Complications from trans surgery!

“It is not uncommon for young people, especially people with autism to research possible causes of distress and come to a fixed conclusion that it is an identity issue when there could be many causes.”

Exactly.
I am autistic. From an early age (5?6?) I would have preferred to be a boy. I didn’t conform to gender stereotypes, which weren’t as rigid in the 80s, and even had a boy’s name picked out.
I didn’t fit in throughout school, and didn’t feel comfortable with myself until my early to mid twenties.
At any point through my child hood had someone suggested I might actually have been a boy it would have been a great revelation, a eureka moment for me, when all along the issue wasn’t ever that I was a boy, but that I was autistic and didn’t stick to stereotypes.

Transitioning, especially when involving girls and young women, is an extreme way to escape rigid gender stereotypes. What very few people are asking (or are allowed to ask) is why they want to escape.

'What is a woman?'

A question asked repeatedly to politicians who are in charge of writing laws but fails to actually get an answer which is satisfactory either legally or culturally.

how come grown men can now claim to be women without making any changes or having any dysphoria, keeping their ability to reproduce and healthy adult body, yet children are pushed to take drugs and have surgery if they say they are trans... very strange double standard.

This, 100%. I would really like just one of the big pro-child-transition organisations to explain this. Why encourage kids have to make permanent, painful changes to their bodies which leave them in much poorer physical health and no better in emotional health- whereas older adults are under no such pressure to change themselves at all?

It’s almost as if vulnerable children and young adults (who are statistically more likely to be female, autistic or just lesbian), are encouraged to make these devastating permanent changes for the benefit of adult politics or validation..

But that’s too horrible for a lot of people to handle it seems, so they’d rather think it’s just angry nasty women being horrible TERFs that is the problem instead.

The law will be clear on what is, and isn't, conversion therapy.

As none of the campaigning groups have been able to provide any significant evidence of gay conversion therapy occurring in the last 10 years (and most known practices are already illegal), it seems that the main focus of this bill is to at the very minimum create a chilling effect on exploratory therapy for people distressed about their sex or identity.

We have already seen therapists reported to their registering bodies by people trying to catch them out and accuse them of ‘conversion therapy’ by simply keeping an open mind and encouraging the patient to keep an open mind about the best outcome when they are in distress.

It is not uncommon for young people, especially people with autism to research possible causes of distress and come to a fixed conclusion that it is an identity issue when there could be many causes.

Making legislation contained concepts and words that are still undefined is very risky.

I'm surprised anyone is confident that the law on this issue would be clear given that our politicians treat questions about the definition of a woman as unreasonable and unhelpful.

There is currently no agreed definition of what it means to be trans and no one seems to be able to explain what gender identity is. We're not dealing with failures to discuss these definitions, we're dealing with refusal. If the people trying to implement a ban on conversion therapy actually had workable definitions they would share them but they hand wave away any request for clarification or claim it's some kind of transphobic dog whistle.

No one thinks conversion therapy is OK but we do need a clear explanation and some examples of what it looks like for anyone with a trans identity. It would be stupid to trust anyone campaigning for this ban when they don't appear to feel obliged to explain themselves.

I cannot support any legislation where the terms of reference are not clearly defined. If we hadn't accepted the GRA 2004 we wouldn't be here now.

Yes. And temperature has some.influence over sex of reptiles. Not gender. Reptiles don't have a gender.

It hasn't been to date. Did you read the latest consultation? Absolute failure to define what they were talking about.
Failure to grasp that changing gender has been viewed as gay conversion therapy.

It suits the agenda of someone to encourage youngsters like Ritchie to transition.

Who? And why?

The medical profession are complicit, particularly in the US where there is money to be made from it. But it's not just them driving it.

What's going on?

But you don't get told all the risks. I had a keyhole procedure done on the nhs. No worries they said, in and out in a day. Quickly mentioned that there was always a chance of death in any operation but not much else. I had no reason to worry.

15 days later after actually dying, being resuscitated, having a second op to remove large parts of my bowel (they'd cut through it with a laser the day before and not noticed), spending time in both icu and hdu contracting MRSA and pneumonia I finally went home.

never trust the professionals about an operation.. Always do your homework first is my motto now. If I had have done I would have discovered the problem i had was a known common complication of the op I had. And i wouldn't have had it.

These people are not being properly informed about the actual outcomes of their lessons.

How can anyone, let than know a child, give informed consent to an experimental medical pathway? There's very little evidence to the long term medical effects of using wrong sex hormones but what there is makes pretty grim reading. The success rate of surgeries appears very low (and I'm still not sure how they are defining 'success') as a surgeon cannot help a patient change sex.

Ritchie Herron was in his 20s, I believe, when he was encouraged by the gender clinic to have radical surgeries. He realises now he is gay but he no longer has functioning sex organs and lives with the heavy medical burden.

All in the name of an ideology.

The high court case about waiting times features 2 adults and 2 children. The children want puberty blockers. Which means they are how old - 10 or younger.
This is such a horrific idea, young children wanting treatment they can not comprehend the consequences of.

Once the genitals and the body begin to be modified by puberty blockers and hormones, the effects are lifelong in many instances.

Kiera Bell is another who has spoken widely about the effects of her 'transition'.

full informed consent would include discussions around future healthcare and all complication, they're not going to outlaw these happening.

"Informed consent" is not the same as "exploratory therapy". "Informed consent" is the only the bare minimum needed for surgery. And as you say, even that bare minimum Informed consent doesn't happen adequately too often.

The worry about a poorly drafted conversion therapy bill is that adults will have to prove that they are not doing conversion therapy, or risk losing their child, or their ability to practise, or even go to prison. When conversion therapy is so poorly defined parents and teachers and carers and therapists will run scared of doing anything that isn't stated to be allowed - and the only thing that's stated to be allowed is affirmation. That worries me, I think it should worry you too.

Exactly! Gender affirmation IS conversion therapy - promoting the sterilisation and cutting off of healthy body parts of gender nonconforming children and YP is not progressive, it's deeply homophobic - as anyone whose watched Susie Green (former CEO of Mermaids) TED talk can see.

There are two body types, and any kind of personality can be found in either one.

Genital transition surgery is not something anybody rushes into unprepared , like a tattoo or botox. It's no secret this is very complex, timeconsuming , expensive surgery with a long recovery time and obvious potential downsides

You wish! Actually it can be something people kind of slide into... first a social transition makes them happy, but then the gaps start to show and they realise they're still not happy, so they try hormones, and that works for a while but after a while that fades, there's still more to try... it's like a downhill slope, people can step off it anytime but it gets steeper the further down you go. Quite a few youngsters don't realise "what have I done?" til after they've done it.

And the downsides get minimised in all sorts of ways. It's not just about information it's about influence. People are less influenced by statistics and experts than by personal stories. And YouTube and Instagram personal stories are highly edited and highly appealing. Look how happy I am with what I've done, laugh off the downside, I'm back in hospital again but it will soon be fine.... So people watch that and think, why wont my cruel transphobic doctor let me have what nakes happy? Or they sign the dotted line because it wont happen to them, or because it happened to their favourite vlogger and the vlogger seemed to cope just fine.

And people choose which stories they look at online. If you're telling yourself "transition will make me happy" you wont be watching detransitioner stories.

Shades of pro-life Americans indignantly saying that no law would ban a woman being treated for a natural miscarriage, or cause a doctor to fear for his or her career if emergency care was provided to a miscarrying woman.

In reality, it's amazing what badly-drafted law can do, because few people want to risk their career and financial stability on being a test case.

are you saying gender isn't a thing in reptiles??

You mean sex. Gender is stereotypes and feelings.
Perhaps if people stopped purposely conflating sex and 'gender' things would be much clearer no?

Perhaps if the absurdly disproportionate amount of funding going to push the new gender religion via Stonewall etc actually instead went to fund help for mental unwell children it would be a start.

What exactly would conversion therapy for a 'gender identity' be?
Not pretending your child is the opposite sex?
Not using demanded pronouns?
Not providing validation of someone else's belief?
Providing talking therapy and psychological help to a traumatised child come to terms with their sexed body?
Denying males access to female only spaces and sports?

How would it work with 'non binary' or the genderfluids?

What about gay children being convinced their non conformity means they must be trans? Surely that IS the very definition of conversion therapy?

First we would need a factual, measurable, coherent meaning of 'gender identity' other than 'because I said so'
Been waiting 5 years for an answer to this one so won't hold my breath.

The outcry about this supposed, none evidenced conversion therapy that apparently happens all the time is just the trans lobby piggybacking once again onto the appalling things that happened to gay people, when being gay was actually illegal, so they can get the nonsense that is gender identity written into law.

It's smoke and mirrors. Emotional blackmail.
Gender reassignment, just like sexual orientation, is already legally protected.

It doesn't, no. But as has been discussed, full informed consent would include discussions around future healthcare and all complication, they're not going to outlaw these happening.

Informed consent doesn't happen adequately too often. I know that. But it wouldn't be outlawed.

Also, sex determination in reptiles has no relation to this discussion. If you wouldn't bring up sex determination in reptiles when we were discussing teenagers getting botox injections, then it's not relevant here.

There is no confusion over the patients' sex when people are given hormonal and surgical treatment by clinics. If there was any true confusion, clinic staff would tell parents of male children attending the clinic that these boys might develop breast tissue without cross-sex hormones being prescribed. Staff do not. Because all the adults are clear who is male, who is female, and what developmental stages male and female bodies progress through, without intervention.

Anything that is not Affirmation 'Acceptance without Exception' is deemed to be conversion therapy.

There has been no interest in looking in the background of the reasons children want to transition. If fact steps have been taken to hide the fact that the majority of children are autistic, gay, in care or vulnerable or a combination of those risk factors.

Any parent who has wanted to do anything other than affirm has been called a bigot.

In some counties, which have followed this path parents who do not affirm have been imprisoned. Under Sturgeon Scotland wishes to take steps for the state to intervene where parents do not affirm to protect the interests of the child.

Some years ago my friend's son was diagnosed with a personality disorder. He was a very troubled young man. But that didn't stop a well known and respected London hospital considering him for gender realignment surgery and beginning hormone treatment. Because he was over 18 they refused to communicate with my friend who became terminally ill a short time later. I have no idea what the outcome was for her son because unfortunately I lost touch with him after her death. It appalled me at the time that he could be considered for life changing surgery while suffering severe psychological problems.

Are you absolutely sure that the law will be clear? Because the Parliamentary Research Briefing on the subject says "‘Conversion therapy’ (CT) doesn’t have a settled definition".

The law will be clear on what is, and isn't, conversion therapy.

Will it? How do you know?

Maybe the UK law will be framed better but the Scottish propsal is so vague and so broad it could mean anything.

It is deliberately very broad (the committee said so). But almost anything could be a "conversion practice". Except gender affirmative therapy - gender affirmative therapy is explicilty excluded from being conversion therapy - presumably even if a child is being affirmed as trans to avoid them growing up gay.

You talk as if you think conversion therapy shouldn't be banned?

Depends what you think it is really! First I want to know what it is, in case we accidentally make it difficult to practice something worthwhile, like person-centred exploratory care. I wrote to my MSPs and just got told conversion therapy was abhorrent without any notion of what it entails. Except (sigh) by (some of) the Conservatives who said they were against the bill but again without really engaging with the problem. It's all party politics again.

Oh OK. Thank you I will now click on the link.

are you saying gender isn't a thing in reptiles??

Gender isn't a thing in any species but humans because it's socially constructed. Sex on the other hand is a thing.