Medical doctors who believe trans women are women.

Bowl I completely agree.
I teach quite a few people without any formal qualifications and have been impressed by the questions they ask and their thinking skills generally.

I'm struck by certain similarities between the doctor and the psychologist: they're superficially clever people but neither is a deep thinker

I’ve got several degrees and work with very highly educated people (just saying that to make a point that I know a lot of academics etc.) . I’ve known several like this - and conversely people with very little education who are extremely deep thinkers. Not everyone with a fancy job title or a PhD is an intellectual and there are plenty of serious brains doing menial jobs.

I think intelligence - true intelligence- isn’t just about academic smarts. It’s difficult to pin down or measure but you know it when you see it - and a big part of it is being able to see the connections between things. I suppose this is what’s meant by common sense

People in positions of power like your psychologist acquaintance who are clever but not intelligent can do a lot of damage.

For the last couple of years I've had occasional social contact with a woman now in her mid-30s who has always come over as a hard-drinking, hard-partying type. We've always found it difficult to find anything to talk about because she's not political, not interested in current affairs and frankly she's never struck me as being very bright. It's just a barrage of jokes and innuendo and I don't find it interesting for long.

In the last few weeks I've been stunned to discover that she's actually a fairly high-ranking clinical psychologist who works in the prison system. I saw her last week and I asked about her work and whether she has much to do with trans prisoners. Her response was that when someone says they identify as trans her role is to interview them to ensure that they're not suffering from some undiagnosed severe mental health disorder and if they're not, she and the prison system accept that they are what they say they are.

I asked whether this ever bothered her and she looked at me as if I was a bit thick and said it was nothing to do with her, it was policy. I asked if she ever thought about it the consequences of men being housed in the female estate and she said no, if a man says he feels like a woman then he's a woman.

I've also been friendly for some years with a doctor who has always had a tendency to jump on bandwagons and is waving the TWAW flag with a vengeance. We have no contact at the moment because I'm GC. Ever since I met her she's talked about herself as being on the autistic spectrum. She's now training to be a transgender specialist working within the NHS.

I'm struck by certain similarities between the doctor and the psychologist: they're superficially clever people but neither is a deep thinker and neither is what I'd call feminist or woman-centred. It concerns me that people like them — people who don't seem interested in the bigger picture and people who uncritically accept that if a man says he feels like a woman then he's a woman — are the people with such power.

OP wrote - "How can you square that with medical training?"

Some people will say and do anything for money and/or an easier life.

but the NHS is wasting money swabbing someone's dick

There is no reliable evidence that NHS resources are being wasted on pretend smear tests.

I have to wait 6 weeks to get a smear test, really, because the appointments are backed up to the time I'm due a period so I need to wait another 2 weeks, but the NHS is wasting money swabbing someone's dick ? Wow.

I found that story v v hard to believe TBH.

The thread about the cervical smear was a screenshot of an anonymous twitter account claiming that their friend had had to do a smear test on a trans woman.

Whether or not this could happen, the tweet certainly wasn’t evidence direct from the source.

If transwomen are female through self id and transmen are male through self id >>> which is what is incresingly being stated and as the definitions of man and woman are adult human male / female respectively it follows logically>>

what are non binary / agender people? do they have no sex?

According to trans definitions I am agender >> I have no internal gender and therefore I have no sex, I am not male or female. What does this mean for my healthcare?

Whole thing is nonsense obiously.

Women meet a wall of diffculty with medical treatment already. Doctors know which is which. I suspect they will continue to know who to take seriosuly and treat properly and who they should fob off with minimisation, disbelief, and an assumption that ailments are probably psychological in nature, and pain is imagined / exaggerated etc etc.

There was a thread on here recently by a nurse’s friend- the nurse was being made to effectively participate in role play and do a “smear test” (penile swab) on a male to feed into the twaw lie.

This is forced participation in a paraphilia and if I was that nurse I’d be suing.

Of course they don’t believe it. Ask them, outright, how a human being changes sex. When the waffle about gender starts just keep saying ‘no, not gender. Sex. How does a human change sex? I’m not talking about gender, about physical sex.’

I have asked this question many times here - even the most committed TRA are not willing to stand up and say outright they believe it, because they know its not true. and they know that if they say they believe it they’d look ridiculous.

So just keep asking.

If there are medics around I'd be interested in creating a discussion group around gender and health, message me if you're interested

I don't think doctors have a network in which discussion of this is really easy. I think most doctors are gender critical even if they'd don't label it as such. Speaking out is hard as no one wants to discourage trans people from seeking medical help when needed.
And I think most people say "trans women are women" in a metaphorical (not sure if that's the right word!) sense - meaning I'll treat them personally and respectfully as if they were women whilst also recognising they will have different biology / health needs.

How's this going to work with cervical and breast cancer screening, all these 'women' who don't have a cervix or female breast tissue?

To be fair, men do have breast tissue, and do get breast cancer. Presumably if they take hormones to develop their breast tissue then that will mean they may need screening.

Cervical screening, otoh, is all ready being done on tw. There was a thread on here recently by a nurse’s friend- the nurse was being made to effectively participate in role play and do a “smear test” (penile swab) on a male to feed into the twaw lie.

How's this going to work with cervical and breast cancer screening, all these 'women' who don't have a cervix or female breast tissue?

EGAnderson, one of the members of the diabetic team didn't know that blood glucose meters had memories. She thought people had to write their readings down. And she was doing this every day.

KatVonGulag

That's quite typical of the way that scientific studies are often reported on. Your link goes to a news site which reviews the study, rather than the original paper. The headline on the news site is: 'A study suggests structural difference in the brain of transgender people', which is probably as far as many people can be bothered to read.

The full paper is here: Grey and white matter volumes either in treatment-naïve or hormone-treated transgender women: a voxel-based morphometry study. But having tried to read that, I think reading the news-site synopsis might be more enlightening. Although as far as I can tell, the paper just says that transwomen's brains are different from both women's brains and typical men's brains.

Another GC doctor here. I don’t feel able to raise my head above the parapet as I have no confidence I would be supported by powers that be.
I am very surprised that there are doctors who don’t know the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes though! Scary stuff.

The problem with the male/female brain argument is that even if masculine or feminine brain traits are identified you have to show that

1. a given trans person has the ‘wrong’ traits for their body
2. That the possession of that trait is any more relevant to being male or female than e.g. height.
3. That it’s somehow useful to group human beings according to personality traits.

And then you’re still left with all the people who are trans but non binary.

None of the ‘scientific born in the wrong body’ arguments bear much scrutiny.

My DF, a GP, once had to go up to check the mental capacity of a long time patient of his who was in a care home and wanted to sign his Will.

He chatted with the bloke for a bit, confirmed that he seemed fine, and the document was signed.

Then, as they went to leave the room, the patient called my dad back. Left alone, the patient produced a bun from under his pillow and whispered that the staff at the care home were poisoning him and could my DF test it for him.

DF said he was very glad that the Will was totally uncontroversial.

www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-03/fda-ass031418.php this is the link to a review of the brain study of transexual people. It's small scale but interesting.
It's often quoted on Pink News, but to me it backs up the trans women are trans women argument. I was pleased to see the studies authors don't support gendered brains.

My specialty is v much about holistic thinking and bigger picture.

It drives me and my colleagues bloody mad how many can't see outside of their narrow box. A lot of the training I have is 'If I do this what will happen, and then what will happen, and then, and then -- so maybe I shouldn't do it at all?' - this blows a lot of doctors minds.

Am finding the newest generation a lot better - they has been a lot of bemoaning how students couldn't do clinical reasoning and perhaps this is starting to show.

Certainly current juniors understand capacity a lot better. No, just because you had 'a chat' and he sounded ok, that doesn't mean this delirious patient had capacity for a very serious procedure.

I find it shocking how any medically educated person could hold such literally anti-science views as TMAM and TWAW. Also I would question what are the protections for patients from the personal views of doctors around this area.

This is different from religious beliefs held by doctors. There are clear rules and boundaries around religious belief held by doctors when patients come for information and help.

Like for example doctors can refuse to perform an abortion themselves- and that’s absolutely fine and right that that they have that choice- but the doctor can’t refuse to refer the woman seeking the abortion to another colleague, for fear the colleague might tell her how to get an abortion or the colleague might become one of the legal medical signatories needed to authorise it for her.

Anti choice doctors can’t tell the woman pack of lies about how an abortion will make her infertile, send her mad afterwards or give her cancer or whatever shite they can think of to deter her.

They can’t send her home to ‘go and think about it’ or refuse to perform pregnancy tests and waste her time until she is past the legal time limit to get an abortion.

If they did, it would be an abuse of power and they would get an investigation by the GMC the regulatory body of doctors. If they found against them then presumably they could be struck off.

Likewise if you are a doctor who is really believing in the healing power of prayer, you would be struck off if you decided to offer prayer instead of conventional medicine to your patients.

Because that’s not being a doctor, which involves objectively putting the patients’ interests first.

What’s the equivalent protection for patients around this trans dogma issue?

What does the GMC (doctors regulator) or NMC (nursing and midwifery regulator) do to protect children or vulnerable adults (well, any one of us) from being misinformed by a doctor or nurse who believes that TWAW or TMAM? Patients need to understand very very clearly that if they opt to undergo medical and surgical intervention, this could objectively result in an completely avoidable lifetime of loss of sexual function, loss of fertility and being a permanent patient. All to further an untruth that you can literally change sex. This is not possible. Whatever psychological support is needed to alleviate physical dysphoria of any kind this should be absolutely provided fully and be available without long waiting lists.

What protection (and legal remedy) is there for patients if their doctors’ tweets about TWAW and TMAM spill over into biased discussions about objective reality and achievable results from proposed medical and surgical treatment? What are the protections and legal remedies for patient if there is any biased underplaying of mental health interventions that objectively are needed because the doctor wants to take an ‘affirmative’ approach to a sex/gender dysphoric person’s needs?

There should be very clear statements from regulators about this, just as there are already are for the boundaries around religion and objective medical, nursing or midwifery practice in the best interests of patients.