How should we refer to parents who take their children abroad to have their genitalia removed?

[GrabbyGabby]

Dear MNHQ

I just got a deletion for referring to the well evidenced fact that Susie Green, now ex CEO of Mermaids took her child to Thailand on their 16th birthday and had their male genitalia removed. I used the correct medical terminology (castration) for this procedure and used sex based pronouns (he).

Can you please explain why my post was deleted? The use of euphasims such as "top surgery" and "gender realignment surgery" are not accurate and hide the brutal truth.

Can you please let me know which elements of my post caused the deletion.

Maybe we should be more specific, cutting their dick and balls off and installing a hole that needs to be dialated for life so that they can be penetrated*. And functionless breasts attached for the purposes of confusion others about your birth sex

• because that's what makes you a woman apparently

I'm not getting into the wider argument when I say this is simply incorrect. FGM and breast ironing is very often carried out with the approval (not informed consent) of the injured party.

There are very many cultural factors and pressures which entail that the cases we hear about are often those either from countries where those presssures are absent or the brave outliers who are forced to undergo serious and potentially lifelong harm.

@PinkyU
FGM is the forced removal of genitalia, reassignment surgery is done with the approval of the participant. Quite a distinctive difference

You quite obviously have no idea how abuse works. The tragedy of much abuse, especially where children are involved, is that the child often does go along with it. Just like women go along with misogyny. We are all groomed to take on the perspectives of those who are grooming us.

I work with many young women who have gone through FGM. Yes, some of them talk about protesting, resisting and screaming but more of them say they accepted the process, even felt proud. They were told it made them more precious, and they believed that.And yet for the rest of their lives they hated their bodies, suffered from shame and depression and never realised why. For many of them it was only much later in life that they understood that they had been violated, and why FGM generally is a sign of violent misogyny. This can happen to children who have been sexually abused too. At the time, they are told it is happening because they are special. And although it deeply wounds them, they partly believe that they are ok with it.

So, FGM and gender reassignment surgery are often really not so different. The people subjected to it might believe it is fine, even that it will benefit them. That is because they have been brainwashed.

Hi @GrabbyGabby thanks for posting. In the past, we received reports about the term 'castration' when used to describe gender reassignment surgery and it became clear that transgender people would struggle to engage in a discussion where the word was used. We also found it's clear that using pronouns about a transperson that they have consciously rejected will have the same effect. As our guidelines say, we don't want Mumsnet to be a place that feels inherently hostile to any group here in good faith. We're not here to stifle debate and we do think it's possible to have a discussion about all aspects of sex and gender within our guidelines, as most threads in Feminism have shown.

We should be clear there is no blanket ban on the term but we do look at things in the wider context of the discussion.

Thankyou for that response, i appreciate the work you do and the lines you have to tread.

However, as i said above, when it comes to issues of child safeguarding, clarity of language has to take prioiry over protecting the feelings of some adults. On this basis, i think you should reinstate my post.

Language is important. If you can't accurately and clearly identify something, how are we supposed to understand what is happening? How do we protect in law? Twee phrases obfuscate reality.

Language really matters. Name it. Understand it.

Ffs.

You were not wrong. These parents should be getting interviewed by social services and monitored. These people slip through the net only because they are not poor and working class.

Why call a spade a spade when we can call it a garden spoon?

I mean, what harm is a spoon when digging bare foot in the garden 🙄

Hiding behind softer sounding names normalises these abusive practices.

Who in their right mind would subject a child, who is in no position to understand the lifelong consequences, to these surgeries unless it was a medical emergency and there was no other option.

And they're overwhelmingly white. Don't forget that.

Mutilators?

Factual medical language should not ever be considered worthy of deletion.

Euphemisms like top surgery and bottom surgery are deliberately designed to make the surgical procedures involved more opaque.

Can we STOP dragging FGM into every trans debate. Yes both are abusive and exploitative. They are in NO WAY comparable.

Pinning a young girl to a floor and sawing off her genitalia as she is crushed by older women holding her down, at the risk of death by infection is not equal to trans surgeries.

Both bad. They don't always have to be compared. It pushes black women and girls in poor countries behind when you put this in the same category. They are in their own categories.

Yes and some people suggest that FGM is not always forced on the girl. That does not make it any less horrific. Just as it does not make what susie green did any less horrific.

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/female-genital-mutilation-cutting-anthropologist/389640/

Absolutely.

What is cutting off a penis and testicles if not catsration? If it's castration when we do it to bulls why isn't it castration when we do it to men or, shamefully, boys? And remember, with the boys it is usually complete castration and not penile inversion, before anyone brings that up. Because there isn't enough penile tissue due to cross sex hormones and impaired puberty. As documented, extensively, including both mothers laughingly referring to it, in both the Jazz Jennings and Jackie Green cases.

In answer to your question OP, I would call them child abusers.

😂❤️

I've read the Mumsnet moderator post three times now.

Wow.

Mumsnet have done a fantastic job of allowing these discussions to even take place. Many other sites would have you banned just for asking the question.

I've had posts deleted and just let it go. As long as I know why so that I can re-phrase just enough to keep the topic open. Also, better to delete the odd post, rather than the whole thread.

...it became clear that transgender people would struggle to engage in a discussion where the word was used

It's become clear to all of us that many transgender people struggle to engage in any discussion at all because of their need to police language.

Fortunately, institutions and legal experts are now waking up to this. Funnily enough, they are getting woke!

Appallingly inaccurate whatever your views. Multiple differences.

The problem is there doesn’t seem to be an alternative word to “castration” that doesn’t obscure the meaning.

Castration is actually a very neutral word. As is mastectomy. Or abortion.

There are medical and non-medical reasons for needing or wanting any of those procedures and naturally people will have their view of a word coloured by the circumstances. Nevertheless, if we abandon the neutral words, the options get worse and the meaning more obscure or slanted.

I had to have an abortion I didn’t want. If someone referred to that procedure as the “murder of [my] baby” it wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to feel upset. If someone used the slightly weird description from upthread (something about “chemical destruction of cells destined to be a baby” was it?), they would seem deliberately provocative and unusual and maybe as having malign intent. They could also easily confuse the reader. But abortion (or ToP) is the correct term and I’ll live with that, despite the associations, because it’s accurate, clear and neutral.

I really don’t understand why “castration” is being given a different treatment.

You could try using the precise and correct medical term, which is orchidectomy.

Castration is any action, surgicall, chemicall, or otherwise, by which an individual loses use of the testicless: the male gonadd. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomyy* (excision of both testicles), while chemical castrationn* uses pharmaceutical drugss* to deactivate the testes.

I think that's quite a niche surgical term. Everyone knows what castration is.

I don't think you can use the words 'approval' or 'consent' in respect of FGM. Going along with something because, essentially, you have no choice as it's cultural / will happen anyway is neither approval nor consent. Resignation, yes. Approval / consent? No.

Both FGM and what Susie Green did are horrific.

The child was castrated

Any parent who has this done to their child is abusive and should be locked up