This is bullshit. Thread #2

[BeyondSpecialSnowflake]

Following on from...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/a2716008-Seriously-MN-this-is-fucking-bullshit?msgid=63181862#63181862

To be honest? >feels old<

AGuyCalledHelen thank you for your contribution. You have articulated it much more effectively than me. Individuals are not the problem, society is.

I don't think we should do anything pre puberty that could impact on a child's future fertility.

Surely this is a decision best left to the individuals involved, in association with the medical professionals responsible for their treatment plan? I mean, fair enough that you have that opinion, I suppose, but I don't necessarily think that it's a universal solution, particularly when a child is apprehensive at the possibility of a puberty they will find uncomfortable and distressing, and their doctors agree with prescribing puberty-suppression treatments.

My point about babies could been explained better by this, I have just realised.

A baby is born with the ability to feed and the basic bodily functions that allow us to live. Ie. breathing and such. Thats it.

A newborn baby that was raised by dogs, would act like a dog. It would walk on both its hands and its legs, it would bark when feeling threatened, it would bite as a means of self defense. There are documented cases of exactly this happening.

Which proves, to me anyway, that we are directly a result of the environment we grow up in. Everything besides how to live, is taught.

WPATH, a worldwide association concerned with the health and treatment of transgender individuals, regards surgery to be a medically necessary procedure for some people, which is by definition not an elective surgery.

"Some people" is the key point here. It should be a last resort when absolutely necessary. The whole treatment of gender dysphoria is now a production line with the ONLY treatment on offer being transition. There is absolutely no therapeutic support available. The whole route is based on affirmation of gender identity without attempting to understand or explain gender.

I support medicalised transition for those of us who are already fucked up by living in this gendered society and where necessary. I don't support a policy which reinforces gender rather than challenging it. I can't support medicalised intervention as a first step.

I'm not suggesting any form of conversion therapy. I'm suggesting allowing people to express themselves and live however they like without telling them that must be the other sex in order for it to be OK.

If my child were trans, I wouldn't allow medical intervention until they were at least 16, In the same way, as a woman covered in tattoos, I wouldn't agree to sign a slip allowing for them to get one at 16.

Everything else I obviously have no idea as my DC aren't old enough yet, and I cringe at parents who claim they'd do this or that with teenagers! But even they hated me for the rest of my life.. I still wouldn't allow it.

And if somehow it made that they could do it without my permission, I'd fight to have them found legally incompetentm because no twelve year old should be taking hormones to transition. No, just no.

Anyway, that's me done with that issue. i really don't think there is any sort of 'debae' to had around hormones and children. To be brutally honest, i think if any of my DC turn out to be trans, by the time they're teenagers there will have been lawsuits or strict laws placed on giving children hormones anyway, so luckily it'll likely never be an issue for me.

The tricky thing here is balancing off the structural and bigger picture issues with the support for the individual. First we have to question why the child feels like that? There is no evidence that being trans is in any way a biological/physiological phenomenon.

The Boston University recently conducted a review study that suggested the opposite. source: www.bu.edu/news/2015/02/13/review-article-provides-evidence-on-the-biological-nature-of-gender-identity/

SpecialAgentSpartacusRoars

Hahaha yes. I have a fourteen year old daughter and we talk a lot via text. Sorry

It means 'Kudos, I agree'.

PaulD - "suggest putting Lumidingo's name through google before engaging with them"

Aww, this Lumidingo, you mean? That is, the clever person who responds to factual biological statements re only females getting pregnant with "I don't fucking care about your stupid ideology. Fuck off." (See photo)

Andi, do you think this Twitter thing is working for you? I mean, 1143 tweets and only 11 followers is a bit sad, isn't it? Just saying.

Do you really think that a statement like "only females get pregnant" is 'ideology'?

I think we all need to remember this:

"Sticks and stones will break my bones
But words will never hurt me
Except pronouns. Pronouns are violent fucks."

Lumidingo This isn't actually a piece of research in itself (I don't think). It's a conclusion based on pulling together selected other snippets of research and suffers from confirmation bias.

'Delusions of Gender' by Cordelia Fine is essential reading before giving any opinions on the scientific validity of these studies.

Agree Helen, I think a large part of the problem is no one seems to be allowed to discuss the elephant in the room: psychological and sexual issues. I wouldn't dare, even on here, express my true opinion on that. Which I think the brutal truth is, the majority of society believe, whether they say it out loud or not. There's a rather large denial by the narcisstic TRAs I've seen that the reason things are going so well for them, is because the majority of straight men in the real world - not the internet, don't care about them, they're harmless to them.

Do they honestly think that will not change as their daughters grow up? With their wives, with the online abuse?

When straight men start to care, transwomen are in deep shit. yet this isn't really something I've ever seen acknowledged by anyone other than you. So refreshing! Honesty, at last.

And I don't think the universal solution is letting 9 and 10 year olds make huge decisions about whether they want babies or not in future.

I know all about dealing with someone going through a puberty they don't want to go through. It would be the easiest short term solution in the world to give them blockers to make them happy now. Is it the best solution for the rest of their life? Absolutely not.

Lum, the thing is you're ignoring thousands of women who tell you that their only experience of 'feeling female' is pregnancy. How many do you think don't tell you that at all?

Are all women wrong? Are only transwomen right?

Because that seems equally as wrong to me.

"A newborn baby that was raised by dogs, would act like a dog. It would walk on both its hands and its legs, it would bark when feeling threatened, it would bite as a means of self defense. There are documented cases of exactly this happening."

I woman who is raised from birth by dogs, barks and bites is still a woman.

A dog who is raised by people and thinks he is a human being is still a dog.

"Some people" is the key point here. It should be a last resort when absolutely necessary. The whole treatment of gender dysphoria is now a production line with the ONLY treatment on offer being transition. There is absolutely no therapeutic support available. The whole route is based on affirmation of gender identity without attempting to understand or explain gender.

This is contradicted by the WPATH Standards of Care, which can be found here: www.wpath.org/site_page.cfm?pk_association_webpage_menu=1351&pk_association_webpage=3926

The website states: "This assistance may include primary care, gynecologic and urologic care, reproductive options, voice and communication therapy, mental health services (e.g., assessment, counseling, psychotherapy), and hormonal and surgical treatments."

You've stated that the only treatment on offer is transition, and that there is absolutely no therapeutic support available. Do you have any evidence to support your version of events? Because it seems to me that assisting patients with gender identity issues with mental health services would directly contradict your assertion that there is 'absolutely no therapeutic support available'.

Thanks for posting that Cote

Time to stop engaging with lumidingo I guess.

"Sticks and stones will break my bones
But words will never hurt me
Except pronouns. Pronouns are violent fucks."

We were long overdue for a good MN poem

Do you realize these studies don't really mean anything? They definitely do not invalidate other viewpoints. Most studies have been disproved by other studies and such somewhere along the line. Maybe the right studies haven't been done yet to prove these ones wrong. Maybe they have, but I don't rely on google to back up my thoughts so I don't know.

With respect..posting links and such as answer to everything is not really giving an opinion.

I mean, fair enough if you believe these studies to be 100% accurate, no chance of any margin of error and that, but equally, if a study came out tomorrow that said the opposite, would you change your view?

The gender identity study you provided earlier. Could be disproved IF we were willing to segregate a few random children to prove that gender identity is indeed a social construct instead of biological. But such a study is unlikely (I hope) to be carried out as it is fucking cruel.

I feel that with more and more people allowing their kids to be who they want to be (eg. letting boys wear dresses rather than telling them no, and so on), cases of gender dysmorphia will decline rapidly over the next 20 years or so. I hope so anyway as it will be better for everyone in the long run.

Elsa how many of us said as children that we'd never have a baby! Never have sex! Okay, just sex for babies. Okay, just sex for fun, no babies.

Things change

Lumidingo Do you have any evidence that counselling and pschotherapy is actually offered? (Other than counselling which is about affirming gender identity and not actually exploring or understanding anything).

If you do I'll happily bow to your superior knowledge.

Ahhh CoteDAzur - thanks for the screenshot

I now see I am fighting a losing battle and shall back off. I was enjoying that as at one stage it did seem to be a decent discussion but I can see its pointless now

bolding fail..as usual

Also disengaging. Lumidingo if you don't want transactivists to be seen as abusive males, don't act like an abusive male (see screenshot).

END