Another Mermaid statement: about Good Morning Britain and Caroline Farrow

RTB Thank you for sharing your experience about CS. You make an extremely valid point, and the comparison with 'transgender' NHS pathways is really stark. This aspect of unfairness and inconsistency in treatment isn't something I hadn't been aware of before.

Have some , or if you prefer

The juxtaposition of the 'child friendly' setting, cutesy Teddy bear and music/credits, against the technical and totally inappropriate language that no 3 year old could possibly understand, nor has any need to.

It's grooming. It really is.

Just watched that Queer Kids Stuff YT video.

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

Oh god that is seriously disturbing. 3 year olds? What the actual fuck.

VeryLittleOwl i have wondered that too, i read up on that when thinking about when to spay my dog. (Castrati for instance often grew taller than average, their shape was different to other men, so bone growth was affected, as it is in dogs) .

Good grief. Yes - that is grooming and completely age inappropriate. There's a name for this

What is this if not grooming? Why the fuck three year olds need to know about cross sex hormones?

mobile.twitter.com/4th_WaveNow/status/1110638759232573440

RE the pschycological assessment prior to surgery, this interview with Susie Green seems to confirm the possibility it came from Dr Norman Spack & his organisation in US

October 2018 Daily Mail:
'My child wouldn’t be here today if she hadn’t gone from Jack to Jackie': Defiant mum whose harrowing story inspired Anna Friel's transgender drama Butterfly praises show - which critics say is just crude propaganda'

(extract)
‘So this is when I found Dr Spack in America, who was prepared to prescribe totally reversible hormone blocking medication for her, just to pause the onset of puberty. But although it transformed her life, she was still enduring terrible hostility at school.’

At her wits’ end, Susie consulted an educational welfare officer and, aged 14, Jackie left school and continued her education three days a week at a special unit for children with long-term health issues.

Meanwhile, Dr Spack prescribed oestrogen, which promoted breast development and helped to stop Jackie growing too tall. (Today she is a little over 6ft.)

‘Her school life in the specialist unit was much less turbulent,’ recalls Susie ‘but she still hated her body.’

So, in a move that many would find extreme, just before Jackie turned 16, Susie consulted plastic surgeon Dr Suporn in Thailand. ‘I asked him when my daughter would be able to have gender reassignment surgery. I expected him to say 18, but to my delight he said she could have it at 16.’

So, supported by psychological reports and a referral letter from Dr Spack, Jackie was admitted for surgery that transformed her life. (continues)

www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/pregnancy-parenting/my-child-wouldn%E2%80%99t-be-here-today-if-she-hadn%E2%80%99t-gone-from-jack-to-jackie-defiant-mum-whose-harrowing-story-inspired-anna-friels-transgender-drama-butterfly-praises-show-which-critics-say-is-just-crude-propaganda/ar-BBOp5c5

Hmm, I suspect we won't know the answer to this for some time, but the discussion a couple of pages back about neutering animals made me wonder if anyone's looking at the effect of puberty blockers on growth plates in children? In dogs, research is starting to indicate that if spaying/neutering is performed before the growth plates close (around 2 years of age), it leads to an increased chance of joint problems in later life. Growth plates in humans close between 12-16 for girls and 14-19 for boys - what's the effect going to be of giving children puberty blockers when it's the onset of puberty which sends the signal to the body to start closing them?

Oh and should add that the best approach to reduce maternal requests is adequate psychological support particularly for women who ask for one. It often ends up with women deciding themselves not to go through with a CS because they feel more in control, more respected and more listened to. A request for a CS should be regarded as a red flag, simply because of the common factors that tend to lead to women asking for one. These are more vulnerable women, often with a history of mental problems or a history of sexual abuse or rape amongst other reasons which is higher than in the general population.

Odd eh?

I've had a csection on psychological grounds for extreme fear of birth and HCP because of a lack of trust in them, but they will only term in NHS terminology as 'being on request'. There is no classification for mental grounds.

In my case I had to demonstrate a psychological need which involved several sessions being assessed plus talk of getting social services involved (I was put as high risk and watched accordingly). I had to demonstrate I fully understood the risks and what was involved.

As it stands this is a care pathway that is recommended by NICE DOES have a body of evidence which suggests that in certain circumstances it is beneficial and lower risk than a natural birth and has a cost to the NICE which isn't prohibitive (and may well be less than the alternative).

My case was unusual in that I didn't have too much hoop jumping to do compared with that many others have.

You have women in their late 30s with PTSD from a previous birth unable to get adequate mental health support AND are being refused a CS, not because of health reasons but because Trusts are deeming it too expensive. Yet these women are being completely infantilised or cast as simply demanding or weak.

The double standards are incredible.

As it goes I think it's an area where there needs to be a case by case assessment and much more mental health support across the board, particularly post birth but also in prenatal setting to tackle this. But a lot of the problems stem from shocking unfunding, respect for proper consent and poor care through the NHS which ends up in a building up of anxiety which for a variety of reasons tends to manifest most in maternity. I personally think that C sections like mine are now being pitched as a magic solution to a very deep and complex problem which might not be the best approach for everyone.

The problem I have most is with this idea of one size fits all medicine with no nuance and no exploration of what's causing the mental health issue.

In my case they made the point strenuously that focusing on getting the CS was fundamentally flawed. Focusing on that, neglected whether I would be able to cope after my baby was born. And that I needed to think about this and develop or consider coping strategies and support.

My age and particularly small size and my physical health were certainly taken into consideration. As was only wanting one child. My situation would be very different to that of a 18 year old, wanting 3 or 4 children and being an average size with a more complex medical history.

CS in these circumstances are still controversial and are regularly framed as simply being a 'too posh to push' thing with no discussion to the medical background and evidence for there being a mental health issue that needs to be addressed regardless of whether you think that should be accompanied by a CS or a natural birth.

I get very frustrated by it all. There is absolutely no consistency. It comes back to the same thing about how womens health and medicine is regarded as fair game for ideological encroachment and comes second to men's health. Mental health is one of those things which is badly neglected or deliberately framed as unimportant in some way.

The strands of the same forces are definitely within the way trans medicine is carried out but they act in a fundamentally different way.

But many of the roots of problems are very similar indeed - particularly for women.

Long and important article which is relevent and will I'm sure contradict those who have claimed/promoted/affirmed the belief that some children have a boy brain in a girl's body or visa versa.

"NEUROGENDERINGS
Eight Things You Need to Know About Sex, Gender, Brains, and Behavior: A Guide for Academics, Journalists, Parents, Gender Diversity Advocates, Social Justice Warriors, Tweeters, Facebookers, and Everyone Else
by Cordelia Fine, Daphna Joel and Gina Rippon

sfonline.barnard.edu/neurogenderings/eight-things-you-need-to-know-about-sex-gender-brains-and-behavior-a-guide-for-academics-journalists-parents-gender-diversity-advocates-social-justice-warriors-tweeters-facebookers-and-ever/

Shared by OP NeurotrashWarrior current thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3543317-8-things-you-need-to-know-about-sex-gender-brains-and-behaviour-by-cordelia-fine-gina-rippon-and-daphna-joel

I was just musing from an abstract perspective about when it might be acceptable to remove healthy functioning tissue and I guess the answer is only for legitimately medically recognised preventative purposes.

Although as AstonishedFemalePersonator posted, circumcision?

Sorry to hear that Rowantrees and don’t get me wrong, not that it matters, but that’s the kind of preventative treatment which Catholic bioethics would support. (Though I appreciate it’s irrelevant for many/most people)

I was just musing from an abstract perspective about when it might be acceptable to remove healthy functioning tissue and I guess the answer is only for legitimately medically recognised preventative purposes.

And the different between a birth defect such as a heart problem and being ‘born in the wrong body.’ It’s all about weighing up risks and rewards isn’t it? A heart needs operating upon for a baby/child to survive. Whereas SRS removes healthy tissue and uses the rest to fashion into the simulation of an entirely different body part.

It’s definitely an unethical and risky way of treating a psychological problem in children.

Helen Webberley is still walking free, and although suspended, has not been struck off, despite prescribing testosterone to a 12-year-old girl. Presumably her parents consented on her behalf, but neither they nor Webberley were acting in her best interests. This child will have to live the rest of her life with the effects of taking testosterone.

It would also be very significant if any of those treated by Dr Webberley were 'Looked After' children etc

Its a really important recent case which concerns the nature of 'consent'

This tattooist was jailed for 3 years for carrying out these procedures on adults who had consented to them.

Helen Webberley is still walking free, and although suspended, has not been struck off, despite prescribing testosterone to a 12-year-old girl. Presumably her parents consented on her behalf, but neither they nor Webberley were acting in her best interests. This child will have to live the rest of her life with the effects of taking testosterone.

Anyway, back to psychiatry. In this layperson's view it's not one of the most advanced branches of medical science, because the brain must be just about the most complicated organ in the body and I don't get the sense that we understand all that much about how it works. But as other branches of medicine made great strides in the early 20th century it looks as if psychiatry, then a brand new specialism, was desperate to try to keep up. This is judging by this Wikipedia article on lobotomy which accords with the little I do know about psychiatric practice in the early and mid 20th century.

**
n the early 20th century, the number of patients residing in mental hospitals increased significantly[n 3] while little in the way of effective medical treatment was available.[n 4][27] Lobotomy was one of a series of radical and invasive physical therapies developed in Europe at this time that signaled a break with a psychiatric culture of therapeutic nihilism that had prevailed since the late nineteenth-century.[28] The new "heroic" physical therapies devised during this experimental era,[29] including malarial therapy for general paresis of the insane (1917),[30] deep sleep therapy (1920), insulin shock therapy (1933), cardiazol shock therapy (1934), and electroconvulsive therapy (1938),[31] helped to imbue the then therapeutically moribund and demoralised psychiatric profession with a renewed sense of optimism in the curability of insanity and the potency of their craft.[32] The success of the shock therapies, despite the considerable risk they posed to patients, also helped to accommodate psychiatrists to ever more drastic forms of medical intervention, including lobotomy.[29]

The clinician-historian Joel Braslow argues that from malarial therapy onward to lobotomy, physical psychiatric therapies "spiral closer and closer to the interior of the brain" with this organ increasingly taking "center stage as a source of disease and site of cure."[33] For Roy Porter, once the doyen of medical history,[34] the often violent and invasive psychiatric interventions developed during the 1930s and 1940s are indicative of both the well-intentioned desire of psychiatrists to find some medical means of alleviating the suffering of the vast number of patients then in psychiatric hospitals and also the relative lack of social power of those same patients to resist the increasingly radical and even reckless interventions of asylum doctors.[35] Many doctors, patients and family members of the period believed that despite potentially catastrophic consequences, the results of lobotomy were seemingly positive in many instances or, at least they were deemed as such when measured next to the apparent alternative of long-term institutionalisation. Lobotomy has always been controversial, but for a period of the medical mainstream, it was even feted and regarded as a legitimate if desperate remedy for categories of patients who were otherwise regarded as hopeless.[36] Today, lobotomy has become a disparaged procedure, a byword for medical barbarism and an exemplary instance of the medical trampling of patients' rights.[3]

I saw that breast ironing article and did wonder why that's totally unacceptable and schools are being urged to identify and report it, while the very same schools are advised to let girls wearing breast binders sit out their PE lessons if they're finding it difficult to breathe.

www.transgendertrend.com/breast-binders-in-uk-schools/

I agree about religious justification Rowantrees, but it was an interesting point (at least for me) about when it’s acceptable to cut things off

Caro for context I am very aware of cancer treatments having being diagnosed and treated for Gynaecological cancer at a relatively young age.
It involved me having quite a lot of 'things cut off'
I also have a number of women close to me who have had to consider whether to have elective mastectomies for BRCA+

Fascinating debate. I've often wondered how it became acceptable to carry out surgery on a patient who to most people would seem to have a psychological problem rather than a physical one. I know about Lili Elbe who died in 1931 from infection after an operation to implant a womb and construct a neovagina. Any earlier instances? From my layperson's knowledge I'd have thought the Elbe case was always doomed to failure because the body would have rejected the transplanted organ.

A tattooist who called himself “Dr Evil” has been jailed for three years for carrying out ear and nipple removals at the request, and with the written consent, of two of his customers.

Its a really important recent case which concerns the nature of 'consent'

Also with regards breast binding by young females who identify as transgender
cf 'abuse'

BBC article today:
'Breast ironing awareness 'needed in school'
(extract)
Breast ironing awareness should be made part of the mandatory school curriculum to protect young girls from abuse, the National Education Union has said.

The practice involves ironing a girl's chest with hot objects to delay breasts from growing, so she does not attract male attention.

Conservative MP Nicky Morgan said teachers must also be educated, as they have a "very important role to play".

The Home Office said teachers have a duty to report concerns. (continues)

'Hidden crime'
There is no specific offence for breast ironing, but the Home Office described it as a form of child abuse and said it should be prosecuted under general assault laws.

Angie Marriott, a former gynaecological nurse who now works as a safeguarding lecturer for Cheshire Police, said that the true scale of breast ironing in the UK was being obscured because of under-reporting.

She described it as a "sensitive, hidden crime", with women afraid to speak out for fear of being "ousted from their communities".

"I know this is happening because people have divulged it to me," she said.

"And they've said it's the first time openly that they've ever spoken about what's happened to them, and they felt ashamed." (continues)

www.bbc.com/news/education-47695169

Worth reading the whole article

I agree about religious justification Rowantrees, but it was an interesting point (at least for me) about when it’s acceptable to cut things off. I know sometimes castration/orchidectomy is needed to be carried out to stop the spread of prostrate cancer.

I also wonder whether because I have read a lot of this theology it might subconsciously have been involved in the word mutilation which I was thinking of in a philosophical as well as factual context?

Bioethics constantly makes reference to SRS using the term, mutilation.

I was thinking of things like this.

A tattooist who called himself “Dr Evil” has been jailed for three years for carrying out ear and nipple removals at the request, and with the written consent, of two of his customers.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/dr-evil-trial-sentence-brendan-mccarthy-tattoo-gbh-wolverhampton-a8833811.html