De Australische journalist Bernard Lane die al jaren de ontwikkelingen in de Nederlandse transzorg volgt, schreef op de Substack Gender Clinic News een achtergrondverhaal over de teloorgang van het Dutch Protocol. De oorspronkelijke criteria voor het behandelen van kinderen met puberteitsremmers zoals genderdysforie van jongs af aan en afwezigheid van psychische issues zijn inmiddels losgelaten. De reden is dat de nieuwe snel groeiende instroom bij de genderklinieken van tienermeisjes niet aan die criteria voldoen, maar wel dringend behandeling vragen.
LEES hier het artikel van Bernard Lane (21 maart 2023)
Mijn bijdrage aan dit stuk:
Gender-affirming pressure
Media sociologist Dr Peter Vasterman—a retired academic who co-wrote with Jan Kuitenbrouwer an opinion article last December calling for a “critical, independent evaluation” of gender medicine in the Netherlands before any expansion of capacity—said the Dutch model did seem to offer more psychological assessment than the American gender-affirming approach.
“Nevertheless, what the patient wants is still leading in this whole process,” Dr Vasterman told GCN.
Dr Vasterman said that if the Netherlands enacted a law against “conversion therapy” involving not only sexual orientation but self-declared gender identity, this would “reinforce” the local influence of the gender-affirming model, thereby “chilling” the more exploratory psychotherapeutic approach.
Bans on conversion therapy are often targeted at churches, but Christian influence may help explain the approach to treatment at the Amsterdam clinic, part of the city’s Free University (VU), which was founded as a Protestant Christian institution in 1880.
“I think the whole attitude of the VU [gender clinicians] is drenched with the idea of compassion, to relieve suffering [despite lack of good evidence for the efficacy of treatment],” Dr Vasterman said.
“Now, as critical studies pile up, they still cling to the idea that medical treatment is necessary to relieve suffering—despite the fact that distress have been removed from the gender incongruence criteria. “For more than two decades [the Dutch clinicians] represented the progressive and humane treatment for these [trans-identifying] children, [treatment] that became a huge international success. It is difficult to step down from this glamorous pedestal.”
Media coverage of gender clinics often has an evangelical tone.
“The media and the audience are fascinated by these young people going through such a radical transition,” Dr Vasterman said. “They are presented as heroes who—despite prejudice and difficult medical procedures—try to ‘become who they are.’ “Because these young people are also sort of victims—of being ‘born in the wrong body’—critical questions are never asked, it’s all about how they and their parents and friends cope with the gender transition” — Dr Peter Vasterman
