To think that if your thread is about a feminist issue you should post on the feminist board

[Shallishanti123]

Just that really. Too many feminist board type threads disguised as AIBUs, but really wanting to bash trans or whoever they feel like hating on right now.

Let’s just all be who we are and lead a happy life.

BrownPaperTeddy I think this is what is so sad. "Genuine" transwomen who have always been among us, using women's toilets, changing rooms, dressing like all us other women and not trying to demand access to women's spaces, awards, all-women's shortlists, sport (especially sad in the USA where one of the main ways that girls from deprived backgrounds can afford to go to university is to qualify for sports scholarships and are now being pushed out by trans girls who are stronger, better, faster at the same events), demanding words like "people with cervixes" or "chest feeding" be used, content warnings on ads for tampons for "gendered language", dressing not to "pass" but as some kind of caricature of a woman. The recent posts about that guy Bunce at Credit Suisse particularly infuriated me as a woman working in finance - if I dressed like that I'd be sent home to change for being unprofessional and yet he is feted for his bravery. The double standards just kick women down yet again in an already male-dominated industry. Same for the BFI Women in Film keynote speaker - oh let's marginalise women even more than they already are by having the speaker be a trans woman.

I think there are only two solutions: either a third unisex bathroom, to be used by a single person at any time like a disabled loo (but crucially not displacing disabled loos).

Or alternatively, do away entirely with self-ID and maintain gatekeeping by medical professionals to people with genuine diagnosed gender dysphoria. It SHOULD be difficult and time consuming to change your legal designation from male to female, because there is a balance to be struck between the rights of trans people and the rights of everybody else.

@Xiaoxiong

Completely agree with everything that you said.

Who ever thought that self ID would be a good thing? Surely anyone with half a brain cell could foresee the potential problems?

A genuine question then - why can't the argument simply be against self ID? Why has it been widened to include men in general?

Would more people not be on board if the argument centred on the issues - from the dangerous to the absurd - of self ID?

Obviously in terms of day to day behaviour, no one should be harassed or attacked. Anyone harassed or attacked should be protected and their attackers prosecuted for the crimes they're committing, just as anyone else should be.

And in terms of how kids should be treated at school, the Transgender Trend school resource pack is excellent. For children under 18, I found this utterly shocking to read from the American Academy of Paediatrics: "when gender dysphoria (GD) occurs in the pre-pubertal child, it resolves in 80-95 percent of patients by late adolescence after they naturally pass through puberty. This is consistent with studies of identical twins that prove no one is born hard-wired to develop GD."

And yet...

Puberty-blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty. Puberty blocking hormones (gonadotropin releasing hormone agonists or GnRH agonists) arrest bone growth, decrease bone density, prevent the sex-steroid dependent organization and maturation of the adolescent brain, and inhibit fertility by preventing the development of gonadal tissue and mature gametes for the duration of treatment.

Pre-pubertal children who receive puberty-blocking hormones (GnRH agonists) followed by cross-sex hormones are permanently sterilized. Pre-pubertal children who bypass pubertal suppression and are placed on cross-sex hormones directly are also permanently sterilized.

www.acpeds.org/gender-dysphoria-in-children-summary-points

This is very, very heavy and permanent stuff that we are talking about. Children should not be allowed to even consider doing any of this and adults should have years of therapy first before deciding to go down this route. Sterilisation is a huge decision for an adult let alone a child - my DH with two children in his 30s was turned down for the snip because "you might decide to have more".

BrownPaperTeddy

It's all a bit moot now.

An ideology has taken the place of a medical condition. I guess many women were okay with accommodating a medical condition, on the odd occasion when it was necessary. Which basically happened to be just toilets and changing rooms.

It certainly wasn't sports, prisons, rape refuges, all women shortlists and every single thing with the word woman in it.

And now the very definition of the word woman itself.

You can't go back in time. Unfortunately.

I'm sure personally, a lot of women have empathy for people with gender dysphoria. No one's a monster. But again, it's immaterial.

You can't practically act on it. Because you can't make a distinction.

It's now necessary to maintain the integrity of words. Of language.

Feminists did predict this. They knew that transsexuals would be caught in the crossfire and the backlash encompass them. So did the transsexuals.

It was obvious that women weren't going to just cede all their rights because 'kindness'.

What was slightly less obvious, certainly to a lot of women who weren't radical feminists, was quite how far these TRAs would take it.

I'm not sure many people predicted convicted rapists being housed in women's prisons and being allowed to assault the women there.

Or male people taking women's officer jobs, claiming they could get pregnant just as much as any other woman who wasn't ovulating.

Or the dictionary definition of the word woman being called a transphobic hate crime.

Or a 4000% increase in youngsters wanting to identify out of their sex, mostly girls.

Accommodating men with gender dysphoria is a dot so far in the distance you can't even see it using the Hubble telescope.

I think two things, first is that most people still don't understand the ramifications of self-ID. When I tried to explain to someone at work about it they just couldn't understand it. They were like - but why would someone want to do that if they hadn't had surgery, they just aren't a woman. It wouldn't be allowed. Like trying to get a driving licence when you hadn't passed the test. They have to send in evidence that they're trans don't they? It turned out that they thought the word "trans" meant "post-operative with a gender recognition certificate".

And second is that we don't even have self-ID yet and there are things that are happening that "would never happen" and yet are already happening. Women being assaulted in women's prisons by trans women who still have penises (Karen White). Girlguides potentially having children with penises and leaders with penises self-identifying into spaces where the safeguarding policies were written with the assumption that no one has a penis - while also excluding girls who think they might be boys. Children being told in school that if they like pink and want to wear a dress they might actually be a girl (see reports of Mermaids and Allsorts training) and then being given permanent and irreversible medical treatment like pubertal blockers, inducing endocrine changes that have detrimental health effects.

@Xiaoxiong

Again you make excellent points.

My only concern here is that surely any medical treatment that a child undergoes should be between the child, the parents and their doctors - and in some cases, the state, if there is disagreement between parents and drs?

I'm not really sure why it is our business?

Obviously we can have opinions but is it right that we try to stop any form of medical treatment because we don't agree with it?

Certainly as adults we have the right to decide for ourselves, even if that decision might have poor outcomes, as long as we are considered of sound mind. So I could choose not to have treatment even if that meant I could die. I don't see this as any different.

We already legally bar many forms of medical treatments and alterations to one's own body because we as a society deem that it's illegal - either you cannot consent to it, or there is a cut off at which time you are deemed able to make that decision for yourself, or if you cannot ever do it even with parental consent.

So for instance, you cannot ask a doctor to cut off a healthy limb, or compel them to do so by law if they refuse. And it's no defence to criminal prosecution to say "oh, he consented to allow me to cut his leg off" - you're still guilty because you cannot consent to that kind of harm to be done to you, even if you sign every contract under the sun and are deemed to be of sound mind. You cannot get a tattoo until you are 18 or silicon breast implants until you are 22, even with parental consent. You cannot buy cigarettes or alcohol at various age cut-offs, with/without food etc. And of course, you cannot ask a doctor to assist you to commit suicide.

And one more point - the Hippocratic Oath bars any doctor from undertaking medical treatment that does harm. In many cases, there is a balancing act to be struck between doing harm and doing good. For instance, chemotherapy works by killing cancer cells, but also kills other healthy cells - amputation of a foot may be necessary to save a leg of a diabetic - etc etc. In many cases patients who beg for particular treatments are turned down because the harm that would be caused would be greater than the medical benefits.

So, it is our business and in the public interest to make these decisions on a societal basis rather than keeping it between parents, doctors and children, because we make doctors legally liable for this balancing act every day and the law will hold them criminally responsible for acts that we as a society deem to be breaking this duty to their patients health and wellbeing. As a result medical ethics is a hideously complicated area, and good research (preferably unencumbered by accusations of transphobia and attempts to get people doing such research fired) is absolutely essential to inform the decisions that doctors have to make on a daily basis.

And just one more point! You say: "So I could choose not to have treatment even if that meant I could die"

This is denial of treatment, which is treated differently to proactively giving or demanding treatment. Doctors can withdraw treatment allowing you to die, but cannot give you anything that would hasten death unnaturally. And even with parental consent you cannot deny treatment in some cases - Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to deny life-saving treatment for their minor children such as blood transfusions.

YABU

Nice post helen and kudos to shalli for taking your words to heart.

Nevertheless I note that it takes someone who is not female (MNHQ don’t @ me - those are Helen’s own words) to get the OP to listen. Women saying that this is a massive problem are just silly/boring/bigoted....

rightreckoner to be fair to the OP I think Helen's post was just the final straw. The real peak trans moment was earlier on when slapbetcommissioner and RepealtheGRA brought up Stefonknee Wolscht and the concept of "trans-age".

Fair enough. Stefonknee would tend to peak trans pretty much anyone. But I do wonder what on earth the OP thought we were all whinging about though. It’s all pretty much laid out for anyone with eyes to see.

@Xiaoxiong

I'm assuming though that the current treatments being prescribed are legal? What alternative is there for people with genuine gender dysphoria?

I could for example, have a preventative mastectomy and oopherectomy if I had the BRCA gene - so some forms of surgery are allowed to prevent possible harm.

We are also allowed to consent to cosmetic surgery which in some cases could be quite disfiguring. It seems to be a very fine line between what we consider to be acceptable and what isn't.

I had no idea you have to be over 22 to have a breast enlargement. Is that definitely correct?

right you'd be amazed how easy it is to be completely in denial about this, even though it's all laid out to see. I myself was not really on top of this at all until a conversation with my aunt, my mum and their friend who is a trans woman (transitioned in 1995!). I'm tearing my hair out with DH and many of our male friends who just seem to feel that I'm being really mean and transphobic, akin to paedo panics in the 1990s.

My female friends generally get it after a few examples, often weirdly about smear tests where most women I know have requested female GPs/nurses to do theirs and would not be happy to have a trans woman do their smear. The only men I know who get it immediately are either gay, or have daughters.

YABU...... The feminists on here are worth their weight in gold. They're Hilarious..... .

BrownPaperTeddy

I think it's less about allowing adults with gender dysphoria to access treatment to alleviate their symptoms, and more about the reasons why so many children are claiming to be trans.

(Also, you don't have to be gender dysphoric to be trans-. That's considered transphobic now).

A lot of women are worried about rapid onset gender dysphoria. Where a child identifies as trans, without any history of gender dysphoria.

Social contagion is playing a huge part. When you have 10 girls at st Pauls school all coming out at once, you know it's not so much a medical condition, as a social one.

Girls are binding their breasts and it's being normalised across the board.

Many children are treating transgenderism as a lifestyle choice. Because it is being taught in schools. That gender is a spectrum, which, through sleight of hand, becomes sex. It's mimicking the pro ana contagion of anorexia. Children are encouraged online to transition. And social pressure is being brought to bear.

Affirmation at all costs is proving to be dangerous.

I won't post it here, because it's very upsetting, but the recent photographs showing how skin is removed to create a fake penis on a young girl was so shocking that words don't really do it justice.

And that was after a double mastectomy. Google it if you have a strong enough stomach.

Medicalising transition will render children permanently sterile, on medication for life, and with the genitalia of a child, or subject to incredibly invasive surgery. Their sex life is permanently compromised as a result.

Finding out why ten girls at once are setting themselves on that path is what occupies feminists. Not the decision of an adult man to have a pair of silicon breasts.

BrownPaperTeddy apologies, you have to be 18 in the UK for silicone implants, 22 in the USA by FDA regulations.

You're absolutely right that some forms of surgery are allowed to prevent possible harm. That's because the balance between the harm of surgery vs. the likelihood of developing breast cancer is balanced against each other. I myself have had parts of my skin and moles removed surgically to prevent them developing into carcinomas (with some pretty gnarly scars as a result!)

At present, I believe that the balance of harm from hormones and surgery should be weighed up against the likelihood of mental health issues (suicide, depression). Many people are increasingly speaking up after their experience of family, friends, children going through this process that with the current wave of trans rights activism feeding through to medical professionals, there is no longer a weighing up going on, and that mere assertion of gender non-conformity or a statement of being transgender to a doctor is immediately affirmed, and the decision is made that hormones and puberty blockers are needed without in-depth evaluation of mental health issues. (See Helen's post above about young people with mental health issues losing their support because it's increasingly being deemed transphobic to conflate transgenderism with a mental health disorder).

One area of research that is desperately needed is whether in fact mental health issues do resolve successfully with surgery, with hormones alone, with a wait-and-see approach, etc. Unfortunately, research into these questions is often hampered by accusation of transphobia and attempts to get researchers fired or defunded (see for instance the researcher at the University of Bath whose funding was rescinded).

In terms of what is legal and not legal - it is indeed an extremely fine line, and this is exactly what discussions like these are meant to address. We as a society need to be able to have open discussions informed by science, philosophy, ethics, common moral values about what we decide is to be legal or not, and these decisions are allowed to change over time. Electro shock therapy used to be legal, so did lobotomies - now they aren't. Routine circumcision is normal in the USA and is offered to parents of babies in hospital, here it's something only done for medical or religious reasons only but still isn't illegal. In some countries vaccinations are mandatory to access school or services. Legal lines around abortion are drawn differently in almost every country in the world. What's acceptable or legal for us today may or may not change in future.

Great thread OP, well done!

OP, this thread might interest you. Started today.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3378075-I-would-like-to-say-thankyou

And yes, while I've been responding directly to questions I agree with Datun about the wider concerns of why so many children are deciding en masse that they are trans. The other big problem I have with the concept of self-ID is that it divorces the legal status from any medical transition and plays straight into the idea that being trans is as simple as saying "I'm trans" and getting a lot of positive affirmation, celebration, congratulations for being brave etc (this absolutely happens in schools, I've seen it myself). And then as a child you're down the path of pressure to wear binders, take blockers, permanent physical changes, unless you have adults all around you who are willing to stand up in the face of being accused of being unsupportive TERFs and transphobes to say - hold your horses, watch, wait, wear what you like but don't do anything permanent, research shows the vast majority of kids who believe they are trans will grow out of it.

Totally disagree OP. Feminism is everyone’s business- whether you want it to be or not. It’s not a hobby to be filed away like being a hairless cat enthusiast.

@Xiaoxiong

Really interesting points.

Social contagion in particular - clearly much more research needs to be done to see if it is more prevalent, or if an increase in acceptance allows more people to admit to their feelings, whether people are questioning gender roles in society - it's obviously such a complex area.

@Datun - In and of itself the horror that you describe of phalloplasty doesn't concern me (it would if it was being done to someone under 18) but, as I said before, many adults already have surgery that in my view scars and damages them but I see it as their body and their choice. So long as it is legal and no one is forcing anyone to have it done I don't have a view on it. There are lots of things that people do that I wouldn't do or have done to me but I respect their right to do it if they want. Doesn't mean that I agree with it but that I believe they have the right to choose it for themselves.

I do absolutely agree that the wider societal implications mean that this topic has to be debated and discussed. I'm very pleasantly surprised to see that, on the whole on this thread, it has been a very respectful debate on both sides of the discussion. I've certainly been given pause for thought and to examine why I believe certain things.