Do phalloplasties actually work?

[SilverTapz]

After wondering about this for a while, I ended up searching phalloplasty online and ended up on a Reddit page where people post their progress. I had never seen one before an was curious, I guess. It was actually quite shocking. People with what looks like no muscle left on their forearms, someone with a necrotic 'scrotum', someone where the stitches were wide open and the tip has turned black and left a gaping hole etc etc. People seem to be commenting saying that they look great, they've made the right decision etc, but honestly they look absolutely butchered. It's scary. And I guess my question is, do they actually function? Some of these people are so young and it's scary what they've done to their bodies. I can't help but think a lot of them will regret the decision. Is it mainly cosmetic? Can they orgasm? Honestly just very shocked by what I've seen!

It's a valid way of looking at online opinions in research. They wouldn't be collected otherwise. You shouldn't be against it. Further studies might include some of your opinions on this site. Wouldn't you want them included to represent women who feel X?

No one who has cosmetic surgery thinks that it makes them a better person or even worse that it makes them a different sex. They like the look, so what?

Not my cup of tea but they aren't pretending to be something else and worse expecting others to go along with it and enabling their delusions.

There are no feminists issues that do not require the correct identification of women and girls as a category.

This is from the USA and it is from 2018.

I would suggest that there are now rather a lot of very publicly known incidents that show this statement, "Additionally, the study finds that reports of privacy and safety violations in public restrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms are exceedingly rare." to be not true in the USA.

A study looking at allowing men into female spaces finds privacy violations exceedingly rare? How do they define ‘privacy violation’ if a man watching a woman undress doesn’t count?

I am against it. Because it is only gauging what people who are willing to post comments are saying. I think you have to acknowledge that can be incredibly misleading. Any organisation who treats that as anything other than 'this is what the public who are willing to post comments are saying' would be using weak evidence. Is that what you and your organisation does? Use weak evidence such as this and states that it is 'valid'?

That paper has been posted on MN quite a few times. It was never very convincing as it also only looked at reported incidents.

How many threads do we see with women recounting their experiences being exposed to male people masturbating or exposing themselves or abusing them in female single sex spaces who never report?

It was never a strong paper.

They aren't a red herring .Toilets have been the overall focus rather than listing every single area that we don't want men in, women's changing rooms, women's wards, women's sports etc etc.

We just needed the SC to confirm what we all knew so that then rules can be implemented and adhered to.

Also, as I said since 2016 things have changed with trans activists pushing and pushing. You must know that?

It's a valid way of looking at online opinions in research. They wouldn't be collected otherwise.

It takes more than collecting information to make research valid.

I don't know the proportion of boob jobs that go drastically wrong, but I think if it was three-quarters of them they'd be banned.

Oh. Well. That was a twist wasn't it.

Especially if they are relying on reporting of incidents in areas where laws have been passed that counts those very reports as unlawful discrimination….

Yes and also if it interfered with continence and included removing all reproductive organs leading to a rather premature menopause with a future of broken bones.

Why do they remove everything internally too it's horrific.

No I don't think that. Which is why I didn't say that. Read my post. Properly.

I’ve only looked at the abstract, but I see it’s a limited study from 2018 in one US state. It finds that the passage of inclusive “bathroom” laws is not related to the number or frequency of criminal incidents in these spaces. It says reports of privacy and safety concerns in such situations are “exceedingly rare”, and that it provides evidence (fair enough, but not proof) that “fears of increased safety and privacy violations as a result of nondiscrimination laws are not empirically grounded.”

This is the extensive research that you feel supports your assertations?

It's valid and useful for certain things. I use this technique myself from time to time, for certain research questions, though admittedly never as a standalone.

But it's definitely not valid as a accurate capturing of representative opinion and it would never be used in that way by professionals.

And imagine if brands only ever took what was posted about them online as what the population thought about them and whether users liked their products. Fuck. If someone put this kind of report infront of me and said, 'look this is what our target market really think of us', I would be sending them away to do their work.

Aggregating online comments can only be valid for the very limited purpose of gauging what people who post on line comments are saying in the particular media being analysed.

It may be useful for generating further research. But if an organisation is drawing strong conclusions from them, it could be likely that they end up with false conclusions.

It also relies on people then posting about their traumatic experiences on line. I know of very few women and girls who would even think of such a thing.

It also ignores the many activist poster such as yourself, who will post online with little strong evidence to support claims.

That you call this 'valid' research and defended it shows the organisation/s you work for in a very poor light.

I must admit that I was disappointed to see the 'valid' defence.

But then the other day I had someone lecture me that something that had a very weak conclusion and even admitted its limitations was regarded as 'good' quality research to support the conclusion. I realised that I am obviously from a different field that uses data to using it in academia and I felt rather sad that so much poor quality research is being regarded as being 'strong', rather than only an indication of where further research was needed.

It's a joke! An absolute joke! And I feel embarrassed for that poster that they used it. One state, and the fact that women don't report these things - because we know fucking damn well what the response would be, don't we - means it 'dIdN't hApPeN'. We went straight from MeToo, to mass silencing women and girls and then using that silence as complicity and to gaslight.

I'd be embarrassed to put my name to that if I was MyOliveHelper. I'm actually cringing with second hand embarrassment for them. Imagine that constitutes 'research' on ANY LEVEL. Fuck me a 9 year old would be too embarrassed to pass that in as homework.

It's entirely dependent on what you want to find out.

So if you want to understand emerging themes in a category - it is useful. For example, if you want to find out what people are using vitamin supplements for (recent example that I worked on).

But you wouldn't use it in isolation and you wouldn't definitely wouldn't use it to gauge representative opinion on anything, much less a complex topic like this.

Research presented by TRAs is almost uniformly poor, biased, misinterpreted, falsely generalised to unrelated populations, or simply misrepresented. They never seem to expect people to actually read the studies they quote even when they don’t try to hide it behind references to opinion pieces rather than the research itself.

Yes. I agree.

I have used media aggregation such as this to look at things like usage, and at what may be issues needing attention, particularly immediate attention and investigation.

To shape policy and prioritisation of issues? Fucking hell! To use papers such as the ones presented to categorise toilets as being a 'red herring', is negligent.

If I worked for an organisation that did this, I would be hugely concerned.

An alternative conclusion from that research would be that the laws introduced in those areas were as effective at silencing women as they were at removing their privacy, safety and dignity.

An alternative conclusion from that research would be that the laws introduced in those areas were as effective at silencing women

Very true.

Absolutely. The ability of transactists to influence and manipulate laws to intimidate and silence women is chilling. As this thread demonstrates, the desperation to silence women from speaking and understanding issues that relate to us is very strong.