Tavistock: Domenico Di Ceglie 3

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Part three: Questions and Answers

This is the final part on Domenico Di Ceglie, the man who set up the children and youth service at the U.K’s main gender clinic. You can read parts 1 & 2 here. These posts are part of my series on the Tavistock.

Tavistock: Domenico Di Ceglio

Tavistock: Domenico Di Ceglio 2

This piece will focus on the question and answer session, following his talk which I covered in parts 1 & 2. The Q & A starts 48 minutes in:

Questions and Answers

Di Ceglie ends his talk with a reference to robots which struck me as quite an odd final comment and appeared to have little connection to what had gone before:

Then I remembered he also said this in part one and I wonder if he is envisaging his work as going beyond what it means to be human?

The question and answer section is quite revealing but it is a shame that, through time constraints, or perhaps deliberately, the audience will not have had time to register some of the more damning, and contradictory, slides which I covered in part two. In particular this one which sets out the risks of the treatments dished out at gender clinics.

Still there were some important questions at the end.

Two came from Bob Withers, a Jungian therapist, who I immediately recognised. Bob has done excellent work in this field. I did a series on Bob’s work: 👇

Bob Withers: Series.

His first question :

You may recall that Di Ceglie stated that no biological underpinning to explain the ”transgender” experience has been found and, believe me, they have been looking. There is a deep desire to find a ”Born this way” narrative to explain why some people experience “Gender Dysphoria” and to present the steep rise in referrals to clinics as a natural phenomenon. There is, as yet, no research that has convinced me. The studies that I have seen tend to cover small sample sizes, fail to control for homosexuality and even include men on synthetic cross hormones. I do not think we will find a common explanation that covers teenage girls, baby gays and heterosexual males who like masturbating in their wife’s knickers!

Di Ceglie valiantly tries, in a somewhat rambling reply. He concedes that no single biological cause has been found, as yet, and that the causes are multi-factorial, but include biology. He also claims that some people have a more rigid mindset (Does he mean autistic people?) and are unable to be fluid in their thinking and these people need to be helped by physical intervention. He also is careful to allow for the variety of choices re physical interventions because ”some people may choose one intervention and not another”. A sort of pick and mix of cosmetic surgeries for your ideal gender ”presentation”.. Humans as ”meat lego” is the phrase that comes to mind, as coined by Mary Harrington. This also reminds me of the man who took the NHS to court, multiple times, because he wanted fake breasts but he still retained a penis. I wrote about him below.

The Elephant in the room.

If you build Gender clinics they will come.

Di Ceglie further elaaborates on this theme by focussing on the patients as ”service users” and how the Tavistock needs to have a range of options to respond to the different needs, which I would call ”desires”. Remember in the opening to his talk he said this.

After Di Ceglie’s ,rather rambling, answer Bob’s rejoinder is much more down to earth.

Di Ceglie’s response:

He then repeats the uncertainty about knowing the final outcome for a specific child and here I must remind you, once again, that we are giving children, as young as ten, irreversible medications based on these theories.

In his next sentence he confirms what I suspected was his belief system. Some of these children have a fixity in their belief systems and features of autism. We already know autistic kids are over-represented at Gender Clinics. Di Ceglie exhibits no concern that they are harming a vulnerable group, instead he links the biological cause, for autistism, suggests a biological underpinning for Gender Dysphoria. He is not explicit about this but it was the inference I took from his response and is common belief among Gender Identity Ideologues.

The next question from another audience member is about the interaction between same sex orientation and a transgender identity.

Di Ceglie gives the stock answer we can get from any Trans activist on twitter. He sees sexual orientation and gender identity as two distinct things and to justify his stance he points out that some of their male subjects go on to have ”Lesbian” relationships. Nobody objects to this redefinition of the word Lesbian. He further points out that ”people assigned female at birth may go on to live in a homosexual relationship with another man”.

Final question, on camera, is from a Canadian woman, from Toronto, who advises that the Canadian Gender Clinic removed Ken Zucker because he was practicing reparative therapy, a form of Conversion Therapy, in her view. She explains that he was teaching kids how not to be ”trans”. She claims this was done in a coercive and controlling way and generating depression and anxiety in the children at the clinic.

Di Ceglie does not defend Ken Zucker but just talks about the complexity of the work and here the session breaks and no further questions are on camera.

I will leave the final word to Marci Bowers, a male who identifies as “transgender” and also performs the operations called ”sexual reassignment surgery”.

I hope this has provided some insight into the kind of thinking at work at the Tavistock. If you can support my work you can do so here. I do now have a limited income but I do still need assistance to keep the show on the road. You can donate to my paypal or my

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Tavistock: Domenico Di Ceglio 2

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Domenico Di Ceglio set up the childhood and adolescent services at the Gender Identity Development Service (G.I.Ds) at the Tavistock. This is part two on a talk he gave at a conference on “Transgender” issues. You can find the rest of my series, on the Tavistock, below.

Tavistock 

You can watch the talk on YouTube, below. 👇

Domenico Di Ceglie

Part one is here

Tavistock: Domenico Di Ceglio

This is the title of that talk. Transgender , Gender and Psychoanalysis, with this subtitle.

In part one Di Ceglie covers his motivation for setting up the children and adolescent service at G.I.Ds; the astronomic growth of referrals and the tensions between staff who wished to provide only therapeutic support, to children, and those who advocated for the administration of puberty blockers. As suggested by the title he uses metaphors to convey his role in managing these tensions. A psychoanalyst might suggest that this allows him to distance himself from the choices he made during his tenure.

We pick up at around the 30 minute mark. Di Ceglie is using the myth of Scylla and Charibdys, from Ulysses, to convey his position at the Tavistock. Both Scylla and Charibdys pose a risk to Ullyses and his sailors but only Charbdys can sink the ship. Ullysses, therefore, steers close to Scylla even though he knows she will snatch some of his sailors and crush them with her grip, before swallowing them. Di Ceglie clearly feels the service is under threat so he needs to balance these risks and sacrifices will have to be made.

Di Ceglie then reflects that it was the more valiant of Ulysses’ sailors who fell victim to Scylla and offers an explanation with reference to G.I.Ds staff calling them ”crusaders,” , which is very revealing.

He explains that the Tavistock tries to steer a middle way neither neglecting the mind nor the body. He claims that they work to break the cycle of secrecy and shame involved in an atypical gender identity. He further argues that the foster uncertainty about the outcomes for any child. I don’t see how this is compatible with this statement: If we are allowing a social transition and puberty blockers there is near certainty (98%) of progression to cross sex hormones. They will be sterile and, as we saw in part one, they will have near zero chance of any orgasmic capacity.

He is also keen to dispel any suggestion that they practice ”reparative” therapy i.e that they seek to reconcile the child with their sex/sexuality. I imagine this is motivated by the wish to avoid the fate of the Canadian Gender Clinic which he mentions more than once during the talk. (Ken Zucker’s clinic was accused of practicing conversion therapy on gender confused kids and his clinic shut down. He won a legal case but was not restored to his post)

He does share a case study of a natal male who adopted a female identity, following the death of his grandmother. After giving him some help to articulate his grief he reconciled to his sex and desisted.

He further claims that clinics who are rigid in their approach to these children run the risk of embedding the cross gender identity even further. He may be correct in this but, again, it does not square with the medical treatments. He does, thankfully, recognise an 80% desistance rate if allowed to go through a natural puberty; shame he does not include how many end up good old-fashioned homosexuals.

Clearly the clinic are making judgements that some children are unlikely to change their minds. This clip suggests early onset gender dysphoria is believed to be more intractable.

He next speculates that gender dysphoria is more intractable with those with paranoid schizophrenic tendencies and even those who have been subject to traumatic events in childhood. This is starting to echo the criteria used to dish out lobotomies or Electric Shock treatment.

Empathising versus Systematising.

This looks at the work of Simon Baron-Cohen who conducted research into children with atypical ”gender ” development and seems to be driven by defining certain behaviours more ”male” / “female” and, presumably, looking for evidence of “true trans“. Unsurprisingly females scored higher on empathy and men on systems. Between a likely biological predisposition and female socialisation women’s scores are , to me, unremarkable. What did surprise me was the scores for trans-identifying males. While they did score lower on “systemising”, than the control of males who were not identifying as ”transgender”, they also had lower scores for empathy. Curiously although Di Ceglie talks of the value of further research into identifying potential desisters this does not appear to have been a research area of interest to the staff at the Tavistock.

Di Ceglie claims it is possible to identify good candidates for early intervention. Not on e does he refer to detransitioners but they may not have been as significant a phenomenon when this conference took place. The YouTube video was uploaded two years ago but it may have pre-dated the Kiera Bell case. It would be interesting to know if he is paying attention to the rising rates of regret.

At the end of the conference Di Ceglie rushes through his final slides so I had to slow down the speed to take screen grabs. He has two slides on the benefits of early transition quoting research papers from 2006 i.e before the current surge in transgender kids /youth. He also claims that puberty blockers are ”considered to be fully reversible“ on one slide but look at the next slide, it directly contradicts this statement.

What are the risks?

It is unclear what the long term impact is on bone development, height, sex organ development it may affect brain development, and it may even lock in the Gender Dysphoria.

Those are some big risks!

Now we have a growing number of detransitioners the chickens may be comimg home to roost. Currently there are 35,000 members on the reddit detrans forum. It is growing at an alarming rate.

In part three I will cover the question and answer session.

You can support my work here. Every donation helps because we are up against billionaires funding this ideology, globally. Contrary to the propaganda I am not funded by Evangelical Christians, the Far Right or Viktor Orban. I rely on donations to cover my costs but do not donate if you are on a limited income.

Researching Gender Identity Ideology and it’s impact on our gay /autistic youth, kids in care as well as the sex based rights of women and adult homosexuals, especially Lesbians.

£10.00

Tavistock: Domenico Di Ceglio 1

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Domenico Di Ceglio set up the childhood and adolescent services at the Gender Identity Development Service (G.I.Ds) at the Tavistock. You can find the rest of my series, on the Tavistock, below.

Tavistock 

To provide some background to a piece on the David Taylor report, into G.I.Ds, I did some research into the man who set up the children’s service. Domenico Di Ceglie can be seen on this YouTube of a conference contribution he made. 👇

Domenico Di Ceglie

This is the title of that talk. Transgender , Gender and Psychoanalysis, with this subtitle.

First he provides his motivation for setting up the service, he admits it was a new area for him until he encountered a teenage girl, who had attempted suicide three times and believed she should have been male. According to Di Ceglie she went on to identify as Ian and was suicidal no more. It was this patient, who wished her parents could have seen someone when she was five, that prompted the setting up of the service. Not everyone accepted this idea without question and someone raised the law of unintended consequences. In the retelling Di Ceglie seemed to think this an amusing moment. (I wonder if he is still laughing as we see more and more post ”transition” regret.)

This reminded me of a conversation I had with an adult male, who self-describes as a ”transsexual”; he observed that the Tavistock provided a solution that created the phenomenon. Or to use a phrase from the business world used in the Kevin Costner film, Field of Dreams:

”If you build it they will come”.

He then uses two Freud quotes and proceeds to talk about the impact of the ”uncertainty principle” in this field. This principle is actually derived from physics but it has acquired a more general use in terms of the difficulty in predicting human behaviour, or their development trajectories. I am sure there are some sound arguments for accepting this ability to tolerate ambiguity, in a therapeutic setting, but it does rather the beg the question about subjecting children as young as 10 on irreversible, medicalised, pathways. We used to accept the certainty we would grow up to be Adult Human Females or Males, needless to say this is still true.

He then introduces Pablo Neruda, the poet, from the Film, The Postman, explaining metaphors to a Greek Postman. Again, it is a perfectly charming clip, but this seems strangely whimsical when you are actually discussing serious medical interventions, in children.

John Money and Robert Stoller

Next we learn about two pioneers working in this field. John Money, for those of you who are unaware, was a pioneer in this field. He is infamous for intervening in the life of a child who had suffered a medical accident which removed his penis. David Rheimer was a twin which provided the perfect experiment in bringing him up as a, putative, girl. As, it turns out the two boys afforded access to children for Money who was subsequently outed as a paedophile. Both boys committed suicide. There is no explicit acknowledgement of the allegations against Money, only a reference to him being a ”controversial figure at the end of his life”.
Both Stoller and Money sensed the revolutionary impact of the concept of a “Gender Identity” or ”Role” which is at odds with your physical embodiment. Stoller puts it clearest here: 👇 The replacing of a subjective, sense of self, a ”gendered soul”; irrespective of your sexed body.

Money, talking in 1992, prophesied the societal revolution we are witnessing in 2022, with a reorganisation of society which is disregarding sex based rights. The obscured word at the end of this quote is ”principles”

Di Ceglie acknowledges that the ascendance of this idea has had huge, societal ramifications but, of course, there is no space to address the disproportionate impact on the female sex. He also seems quite excited about this social revolution comparing it to Copernicus who discovered that the earth rotated around the son and not the other way around. I should add that Copernicus made a discovery of fact he did not invent an unprovable theory of innate gender identity.

Brain sex #LadyBrain

In this section Di Ceglie concedes that attempts to prove a biological basis for ”gender identity’ have foundered.

At the same time he makes this astonishing claim which needs to be highlighted. He does not think we will ever have incontrovertible evidence because this is “beyond human”. The problem is we are not dealing with post-human society he is dealing with human beings. This statement looks like a nod to ”transhumanism”.

In this next section he covers the steep rise in referrals to G.I.Ds between 1989 to 2015. Most of you will be familiar with the fact we have had a 4000% increase in female patients; a complete inversion of the sex ratio as well as a dramatic lowering of the age profile. Same sex attracted youth are over-represented and not singled out for specific mention, neither is the prevalence of referrals of teenage girls with no concomitant rise of referrals of middle aged women. Surely if this was a product of more social acceptance we would see a surge in late transitioning females? Thankfully, whilst Di Ceglie shows little curiosity about this phenomenon we do have the words of his colleague, Bernadette Wren.

Cutting edge of a social revolution

Unfortunately, for us, you are literally cutting into the bodies of our children as part of this ”revolution”. Teenage girls with extreme body hatred is not new phenomenon as Wren knows very well.

Di Ceglie also uses a number of metaphors to explore his feelings about operating on the edge in terms of the Tavistock’s practices. If I were a psychoanalyst I might suggest that using metaphors, rather than grounded language conceals what he is actually enabling, perhaps even from himself. In plainer language he explains there is a fear of both action and inaction in relation to these children . There are pressures from within and without the clinic to begin prescribing puberty blockers, to children as young as 11. Some within the service wanted to limit their role to therapy, while others were keen to prescribe puberty blockers, early, in what was known as the Dutch protocol. As we now know, the latter group prevailed. Di Ceglie explores this debate by reference to Greek myths rather than saying, in plain language, the cost benefit analysis means we will sometimes treat the ”wrong” children. The correct number of children to be medicalised, for me, is zero. No child should be sterilised and have zero capacity to orgasm. You may be skeptical of this claim so I will share the words of Marci Bowers. Bowers is a surgeon and also a “trans” identified male. He performed surgery on Jazz Jennings. These children are being robbed of their sexual pleasure.

Autism

Later he will acknowledge the high number of autistic referrals and reference a theory that links this to atypical levels of testosterone in utero leading to ”masculine” brain type. My own theory, while I don’t wholly dismiss some, sex specific, biological imprint on male and female brains, is that *some* autistic girls are not as efficient at absorbing female socialisation. Conversely, I have also seen female socialisation as an explanation for why *some* autistic girls become adept at ”masking” /mimicking their peers so are often diagnosed late in life. (I will come back to Autism in a the next piece because it is a complex area. )

I will cover the rest of this YouTube in a further blog because there was more on autism and one person pushed him on the issue of high rates of referrals with same sexual orientation. I will leave you with Bob’s excellent question.

Questions

Bob Withers.

Bob asked an excellent question which goes to the heart of the matter. I have done a series on Bob’s work. (Link below).

Bob Withers: Series.

Now we have a growing number of detransitioners the chickens may be comimg home to roost. Currently there are 35,000 members on the reddit detrans forum. It is growing at an alarming rate.

You can support my work here. Every donation helps because we are up against billionaires funding this ideology, globally. Contrary to the propaganda I am not funded by Evangelical Christians, the Far Right or Viktor Orban. I rely on donations to cover my costs but do not donate if you are on a limited income.

Researching Gender Identity Ideology and it’s impact on our gay /autistic youth, kids in care as well as the sex based rights of women and adult homosexuals, especially Lesbians.

£10.00