"Delay to self-ID puts trans people’s sexual health at risk, charities warn"

I agree that stating worldwide HIV stats for trans people isn’t helpful. I follow this sort of stuff so went digging:

Firstly, here’s more info on why these rates are so high www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-social-issues/key-affected-populations/transgender

More locally, see here for the UK and why we don’t have the data: www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/western-central-europe-north-america/uk

This bit in particular:

There is a concerning lack of data on HIV prevalence and new diagnoses among transgender people in the UK. However, in 2017 Public Health England (PHE) changed its data policy: transgender people are now monitored as a separate population group to men who have sex with men.

As of June 2019, full findings on HIV and transgender people in the UK have yet to be reported. However, in April 2019, PHE reported that 123 trans people accessed HIV care in 2017, 88% of whom were transwomen. This data suggests that trans people have similar levels of late diagnosis, treatment retention and viral suppression as other people living with HIV, but are four times more likely to have mental health issues than other people living with HIV (with 16% being in active psychiatric care as compared with 4%).

As far as Scotland goes, I could only find this
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-42354884

Actual stats, when they come out, should show more. I do agree also with the PP who mentioned the serious need to address the rise in HIV cases amongst intravenous drug users in Scotland.

I certainly think there’s a need for action on transgender health.

Unfortunately the organisation who’s name suggests that might be a priority for them thinks suitable medical intervention consists of punching women’s lights out.

Wouldn't a really good step be robust counselling and strategies to develop the emotional skills to cope with misgendering? Learn to take responsibility for those feelings and reach the 'I am who I am and don't give a fuck what you think' resilience that LGB people and BAME people and disabled people and many other groups have proudly embraced over the past century or so?

Because if that's the barrier, that's the obvious, fastest and strongest solution.

There’s a Samuel R Delany short story in the 1960s Dangerous Visions anthology about sexual obsession with someone who has no genitals because he has been genetically adapted for life in space.

At the time I read it I just thought it was just surreal. Once I learnt Delany supported NAMBLA it all made sense

“The trans people we work with tell us that fear of misgendering and a lack of compassionate support prevents them from accessing basic sexual health services, including contraception and STI prevention,”

As a PP mentions, I'd think a number of women might be familiar with the experience of "a lack of compassionate support". However, the way that the letter is phrased, it's difficult to know if it's the fear of a lack etc. rather than actual experience of such a lack.

That aside, I think it might be helpful to see examples of guidance on how misgendering might be avoided when discussing the biological realities of contraception.

And, beyond that, diagnostic tests for STIs can influence patient choice. The good news is that urine tests and swabs are appropriate for some STIs: and, for gonorrhoea, a urine test can be offered for one group but not others.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/gonorrhoea/

I wonder if the discussion of prophylaxis for everyone would need to be introduced with "appropriate condom"?

Trans women should get the specialist skills they need

They should. But until they stop trying to get drs fired , discredited, and piled on on Twitter should they dare to seek out any negative outcomes to surgeries and treatments it's not going to get better is it. Mistakes and negative outcomes are awful obviously, but looking at them and admitting them is important. They are what drive people to make things better. They are what help people make decisions as to what to do.

We wouldn't have keyhole surgery if no one.had looked at infection rates, complication rates and length of recovery and felt they werent good enough.

So surely there is a unique problem here with transwomen having different risk factors to women.

Surely the solution is fuck all to do with self ID as such and simply about a lack of dedicated trans sexual health clinics and finding which could operate on a self id basis without the need for the law to be used at all.

This is a funding and resource issue rather than a specific self ID one.

Trans women should get the specialist skills they need. Not gatecrash a womans clinic nor get money out of the womans sexual health pot.

Globally trans women are 49 times more likely to have HIV than the general population, the World Health Organisation has said.

A global figure is of no use, what are the rates in the UK?

Is this the same as using Brazillian figures for murder and applying them to the UK?

How about we use South African rape figures to get rape support for women?

The sexual health clinics here are drop in. I don't see how self ID will lead to misgendering being less of an issue.

What are the comparative rates for gay men for HIV worldwide?

Do they record the stats for STDs in trans people or is that disallowed because they are just recorded for men and women?

Of course everyone should have access to sexual health services, and any other medical treatment they need, but I don't see how this is the way to do it.

Sex A patient’s request to change the sex indicated on their medical records should be respected; they do not have to have been granted a Gender Recognition Certificate or have acquired an updated birth certificate for this to be changed.

from www.essexlmc.org.uk/recording-gender-medical-records/

“It's hard for me to talk about boys with my friends sometimes,” Jazz said. “All they have to do is stuck their butt out and then a boy's like, ‘Text me.’ For me, it's not like that.”

This is from a very disingenuous article about Jazz at the age of 14.

Jazz has been raised to assume the world (including male peers) will accept JJ as a girl. But - surprise surprise - “I’m not sure if people are going to be fully accepting,” she said. “I’ve noticed that boys are less accepting than girls.”.

For doctors and parents to assure a male child undergoing extreme cosmetic surgery that boys will be sexually attracted to them "just like other girls" is grossly negligent imo.

hmmm no comments showing on that article yet.

no concept of what a vagina actually is

Mind, reading the JY thread and having inadvertently learned that some people posit that a tomato puree/juice frozen popsicle can be inserted to melt and simulate a menstrual flow, I'm beginning to suspect that profound ignorance of certain matters is widespread.

My heart goes out to these children. Yet I know that any committee that is asked to consider these issues will be policy/lobby captured and effectively compelled to take evidence only from the 'brave and stunning' such as JB or AC and ultimately consent to some remarkable and unevidenced interventions.

Waverley Care, Scottish Drugs Forum, the Terrence Higgins Trust, HIV Scotland and LGBT Health and Wellbeing

That's a handy list to add to the long list of "captured" organisations.

Also genuinely no clue how selfID would help any of this. Using the global numbers, I wold suspect their is a very high percentage of transwomen in, say Brazil, with stds and such, given so many work in prostitution. Using worldwide stats ad making out its about Scotland is ridiculous. Like how the murder rates are brought up by TRAs, failing to mention that actually, in USA/UK and such, its actually safer to be a transwoman than a man/woman. Bu the global murder rates trying to be used to make out transwomen are so unsafe in western countries is wrong. Anything to do with stats when TRA types bring them up is likely to be twisted beyond all recognition anyway.

Does anyone know if there’s a reason they haven’t they just started using Transwoman and transman on people’s medical records? That way professionals can address things relating to biological sex without misgendering?

Erm, the only answer I have ever heard to this is 'because its transphobic' or it may be 'outing'..because you know, noone can tell a male is male if he wears a dress, and women of course are misaken for men constantly when they wear trousers Plus, ontop of that, its impossible really to get someone elses medical notes, its not like..birth certificates, which can be accessed by anyone.

The only reason is to be penetrated to please a possible future partner, one who will apparently have so little concern for Jazz’s well being that it won’t bother them that Jazz is getting nothing out of the experience at all.

This.

And what kind of male partner is going to be attracted to this kind of relationship, where their partner's pleasure is not relevant and sex is about one body being helped to use another to meet their own needs? And where the body being used holds a number of pre pubescent features and responses?

I know there is the naiive and optimistic hope of the white knight who will be the exceptional partner that this poor person deserves. And even then, it's inevitable that Jazz is going to come to realise and grieve the losses within that relationship. But any basically world-wise adult would see the predators and abusers to whom this kind of relationship would be the stuff of dreams. And you'd think those adults would have thought before they helped a child into this terrible position.

How can a child ever gain space to question and consider when their every move is subject to the scrutiny of millions?

With the possibility that the drugs have stunted their mental maturation to the point where they are still addressing the issue with the mind of a child.

And Jazz has been groomed by parents and doctors into not seeing it for what it is.

I'd add TV companies to the list of groomers. That all of this has been broadcast across the world makes me sick.

How can a child ever gain space to question and consider when their every move is subject to the scrutiny of millions?

What loving partner is going to want to have sex with someone who can't feel anything and never has?

This is the part that worries me the most tbh. And Jazz has been groomed by parents and doctors into not seeing it for what it is.

I think that’s what I find heartbreaking. All of us here can see what’s happened to Jazz. But Jazz still needs to get there (publicly at least). Still needs to process it. Needs to understand, if possible, what has been taken, and I don’t mean testes, I mean possibilities. THAT is the sort of sexual health issues I want to see funded. Helping people like Jazz deal with the trauma.

What loving partner is going to want to have sex with someone who can't feel anything and never has?

And this is a future that Jazz’s parents and doctors all think is the best possible outcome.

I get the impression that jazz thinks the actual sex will be a meaningful experience. Even though they may not have an orgasm. They would've been told that many women enjoy sex without orgasming.

The difference is that jazz doesn't appear to have erotic feelings. Or erotic sensations.

Unsurprisingly.

My fear is that jazz will realise the futility of the entire thing, when they find all this out during 'sex'.

Is anyone actually sitting down with this kid and saying look, sex might just be something that is off the table for you, personally. Giving them the possibility in order for them to process the implications.

Isn't that because globally transwomen are often sex workers in countries not known for their modern approaches to sexual health?

Or equality legislation that might allow transwomen the opportunity to make a living in a less dangerous and exploitative "profession" (inverted commas to avoid ligitamising paid sexual exploitation as work).