To think that this book should not be sold to young girls?

[WandaWomblesaurus]

twitter.com/Waterstones/status/1623584986740953091?s=20&t=WU0D0fzc6ClGJC5R-gJnuw

Waterstones tweeted celebrating a book that is about transing girls. Here is one of the illustrations from the book.

AIBU to think that this is directly promoting self harm to young vulnerable girls?

It's bizarre that the law literally allows a 17 year old to choose to refuse life saving treatment and die, but folks obsess about a tiny number of 16 or 17 year olds choosing to have mastectomies

Stop with the frothing. Being concerned about teens having healthy body parts isn’t “obsessing”

having healthy body parts removed*

But key question - how many double mastectomies have actually been carried out on people under 18?

Hundreds worldwide at least.

This study alone documented 35 under 18, including 2 as young as 13. So multiply that by all the other hundreds of gender clinics across the USA and other countries, add in all those who weren’t including in studies, those done privately and it’s probably in the thousands.

If we don’t know completely because gender clinics don’t publish their figures and there’s a huge private market.

Shrouding the realities of the iatrogenic harm they carry out is very much the MO of gender clinics and surgeons.

It's bizarre that the law literally allows a 17 year old to choose to refuse life saving treatment and die, but folks obsess about a tiny number of 16 or 17 year olds choosing to have mastectomies.

I don't think it's bizarre at all. For a teenager to need life saving treatment, they must be seriously ill, the treatment may be unpleasant and dangerous and not always successful, so they may prefer to let nature take it's course.

In terms of a 16 or 17 year old having a double mastectomy, it is radical surgery but also cosmetic/unnecessary surgery to remove healthy body parts. I can't see any problem in asking them wait for what amounts to one or 2 years.

Don’t think book banning is the answer to anything.

I'm going to park your offensive comparison of trans people to heroin addicts...

Yes, I think the author of this book is better placed to judge whether his outcome is positive than you are.

Ah yes the dog whistle that is 'transphobe' - do you think anyone who disagrees with you is scared of people who identify as trans? What a simplistic worldview you have.

Choosing to make extreme body modifications to yourself, ones that will shorten your life, because of a belief system does not make you any kind of expert on medicine, the long term effects of transition, child development or the insidious impact of social contagion.

'Positive outcome'? Based on what exactly? How this person feels today? What about in ten years? Twenty? Thirty? Can you imagine thirty years' time? I ask because you sound quite young.

But of course, people who show concern are just hoping for negative outcomes. What a sad, ungenerous, defensive way to view others.

FYI: I hope I'm wrong about long-term outcomes, but I very much doubt it.

No, but a bit of extra thought and care would be welcome from

Publishers when choosing what to publish
Bookshops when choosing what to promote
Teachers and librarians when choosing what to stock
Parents when choosing what to buy

I wouldn't want my kids having unfettered access to rabidly racist books, for example, without some guidance and context.

I wouldn't want or expect Waterstones to promote Mein Kampf or David Irving or Little Black Sambo as a book of the week.

I wouldn't want the school library packed full of antisemitic, anti-Black literature with the students encouraged to borrow and read them without any critique.

"Frothing"

Ever get the feeling that somebody is a bit angry at their mum? 🤣

It's not about the outcome for this one individual. Even if they were magically able to predict their health in the future or to know that they've increased their risk of cancer, osteoporosis, etc.

Even if that individual were absolutely fine, which 'Lived experience' doesn't tell you, that doesn't mean it's OK to tell adolescent girls that the answer to their very normal and painful experience of growing into a woman Is to surgically destroy their body.

Very very few girls don't have these feelings towards their bodies as they develop. That's why self harm and eating disorders are so prevalent. And socially contagious.

The difference is that on the whole, parents, teachers, doctors and other authority figures generally try to reduce and stop those behaviours, not to encourage them and share in the belief that their bodies are disgusting and wrong and the answer is to hack them to pieces.

When i was anorexic, no one gave me appetite suppressants.

When i was self harming, they gave me stitches, not a knife.

Not trans people. The effects of “gender affirming care”.

I’ve seen with my own eyes, and heard first hand, trans people list all the physical problems they have as a result of puberty blockers, wrong sex hormones, surgery, and how they’ve impacted their lives and still claim life is wonderful and it was all worth it.

It’s sunk cost fallacy. They’ve invested so much it’s hard to acknowledge the error of their ways. Those who come to that realisation end up on r/detrans.

They do not become unreasonable just because some transphobes desperately want all trans people to have awful outcomes to justify their campaign against trans healthcare.

@TeaKlaxon do you think if someone is a man or a woman then they should feel pressured to have a certain type of body? Do you think it is an acceptable belief that, for example, if you are a man, you need to have a flat chest?

God, what a load of offensive hyperbole. This is a graphic novel about one person's experience, not Mein bloody Kampf. Its sales seem quite modest. It's hardly a number one bestseller resulting in hordes of teenage girls transitioning. Some young people will find it helpful.

Very very few girls don't have these feelings towards their bodies as they develop.
See... that is YOUR experience, you can't just say it like a fact as if that makes it true.
It certainly wasn't mine, I was comfortable in my own skin and still am.
A lot of my friends were too.
That's not to say I'm suggesting it's everyone's experience, because I'm not at all
Just that surely you can understand that we are all different, we're not all the same?

They do not become unreasonable just because some transphobes desperately want all trans people to have awful outcomes to justify their campaign against trans healthcare.

Medical treatments result in worse outcomes. Including children. There is no evidence medical treatment improves outcomes.

The “campaign” if you want to call it that, is for children to receive evidence-based healthcare, not consumer-driven ideological healthcare.

God, what a load of offensive hyperbole. This is a graphic novel about one person's experience, not Mein bloody Kampf. Its sales seem quite modest. It's hardly a number one bestseller resulting in hordes of teenage girls transitioning. Some young people will find it helpful.

So do you believe that all books should be published regardless of content? This is the point the poster you quoted was making, using obviously extreme examples because people don't seem to understand actual words otherwise.

Anything that contributes to the social contagion teenage girls are experiencing is a concern, and a major company like Waterstone’s shouldn’t be promoting it as a result.

Yes, I think the author of this book is better placed to judge whether his outcome is positive than you are.

Except that is not a full and balanced representation of the facts.

This book has no discussion of the health status of the author. This is written by someone deeply invested in the ideology and as such the account should be taken with extreme caution. This is not flagged in the book however.

The ‘lived experiences’ of the growing number of girls who show pictures of terribly mutilated breasts, reports of severe haemorrhage due to ripping of the vagina as testosterone has thinned the skin so badly, the growing numbers we see on walking sticks due to bone density issues caused by being out into menopause as a teenager.

There are the detransitioners accounts of severe liver damage due to the body trying to metabolise the huge overdoses of testosterone and the phantom nipple/breast pain due to amputation.

It is utterly irresponsible of Waterstones to suggest all the ways girls should hate their changing bodies and then present the solution to that not as something healthy like getting into sport, but as taking testosterone.

They even mock Keira Bell who is a victim of this and has been permanently harmed.

Hordes of teenage girls are transitioning, though. The rate of young girls applying for this kind of treatment has increased by over 4000 percent. The graph is insane. That is social contagion. Young girls are extremely vulnerable to it.

There are also, consequently, ever increasing numbers of detransitioners. And their experiences are incredibly distressing to read.

These young girls are being failed, massively, by adults who should know better. It is criminal.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ff0b02b0-1a5d-11ec-8d6d-67649e90fafa?shareToken=21bf99a7754f3a430319eb7af490245a

51 under 18s referred for double mastectomies @TeaKlaxon to remove their healthy breasts

How is it offensive? Lewis is taking medication which will permanently alter the body - drugs to suppress production of oestrogen and progesterone, plus taking a far higher amount of testosterone than a healthy female body naturally produces. Lewis is happy with the results and the book reflects that. However, Lewis is glossing over the fact that taking these drugs will lead to vaginal atrophy, loss of fertility, possible problems with incontinence, an increased risk of early-onset dementia and heart problems, and that's just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. These aren't trivial things to live with. Not every teenager who comes across this book is going to have a mum like @BlibBlabBlob who will take the time and trouble to read it too and sit down and talk about it. Most parents don't have a clue about this stuff and rely on what the medical and other professionals tell them, and unfortunately it's clear many of them have fallen down on the job in this area.

I'm very glad that you didn't experience that. I think most girls do, to a greater or lesser extent, but great for you if you didn't.

That wasn't really the point I was making, though.

the point was that other ways that girls seek to deal with feelings of hating their developing bodies (self harm, eating disorders, etc.) are discouraged, not encouraged, by those who are older and can try to guide them.

As an anorexic I sought validation from books, magazines, other girls, etc. I wasn't told by teachers, therapists, etc. that I was right to hate my breasts and hips and arse and that I should try to starve them away.

Waterstones, like a lot of people and organisations, are just doing this because it's where the money is. It is shameful.

I've no idea what its sales have been to date, but now it's been shortlisted for a high-profile prize they're likely to increase substantially. Hence the anger on this thread that Waterstone's don't appear to have done any due diligence.

So do you believe that all books should be published regardless of content? This is the point the poster you quoted was making, using obviously extreme examples because people don't seem to understand actual words otherwise

Well with self publishing freely available, anyone can publish anything, to be fair.

But of course I don't think harmful, bigoted books should be published and marketed by mainstream publishing. In general they are not.