Gender reassignment surgery has 'real downsides' says Guardian article

I hope for a world where nobody feels so dissociated from their own body that they want to surgically remove or significantly reshape their genitals for psychological, cultural or even neurobiological reasons (the latter being a really deeply weird idea tbh - you want a neovagina becauseerm your anterior cingulate is a bit small? Run that by me again?) I dislike any legal incentives to have the surgery as imo it will only increase the pressure for medical intervention on younger people. I am glad whenever I hear that someone has kept their own body intact. This person certainly sounds like a twat, even without surgery.

Gasp that quote about adoptive parents was quite something to behold. I'll look out for your thread.

I started a thread yesterday about another phrase in that article about adoptive parents, which is still going on.

Having skimmed a couple of other articles/interviews with this Professor, it looks like a classic case of growing up in a very gendered home where the little girl of the family was dressed in frilly pink clothes and the little boy was expected to be tough and boyish, and really struggled with the repression involved. I'm sympathetic to that, but I'd be interested to know if Sophie's sister was happy with her gender role and what she's like now. There's nothing very pink and frilly about coping with periods, worrying about pregnancy, finding yourself talked over at work and paid less because you're a woman, putting your career on hold because your husband has a new job at the other end of the country, and so on.

Re the magic wand comment. I too would love to wave a magic wand and allow men the joy of feeling an ovarian cyst "pop" inside their abdomen. Pop. Such a little, inoffensive word, for an act of violence on my body by a teeny part of my body, that laid me flat out in the staff toilets for an hour till somebody came looking for me. Yep, I'd wave that wand and share that experience happily. Forget feeling your tits, Myrrhanda, here's the real shit.

Whenever I see pieces like this, I always think of the Transwidows thread.

"The problem is that there’s something about ourselves that even we don’t understand.”

Women are always being asked to "understand" men. This is underpinned by phrases such as "the little child/boy inside the man" etc. Like men are an enigma to unravel. The tortured artist. Nobody is ever asked to dig deep into the woman's psyche. She just gets on with it.

These pieces usually rush over the part about the wives and children and chalk it off to being a bit "difficult."

And that male ego, that selfishness, that being raised as a male in a man's world is never disguised.

I criticised this article on another thread. It says JK Rowling has

“publish[ed] a broadside in June on transgender issues.”

Broadside means “vicious verbal attack” based on the historical origin of firing all the guns from one side of a warship.

A woman writes about women’s rights and this is the slur it gets. It’s outrageous really.

And despite this person talking about their own concerns regarding surgery, they don’t have the good grace to acknowledge that that is something they’re in agreement with Rowling, something she expressing in her statement.

This is why there’s “cancel culture”. People manipulate and lie, use emotive slurs and can’t even acknowledge agreement even when it’s staring them in the face.

mum’s understanding about that and her horror about what it could mean; and her anger at the little boy for naming it

I bet she didn't for a second think 'trans'.

Also, I know we shouldn't be focusing on appearances but... what is Sophie wearing in the photo? It like more like dress up for a little girl than what you'd expect from a mature woman.

So it's okay for men with AGP who haven't had surgery to voice concerns about it but not for women who have actually experienced surgery and the devastating effects on their life?

Magdalen Berns highlighted this May 2016

'What Kind Of Fools Do Transgender UK and Stonewall Take Us For?'