Keira Bell

It’s a lot harder to wank at a real female puberty than a fantasy one.

I am still laughing while huddled under a blanket moaning with period pain at 50!!! This is so true.

I also though feel very cynical when I feel that the denial of ROGD and agn is denied because it is validation to those who have transitioned. If ROGD can be turned into ‘it is just that society has progressed and girls just want to be their true selves now that it is acceptable’, it means ultimately growth of numbers to support the cause.

Just like shutting down those that desist.

I’m starting to wonder if the AGP denial of ROGD is motivated by determination to preserve the Imagined, fantasy female puberty.

Adult male transitioners are all obsessed with breast growth and tanner stage and the anticipation of an emergent ‘female’ sexuality. It’s all ‘cute’ outfits and dating apps and female orgasm and crying over missing out on pyjama parties and baton twirling/ballet.

When real female puberty is messy, greasy, awkward, terrifying, unwelcome and happening too fast. It attracts unwanted sexual attention from adult males, and comes with a new set of social rules (which often separate you from your male peers and your previous favourite activities). Periods can be especially awful for the first few years, painful enough to need special medication or days off school. Compulsory PE and swimming, changing in front of others who may be more or less developed than you. The beginning of understanding the misogyny and sexism that adult life will full of. The fear of moving from childhood to adulthood. Eating disorders, cutting, pernicious bullying, dying your hair green and wearing paraboots to try and repel the male gaze...

It’s a lot harder to wank at a real female puberty than a fantasy one.

If the child gender services weren't there, then kids with gender issues would be a lot worse off than they are now. I felt alone, scared, depressed throughout the majority of my childhood, I'm not the only one that went through this situation. Do you really want a return to that?

You don't seem to have read anything on here oopster. Nobody wants all services for children to be removed. But it should be psychological support. Counselling and listening to the child about the causes of their distress and helping to alleviate that distress.

Physical treatments such as hormone blockers, hormones and surgery should be restricted to adults who can fully comprehend the implications of these treatments in terms of sexual function and fertility.

You're looking for someone to blame here and I'm sorry but there isn't anyone to blame. Keira realised too late that she'd made the wrong choices

I've said this several times already oopster, but I'll say it once more, in the hope that you finally understand.

If the doctors were not offering this treatment to children, because children are not capable of fully informed consent for such treatment, she would not have been able to make this 'wrong choice'. The people to blame are the medical professionals who are offering treatments to children which those children cannot give fully informed consent to because they are children. The point of this judicial review is to stop this treatment being offered to children, so that they cannot make these mistakes.

It will have no effect on treatment for adults.

Oopster, it's very strange that you keep repeating the same things.

You are making a 16-year-old, who would already have been on track (16 was when she actually started to take the medication), responsible for the treatment doctors are providing.

There's safeguards in place to ensure patients are doing what they believe is the right thing.

I've rarely seen someone say anything quite as callous and misinformed as this.

Safeguards are not provided to validate and confirm what a patient is demanding!

You may as well say if a paedophile understands, fully, what they are getting up to in the children's changing room, then the safeguards have been deployed. They knew what they were doing, if it turns out we should have stopped them, it's not our fault, it's theirs.

You have an incredibly one-dimensional view of what is actually happening. Just because you are in the market for drugs to make you feel better, you are overlaying that on to young, vulnerable children.

It's extraordinary.

Im disinterested in oopster bar my disquiet about the decision to hold court on this particular thread.

I think it’s the tendency to dismiss anything they can’t possibly experience as unimportant, because their very important self can’t experience it.

Hence the very odd view that ‘woman’ means only the bits that a man could feasibly imitate.

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable when non-female posters make comments about female bodies in the context of 'transition', hormones and surgeries?

I do.

The differences in complexity between male bodies and female bodies is immense. Male hormone and reproductive systems are really quite simple. Female hormone and reproductive systems are astonishingly complex because we grow and feed babies. Every month for the lifetime of our fertility our body prepares to grow a human. That's a big ask.

I don't think most men (however they identify) get this at all.

Growing a baby isn't like laying an egg in your womb, where it all happens in a sealed cocoon, independent of the mother who's just providing a warm nest.

Girls and women who take hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones and undergo surgery have considerably more side-effects and lasting health problems because of the Increased complexity of our biology.

Yes I do
I also feel disquieted when adult males dismiss important aspects of Safeguarding frameworks intended to protect children.

Oopster, yes you sound patronizing though I’m prepared to believe you are well meaning.

I imagine you would be indignant if Keira told you that your recollection of your childhood was wrong. But you seem entirely confident that her own knowledge of her treatment was wrong.

Why?

You seem unable to take in new evidence or admit that others - maybe especially female others - have different experiences to you.

I felt alone, scared, depressed throughout the majority of my childhood, I'm not the only one that went through this situation. Do you really want a return to that?

There isnt a binary choice & to frame it this way is not helpful (to anyone)

Every child matters & should be supported as well as Safeguarded.

BMJ published 29 October 2018
'Redesigning gender identity services: an opportunity to generate evidence'
authors: Richard Byng, general practitioner and professor in primary care research, Susan Bewley, emeritus professor of obstetrics and women’s health, Damian Clifford, consultant liaison psychiatrist, Margaret McCartney, general practitioner and freelance writer
(extracts)
"A recent feature in The BMJ implied that new services are all that’s needed to improve transgender healthcare. Providing timely, sensitive services for all, including those who decide to not pursue treatment or detransition, is important. But the article did not question the steep rise in referrals of mainly young women or the potential harms of medical overdiagnosis and overtreatment" (continues)

"Regulated medical practitioners should follow a framework of evidence, not simply respond to client expectations. Creating that evidence to inform quality standards is an ethical imperative. We need research to explore the interplays between gender identity, mental health and neurodevelopmental problems, sexual orientation, autogynephilia, and unpalatable gender roles" (continues)

www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4490

Im wondering why if oopster genuinely believes what they’re saying, they think that a judicial review has been approved?
And what they think the basis of the approval is, given there’s ‘nothing to see here’

They're part of the NHS so can refer their patients to other relevant services within the NHS. There's safeguards in place to ensure patients are doing what they believe is the right thing. You're looking for someone to blame here and I'm sorry but there isn't anyone to blame.

No oopster you are seeking to minimise & disrupt discussions about serious Safeguarding failures within a NHS paediatric service.

This isn't just 'the opinion' of a few women on an internet forum.
There have been plenty of documents linked on this thread which detail the nature of serious Duty of Care failings.

Clearly you do not understand/respect(?) Safeguarding of children & vulnerable adults.

Do you really want a return to that?

We want a return to ‘watchful waiting’.

I felt alone, scared, depressed throughout the majority of my childhood, I'm not the only one that went through this situation. Do you really want a return to that?

I don’t thing anyone wants that Oopster. What worries me is that Keira describes having just three sessions before she was prescribed puberty blockers. CAMHS services are ridiculously over stretched and I wonder if many of the young people referred to GIDS would have been more suited to a service in which they could properly explore their gender identity along with other factors such as eating disorders, depression and body dysmorphia. I do think that some of the increase in GIDS referrals is due to better societal acceptance of being trans but I don’t see how the better recognition argument accounts for all the increase.

Keira thought she was trans at one point. My point, if I can put it another way, is that someone is either trans or there not, is the same as defining someone's sexuality, you either are or you aren't.

This is the 'no true trans' position?
Anyone who detransitions wasn't trans in the first place.

It is also used when (for example) a transwoman sexually abuses women in prison/female homeless shelter etc

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3266198-No-True-Transwoman-transadvocates-question-whether-TW-is-genuine-after-said-TW-sexually-harasses-women-in-homeless-shelter

cf 'no true Scotsman' fallacy

Clitoria

Yes... Changes to female bodies as a result of cross-sex hormones are more dramatic and more permanent than the equivalent on male bodies.

This.

And the way GD manifests itself and why has to be acknowledged to be different. But then I guess if you take the belief that TW AW first, you completely obliterate these differences don’t you? And to talk about them in regards to policy making decisions is irrelevant and hurtful.

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable when non-female posters make comments about female bodies in the context of 'transition', hormones and surgeries?

I do.

The differences in complexity between male bodies and female bodies is immense. Male hormone and reproductive systems are really quite simple. Female hormone and reproductive systems are astonishingly complex because we grow and feed babies. Every month for the lifetime of our fertility our body prepares to grow a human. That's a big ask.

I don't think most men (however they identify) get this at all.

Growing a baby isn't like laying an egg in your womb, where it all happens in a sealed cocoon, independent of the mother who's just providing a warm nest.

Girls and women who take hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones and undergo surgery have considerably more side-effects and lasting health problems because of the Increased complexity of our biology.

It is impossible for a man (however he identifies) to truly understand the way the female body works.

We know that men struggle to locate and identify the clitoris, that many men think women urinate out of our vaginas, that few men understand menstruation and menopause.

Changes to female bodies as a result of cross-sex hormones are more dramatic and more permanent than the equivalent on male bodies.

A man who pursues hormones and genital surgery can bank his sperm and protect his ability to be a father. Apart from not physically impregnating the mother, his future role as father, physically and legally, is unchanged.

A woman who pursues hormones, breast and genital surgery will almost certainly need a hysterectomy. She can bank her eggs, but without a womb she can no longer gestate, without beasts she will never breastfeed. Her future role as a mother who bears her own child is gone.

The impact on men's and women's bodies and futures is incomparable.

Children cannot and should not be making decisions that will or might have such profound effects on their futures.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child accords those rights to all those aged under 18.

There is good evidence that the brain and its ability to make decisions is not fully matured until 25.

Keira should never have been allowed and enabled to 'make those choices'. She was seriously let down by those who should have protected her.

You're looking for someone to blame here and I'm sorry but there isn't anyone to blame.

I am glad that you got the help that you needed. However, you do seem to continuing to ignore that this has grown into a much more complicated issue than it was, even last decade. And you seem to be unable to understand that maybe the girls who are using this service, may have a completely different set of needs than a male teen.

Plus you are continuing to ignore that Kiera has said she was not told of the medical risks. Whether she was an adult or a child, this is actually rather significant and quite sinister.

And that the system as it stands now needs to be completely reviewed.

The gic' are there to help with gender identity issues. They're part of the NHS so can refer their patients to other relevant services within the NHS. There's safeguards in place to ensure patients are doing what they believe is the right thing. You're looking for someone to blame here and I'm sorry but there isn't anyone to blame. Keira realised too late that she'd made the wrong choices, and I have all the sympathy in the world for her, but she is a tiny percentage of the patients treated at these places. Medical treatment is not exact, its estimation, observation, research. If the child gender services weren't there, then kids with gender issues would be a lot worse off than they are now. I felt alone, scared, depressed throughout the majority of my childhood, I'm not the only one that went through this situation. Do you really want a return to that?

Dodo no I don't have autism. I wanted to be a computer programmer growing up, and learned that you can't assume things, or take them for granted. A computer doesn't know anything, it has to be preprogrammed with anticipated responses. It's hard to explain and I'm not sure I'm doing a good job of it, but it can lead some to thinking I'm patronising them when that's the last thing I'm wanting to do.

Keira thought she was trans at one point. My point, if I can put it another way, is that someone is either trans or there not, is the same as defining someone's sexuality, you either are or you aren't.

DuLANGMondeFOREVER I wasn't aiming that at you, I've seen it elsewhere where it was blatantly paranoid talking.

you're either trans or you're not, you can't be encouraged to be what you're not.

How can you believe that to be true, on a thread about a women who thought she was trans, who the doctors diagnosed with gender dysphoria, who now knows she isn’t trans at all?

Something encouraged Keira into believing she was trans.

you're either trans or you're not, you can't be encouraged to be what you're not.

I was told from a friend on the weekend, her daughter has two girls who have transitioned to boys in past 6 months? Really, what are the chances of that if there is no social element at work.

Oopster, do you have autism? Honest question. It’s the writing style, which is very reminiscent of my teenage son.