What proportion of men who identify as women do you think have had an operation to remove their male genitals?

[ScrollingLeaves]

Given that any man who identifies as a woman may legally be treated as a woman, join women’s sports, be housed in women's prisons, be in a women’s rape crisis centre, or be on a women’s hospital ward,

I am interested to know what other women reading here think about this question.

The reason for asking here, not on the Feminism and Women’s Rights/Gender board, Mumsnet HQ, is to find out what people think more generally. Please do not move it.

I am asking this out of interest in the wake of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill which has just been passed by Scottish Parliament.

I think this is the study I found years ago:

www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/trgh.2016.0013

The researchers conducted their own survey. Out of 280 study participants, 'Only 11 persons, all transwomen, had genital surgery'. I don't think their own study is worth much on its own but in their discussion they compare their results with lots of other studies in different settings and it's not a bad overview.

But that was in 2016 and things have moved on considerably since then, As we all know the direction of travel has been for fewer men to have their penises removed but for more women to have their breasts removed, plus a huge increase in the number of people who ID as trans while making no changes to their bodies at all.

Regarding women seeking phalloplasty, this letter horrified me. Just scroll down the list of signatories and notice how many are waiting for repairs.

www.transactual.org.uk/open-letter-to-sajid-javid

Interesting. I have two trans friends both f >m. One has has a penis fashioned, all a bit of a disaster really. The other takes the relevant hormones, is bearded, lives as a man, has had breasts and womb removed but is still intact.
Personally, I’d be more interested in knowing how many trans women are in women’s prisons.

I thought this thread had been deleted. It definitely was. How is it back?

www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/4708236-what-proportion-of-men-thread-deleted-why

What do you mean by 'intact'?

A woman who has had her uterus removed is not 'intact'. She has been irreversibly sterilised.

There are plenty of other excellent threads about men in women's prisons. Keep an eye out on FWR, or start your own thread there:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights

@LangClegsInSpace
i had a quick Google, it appears that trans women are being placed in male prisons unless they have had all necessary surgery .

As for my friend, yes you are right, a hysterectomy is radical, that was his choice. I was trying, somewhat unsuccessfully to say that he still has a vagina, labia etc. in more delicate terms. Apologies.

Your 'quick google' has provided you with misinformation about male prisoners in the female estate.

This is a good website:

kpssinfo.org/

@LangClegsInSpace · Today 00:23

I thought this thread had been deleted. It definitely was. How is it back?

www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/4708236-what-proportion-of-men-thread

Thank you, and others, for persuading MN to put the thread back.

It is an important question. I do think most people have no idea at all that by far the greatest majority of men who identify as woman have not had any genital surgery, and that there are many not taking hormones either.

So when they hear about transwomen in women’s prisons, changing rooms and lavatories, rape crisis centres, and refuges
they do not understand what is entailed.

The petition map showing signatures - in yellow meaning the fewest to dark red meaning the most- petitioning parliament to upgrade the equality act to make clear that sex means biological sex, shows that many people in Scotland have responded in reaction against the Scottish parliament’s recent reforms to Gender Recognition, vbringing in virtual self-ID, with inadequate protection against male sex criminals availing themselves of a female identity: Scotland is turning dark red.

Meanwhile England and Wales is yellow meaning close to no signatures. Almost no one has the first clue about what has been going on, or what a transwoman actually is, or that a transwoman in a designated women’s only space may well simply be an ordinary man with another name and women’s clothes in a woman only space.

LangClegsInSpace · Today 00:53
Your 'quick google' has provided you with misinformation about male prisoners in the female estate.

This is a good website:

kpssinfo.org/

I have just been reading some of their reports and consultations. It is a useful site.

Apparently offending rates among men identifying as women remain the same as for all men even after a medical diagnosis and surgery.

Glad to see this thread back. I’d be interested to hear more answers to the OP from regular MNetters who don’t necessarily frequent the feminism boards.

Out of interest I just had a look at the NHS web pages for gender dysphoria and found it staggering that treatment is purely about helping someone change gender rather any exploratory work as to why they feel their unease. The pages do at least make it clear that if hormone treatment takes place then the patient will ’need lifelong monitoring of your hormone levels by your GP’. Seems to me like the NHS can’t afford to have too many people going down this route.

Leafstamp · Today 14:52
Glad to see this thread back. I’d be interested to hear more answers to the OP from regular MNetters who don’t necessarily frequent the feminism boards.

Out of interest I just had a look at the NHS web pages for gender dysphoria and found it staggering that treatment is purely about helping someone change gender rather any exploratory work as to why they feel their unease. The pages do at least make it clear that if hormone treatment takes place then the patient will ’need lifelong monitoring of your hormone levels by your GP’. Seems to me like the NHS can’t afford to have too many people going down this route.

I completely agree with your last paragraph. Also, I read the link posted by LangClegsInSpace (scroll to the end) which was a letter from transwomen to Sajid Javid about their suspended surgeries and corrections to surgeries that had already happened. It is absolutely harrowing to see what they are going through, and begs the question: what on earth has happened to them in their lives as young girls to make them think any of this could ever be a solution, rather than the start of a nightmare?

It must be similarly awful for transwomen when they have surgeries but
do more transmen (females) opt for surgery than transwomen (males) do? There were so transmen (females)
signing that letter.

It also suggests a reason to be a bit cynical about reform to the Gender Recognition Act, allowing people to legally change their gender without a medical diagnosis - it would (will in Scotland) potentially save the NHS time and money.

It is odd that tras say wanting to change gender is not a medical condition, while at the same time that letter signed by so many transwomen shows them as being desperate for surgery, which they believe will ease their dysphoria ( though at the same time as physically harming them so much), and which together with hormones will necessitate a life time of medical worries.

^LangClegsInSpace · Today 00:21
Regarding women seeking phalloplasty, this letter horrified me. Just scroll down the list of signatories and notice how many are waiting for repairs^
www.transactual.org.uk/open-letter-to-sajid-javid

There's a reason you have your own corner of MN.

Both sides of this debate are ridiculous at the polarities and I'm afraid that means you.

Can you explain what you found ridiculous about what @Leafstamp wrote?

@LadyOfTheFliessssss it would be indeed be helpful if you could explain the what I have said that you think is ridiculous. I am wondering if you think hormone and surgery treatment is always required/desirable for gender dysphoria? Should it always be offered on the NHS if someone requests it?

Conversely, and returning to the theme of the OP, I am wondering if you think those who do not seek any surgery have a less severe version of gender dysphoria? Or perhaps do not have gender dysphoria at all?

What @Leafstamp wrote is a fair observation. It’s shocking that treatment for gender dysphoria isn’t more strongly evidenced by properly conducted clinical studies comparing different approaches. The current situation is letting people with gender dysphoria down.

Second, puberty blockers and cross sex hormones in the US plus associated monitoring cost in the region of $20K per year, if memory serves correctly. If treatments are provided at scale by the NHS, there normally has to be evidence that the cost is justified by them being safe and effective. I personally think that the current affirmative approach to trans healthcare is a bonanza to the private healthcare industry, who don’t care about outcomes for patients as long as they are making money.

You mean please tell you anything so you can look for all the reasons you don't agree. What's the point? You can't see this from any other perspective than your own.

I have no interest in either getting you off or joining you on your high horse. Just letting you know you look silly up there.

You can't see this from any other perspective than your own.

Well you haven't shared your perspective have you? You've just been rude.

It’s a shame you won’t elaborate @LadyOfTheFliessssss I was genuinely interested in your viewpoint and others lurking may be even more so. You might even find they agree with you.

But as you won’t share its harder for people to evaluate things having heard a variety of views.

YEP

No thanks. Been there, done that and heard all the bullshit already.

If you are spending your life worrying about other people's genitals to this extent, we have no common ground. It's absolutely fucking stupid.

LadyOfTheFliessssss · Today 20:29

This thread is about human animals as incarnate bodies, and how one class of them can have an impact on the other as a result - when circumstances are such that proximity of one to the other could be difficult. The impact can be physical or mental.

This thread is not about out of body interactions in some abstract spiritual realm where no physical contact is possible but how men’s bodies and driven mental states sometimes make women feel vulnerable.

I think even you can see that sex criminals, who are 98% likely to be male, use their genitals, not just their mind, to assault predominantly women and children’s genitals specifically.

Most men do not do this, a few do. In the same way most men who are transgender do not do this, but some do.

I don't give a shit. I'm sure you'd like me to agree that anyone who is trans is a potential sex criminal but they're just ordinary people. And braying about ridiculous unlikely extremes does not a good argument make.

I'm out. Got a life to live so I can't chat genitalia with you. Soz.

LadyOfTheFliessssss · Today 21:28
I don't give a shit. I'm sure you'd like me to agree that anyone who is trans is a potential sex criminal but they're just ordinary people. And braying about ridiculous unlikely extremes does not a good argument make.

I'm out. Got a life to live so I can't chat genitalia with you. Soz.

The whole point is exactly the one you make: anyone who is trans is just a normal person.

There are male people and female normal people.

A transwoman is basically a normal male person even if identifying as a woman.

And among all normal male people there are some potential sex criminals.

Women would therefore like to maintain certain spaces as being for women only.

In the case of prisons, the males some women are being housed with are not just potential criminals, but actual ones who are identifying as being women.

@LadyOfTheFliessssss - do you give a shit when violent, male-bodied sex offenders who identify as female, are placed in women’s jails, locked up with vulnerable women who they go on to sexually abuse?

Maybe you might give a shit when female aestheticians are sued for not wanting to wax male genitalia?

How about when a woman who has been raped is told she cannot want or expect to have a support group with no male bodied, male born individuals in it - do you give a shit about a traumatised woman who only wants to talk about her rape in front of other females - or should she be left without support because trans women are welcome in every group in a rape crisis centre, but women who need women-only spaces cannot have even one group, out of all the groups the centre offers?

Do you give a shit when a trans identifying, male bodied individual walks round in a shelter full of vulnerable women and children, proudly displaying their penis, and gloating about making women uncomfortable - but the only wrongdoer in that situation would be any woman who complained?

Will you give a shit when violent or abusive men misuse the self ID laws to gain entry to women’s single sex spaces, to abuse or terrorise women and girls?

I give a shit about all of these things.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius - Totally agree with every word.