Testosterone gives transmen incontinence, bladder & bowel problems

Just to make clear I haven’t made any of my comments to insult Jazz or the AMA poster on a personal level. The mumsnet poster came across as a kind soul who has been through an awful lot. I don’t agree with her views on transition etc. obviously, but the only thing I feel for her is concern. The same is true of Jazz, he has clearly been brainwashed very powerfully but I think the day will come where he finally realised how badly he had been abused and the whole facade will crumble.

Heart breaking isn’t it? I can’t say I blame her for not being able to engage with the ‘counselling’ at the Tavistock considering how inappropriate it was and involved recommending underage PIV sex and adults making her look in the mirror whilst they commented on her sexual characteristics I.e. breasts and genitals presumably!?

But I was very concerned to read about how she found herself unable to even speak to a counsellor after a very violent rape at the age of 19. She said she preferred to stay busy with work and ‘move on’. Yet she is still so affected by it that she can’t even speak on the matter now and has to write it down on paper when necessary to inform people such as healthcare providers.

I think she probably thinks it will go away after she has had phalloplasty and she will be able to form romantic and sexual relationships without issue. I really fear for her mental health when that inevitably doesn’t work out.

Yes, I found an old Telegraph article about the book and the Tavistock scandal with this quote

Less than two per cent of children in the UK are thought to have an autism spectrum disorder, but according to Gids’s own data, around 35 per cent of its referrals “present with moderate to severe autistic traits”.
In 2000, the only clinical audit of patients ever carried out by Gids found that more than 25 per cent of referrals had spent time in care, compared with 0.67 per cent of the general population. Children referred to Gids were ten times more likely than the national average to have a registered sex offender as a parent, while 42 per cent had lost a parent through death or separation, and 70 per cent had more than five “associated features” such as anxiety, depression, abuse, self-harm, bullying, eating disorders or suicide attempts.

I highlighted the relevant bit but thought the whole section warranted repeating.

Yes higher rates in LGB children and extremely high in transgender-identified (up to 50%) found in this study

Almost 4x higher risk in LGB people according to this one.

This study shows that highly gender non-conforming children have an increased risk of all kinds of abuse including sexual.

I thought this, especially as she said she refused to engage with counselling/psychotherapy in any meaningful way. I felt she couldn't face something that had happened to her.

Yes there was something along those lines discussed in Hannah Barnes’ book Time to Think.

Is that true?

I don't doubt you, but for many years the truism I have heard is that there is no correlation between sexual abuse and homosexuality.

I suppose these days I would not be surprised to find that was a lie, but it's not really something I had thought to doubt.

Wasn't there something about the GID kids being more likely to have a parent (likely to be the male parent) who was sex offender?

Hope the family were reported to social services in that case. That's a criminal offence nowadays to not report child Safeguarding concerns.

Dear lord! How the hell could these clinicians go to work every day and contribute to the mutilation of children, if they even suspected that these children were being abused?

It's not a totally hypothetical scenario. A GIDS clinician said this about one of the children she treated:

“All the pushing was coming from the father to put the kid on puberty blockers. Thinking back on it now, I fear that the father was a paedophile and the child was being abused.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-feels-like-conversion-therapy-for-gay-children-say-clinicians-pvsckdvq2

Archived here: https://archive.is/OzlEP

Well gender non conforming children and those who will grow up gay and lesbian suffer significantly higher rates of sexual abuse.

This is merely musing, but if a hypothetical, very closeted pedophilic, possibly gay, man had a little boy, who gave off "effeminate " vibes, I wonder how that man would react. I especially wonder how that man would react towards a child towards whom he was attracted.

Even before the use of puberty blockers the place was abysmal. The AMA OP reports being asked by a therapist to justify why she didn’t want to have vaginal sex followed by a recommendation she tried it. At the time she was underage, and she is same sex attracted.

They also made her stand in front of the mirror whilst female characteristics of her body (which I can only assume meant her breasts and privates) were commented on ‘positively’. I have no idea what therapeutic benefit they believed that the objectification and sexualisation of a child would achieve.

The tragic thing is that she readily admits she wishes she had received effective support to accept her body. Unsurprisingly she found the ‘therapy’ humiliating and traumatic and so concluded that there was nothing that would help other than drugs and surgery. I wonder what the outcome would have been if someone like Dr Cass had been the one to care for her.

I wonder the same of Jazz. Had he been taken to a therapist who recognised the abuse occurring and taught him that his gender non conformity was nothing to be ashamed or upset about, the outcome could have been very different. Whilst nothing can undo what was done to these young people, I really hope that the changes being made will protect the next generation.

Couldn’t agree more. Severe distress regarding their genitals is very unlikely to appear in children without some kind of adverse experience in my opinion. We know that rates of abuse, being looked after etc. were disproportionately high in children attending the Tavistock. What the Tavistock should have done is to look at these children and their family holistically and with safeguarding at the forefront of their mind.

In many families nowadays a little boy dressing up in a princess costume would be just fine. Decades ago it would have been a different story. I think there's always been a bit more tolerance for tomboys, but not in all families and communities. I find it all too easy to believe that intolerant parents, extended family, church members and so on can make a tiny child's life a misery constantly saying 'Not that, that's for girls! Put that down at once - what are you, a sissy?' One advantage of getting parents and children in a clinic with experienced, sensible HCPs and therapists is that they can work on the parents as well as the child - attempt to get them to see that gender nonconforming behaviour is no big deal, and that they're making their child ill by their responses to it. In that context watchful waiting was a very sensible approach.

There's an article in Time magazine, an interview with Jazz. He says about undoing his onesie to be like a dress, the blue fairy. Thing is, assuming Jazz believes Jazz is being truthful, Jazz will struggle to differentiate between real memories, stories told to Jazz from a young age that Jazz thinks are memories, stuff that actually happened later (following influence from others) that have been retconned into the Jazz legend.

Children can be very sensitive to teasing. My Dad teased me about having a boyfriend when I was very young (literally just said 'ooh, IcakethereforeIam has got a boyfriend' in that stupid sing song voice). It totally messed with my head. I felt humiliated although, in the scheme of things, it was nothing. But not to little me. And it marked me for a long time. I suspect it was forgotten by everyone else before the day was over.

The inciting incident for Jackie Green, losing toys (though I wouldn't be surprised if there was more), is not a big deal but huge for a child. If there's something similar in Jazz's past, it may have gone unremarked at the time and now been forgotten. If Jazz remembers it could now seem so small and petty that Jazz would be too embarrassed to admit it.

I honestly don’t believe a word that comes out of that woman’s mouth. The AMA was more informative purely as it came from the individual herself, and as an adult. She described a feeling of ‘horror’ from being a toddler. However, the desire to actually possess male genitals (vs unhappiness with her own) seems to have arisen later in childhood. The transition between those two positions wasn’t made overly clear. In my opinion, it’s seems likely that once she realised that genitals different than her own existed, to have them instead must have seemed the perfect solution.

Indeed. It is almost textbook for sexually abused children to blame themselves. How it can’t be at the front of a doctor or therapist’s mind I have no idea. Maybe it’s more palatable to them to accept the idea of trans children than raped toddlers. Maybe it’s easier to pump them full of drugs and amputate their genitals than to provide the ongoing and challenging psychological interventions necessary. I can only hope I’m being overly cynical but I know what my gut says.

With JJ in one of the clips of a tv show, the mother said at 2 years old he asked if the fairy was going to give him a vagina or something along those lines. I'm sorry but at 2 years old? I just don't get it. Surely at 2 years old, toddlers have no real awareness of their bodies in this way.

You would think so wouldn't you! But no! lets just chop it all off then! Instead.

I want to shout "have you lost your Fucking minds?? " at them!

I can see the value in it for children who are actually distressed. By all means we shouldn’t be pathologising normal behaviour like dressing up, but if they have distress or mental ill health I think that is a different scenario. Psychiatric input and support to identify the underlying cause, manage the issue, and teach them to be comfortable in their body could all be beneficial in my opinion. I think that is particularly important considering the safeguarding issues that could be at play.

She explained it as arising during undress such as being bathed or changing for swimming. I have no doubt that the distress is absolutely genuine and it helps to explain why she is so determined to have phalloplasty despite the horrendous effect of it. But I can’t help but worry about the underlying cause in such a young child (pre-nursery school). Especially as she has never had any proper romantic relationship (despite now being in her 30s) because the thought of being touched intimately is unbearable.

Some other posters did try and elicit whether there was any such history but were shut down by other users. It does appear they must have been insensitive in how they asked as HQ had deleted the comments before I came across the thread, but I think the concern behind it is absolutely valid.

To be honest even things like watchful waiting seems over the top. One of mine wanted to be a Disney princess when he was 3 or 4, we just let him get on with it. He grew out of it as I'm sure most kids would if no one made a fuss or reacted.

Agreed. The AMA poster said she hadn’t suffered any sexual abuse in childhood. However, as someone who did suffer CSA a lot of her feelings and mental health problems were very familiar to me.

A child being horrified by their genitalia at the age of 2 or 3 is very worrying. It might be projection from my own experiences but I can’t help but wonder whether something has been suppressed or the conscious memory has been lost, considering the very young age at distress.