'I'm not meant to be a bloke': Woman who changed gender to become man called Lee says sex swap was a huge mistake

Properly heartbreaking to read of this woman's story. Her distress should upset any person reading who has a normal level of compassion.

And I find myself looking through my fingers nervously at the situation, waiting for her to be piled on by AWAs for damaging the narrative. Endlessly disturbing.

But think of what lee says in that article- they reject their body because their biologically sexed body is what is being raped and by not having that female anatomy the trauma will stop.

Related to this, males of either the dysphoria having variety or the fetish having variety are absolutely not the right people to be providing guidance to women and girls who find themselves in that situation. And yet here we are, with both groups insisting on their right to do just that and trying to scare off the very women who might actually be able to help if they'd get out of the way and let us.

I know an (ex) woman whose father died and she immediately decided to become a man. She’d had no feelings about her gender prior to that. She replicated her father’s haircut and started going on about how much she resembles him now she’s a he. There are clearly grief issues here and I wonder what will happen when the dust settles considering that there have now been medical interventions.

A ‘self diagnosed’ condition that results in the removal of healthy organs, the suturing of natural orifices, and a life long dependence on synthetic hormones is an incredibly troubling phenomenon.

That’s exactly what radical feminists are saying: female biology is the source of our oppression.

Exactly.

"I was traumatised by what had happened in my life and it was misdiagnosed as being transgender.

"I was vulnerable, I just though that if I wasn't a girl my life would be different, I would be different, I would be accepted and that would be it.

"I thought that becoming a man would make me worthy and I would become a different person."

You don't have to have been raped, or feel like this woman to understand.

And I don't just mean understand, I mean a hundred percent, solid gold, iron tight clarity of profound understanding. Because women's oppression is everywhere. Misogyny is everywhere.

You don't have to have suffered from the worst of it, to see it.

Any woman reading this story will be struck by the distressing recognition and familiarity of the sentiment, if not the actual experience.

Times article today:

(extract)
"The police have a problem with women. They resisted investigating gangs who sexually exploited girls. They failed to take seriously victims who reported the black cab rapist John Worboys. This dismissal gave criminals impunity to commit more crimes. “It is the whole system that has failed,” a victim of Worboys said after she’d had to bring a high court case to challenge his release.

A steep rise in crime and a drop in arrests have left the public with doubts about police competence. Rather than address internal failings, Sara Thornton, chairwoman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told its conference last week that one way to improve performance would be to exclude misogynist abuse from the hate crimes law. Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, agreed, saying that police should return to their “traditional values”.

Yet misogyny underpins most violent crime, from sexual grooming to domestic violence, sexual assault, rape and murder. No one is calling for race, religion or disability to be removed from the list of hate crimes.

Let’s be clear: it’s not the law on hate speech that is at issue here, it’s the addition of misogyny. This is a challenge to patriarchy itself, an ideology and political system that divides society into two groups: adult men and everyone else, where everyone else is of lesser value." (continues)

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3414658-Times-article-Misogyny-is-a-gateway-belief-justifying-abuse-Heather-Brooke

Well no exactly- this big trans umbrella is a part of the problem.

-People with genuine dysphoria
-Young women experiencing trauma driven disgust and disconnection with their bodies
-Fetishists

None of those groups need the same treatment.

But think of what lee says in that article- they reject their body because their biologically sexed body is what is being raped and by not having that female anatomy the trauma will stop.

Lee was literally trying to identify out of being female because of biology based oppression.

That’s exactly what radical feminists are saying: female biology is the source of our oppression.

Incredibly sad

But apparently it’s all good because it’s all under the big inclusive trans umbrella?

"The first time I changed the world was when I told my mates to call me she rather than he. I literally constructed a new world where its possible to understand myself as a genderqueer woman, despite being asigned male at birth simply by changing the language to describe myself. This is why language and pronouns are so important. Its about creating a world in which trans people are allowed to exist"

"And I can honestly say that the work that trans people do for each other means that, for me at least, the trans community is a beautiful place to be. Despite our differences, we have each others' backs"

Jess Bradley 'To My Trans Sisters'
edited by Charlie Craggs

On one hand trans women are ‘widening the band width of what it means to be a woman’ and appear fully male (and Phillip Bunce/Alex Drummond aren’t just outliers, they are actively involved in mainstream trans advocacy) and on the other early medical treatment is being advocated by Mermaids.

Meanwhile teenage girls who we know are already at risk for eating disorders and self harm are learning how to chest bind online.

But apparently it’s all good because it’s all under the big inclusive trans umbrella?

I agree Bespin that trans is not one big group, but it is very difficult to question anything once it is classified as ‘trans’.

bespin I couldn't really understand what you were trying to say in your last post as the punctuation has gone astray, but lumping people altogether as 'trans people' is exactly what I am against.

That is why I put ' ' around 'feeling trans'. Because I don't think it scratches the surface of what is going on for most trans people people who have disorders of the self/ identity, that may manifest as such things as feelings of gender dysphoria. And/or sexual issues. It is a dangerous shorthand I think and the trans umbrella.. well.. just wrong. It fails people, real, individual, complex people.

The right therapy can help work out why something is happening, not just validate symptoms. You should know this if you work with PTSD. Cause and effect etc.

Thank you angryattackkittens. Mental ill health eh.

And you are right, ‘trans’ isn’t one thing and it’s clear that many people who identify as trans don’t want surgery.

from the work by Elizabeth Gordon (link to website in previous post):
"Quoted from an email from Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald – 2018

“Naming Non-State Torture (NST) as a violation of the human rights of women and girls. All forms of violence against women and girls that may entail severe pain or suffering (whether physical or mental) violate the right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Discrimination exists for women/girls who suffer torture by non-state actors in the private/domestic sphere when this form of gender-based violation is not socio-legally recognised as a specific crime and a distinct violation of their human rights.

Women and girls who are tortured in this way must be recognised as a specific vulnerable group. Unless there is a specific NST law and this law is enacted, criminal-legal data fails to record acts of gender-based NST therefore NST remains invisible.

The European Court of Human Rights, interpreting Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights has for example held that rape is an “specially grave and abhorrent form of ill-treatment” and that the “specially cruel act of rape the victim was subjected to amounted to torture”. See, Aydin v. Turkey, European Court of Human Rights, Application No.29289/95, judgment of 25 September 1997

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm#article1

I don't have time at the moment to reply but there are a lot of medical treatments that are dependent on the patent wanting them with little or no checks

Like what? I can’t think of any others that involve the removal of organs.

wingwarbler

I don't have time at the moment to reply but there are a lot of medical treatments that are dependent on the patent wanting them with little or no checks. if you see trans a purely a symptom then I feel this is where the issue is what else would. the treatment be trans is not just one thing and we are all not being treated for the same condition thst is the issue and when people try to treat us as one big group it is wrong.

rowen as always the things you post are interesting and I wish they were done outside the context of this.

angery I hope that that person found peace in there lives

I am here apparently seen as 'anti-trans' and phbic

You're not, except by people whose connection with reality is clearly tenuous at best.

"I had spent years feeling I couldn't live in my own body and hating every single moment. I thought the female body was disgusting.

"When I showered I used to gag at the sight of my body.

"Suddenly I saw the answer on Kilroy. It felt like the only answer.

"I remember when I started waking up in the morning and seeing stubble on my face, thinking 'this is the start of a new life' and I'm no longer this traumatised girl.

to Debbie and everyone similarly affected and traumatised.

Debbie should be helped ASAP. It is criminal that she was not given therapy before transition. Criminal. The private psychiatrist needs investigating. I am here apparently seen as 'anti-trans' and phbic, when I am more pro-MH than many doctors and fighting in RL for people to be actually helped. So fucked up.

I know someone who transitioned for much the same reasons Lee did. It shouldn't have been allowed to happen. It could happen far more easily now than it did than, and that's worrying.

"Now, he looks in the mirror "through the eyes of that terrified 15-year-old girl and see this funny little man staring back at me".

"The thing with objectum sexuality is they are addictions and I felt compelled to have them," he recalled.

"Looking back it was just a way of coping with the trauma."

'FEELING TRANS' IS A SYMPTOM, NOT A DIAGNOSIS.

if you consider a thread to not be going the way that you want it too then I'm sorry but it's a open forum and there are lots of threads on here I feel like that. I would love to see a thread about the effects of complex ptsd in general and the abuse of children and woman. I'm sure that I wider discussion would be welcomed but at the moment this forum is mostly focusing on this area.

Elizabeth Gordon is an artist and a campaigner against Non State Torture. She advocates for non state torture to be named and recognised for what it is, so that the voices of survivors have the words to name the violence they suffered. She campaigns for a human rights based approach to supporting survivors

interviewed here by Julian Norman: filia.org.uk/podcasts/2018/10/3/filia-meets-elizabeth-gordon-non-state-torture

Non-State torture is named in the The Women’s Equality Network (WEN) Wales 2018 CEDAW Shadow Report ~ page 17.

"An excerpt from my email to WRC dated 7 June 2018:

“We cannot further the human rights of women and girls not to be subjected to torture unless we face and name the uncomfortable and disturbing reality that women and girls do suffer torture by family, by parents, intimate partners and through trafficking and prostitution. Please do not discriminate by invisibilising the torture women and girls suffer by leaving this population behind.”
artprintspace.net/

I can totally see that this was the wrong choice for them and they could have been helped better but no one diagnoses anyone with this there are no tests you can take all that people do is allow you to validate how you feel there is a misunderstanding that doctors can tell you your trans and that if they don't done how your not in the years that I saw them all they did was asked me if I was a woman in various ways and helped eventually facilitate treatment for me. this is on the whole a self diagnosed condition and that does mean we can be wrong. I 100% agree that our reasons should he explored and do worry about the effects of trauma on people. I had a successful transition but in done respects I'm lucky though I do have a nerve issue due to surgery. as I said this is not perfect but this was the best I could do. others I know were not so lucky but that does not mean that being trans is the lesser option. it is about finding peace within yourself something that no treatment can do in its own. we all do things to ourselves that we have to find a way to live with the good and the bad I am fully aware that one day I may not feel like this but I can not see it.

Bespin many of us really do understand and empathise with feelings of distrss and mental illhealth. In ourselves and in others. And what lengths that may drive people to. Consciously or unconsciously.

Your post above horrifies me, because it is exactly what I believe is terribly wrong with how trans people are nothelped nowadays.

This is not the approach that doctors should be taking. Symptoms can be self diagnosed, but there are diagnostic questionnaires and therapies that should be exploring people's reasons for having these symptoms. It can be explored and understood and differential diagnoses must be explored. There is nothing inevitable about any of this. That is the failing of doctors. It is verging on criminal in my view as there are other options and theories that can explain and help, and they are not being considered.

No other physical or mental health medical issue just gives the patient what they want by the patient's own diagnosis. It is insanity to do so. That it may be coerced by people feeling suicidal is even worse. And no other suicidal patients get treated so deferentially I can tell you. Something is very, very wrong here.

Of course one cannot force on people that there may be trauma in their past if they do not remember it that would be abusive, but that it may surface later is exactly what happens to many people, and exactly what happened to the person in the article. But this is why years therapy need to be started and people seen earlier by the right therapists. To give people time to explore what is happening to them and how they feel. Social transition was used in some cases to help stabilise people while longterm therapy was continued, and of course some people will always suffer with thier symtoms. Mediation and therapy is not a magic wand. That we now give people hormones and surgery is a line that we should not have crossed. This is where we started with quick fix boob and nose jobs. Fixing the symptoms not the cause. Fixing the object of the MH problem.

This is why treating children with identity/ dysphoria issues early is exactly what we need to be doing. But treating them with talking therapies and people with safe boundaries who can help them learn to cope with their feelings and symptoms whilst the causes are explored. Not with unquestioning affirmation.

It is wrong that doctors are quick fixing, colluding, enabling, or worse (some of these transition doctors I really have concerns about). I suggest that it there is something there that 'fits' very well with the types of parents and childhood that trans people experience, and their transition actually becomes another type of abuse or failure by those who are supposed to care for them.

We have terrible mental health care in this country and it is getting worse and more dangerous all the time. I am frustrated and scared for people. Women because we always bear the brunt of it in so many ways, and for trans people too. And the males that I believe experienced abuse and trauma that go undiagnosed and may go on to perpetuate abuse and damaging behaviour. It truly is a nightmare.

rowen I 100% agree with the need forore services for young people who suffer trauma and trauma informed care

rowen if this thread was about abuse then we would be talking about that and not detransition. if she was on here sharing her story then we would be discussing it with her. we are not we are on here making a point about some people make choices that are not right for them because of other reasons this one being trauma and for that my heart Truely hurts. I am centering this around my experiance because that is all that I have I am doing that because it humanises it as a discussion around the choices that we make. I would love to discuss it with her and explore the complex reasons around the choices we make and how we can get better at making them