Talk:Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 16 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): EmKayEdits.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:08, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Removed unsourced material

I removed A dramatic elevation in surgical and post-surgical risks as well as an increased possibility of post-surgical dissatisfaction is often the exchange for lower costs and fewer pre-surgical requirements such as weight limits. because a) it's unsourced b) it's a damaging lie about trans people. It's an old canard on the level of the Protocols of Zion lie about Jews. c) it's language is inflammatory. If such a claim is to be made 'dramaticly' needs defined.

Undid OR contribution

Undid change of wording from 'change sex' to 'change gender'. Most trans people feel they remain the gender they've always been, they are merely making their body conform to it. Editor claims in edit comment that no government accepts hormonal change as sex change, but this is not true in my experience (state of California will), and Wikipedia is not place to publish OR. Anniepoo (talk) 19:45, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Intended Edits

I plan to expand more on the information covered in the 7th edition of the SOC as well as on the protocol for children and adolescents. I am also going to find sources for the end of the article and the section on criticism from intersex individuals.

EmKayEdits (talk) 16:25, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Time to update

With version 8 now published, information pertaining to versions 6 and 7 should be moved to specific sections and de-emphasized and the current status should be described in greater detail. CyreJ (talk) 09:35, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

'Version' or 'edition'?

I'm unsure which one to use. It currently reads 'version' with this edit that I made (WPATH uses 'version'; it was the more common wording when I made the edit), but I've seen sources describe it as 'version' and 'edition'. I also haven't been able to find WP guidelines disambiguating the two. LightNightLights ^(talk) 02:51, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Based on the following two searches, you should use version by 2 – 1:

• "WPATH" AND ("standards of care" NEAR "edition")
• "WPATH" AND ("standards of care" NEAR "version")

Hope this helps. Mathglot (talk) 06:47, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

What does the 'NEAR' keyword do in Google? I'm not able to find any documentation about searching based on proximity other than 'AROUND(x)'. LightNightLights ^(talk) 08:04, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

My edit got reverted for a reason that is false

Sideswipe9th claimed that my edit was unsourced and "didn't seem to be true". The article said that the Eunuch thing was controversial, and I explained why it was controversial. Namely, that it linked to child castration porn. I did forget to add a second source, but I just checked and the archived Economist article also had that information in it. There are now two reliable sources for the claim. We shall see if it gets reverted again. Benevolent Prawn (talk) 17:35, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Eunuchs

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The following discussion concerns the reliability of the sources used to present the controversy around the eunuch chapter of SoC v.8 (its recognising of eunuchs as a separate gender and linking to Eunuch Archive), as well as whether the inclusion gives undue weight to that criticism. As this is a content dispute about inclusion, it is up to the side favouring inclusion to convince people so that their position is the consensus established in this discussion.

By !vote tally, the yeahs have it, 16-10.

The sources proposed here are mainly from the British media: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, The Economist, The Daily Telegraph, The Scotsman, LBC and The Times of London. WP:RSP lists three of these as generally reliable, The Scotsman is listed as a newspaper of record for Scotland, the NZZ is one for Switzerland, while LBC seems to receive generally positive commentary on RSN. Several RfCs were launched about the reliability of some of the news resources, including The Economist, The Telegraph, The Times of London, and which are connected to this discussion. I strongly discourage this behaviour because not only this makes closing stuff harder but also attracts reasonable criticism of forum-shopping. Still, as of the moment of writing, all of these discussions appear to be heading towards "consensus for general reliability". (I will change my closure if any of these RfCs go the other way). I will use arguments presented in those RfCs and apply them here if necessary.

Opponents contend that the British media landscape is generally hostile to trans coverage and therefore generally British media reporting on transgender issues is questionable (though may be better in other issues); and also that since it was basically not reported outside the UK, we should dismiss it as the outlets that did care are all biased towards one side. Among the arguments I was able to find were these two comments about bias in reporting. That criticism also appears in other scholarly articles and books which do not appear to be about opinion pieces: [1], [2]. However, since these were not mentioned, I am not able to use these to weigh the strength of the argument; besides, a report commissioned by the Independent Press Standards Organisation found that generally, the news reporting on transgender issues was heated and had strong wording but remained within IPSO guidelines (IPSO faces severe criticism, but well, we have what we have). There was the PinkNews article asserting Telegraph's inaccurate coverage on transgender issues, but even if accepted at face value, this is not by itself evidence of massive fraudulent coverage. In any case, the evidence presented was challenged and it seems that others either ignored it or remained largely unconvinced by presented proofs. Some of them (like the CNN article or the analysis by prof. Paul Baker were not challenged as much but, as presented, they also show little evidence of persistent factual inaccuracy in this topic area. There is, however, ample evidence of systematic anti-trans rights bias (mainly by selection of content they wish to publish), at least in the case of The Telegraph. As for NZZ, while factual inaccuracy was not questioned, its reliability was challenged based on evident editorialising within news reporting and references to Twitter as evidence of controversy (these points were not addressed by the proponents). In all of these cases, WP:BIASED suggests that articles may be used as reliable sources even if they have a slant.

There was also some discussion about whether the information about the "outcry" should be held to stricter WP:MEDRS standards, but it appears that editors generally agree that it falls outside of the MEDRS requirements. This interpretation is indeed covered by WP:BMI, the "Society and culture" point. However, any mention of "health risks" should be backed up by medical literature.

There was no scholarly commentary about SoC-8 in the discussion, and no source among the six says that there is significant controversy in the academia. The sources approvingly cite clearly activist (and, as some argued, fringe) organisations, such as For Women Scotland, Genspect, and SEGM. There were two RfCs on RSN about the latter two, which I closed as showing consensus that they are not reliable for facts about transgender topics, and along the same lines, neither does the first appear to be so. Several editors said that quoting them or mentioning them would violate due weight, and since no one advocated to quote them, I assume that's the consensus here.

The final question is whether any mention here is warranted at all. There seems to be more opposition against this version of text, as compared to this one. Proponents suggest that coverage in multiple reliable sources about the issue is good enough to have at least a sentence, even if the sources themselves are biased, which was almost the entirety of yes votes. Opponents argue that the coverage would be bad as it would be composed of multiple sources that exhibit a one-way bias, even if the sources are reliable; or alternatively that they are unreliable for the topic. There's also the issue that the current size of the "Version 8" paragraph does not allow for a lot of criticism to be mentioned as it would be out of proportion to the description of that version's contents.

WP:UNDUE says that Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. As established above, most, if not all, of the resources should pass the reliability criterion. Additionally, the prominence of the opposing view to that presented by the newspapers about SoC-8 is impossible to establish from these discussions because none have been presented or likely published yet (which could mean that the academia doesn't seem to be bothered for now, or that it is but the papers are undergoing peer review and so aren't publicly available yet). As was mentioned by a user, the concept of "due weight" is relative, so it only works in comparison with the prominence of other viewpoints, but there's nothing to compare to. This means that there is essentially one viewpoint published in some reliable sources, and no other exists for balance in the eunuch issue for now.

After excluding the no !votes whose main argument was that the sources are unreliable, for the reasons I mentioned above, it appears that there is rough consensus that a short mention is DUE. WP:PROPORTION, however, asks us not to make excess stress on what could be seen as a minor aspect of the subject being described. Therefore, it should be no longer than a sentence and address only the point that such outcry in the press existed.

Excuse me for the long-windedness. (non-admin closure) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 05:29, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

---

Should the article mention the controversy over the Eunuch chapter in SOC8? gnu57 16:51, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, without question. These are reliable sources. (e • nn • en!) 07:26, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Opinions

• Yes, include The controversy has been covered by news sources including Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Economist, the Telegraph, and the Times. MEDRS sourcing is required only for biomedical information, not for describing a social controversy. gnu57 16:51, 2 November 2022 (UTC) ETA: Here are two more reliable sources: The Scotsman, LBC gnu57 11:18, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

  Since when would LBC be considered a "reliable source"? And The Scotsman doesn't support any of the salacious content from your preferred article version, does it? Newimpartial (talk) 11:28, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

  Please keep threaded discussion in the designated section. I have replied below. gnu57 12:03, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• No, exclude until better sourcing is found - so far we have The Times, The Telegraph and The Economist - all decidedly BIASEDSOURCES - and a Swiss source that, as far as I can tell, can't be used to support any of the content that Genericusername57 and Benevolent Prawn are shoehorning into this article. If the sourcing improves significantly, sure it could become DUE, but it certainly isn't now. Newimpartial (talk) 17:03, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
• No, because British newspapers in general are less reliable on trans issues. I've been meaning to start some kind of discussion over at RSN about this, because the sources for things like the Lily Cade article or Guardian America rebuking its British counterpart are quite strong. But for just these specific sources, I would point out that one of the executives at the Economist is Helen Joyce, who believes all trans people are a "huge problem to a sane world" according to our own article on her. The Telegraph, besides its absolutely wild misrepresentation of the most widespread protocol used by professionals working with transgender or gender-variant people according to this very article as "secret" and "controversial", has a documented history of misrepresenting trans issues. Like, these sources are just no good. They're bad. They're not reliable in the least. We're in Fox News or worse territory here. Loki (talk) 17:38, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
• Yes of course, coverage is significant and reliable.--Ortizesp (talk) 18:03, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, coverage by many mainstream sources and major newspapers recognized by the community as reliable for facts warrants inclusion. Favoritism for a particular nation's media - although I've seen trans-focused outlets complain about the New York Times, The Atlantic, etc., so who knows what the difference even is - is not a sufficient justification for overriding generally-reliable sources. Also, it's not just the British media - is the Swiss media supposed to be in on the anti-trans conspiracy too? Crossroads ^-talk- 00:32, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

  Your assertion that The Telegraph, The Times and The Economist are recognized by the community as reliable for facts in the domain of transgender issues is sadly unsupported by evidence. Repeating something over and over again does not make it true. And the Swiss source makes a statement attributed to "media sources", not the statement of supposed fact that was being shoehorned into the article. Newimpartial (talk) 00:36, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

  They are recognized as generally reliable yes, and your assertions over and over again that this topic should be carved out because of a supposed bias (when biased sources can still be reliable for facts anyway and this is never applied to sources with obvious opposing bias like PinkNews) does not negate this. As for NZZ, the RfC didn't ask about attribution; rather two editors were removing it entirely rather than adding attribution, if that were the concern. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:55, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

  PinkNews simply does not engage in the kind of politically motivated campaigning for trans rights that The Times and The Telegraph conduct against trans rights. They just don't, and if they did one would expect that some high-quality or academic sources would have picked up on it by now the way they have picked up on the campaigning by the mainstream anti-trans broadsheets.

  Your constant chorus of "but what about PinkNews" is the same red herring it has always been, even back in the day when you thought you could convince people that PinkNews was unrelaible because it understood Gay icons better than you do. Newimpartial (talk) 01:14, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• No, as I said in my edit summary, including it is WP:UNDUE. When looking at the three English language sources, all of which are negatively biased in this content area, the criticism seems to come from three fringe anti-trans organisations; For Women Scotland, Genspect, SEGM. The Economist in their coverage is actually being somewhat sneaky, as they quote both Genspect and SEGM twice. Once from Genspect founder Stella O'Malley, and once from Genspect contributor and SEGM board member and clinical advisor Julia Mason (Genspect, SEGM). Given that there are only three anti-trans organisations providing this "social controversy", I believe UNDUE point three apples, which states: If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true, or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article.
  As for the Swiss/German Neue Zürcher Zeitung source, I've ran it through machine translation (DeepL and Google Translate) and have a concern that this is an op-ed (and so subject to WP:RSOPINION), and not factual reporting. When I find translated quotations like In the future, will there also be "eunuch" on questionnaires or in job advertisements in addition to the categories male, female, diverse? (first paragraph), If you go to the website of the Eunuch Archives, you can easily get to the chatroom #Lobby. There, users have names like [usernames snipped] as an inspection reveals. Now that sounds less like a harmless online support group. (eleventh paragraph), and The very idea that a child might consider himself or herself a eunuch is likely to sound disconcerting to alarming to most ears. On social networks like Twitter, the aspect is causing an outcry. (fourteenth paragraph). While I can't rule out this being a machine translation artefact, I am understandably suspicious that this is an op-ed and not factual reporting. Is there anyone here fluent and confident enough in German to verify if the machine translation is accurate? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:10, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
• Yes. The sources are top-quality. No evidence has been presented that they are systematically biased but even if they were it wouldn't matter per WP:BIASED. Alaexis_¿question? 07:04, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
• No. The Times, Telegraph, and Economist are not reliable sources on the topic of trans issues. While we can use biased sources to a degree on Wikipedia, we should not let their editorial decisions determine ours—just like we don't cram articles on American Democratic politicians full of every supposed scandal Fox News has implicated them in, even though Fox News is a reliable source for most topics. If someone wants to refute the assertion that these sources are unreliable, they can start by showing that other tertiary sources consider them reliable in this topic area. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 08:00, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
• No per my comment below. WP:PROPORTION requires us to consider the "body of reliable, published material on the subject". If only/mostly publications with a trans-hostile editiorial stance or journalists with a trans-hostile agenda (such as opposing the Gender Recognition Act changes in Scotland, which the LBC article should be viewd in the context of) but it is ignored by other news sources as a nothingburger, then we should ignore it too. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Bias in sources advises us "This does not mean any biased source must be used; it may well serve an article better to exclude the material altogether." Most of the sources are not directly commenting on WPATH guidelines, but on publication by National Gender Identity Clinical Network for Scotland that was retracted. They are mentioning this solely because Scotland has been a focus of attention wrt Gender Recognition Act changes. The Times article isn't even journalism but merely and explicitly getting a story second hand from The Telegraph. -- Colin°^Talk 16:49, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, include. When something has been covered in the Times, the Telegraph, the Economist and by LBC, then it is significant. Sweet6970 (talk) 19:41, 3 November 2022 (UTC) And the Scotsman. Sweet6970 (talk) 19:43, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

  So essentially your view is that any four WP:BIASEDSOURCES on trans issues are enough to guarantee inclusion, so long as those sources are right-wing? I will have to remember that principle going forward. Newimpartial (talk) 00:00, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

  No, that's not my view. Sweet6970 (talk) 09:54, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

• No This seems like coverage meant to create a controversy where there is none. Something on the level of tabloid journalism (which is rather disappointing for papers like The Economist to be conducting), but I don't see DUE being met here. This information doesn't seem relevant enough to include and the way it's attempting to be included in the article appears to be trying to amplify the controversy part of it. Which is inappropriate for any Wikipedia article. Silverseren^C 20:23, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
• Yes These sources are not far to the right at all. If you think they are, I'd like to know what you think of as a centrist source. Does anyone seriously doubt, based on the evidence, that Standards of Care linked to the Eunuch Archive to support its claim? Does anyone seriously doubt that the Eunuch Archive is in large part a child castration fetish website? Does anyone seriously doubt that the seemingly convivial relationship between the Eunuch Archive and WPATH would cause a controversy? NHS Scotland apologized. Do you think that they were tricked into apologizing for something they never did? Do you think they never apologized and that the news sites invented the apology out of whole cloth? Doesn't it seem like something that provokes an official public apology is usually important enough to be included on this wikipedia page, not even about the organization itself, but about this one specific document? How is this not a real controversy? Aside from claiming that these sources are unfit, what features does a controversy have that this incident lacks? Because The Times, the Economist, and the Telegraph are all in green on Wikipedia's perennial sources page as of this writing, indicating that they are considered generally reliable. If you want to lead a campaign to say that they should be listed as "generally reliable except for on trans issues" then go ahead and lead that campaign, but they are not in fact so listed, and I would say that the perennial sources document is a more authoritative document then any argument had here. None of these questions are rhetorical by the way, feel free to answer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benevolent Prawn (talk • contribs) 00:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
• No opinion Whole article will be out of balance because little has been done to summarize most SOC8 content or commentary (yes also by me after I started those headings, you could say WP:SOFIXIT). Should it ideally include one or a few sentences about this eunuch issue? Maybe, maybe not. But it certainly shouldn't dominate a description of SOC8, which is inevitable when there's not much else. Any outcome of this decision can't look good in the current context. Due weight is relative; I suggest energy is better spent on figuring out what the big picture is before it makes sense to debate how/whether this fits in. CyreJ (talk) 16:55, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
• Yes being written about in mainstream high-quality RSs (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Economist, the Telegraph, and the Times) including 2 newspapers of record clearly shows that it is DUE to include it.  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 19:02, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
• No. Many of the sources that have been presented above don't even focus on WPATH and instead only mention it in passing as part of a tangentially-connected controversy at the NHS. The sources also tend to all be WP:BIASED in a single direction; while we can use biased sources, it is undue to construct a section entirely out of them or to give their opinions excessive weight on an article about a broad topic like this. --Aquillion (talk) 05:18, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
• Yes. If sources are normally considered reliable, claiming that they are unreliable on a specific issue makes it easy to use special pleading to arbitrarily exclude any source you want that says something embarrassing. Such claims should be treated with skepticism without good reasons to think otherwise; you need more than just "the source has taken a negative stance on the issue". Ken Arromdee (talk) 20:47, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

  Academics and other reliable sources have observed that The Times and The Telegraph have channeled their published reporting in service of political campaigns to roll back trans rights; to paraphrase thus situation as "the source has taken a negative stance on the issue" doesn't really do justice to what quality sources actually say. Newimpartial (talk) 21:31, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh, no, political campaigns. You'd expect an organization which has a position on an issue to engage in political campaigns. (And I'd be surprised of the pro-trans organizations listed here have never engaged in trans-related political campaigning.) Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:24, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Well, I don't know who you're considering as pro-trans organizations, but PinkNews certainly doesn't engage in political campaigns the way the UK broadsheets do. Newimpartial (talk) 22:37, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Do you not consider the Telegraph article having obvious factual errors (specifically, presenting the subject of this article, the most widespread protocol used by professionals working with transgender or gender-variant people, as "secret") to be a good reason to not use it? Loki (talk) 22:24, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

The discussion here has mostly been devoid of claims that the article contains factual errors substantial enough to make the source non-reliable. If you want to argue this, you really need to argue it at some length, not claim that the sources are unreliable because they're "biased" and only resorting to this argument once someone points out the flaws in the other one. I feel that this has become a game of whack-a-mole where as soon as one argument is refuted, someone pops up with another one (that they were careful not to bring up earlier so it remained unaddressed). Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:29, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

You clearly haven't been following the prior discussion of The Times and The Telegraph. This isn't something that was first raised with this specific matter. Newimpartial (talk) 22:37, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, include. There is a debate in mainstream reliable sources and Wikipedia should reflect it. (I saw a link to this discussion at RSN.) --Andreas JN466 18:17, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
  • This begs the question of these being reliable sources for this topic. Why do you think they are? Every claim I've seen here so far simply points to their status as generally reliable, but WP:RSCONTEXT requires that we judge a source by their reliability for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article. Again, if people want to argue that these are reliable sources in this context, they should show that the sources are generally regarded as such. If that's true, it shouldn't be that hard to show, given the sources' prominence. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 11:24, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

    I think part of the problem is people are using the word "reliable" for different things. I'm not sure the facts are being contested here but the importance of them and how big a deal to make of them is something unreliable sources will get wrong, either due to bias or due to ignorance. For example, WP:MEDRS regards the popular press as unreliable for biomedical information, not just because they get it wrong but because they get the importance of things wildly wrong. Thus they elevate the views of a crank over those of the mainstream, or they say we should entirely stop eating something that has a tiny risk of cancer or start eating lots of something that might have a tiny benefit against cancer and so on. I think WP:RSCONTEXT is a good one to read because "editors should cite sources focused on the topic" and they may not be "appropriate source for that content". The lack of focus is true for almost all of the sources here, which are simply relaying the press release of the For Women Scotland campaign group, which is campaigning against trans rights wrt the Scottish gender ID debate, which is the focus for those papers. The Economist article is focused on WPATH's new document, but they don't give any evidence there is any controversy, neither quoting nor interviewing anyone on that sentence. We are left then with a single article making a claim in one sentence that they don't support beyond being merely the opinion of the anonymous writer. It is hard really to understand why a magazine called "The Economist" is in any way relevant to treatment for trans people. What next, Dentists Weekly having a view on the economy? -- Colin°^Talk 13:21, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

    @Colin: Good points. One thing I'll add, though, is that a source focusing on something can be taken as a statement of fact regarding which their reliability is relevant: the statement "this is a thing worth discussing". So there is a bridge between reliability for facts and reliability for WP:DUE inquiries. Well, two bridges, the other being Wikipedia:Verifiability: can't build a section if no RS are available. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 13:25, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

    User:Benevolent Prawn made a sound policy-based argument above that to my mind has not been refuted. I don't think this requires much weight in the article, but a sentence is due. Regards, Andreas JN466 13:36, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

    Jayen466 I can refute it per WP:VNOT and WP:MEDRS. This is a medical guideline. We don't let newspapers dictate which guidelines are controversial. They have zero weight for biomedical topics. They got it wrong on MMR, AIDS, Covid. The source for all these newspaper reports are anti-trans feminist groups, which is a bit like asking Trump about the UK economy: they know nothing at all but likely will give you an opinion. If you concern is WP:DUE can you cite any mainstream medical professional publications (there are a few medical journals you know, which do cover this sort of thing as their day job). I mean, if the guideline was this bad and this controversial, we'd be seeing editorials and opinion pieces in the mainstream journals. Are there? -- Colin°^Talk 13:53, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

    WP:MEDRS is for biomedical information, and there are aspects of this – a document being withdrawn, an NHS body apologising, differing health policies adopted by various administrations – that fall outside the purview of WP:MEDRS and within the purview of journalism. Hence the various journalistic sources (CNN, NBC, NYT Magazine) currently cited in the article without controversy. We have to cover the situation outside the US as well. Regards, Andreas JN466 14:27, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

    Jayen466 the thing is, this article is about "Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People". It isn't about the National Gender Identity Clinical Network for Scotland's website, or about NHS Scotland where your non-MEDRS angle might be relevant. The CNN source is one of three and isn't required or controversial. The NBC and NYT section is problematic but not nearly so inflammatory. That a trans treatment guideline is created with some input from trans organisations is quite normal (NICE and SIGN for all medical guidelines take input from patient groups too). What is abnormal is the reporting on opinions on these international guidelines from, em, some random feminist who objects to gender ID reform in Scotland. That's kinda weird. -- Colin°^Talk 15:31, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

    In my view the article needs something akin to a "Reception" section. Readers should be able to learn from such a section which jurisdictions have explicitly adopted or rejected (parts of) it, which parts have been praised or critiqued by transgender spokespeople, etc., representing the range of viewpoints reflected in RS coverage. Andreas JN466 23:13, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

    Ok, but given these are medical guidelines to be accepted/rejected by medical professionals (vs random Scottish feminists), don't you think our sources for that would be the various medical groups of countries that could accept or reject these guidelines. Jaye466, what I'm looking for you to think is that these are guidelines on treating diabetes or schizophrenia or some other healthcare issue. Who do you think Wikipedia should source viewpoints on those guidelines for healthcare professionals treating trans people? They aren't guidelines on who should be allowed in bathrooms or refuge shelters or guidelines on what process someone has to go through to declare a legal change of gender/sex. On what grounds is the opinion of some random Scottish feminist relevant to the opinion of medical professionals giving guidelines to other medical professionals? It seems to me, about as relevant as whether they have a view on Skoda's advice to mechanics on how to identify engine management systems failures. -- 23:31, 12 November 2022 (UTC) Colin°^Talk 23:31, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

    Not quite, Colin. This is an area where advocacy and resulting changes in public opinion, rather than mere medical advances, are driving changes in health policy. I would argue that the widespread (but by no means complete ... !!!) decriminalisation and depathologisation of homosexuality in the last century and the more recent move towards viewing gender dysphoria from a compassionate and pragmatic viewpoint as real distress rather than, judgmentally, a mental disorder had as much to do with the work of advocates as it had to do with strictly medical or psychiatric insights. So in my view societal currents promoting or resisting new ways of thinking about and framing these matters play a key role here. Regards, Andreas JN466 00:48, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

    But which "advocates" are they? If you mean those for patient groups, which I suspect you do, then I've already noted this is normal. Do you think WPATH took any input from For Women Scotland? We both know the answer is no. But that group, who appear to lack qualification or any actual experience with trans people, have an opinion on WPATH. They are simply dirt-digging because they think it will help their case against gender ID reform in Scotland. The question then, is that opinion, that squabble in some distant wee country, relevant to this article? It seems about as relevant as my dentist's views on the US economy. -- Colin°^Talk 09:08, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

    I haven't advocated quoting them in this article ...? The key point to me is the controversy about the eunuch section in the SOC document that led –

    • to a police referral (because of the website linked in that section was held to feature "graphic fictional depictions of child castration and sexual abuse"),
    • to the document being removed from the NHS website, and
    • to the NHS apologising to the public for having uploaded it.

    Andreas JN466 14:53, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

    I get there are prurient details you would like to include. All three bullet points are about Scotland. The so-called "police referral" appears, AFAIKS, in only the Telegraph column by their Scotland correspondent. Their source for this claim is "according to internal documents", in other words, not actually corroborated by the police, or even, it would appear, arousing their interest. I once told the police about a white-van-man offering to sell me a cheap television from an Aldi car park. I'm not sure that belongs on Wikipedia. The "NHS website" isn't the the NHS website but "an NHS website". Not sure then that this was even a public facing one, or even if it was, the website of some non-notable clinic. And apologies are not notable and wasn't "The NHS" but just a person who works for the "National Specialist Services Division Scotland" talking to a journalist.

    But remember this is an article about a guideline, an international one, but one primarily used in the US. Don't you think it a bit odd that the journalists are "Daniel Sanderson, Scottish Correspondent", "Mike Wade, Senior Reporter Scotland" "Gina Davidson, Scotland Political Editor" (the Scotsman just reports a second hand story from The Telegraph). And The Economist (a UK publication) doesn't cover the three bullet points you make, but does regard WPATH as a US story, because that's the section of their magazine they put it in.

    So tell me please why Wikipedia, an international project, when describing an international guideline of most concern to the US, cannot find any sources in the US to describe this? They do have newspapers in the US. And if these prurient details are so scandalous that they need to be permanently recorded about these guidelines, why we can't find a neutral source, one that isn't very clearly trans-hostile in its point of view? I mean, surely castrations and child abuse are something anyone might find interesting to read about with their breakfast paper? -- Colin°^Talk 21:01, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

    That argument doesn't make sense at all. You say it is an international guideline and Wikipedia is an international project, but if it isn't covered in a US source it is irrelevant ...? "International" means that more than one nation is relevant.

    The person reported to have apologised was Susan Buchanan, Director of the National Specialist and Screening Directorate. She heads a national body. "The National Specialist and Screening Directorate (NSD) plans, funds and co-ordinates national specialist and screening services, national clinical, diagnostic and justice networks and national planning on behalf of NHS Boards and the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates. It facilitates service change across NHS Scotland to ensure consistent, equitable provision of high quality, safe, effective, person centred services to meet the needs of the population of Scotland."

    I take your point about the "police referral" and the Aldi car park , but I disagree with your view that NPOV requires Wikipedia to pretend these reports weren't published, or that there never was any controversy. Andreas JN466 19:30, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

    I don't think WP:PROPORTION says we should "pretend these reports weren't published". That's not really a fair description of how NPOV works. And I've repeatedly said that if that wee clinic and its website was notable, it would be appropriate weight for that article, which we don't have. Did you see my post below, though, that Wikipedia has in fact hosted the same link continuously at Eunuch for 17 years, a website you say "was held to feature "graphic fictional depictions of child castration and sexual abuse")". And all these years you've been participating here and schools have encouraged their children to do their homework here. Makes you sick, or "disgusted" as the Telegraph reported.

    But importantly, the document that the Telegraph reporter got someone to apologise over, is hosted here by Taylor & Francis Online in their journal "International Journal of Transgender Health". A publisher founded in 1852. The guideline has well over 100 authors, all presumably actual experts, vs the For Woman Scotland group, who have an incentive to smear them. You can read the document and the Eunuch chapter and see the same link to the same site that Wikipedia's article on Eunuchs has. Do you think there's even the remotest possibility that this publisher, this journal and these hundred or so experts, were unaware of the link to a site, apparently containing "graphic fictional depictions of child castration and sexual abuse"? A link that Wikipedia also makes. And a search on PubMed for the Eunuch Archive gives six articles, all of which note the site as a place where they posted questionnaires to gather information about such people. This frankly seems about as silly as complaining about a link to Twitter because you can find white supremacist hate speech on Twitter if you go looking.

    Are you really still thinking that because an anti-trans feminist group made a fuss about this, got someone to apologise, and got the Scottish correspondent in a few newspapers to publish it, that this non-story has weight? I don't see a weight of international newspapers complaining about the link in the actual v8 of the guideline published by this international publisher. If really this was such a terrible link, wouldn't they be doing that? And attacking Wikipedia too -- Colin°^Talk 20:35, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, include as per gnu. - LilySophie (talk) 19:56, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
• No per Sideswipe9th and Tamzin. GreenComputer (talk) 05:24, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
• Comment (I came here from the RFC at RSN, and have reviewed the specific arguments presented here by both sides) I have no opinion on mentioning the eunuchs controversy, but I feel like this article has an oppportunity to address many of the false claims about the Standards of Care being cavalier or fringe. Many criticisms of the SoC in popular consciousness are grounded in ignorance, and I feel that this article should include a far wider range of (very brief mentions of) allegations against the SoC, followed by well-sourced (preferrably by MEDRS) rebuttals. I'm thinking specifically of allegations of ideological bias, of allegations about minimum ages based on out-of-context readings of the SoC, allegations of overmedicalization of trans youth, and exaggerated risks of puberty blockers. If we want to debunk them in this article, we need to briefly mention them, while ensuring they're a fraction of the length of the rebuttals. On the whole, that seems like a better way to educate people and address widespread misinformation, which are Wikipedia's goals. Though this comment isn't directly related to the eunuchs controversy, I'd caution editors against over-exclusion, which would prevent rebutting these criticisms directly. Doing so here might even help improve media coverage, as it'll centralize arguments in one place that journalists (or their editors) can easily look at. If this is done, I also suggest moving this article to WPATH Standards of Care to give it more prominence in Google. DFlhb (talk) 06:19, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  This isn't how Wikipedia works for mainstream medicine. We don't stuff the Cancer article full of quack cures along with longer rebuttals (and Brandolini's law means rebuttals are hard work). Wikipedia doesn't exist to give a platform to ignorant lobby groups (and as I'm explaining above, groups like For Women Scotland are not in any shape or form a patient support group or a group of doctors or trans people). These groups invent a controversy like the above non-story. There is a reason why this non-story didn't get coverage beyond the "Scotland correspondent" of a handful of anti-trans right-wing newspapers. Wikipedia doesn't say, ok, let's give the "Inject bleach to cure covid" the first sentence, and then we can spend five sentences saying why that's a terrible idea. This isn't a court room where we allow both sides to have their say, even if you argue we should give medicine a longer say. That is WP:FALSEBALANCE.

  Part of the playbook of many pressure groups is to try to make it seem like something is more controversial than it is. So they will say that not all scientists agree about climate change or the origin of aids or whatever. I have no doubt there will be controversies within the medical profession about how to treat trans people. Part of that is why guidelines go through drafts and are revised. We should include those voices. If the anti-trans groups are so sure that there are serious problems with these guidelines, then it should not be hard to find dissent within the actual profession, vs complaints by gender-ID-reform groups in Scotland.

  Wikipedia should treat this article more like it was NICE guideline NG217 Epilepsies in children, young people and adults. I don't see why Wikipedia should let the views of hateful and ignorant people get a platform wrt the treatment of trans people any more than we would give a platform to the "Scotland correspondent" citing a pressure group who claim "Epileptics are possessed by the devil and should be exorcised with fire". (Oh, and I'm not entirely making that up, possession by evil spirits as a cause of epilepsy featured in the New Testament and is still believed in many countries including by highly educated people of all faiths). -- Colin°^Talk 10:10, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  Fair points, but to be clear, I wasn't suggesting putting any of this in the lead; nor framing the criticisms as non-biased, credible or widespread; I think there's ways to word it that would avoid that, while still exposing the flaws in the criticisms, and avoiding both-sides-ism. DFlhb (talk) 12:00, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  Nor do we need to cite any of what I propose to British outlets; the NYT has had several long-form pieces on the WPATH's response to the right-wing backlash [3], and in-depth interviews with lead WPATH doctors addressing the misrepresentations. DFlhb (talk) 12:39, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  It's tricky. Newspapers are just so random in quality. I'm frankly depressed at those who look at that Telegraph article and fail to see the parallels with covid cranks, homophobic and white supremacist groups or when some newspapers didn't believe AIDS was caused by HIV or promoted the MMR/Autism myth:

  • Mainstream organisations, guidelines and clinics are described as extremists
  • Random self-appointed people-with-opinions who run lobby groups that seek to reduce rights and care for minority groups they despise get interviewed and platformed, while the "doctors addressing the misrepresentations" are not.
  • No voice given to the patient group themselves.

  While the NYT may well have some excellent interviews and pieces, what is the policy route to selecting that over the dross in the Telegraph? There will be many editors who regard both papers as sound. If folk have some ideas on how to solve that, I'd like to know. It may be simpler to just to take the MEDRS approach of just not citing newspapers for biomedical information (such as healthcare guidelines) even if then we miss out on some gold in among the shite. -- Colin°^Talk 17:15, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  what is the policy route to selecting that over the dross in the Telegraph? It's not really either/or; whatever the results of this RFC, it doesn't prevent us from including the NYT's coverage. DUEness and WP:FALSEBALANCE would be solid policy routes, IMO. Surely, if the NYT covered the SoC (in a fair and in-depth way), it merits inclusion? The stuff NYT covers wouldn't be subject to MEDRS, since it's about how they arrived at decisions; MEDRS can be used to explain the decisions themselves. DFlhb (talk) 17:29, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  Why would the process of arriving at a decision require a lower standard of sourcing than the decision itself? Surely the general-interest press can distort its portrayal of the former. XOR'easter (talk) 18:30, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  The process of arriving at the decisions is not biomedical information, so is not subject to WP:MEDRS but to WP:RS. And I'll remind everyone that policies explicitly encourage you to exclude individual inaccurate statements by WP:RS (WP:RSCONTEXT), even if the article, or the NEWSORG itself is generally accurate; so if you feel the NYT distorts anything, you can just exclude whatever they distort, and include the rest. DFlhb (talk) 18:46, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  But why is the process of arriving at the decisions not "biomedical information"? It's not in the penumbra of things that have to do with health and medicine but don't require MEDRS (e.g., etymology of a disease name, information about centuries-outdated remedies, portrayals of a disease in literature...). XOR'easter (talk) 20:19, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  There's also the matter that we are just an encyclopaedia. I find the "sum of all human knowledge" soundbite to be total offal personally. Maybe DSM-5 is something to compare (with the warning that it may be a good or a terrible example). The vast majority of the sources are academic. There are some news sources but they seem to be commenting on the academic controversy as opposed to giving voice to idiots and hateful people with opinions. Of course, this guideline isn't nearly as notable as DSM. It may be we should err on the side of saying little if there is indeed little said in genuinely reliable sources. -- Colin°^Talk 22:13, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

• No per the WP:UNDUE/WP:PROPORTION analyses of Sideswipe9th and Colin. XOR'easter (talk) 18:30, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
• No, as Loki and Sideswipe9th have said, these sources are not reliable on trans subjects, not just the medical matter itself but also events surrounding such. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:22, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

  Please note that the reliability of these (and other) sources on trans subjects is currently under discussion at WP:RSN. Newimpartial (talk) 22:22, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

• Yes Very strongly sourced, there is no serious doubt about the reliability of sources or the factuality of the claims. Open and shut case really. Boynamedsue (talk) 22:42, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

  So you believe that three sources sharing the same clear bias, and a fourth source that attributes the claim to "some media outlets", counts as Very strongly sourced? That's ... interesting. Newimpartial (talk) 23:51, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I would find an uncontested fact published in four strongly biased pro-trans RS to be equally well-sourced. --Boynamedsue (talk) 16:27, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't see anything like unanimity in the characterization of the fictional accounts of the castration of minors. I have no idea what text would allow that topic to he treated with WP:V and NPOV, since it involves a choice among biased characterisation (or reliance on translation from the German-language souece, which doesn't seem ideal for nuance). Newimpartial (talk) 16:33, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't really understand that post. What is the factual claim in the sources that you dispute? The part that the NHS linked to a site with explicit non-medical material? --Boynamedsue (talk) 16:41, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

My question is, what language can use in article text to mention this explicit non-medical material, while meeting WP:V and NPOV? I can't speak for anyone else, but that has been my most urgent problem all along. Newimpartial (talk) 16:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Just to be clear (and I have done another dive into the secondary sources to verify this), I can find no characterisation of this material that is shared (or "neutral") among the (few) independent RS that cover this issue. Graham Linehan goes with a fetish forum that hosts and produces extreme sadomasochistic written pornography involving the castration and torture of children, but sadly Glinner is not a reliable source. Newimpartial (talk) 16:43, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Newimpartial, why do you care about language? Are we really going to repeat the tosh about links to eunuch.org. I've got news for everyone here, Wikipedia's eunuch article has had an External Link to it constantly since 2005. Nobody as far as I know has made a police report about Wikipedia linking to such depravity.

Boynamedsue, just because something has factual aspects to it doesn't prevent it being complete tosh. How about we write "Boynamedsue regularly frequents with transgender users of a controversial website which prides itself in being uncensored, hosting images of depraved sexual acts, links to eunuch fetish websites, lambasted for hosting suicide how-to guides and that was founded on money made from porn. He has even participated at Wikimedia Commons which a Wikpedia co-founder claimed knowingly hosted child porn.[4]" We could say all these things about you and you would rightly complain people are trying to smear you. This is standard UK press trash journalism, and yes, even the broadsheets participate in it. Go on, try to show any of the things I listed about you are untrue. You can't. There is a reason for WP:VNOT at this sort of Scottish kerfuffle is it. -- Colin°^Talk 18:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

User:Jayen466 I'm interested what you make of Wikipedia's longterm external link to depravity (see above)? Should we file a police report? Ask Jimbo to make a public apology to the entire world? And more importantly, remove this heinous link? -- Colin°^Talk 19:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Boynamedsue, you do realise that Wikipedia hosts "explicit non-medical material". That you are participating in a project that publishes pornographic images, suicide how-to-guides and, most outrageously of all, denies Trump won the 2020 election. Yes, I think the linked website moral panic stuff and the police report bit are tosh. Total tosh. Colin°^Talk 16:45, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I think I get what you are upset about here, you feel that there was nothing wrong with linking to eunuch.org so that aspect should not be mentioned in the article? Well, I can only say that, in contemporary British culture, fiction regarding extreme child abuse is considered to be the most unacceptable written material possible. This is especially the case when that material is celebratory or, worse still, intended to stimulate the reader. While wikipedia is not censored, and as such linking to that page is almost certainly correct, the idea that a government organisation might direct the public towards such material is mind-boggling. It is exceptionally noteworthy and really should be in the article. Boynamedsue (talk) 22:45, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

This idea that a government organisation might direct the public towards such material isn't actually about WPATH 8, though, is it? It is an issue in Scotland concerning Scottish entities and largely Scottish reaction. So it may be DUE for inclusion somewhere on Wikipedia, but I'm having trouble seeing how it is DUE for the article on WPATH, since we aren't really covering the reaction to WPATH 8 in, say, New Zealand or in Massatcheussets, two broadly comparable jurisdictions. Newimpartial (talk) 23:05, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

So you are happy for the apology regarding WPATH 8 to be included if it doesn't include mention of eunuch.org? --Boynamedsue (talk) 23:18, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

But the apology isn't by WPATH nor is it about WPATH 8. It is a beleaguered medical org apologizing for its web links, as far as I can tell, so I don't see why it belongs in this article. Newimpartial (talk) 23:27, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

The link is not the main part, it is the controversial inclusion of eunuch, which is mentioned in various sources. I would include both. I think it is agree to disagree time here, I see reliable sources and notable information.Boynamedsue (talk) 23:36, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, Scotland is the only jurisdiction in the world in which the RS coverage of WPATH 8 is dominated by eunuchs' rights issues. Newimpartial (talk) 23:39, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion on eunuch.org. None whatsoever. Haven't visited it. I suspect you haven't either. According to the source The Telegraph the site includes "graphic and sexually explicit fictional descriptions of child eunuchs". I'm not aware that exceeds the limit to what one can imagine and put into words and appear on bookshelves or online perfectly legally. I live in Britain. You claim "fiction regarding extreme child abuse is considered to be the most unacceptable written material possible". Really? Amazon has a whole category of Books on Child Abuse. There was a time when it seemed every other book on the supermarket shelves had some title like "Oh Daddy How Could You" with a picture of a sobbing wee girl on the cover. Ok, so they are non-fiction, but child abuse and rape and other abuses are pretty common features in fiction, including classic and major works: "The Handmaid's Tail" for example.

You also say your mind boggles that "A government organisation .. direct[ed] the public towards such material". The WPATH 8 is published in HTML form here, PDF form here and PubReader form here. At the very top of that page it says "An official website of the United States government", which is what the NIH National Library of Medicine is. And as I noted above there are at least 6 other medical journal papers that mention that website, and indeed where the authors used the site to publish questionnaires for their research. The actual WPATH guideline isn't some self published work by a few extremist scientists, but published in a journal by a very major and established publishing house and has well over 100 authors, all of which are experts in their field. Do you really think all of those authors, that publisher, its editor, or the NIH might be linking to a site that in some way illegal or dodgy enough to need a police report?

You say the public were directed towards such material. The document is 258 pages long and the offending link is buried in the text on page 86. I'm reminded about a demolition notice in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy wrt how obscure that "direction" could be. Someone has tried really really hard to get offended.

So the US Government NIH are happy to publish and host a document (WPATH 8) with a link to this site. But if a small clinic in the Scottish NHS puts that same document on its website, some Scottish feminists get upset about and get the Scotland correspondent in a few newspapers to write an anti-trans article around it. Isn't it weird how there is nothing about this in the US press? Maybe because "Scottish feminists get upset over nothing" doesn't sell newspapers in the US.

And we have a website that apparently contains written descriptions of extreme child abuse. That website is called Amazon.com. It's Black Friday Week apparently. -- Colin°^Talk 14:15, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

The document published on the NHS website was this draft version of the eunuch chapter, not the final published version of the SOC. gnu57 14:37, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I would suggest certain users are approaching WP:BLUDGEON territory here. However, I will answer one point. I would be very concerned about the NHS linking to a fictional text on child abuse, but I can just about see a chain of events that might lead to this. However, the point of commonly available books on child abuse is that they generally take the line it is a bad thing. Now, maybe drop the stick?Boynamedsue (talk) 16:00, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Boynamedsue, please stop posting false and inflammatory claims like "the NHS linking to a fictional text on child abuse". -- Colin°^Talk 17:57, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Castrating a child is one of the most horrific acts of abuse imaginable, and the website concerned contains many fictional depictions of this, form a point of view in which it is considered to be desirable. I am genuinely sorry that some people have gone so far through the looking glass that they see no problem with this. --Boynamedsue (talk) 20:04, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

They didn't actually link to such a story, though, did they, and that's not an accurate description of what the site is about, any more than describing Amazon as a child abuse website or Netflix as a rape fantasy website or Wikimedia Commons as an amateur porn repository. Ok, maybe the last one. You can go on either of those commercial sites and watch or buy such media and, apparently, do so for your personal enjoyment of an evening, rather than because you are a phycologist or social worker. Please don't suggest editors "see no problem" with some things, though I'll reserve judgement to what I know about rather than a description by an unreliable witness. But I also see huge problems with that trope of detective drama where a series of young women are stalked, sexually assaulted and killed, and then a male detective comes along to their rescue. This is an entire major genre of fiction. I see huge problems reading about child abuse for pleasure, but apparently millions of people, mostly women, disagree with me. And these things are available on those two websites and any supermarket. The point is your description and the description quoted/relayed in the Telegraph are gross mischaracterisations of the facts. Boynamedsue, you keep arguing that the horror of that link demands we cite the opinions of a few Scottish feminists clutching their pearls, and yet you continue to participate on Wikipedia, which has that link too. If you are serious about your upset, rather than, you know, trolling, or being quite obviously selective in your choice of target, I think you should do something about that. -- Colin°^Talk 20:54, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I for one do not support any point of view in which Castrating a child is considered desirable. Neither, to the best of my knowledge, does any version of WPATH SOC 8 - at least, I haven't seen that allegation in even the most lurid of the depictions in the BIASEDSOURCES.

Some fictional depictions of child abuse are indeed illegal in some jurisdictions, and apparently the Eunuch Archive hosts some fictional depictions of child abuse. But I don't see any reference to this fiction in the current WPATH SOC 8, nor have I see any text by WPATH that treats child abuse with any less concern that is merited by this serious issue. So whatever controversy may have been arisen about links appearing on the web pages of Scottish medical organisations, I still dont see anything here that is actually relevant to the WPATH SOC. Newimpartial (talk) 21:01, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

gnu57, thanks for the link to a draft version of the chapter. It isn't clear from the newspapers what was uploaded, the government apology says documents, plural, which makes me think all the draft chapters were published. The Times seems to be confused who wrote it, saying "The paper was written by The National Gender Identity Clinical Network for Scotland (NGICNS), and uploaded to an official NHS website, as part of a consultation over proposed updates to its guidelines." but they go on to quote sentences from this "paper" which are verbatim in the WPATH draft, which they later call "The Standards of Care document". But this draft is useful because in dealing with WP:BIASEDSOURCES we need to be very careful to recognise they often try to mislead the reader.

The headlines (which we don't regard as reliable) claim "NHS Scotland apologises for saying eunuch should be gender identity" but that isn't what NHS Scotland apologised for. And this is misleading others here (e.g. Jayen466 above) into thinking the Eunuch controversy "led to" an apology to the public. But that Times article says "A Scottish government spokesman said: “This material was published in error. The documents have been removed and we apologise to anyone affected.”" And LBC repeats that, adding "Yesterday Susan Buchanan, the director of National Specialist Services Division Scotland, apologised for the documents being uploaded "in error" and said her organisation would hold a full investigation into the incident."

WPATH provides these draft guidelines for people to read but explicitly mark every page with "WPATH PROPERTY - CONFIDENTIAL DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION". The publication-in-error was that this clinic should not have taken a copy of these copyright and confidential documents and re-published them on its own site. All we can, on this talk page, assume from what the government/nhs people have said is that it is this procedural and legal error that was a mistake, has been remedied, and it is WPATH who they have apologised to for breach of protocol and copyright law. We cannot offer in the article or even suggest in the article any reason for the apology and especially not that the apology is because of the claim a eunuch is an identity or for the link to that website. They have not said that. And the various sources body text do not make that claim either (the closest they get is using the word "after" which only claims a chronological sequence and not a causal one).

This is why trash journalism should not be permitted into our medical articles. -- Colin°^Talk 09:20, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

• Yes Given the for now solid sources and most of the objections not concerning the actual facts of the matter.XeCyranium (talk) 00:52, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

  Why are we getting YES votes that are essentially saying "passes WP:V". Which part of WP:VNOT is unclear? The lack of WP:DUE on this matter is what matters, and we have a few newspaper stories sourced to the same anti-trans organisation (For Women Scotland) all written by their Scottish Correspondent. There's no international coverage of this at all, so neither should there be international weight given on Wikipedia, for this is an international guideline, not the website of a clinic in Scotland. I have no doubt this !vote will get cited in some people's topic bans, as evidence they selectively ignore basic policy in order to push their agenda. -- Colin°^Talk 08:47, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

  Then let me add that I think it appears due because it had coverage from fairly large sources. The idea that an event contained to one nation being unworthy of mention isn't supported by policy as far as I'm aware but if you can show otherwise I'd be glad to change my vote. I didn't realize there were objections to it on grounds of it being due, apologies for not reading all of your comments before voting. Accusations of activism are unfounded and immature, you should strike them and consider the way your own comments come across.XeCyranium (talk) 04:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

  WP:DUE is always part of any "should we mention" consideration. And many of the votes here have ignored it. The event isn't just "contained to one nation" but contained to one clinic. The point isn't so much where the event took place, but the fact that nobody outside the UK, and mostly nobody outside of a newspaper's Scotland Correspondent, have written about it. That is a concern for DUE. -- Colin°^Talk 08:46, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

• Yes – a large number of high quality reliable sources have been presented which cover the controversy; therefore, there is due weight to cover the topic in the Standards of Care (SOC), version 8 subsection. --Guest2625 (talk) 11:39, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
  • WP:RECENTISM. Newimpartial (talk) 16:52, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
• Yes. There's good coverage and the claim that some sources are unreliable is unsubstantiated. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 15:26, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

  You mean, apart from the reliable souces that point out the biases, exaggerartions, spin and political campaigning these publications are engaged in on transgender issues? Newimpartial (talk) 17:55, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, I think that those sources are not conclusive and I see biases, exaggerations, spin and political campaigning on both sides of the transgender issues. The attempt to undermine The Times, The Telegraph and The Economist because all decidedly BIASEDSOURCES might strike as a case in point. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:48, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, per Spy-cicle. BilledMammal (talk) 17:35, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
• Yes – It's mainly a WP:DUE issue, and imho the sources are sufficient to include a brief mention. There are two things opponents get wrong about this. First, is it doesn't matter whether these sources are biased for trans issues or not; NPOV policy's attribution requirements allow us to quote biased or unreliable sources. What matters is whether it is WP:DUE or not. That is, whether these sources represent only a "tiny minority" of generally reliable sources (in which case, exclude) or a "minority view" (in which case, include, but briefly, as Colin suggested).

The other thing is that appeals to WP:MEDRS are misapplied. WPATH is an advocacy organization and they have opinions about stuff, which we report. Sometimes opinions of advocacy organizations are controversial, or engender criticism for whatever reason, possibly nonsensical, wrong-headed, false, or self-serving; but if it passes the DUE "tiny-minority" threshold, we report that criticism in proportion to its appearance in sources. The criticism of the SOC report has some commonality with the criticism of the ROGD study, or for that matter, our coverage of the wacko theories of what brought down the World Trade Center. It doesn't matter how loopy or credential-free these theories are, if they get sufficient press (even biased press) to pass DUE, then there's a controversy that needs to be reported. Our September 11 attacks article has a § Cultural influence section that briefly mentions conspiracy theories, and this article should have a brief mention if it is DUE. The collection of sources looks to me like more than a "tiny minority", therefore I vote "yes". Call the section, "#Some wacko ideas about this by biased Brits" if you want, but include it. That's what the policy calls for. Mathglot (talk) 21:53, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Mathglot, I don't think your comparison is fair, and I didn't suggest it be included "briefly". Nor are you correct or fair to describe WPATH as an "advocacy organization" with an opinion, as though they are like LGB Alliance or For Women Scotland. They are a professional medical organisation, and this SOC document has well over 100 expert authors, published in a respected journal. As such, a document like this represents a global consensus of experts, which is what Wikipedia's NPOV respects. For sure, they may get things wrong and come up with wrong-headed ideas. All sorts of expert guidance has come in for criticism over the years, such as DSM or NICE, but generally speaking, the serious criticism comes from other experts, not just a few feminists whose main concern is fighting gender ID reform and promoting the idea that trans people are dangerous perverts you don't want to meet in a public bathroom.

The criticism of the ROGD study appears in academic journals, as well as other sources like mainstream media. And in that case, the criticism is mainstream, and the wacko stuff is the ROGD study. The wacko theories of the World Trade Center have been covered globally, by all the press and TV stations. It is hard to find a fringe theory that is more notable than that and certainly warrants coverage in our article. If you think "#whacko ideas about this by a few biased Scots" is relevant in a global encylcopaedia documenting an international medical guideline, where are the international sources? It isn't like there aren't plenty American journalists looking for material on this topic, but we have no American newspaper sources. Don't you find that odd? Not only are the sources exclusively British, but all but one are exclusively written by a Scottish Correspondent? This isn't anything like a World Trade Center fringe theory. What this is, is a LGBT grooming conspiracy theory playbook attack, where the mainstream scientists and doctors are being linked to child abuse, and nonsense about police reports. As I said, if we had an article about this Scottish gender clinic, this could be DUE briefly there, and would need context that the remarks were made during the Scottish gender ID debate. -- Colin°^Talk 22:46, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

If I misinterpreted your suggestion, I apologize. I didn't say WPATH is like LGB Alliance, which is not medically based, whereas WPATH is, so that's a straw man. WPATH is still an advocacy organization, however. Personally, I believe that WPATH advocates for the right thing, but that's just my personal bias, and not everyone agrees. Rather than being like LGB Alliance, WPATH is more like ACPeds, who, (in my opinion) advocates for the wrong thing, and are also medically based, just like WPATH is. You and I just both happen to agree that WPATH gets it right, but that's not a reason to exclude reliably sourced opposing material from the article (medically-based, or not) if it meets the DUE threshold, which I believe it does. The inclusion/exclusion factor is not based on its WQ (Wackiness Quotient) but on its visibility in sources, and that's what we should be arguing about, and not on pointless counts of medical experts, which have no bearing on the resolution of this question whatsoever. If you're basing that on "a document like this represents a global consensus of experts, which is what Wikipedia's NPOV respects", that's simply a misunderstanding of NPOV, which makes no such claim. The only mention of the term expert is in the section about art appreciation and doesn't apply here. Mathglot (talk) 00:09, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure the comparison of WPATH and ACPeds is fair either, in that the latter is a breakaway campaign group from mainstream American Academy of Pediatrics with a name clearly similar enough to cause confusion. I can barely find them on PubMed (two publications both concerning legal issues) whereas WPATH is widely cited in the literature, as an authority and publisher of this SOC, and have their own journal published by Taylor & Francis. The ACPeds has a revenue 1/1000th the size of AAPeds and 1/10th the size of WPATH. Their purpose is primarily advocacy aimed at parents, leaflets for schools.

In comparison to "advocacy organisations", whose primary aims are political, WPATH is a professional organisation whose scope is transgender health, and so are similar to American Psychiatric Association, who's own DSM has had a number of controversies over the years. I wouldn't say they "get it right" any more than I'd say the APA gets it right. I would say, though, that in that field, they are as close as we are going to get to the dominant view of reliable sources, which in this field is the medical literature. Yes NPOV does not mention "experts" because it doesn't need to. People and organisations with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy in a technical domain (healthcare, microchip architecture, chemistry, history) are called "experts". WP:MEDRS places consensus guidelines by professional organisations at the top of its recommended sources. The subject of this article is one of those.

You haven't answered my question about why there is no coverage of in any newspapers in the US or Europe for example. It is a world standard, and arguably more relevant to the US than the UK. The same chapter on eunuchs with the same link to the same website are all present in the final edition. And why are the folk who kicked up a fuss not continuing to campaign about it? WP:NOTNEWS is why. It was some muck someone threw for political purposes during a campaign and served its purposes. We are not a newspaper nor are we puppets of hate groups. -- Colin°^Talk 10:03, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

That's a fair critique, in that I don't disagree that the view of WPATH is the dominant view, but it's clearly not the only view, and that's the key here. Regarding your question about why there isn't more coverage, you're right that I haven't answered it, but my main point was to underline the fact that this is a DUE issue, and not a MEDRS issue, because mentioning critiques (if they meet the DUE threshold) is not quashed by MEDRS, and I think I've done that. (I agree that there deserves to be a more solid data foundation for supporting either view; unfortunately, I don't have time for that right now.) I'll just add that WP:NPOV "cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus", so whatever MEDRS says, DUE applies here nevertheless, and should be the governing policy in determining the result. Mathglot (talk) 18:29, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I also agree that WPATH is obviously not "an advocacy organization". They do certainly advocate for things sometimes, but only in their capacity as a professional medical organization. Think of it like this: The AMA advocates strongly for vaccines, but that doesn't make them "an advocacy organization".

I agree that the controlling policy here is WP:DUE, but not that that means we have to include nutty conspiracy theories, even if they appear in an otherwise reliable source. My strong opinion here is that the sources in question are in fact not reliable for trans issues specifically despite their general reliability on other topics, and they're not reliable at least in part because they contradict super high quality WP:MEDRS-level sources on medical topics related to transgender healthcare, which is why WP:MEDRS and whether WPATH is an advocacy or a professional organization is relevant here. Loki (talk) 20:18, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Actually, Mathglot, I don't think there's been a claim this is a MEDRS issue, though the discussion has mentioned it, wrt why newspapers can be unreliable (giving voice to cranks and no voice to the actual professionals) and in a discussion about proposing another newspaper's supportive commentary about WPATH. I only got into defending WPATH and explaining their position wrt MEDRS because you labelled them an advocacy organisation, which to me placed them with the cranks, and which you then confirmed by comparing them to an extreme political advocacy group. So we've got off topic. If this was an article about medical treatment, WPATH and their guidelines would be cited much like I'd cite the latest consensus guidelines on diabetes. And MEDRS could affect DUE for such an article, because we don't regard newspapers as reliable sources for biomedical information; they simply have zero weight, for aspects that are biomedical.

But it is rather oddly an article about a guideline. It is quite a mix of stuff that's been edit warred to include, not all of which is what you'd call "critiques". If we accept that v8's eunuch chapter has been criticised by some individuals and include "brief mention", what would you mention? For example, how can we possibly mention that a small clinic in Scotland briefly accidentally published a draft copy (which was clearly marked "WPATH PROPERTY - CONFIDENTIAL DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION") and then removed the draft with an apology. Is it really of any concern to readers of this article that that clinic did that? There is nothing, absolutely nothing beyond the headline, in any of our sources solidly linking that retraction to any controversy about the SOC content or weblinks within it That some newspapers and groups desperately want there to be a link is quite a different matter from there actually being one. If we did cover the controversy along with the retraction, we are complicit in spinning the lie in those headlines. Surely all that is DUE, if you think it is DUE, and is reliably sourced, is that the chapter on eunuchs is controversial, and perhaps that For Women Scotland are "disgusted". -- Colin°^Talk 09:46, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• @Newimpartial: In the NZZ article, please see the section "Eunuch Archives als Tummelfeld für Pädosexuelle?". The most relevant parts are

  Die SOC8 beziehen sich mehrfach auf das 1998 gegründete Eunuch Archive, das weltweit über 130 000 registrierte Mitglieder zählt [...] In verschiedenen Recherchen wurde nachgewiesen, dass sich im geschützten Bereich des Archivs eine grosse Anzahl von Geschichten befindet, die direkt mit dem sadistischen sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern zu tun haben. [...] Das Dokument enthielt laut Medienberichten einen direkten Link zu den Eunuch Archives , «die grafische und sexuell eindeutige fiktive Beschreibungen von Kinder-Eunuchen enthalten».

  gnu57 17:21, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, that gives you one RS making the connection to the web link - except that 《laut Medienberichten》 makes the Swiss source an attributed statement, which is not what you have added to the article based on the BIASEDSOURCES. Anyway, given the overall mass of coverage about WPATH over the years, do you mind explaining to me how this meager sourcing makes your proposed inclusion DUE? Newimpartial (talk) 17:27, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  @Newimpartial: I have provided 4 top-tier, mainstream RS. Could you please strike out your incorrect comment above (...a Swiss source that, as far as I can tell, can't be used to support any of the content...)? gnu57 17:38, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  Since the source attributes the claim to "media sources", and your proposed text makes an assertion in Wikicoice, I'm afraid I can't do what you ask. Newimpartial (talk) 17:43, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  Also, if you can't be bothered to read the discussions on-wiki and the academic and other high-quality sources that have been presented previously, pointing to the biases in three of your "top-tier" RS when it comes to "transgender issues", then I'm not sure what more I could do to help you. Newimpartial (talk) 17:47, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Re diff and diff: I didn't write any of the disputed content. My one recent edit to the article was this revert; the text there is supported by the two sources cited, The Economist and LBC. If you would prefer that we cite the NZZ, feel free to propose wording in line with it.

  Re diff: I have read many of your comments criticising the Times and the Telegraph but remain unconvinced. If you would like a general reevaluation of their reliability, please use the reliable sources noticeboard.gnu57 17:54, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  The day for that reevaluation will undoubtedly come, but in the mean time, "remaining unconvinced" of their biases when presented with academic and other high quality sources documenting those biases is not exactly a good look, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 18:02, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  I have replied on your talk page (diff) so as not to derail the discussion here. gnu57 20:17, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  I asked above in my !vote, and I'll ask again here. Is there a full non-machine translation of the NZZ article available anywhere? I preformed a machine translation on it earlier using DeepL and Google Translate, and the content I got back makes me question if the NZZ article you're relying on is actually an op-ed. I've included some translated quotes above, but the language used seems more like it is trying to persuade the reader about a specific point of view, instead of informing the reader about factual content. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:05, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• I'm undecided on whether this should be included, but if yes, the criticism should be attributed (e.g. was criticized by representatives of Genspect and For Women Scotland), rather than a vague was controversial. ■ ∃ Madeline ⇔ ∃ Part of me ; 17:33, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
• @Newimpartial: Is there something wrong with the LBC? Isn't it a mainstream news organisation? The Scotsman article states: The paper also provided a direct link to a website that included graphic and sexually explicit fictional descriptions of child eunuchs. Regarding your preferred article version, please recall that I didn't write any of the content under dispute. gnu57 12:03, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

  No, LBC isn't a mainstream news organisation. And this may be a language issue, but sexually explicit is not a synonym for sexualized. Newimpartial (talk) 12:11, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

  I have asked about LBC at RSN. If you'd rather we say "sexually explicit" descriptions of children, rather than "sexualised", that is fine with me--I have no preference one way or the other. gnu57 13:44, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• I think we have to be very careful to judge DUE based on journalism from newspapers with an established trans-hostile editorial stance. The Telegraph (along with the Daily Mail) publish trans-negative stories every day, sometimes more often. If "was once published in the Telegraph" was a basis for inclusion on trans issues, our trans content would be overwhelmingly filled with the views of gender critical authors and campaign groups and negative case histories about trans people doing werid stuff. It isn't like it is balanced out by other establishment media; the more reputable ones just ignore this crap. Yesterday's telegraph has four trans stories:

• Daniel Radcliffe is surely the world’s most ungrateful man: The actor has once again sought to cancel his creator JK Rowling for believing that women are women and trans women are trans women
• Transgender criminal makes history by appearing in court as both a man and a woman: Offences committed by Alan and Alannah Morgan - the same person - heard at Dundee court
• Nicola Sturgeon’s trans crusade will cost her dearly: By allowing herself to be captured by extremists, she has united both nationalists and unionists against her
• Data on trans BBC staff to be collected by Ofcom: Regulator seeks to better understand gender identity of employees at major broadcasters (if you read other sources on this, gender identity is one of many changes in recent diversity questionaire, which affects all broadcasters, not just the BBC, but trans, and the hated BBC are the only ones to make the title of the Telegraph article).

Is someone going to go to Daniel Radcliffe and note that he's "the world’s most ungrateful man"? Or edit Scots law to note the "history" being made by a trans person committing a crime. Or edit Nicola Sturgeon to say she's been "captured by extremists"? Or edit Ofcom to note that they are ensuring the lefty BBC and Channel 4 aren't being overrun by trans people. Because taking a naive "If it's in the Telegraph it must be important" attitude to trans issues, would have you making such controversial edits every single day. -- Colin°^Talk 12:18, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I concur. The question for me is not whether or not the sources are reliable, it's whether or not the content is DUE.

Unfortunately all of the English language sources thus far quote from some combination of the same three fringe anti-trans organisations; For Women Scotland, Genspect, and SEGM. All three organisations by their history and activities are demonstrably biased against trans healthcare, particularly gender affirming care, and trans rights. These organisations regularly attack groups, organisations, and agencies like WPATH because of their opposing stances. To put it charitably, this seems like an attempt at throwing everything controversial against the wall and seeing what sticks, and a manufactured controversy within the press.

I say manufactured controversy within the press, because no-one here has provided any sources that substantiate there being an academic dispute within the eunuch chapter of the 8th edition standards of care. I've attempted to search for academic sources on this, but as the SoC was only published a little under two months ago, there doesn't seem to be any. Maybe that will change in another 3 to 6 months, or maybe this will be forgotten. Outside of The Telegraph and Daily Mail producting stories on this two weeks ago, and The Economist's story in September, all other content on this seems to have been published in June. As such there doesn't seem to be any real sustained coverage of this. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:22, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Is any controversy that doesn't have an academic component a manufactured controversy? What makes it a manufactured controversy and not a real controversy? In other words, what would make it a real controversy? Benevolent Prawn (talk) 00:24, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I just checked and it seems like the term "manufactured controversy" only applies to factual disputes. Would you say that this dispute is factual, normative, or an even split of both? I'd say that it's mostly normative. Even if it were purely factual, why not include the controversy on the page? This isn't really a case where we need an academic to come along and say whether WPATH's actions were Morally Right, in which case there would be Officially No Controversy, or Morally Wrong, in which case there would be An Offical Scientific Controversy. Because this is mostly a moral controversy. Like... to give an extreme example, if there was some statement in the Standards of Care about how it was okay steal from your patients or whatever, that would generate a moral controversy, whether academics got involved or not. Or, to give a more closely aligned but still very unrealistic demonstrative example, if WPATH said that Burn Victim was a gender identity, and linked to Arson Fetish sites, that would result in a moral controversy. Even if many academics took WPATH's side, it would still be a moral controversy. Whereas if WPATH said that smoking causes lung cancer, and the vast majority of academics took their side, that might result in a "Manufactured" (not scare quotes, just regular quotes) factual controversy if others disputed the ill-effect of smoking. Which still might be reported on by Wikipedia in some capacity.Benevolent Prawn (talk) 00:39, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

To the extent that it is a factual dispute, it seems like a very different kind of factual dispute then questions like "Do cigarettes cause lung cancer" or "Do fluorocarbons deplete the ozone layer". To the extent that I'm not sure the same principles apply.Benevolent Prawn (talk) 00:58, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

"All three organisations by their history and activities are demonstrably biased against trans healthcare"... If something is controversial, most organizations that have chosen to speak out about the controversy at all will have a stance on the controversial issue. The idea that we should consider the sources biased and unsuitable as reference because they have a stance is bizarre. Ken Arromdee (talk) 20:38, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure the Economist is editorially anti-trans. They seem to have a pretty nuanced position on the matter from the articles I've seen. Not that it would matter according to WP:BIAS. The Scotsman also isn't anti-trans. It seems silly to stage an attack based on the sources if some of the sources are never alleged to be unusable.Benevolent Prawn (talk) 04:46, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I am surprised to hear of the Economist having a pretty nuanced position on Trans issues, and would like to see some supporting evidence for that. This isn't The Guardian, which does show nuance (or perhaps simply internal division) on these issues. Newimpartial (talk) 11:29, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

The Guardian isn't nuanced, and is in fact split between their UK and US branches. The UK editorial line is somewhat anti-trans, though not as much as The Telegraph or Times, while the US line is more pro-trans. BuzzFeed News reported on the editorial split in 2020, and there's at least one editorial from the Guardian's US branch over the stance taken by the UK editors. I seem to recall there being another editorial published after the UK editors removed three paragraphs from an interview conducted by the US branch with Judith Butler, but I can't seem to find it now. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

According to Hadley Freeman, the problem at the Guardian is pro-trans censorship. [5] - and that is why she is leaving. Sweet6970 (talk) 21:32, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Is Hadley Freeman personally a reliable source? Loki (talk) 03:27, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

There is nothing in that article that says the Guardian is "pro-trans" and "censors" accordingly. Freeman's last straw seems to be that they thought the columnist who writes celebrity interviews could dictate to the editor what stories the newspaper covered. Sweet, there is a middle ground between being anti-trans and "pro-trans", as you put it, in the same way as most people who oppose racism or religious intolerance aren't pro-black or pro-Muslim.

WP:SOURCES tells us there are different aspects to consider, such as the author of the piece (the journalist, columnist, guest writer or interview subject who is being quoted or who's views are being relayed), the publication it is in (the newspaper and its editorial stance) and sometimes the publisher (like News International). For a newspaper, I often sigh when people ask simply if they are a reliable source, because that's naive when you have straightforward news reporting, opinion columnist, diary writers who write mocking pieces, guests, interviews, etc. For sure, an editorial policy can influence what columnists they hire, but sometimes, and Freeman is a good example, your longstanding celebrity-interview columnist suddenly decides being anti-trans is their mission in life.

Clearly the newspapers on the right in politics will tend to attract columnists aligned with the right's current playbook of being anti-woke, and trans rights are an example of that. The left or more politically neutral media can be more mixed or uncertain. A publication's "editorial" pieces can offer a view on their editorial stance, and on that ground the Guardian is somewhat anti-trans when it comes to some recent political events. But the newspaper's editorials and headlines do not use such clear shibboleths like talking about "trans ideology" or complaining about "woke", which is language you will find at The Telegraph and the Economist. The Times newspaper had this Editorial which is fairly strongly anti-trans but not as rabid as those other papers, such as their agreement that the fuss afforded to this issue is out of place in a world where we are at war and have an economic crisis, and they put the word "woke" in scare quotes. The Times recently published a guest piece by Kezia Dugdale which was pro-trans rights. Remember also that some papers have a different editorial team on Sunday, and some tabloids have different editorial team in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

I think currently the Daily Mail and The Telegraph are outliers wrt anti-trans reporting, publishing at least one anti-trans story every single day, and as I noted above, sometimes a handful of such stories. As we keep getting reminded by some editors, there are very few trans people, so the weight they are affording to this issue is deeply suspicious. The Economist publishes less merely because it is a magazine rather than a daily newspaper, but its headlines are often equally hostile. Put it this way, if the source is covering this issue with language you don't think is encyclopaedic in tone, then its reporting has veered beyond merely being biased into downright hostile activism. -- Colin°^Talk 10:28, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

This is a quote referring to censorship from the Press Gazette article:Freeman told Viner: “It is astonishing to me that the progressive media has handed such an own goal to the right, closing its eyes to concerns about the safeguarding out of fear that to do otherwise would lead to accusations of bigotry. You have said that both sides in the gender debate are equally passionate – but only one side demands censorship. It seems to me that at the Guardian that side has won.” Sweet6970 (talk) 12:58, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I missed that bit. It is funny how people who claim they are being censored or cancelled have themselves and their views so widely represented in the media. I count a couple of dozen anti-trans Guardian articles by this author, and about eight on Unheard, plus all the other articles about her leaving or being unhappy. And weirdly, not a single one of them interviews an actual trans person. All actual publications you can read and nobody, not even the all-powerful trans lobby, is stopping you.

When I read the bit "I felt so hated for saying things — things that are scientifically, biologically and factually true" I recall, oh, just about any random POV pusher coming to Wikipedia to push things key know are "scientifically, biologically and factually true" but can't actually find any reliable sources, and who resort to complaining that Wikipedia censors them.

And my point is we are discussing weight and bias in sources. We get a quote from someone who claims censorship in the media, and clearly they haven't been and aren't being censored. Perhaps they forgot the bit about being hired by the Sunday Times. -- Colin°^Talk 14:26, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

The one point I'm most interested in hearing someone attempt to rebut is: The NHS apologized. Aren't things of sufficient magnitude to provoke an official apology from the NHS almost always noteworthy? Benevolent Prawn (talk) 01:21, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

No? Government agencies make public comments all the time, and the vast majority of them aren't noteworthy. Loki (talk) 03:28, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I didn't say public comment, I said apology. As in an official apology to the entire public. Benevolent Prawn (talk) 06:17, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

To elaborate: I don't think the NHS officially apologises to the general public that often. Benevolent Prawn (talk) 06:30, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

To the entire public? I know the postal service is rubbish these days, but I haven't received my apology. I don't know what makes you think this is an "official apology" or why that is "almost always noteworthy". A journalist from the Telegraph pressed them on the matter and they gave a very unspecific published-in-error sorry-to-anyone-affected reply, which the journalist has manufactured an article around. It was published on the website of National Gender Identity Clinical Network for Scotland. That a division of the NHS that is so insignificant we don't have an article about it published a document "in error" is not noteworthy. It certainly isn't noteworthy in this article here. -- Colin°^Talk Colin°^Talk 10:43, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Note - gnu57 has taken it upon themselves to continue this discussion by other means at WT:RSN (sections on The Economist, The Telegraph and The Times). I'm feeling whiplash. Newimpartial (talk) 19:47, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Not WT:RSN, WP:RSN. Also, I agree with you that this smells like WP:FORUMSHOPPING, so maybe a clearer note would be advisable? Like some pings? Loki (talk) 00:46, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

It also doesn't feel like the RSN discussions are relevant to this discussion here, which is much more of a WP:DUE issue. So, yeah, this does look like forumshopping to get editors in here to make the outcome what gnu57 wants. Silverseren^C 00:49, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Given your constant disparaging of the sources as unreliable RSN seems like the appropriate place for the discussion.XeCyranium (talk) 00:48, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Ironically, a theme of the RSN discussion seems to be that the accuracy and DUE inclusion of claims from these sources needs to be determined on a case by case basis. Newimpartial (talk) 16:44, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

So you should be glad it's being discussed on RSN, I'm not sure what's ironic about that. I'm saying you shouldn't make accusations over having a discussion opened on RSN when your complaints were all more appropriate for RSN in the first place. Accusations of forum shopping were inappropriate given it was the actual relevant forum for your objections.XeCyranium (talk) 04:14, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure to whom you are attributing Accusarions of forum shopping, but that shouldn't be me. Newimpartial (talk) 14:15, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

My mistake, sorry for that, I thought Loki was echoing an accusation you'd made, my bad for not checking more carefully.XeCyranium (talk) 00:29, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I definitely made accusations of WP:FORUMSHOPPING and I stand by them. While it was the actual relevant forum for the literal text of the RFCs gnu57 made over there, the reason they made those RFCs was very clearly because of the impact they would have on this RFC, and specifically because consensus wasn't developing here the way they wanted. That's WP:FORUMSHOPPING. Loki (talk) 05:16, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Speaking of the relevant forum if you stand by your accusations, which I find very silly personally, you should make them in the relevant forum.XeCyranium (talk) 00:29, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I've added some text to the article, per the closing commments. It ended up two sentences rather than one, but I think it was important to set it in context. -- Colin°^Talk 11:33, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Colin, Looks OK for me. The only thing I wanted to note is that the text suggests that the eunuch chapter was in the draft (and it is sort of assumed that it was thrown away on final publication), while in fact, there is a chapter on eunuchs in the final version. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 14:44, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Szmenderowiecki, I just removed "draft". That it was a draft wasn't important to the controversy. -- Colin°^Talk 15:21, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

tense?

Changed some criticisms of SOC-6 to past tense - I think we can assume any debate over SOC-6 is over. Should the whole description of versions 6 and 7 be changed to past tense? What's the general policy for talking about technically still existing, but superseded longer relevant documents? CyreJ (talk) 21:43, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Systematic review by University of York

I added the following text

In April 2024, paediatrician Hilary Cass, author of the Cass Review, wrote in the British Medical Journal that although WPATH has been "highly influential in directing international practice", an appraisal by the University of York found its guidelines to "lack developmental rigour and transparency". Some clinicians questioned the rejection by Cass of what she calls "poor quality" research.

about the WPATH guidelines from reliable secondary sources about a peer-reviewed systematic review:

• Guardian article Gender medicine ‘built on shaky foundations’, Cass review finds | Transgender | The Guardian
• PinkNews article Doctors question Cass report's dismissal of trans research (thepinknews.com)
• the peer-reviewed systematic review Clinical guidelines for children and adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria or incongruence: a systematic review of guideline quality (part 1) | Archives of Disease in Childhood (bmj.com) (accepted 15 December 2023)

Dear @Raladic let's have a discussion. I don't understand your objection to the text you removed, given these reliable sources.

AndyGordon (talk) 07:10, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The systematic review is a top tier MEDRS, analysing multiple international guidelines in this area. It is relevant and due. I would suggest citing that directly and rephrasing to limit the commentary to only what is covered by the review. Void if removed (talk) 08:24, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The problem with the text as you added is that it is an Opinion piece (https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q814) that is primary to Cass, it was quoted basically as is by the sources you added, but that nonetheless doesn’t make it an opinion and not RS. This article here is medical, so it requires MEDRS and the actual article on the Cass Review itself has an extensive criticism section of being criticized by most medical institutions including WPATH (so it’s somewhat circular), so adding this opinion quote of hers into here would not be appropriate and we should stick to the actual medical text of the peer reviewed systemic review, with note that it specifically analyzed SOC7 as they wrote most of their review prior to SOC8, which is the newer standard and was only cursory mentioned in the actual systemic review.

The other part of why I asked you to discuss this here first is that we avoid a pure WP:CRITS section that only focuses on criticism, it doesn’t matter if it is titled “Criticism” or “Reception” if the only content is negative, as that is just a criticism section in hiding, instead per our guidance, if we add a reception section it needs to be balanced, so it needs to also include the (in this case overwhelming) positive appraisal of the WPATH SOC since they are the de-facto medical worldwide standard on transgender care. Raladic (talk) 14:39, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Interesting and thank you for the explanation. Reading WP:MEDRS and WP:MEDDEF in particular I'm wondering about the distinction there between biomedical information and general information. I think that statements about the quality of the review would be biomedical, whereas the statement about its influence on other guidelines would be general information. Anyhow, I will rephrase the text above using only the systematic review, and drop the final sentence "Some clinicians..." because it is biomedical and not supported by MEDRS.

To your point that it is a de-facto standard, there is material in the systematic review to the effect that the WPATH guidelines together with those of the Endocrine Society have influenced all the others, despite being of poor quality. So we should include a careful summary of that. AndyGordon (talk) 21:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Ok, but also as I mentioned, before we can add any of this criticism, you will also need to create a balanced positive reception part of the SOC. Since while the Cass review criticized it for the purpose of guidance for the British NHS, the rest of the medical community around the world doesn’t share that sentiment, which is why many parts of the rest of the world do follow the SOC guidelines in their local country specific rules, or just outright use the SOC guidelines, such as is the case in the US. Raladic (talk) 21:17, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I've made an attempt to include material just from the systematic review. AndyGordon (talk) 11:43, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Lynne-Joseph quote

Hi @Raladic, hope you're having a nice day.

I just saw you reverted my edit. To allay your concerns:

• this is a secondary source; Lynne-Joseph actually cites this statement with two references of her own
• it's not that vague: it specifies two groups of people who share concerns over a lacking evidence base and cites two sources which can be examined for further detail
• it's a peer-reviewed article in Social Science & Medicine summarising prior findings in multiple other such articles elsewhere, so it isn't giving undue weight to a fringe opinion; you can also see this in a direct quote from a WPATH and USPATH member: "A lot of people had so many concerns about the SOC8 guidelines, because they were based on the opinions, quite frankly, not on the evidence, but on the anecdotal opinions of researchers who are cisgender" and the director of Belgium’s Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, who has said he would “toss them [WPATH’s guidelines] in the bin.”

Please let me know if you still have any issues. Thanks! 13tez (talk) 14:32, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

No, it’s portraying it in a way that tries to make it appear that a vague whole group (it reads as if all TGNC people and clinicians have criticized… are opposed to the SOC) is criticizing it, which is WP:UNDUE as it doesn’t specify who those people are and doesn’t make clear that very many other TGNC and clinicians are very much in support of SOC8 as it’s the de-facto gold standard for gender-affirming care worldwide and supported by clinicians from around the world.

As this article is about a medical topic, we have a specific guideline that spells. Please check out the recent discussion just above on Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People#Systematic review by University of York on this which is why similarly, this section included just the systemic review paper in a narrow way as we don’t encourage extensive criticism sections without them having balance of supportive evaluation, which exists is large quantities and would have to be brought in, or else this just becomes a WP:CRITS section in disguise.

Aside from all that, the paper from Lynne-Joseph is about SOC8 and not SOC7, so if we were to include it, alongside a balanced discussion of the extensive worldwide support that the WPATH standard receives, it would have to go in the version 8 section. Raladic (talk) 16:25, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your reply.

it’s portraying it in a way that tries to make it appear that a vague whole group (it reads as if all TGNC people and clinicians have criticized… are opposed to the SOC) is criticizing it

Not really. The quote is "TGNC people and clinicians have criticized the SOC for relying too heavily on expert opinion and called for updates that incorporate stronger evidence". The quote tells us that some number of TGNC and clinicians have made these criticisms, which is true. It doesn't say any specific number have done so, certainly not all or even a majority. To resolve this issue, however, would you prefer to paraphrase the quote to make it explicit that it is "some" of these people rather than all of them?

doesn’t make clear that very many other TGNC and clinicians are very much in support of SOC8

This isn't supported in this quote from this source, so we can't extract this information from it. Everything we include has to be verifiable via reliable sources. It is true but should be referenced from elsewhere - and should be to provide balance and context. Explaining that some support and some oppose the guidelines (and why) will also help us maintain a neutral point of view. I'm sure you'll agree the concerns (as well as praise) of medical professionals and patients, verifiable through multiple reliable and MEDRS sources, have due weight.

de-facto gold standard for gender-affirming care worldwide and supported by clinicians from around the world

It does have popular support, but doesn't have amazing credibility. As I've pointed out, there are several sources such as the systematic reviews in the Cass Review, the journal article in question here, the quotes from a WPATH and USPATH member and the director of Belgium’s Center for Evidence-Based Medicine (found in five minutes of googling) that all say the current guidelines in the SOC aren't sufficiently based on evidence. There are even further groups (Sweden, Ireland, Norway, and Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the European Academy of Paediatrics) who believe that the current practice they set out isn't evidence-based or are going to carry out reviews because they share these concerns. There really isn't a consensus that the SOC "are correct". The best analysis to date, from the systematic reviews commissioned for the Cass Review and a Swedish systematic review, all say there isn't enough evidence to support current practice of the sort SOC recommends. The global standard will be set by the relevant WHO GDG.

'we don’t encourage extensive criticism sections without them having balance of supportive evaluation, which exists is large quantities and would have to be brought in, or else this just becomes a WP:CRITS section in disguise'

It should be fine to summarise the fact that relevant people both support and oppose the SOC and why, in the manner I talked about above. We should acknowledge and summarise both to maintain due weight and a neutral point of view. Would you prefer to summarise multiple sources into a single further sentence saying something like "Some medical professionals, TGNC people, and WPATH members have criticised the SOC for not being sufficiently evidence-based."? We can add the two news articles and the journal article in question to verify this and means we aren't listing out every single person who's said this, but still giving them some coverage (which is due). By summarising in a single sentence, we'll avoid a criticism section/article.

the paper from Lynne-Joseph is about SOC8 and not SOC7, so if we were to include it, alongside a balanced discussion of the extensive worldwide support that the WPATH standard receives, it would have to go in the version 8 section.

"In June 2017, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) announced a plan to revise its “Standards of Care” (SOC), a set of prominent clinical practice guidelines used in transgender medicine, for the eighth time to create SOC-8...TGNC people and clinicians have criticized the SOC for relying too heavily on expert opinion and called for updates that incorporate stronger evidence...Cognizant of the criticisms leveled by clinicians and patients alike, WPATH leadership radically changed the process for guideline development with the SOC-8. The process aimed to address ongoing tensions concurrently by...aligning the guidelines with the principles of evidence-based medicine (EBM)."

Thanks again. 13tez (talk) 19:01, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

There really isn't a consensus that the SOC "are correct". - The health organizations from most countries of the world following WPATH SOC is exactly that, it is their current medical consensus and for most countries considered the currently global standard.

The Cass Review itself has received extensive criticism from the medical community around the world and thus we should not put undue weight on it as it is a review, but it was created to inform the standards of one country, the UK, which the European Union itself has called out has regressed dramatically in trans rights in recent years.

So yes, we can of course include specific criticism if it is due, but we can not ONLY include this criticism, without also providing the counterbalance that the WPATH SOC is widely viewed as appropriate as exhibited by the many more countries following its recommendation versus some who have created their own standards. Otherwise it may appear that there is only criticism and no support, which would violate Wikipedias WP:NPOV policies. So an example on how this content could be included in a balanced way could be that you can go find the sources that cite how many other countries do follow the WPATH SOC standards and thus endorse them, versus the countries you just listed that have created their own standards or criticized it.

One other thing to note, we try to limit MOS:QUOTEs and instead summarize when we can.

So the point I was trying to make, was similar to the discussion I already referenced from above, that we have to maintain a neutral point of view when we add criticism content to an article to ensue it doesn't give WP:UNDUE weight to a particular view. Raladic (talk) 19:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back to me again.

The health organizations from most countries of the world following WPATH SOC is exactly that, it is their current medical consensus and for most countries considered the currently global standard.

Which countries (or their health organisations) follow the WPATH SOC and have their caregivers relying upon them (or legally obliged to follow them) as their primary guidelines in transgender care? I'm not aware of any at present.

The Cass Review itself has received extensive criticism from the medical community around the world

From groups like WPATH based on conventional wisdom. Systematic reviews are one of the highest levels of evidence (medicine should be based on evidence, not conventional wisdom), and the NHS is far more credible and reputable than any of the groups (I am aware of) who have criticised the review. A lot of criticism is also based on objectively false claims (e.g. that it dismissed 98% of studies).

we can of course include specific criticism if it is due, but we can not ONLY include this criticism, without also providing the counterbalance that the WPATH SOC is widely viewed as appropriate as exhibited by the many more countries following its recommendation...

OK then, I think we agree: we should include summaries of support and opposition. Can you verify that more countries support or follow the WPATH SOC than the number which don't? I ask because it would be relevant for inclusion here, and you've mentioned that "many more countries" support it and "most countries considered the currently global standard". Thanks! 13tez (talk) 20:10, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

There is no singular list, so you'll have to go to each countries medical board to pull it up for citation, but the WPATH SOC are translated into 18 languages, suggesting their adoption in many parts of the world of those languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Polish.

Also while above, you cited the Netherlands as criticizing it, they do in fact follow the WPATH guidelines in their Dutch protocol 2018 - so as you can see, if you only included some criticism, it could appear that the country would be seen ass against it, when in fact, they are following it.

This is the point of why we have WP:NPOV policies and particular caution has to be exercised when you want to add criticism without also doing the research of support, or trying to argue that you don't have to do this research yourself and only selectively adding the criticism, which is outlined in the WP:Criticism#Neutrality and verifiability essay with particular note about WP:WEIGHT, as otherwise it can be seen as pushing a certain WP:POV focussing only on the negativity. Raladic (talk) 20:34, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back to me again.

There is no singular list, so you'll have to go to each countries medical board to pull it up for citation, but the WPATH SOC are translated into 18 languages, suggesting their adoption in many parts of the world of those languages

That's helpful and a good place to start, but we need to verify which countries do follow the SOC in the manner I described. Translation into the language of a country, of course, isn't sufficient to substantiate that.

Also while above, you cited the Netherlands as criticizing it, they do in fact follow the WPATH guidelines in their Dutch protocol 2018

I was very careful with what I said: "who believe that the current practice they set out isn't evidence-based or are going to carry out reviews because they share these concerns". Even though most of the groups I listed are no longer carrying out treatments in the manner set out in the SOC, some are reviewing whether treatments should continue in that manner in light of recent findings that there is insufficient evidence to support them. The article says: "Even the original Dutch clinic is facing pressure to limit patients receiving the care...the Dutch Parliament passed a resolution to conduct research comparing the current Dutch approach with that of other European countries." In other words, they're now reviewing their current practice (and, given multiple other reviews have found it to be insufficiently supported by evidence, are likely to change it as a result).

This is the point of why we have WP:NPOV policies..

Yeah, I agree. I think we both understand that it's important to summarise both the support and opposition to the SOC and not go into extraneous detail (on either front) that would take up too much text or push either narrative.

Thanks! 13tez (talk) 20:55, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Just a quick note on In other words, they're now reviewing their current practice (and, given multiple other reviews have found it to be insufficiently supported by evidence, are likely to change it as a result). - One of the core policies of Wikipedia is that we do not employ WP:CRYSTALBALL - so we do not make speculation of what may happen in the future and should not add content to that effect to articles. Raladic (talk) 21:00, 5 May 2024 (UTC)