Decades-long campaign powered by patient perspectives results in switch from PCOS – a name that caused confusion and undue suffering – to PM
a health policy paper has been published saying the name is officially updated to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS)
polyendocrine= multiple endocrine factors
metabolic = affecting/affected by metabolism
ovarian = from the ovaries
essentially, instead of using the symptomatic term (many people with PMOS do not develop cysts) the new term widens the diagnostic area and makes it easier to diagnose, treat, and do research on people with PMOS (even atypical types, such as no cysts).
it may seem like a waste of time to change a name instead of focusing on research, but for a lot of medical professionals a name can be associated with a hard set collection of symptoms, so the name needs to change to acknowledge that the disorder is not well understood and has a broader, subtler, and often missed set of symptoms. for example ADD is considered an antiquated/unused term, and now comes under the ADHD umbrella. in healthcare names and terminology changes all the time, and this is a positive change. your local healthcare professional may not know about this unless theyre really up on the news though!
in case you want to read about the name change process that was published in the Lancet (one of the most impactful and well respected medical journals):
Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), previously named polycystic ovary
syndrome (PCOS), affects one in eight women. However, the
For anybody not caught up: Tennessee just passed a new map that pretty much makes it so black neighborhoods have no power in local votes. Two things about this. While protestors were chanting "No Jim Crow", white Tennessee lawmakers were caught laughing on video. On top of this, Representative Justin Pearson and his brother KeShaun Pearson were arrested for trying to give their takes on the matter (which is not only their legal right but literally his job). If you give a shit about black people, help fight this. We can't allow a return to Jim Crow.
A local paper had some great photographs, all taken by Nicole Hester:
The day before, Rep. Justin Pearson tries to attend a Senate Committee meeting and is barred access by the Sergeant at Arms.
Lawmakers and protesters link arms as the descend the capitol steps.
Once inside the chamber, Democratic representatives continued to stand together with arms linked.
They continued standing together with arms linked as votes were cast.
Democratic representatives take a group photo protesting the redistricting.
Rep. Justin Jones burns a photo of the Confederate flag with the words, We will not go back.
And stomps the ashes.
KeShaun Pearson being escorted from the building by the Staties.
KeShaun Pearson (left) being taken into custody. Rep. Justin Pearson (right) showing his support of his brother.
Additional information: State lawmakers have been gunning for Pearson and Jones nearly their entire terms. Most notably, in 2023, the House expelled them for participating in a protest at the Capitol. Their districts had to have special elections to have them reinstated.
Pearson is one of the plaintiffs of a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the redistricting.
The city most affected by the redistricting is Memphis, where locals are fighting against xAI's data center, which has been operating with very little oversight and is poisoning the people who live there. Here is a previous post on that with more information and more sources.
CeCe Rogers on Facebook writes: "Two Black Tennessee lawmakers were physically escorted out of chambers this week while Republicans quietly held a hearing to approve gerrymandered maps that would eliminate the state's only majority-Black congressional district.
No referendum. No special election. No public vote.
Because they know what happens when voters actually get a say — just look at Virginia, where the people spoke so loudly that Republicans had to drag the courts in to override them.
This isn't new. During Reconstruction, Black Americans held more congressional seats than at any point in the prior 90 years of American history. And white supremacists spent the next several decades tearing that down, through gerrymandering, poll taxes, and voter intimidation.
150 years later, the same tools. Different suits.
The audacity of escorting Black lawmakers out of their own chambers while dismantling Black political representation, and then telling us the courts aren't political, is breathtaking. These are the same courts they're counting on to make it stick.
This is a coordinated, multi-front assault on Black Americans. And we need to say it exactly that plainly."
Anti-vaxxer extremist RFK Jr, the US Health Secretary, is now actively trying to collect medical records of folks on the autism spectrum. First, he used dehumanizing and infantilizating language to insist people with autism won't 'pay taxes and live a 'normal life' which we all know is ableist bullshit and is literally a precursor to genocide. This man is a monster.
Keep sharing this folks. & take action. This is a major bill that has republican’s support. It is essentially the reversal of the 19th amendment using citizenship as a scapegoat
There will be a lot of distractions preventing folks from focusing on this bill. Because this is the one that will bring democracy down.
What to do if you find yourself homless- written by someone who has actually been homeless
Most important: Spend the money you have on a motel. Churches probably will not actually help and shelters can be dangerous or turn you away. At a motel you have free breakfast, access to running water, and a lockable place to sleep. Do not waste money on a gym membership like the popular version of this post says to do, YMCA memberships are like $40.
2. Contact family and friends. Now is not the time to worry about being a burden. Your survival and safety comes first and that is all that matters, anyone worth having in your life will agree.
3. Start a gofundme. Even if someone can’t offer you a place to stay, they might be willing to toss out $5 so you can eat today.
4. Libraries have free wifi. Apply to any and all jobs you can think of if you aren’t already working.
5. Any home is a good home. Even if it’s a dingy apartment in a bad neighborhood. If its cheap and you can afford it, snatch it up.
6. Pancake mix and peanut butter are filling, cheap, and last a long time.
WriteToThem is a website which provides an easy way to contact MPs, councillors and other elected representatives.
UK ADULTS IT IS TIME AGAIN TO SHOUT AT YOUR MP.
It is about that Wes Streeting plans to make the ban on puberty blockers for specifically trans children and not cis children undergoing precocious puberty permanent.
Advice on what to put in your letter, with sources, is available here:
How to write to your MP Check out https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP to see who your MP is and to get their email address. You can al
You can and should personalise it as much as possible, but there's nothing wrong with C&Ping most of the text from the doc and adding a couple of sentences on your own experience/views.
Mine, below the cut:
I am writing to you to ask you to oppose the permanent ban on puberty blockers, for the following reasons:
The ban was implemented by the previous and current Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in an apparent response to the Cass Review, which itself did not directly call for such a ban;
The review however marked all observational studies as poor and itself only conducted a systematic review, which under the GRADE II methodology is classed as very poor, as has been noted by a Yale study on the metholody of the review;
According to NHS figures, a typical waiting time for a child to be seen by a gender specialist is 6 years. If they turn 18 before being seen, they then progress to adult services, where they face another 6+ year long waiting list (this information was obtained via a freedom of information request to the NHS https://docs.google.com/document/d/1neOdLdAPHD6wTikLi9s7Y1AFxrOR9FZQjoMvxKIyJGk/edit?tab=t.0).
The inability to access timely treatment, even for serious cases, leads many to obtain puberty blockers via private healthcare, an avenue of access that has now been removed by the ban.
The ban therefore currently leaves transgender children with no medical treatment options for gender dysphoria within the UK, forcing those who can afford it, to take their children overseas for treatment, and leaving those who can’t with no medical pathway.
As a transgender adult, I am well aware of the acute, often suicidal distress suffered by transgender children undergoing a puberty which does not align with their experience of their own gender. It is not inconceivable that blocking transgender children from accessing this healthcare will increase suicide rates in this group.
A preprint paper by Goldsmiths lecturer Dr Natacha Kennedy (Kennedy, 2024) examines the effects of the ban, using a survey for the parents of young transgender people after the ban was implemented. The parents responding to the survey commented that the ruling seemed to have emboldened transphobes, particularly transphobic politicians and media, by making transphobia more respectable:
“She feels as though the government and media hates her. It’s disgusting that our country is doing this to children.”
As part of this, there has been an increase in delegitimizing language, such as referring to transgender children as ‘gender questioning’:
“It seems since the ban following the Cass Review that it has given politicians, the government, the press and public endorsement to try to further reduce trans youths’ rights and even the word ‘trans’ or ‘transgender’ is being removed from the narrative and there seems to be an erasure of using the word ‘trans’ for youth and it has been replaced with Gender Questioning Children. My child is not gender questioning, they are transgender and have been out for over 9 years and living as themselves. They know who they are and it hurts terribly when people doubt that or don’t accept it.”
The results of the survey show the lack of treatment options has already had a horrifying effect on children and young people’s mental health. Parents noted:
“I have a child who has been suicidal, self-harming and has been unable to leave the house.”
“My child was suicidal and has self-harmed many times as a way to express her emotional distress at the change in her access to gender affirming care.”
“Distraught. Devastated. Distressed. She had already been through the experience of having her healthcare access stopped after the Bell judgement - she had been due to start blockers that week and they were instantly stopped. This deeply affected her trust in adults responsible for her care, and had a knock on effect on relationships with teachers, club leaders, the GP etc.”
The paper also shows that parents and families have been severely impacted by the ban. They feel powerless to protect their children and abandoned to deal with the impacts alone:
“I am so worried about puberty. I think about it at least once a day. I am deeply concerned that if she struggles then we are helpless.”
“It has caused direct damage to my mental health by causing panic and confusion. I was left to support a child whose mental health changed for the worst overnight (literally). There was no support for her or parents. There was no warning. I felt confused and desperate and also totally unseen.”
“Watching my child suffer and struggle needlessly due to the decisions made by people who this has zero impact on is single-handedly the hardest thing I've ever had to do as a mother.”
One parent noted that their daughter was now frightened of being outed at school and potentially stabbed because she will go through the wrong puberty:
“I am so afraid for her. She is in stealth at school, afraid of being stabbed and now she will undoubtedly go through the wrong puberty for her.”
With the rise in hate and transphobia, this ban may well put children and young people at physical risk from their peers, which is more dangerous than any safety issues from puberty blockers.
Much as anti-immigrant rhetoric from public sources in the UK has embolded violent racism, so a government which is seen to withhold support from transgender children emboldens violent bigotry against them. We have already had one despicable, very widely-publicised murder of a transgender teenager in this country. It falls upon us all to prevent any more.
The ban is not firmly based on medical recommendations or evidence. The Cass Review remains controversial, has been criticised for its quality by various professional institutions and is still being critiqued and analysed. Banning puberty blockers is a politically motivated and scientifically unjustified response. The UK is an outlier in implementing a ban and goes against the expert opinions of many professional associations and nations worldwide. Several other countries, including Australia and France, have conducted reviews of their own finding that puberty blockers are a considerable help to transgender children.
Some instances of precocious puberty have been treated with puberty blockers for the past 50 years, with no discernible side noticed. By this point if there was a serious issue, it would be endemic. Contrary to their presentation as being a recent and experimental innovation, Puberty Blockers have been used in the treatment of cisgender children since the mid 70’s and transgender children since the late 90’s, with no discernible epidemic in side effects. We have decades of observational studies which show that for 90% of people transition is the right course of action and even for the 10% who detransition, only 3% of them detransition because they’re not trans at all. (Numbers are from the preliminary results of the world's largest review of detransition rates in the world, the North American Dare Study.) A decade-long study of 200 trans children which showed no decline in mental acuity, was ignored (Arnoldussen et al., 2022).
The Cass Review was conducted without the assistance of Gender Specialists and Endocrinologists due to a perceived bias, that in itself should be cause for concern. Imagine a review of natal services in the UK excluding specialists in that field. Yet, members of SEGM, a designated trans hate group (Southern Poverty Law Centre, n.d.), participated in the NHS Working Group on Gender Dysphoria, which helped to create the Cass Review (https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDownloadDocument?pubId=&eodoc=true&documentID=136692)
I therefore ask you to get in contact with Mr Streeting and to urge him to lift the ban, before more children and young people are hurt.
This should go without saying but as I didn't: if you're outside the UK I would still like you to reblog this so that more people can see it and potentially respond. Thank you.
I'd like to remind everybody that this isn't just about A03 or civil rights organizations. This could be applied to any 501 organization. That includes churches, schools, museums and library support organizations. All sorts of support organizations like soup kitchens or places like goodwill. Those are all non-profit organizations and they all have a 501 status. This is a threat to every civil organization we have that is meant to help the public.
So please contact your representatives. Please look this up on Twitter and click the link so you can call your representatives and voice against this. Because there's a hell of a lot more at stake with a bill like this than just ao3. People's lives could be at risk.
The House will vote THIS WEEK to determine whether the incoming Trump administration will have the power to shut down non-profit organizations with no due process.
Congress has already tried to fast-track this legislation once and failed because of the onslaught of calls to their offices. We can’t let them do this quietly. Congress giving Trump the power to crush dissent and target organizations fighting for justice is a betrayal. Tell your representatives to vote NO on this dangerous bill!
hello again (bill clinton limewire voice) my fellow americans
There are a few states that actually have Shield/Refuge laws designed to help trans people fleeing from trans-unsafe states, which also guarantee trans folks access to healthcare. These states are:
California
Colorado
Illinois
Oregon
Vermont
Washington
Minnesota
New Mexico
Maine
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
Washington D.C.
Additionally, some states have "trans sanctuary" executive orders signifying safety for trans folks seeking healthcare. These states are:
Maryland
New Jersey
New York
Living as a resident in these states means you are protected by state's rights and state government to continue or begin receiving trans healthcare. These laws have been codified in their states so everything has been a-ok'd by their state governments.
