sort things out and grow up (since most kids decide that they are really OK with their biological genders once they get through puberty). His article, The Clinical Irrelevance of “Desistance” Research for Transgender and Gender Creative Youth [5] generates a massive amount of babble to say that since “wait and see”, rather than socially, medically and surgically reinforcing a child’s delusion, generally results in the “question” of gender becoming moot through resolution, we should not do that. In fact, says the anointed expert, do not use what we know about the benefits of NOT intervening (“desistance”) to choose not to intervene: “This article analyzes desistance research and concludes that the body of research is not relevant when deciding between models of care. [This body of research, that tells us that it serves kids best to just wait a while before changing their bodies permanently is not relevant to the people the research was conducted about because, transgender.] Three arguments undermining the relevance of desistance research are presented. Drawing on a variety of concerns, the article highlights that “desistance” does not provide reasons against prepubertal social transition or peripubertal medical transition, [Waiting to see what happens is not ANTI hormone blockers so you cannot choose to let the kid wait until they grow up some. What?] that transition for “desisters” is not comparably harmful to delays for trans youth, [And EQUITY would require that both doing something and not doing something must be equally harmful to be a good choice for either group.] and that the wait-and-see and corrective models of care are harmful to youth who will grow up cis. [Wait! What? Kids who grow out of the delusion are harmed by not being harmed? Sorry. Logic package fell overboard.] The assumed relevance of desistance research to trans youth care is therefore misconceived.”

Bonkers. Quite literally bonkers. But dangerous. This man is setting policy not just for himself, deciding what dresses to wear with his long tresses and tattoos, but helping a would-be totalitarian control system set policy and lay out options - and requirements - for us, for our schools, for our doctors, for our children.

Before I thank Mr. Ashley, I want to share one more of his astonishing “contributions”.

You know that mutilating children has, for the monsters out there, a great advantage in that it reduces their fertility, assisting in the depopulation efforts (every little bit helps, after all, and this gender bending nonsense is being proliferated very, very widely). He clarifies this issue for us here: Reflecting on the Rhetoric of Adoption in Trans Youth Care [6] he does, in fact, call a reproductive spade a reproductive spade, at least for children who have been mutilated chemically and/or surgically. It is axiomatic to Mr. Ashley, as it is to all professional victims, that the world is a cruel and terrible place. Here it is an unjust one. And human relationships are obviously terribly painful and problematic in it. “Adoption is increasingly being discussed as an alternative to procreation for trans youth given the impact of gender-affirming medical care on fertility. [Thank you, Mr. Ashley, for affirming not gender, but the massive destruction of reproductive capacity that what you are advocating causes. You might, just might, think about NOT advocating something that destroys a child’s fertility before they even complete puberty and refrain from doing that to children. But then you might not have anything to be an expert about.] In this article, I caution against idyllic views of adoption and offer a critical perspective on the social, political, and ethical dimensions of adoption. [Mr. Ashley is asserting that adoption sucks. Is he an adopted child? Everything else about his positions and presentations seems to be based on personal trauma, experience and preference. These are compelling for the individual, but make really awful foundation stones for public policy in any rational and science based world, in my opinion. Query: Was Mr. Ashley adopted?] After reviewing adoption’s relationship to sexism, racism, imperialism, and cisheteronormativity, I sketch an alternative view of adoption as a com¬plex and multi-valenced form of care in an unjust world. [Mr. Ashley, my father used to say, and I quote, ‘Life is rough all over. Even the subway is in a hole!’]
Mutilated children might grow up to want to adopt and there are problems with that. Oh, the unfairness, oh, the suffering, oh, the agony. Oh, the professional class, endless victim wailing.
Gobbledygook and irrational/pseudo rational nonsense does not make very good reading and it certainly does not make good science or public policy.

But it does give me one more reason to loath and fear continued participation in WHO, which is taking its policy orders from you and your addled comrades. You can go to http://PreventGenocide2030.org to take action to help get us out of the monster system of WHO/UN/Etc.
Canadian? No problem visit https://PreventGenocide2030.org/Canada to take relevant and very important action there.

I predict, by the way, that because of the weight of evidence, the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual will incorporate a new, but widely disseminated diagnosis: Batshit crazy. Expert documentation will be abundantly available.

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[1] The guideline will focus in 5 areas: provision of gender-affirming care, including hormones; health workers education and training for the provision of gender-inclusive care; provision of health care for trans and gender diverse people who suffered interpersonal violence based in their needs; health policies that support gender-inclusive care, and legal recognition of self-determined gender identity.  WHO announces the development of a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people

[2] biographies_tgd-gdg_proposed_members_2024.pdf (who.int)

[3] http://www.florenceashley.com/about.html

[4] Randomized-controlled trials are methodologically inappropriate in adolescent transgender healthcare 2023. International Journal of Transgender Health (audio) [with Diana M. Tordoff, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, and Arjee J. Restar]

[5] The Clinical Irrelevance of “Desistance” Research for Transgender and Gender Creative Youth
2022. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 387–97 (VoR, audio)

[6] Reflecting on the Rhetoric of Adoption in Trans Youth Care
2023. Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, vol. 2(3–4), pp. 249–75 (audio)