Emma Barnett interviews Endometriosis South Coast Steph Richards and Trustee Jodie Hughes

There are not two sides, there are three.

The people who believe in mental gender instead of sex

The people who believe your sex determines your mental gender

The people who don't believe in mental gender

It's the first two who are likely to throw insults, abuse and threats because they are taking opposite sides.

The last group are trying to have a completely different conversation but the first two are too busy shouting to hear.

Thanks for that Al, very informative.

From my brief skim it seems that men who have been exposed to an excess of oestrogen might suffer more from this disease.

Is that right? In which case, maybe transwomen are more prone? ;Although, it's not endometriosis.)

It seems to me that a lot of things that are female specific - periods, abortion, miscarriage, pregnancy, breastfeeding, etc, make some men desperate to claim they can experience it.

From fake period kits, to pretending to miscarry.

Endometriosis is no different, I'm assuming.

Hence the initial premise that men and transmen can get it.

Answer: I’ve yet to come across any terfs wishing violence on anyone. Are they out there? I have no idea. But whoever told Jodie she should be burned alive is, quite frankly, a disgusting person.

And a man, my X years of experience of being a woman on this planet reliably inform me.

I’ve certainly seen some pretty harsh name calling coming from the GC side of things (even against others on the same side). I don’t doubt there are a few people out there who would go a step further and send abusive messages. There are always a people who go too far linked with every cause. I don’t think it’s remotely equivalent though to the abuse that comes from trans activists which is off the scale (evidenced by the growing number of convictions/ cautions etc.)

Edit to say I don’t think I’ve seen much in the way of threats of violence from the GC side though. Mostly just name calling.

I certainly don't claim that abuse never comes from our side. I can't know if or how much does.

But I am sure it's very much less likely to come from us. It's far more likely that the burn to death comment to Jodie was from a men's rights activist wanting it to seem to come from us, or some random Internet sicko.

I feel sorry for women because I would have loved to be able to explain more about endometriosis.

Oh God how narcissistic do these words sound? “I feel sorry for women because they didn’t get to hear me waffle on about something I learned about from Googling it last week”.

Just imagine having to learn about your medical condition from a person who uses women’s health as a way to validate their own identity and to push a political ideology into the mainstream. I actually think that the internet would be the better option.

Generally from the GC side we’re accused of hate if we say “men aren’t women” (even though that’s a fact, just like “the Earth isn’t flat”). Also, if we object to the word “woman” being erased and we want to keep our single-sex provisions and sports etc, that is viewed by the TRA lobby as “hateful”.

Now on to the “hate” from the other side. You could wallpaper a whole street full of houses with it, it’s everywhere, and notice the very clear difference in tone to the terven. How many so-called terfs say things like “die in a grease fire”; “choke on my girldick”; “I punch TRAs”; “decapitate TRAs”?

Answer: I’ve yet to come across any terfs wishing violence on anyone. Are they out there? I have no idea. But whoever told Jodie she should be burned alive is, quite frankly, a disgusting person.

I’d love to know how many women with endometriosis fall into the hateful terf category I outlined in my first paragraph. Steph wants to see terfs in hell. Maybe the majority of women that Steph is meant to be advocating for are actually bigots on the wrong side of history? How can Steph help them if Steph wants to see them in hell?

If I hated a huge proportion of men and wished they’d all go to hell, I couldn’t front a men’s health charity.

Maybe not GC women, but definitely people who would just happily weigh into any toxic debate because it gives them an excuse to chuck insults with impunity. It doesn't take a PhD to recognise that the genuinely concerned voices on the GC side are much less likely to say such awful things than the more vocal TRAs, whose vested interests are obvious and not as altruistic....?

Fair enough. But my experience is that women, and particularly women from the GC side, are extremely careful and thoughtful about their chocie of language, as they have had to be to maintain a voice in this debate.

I should have clarified that I was talking in general terms, not about this particular case. I just feel it is dangerous to think that nobody on any one ‘side’ can be capable of using abusive language. That sort of thinking can lead to blind spots about abuse from ‘our side’, that is all I mean. People who throw out insults won’t necessarily be mindful of the connotations, or may not even care about the issue at all, they are just doing it to stir trouble, because they can.

The men they referred to don't have endometriosis, as they are men, without uteruses or the lining of said uteruses - the endometrium. Endometrial cells from here cause endometriosis, in women with uteruses. Endometrial cells are a type of Epithelial cell, of which there are many types in all bodies, of both sexes. They line things, like organs and blood vessels https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559063/#:~:text=Epithelial%20cells%20are%20among%20the,physiological%20functions%20in%20different%20organs.
Epithelial cells have the ability to move or migrate, in some circumstances, and hence are implicated in lots of human 'inappropriate growth' conditions, like endometriosis in women, some forms of cancer, warts etc.

29 men have a similar condition to endometriosis where a similar type of epithelial cell from somewhere else in their body (not endometrial cells from the endometrial lining of their uteruses, because they don't have them) behave is a similar 'migrating to the wrong place' way and cause a similar 'clogging up' issue to endometriosis. This is not endometriosis, because they're not misbehaving endometrial cells and calling it endometriosis in men is a misnomer. It's like saying that men get ovarian cancer or women get testicular cancer. Similar, related, same type of tissue involved, yes, but the sex-specifc version, and not the same disease with not the same prevalence, treatment, progression, survival rates etc because found in the very different hormonal and genetic context of the 2 different sexes. As evidenced by the fact that Steph and Jodie can only find 29 men with this condition, as opposed to the millions that suffer from endometriosis.

Perhaps, given Steph's lack of credentials and the charity's small size and modest funding, it could be more usefully repurposed to support the 29 men with this distressing condition. As Steph's only motivation is a passionate desire to help people who are suffering, Steph could probably do a lot of good here raising the profile of this condition in men and transwomen, who Steph is also passionate about.

Mmmnotsure amazing work, thank you!

@TeenDivided @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Thank you! That makes more sense now

It can't be stated often enough that this is a tiny charity with £8k annual income last year and no employees. We're not looking at a recruitment process comparable to a new CEO for Oxfam or similar. If Jodie had asked another friend over coffee to take on some of the routine admin nobody would even have noticed. The issue here is not really with Steph's competence to run a charity, given that next to nothing will be required if they carry on as they have been doing. It's not because Steph is male. It's because this is a charity promoting awareness of a medical condition that virtually exclusively affects women and girls and it's now got a high profile transactivist at the helm, who has organised protests against FILIA, etc etc, as documented on this thread. The suspicion has to be that Steph sees this as both validation - Steph has a GRC and believes that identifying as a woman makes Steph a woman, regardless of biology - and also a chance to use 'inclusive' language about a female condition. The fact that this makes much of their website's content inaccurate and less likely to inform the target audience is much less important to Steph (and sadly to Jodie, it would seem).

I understand that Steph was a hairdresser and in the beauty business before transitioning and become a TRA.

There's a whiff of Steph thinking Emma wasn't womaning properly what with her 'aggression' and all. Steph on the other hand is doing it properly because Steph feels sorry for women and lots of lovely women have been sending Steph supportive messages. Apparently.

Urgh. It's all such a fucking performance.

It's explained by a scientist/HCP somewhere on this thread or one of the others on this subject, but as far as I (a layperson!) can remember, the 29 cases mentioned were all in men, i.e. human males. They obviously didn't have bits of endometrium migrating to other parts of the body, but they did have various medical issues - e.g. some sort of hormonal imbalance, or they were having hormone treatment for another condition, e.g. prostate cancer, or they were so obese that normal male hormones were disrupted - and this caused the growth of endometrium-like tissue in various parts of the body, e.g. bladder, where it caused problems. This is so vanishingly rare in males that the very few cases identified get written up in medical journals.

There will undoubtedly be large numbers of transmen with endometriosis given it affects one in ten women and girls of reproductive age.

If a woman with a difference of sexual development has a womb, she may also suffer from endometriosis, I'd have thought.

Steph's LinkedIn profile is interesting. I'm exposed to lots of CEOs through working at various startups and I have never seen one whose profile revealed:

Only 2 digit followers and 2 digit connections, literally unheard of.

No educational history. As well as a degree, I can't remember seeing one who didn't also have an MBA.

No work history or experience before 2020 for someone in their 70s.

A profile banner that obscures the name of their website, the name of which means something completely different to their processes aims (translucent = semi-transparent, nobody with a professional marketing team would sign off on that shady association).

It comes across more and more as a very amateur attempt to push ones own agenda, rather than having any actual professional credibility.

They are XY men, with a condition similar/related to traditional female endometriosis but that obviously is not happening in the womb. (I think).

Ooh, 'everyone'. Steph, you're too kind

Poor Steph. The Mail continues to update the story.

"She said: 'In my statement I included the word 'everyone' but that wasn't good enough for Emma. I was surprised at the aggression. She wanted to carry on going back to it all the time.

'I've had loads of messages, emails from women saying: 'Why did she do that?' She obviously had an agenda to pick up on such a small point. She was basically looking for problems. I feel sorry for women because I would have loved to be able to explain more about endometriosis. It was a manufactured debate.'"

'Everyone' is not a substitute for the word 'woman'. Just as being a woman is not something you can just identify in and out of.

Sorry if I am missing something here, but that tiny number of men who have endometriosis; are these ‘born males (xy)’, transmen or people with DSDs? I don’t understand how ‘born males’ could have the condition unless we really have been misunderstanding what the disease is all this time?!

Sub- sub- set: being questioned by someone about your motivations and unusual way of describing endometriosis as 'non gynaecological' = 'bullying'

I have to say, the bullying claims did make me laugh, hollowly, remembering some of the comments my PhD supervisors gave me at various progress meetings and even at the actual viva. Now that was a roasting! Why should anyone care about this work you've spent the last X years or your life obsessively working on to the exclusion of all else? Why do you think this adds anything to scientific or human understanding? Who cares about this? Why did you design it like this and not that? etc etc. Jodie will need to toughen up if she's going to get through it and gain a doctorate at the end if she thinks someone mildy questioning her work and being a bit pissed off at her interpretation is bullying.

Fair, I should have added 'or if actual abuse, from some misogynist arsehole, but either way not narsty transphobes aka actual GC women'.

Jodi might have received threats. It's a characteristic of social media that quite normal people enjoy sending the most disgusting threats.

But it won't be from anyone on the gender critical feminism side.