What you all said was coming

I agree. People make decisions about their options re treatment. If someone has a mental health issue, the NHS doesn’t have time to assess that in detail before going ahead with treatment. What annoys me is the time and expense involved in these procedures, whilst people with actual medical conditions are on huge waiting lists. Also people wirh other mental health issues are ignored or there is no help available.
Why is gender reassignment considered so high up the list of priorities in an overstretched system?

Not the NHS that gave you what you wanted

It is not the job of the NHS to give you what you want. It is the responsibility of the NHS to provide you with what you need. It is also the responsibility of the NHS to distinguish between the two.

This man has described himself as being in a 'deeply unwell, obsessive state'.

I'm shocked at the lack of compassion being shown on this thread.

You go to a doctor with a medical problem, they explain treatment options and what they advise.

If this young man was advised surgery would benefit him and went ahead, I really don't think the blame should be shifted to him.

Having read his twitter on this I do feel sympathy for him.

He is in noway stupid and of course knew his genitals were going to be removed but he was sold a lie. A lie that grew from on line grooming in the trans groups he joined. A lie that the NHS colluded with and affirmed to him that the surgery would change his sex and he would become a woman.
He knew as soon as he woke he was still a man just a castrated man. That's not what women are!

The medical bodies accept that body dysmorphia is a mental illness if its based around weight or dozens of surgerys to look like a cat or have breast enlargements so big it can kill you or removal of limbs as the person feels disabled yet when it comes to gender dysmorphia all that understanding is thrown out the window! Why?

I can't find NICE guidance on trans healthcare. They have made a few comments about the quality of evidence for puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones in children but I can't find anything about the efficacy of surgical intervention in adults.

I found the service specification for surgical intervention in adults. I don't even know where to begin critiquing the contents.

www.england.nhs.uk/publication/service-specification-gender-identity-services-for-adults-surgical-interventions/

The more I read and see the more convinced I am that we should not be offering surgery to anyone with gender dysphoria. The list of common complications contained in the patient information leaflet linked previously is shocking, how can anyone write that and not have serious questions about the cost/benefit.

I think that's unfair though. Aside from the fact it seems he was mentally unwell there is so so so much misinformation online about the surgery, and few resources that actually spell out what it's actually like and the risks. It's being sold to people (including children) as a magic fix, and some put a lot of time and effort into supporting this notion in online content.

I understand your point, but then due Stonewall and Mermaids, and Facebook and twitter. Not the NHS that gave you what you wanted

Individual doctors didn't know. The drug company did.

I can sympathise as I understand how you felt although for me it was the other way round. Emergency CS which I hated, next child I didn't want a CS, it ended up with a very difficult forceps delivery. Baby was bruised but no permanent damage but I still sometimes think how my gamble could have gone very very wrong and how terrible that would be. We make choices and have to live with them and accept our own part in them.

I have very little sympathy for him, but if this is the warning shot that stops the NHS from sterilising and mutulating children, and wasting taxpayers money offering this surgery to adults for free, then he can crack on and I hope he wins.

he was fed the lie that his gender dysphoria would be cured by those actions. That rather than investigating the psychological causes for his distress, which most likely in the past would have led him to come to be at ease with his male body, and his same sex attraction,

I've now listened to the Benjamin Boyce interview and the recommended Just Checking In podcast. There had been severe mental health problems to the point that they resulted in hospitalisation from the age of 4. There's a lot of complex trauma in there.

It's very clear that there are few checks and balances for adults. It's also very clear that, despite the objections, there is a huge need for a re-examination of the adult services and the current affirmation model.

OT: the Benjamin Boyce discussion with Tulip and Sinead Watson is very thoughtful on a number of issues, especially the differences between detransitioners who are MtFtM (and the split within them along Blanchard lines) and FtMtF. Even more OT, excellent discussion as to why the word 'detrans' should be minimised unless needed for clarity.

There is a famous Hollywood actor who is around 60 . He said that if he was growing up now he would probably have gone down the transwoman route and then wanted a reversal. He is gay and was very uncomfortable,as a young man, about his gayness and how his family and others would cope with it. He didn't have that option then and he said he is very glad that,as a much older man, he can live as a man ,but a man who fancies men, rather than trying to live as a transwoman.
I think the mental health aspect of the trans situation is far,far more important than anything else. It isn't an accident that the majority of people who wish to transition are also on the autistic spectrum. Finding happiness through hormones and life changing surgery may help some achieve peace of mind. Many others will find that the troubles they have inside their head remain just the same despite changing their external body.

Agreed. The impartiality is key.

As the NHS are promoting this idea that medical treatment and terms can be gender neutral and promoting terms like uterus haver in its information, and its paying for training for its MEDICAL staff from self appointed experts in ‘identifying as another gender’, and it’s ignoring the equality act and promoting same sex but mixed sex wards and medical staff that are women but male born, and its ignoring whistle blowers such as its own safeguarding leads - it needs to be sued into reality and to start looking at its spending.

So disgraceful that he’s suing the NHS. He needs to take a certain amount of responsibility for this. He says he didn’t realise it would be such a big change…what?? Whether they did enough counselling is another matter as he may not have been suitable.

Well, yes, the counselling bit is critical to this case!

The NHS has a duty of care to ensure that only the people who would benefit from hormones and surgery get them!

If the NHS can show it provided adequate support, counselling and took all necessary steps to ensure that this man was capable of giving informed consent then it will win the case and has nothing to worry about.

I do agree there's definitely things the NHS needs to learn from this and their services are probably going to need to do a lot of awkward backtracking. They should have been firmer with the people pushing more extreme views. I also don't think that threatening suicide/self harm should be a reason for having any kind of plastic surgery. This is not a healthy way of dealing with stress whatever the cause of stress. Focus should be on teaching them to deal with this stress and in the case of young kids working out what the hell is going so wrong in their childhood to cause such stress as a lot of the time I believe gender identity is a symptom of this not a cause. I'm not saying the NHS is perfect but it's very hard to challenge this notion that society seems to have that gender identity should simply go unchallenged and that major life altering surgery is the solution. The whole of society needs to educate kids better, not just the NHS is my point

Surgeons have been led astray by the opportunity to develop their techniques, I feel.

Any reasonable doctor would surely have said 'What a shame. I'm afraid sex change is not possible. We can use plastic surgery to create some similar prostheses, but the function is totally different and sub optimal. It's doable where there's no other choice, but it's not an elective surgery.'

Poor poor guy.

A few more of these cases - and we all know there will be more - and health services private and state will have to be much more careful.

I havent read through the whole thread, but I have followed this young man's story

Its not as simple as 'well of course he know that he was going to have his ckock chopped off' misses the point entirely.

Yes, of course he knew that - but he was fed the lie that his gender dysphoria would be cured by those actions. That rather than investigating the psychological causes for his distress, which most likely in the past would have led him to come to be at ease with his male body, and his same sex attraction, he was fast tracked down the glittery rainbow path of sex change as the magic bullet that would allow him to live a perfect new life as a woman.

He was ill. He was severely mentally unwell. Gender dysphoria is akin to other body dysmorphias, such as anorexia. We wouldnt allow the NHS to perform gastric bypasses on an anorexic as a cure. The links with OCD and trauma are close. We would expect the NHS to 'do no harm' and to refer to psychiatric / pasychological help, which is what USED to happen before the transactivists took hold of the service, removed being trans from being a menatl health issue, and followed the affirmation only pathway.

So yes, I do think the medical establishment holds the can here. Only promoting transition as the solution, not giving full disclosure on risks and follow ups, not following through to see whether post transition results have a drastic reduction in MH problems (answer - no they dont, in fact suicide is higher after) - not talking about the awful side effects and long term effects. Yes, I hope he sues. And I hope it stops this harmful practice in its tracks, because those with true gender dysphoria are the ones being harmed by a section of society who have absolutely no cares in the world beyond their own narcissism, nor any kind of dysphoria around their male bodies, but who have utilised the dysphoric for their own agenda

The problem with both this case and the Keira Bell case was that they hinge on whether the patient is able to give informed consent. That's the way the law works, unfortunately. But what we should be focusing on is whether doctors should be carrying out this procedure at all. Other analogous procedures might be lobotomies or vaginal mesh - the point is that doctors should not be performing them, full stop. How can anyone consent to having healthy body parts removed?

There are people with body integrity identity disorder who strongly belief they should have both legs amputated, or their spinal column severed.

Doctors don't perform those procedures on them, because it is understood that those people are mentally unwell, not capable of giving valid consent, and it would not be in their best interests.

Why is it different when the body part someone wants cut off is a penis or a pair of breasts?

You think a clitoris is the same as the bottom of the shaft of a penis?
God there have been some ignorant bullshit on this thread.
Also the 'not the sharpest tool in the box'
If you bothered to listen to the podcast he did you would see he is actually a very intelligent, brave and thoughtful person.
I know this is only mumsnet but ffs educate yourselvs off the level of the basement before posting.

How’s money going to bring back sensation, unless there’s a private procedure he can pay for that I’m unaware of? He comes across as grabby if he sues for loads of cash when they gave the operation he asked for and he received the desired outcome. It’s not like he asked to be made a woman and they accidentally chopped off his leg. Then I’d have some sympathy.

"Since newspapers are talking shit. Let's clarify.

All my hormones were prescribed by the NHS. I never self medded, I did however get a payday loan for a private diagnosis to start androgen blockers.

NHS approved and issued"

twitter.com/tullipr/status/1540164378900717569?s=21&t=kVMdtU7MkISB1--dvbOVdQ

It's not even remotely comparable to thalidomide.

They didn't know thalidomide would cause birth defects when they prescribed it to pregnant women.

These people know exactly what harm they are causing.

Apparently the woman who transitioned to be one a man and then went on to have two babies didn't realise they wouldn't be able to breastfeed after a mascetomy. So it seems people are ill informed regularly.

If the drs who have years of training under their belt , and have likely seen first hand the results of these surgeries and absolutely know it's leaving patients incontinent and disabled and sexually/physically dysfunctional and suicide rates increasing after several years after surgery, are so captured they will destroy a healthy functioning body on the say so of delusional patients and lobby groups witg no medical.back ground. Then what hope does a patient in the grips of a dysphoria, who has been indulged in a lie for tears have of saying no.