Confusing statement about treatment for intersex being a victory for trans community

These days I see 'woman wins woman award' and automatically think 'must be a man'.

If she IS a woman then why go into all the nonsense about intersex/trans in the first place? Why not just say 'thank you how wonderful'?

its another land grab I imagine

I'm not sure what's going on and so I'm reluctant to comment, other than that I find it surprising that an award winning writer does not have the words at their disposal to describe their condition more clearly.

I’m interested in developing a better understanding of the rights issues that arise because of having a DSD. I imagine them to be the same as those that arise with other health conditions.

There's not enough information in Van der Wouden's words for any clarity, so anyone can latch onto them.

But this has echoes of Imane Khelif.

Why are you claiming that people claiming a trans identity and taking cross sex hormones to change their appearance has any bearing on medical treatment for people with chromosomal abnormalities that affects their reproductive development?

People do not claim a trans identity because of chromosome abnormalities, otherwise there would be a test for ‘trans’. Medical research for people with DSDs is entirely different to the unscientific practice of creating a deliberate hormone imbalance in otherwise healthy people in order to change their appearance. HTH.

In reference to your other comment on PPs post about men wanting to grow boobs - you do know that many men who identify as women call their oestrogen pills ‘titty skittles’? Why would they do that do you think?

Yes, that is how I read based on the information we have. This is the key sentence in Yael’s speech

“I was a girl until I turned 13, and then as I hit puberty all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen, or if it did happen it happened too much,”

I wonder if the quality of the novel actually warrants this rare achievement of having a debut novel win the prize? It is certainly VERY convenient for the WPF on a number of levels.

As someone with a cousin born 'intersex' in the 60s and was made female at 6 months old, then hit puberty, knew he was a he, became so mentally ill because of it, which resulted in their suicide, I find it abominable that the 'trans' community, and the idiotic parents want children as young as 3 (no medical reasons) assigned to a different sex. Don't they do research?, don't they see the result of what happened to thousands of people wrongly assigned as babies?
I hate those that jump on trendy bandwagons with their stupid ideals.
My aunt never got over my cousins death, and blamed herself, even though in those days 'that's what the medical profession did'
Thankfully nowadays these babies are left to see what gender they become, if either, it's their choice.

"The Safekeep is a romantic and family saga set in the Netherlands in 1961 which explores the treatment of Dutch Jews in the postwar period."

It depends on the subject matter. If you are writing about how periods and hormones affect you, then yes it very much does matter!

Edit: ...anyone can self-id as diverse now

@yetanotherusernameAgain that's how I read it too.

It is thought provoking because, in cases where there's a physical advantage like sports it really does matter... but for a writing award... is being raised as female from birth (and having health care to align your body with how you 'feel') and passing as a woman 'enough'?

Surely the reason for needing a 'woman's' writing award is all about the way women are perceived... not because we believe men are better / different when it comes to writing?

I have however met students who call themselves queer or intersex for having it. There's more social currency in being part of the QI+ than being a woman with an illness. It's even possible it makes them happier to do so, at least short term.

Less a generational thing and more an ill informed, attention seeking thing, really. They can insist that PCOS is an 'intersex' condition all they like. Doesn't make it so.

Think about the trauma this man went through at puberty on discovering he was male because an error was made.

Now consider the kids being socially transitioned deliberately at 5 or 6 who are being deliberately set up for the situation this male found despite ALL the adults in the child's life being aware of the child's sex.

It's abusive. I know of a child in this situation. I'm told the parents are lovely. Abusive parents can often seem charming. But you don't go along with it and enable the parents knowing it will cause harm to the child because the parents are nice. Yet this is what the school and the rest of the parents in the class do. I'm so glad I don't know them.

AidaP: "And when transgender people gain rights, generally so do intersex people, although UK still remains quite backwards in this regard."

People with DSD gained a change in the registration law in Germany about 15 years ago by campaigning, and at that time there was no talk of Trans in connection with it. I remember a few interviews with people with DSD, explaining why they wanted to have the "d" (diverse) entry for their sex. Most impressive to me was a lady, of 60+ years, who was genetically male, but only found out in her 20s, after marriage and being unable to have children. Also around that time they made a law to raise the age for surgical interventions to 18.

The Trans movement only got interested in DSDs later, because of the sex is a spectrum story, and they now have appropriated the "d" registration with the new self-id law (everyone can self-id as diverse now in Germany, you needed a diagnosis of DSD before).
So from my perspective as an older person, the Trans movement hasn't been helpful in the big picture. What's more, the DSD people & friends did campaign for their own issues and gained changes.

But is she biologically female? The wording of that quote (I haven't read the whole article) suggests that she might have a DSD that presents as female until puberty, when the resulting changes reveal that the person is biologically male, and she later had healthcare so she could present as a woman.

So it's possible to have a DSD and be transgender, were 'trans' means choosing to present as the sex you thought you were in childhood, which probably feels more like staying the same rather than transitioning.

Am I the only person interpreting her words in this way?

Perhaps the author has a DSD which although they were thought to be female at birth based on external genitalia was revealed at puberty that biologically/ hormonally they are male?

If they have been medically/ surgically been able to maintain a female appearance to align with their belief that they were a woman then I could see how that would align them with other people who say they 'feel like' a woman.

It's possible she found comfort from other people saying that they were upset their bodies weren't M/F enough and it didn't stop them being women.

If it'd been a different time in history or she hadn't been a vulnerable teenager, she'd probably have thought it offensive that a female hormone imbalance would have actual males saying they were the same as her.

There is a generational thing though. I know a number of women with PCOS. Those in their 40s are very offended to be grouped into that "2% are intersex," guff going around, that having this female medical condition does not mean TRAs can assign them as "not female," for their own ends. I have however met students who call themselves queer or intersex for having it. There's more social currency in being part of the QI+ than being a woman with an illness. It's even possible it makes them happier to do so, at least short term.

It absolutely does not help treatments for DSDs to have trans people clogging up the endocrinology waiting lists or taking funding for research. I would admit I was wrong if a single treatment developed this way could be presented. However, TRAs want basic hormones and cosmetic surgery - all of which has been around for ages.

Personally, I think people (mainly women) with medical conditions are being appropriated and exploited by people who are completely phenotypically one sex but want to act like there are blurred lives they can cross.

She is so vague about her condition, just saying 'intersex' and talking about trans people that it wasn't clear she even has a DSD.

If anything I thought the opposite was true - that medical treatment was more likely in the past, to the point of parents sometimes concealing the condition from their children.

This would have long predated any concept of trans rights.

However, perhaps intersex is an identity that some people with DSDs find helpful, It’s not clear what is meant by the speech.

So the argument boils down to another variation of let’s conflate gender with biological sex to muddy the waters and let’s have a free for all at the latter end of the alphabet soup who of course are the most vulnerable etc etc.

I do think she may be the latest gotcha to be trotted out amongst the scientific illiterati sadly to the detriment of good work done by intersex campaigners seeking better treatment for their conditions.

Look one intersex mildly nichey famous person thinks this, therefore it must reflect the entire position of the whole cohort. I weep for the critical thinking skills of this generation of writers.

This is from AidaP at 02.44

“(there are tons of studies showing the correlation between access to those <refers to trans ‘healthcare’> and suicide rates). And when transgender people gain rights, generally so do intersex people, although UK still remains quite backwards in this regard.”

Thanks to Cass, we’re all well aware of the quality and quantity of studies relating the pharmacological and surgical treatments of trans-presenting young patients to their suicide risk. Spoiler alert, there’s nothing credible.

I’ve never seen anything relating transgender ‘rights’ to a society’s treatment of people with DSD’s (there is no ‘intersex’ third sex); Aida doesn’t choose to evidence the argument.

All of which gives a pretty good indication of which poster needs to ‘grow up’

What she says about her medical condition and what context she puts it in is up to her. It is deliberately vague though, which is unusual for people who want medical conditions to be better understood in themselves.

Scold alert!

Exactly. The connection was made by genderists when, having surfed on public sympathy for the 'feminine' style of male homosexual, they were faced with people starting to notice the preponderance of hulking great male 'women' claiming to be lesbians - not at all the sympathetic stereotype.

When they said trans women ARE women, meaning visibly male heterosexuals with an unseemly fondness for talking about their 'female' penises, there was a fair amount of pushback and ridicule. Landing on DSDs as their new sympathy vehicle was clever: it let them cut down the "anyone can see that's a bloke" objectors with a single sweep of faux science. You can't see anyone's sex, they sneered: you can't even be sure you know what sex YOU are unless you've been karyotyped!

Oooh, long words and medical disorders! Sex identification is so fundamental to life, few people have given it any thought. The news that some people actually do have to be 'karyotyped' to find out their biological sex was quite shocking. It suddenly made sex - a fact of life so basic that nobody discusses it - into a great, wondrous mystery understood only by the privileged few (guess who?!) They could come out with any old shite and people accepted it, because only yesterday they'd taken it for granted.

The fact that DSD/intersex organisations were pleading not to be used as a trans talking point meant nothing: they weren't going around 'educating' the public en masse but the genderists were. An intrepid few experts (the real kind) tried to correct the flood of misinformation, mostly unheard yet forcefully attacked by genderists who'd read half a paragraph on Wikipedia.

The success of this line of attack on reality is well illustrated by the huge amount of fawning media coverage lavished on Yael Van der Wouden, thanks to her nonsensical little statement. Winners of the Booker Women's Prize rarely get this much publicity.

Transgenderism's a very impressive, multi-pronged assault on societal structures, common sense, thought and speech. It's exhausting. I wish it would go away.