#debunking misinformation

[magnetothemagnificent]

Debunking an absolutely full-of-shit post by @/gender-sexuality-and-happiness. This is the post if you want to go report it.

This post is especially insidious because it hides overt antisemitism and ableism and misogyny.

So, I will lay out their claims one by one, and then one by one debunk them.

Boundaries: I will not tolerate antisemitism or islamophobia on this post. If you comment or reblog anything antisemitic or islamophobic on this post, I will block and report you immediately.

No, no it's not. You are doing a disservice to the horrors of FGM by comparing circumcision to it. Male circumcision has had thousands of years to be perfected as a legitimate medical procedure. It is done in a safe, sterile environment with sterile tools and trained professionals. It's better to do circumcision on a baby because it gives the area more of a chance to recover better. FGM is a horrific procedure involving the partial or entire removal of the labia and clitoris. Male circumcision is the removal of the foreskin, an unnecessary flap of skin surrounding the shaft of the penis. FGM is a procedure that leaves its victims unable to have pleasurable and painless sex, and sometimes even unable to reproduce, and more prone to infection. Male circumcision leaves no lasting side effects other than you know, not have a foreskin, which doesn't interfere at all with sexual or bodily function.

Well this is just a chock-full of blatent lies.

Let's start debunking every single sentence in this paragraph.

Jews do do circumcision in America, even non-religious Jews. I don't know where this person is getting their statistics from, but Israel, the country with the highest Jewish population outside of the US, has 91.7% of the male population circumcized. And no, before you go all antisemitic, it is not a requirement to be circumcized in Israel. Jews do not circumcize their male babies because of sanitary reasons, it's because we were commanded by G-d to do so, and because we are honouring our ancestors who did so before us. Yes, like all medical procedures, there is a very very low risk to circumcision. But it's not riskier than any other procedure. In fact, studies show that there might be benefits to circumcision, but this is besides the point. According to the NIH, "However, it has been shown that there is no difference between circumcised and uncircumcised men in their ability to sense extroceptive and tactile stimuli on the ventral and dorsal surfaces of the glans." So there's no difference between penile sensation in circumcised and uncircumcised males. All of this fear-mongering about circumcision is the result of antisemitic and islamophobic propaganda.

While it is true that Europe has lower rates of circumcision, this is because they have less Jewish and Muslims per population. Penile cancer is extremely rare, and actually Jewish men in Israel have the lowest rate of penile cancer. Hey, remember the statistics showing how most men in Israel are circumcised? So clearly there is no concise connection between penile cancer and circumcision. Circumcision also has no connection to UTIs, and may also decrease the risk of certain STIs.

I can't find any actual research to support this inflamattory claim, but I can provide evidence that one of the first actual recorded documentation of hemophilia is in the Jewish Talmud, in which Rabbis discussed the disorder and ruled that circumcision is expressely forbidden for hemophiliacs, or even for a baby who has hemophiliac family members, becaue they understood the genetic factor of this disorder.

All in all, this post is antisemitism and islamophobia and misogyny trying to hide behind just a whole thread of helpful infographics. It's deeply insidious that they try to hide this propagnda inside this post. The post's OP is smart about what they're doing. They're hiding pure lies and bigotry behind a mask of progressive language. I would report this user immediately.

Anti-circumcision activists like to spread the misinformation that circumcision is dangerous and barbaric, when mounds of scientific research and evidence show otherwise. Additionally, the rhetoric spouted by anti-circumcision activists is deeply ableist- they often imply that circumcized people are "incomplete" and "missing something" by not having their foreskin. This rhetoric is very similar to ableist arguements about how disabled people are "missing something", especially amputees, and also is the rhetoric behind the forced genital "reconstruction" of intersex infants.

Every body is different, and every penis is different. Some people are born without a foreskin at all, are they missing something? No penis is better or worse than another, and implying that being circumcised makes a man less of a man stems from age-old antisemitic and islamophobic rhetoric.

Sources:

[id in alt text]

#circumcision #facts #debunking misinformation #judaism #antisemitism #islamophobia #misogyny #fgm #medical procedures #information

[hylianengineer]

During a lecture about research and making credible arguments, my public speaking professor said, "Did you guys know California banned skittles?"

California has not in fact banned Skittles.

#what California has done is ban 4 harmful food additives none of which are in skittles #the reason for the skittle misinfo is that a previous version of the bill. a version which did NOT pass. proposed a ban on titanium dioxide #which is in skittles. HOWEVER the ban doesnt start til 2027 anyways and skittles currently sells titanium dioxide free versions in #some countries which have already banned the chemical #i learned all this in five minutes with a single Google search #come on professor #debunking misinformation #food tw #college life

[isitcorrect]

Something unremittingly bleak about a goddamn country starting "crisis actor" conspiracy theories to deny their crimes. A term invented to deny the deaths of children at Sandy Hook in 2012 is now used to deny the deaths of children in Gaza in 2023.

As the community note says, this isn't a crisis actor. This is a guy who posts on Instagram. A influencer who posts videos online of breaking events...is seen at a lot of breaking events. To Israel, this is a sign of a conspiracy. In fact, some of those images aren't even him, or aren't even related to Palestine at all; one image included in other posts targeting Saleh Aljafarawi is a Halloween costume from Thailand. That article says "pro-Israeli accounts" tweeted this, but it's the literal, official Twitter account of Israel posting this shit, next to their comedy sketches that somehow make trans people the punchline bc fascists only have one joke the whole world wide I guess

Like. It's not new for a government to deny the reality of its atrocities. It is new for that government to outright use a conspiracy theory term devised by Alex fucking Jones, or to, when called on doing so, defend it as a "meme" (also bizarre to see hardcore Zionists use a term crafted for especially antisemitic conspiracy theories). Everything rancid about the world in 2023 congealed into a single tweet, right here

#palestine #conspiracy theories #misinformation #gaza #debunking

[deputy-videogamer]

Have you seen this tweet/picture providing evidence that UNRA is working with Hamas?

This evidence was created by Dr. Eli David on Twitter proving that Hamas is working with the UNRA on Jan 27 a day after the UNRA announced that nine countries has suspended their funding after accusation of Hamas working for UNRA

Source

When I first saw this post I found this really suspicious as the UNRA had just announced their situation and the allegations against them. So with the help of Reverse Google Images I manage to find out that the so-called "Hamas militants" are actually the Rafah police.

The picture was from the Rafah Police Facebook account with the captions translating saying they are sending aid into Gaza back in Jan 10 on a Facebook post.

Source

As of right now the post has gain over 1 MILLION views, 12.2K reposts, and 381 requotes with NO COMMUNITY NOTES debunking this post.

#palestine #free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #gaza #free gaza #freepalastine🇵🇸 #gaza genocide #palestine genocide #misinformation #debunking #israel propaganda #israeli apartheid #israeli lies #boycott israel #free west bank #eyes on rafah #eyes on palestine

[psychologeek]

Fake News

This is a photo from February 12th (the latest) - over month prior to the "breaking" post (March 26th)

As you can see here:

Translation: "Israel Frees Two Of Its Hostages Amid Air Strike In Gaza").

But propaganda doesn't care about the truth, I guess.

(plz rb this, thank you)

#hostages #debunked #fake news #disinformation #misinformation #gaza #israel #idf #ceasefire #propoganda #fact check

[sonknuxadow]

can they just say whos voicing shadow already so i can be free from the neverending cycle of random twitter users claiming to know who the va is and saying it with no evidence and people just believing it and spreading it as confirmed fact

#''keanu reeves is voicing shadow guys !!! look this leaker confirmed it !!!!'' #we've been through this already you guys were saying the exact same shit about hayden whatever his name is not too long ago. come on. #idk what it is about the sonic movies specifically that has people accepting baseless rumors as facts #or falling for obviously fake leaks or just spreading easily debunked misinformation #or even taking something that Is true and turning it into some wild exaggerated version that definitely isnt true anymore #example of the last thing: i once saw people take ''the director of the sonic movies worked on the cgi cutscnes for shadow the hedgehog'' #which is true. and turn it into ''the creator of the shadow the hedgehog game is being brought onto the movie team to make sonic 3'' ????? #and also people saying that the third movie is confirmed to be a shadow the hedgehog adaptation #JUST because some of the writers mentioned that game in an interview once as a shadow focused game they COULD take inspo from #but didnt confirm anything.. and people were also framing these claims as reasons to panic because they dont like shth #which makes it more annoying ... #also the amount of times ive seen obviously fanmade movie posters for sonic 3 being spread around as real. come on. #not saying the keanu as shadow rumors are 100 percent fake but we definitely dont have any reason to be immediately accepting #them as fact either. because this person is providing literally no evidence and could easily be lying

[pokeconspiracy]

The Mega Evolution the Kalosian Government has been Hiding From You!!!

The Kalosian Government can't hide this forever. I, Winnie, owner of pokeconspiracy, your TOTALLY reliable source of information, will give you all the details and information about this secret hidden Mega Evolution, which is totally not a lie!!!

The Mega Evolution I'm talking about is Mega Eevee. Mega Eevee is a Normal-type Pokémon. It has a base stat of 625, its ability being "Full Potential", where it boosts moves by the Eeveelutions Flareon, Jolteon, Vaporeon, Umbreon, Espeon, Glaceon, Leafeon, and Sylveon by 25%.

Down below, I provided a picture of Mega Eevee for you to see that I have uncovered in the classified files of the Kalosian government and its Mega Stone for its' Mega Evolution, the Eevite.

Do you see how beautiful it is in the picture??? If you're wondering, why would the Kalosian government hide this Mega Evolution of Eevee from us? I'll tell you what I think! It's because of an Eevee-obsessed hacker Penny, who's been hacking into the Kalosian government, and the GOVERNMENT WAS ANNOYED AND ANGRY SO THEY HID THIS MEGA EVOLUTION FROM US OUT OF SPITE!!! DON'T LET THEM DECEIVE YOU!!! DON'T LET THEM THINK THEY CAN HIDE IT FROM US ANYMORE!!! Mega Eevee is real and cannot be hidden from us any longer!

//Credit to @randompokemonicons for the Mega Eevee picture!!

#pkmn irl #pokemon irl #rotomblr #pokeblogging #rotumblr #pokemon #irl pkmn #irl pokemon #pkmn #tw misinformation #unreality #pokemon unreality #//btw her naming penny is a coincidence #//she doesnt know who penny is. she just made her up as a crappy excuse why the kalosian government is hiding a mega eevee of all things #//to all my penny accounts on rotomblr idk #//just say “yeah totally” or something #//debunk it #//or play along but it's just a coincidence

[chaos-in-one]

Saw this and it is genuinely one of the worst "DID red flags/DID faker signs" type post I've seen in a while and a few of these genuinely pissed me off so let's unpack these one by one!

!!! Long post !!!

Active in the Fandom of popular gaming youtubers

If it's a large Fandom, it's going to attract more fans. Which also means more disabled people will be in it. Including people with DID.

Certain youtubers yes it could be a red flag to be a fan of them. Isn't related to the person's DID though, it's about them choosing to support a shitty person.

VERY vocal about their diagnosises, think their experiences are the only valid ones and thus everyone else is faking but them

This one I do actually agree with! It absolutely is a red flag to use your diagnosis and how you experience your disorder to put down others!

Literally will not shut up about it

You are probably looking at an account made specifically to be open about DID. Because believe it or not, outside comparatively very small circles on the internet, DID is highly stigmatized. It is hard to find acceptance in real life, so some people go online to look for spaces they can talk about what they can't in the real world. Saying it is a negative thing actively hurts people with DID, because it says that them having spaces to freely exist is bad.

Active in fake claiming communitites

... you haven't been on r/systemscringe very long, have you?

Uses r/plural and related subs

Same point as the 3rd one: DID is highly stigmatized and people with DID are allowed to look for places they can talk about their experiences with DID.

Posts in those subreddits things like "am I faking?" Or "my alters disappeared when school started?"

The first one is actually a rather common thought for a lot of people with DID! For most people with the disorder, it is meant to be covert. Your brain doesn't want you to know you have it because it is trying to protect you from what caused it. So when you do recognize you have the disorder, it is going to try to push you back into denial because it doesn't want you to know you have it.

The second one, while how it is worded certainly could be a red flag as alters don't just disappear, alters seeming to be gone during stressful situations is also actually really common! The entire point of the disorder is to protect a traumatized child from their trauma and future trauma as best as it can. And by extention, it tends to see certain intense emotions as a warning sign, and will lock a particular alter in control to protect as much of the mind as it can from potential trauma.

Minor

It is a childhood trauma based disorder. Every person with DID was a minor with DID at some point.

Typing Quirks

Typing quirks should never have been associated together in the first place. Typing quirks are not a DID thing, or a system thing at all.

I do agree that if they don't have a translation it is a red flag though, it makes it difficult to impossible for multiple groups of disabled people to access.

Pastel or kidcore aesthetic

An aesthetic is not related to DID. At all. Two completely separate things. The only time either of these are a red flag is if the person is using the aesthetic to sexualize things related to children.

Medically recognized

Literally all this means is that a medical professional has agreed that you might have the disorder. Almost everyone now diagnosed at one point was medically recognized, because diagnosis is a process, not a single event.

Makes picrews of their alters

This is literally just like anyone else making a picrew of themselves. Someone making a little character of what they look like (or want to look like in some cases), is not a red flag. It is not uniquely wrong with someone with a specific disorder does this.

Ftm or nonbinary

.... do I even need to spell out how calling being trans a red flag is transphobic?

A-spec

Again, do I really need to spell out how calling someone's orientation a red flag is bigoted....

Dyed hair

See the point on kidcore & Pastel aesthetic: someone's style choices aren't related to any disorder.

Looks like they would microwave their hampster for tik tok clout

Based on physical appearance? No that's not a red flag, because physical appearance is not an actual indicator of what a person is like. Based on personality? Yeah it is a little concerning if that's what you get out of how someone acts.

Furry or furry adjacent

For the last time. People's style choices are not related to their disorder.

Likes east Asian media

Depends. If they're not Asian and like it to an almost obsessive or fetishistic degree, yeah, big red flag. If they're not fetishistic about it or literally Asian themselves? No. People are allowed to like media from other cultures.

I genuinely cannot read most of the next point so I'm not going to try to answer that for now

List of triggers never ends

Personally I think publicly listing triggers in general is a very bad idea, especially for people with disorders that could make them more vulnerable already. So I do for the most part agree with this point.

Probs mentions pro-shippers somewhere

If it's to tell them to stay away/not interact/etc. No. Again, not related to DID, and also a reasonable boundary to have. If it's in support of proshippers, still not DID related, but yeah definitely a red flag in my book.

Fujoshi

If you actually mean non mlm or nblm who fetishize mlm then yeah, that is a red flag. If you mean anyone who liked any mlm ship ever... yeah no. People are allowed to like gay ships. Gatekeeping who can like a ship based on the genders of the characters ends up just othering us.

Username contains words like system/collective/etc

Again, it is probably an account about DID specifically. Not necessarily a red flag for the reasons previously stated.

Uses we to refer to themselves

A lot of people with DID consider alters to be someone else, not themselves. So they see all of them as a group. It's grammatically correct to refer to a group using 'we' instead of 'I'.

"Diagnosed" by their therapist

In a lot of cases, yes. Most therapists cannot diagnose. Certain therapists who are also things like trauma specialists are licensed to, however. It just isn't very common.

Endogenic

I am going to stay out of this one for the most part, as no matter what I answer it will most likely drag me into an argument that detracts from the point of this post. However I do think it is a red flag to claim DID itself can be non traumagenic, it has been proven time and time again to be caused by trauma.

Wants to be an oppressed minority soooo bad

You know, on any topic, I always hated this point. Because nine times out of ten, the person doesn't actually WANT to be an oppressed minority. They just want their struggles as an actual minority to stop being dismissed.

Usually claims other "popular" disorders/illnesses too (Autism/NPD/BPD/POTS/hEDS)

I have a few points for this one.

One, a lot of disorders do actually make it more likely to develop trauma based disorders. Disorders like autism can lower the trauma threshold and make it more likely that dissociation is how the person copes. And disorders, especially physical disabilities, can cause trauma in and of themselves!

Two, these disorders can all be comorbid. Trauma disorders have high comorbidity rates with certain physical disabilities because the stress that caused those trauma disorders puts tangible, physical stress on your body and it's limits. And trauma disorders also have a very high comorbidity rate with other trauma disorders. It's pretty common to have more than one.

Three, NPD most definitely is not a "popular" disorder. Neither is BPD, in my opinion, although the amount of acceptance for it is higher than with NPD. NPD is quite literally one of the most heavily stigmatized disorders. There are articles after articles, entire forums and communities and more, built around calling people with NPD abusers. You look up NPD and you can find page after page after page telling how to spot a narcissist, how to psychologically damage a narcissist, how to hurt one. It is not by any means a "popular" disorder to have.

System of mostly introjects

Current generations literally have the highest amount of access to fictional media in all of recorded history. And when there is more access to fiction, more people will use it to cope. When more people use it to cope, it becomes more common for it to influence how people are. And DID is a disorder highly influenced and tailored by the specific individuals situation.

New alters always appearing

Again, another situation of a person's experiences being misinterpreted: a lot of the time "new" alters aren't actually new. Many alters are hidden from the person for days, weeks, months or even years before they are discovered. And sometimes they don't even realize how long they have been there, because they had no communication with any other alters. Having a poor perception of time is a very common symptom in most dissociative disorders.

Has tik tok

Someone with DID having a social media is not any more a red flag than someone without DID having it. The two are not related.

Has recordings of themselves "switching"

I do personally find this uncomfortable. Especially since, for a lot of people with DID, or OSDD, switching is often completely uncontrollable. A lot of the times it also is uncomfortable or even painful or stress inducing. I can understand how this could be a red flag, although it is not impossible for it to actually happen, especially if someone else is the one filming.

Neopronouns

Points to the previous point about how saying someone's transness is a red flag is transphobic

"Stims"

This one is a grey area. If they are romanticizing them, fetishizing them, treating them like they're cute, spreading misinfo, etc. Then yes. Just showing or talking about stimming in general though? No. That is an actual thing people do, especially people with disorders like ADHD and autism. Calling a symptom associated with disorders a red flag by itself is ableist and harmful to people with those disorders.

Will do literally anything but show their diagnostic paperwork to "prove" they aren't faking

Diagnostic papers are quite literally private medical information. Depending on how they are formated (differs from company to company), they also could include other private information that sharing online could put you in danger. Depending, showing these could literally get a person doxxed. Them keeping themselves safe online is not a red flag, and it is a red flag to demand someone risk their safety to prove their disability to you. Even employers are legally not allowed to demand this information in most cases.

If you don't like them you're ableist and/or homophobic

If said because someone doesn't like them as a person and as a serious thing, then yes. If said because the reason the person didn't like them was because of their orientation or disorder, or as a joke, then no.

Their "therapy" goal is to live in harmony with their alters, instead of reintegration

The thing you are trying to talk about actually has a name! It is called functional multiplicity. And it actually is not "not integrating", it still is a form of integration. Just like final fusion, the goal is to lower dissociative barriers and heal from childhood trauma over time. The only difference is the alters "fusing" or becoming one with one another, is not part of the treatment plan. Functional multiplicity is not the opposite of integration, it is a form of integration in and of itself. People with that goal still want to heal. They just don't feel that final fusion would benefit them. Both are goals approved by many actual professionals.

"Getting a diagnosis would put me at a disadvantage in xyz" (it won't)

Again, this is a grey area and highly depends on the individuals living situation and where they are.

If they are spreading misinformation, like the idea that employers in the U.S. all get to see your diagnosis (again, quite literally illegal for them to try to force you to give them that), then yes, red flag!

However there are certain things that in some places in the world, a DID diagnosis can make harder to access. For instance, it can be harder to get a driver's license in some places.

Additionally, depending on who the person is living with, it could be actively unsafe for them to be diagnosed. Again, in real life, DID is highly stigmatized.

Advocates for self dx

It really depends on how this is gone about. If they are encouraging people to do things like take quizzes or saying "if you do x you have DID" then yes this is a red flag! However, encouraging people to do actual research into the disorder is a good thing! People realizing they have symptoms of something can majorly help them! So can educated self dx, in some cases. It can help them access spaces with resources for people with symptoms like theirs, it can help them learn ways to cope with their symptoms specific to that disorder, it can help them know what to tell their psychiatrist they suspect is going on, and a lot more!

Alters are fully fleshed out characters

Honestly this is another one that rather pissed me off. Alters are not "characters". People with DID are not fictional. These are actual people. As for them being more "fleshed out"... that's part of the point. Again, these are real people. They are going to be complex. Yeah it's rare for ALL alters to be that complex, but the existence of any alters or even multiple alters who are is not a red flag. Distinctly different alters is quite literally one of the symptoms that sets DID apart from other dissociative disorders, like OSDD-1.

Sign offs with alter names

Someone with DID trying to decrease confusion for themselves and those around them is not a red flag by itself. It is literally to help themselves. It is a lot easier to deal with memory barriers if you can look and see something physical telling you what happened and who did it.

Headspace "maps"

Again, this is usually done to help with memory barriers. For a lot of people, DID or not, physically making something to show you what is going on in your head makes it easier to understand for you. Trying to help yourself deal with a damaging symptom of your disorder by giving yourself something to lay it all out is not a bad thing.

Well that was All! Hope that makes sense and cleared some things up.

And before anyone tries to use this to say I'm faking DID: I do not have DID.

#syscourse #fakeclaiming #r/systemscringe #long post #debunking #debunks #misinformation

[cxparadisi]

honestly what kills you as a seeking-/post-bottom surgery trans in the online transmasc community isn't even the open disgust people have for your body or how quick they are to spread misinformation bc mysteriously their trans sex positivity only applies to transition they personally want/are attracted to. like yeah that stuff hurts, the fact that every couple months a post about how it's TOTALLY FINE to be grossed out by my body and assuring trans guys NOBODY wants to look like me gets 10k notes sucks, but that's actually a minority of the problem. the killer is that disgust towards bottom surgery is SO normalized that, in general, people just assume that no post-op people exist in transmasc spaces, if they think about them at all. you're just left out of everything by default.

jokes? sorry, every transmasc joke assumes you have a boypussy and menstruate and the only surgery you've ever had is top surgery and if bottom surgery does crop up it's a joke about how you'd never get it. sucks to suck! fictional representation? no post-op characters exist and in fact any characters that mention their junk specify that they're non-op just in case you were worried about that. sucks to suck! fictional character headcanons? i mean, sometimes you could imagine that the shapeshifting characters might change genitals...? the medieval fantasy characters DO get top surgery scars though, so really it's just an excuse not to have to think about how gross bottom surgery is even if you acknowledge the desire to swap your junk. sucks to suck! positivity posts? nope, even ones specific to surgery don't bother to acknowledge anything below the waist. sucks to suck! discussions of transmasc sexuality? hahahahaha yeah no, those are even more inaccessible to anyone without a boycunt. sucks to suck! discourse about obstacles to transmasc transition? nope, again, that just removes the possibility that people could care about you since not mentioning you in this context means they definitely just aren't thinking about it at all. sucks to suck! discourse specifically about bottom surgery? congrats, people acknowlege you...... as a 3rd party who can't possibly be present and definitely fits into the .01 x .01 inch box they have in their heads of the Cis-Passing Binary Transsexual Male who only wants to get bottom surgery to lick cis boots, and "discourse" is kind of a misnomer because in reality what that means is "discourse about how gross it is that people think me, a trans man, might have gotten bottom surgery". sucks to suck!

naturally i need to add a million disclaimers about how i don't think transmascs who don't want bottom surgery are any less trans than i am(true) or that transmascs who don't get bottom surgery face as much transphobia as i do (so true bestie) and i'm saying this as a reflection of my own personal experiences even though i'm sure you personally have nothing against us genital-mutilators. that same grace has never once been extended to me though so i will be cranky about it.

#transmasc #phalloplasty #metoidioplasty #u might say im just a bitter hater. astute observation indeed i am #if it helps i can be your angle or your devil and the quickest way to get me to shut up abt this #is to draw fictional characters with phallo scars sometimes #thats it. you dont even have to care abt the high cost and legal barriers to our transitions #or help debunk misinformation abt our ability to have sex and counter fearmongering against scarring and EDs #just put a little rectangle on that fictional mans arm/thigh. it doesnt even have to be in the right spot.

[grulu]

cancun magic missile

gruuluu

#mamgur #grulu #magic missile #misinformation #debunking #positron #horrible dread

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Benjamin Ryan

Published: Apr 23, 2024

The prominent American transgender activist Erin Reed has repeatedly and insistently made demonstrably false claims about pediatric gender medicine.

During the two weeks since the publication of the Cass Review, England’s mammoth report about this controversial and politicized medical field, Reed has emitted a fusillade of false claims about the review, its findings and the systematic literature reviews on which it was partially based. Reed has only doubled down when fact checked, even when the corrections have come from lead author of the report, pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, herself.

Reed publishes a popular daily Substack, “Erin In The Morning,” focusing on trans legislative, civil-rights and medical issues. Over the past couple of years, as access to gender-transition treatment by children has become a major political fight in U.S. statehouses, Reed has amassed a large following, both through her coverage of these issues and her activism against such laws and for gender-distressed children’s access to such treatments.

The Cass Review was four years in the making and published to considerable fanfare in the UK on April 9. The 388-page report scrutinized the field of pediatric gender-transition treatment and found it was based on “remarkably weak evidence,” as I reported for The New York Sun.

The report has heralded the end of an era in England. It helped shutter the troubled pediatric gender clinic, known as GIDS, that once provided puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to members of a burgeoning population of thousands of British minors distressed about their gender. Going forward in England, holistic psychological care will be prioritized for such young people, as it now is in multiple Scandinavian nations.

For gender-distressed minors in England, puberty blockers will only be available through a planned clinical trial. And the nation’s National Health Service looks likely to heed Cass’s counsel to reverse its recently announced policy to permit cross-sex hormones to 16 and 17 year olds. Furthermore, signs from Parliament suggest that the government will likely crack down on any private and overseas clinics prescribing of puberty blockers for gender distress. Even members of the Labour party have expressed support for Cass’s findings and recommendations.

Reed stands at the forefront of a full-court press by British and North American activists and online influencers to undermine and cast doubt on the Cass Review, including through falsehoods. This comes as English politicians and medical societies, the NHS, and even major UK LGBTQ organizations have fallen in line and pledged their support of the report’s findings, or at least refrained from fighting them. U.S. medical societies, meanwhile, have remained notably silent on the matter. They all unwaveringly support pediatric gender-transition treatment.

Most notably, Reed has falsely claimed on repeated occasions that the Cass Review simply “disregarded” a substantial proportion of the available medical literature on pediatric gender-transition treatment. Sometimes phrased as the notion that Cass tossed out 98% of available studies, some version of this false claim ran rampant during the first week after the report’s publication. The game of falsehood telephone stormed across social media, showed up in the opinions of LGBTQ charity leaders and English MPs, and in an error-laden Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article that I fact checked on X.

Finally, Dr. Cass herself cried foul.

In an interview with The Times published April 19, Dr. Cass did not mince words. She denounced those who had falsely claimed she had not included 100 papers on pediatric gender medicine in her review. (I explained the finer details of why this claim is egregiously incorrect in my Substack from last week, so I’ll go into only just a bit of explanatory detail about this later in this report.)

The Times reported:

Calling the assertion “completely wrong”, Cass said that it was “unforgivable” for people to undermine her report by spreading “straight disinformation”. The physician, 66, who has spoken about the toxic debate around the issue, also revealed that she had been sent “vile” abusive emails and been given security advice to help keep her safe. Of her critics, Cass said: “I have been really frustrated by the criticisms, because it is straight disinformation. It is completely inaccurate.

Reed’s false claims, about the Cass Review in particular and pediatric gender-transition treatment in general, have likely had a substantial impact on the global conversation about the care of young people with gender distress, given the wide reach of her platform. She has many eager followers and her tweets routinely rack up tens or hundreds of thousands of views. She is taken seriously by media outlets and even doctors and is routinely asked to speak at medical conferences.

I spoke with Erica Anderson, a trans woman, psychologist and the former head of USPATH, the U.S. branch of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, about Reed’s influence on the larger conversation about pediatric gender medicine.

Dr. Anderson, who has become a vocal critic of WPATH’s full-throated support for pediatric gender-transition treatment, told me:

“It’s unfortunate that Erin Reed in her mistaken efforts to advocate for transgender persons repeatedly and demonstrably promotes falsehoods, including most recently about the Cass Commission report.”

Referring to the fact that, in every tweet thread that Reed posts promoting her Substack essays, Reed asks people to pay for a subscription, Dr. Anderson continued: “She asks the trans community to support her efforts financially. There is no way I can do so.”

[ All of Reed’s tweet threads about her Substack articles, which are often laden with errors, come with with a financial ask. ]

Reached for comment, Reed said: “Readers should not trust a fact check done by somebody like Benjamin Ryan, who himself has consistently misrepresented studies on gender affirming care and gotten basic facts about them incorrect.”

I stand by my own 23 years of professional science reporting and am proud that I have never had to run a major correction.

Erin Reed’s Two-Week Marathon of Falsehoods About the Cass Review

Over the past two weeks, Reed has repeated various versions of the false claim that Dr. Cass simply “disregarded” a stack of papers about pediatric gender medicine. Why did the author of the Cass Review do such a thing? Because, Reed claimed, those studies didn’t suit her “predetermined conclion [sic] ”—meaning conclusions.

Without going into too much detail, here is the truth:

Two systematic literature reviews, conducted by the University of York on behalf of the Cass Review and published by the BMJ the same day as the Cass Review, examined puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as treatments for gender distress in minors.

Between them, these two reviews examined 103 studies. Using a validated scoring method, they identified two high-quality papers, 58 moderate-quality papers, and 43 low-quality papers.

Only the high-quality and moderate-quality papers were included in the review papers’ syntheses.

When reaching their ultimate conclusions—essentially that the evidence base was largely unreliable and inconclusive, although there was some evidence that hormones were associated with psychological benefits—the review papers leaned on the high-quality papers, but did not discount the moderate-quality papers.

[ The conclusion of the systematic literature review on cross-sex hormones. ]

Cass considered all these papers in her own analysis and did not simply disregard or discard any of them, as I reported on Substack last week.

That said, the central purpose of an evidence-based medicine approach is to discern which studies are more likely to provide reliable results and which are less likely to do so. This is meant to keep false study results, such as those driven by bias, from influencing medical practices. Reed and other activists mischaracterize this effort as capricious and biased, one that starts with a desired outcome and then reverse engineers it.

Discernment of study quality is particularly important, evidence-based medicine experts have insisted, when caring for the particularly vulnerable population of gender-distressed children. And it is of paramount importance, these experts say, to prioritize higher quality research when devising treatment guidelines for this group, considering that children cannot consent to their own care and may lose their fertility and sexual function as a result of treatment with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

These systematic reviews were conducted independently and were structured to be agnostic about their results.

Reed was not convinced.

On April 18, she denounced the Cass Review as a member of a collection of “sham reports concocted to justify escalating crackdowns on their care.”

The day after the Cass Review was published, Reed published a Substack condemning it. The false or misleading claims Reed made in this report included:

The report did not, as Reed claimed, “call for restrictions” on social transition. It advised that families observe “caution” when considering the social transition of a child.

The Cass Review did not “[advocate] for the blocking” of trans young adults receiving cross-sex hormones,” as Reed claimed. It advised a review of young-adult gender services, suggesting that the problems that have plagued the pediatric clinic may be similar in young-adult care.

The theory of rapid-onset gender dysphoria has not been “discredited”, as she claimed. It remains a hypothesis under investigation by researchers.

Systematic literature reviews are considered the gold-standard source of scientific evidence. They are not mere “reviews”, as she wrote—in scare quotes meant to dismiss them.

The Cass Report stated that there was not sufficient research to determine the rate at which young people who receive cross-sex hormones will detransition—meaning revert to identifying and presenting as their biological sex.

But Reed insisted that an audit of some 3,500 GIDS patients, mentioned in Appendix 8 of the Cass Review, showed that only 8 out of 3,000 detransitioned, for a rate of just 0.27%. (Approximately 9,000 patients were seen at GIDS since 2011.)

As I explained in the tweet below, Erin had the denominator wrong, and the true rate was about 1.6%.

Regardless, the 1.6% figure is woefully incomplete. Because this audit only considered GIDS patients assessed upon discharge, including because they turned 18 and aged out. And as Cass stated, her interviews with clinicians suggested that detransitioning can take 5 to 10 years. So the young people would likely need to be followed into their mid- to late-20s to establish a true detransitioning rate. But such data was unavailable to Dr. Cass’s team, because the NHS adult gender services refused to share it with them. (It looks likely the British government will ultimately force those clinics to hand over the data. However, activists have sought to convince these patients to forbid the NHS to share their personal, if anonymized, health records.)

In an April 18 appearance on the super-lefty Majority Report podcast with the super-cranky Emma Vigeland, Reed claimed that Dr. Cass was secretly conspiring to ban pediatric gender-transition treatment. Reed also falsely claimed that the Cass Review did not factor in the voices of trans people or their care providers.

Here is how the Cass Review diagrammed all the sources Dr. Cass and her team drew upon when crafting the report, including trans people and their care providers:

Reed then suggested to a super-credulous Vigeland that the Cass Review was aligning itself with an anti-trans propaganda machine, because in a footnote it referred to a video posted by that account’s YouTube channel.

Below is the video in question, which is an unedited, 37-minute video of GIDS director Dr. Polly Charmichael speaking at the 2016 WPATH conference. The YouTube account’s politics notwithstanding, the video itself is provided with no extra editorial comment by the account; it is just the words and slides of Dr. Charmichael.

In an April 18 Substack that she characterized as an opinion piece, Reed argued that “England’s Anti-Trans Cass Review Is Politics Disguised As Science.”

In the single paragraph below from that Substack, she made at least six false or misleading claims.

Reed falsely claimed that the Cass Review was crafted with a predetermined conclusion. In fact, as I mentioned, Dr. Cass commissioned seven independent systematic literature reviews on various facets of pediatric gender medicine from the University of York. Their findings informed Cass's conclusions.

Reed falsely claimed the systematic literature reviews were “highly susceptible to subjectivity.” The reviews used a validated scoring method, the Newcastle-Ottawa scale (NOS), and two independent reviewers each. The paper on the NOS scale to which Reed linked in her Substack actually states much more modestly that there is apparent “room for subjectivity in the NOS tool.”

She falsely claimed the Cass Review disregarded all research not deemed high quality.

She falsely claimed that the theory that gender dysphoria and trans identity may be influenced by social contagion has been "debunked". This remains an open question subject to ongoing research.

She makes the misleading suggestion about the YouTube footnote.

She falsely claims that the Cass Review asserts that rates of detransition are high. In fact, Cass states that the detransition rate is “unknown due to the lack of long term follow-up.”

In an April 19 Substack, Reed began pushing the particularly far-fetched claim that Dr. Cass had somehow, after publishing a nearly 400-page report following a four-year effort, suddenly reversed herself and endorsed the prescribing of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors outside of a clinical trial.

“Dr. Cass Backpedals From Review: HRT, Blockers Should Be Made Available,” Reed trumpeted in her headline.

Her source for this claim was a supposed transcript from an interview Dr. Cass had apparently given to The Kite Trust. The transcript was inexplicably written in the third person, referring repeatedly to “Dr. Cass.” Reed mischaracterized statements that Dr. Cass apparently made about how she envisioned children receiving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in clinical trials of such drugs; Reed presented those statements as if they applied to everyday prescribing of drugs.

Fact Checked By Cass, Reed Doubles Down, Repeats the Same Falsehoods

Reed has remained resolute that she is right and Dr. Hilary Cass is wrong regarding the evidence backing pediatric gender-transition treatment.

After Cass castigated those who propogate such “disinformation” in her interview with The Times, Reed repeated her false claim that Cass discarded perfectly good research.

In response to an April 22 BBC tweet thread that painstakingly diagrammed how the misinformation about the Cass Review spread around the world, and why it was wrong, Reed responded:

“Not accurate.”

Reed then proceeded to mischaracterize the systematic reviews syntheses, describing them as if they were capricious processes and not structured to weed out study results that are unreliable. Referring to the 58 moderate-quality studies that were factored into the syntheses, Reed wrote: “Much of what was in the moderate section was also discarded, especially in Cass’s conclusions.”

This tweet came as the UK LGBTQ charity Stonewall backed off of its previous claims that Cass had egregiously discarded a large crop of research.

“We are grateful to Dr Cass for taking the time to clarify that both ‘high’ and ‘moderate’ quality research were considered by as part of the evidence review, both in the media and directly to trans and LGBTQ+ organisations,” a contrite Stonewall tweeted.

That same day, the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists also backed the Cass Review. Its president, Dr. Lade Smith CBE, stated in a press release: “It is a comprehensive and evidence-based assessment that needs to be acted upon with a fully resourced implementation plan.”

Who Is Erin Reed?

Reed has been Substacking for a relatively short time, but has quickly amassed a large following. She has 54,000 subscribers, among whom a group that is apparently in the thousands pays either $50 per year or $5 per month for their premium subscription.

She is recommended by doctors.

In the wake of the March publication of the so-called WPATH Files by Michael Shellenberger’s nonprofit Environmental Progress, Dr. Carl Streed, the current USPATH head, wrote in a letter to USPATH colleagues that he was “grateful” for Reed’s reporting about the Files—for correcting the “numerous false claims running rampant in the media.”

(Dr. Streed, whom I’ve interviewed a couple of times, took a clear swipe at me in the letter. First he called into question the findings of a recent Finnish study that found no independent association between receiving gender-transition treatment and the suicide death rate among gender-distressed youths. Then he wrote, “I seriously question the motives and ethics of any reporter, legislator, or professional citing it as evidence.” I was the only reporter to cover the study for a major U.S. media outlet, the New York Post. Reed was no fan of the article either and, as she noted in her message to me about this Substack, published her own takedown of my work in the Los Angeles Blade. I stand by my reporting. My motive is to report the truth. As it happens, Cass also found that there was no evidence backing the suggestion that gender-transition treatment impacts suicide deaths in youths.)

The Cass Review excoriated WPATH, saying that it exaggerated the strength of the research backing its influential guidelines for treating gender distress in children.

The LGBTQ nonprofit GLAAD, which has falsely claimed the “science is settled” on pediatric gender-transition treatment, is also a vocal supporter of Reed’s writing.

However, not all doctors see Reed as a trustworthy intellectual. Last October, at the Society for Evidence Based Medicine conference in New York City, I cited Reed when asking a question of a panel of researchers and physicians. When I noted that one major media outlet refers to Reed as a “legislative analyst,” the room broke out into derisive laughter.

Reed is no fan of SEGM’s and repeatedly claims they are a hate group. I got no such impression from the conference in particular, which provided a crash course on evidence-based medicine practice. Politics came up only briefly. This was a science conference.

Reed recently became engaged to Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat.

Reed, whose writing has also been published by Harper’s Bazaar, was recently lionized as a journalistic force to be reckoned with by The Nation. The progressive outlet (which I have written for a few times) charactered Reed’s Substack as one of “the most reliable sources for information on the exploding campaign against trans rights.”

Don’t tell that to Laura Edwards-Leeper. She is a child psychologist who was part of the team to first import to the U.S., in 2007, the so-called Dutch model for prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender-related distress in children. More recently, Edwards-Leeper, who practices in Oregon, has become one of the most prominent voices calling for reform and caution in the pediatric gender-care field from within its ranks.

[ Laura Edwards-Leeper ]

Dr. Edwards-Leeper is no fan of Reed’s.

“Erin Reed is harming children with her false claims about the Cass Review,” Dr. Edwards-Leeper told me. “Because many providers, parents, and even professional organizations are believing these claims without taking the time to read the actual review themselves. By ignoring the Cass Review, the most comprehensive examination of the evidence for treating gender-distressed youth medically to date, providers and parents who believe Erin’s false synopsis are making decisions that are not accurate and will undoubtedly harm children.”

Echoing Dr. Cass, who said, “This must stop,” of the toxic bullying that has intimidated many health professionals out of speaking out about the subject of pediatric gender medicine, Dr. Edwards-Leeper said of Reed’s routine publication of falsehoods about the Cass Review and pediatric gender medicine:

“This behavior is unforgivable and must stop immediately.”

I encourage you to retweet a thread about this Substack: https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1782653360207761431

==

Ben brought the receipts.

Follow-up:

PSA: Reed is most correctly addressed as Globally Discredited Shill Blogger "Erin" Reed.

#Benjamin Ryan #receipts #Erin Reed #Christopher Reed #compulsive liar #pathological liars #misinformation #dishonesty #disinformation #debunked #Cass review #Cass report #Hilary Cass #Dr. Hilary Cass #religion is a mental illness

[ariadne-mouse]

Do you ever watch a video that has some interesting, confidently-delivered information in it that is immediately debunked in the comments as false with reputable backup and, despite you agreeing with the debunking, you feel like your eager brain has already soaked up the bad information like a carpet soaking up a stain and you have to hope it's not going to burble up later as "fact"? Continued influence effect is a real bitch

#op #i don't have tiktok and generally avoid sciencetoks in the wild but one was linked on reddit the other day #i idly clicked and the narration was moving faster than i could dredge up old AP chem memories to fact check it #roll to the comments: universal debunking #i heave a heavy sigh #much of the misinformation was easily googlable. why did this creator do that

[madaniss]

damn i wish people who want to debate veganism actually did it in good faith instead of coming up with straw man arguments

#the science on nutrition and the environment is right there #i'm begging you to do some research before getting mad at an imaginary vegan #everyday carnists come up with gotchas that have been debunked several times already 🥱 #i wish i had the energy to fight all the misinformation i see #but my weak vegan body can't keep up with all the nonsense

[fernisfat]

shoutout to my mom for handing me a gummy and a glass of wine as she informed me that my least favorite relatives are coming over for dinner, like i’m still mad about it but at least i don’t have to be sober while they try to engage me in a debate about crypto or whatever 🤷🏻

#they’re not bad people they’re just really stupid and incapable of recognizing that i don’t want to spend an hour or more #debunking whatever misinformation they picked up on Facebook or TikTok or wherever they’re getting their news #fern whispers

[weedle-testaburger]

i have no idea how people manage to watch Political Content on youtube bc i can't stand shoutboxes of people going 'LOOK AT THIS AWFUL SHIT WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING' and doing nothing except continuing to shout about it

#political crap #maybe that's why hbomb is still a bit more palatable for me #he only makes videos very rarely and when he does his serious points are more productive like debunking misinformation #or raising money and attention for people who've been wronged #rather than just making the 38583827637th video about why police violence is bad as if people don't either know #and want something productive to be done about it or are in denial and won't come out #on a related note i hope i don't come across as like politically 'wrong' i just find shouting into the void #about serious issues to be a waste of everyone's time and effort #i think people should promote and contribute to fundraisers instead

[chinesegal]

Debunked lie: Palestinian influencer isnt a crisis actor

Saleh Aljafarawi is a Palestinian influencer who has recently been accused of being a crisis actor and part of Hamas' propaganda machine.

However, the truth behind these pictures tell a different story.

In several pictures Aljafarawi is portrayed as a victim inside a body bag, on another one as a wounded patient receiving hospital treatment, on another one as a war correspondent.

The photo of a person inside a body bag is a halloween picture from 2022:

and the hospital patient is of 16-year old Mohammed Zendiq who lost his leg in August 2023 and published on TikTok, months before the conflict started.

The picture of Aljafarawi in a Press helmet was taken in a video where he explains he was allowed to borrow it and doesn't try to portray himself as a journalist.

#misinformation #debunked #save palestine #save gaza #palestine #israel #israel lies #hasbara #decolonizepalestine #racism #genocide