"I regret transitioning"

Datun The number of doctors in the UK currently actively treating kids with PBs/HRT is tiny. Even the number of doctors treating adults is very small. The worry is that we are all being pressured to acquiesce - with the RCGP and GMC pushing "no conversion therapy line". I suspect they do not understand how the full implications of what they are saying, but the risk is that this becomes normalised and GPs have to choose between issuing prescriptions and being hauled in front of the GMC.

WRT performing GR surgery on fully informed adults, this is more ethically tricky. I don't think we can say that absolutely no one with gender dysphoria is helped by surgery (or hormones). If you are a 35 year old biological woman who has identified as a man since puberty and spent 20 years, desperate for a mastectomy, I think that is a very different case from a teenager or even someone of any age who has only recently identified as the other sex. Whether the NHS should pay for treatment is a different issue, but I wouldn't say a surgeon who performs the mastectomy on the 35 year old in this scenario is necessarily acting unethically.

A friend is transgender and I have serious questions about the private route to transitioning. Private doctors charge a fortune, will usually say yes to hormones that they supply (well, there's a surprise....), recommend counsellors either on their books or within their radar, plus I have seen a letter stating that 'the person named is living full time in their chosen gender', signed and dated by the doctor but the name of the patient left blank, so a gender 'blank cheque' effectively.....

A friend of his went through the whole process privately, and in about 12 months. His first referral was by the private doctor I question, the second was done by phone by an overseas doctor found on the Internet. Now that person is living quite remotely, has very few friends, no relationship since transition, and is feeling 'isolated and depressed'. The public health route may be long winded and red tape-laden, but with the private route the doctors win pretty much 100% of the time.....

I can't answer for Shiny and I am not in a health related field ... but I can say that being worried to speak out is pretty common amongst a range of people and professions that are connected in different ways with the current trans epidemic ... Sad, but true.

Shiny

Please stop blaming doctors as a whole.

Unfortunately, the medical regulators and Royal Colleges have swallowed the TA propaganda hook, line and sinker

Shiny, there is a contradiction there, unless I am not seeing something.

If you are a doctor and a trans critical then I wasn't directing it towards you. Are you saying that on the whole, doctors, i.e. those at the coalface as it were, are as uncomfortable as you? In which case why is this discomfort not going back up the food chain to alert the regulatory bodies in the medical profession?

We have seen how the many of the older generation of trans women (in particular) haven't been helped at all by medical intervention to 'correct' their gender - it just feeds the dysphoria.

So there are doctors performing surgery which completely contradicts their medical opinion?

Your post has worried me more than anything. If the very people who are prescribing drugs and carrying out surgery are doing it against their better judgement. Then yes they're not doing their job.

Believe me, I have every sympathy, but understanding why doctors are too worried to speak out, does not contradict what I've said.

When are the medics going to start doing their bloody jobs

Please stop blaming doctors as a whole. Most of us are extremely uncomfortable about GR drugs & surgery. We have seen how the many of the older generation of trans women (in particular) haven't been helped at all by medical intervention to 'correct' their gender - it just feeds the dysphoria.

Unfortunately, the medical regulators and Royal Colleges have swallowed the TA propaganda hook, line and sinker, meaning that doctors' jobs are now at risk if they express any doubts about the wisdom of transitioning. Last week we had the ever ludicrous BMA telling staff not to call pregnant colleagues 'mothers' and, the week before, a host of Royal Colleges & the General Medical Council promoted the TA line that any counselling before GR surgery is 'conversion therapy'. It has now become effectively impossible for doctors to be openly gender critical without sharing the fate of Dr Zucker. It is incredibly sinister. Slagging us off isn't going to help.

Comments on Graun closed now before I got round to commenting. I felt many commentators saw transsexuals as women wanting to be men and as an oppression of women thing ignoring the fact that the vast majority are m to f.
I think it's more a rejection of strict sexual stereotypes with a dose of grass is greener thinking. Also like blaming immigrants being the wrong gender can be seen as a simple cause of all life's problems.

2rebecca
It used to be the case that you had to see a psychologist to have gender reassignment on the NHS (not sure if it still is) but often that was to ensure the person had capacity and no unrealistic expectations.

Surely thinking you will become the opposite sex/are really the opposite sex inside is an unrealistic expectation?

I'm not sure that looking at the practical problems of always being trans not the desired sex and why they have such a narrow view of gender roles and feel they can't live as they want in their genetic sex and the limitations of surgically constructed sexual organs would be gone in to.

I'm weirdly half gobsmacked and half not surprised at this. Gobsmacked because you think they would try to go for the least invasive and (let's be honest) cheapest option as a first line of treatment.

Not surprised, OTOH, because of the societal role of psychiatry. People get seriously fucked up because of stuff happening in the world, and the mental health system focuses on the individuals, not changing society. In many ways it's just about control; getting the "freaks" back in line to stop them showing up where society is going wrong.

I always feel a bit tinfoil-hatter saying stuff like this; it's hard to express as I wouldn't have even thought about it if I didn't have lived experience. But they definitely want to put things down to faulty brain chemistry/faulty thinking rather than a human response to circumstances. And the sort of liberal, supposedly accepting type stuff misses the point - in the case of the trans issue being "accepting" by saying a transwoman is just like any other woman, being "accepting" that it's a medical condition they can't help, rather than literally just accepting them the way they are and questioning the wider context.

I hope that makes sense.

The trouble is there is no such thing as a completely objective counsellor. Counsellors are people with the opinions and prejudices people have. They try to be non-judgemental but most counsellors working in gender reassignment fields will be pro the idea and likely to subscribe to the always been the target gender philosophy.
It used to be the case that you had to see a psychologist to have gender reassignment on the NHS (not sure if it still is) but often that was to ensure the person had capacity and no unrealistic expectations. I'm not sure that looking at the practical problems of always being trans not the desired sex and why they have such a narrow view of gender roles and feel they can't live as they want in their genetic sex and the limitations of surgically constructed sexual organs would be gone in to. Also often people wanting to trans are so focussed on jumping through the hoops of transitioning they don't stop and think what real difference being the other gender (or being an intermediate trans group) will make to their lives.

I imagine so. I've never seen anything else remotely trans critical in the Guardian.

I know prawn! They weren't frothing like a lot of BTL, but there was def some questioning.

Maybe it's the first time the paper has allowed a trans-critical story?

What amazed - and encouraged - me were the BTL comments. People were saying stuff they'd have been censored for a year or two back. Lots of (mildly) gender critical posts. Perhaps the Guardian is slowly starting to change stance?

italian

I've seen some videos of women who have detransitioned, and it's absolutely tragic. They are clearly horribly traumatised individuals. And absolutely loathe what the treatment has done to them. They remain fairly broken emotionally.

The heartening thing about this woman is that she pulled herself back from the brink through sheer force of will and self analysis. Despite what she says about the trauma involved, she comes across as grounded and sensible. I hope she becomes a poster girl.

She's made so.e great vids. I think one I'd called when to sack your therapist or something similar!

italian

That video was very powerful. Everything she said has such a ring of authenticity, one can't fail to believe everything she says.

I think it's becoming much more widely accepted that the reason women transition is to escape either trauma, or the objectification of their sex. Gah!

Tragically, in order to escape this sexism she identified as male and started to hang around with men. Where, because she didn't identify as a woman, they took the gloves off and were even more sexist in her presence.

She clearly still struggles with some kind of disassociation with her femaleness, but has extraordinary insight into how thinking she was a man really, really wasn't true.

italian

That video was very powerful. Everything she said has such a ring of authenticity, one can't fail to believe everything she says.

I think it's becoming much more widely accepted that the reason women transition is to escape either trauma, or the objectification of their sex. Gah!

Tragically, in order to escape this sexism she identified as male and started to hang around with men. Where, because she didn't identify as a woman, they took the gloves off and were even more sexist in her presence.

She clearly still struggles with some kind of disassociation with her femaleness, but has extraordinary insight into how thinking she was a man really, really wasn't true.

Oliversmumsarmy

The more I read, the more cynical I am getting. Drugs cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and a lifelong commitment. You have to ask who is benefiting from this?

The drug companies.

I am so glad the women in the article realised before she had her female reproductive system removed.

I think young women de-transitioning is going to be much more common.

I had a friend who became she in his/her 60s. Hormone therapy. Hair removal. The works.

Now in his 70s he's gone back to being a man and is very confused and conflicted about his female years.

I honestly don't know what to think about the whole trans issue.

I look at it from a different angle.

Why are the NHS not providing a few hundred pounds worth of counselling yet jumping straight in to operations that cost £xxxxxxs

Well done to whoever at the Guardian was responsible for that article.

Yes, a lot of the comments are questioning and some are critical, particularly over gender roles. But there are a fair number maintaining there is a similarity in the brain of trans individuals to their target sex too. One comment mentioned a nurse why thought there was a test for it!

Still, it's something.

Look at the comments too, very sympathetic and critical of the madness.

Don't tell me the Graun are waking up to realise that there is another dimension to the trans issue?!

Hmmmm. There's a poster in the comments section on the Guardian website who resents the article being published because "it will give ammunition to transphobes and TERFS". I expect the bit about the author realising that the problem was the status of women in society, not her body, might be troubling for the trans activist rhetoric.

Oh god that article is awful - that poor poor woman. Imagine going through all that with no counselling.