Mum takes 14 yr old to Poland for top surgery

With women, if anything was wrong, it was considered ‘hysteria’ too.
(From the on line etymological dictionary)
^hysteria (n.)
nervous disease, 1801, coined in medical Latin as an abstract noun from Greek hystera "womb," from PIE udtero-, variant of udero- "abdomen, womb, stomach" (see uterus). Originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus. With abstract noun ending -ia. General sense of "unhealthy emotion or excitement" is by 1839^.

I think they also removed the ovaries when a woman was considered to be promiscuous.

Later, if women were troubled, the medical profession moved to lobotomies.

This book in the image is excellent. It stops near the end of the 1980s. No doubt the author would have had something to say about girls and women being given hormones and surgery to ‘correct’ their healthy bodies had this been a prevalent course of treatment then.

@WarriorN shocking

In Victorian England FGM / "clitorectomies" was a medical treatment for "hysteria."

It persisted in the US till the mid 20th century, on white women.

Violent Physical Abuse of women and girl's bodies has long been excused as medically necessary.

Breast ironing, met police:

Breast ironing (also called breast flattening) is when young girls' breasts are damaged over time to flatten them and delay their development. Sometimes, an elastic belt, or binder, is used to stop them from growing.
Breast ironing usually starts with the first signs of puberty and is most often done by female relatives. In most cases, the abuser incorrectly thinks they're behaving in the best interests of the child. They believe flattening the breasts will make the child less 'womanly'. They hope this will protect the girl from harassment, rape, abduction and early forced marriage, and help them stay in education.

Breast ironing can cause serious physical issues such as:
• abscesses (a painful collection of pus that develops under the skin)
• cysts (fluid-filled lumps under the skin that can develop into abscesses)
• itching
• tissue damage
• infection
• discharge of milk
• breasts becoming significantly different shapes or sizes
• severe fever
• the complete disappearance of one or both breasts

Although there's no specific law within the UK around breast ironing, it's a form of child abuse.

Find out what the signs of this abuse are, what you can do if you’re concerned about someone and how to get help if you’ve been affected.
Signs and symptoms of breast ironing
There are many signs that breast ironing could be happening to a girl. These include:
• avoiding medical examinations
• not wanting to get undressed in front of anyone
• difficulty lifting their arms as the breast area will be tender to move and touch
• walking or sitting hunched over
• some girls may ask for help, but may not say exactly what the problem is because they're embarrassed or scared
• unusual behaviour after time away from school or college including depression, anxiety, aggression and withdrawal
• a girl is withdrawn from PE and/or sex and relationship education classes

www.met.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/caa/child-abuse/breast-ironing-flattening/

If remote, very poor people of a different race were carrying out mastectomies on certain girls, and were giving them potions to make them sterile, how would we describe that?

Breast ironing is considered child abuse. But when wealthy, white, Westerners take their child to have an elective mastectomy, it's considered progressive, wonderful, life-affirming. By some people.

If it made my child smile to have her body mutilated (albeit by a surgeon) I'd be rigid with fear for her future.

The idea that these children are going to finish having all these treatments and just be happy without ever regretting what has happened and without addressing the underlying issues that made them think their developing body was the enemy in the first place is sheer stupidity.

OvertPrude· Yesterday 15:15
It is a mastectomy in a child. And children are misled into thinking it's good, no doubt this will cause severe issues in many of them later on. Still not FGM.

No, it isn’t genital ( though castrating transgender boys to make them into girls is) and there are completely different contexts which do matter. But people do need a short hand to counter euphemisms like ‘top surgery’ and ‘bottom surgery’.

If remote, very poor people of a different race were carrying out mastectomies on certain girls, and were giving them potions to make them sterile, how would we describe that?

It is not FGM, I agree. We should not in any way diminish or co-opt the horror that is FGM.

What differentiates elective child mastectomy from FGM is that the child wants it, anaesthetic is used and it is done under sterile conditions. The similarities are lifelong impediment, bodily distortion and irreversibility.

Perhaps we should call it FSSCM, the SSC being Secondary Sexual Characteristics.

MNHQ ban us from using the M part of FGM to describe elective child mastectomies.

Agree, @WarriorN that it should be treated in the same way as FGM far as safeguarding is concerned. And as far as the law is concerned.

It is ironic that Poland has strict abortion laws yet they are promoting this surgery that will mean these girls/women will never feed a baby, and if they continue on the trans path with male hormones, they will abort in advance the possibility of ever one. Hypocritical.

Breast IRONING? WTF???

I'm saying it should be treated as fgm is. I agree fgm should not be minimised.

As a pp upthread said; perhaps Cosmetic Mastectomy is a better term?

Is there a specific law around breast ironing in the U.K.? In safeguarding training it's never mentioned. Just fgm. It perhaps hasn't been known to happen here?

@OvertPrude I totally agree with you. I don’t think anyone here said that; I said that the euphemistically named “top surgery” is AKIN to FGM. In no way did I intend to diminish the seriousness and horror of FGM by saying this, though, but I apologise if this is how it came across.

I get the need to for string phrasing, just don't think victims of misogynistic, ritualistic violence (often in poor, remote regions) should have their issues sidelined. Surprised nobody else felt the same.

I can't argue with your point, but I also have sympathy with those who see the parallels and think "FGM" is useful shorthand.

This is awful but can we not call this FGM? Its offensive. We don't need to call it FGM and take that away from victims of that practice to make it serious. It's already serious: but it's not female GENITAL mutilation.

It is a mastectomy in a child. And children are misled into thinking it's good, no doubt this will cause severe issues in many of them later on. Still not FGM.

It certainly shows how organisations apparently experts in this whole thing need to actually start talking to eachother rather than simply being united to fight against us.

You have the likes of mermaids claiming its not the wrong body. Theres no wring brain/wrong body thing and ita not stereotypes.

Then you have the nhs or bmj criteria of gender dysphoria which requires 6 out of 8 ( I think that's the right number) boxes checked off a list. But if you remove any of the criteria reliant on the body being wrong or stereotypes then you don't actually have enough left to score the six needed for a dx

All these experts and all thrse drs speaking out in defence and making money out of it and there's not a single.non circular definition.

Yes, that's pretty much the point. You could do a DNA test on two brains and find one had XY chromosomes and the other XX, but it wouldn't make any difference to the structure of the brain itself. Anymore than if you did the same test on muscles or someone's earlobe. You could see genetically that the cells came from a man or a woman but muscle fibres and earlobes are not different between the sexes. Equally someone who claims to have a brain of the opposite sex doesn't actually have chromosomes of that are different in their brain than the rest of their body.

Now brains can develop a little differently based on the different sex hormones they are awash in growing up (on average). And behaviour can be influenced by those subjecting it to different hormones. E.g. a girl who starts taking testosterone to be "male" is going to behave more aggressively. But the whole notion of "wrong brain in the body" to justify trans is nonsense.

I hope it is treated with a lot more more success than FGM prosecutions. Most of the tiny number of FGM prosecutions against practitioners in the UK fail in court , I don’t think there have been any charges and subsequent prosecutions made against parents taking daughters abroad, and only one successful prosecution against a parent who committed FGM on her own child. In addition only a few hundred restriction notices have been made over a period about ten years to protect vunerable girls from being taken abroad, which is probably only a tiny fraction of the actual cases of girls who are taken abroad to be cut. It is only quite recently that hospitals have been required to report cases of FGM in patients. As legislation it has been remarkably ineffective.

I'm worried about kids this young getting surgery, and i know it does happen, but i looked at the posting history of the profile in this case and it seems clearly fake to me.

The person who posted it has linked a surgeon that does mastectomies for gynecomastia for males who are not trans in any way, and doesn't do them for FTMs or anything. That, with the fact the story is about Poland which is really notoriously not on board with gender ideology makes me think this is a story planted to make gender critical women look silly for believing it.

People are doing surgeries on kids like this, i've heard about it in the US and other places in Europe, but part of this story has the supposed mother claiming she brought testosterone over from Poland. It's a controlled substance here, the idea that she brought vials of it over from Poland and no-one stopped her is silly.

Isn't that just the biological difference? That if u test the cells in the brain they will contain the same xx as other cells in the body.

You wouldn't find a brain made up of xy coded cells inside a women .

The same.way you wouldnt find a a male.left leg on a woman.

Brain scans and blood tests are not part if the dx process. And given a male who's made no changes medically or surgically can also be a woman apparently, there's nothing in common between their own cohorts either

Should be treated like when adults are prosecuted for taking their daughters abroad for FGM. Pure child abuse.

I know you're just making the point more clearly but it makes me want to expand on this.

Male and female brains are different to an extent, and on average. But that's a developmental thing based on the hormones they are subjected to. Same way that male and female muscles are not different in any basic way, but men will have larger muscles because their frame develops larger due to the different hormones. Same deal with brains. You can roughly guess whether a brain is male or female based on size and proportions but you can't do more than guess. And most certainly that doesn't correspond to being "trans".

If someone wanted to claim you could tell if someone was trans by their brain, they'd also have to claim that you could tell someone they weren't trans by their brain. And I haven't seen the TRAs try to pull that one, yet.

Doesn't everything start from the division of cells ? And if it could actually happen where despite a second x chromosome not being present , why would it just be the brain? Why don't we see female big toes attached to male feet. Or a man's left arm growing on a womans body?