AIBU to think the NHS should not be recommending hysterectomy to young girls

[pisacake]

NHS handout for 'young trans people in the UK'

www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/assets/media/17-15-02-A-Guide-For-Young-People.pdf

'Surgical Options'

"Hysterectomy
This surgery involves the removal of the interior female sexual organs. This prevents the risk of cancer and forever prevents periods or risk of pregnancy"

Sounds awesome doesn't it!

Here's the NHS advice on taking drugs

"Hormone Blockers
If blockers (or anti-androgens) are taken when younger, the effects from puberty are likely not to occur and a more passable body is likely to result."

Yes, that's right kids you can just skip puberty, and be Peter Pan. It's a brave new world where you are stuck with a micropenis for the rest of your life.

And what if your stupid parents don't agree?

"If you are under 16 a lot will depend on gaining the full support from your parents. In other countries hormone blockers can be given to younger transsexual people which will prevent the onset of unwanted secondary sex characteristics. This may mean that you look further than the UK for medical intervention. It would be undesirable to buy hormones over the internet without fully knowing what you are buying."

That's right kids! You can suppress those pesky unwanted secondary sex characteristics' by buying hormones on teh internetz. Yay NHS! Yay Aneurin Bevan!

And boys, thinking of becoming girls, it's NOTHING to worry about, you can chop off your balls and turn your dick inside out, it's perfectly normal! It will even improve your health, everything is awesome!

""Orchidectomy is the removal of the testes. This operation means that testosterone will no longer be naturally produced in the body and therefore you can do without your testosterone blocker. In general, the lower the dose of any drug the lower the health risks you will have. "

"Technology for SRS is quite advanced and with good surgery even gynaecologists are said to find it hard to distinguish a constructed vagina from a natal one. "

A constructed vagina huh? You mean like a sex toy? www.lovehoney.co.uk/sex-toys/male-sex-toys/pocket-vaginas/ I hear they are pretty realistic too.

This is NHS advice, albeit I don't think any doctor actually reviews this stuff before they print it, there seems to be an attitude that it would be transphobic to have any of this written by mainstream medics, so let's just let a self-selecting group of people with loud voices do it. (Like the group Mermaids, who are recommended in the handout, and who basically consist of one woman who took her son to Thailand at 16 to have 'bottom surgery'.)

And don't think all these pamphlets and websites telling you that hysterectomy and puberty blocking are awesome have no effect on kids. Nope, there is a MASSIVE increase in kids identifying as trans.

Here's an article today from St Albans www.hertsad.co.uk/news/increase-in-trans-support-is-offered-as-child-gender-fluidity-rises-in-st-albans-district-1-5264057

Lots and lots of girls deciding they are boys because "He wouldn’t wear knickers and refused to play with girls’ toys" and the NHS happily supporting that. (That biologically female child is seven-years-old, and per the NHS handout above you will get GREAT results, by taking puberty blockers follow by testosterone, which "offers very effective masculinisation for FTMs". Apparently said child is "adamant he will grow up and get married and be the husband and daddy and he will have a wife". )

There is obviously no meaningful consent possible by pre-pubescent child to puberty blocking, because they have no real conception of what puberty hormones would do to their body AND brain. But apparently there is no concern whatsoever about this, because EVERYTHING IS AWESOME when you're trans. So much better than being a boring old 'cis' female with periods and cancer and pregnancy and all those silly 'ciswoman' problems.

Why can't the information be more balanced?

Something along the lines of "if there is sufficient skin, it is usually possible to create a "neo-vagina" after removal of the penis and testes. Many transwomen are pleased with the results of this surgery and cosmetic advances are being made all the time. However, as with any surgery, complications can occur, including hair re-growth inside the neo-vagina and infections. This surgery is not reversible so should not be undertaken without full counselling."

What could be the possible harm in mentioning the downsides? confused

Because the pamphlet was written by misogynist who believe a vagina is nothing more than a hole rather than a complex structure... and really how hard could it be to make a hole?

Thank you for your informative post norah. I genuinely find it very scary.

Formerbabe I totally agree that for some of them it has to be a phase. I said I was a lesbian when I was a young teen, I'm totally straight but at the time I thought it was edgy or something. It went on for ages!

I have lots of questions but I always feel like I'm out of order / ignorant and I've seen trans threads descend into bunfights very quickly.

formerbabe

I don’t disagree. The problem with all this is that children are medicalised on the basis of it.

There is no doubt that for some it’s just trendy. 10 girls at once coming out at St Paul’s school, for instance.

But then you have, running alongside that, leaflets which explain transgenderism as something that is innate, something that is necessary to expose so you can be authentic and happy, be accommodated, and celebrated.

Something that your parents might disagree with, and the language often framed around that implying that your parents are old-fashioned and bigoted.

It is a blurring of something that is trendy, with something that is a psychological illness and providing what seems to be a sought after victim status.

There is some strong manipulation going on.

Is there an alterior motive for any of this? I was thinking financial but then if the nhs pay that would be a no. Do these mermaids people etc genuinely believe they are doing something good and altruistic and the rest of us just 'haven't seen the light yet'? Any person with half a brain would question the drugs used etc so why / how has this escaped all of the activists and parents pushing on one child after the next?

I truly do not understand. And i am NOT transphobic - just scared that innocent children are being used in what i see as a huge experiment on small and vulnerable people in society.

@datun don't get me started on victim culture ☠️Hate it!

Being gay has nothing whatsoever to do with being trans.

One is all about sexuality, whether lesbian, gay or bisexual.

The other is all about gender.

Thetoothyteeth the Tories are in the process of dismantling the NHS and introducing the American style system. Theres a huge profit motive.

It’s framing trans as saying that your biological sex and your internal sense of gender don’t fit.

Something that any number of kids will feel.

Because gender is a spectrum of masculinity to femininity. Anyone, male or female, can be on any part of it, at any time.

Framing being trans like that is manipulative.

Being trans should be predicated on gender dysphoria. A psychological illness. Not fun, not cool, not edgy. Nothing to see here.

That would separate out the people who did require treatment, from the children who are either confused or bandwagon jumping.

Trans should not exist without gender dysphoria.

Unless it is patently clear that trans just means kids who don’t conform to social expectations.

Mumoftwo Well, quite. What should be emphasised to kids is that being of this or that sex doesn’t (or shouldn’t) mean that you have to follow a cardboard cutout of behaviours and experiences for the rest of your life, or else you’re in The Wrong Body.

I’ ve suspected I’m somewhere on the ASD scale for over 20 years, since happening on an article in a science journal about the ‘relatively new’ condition of Asperger’s and having a chill of recognition. It’s only been in recent years that the idea of Asperger’s in females has really been a thing. I remember coming across an online article (which was genuinely written in a spirit of sympathy): “Your first kiss in junior high...going to the prom with your true love...girly shopping trips...all of these are milestones that most women take for granted but those with Asperger’s might struggle with.” Well (and leaving aside the obvious USA specificity of it), that Hollywoodified idea of ‘the female norm’ probably misses out a helluva lot of women, ASD or no. (My lack of success with blokes has as much to do with what the outside of yy head looks like as how the inside of it works.)

Being gay has nothing whatsoever to do with being trans

Actually it can, when young people who are attracted to the same sex are uncomfortable with that, it can be (and is being) reframed as part of their wanting to be the opposite sex (and therefore they aren't attracted to the wrong sex at all)

Gay teens are being pushed into identifying as trans before they have any chance to explore their feelings or let them grow. Effeminate gay males are being told their qualities make them female in spirit rather than gay, and vice versa to girls.

The world today is scary. Whwn i was 6stone and convinced i was chubby i was told it was in my head. I still think im enormous and ugly and im told its in my head by drs family everyone. But if i say i am a man and my bodys wrong i will be believed instantly and be allowed surgery to correct this?

My friend has crippling pelvic inflammatory disease resulting in hospitalization on a reasonably frequent basis. She's got two kids and doesn't want anymore but because she's in her early thirties they won't give her a hysterectomy because "she might change her mind", yet we're steering the ship into a world where adolescent females can get rid of their healthy reproductive systems before they've had a chance to properly investigate whether they want the use of them yet?! It is batshit!

@djbaggy im not a fan of the nhs in it's current state after some bad experiences i believe it should be restructured but allowing this to be privatised is scary. American health insurers have started paying out for trans surgery, guess we need to see what bupa or the new copay system says.
I forgot as well - the companies manufacturing these drugs have an ongoing income from this. Stupid of me!

@martha well yes probably because anorexia isn't a human rights / equalities issue. What can you do?! Batshit.

My DPs daughter told him she felt she should be male about 2 years ago, right before leaving for uni. He has now been on hormones for some time, had some counselling and changed all of his official documents to his new name.

Reading all this, I am now pretty terrified for him.

snash12

Is he (she?), dating girls, by any chance?

Thanks for the links Darin and Pencils

From that article The FDA considers the drug’s impact on children’s bones an unanswered question, according to a statement: “The effects of bone density in children whose central precocious puberty is arrested with a GnRH agonist are considered ‘unknown’ as they have not been studied.”

Says it all really, the medical profession have NO idea how these drugs will effect children long-term. How can any of this be ethical?

The fda are primarily a money making organisation in my opinion. In America money talks, it's very easy to get fda approval and then they sign off with a cute little flourish of small print 'unknown / comes with a warning / good luck dumbasses'. Imho.

The NHS/mermaids connection is so fucking scary. Mermaids is a disgusting organization that should really be shut down. They are not there to 'support parents' at all. From pretty much all I have read they are a pressure group and will only 'support parents' if the parents decide to go down the transition route. There has already been a case this year of Mermaids interference in a kids life where the judge ordered Mermaids to stay the fuck away from the kid (in nicer terms, obliviously)

The NHS will be sued to the high heavens once this generation of transkids grows up and realise what has actually been done to them. Once the long term effects of lupron and cross sex hormones start showing. When they want kids and are infertile due to drugs. When they decide that they actually are their birth sex and cannot be 'turned back'...so many ways the NHS (and possibly parents) will be sued. I hope Mermaids is one of the first casualties of this. I genuinely do. I suspect they will escape scrutiny though and the NHS will bear the brunt. Given the NHS really should know better.

*Being gay has nothing whatsoever to do with being trans

Actually it can, when young people who are attracted to the same sex are uncomfortable with that, it can be (and is being) reframed as part of their wanting to be the opposite sex (and therefore they aren't attracted to the wrong sex at all) *

See Iran for this. Homosexuality is illegal, Iran doesn’t have many gays, but by amazing coincidence has lots of transsexuals and state-encouraged surgery.

There is not a huge profit to be made from the NHS by making it the USA system. It's not going to happen. The USA and the UK are different in so many ways. The internet might connect us, stuff like Christmas etc; but the UK doesn't have the system in place to do it. It would be a disaster (and loose votes).

Also, supporting the puberty blockers route, is gay eugenics. Given most kids grow out of 'gender dysphoria' and most of them turn out to simply be gay adults. Where when blockers are used, all kids on blockers go onto cross sex hormones. Probably as brain development occurs in puberty, and putting that off, means the kid is stuck in their 'child like;' mind so is unlikely to have the maturity to just come to terms with being gay.

So many seem in support of gay eugenics. A little strange, given how accepting society is meant to be towards gay people.

Mind with mermaids throwing fake suicide stats at parents, you cannot blame the parents for listening to Mermaids. The widespread support for blockers is my issue. Not with parents who have mostly been effectively bullied into using them on their own child, who without them would probably have just turned out to be gay/lesbian.

But not being heterosexual is no longer a sin, no longer thought of as deviant, post victorian age - before this age it was acceptable in many circles of life, including the court. Sexuality really is different from gender. It's about who you are attracted to in a sexual way and who you will get pleasure from.

I used to work with people with dementia who reverted to childhood and thought they were kids again. What happens if trans people get dementia and think they are themselves pre op and cant understand why their body is the opposite sex.

We need to keep talking about this. Until recently anyone raising these concerns has been openly silenced.The only views our children will find online are silent about any dangers or disadvantages.They are told that any criticism is 'literal violence and hate speech' and we are all 'transphobic' or hate filled 'TERFS'. Unbelievably it is only in the last month that the press have started publishing articles that are gender critical.

It is hard to talk about this because of all the cries of transphobia Transgender people must live their lives free from discrimination and harassment. Women must also be allowed to live their lives in the same way and to access hard fought for sex segregated spaces / sport etc. And equally important, children must be allowed to grow and mature free from any pressure from adults to adopt any particular lifestyle. We have an age of consent for very good reasons - this is currently being eroded for transgender children who are making decisions that they cannot possibly be old enough to make. This cannot continue.