Trans Train

Placemarking. I started watching this a couple of days ago. I feel it's a braver piece and more honest than has been yet tackled in the uk.

The high % of ptsd and other mh or neurodiverse conditions among the girls is so significant.

Also, I simply can't keep the power of you tube and social media and easier access to screens out of my head when I see the start of the rise in data around 2009. iPads and internet and touchscreen phones have become commonplace in society and for kids in that time.

If the importance or need of 'bottom surgery' has decreased as much as it has/ with many choosing not to do this as the genitals don't define the gender, then why the hell are they not espousing the same in regards to hormones for children. Wear a skirt, change your name, but permanently and irrecoverably changing your body chemistry at a time it's only developing does seem very wrong. I wonder if this is going to be looked back on in the future with the same contempt and disgust we have for the practise of lobotomising people to modify their behaviour?

I'm midway through watching and a thought just occurred to me (well, many have but I will come back to the others once I've finished).

It's much mooted that these kids will commit suicide if they don't transition. Does anyone else think there will be a spike in teen suicides from kids who do transition then realise this hasn't been the "cure" for their issues and they are now stuck in a steralised, medically induced body for the rest of their lives?

Therapy has been getting short shrift in many countries for a while now. There seems to have been a movement away from seeing mental or emotional problems as things therapy can help, and toward seeing them as physical illnesses that can be helped best with pills or other interventions.

Part of this is an immediate gratification culture, part the desire to remove stigma, part - a big part - about money. But I have wondered if part of the problem is that therapy seems less "scientific" to a lot of people, who increasingly are only able to think in those terms. I've read some really interesting Jungian stuff on trans issues, and I think the way they see it as part of a kind of narrative of a persons life, with meaning, is actually very helpful - that is why we grow through things like literature, myth, etc. And yet often the only thing we offer people is a kind of medicalised way of thinking about their problems.

Thanks for this OP. Great documentary.

StrangeLookingParasite
It's notoriously difficult to get proper mental help in Sweden. Especially if you got trauma, like a lot of these children and teenagers do. I have PTSD myself and have tried to get proper help from someone who actually understands trauma for years. I have been referred to therapists who don't really have a clue. There just isn't enough competence around that here.

Another thing that makes me angry is that the "Feminist" party (Feminist Initiative) supports self-ID and removing the age limit for it. They are no feminists.

Sametti got her breasts removed too.

I think she also had a hysterectomy. I nearly cried at that point, I was so sad for both her and for 'Mika'.
It is just ethically unjustifiable, that this is being done, especially at the speed it is being done.
The legislative changes Sweden is apparently planning are horrific, too; lowering the minimum age to 12, bottom surgery at fifteen without parental permission. Why? Why does this have to happen so fast? Why is there no decent psychological help?

Personally I did and do suffer from horrible body dysmorphia, but I've learned at times to be grateful for having a body that works, and also to be a lot less focussed on appearances. There is more to life (nearly all of it, in fact) than what you look like.

I agree, @PegLegAntoine - and I would add that we need to move rapidly towards a society where we don't pigeon-hole people based on their preferences, whether that be their choice of toys, favourite colours, hobby, clothing, career etc etc.

As long as we have things that are labelled 'Boys' stuff' and Girls' stuff', people of one sex who like things labelled for the other sex will feel that they are pigeonholed by their choices, and that society may well be judging them based on that.

A boy who likes pink, skirts, dolls may well fear criticism and teasing for being a boy who likes girl stuff - which will cause anxiety, fear and maybe depression - whereas identifying as trans will allow them to be seen as brave and inspirational, and to enjoy freely their choice of colours/clothing etc, whilst shutting down any negativity with the hammer of the TERF accusation.

If we moved away from the toxic stereotyping of things for men/boys and things for women/girls to a society where we didn't label things or pigeonhole people based on their choice of colour/clothing/hobby/career, I suspect we would have a happier society, and one where most people could be comfortable in their own skin, and didn't feel the need to transition.

Yes Prion it was sarcasm (sorry if not clear I’m autistic and don’t always put my words across very well). There is such a fear that these children will kill themselves if they aren’t given what they (think they) want immediately. All ramped up, IMO, by social media, isn’t there advice online about what buzzwords to say to get them to agree to treatment? I can’t find it now but I also saw a picture to this effect on another thread recently, the scales with waiting on one side (with the risk of suicide) and action with only minor possible issues on the other. Horrific.

Watching, waiting, THERAPY is needed :( help for these children to become comfortable in their own skin again, in time, because puberty is a bitch for any child. And autism assessment for those not already diagnosed - I feel strongly about this given my own history of gender confusion (that I grew out of).

Totally agree about the anorexia comparison too, if an underweight teenager thought they needed to be thinner we would say Yep you’re right here’s some drugs to make it happen.

I haven’t watched the video yet but will do later, but on the issue of consent from children I don’t think it is possible for such life changing surgery.

I got a tattoo at 18. Legally I was an adult, and able to consent. I was sure I would never regret it. Reader, I regret it. Thankfully I had it done somewhere very easy to hide, so my regret is pretty mild, but I had no idea at 18 of how much growing up I still had to do.

We don’t let children get tattoos, even though any regret from a child getting a tattoo would be far less disastrous than the regret a lot of these young women will feel.

Appalling that any medical professionals take part in this. What next, liposuction and laxatives as a treatment for anorexia?

BessyK wee have a trans identifying child in wider family, it's personal for us. Please feel free to PM me.

I know, bits of it were very creepy.

The doctor supporting mastectomies for teenagers was a monster.

Another area which would be a magnet for dodgy people. Ethical and sane physicians wouldn't touch this.

Lots of teenagers don't go out of their rooms for years. Better that than chopping their breasts off and poisoning them permanently with testosterone.

That is such a sad video on so many fronts and leaves more questions unanswered than it actually answered.

How the hell are ethics committees pushing this through when the evidence before them is saying 'we don't know' to so many aspects?

'We never say no any more', why not when as many as 60% have other MH issues? Since when is medication and surgery the first option rather than the last resort?

BessyK thank you for sharing this.

It was very interesting, heartbreaking too of course, but actually quite balanced, I felt.

The medical profession (worldwide) needs to be honest and take a hard look at itself. Surgery at 14, it is crazy.

”What happened to the Hippocratic Oath, and “First, do no harm”??”

”Doing nothing is as good as doing harm though, because they’ll all rush off and commit suicide, apparently.”

I realise your reply is probably sarcasm, but that Swedish male gender doctor’s attitude is despicable. Doing nothing is not the only alternative. If a fourteen year old girl is so distressed by her breasts that she can’t go out, then she needs intensive psychiatric help. The last thing she needs is mutilation of her healthy body.

Worse still that he’s saying it’s not his responsibility because the young person and the parents consent. They’re relying on the advice of a doctor and he’s lying on a number of levels, not least that they have no idea what the levels of regret will be in this new and very different patient cohort.

It also struck me how much harder it is for these young women to detransition than men. Not just the social stigma and ostracism from the community that pretended to support them, which is bad enough. But many of them will never, ever again “pass” as the women they are.

I got the impression the doctors are blinded. They’ve been doing this so long that they can’t stop, even though it’s glaringly obvious the situation has changed and it’s no longer safe.

But then came the section at the end. They’re rushing laws through that will do yet more damage. For the young people who will have to live with the consequences, it’s desperately sad.

Something that really struck me in this though is that they didn't actually talk a whole lot about the supposed suicide statistics. I am wonderig if this is a cultural thing, because what they did talk about was not letting people suffer - I think this may be something that you see a stronger thread in some European countries, that suffering is really not allowable. You hear very similar language when you read about some of the assisted suicide and euthanasia programs.

While I think the suicide narrative seems stronger in English speaking countries, I wonder if a real discomfort with suffering might underly some of the strange behaviour from doctors and clinics. Normal teenage suffering, or even the suffering of mental illness which is terrible, but sometimes unavoidable, is seen in a twisted sort of way.

I see similar things with young people in other settings, such as the university - there is a real sense of being easily broken and delicate, and they seem to have been so protected growing up. Suffering, to them, means something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

Heartbreaking and infuriating. These kids deserve so much better.

Just placemarking

ethical stress
A euphemism for 'knowing something to be unethical but being complicit in it anyway'.

What happened to the Hippocratic Oath, and “First, do no harm”??

Doing nothing is as good as doing harm though, because they’ll all rush off and commit suicide, apparently.

Obviously my ears blocked that out NTNC. Horrific.

let 15 year olds be castrated as long as their parents approve

I thought that was without parental consent.

Interesting that ROGD is not just confined to the UK.

No, it's happening in the US (isn't that the origin?) and all over Europe. It's thanks to social media.