I went to the Tavistock as a young person - AMA

[MAW1993]

I attended the Tavistock from 2008 to 2011, beginning when I was about 15. I made this post because I saw the many questions people asked on a previous AMA. Unfortunately, the OP was uncomfortable answering some of them, and I felt there may be a need for an AMA with someone who can be more open.

I have been made aware that you outlined your certainty that I had been sexually abused as a child on another thread. That was before your more recent questions here. Therefore, it feels to me that you are searching for something that fits with that. Would you have come to the same conclusion based only on the events of my childhood, if I wasn't trans?

You are entitled to your beliefs, but I don't think it is right for you to interrogate my childhood to try and back them up. I know it is an AMA and so I have opened myself up to that to a degree. However, I have answered these questions honestly before as well as making it clear why I don't think that what you are alleging is a possibility.

Even ignoring all that, I don't see how it would change my life now. I have been perceived and treated as a man since my early adulthood. My feelings on my body have never changed. The only thing that a discovery like that would prompt is the destruction of my relationship with my parents. In terms of your approach, an event like that cannot be ruled out for anyone. None of us can remember our infancy. Would you recommend that others accuse their parents of covering up abuse on that basis?

I’m not sure what had been said about me or by who. It is true that I have mentioned your account in other threads. That has only been where your experience was directly relevant. For example, it was noticed that your description of gender distress was very similar to Jazz Jennings, another person with significant red flags for abuse in their childhood. You both describe a feeling of horror towards your genitalia from a very young age. This generated understandable concern about the underlying cause. No discussion has ever involved gossiping, spreading rumours, or insulting you. It has only ever been focused on how parents can best care for a gender questioning child.

To answer your question, yes I would recommend the exploration even if you did not identify as a transman. There are several reasons why:

• You have struggled with mental illness and suicide attempts since a young age.
• You have such an extreme fear of your vulva being seen or touched that you have been unable to maintain a romantic relationship. This is despite a deep desire to have one and has been the case since before the known sexual assault.
• Your reception teacher strongly suspected a history of abuse. As someone who had worked in schools, I know these suspicions must have been very serious to prompt a physical examination and referral to a forensic child psychologist. It is not that uncommon for children to be shy when getting changed and so I think there must have been other reasons at play.
• Your parents have always been very honest with you as an adult, but still don’t feel able to discuss one specific incident. This stands out as unusual.
• Your mother felt so uncomfortable around your uncle that she went out of her way to avoid him. That seems to be more than just not liking someone to me. I dislike members of my wife’s family, but I am simply civil and bite my tongue when meeting them. I don’t feel unsafe enough to try and avoid them.
• There was a timeline of events where you were cared for by your uncle for hours every day, unsupervised and across several weeks. This was shortly followed by his very close relationship with your father being destroyed and the development of severe distress towards your vulva.

Of course your identity is also a factor. For many young girls, fear and distress about their body is caused by sexual abuse. However even without that the facts above are enough to be very worried. As a future professional who will work to safeguard children, if you knew all of the above would you not feel concern for the child in question?

You do not need to risk offending your parents by asking outright. You could just say you are curious about what happened between your dad and your uncle. You have had conversations with your mum about all kinds of difficult things in the past. I don’t believe she would suspect anything more than curiosity. She may have been waiting for the right time to talk to you about it but found it too hard to know where to start.

Before people maliciously report my post, maybe you should consider that OP is still engaging with me. Does that not suggest a desire to explore this issue further lies beneath the understandable defensiveness? Who are you to deny her that opportunity? OP is an adult and fully capable of deciding who to talk to, and the attempts to have my posts removed before she can even read them is really infantilising. I have read the talk rules in depth and can’t see anywhere that I have breached them or made a personal attack on OP.

I am more than happy to link to the other threads. I think you will see that I haven’t said anything different to what I have said here. You will also see that there are many other people who have serious concerns about your well-being, and that we have never insulted or been cruel about you.

All of those things can be explained by sex dysphoria. Clearly, you don't believe in its existence. You are entitled to you opinion but I think we are going to have to agree to disagree because that is not how I feel. I have already seen the threads in question so there is no need to share them but thank you for offering.

I am happy for your posts to be left. I am confident in myself and who I am and I have heard it all many times before. It is a good example of the kind of questioning that I made reference to when explaining my decision not to be openly trans in my day to day life. I think that will help others to understand why many trans people make the same decision, and the legitimacy of their concerns regarding their privacy.

I’m glad you feel confident in yourself, I can’t imagine it has been easy to reach that point. Whether people believe it or not, I am sorry that you feel I have been invasive. I know many people feel revictimised when difficult events in their past are explored, no matter how sensitively, and understand that people will instinctively protect themselves from that.

It is clear from the way you deal with your rape trauma that your coping mechanism is to suppress it and distract yourself. You should cope however you feel is best, and any choice you make is valid. I just hope you know now that if a day ever comes where that stops working, there are alternative ways to cope. There are also many people like me (or independent mental health experts if you prefer) who can support you through the difficult process of confronting your past 💐

Jesus Christ, @TicklishLemur , can you not just leave it alone? @MAW1993 is not a fucking circus exhibit for you to pontificate about. I hope that if you could hear how you sound you would be consumed by shame. You certainly deserve to.

@MAW1993 is demonstrating a masterclass in restraint, here...

@TicklishLemur I feel like if you were actually sorry about being invasive you wouldn’t have made him spell out the details of how he masturbates and which of his bits were raped. It was obvious what he was talking about if you just read between the lines but no you had to make him bring it all back up. The way you are behaving is very similar to how the therapisr did even though you said that was horrible.

The only person whose opinion of what happened or not with the uncle matters is MAW. Other people can come to whatever conclusion they wnat but stop trying to push something on him that he doesn’t want to think about. Not everyone wants to sit in a circle singing kumbayah and talk about all the bad things in their life. He is training to be a doctor understands himself and is a kind person. Whatever he is doing is working so he doesn’t need you poking your nose in.

Your lucky hes strong enough not to be very upset because most people would be. You knew that and did it anyway seeing as you put a link to samaritans when telling him you think his uncle probably raped him as a baby knowing he had no clue of that even being a possibility. I was reluctant to even say anything else since you don’t know when to stop but I wanted @MAW1993 to know people give a damn

I apologised for that which was accepted by OP. It might have been obvious to you but it wasn’t to me and it was just a misunderstanding. I have no interest in how someone chooses to enjoy their body and I would never want to force a rape victim to provide details they didn’t want to.

The gender therapist wanted OP to deny her sexuality and sleep with boys. She tried to teach OP that the purpose of her body was to arouse men and give them sexual pleasure. I believe no such thing. I accept her fully as a same sex attracted female, as well as her current identity as a transman. I have never treated her as a circus exhibition, just someone who might benefit from loving guidance. Guidance from an older woman who has shared very similar experiences and can identify with her struggles.

The only things I would want to see her find are happiness, self acceptance and the life partner she is looking for. Sadly I only see further harm occurring in her future if the underlying cause of her gender dysphoria is not addressed. Whilst many stopped caring and contributing as soon as their curiosity was resolved, I tried to get to know OP on a deeper level and see if there was anything I could do to help her. These attacks on me are completely unfounded and the ganging up is very unpleasant and hurtful.

Fear of offending or hurting feelings is what allowed the Tavistock clinic to ignore the suffering and abuse affecting many of the children in their care. That is what led to the situation laid out in devastating details by Hilary Cass.

Aw diddums, did the mean girls upset you @TicklishLemur ?

1. HE has never asked for advice or commentary or interpretation.
2. HE has offered to answer our questions. And has done so with grace and patience.
3. HE is training in medicine. If anyone can be said to be going into this with open eyes, it's HIM.
4. HE has far better manners and social skills than you. I think this is the reason you are still getting responses. 99.9% of people would have given up by now.

I'm sorry you are feeling attacked and I understand why childhood abuse is a matter close to your heart. Clearly there are some things we will not agree on, and that is ok. I appreciate that you have been motivated by a desire to help me, but I don't share your views regarding the events you believe to have occurred during my childhood. As such, I'm not sure that there is much more for me to say on that matter.

I would also like to point out that I am happy despite the imperfections in my life. Although my sex dysphoria must seem like the focus of my life, this thread is not representative of my day to day existence. In reality, far more of my attention is focused on upcoming exams than on ruminating over how my life would have been if things were different. I am at peace with my situation and have tried to make the best of it. Ultimately I am content with my life as it stands. It is nice that you care, but you don't need to worry for me going forward.

As a mother and grandmother I could never stop caring about young people dealing with very difficult things. I know you are an adult but you are young to me. But I can see that you do not find my input helpful at the moment. If you do change your mind you know how to reach me. I will always make the time to listen and support you and I would never judge you for anything 🌹

Sorry @popebishop I meant to you earlier but was distracted. I absolutely agree that most teenage girls are pretty far from thinking about pregnancy and childbirth! It's a hard one because the treatments affect your fertility, so that future prospect has to be considered. But there are definitely much better ways to go about it. The finding a boy thing was pretty exhausting and felt very 1950s. Even if I had been attracted to boys it was hardly my most pressing concern at the time.

I’m a straight woman and super excited to be pregnant for the first time. Still would have hated the idea as a 15 year old kid 🙄😦

@TicklishLemur I'll start by saying that I am 100% supportive of OP. I'm also a suspicious person and am reading all the posts hoping that no-one who expresses support for him is actually trying to weedle their way into his trust in order to identify and expose him.

Having said that, I feel that it's you who currently could do with some support having had a few negative posts aimed at you.

[ Yes, I know it was me who previously expressed the view that we 'others' shouldn't interact with each other, and instead interact solely with the OP; however, this was to try and reduce the risk of this AMA degenerating into a typical pile-on hate fest (admittedly, I expected the pile-on to come from anti-trans people and to be directed against the OP... Mind you, that could still happen - particularly if such people were to feel that one of their own was under attack). ]

Anyhoo...

For what it's worth, I think that you tried your best to express yourself as carefully (and as full of care) as you could. There were times when I was worried (like you were) for how your words might effect the OP, and did consider stepping in and suggesting you had overstepped the mark... but I didn't. Instead, I limited myself to clicking the 'thanks' icon on one of his posts to show him that he had support out here.

But now I think it's you who could do with a little support and so this is me giving you it... having had multiple negative posts aimed at myself in the past.

That said... I will point out that the impression I get from your posts is that you have a positivist paradigm/ mindset (ie you appear to think things have a single truth - they are either black or white) and that this then makes it ok (and morally the right thing to do) for you to 'help' others by enlightening them to the particular 'truth' of the matter at hand.

Maybe that's too much of a generalisation; maybe it's just with trans issues. Anyway, as a fellow oldie, I can sympathise with the problem of things that have always been one way, suddenly changing.

Boy, I'm rambling! Ok, what am I saying?

I think it's understandable that you hold a view and want to help by passing on that view. However, just because you believe that something is so doesn't make it ok for you to pass that message onto every individual regardless of the individual concerned. The world is full of individuals with individual 'truths'. Expressing your own 'truth' to one person might help them whilst expressing it to another person might harm them. Therefore it's important to read the signs. I don't see signs that suggest that the OP is in danger of having a terrible life and is thus in needs of your well-meaning intervention. Instead, I think your intervention could prove harmful.

It's too late for the OP now (as you've done what you've done), but I pass on my observation in the hope that you think twice (or 3 or 4 times, if that's what it takes) before risking the mental wellbeing of others in pursuit of you passing on your well-intended enlightenment.

That's me. best wishes to you. X

Final thing: you mis-gendered OP (calling him 'her'). I suspect this was done accidentally (in the heat of replying to what you perceived as an attack) and so I only mention it as I suspect that you'd like to know so as to be able to apologise.

Thank you for being kind and not just attacking me. You have definitely given me some things to think about. I am glad you could see how I put in a lot of thought before posting. I don’t think I only believe in one view though. I think there are a lot of reasons why people become trans-identified. I am the first person to tell others not to stereotype the whole group based on a few. I also was quick to condemn KJK’s comments suggesting housing and work discrimination against trans-identified people and to call out the people on this website who were defending her.

But as someone who was repeatedly raped from the ages of 4 to 12 when reading OP’s posts the pain, confusion and anger directed towards OP’s body was palpable. I had the same response and engaged in all manner of self harm because of the overwhelming hatred and sense of betrayal I felt towards my body. If I had been born when OP was I would have been at risk of thinking that testosterone and surgery could heal me too. Blaming yourself or your body is a very common response to sexual abuse.

The danger of doing nothing is that OP plans to undergo one of the most brutal surgeries that can be performed on the female body. OP admits to not possessing any understanding of where that desire comes from. I thought OP deserved to be told how OP’s feelings and childhood events really strongly indicate a cause. Especially when that might completely change how OP decides to manage the distress. Phalloplasty is a major and irreversible surgery that has terrible side effects and can never achieve what the person has their heart set on. If OP had already had this performed I wouldn’t have posted, because it would be too late to help and the risk of harm would be greater than benefit.

I am sorry if I offended you OP by saying she and her. I don’t believe people can change their sex but I do try to be kind to trans-identified people. I don’t feel able to use opposite sex pronouns for you but if I knew you in real life I would call you by your name every time. I have tried to stick to OP here but have slipped up a few times.

Also I would never dox anyone but I would suggest that it would be better not to use your initials and date of birth in your username if you are worried about being identified…

To be fair I think I have been very clear in acknowledging the risks of phalloplasty. I have also been clear about what is not possible. I believe I am well informed about it, and I was aware of the potential sequelae you listed previously. I know it is hard to understand a decision to undergo a surgery which carries serious risk, and results in something that many consider to be rudimentary. But if you were able to experience the degree of sex dysphoria I feel it would make complete sense to you.

They aren't my initials. Down Under by Men At Work (MAW) was on the radio when I had to think of a username. It is my date of birth, but I think you'd be hard pressed to identify me from that, and it could be deduced from the dates and ages at which I attended the Tavistock anyway.

MAW could possibly consider working for the UN peace corps if medicine doesn’t work out…

@WaitingForMojo I agree OP is very kind and diplomatic so I understand the strong inclination to defend OP against what has been misinterpreted as an attack

Thank you but I think that would likely be disastrous 😂 I've always been pretty blunt and to the point but have had to learn the hard way over the years the difference between things you can say and those you should only think!

Many people who struggle with that are autistic OP, do you know if you might be?

No, tact just wasn't one of my strong suits when I was younger. I still think I'm pretty to the point, I just know now that my personal opinion is not always desired or beneficial. We live and learn

I’m autistic, and MAW is much more diplomatic than me! I actually wondered whether you might be autistic, ticklishlemur, as to me your posts have come across as quite rigid in your thinking and not quite knowing when to let something drop, both autistic traits. Also assuming that the op has a similar experience to yours.

Yes I am an autistic, same sex attracted female who also suffered CSA. I never believed a day would come where it was safer for me to be born in the 60s than modern times. That is why I care so much about vulnerable girls like OP once was. That isn’t denying OP’s current transman identity before people have a go, I’m talking about OP as a child.