Horizon programme on transgender

[Pemba]

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096k5dm

BBC Two tonight (Tuesday) 9 pm. I wonder what take they'll have on it?

Can you watch it and report back? I don't think my blood pressure can take another 'isn't it wonderful giving all these drugs to gender non-conforming kids to correct them' programme?

''How does a person know their gender? Do they see themselves as male or female, or somewhere in between? More and more people around the world do not identify with the gender they were assigned to at birth.
Increasingly, people are expressing their gender identity outside of the 'norms', and the lines of gender are becoming more blurred than ever. This film explores what it actually means to be transgender, and what happens when a person transitions psychologically, physically and biologically.''

No outrage in social media about the Beeb LITERALLY KILLING trans people by showing it - suggests that it will toe the pro-trans line.

I

"Increasingly, people are expressing their gender identity outside of the 'norms'"

This stuck out to me... people have been expressing themselves outside gender "norms" in many ways for many years. Without being trans.

It's irritating me quite a bit.

He never liked 'girly things'

I'm watching. A scientist in the Netherlands just scanned the brains of males and females when they did a spatial awareness problem and compared against trans men and women. The trans people showed similar results to the sex they wanted to be. A lot of confirmation bias! It reminds me a bit of one of the experiments Cordelia fine mentioned in the gender delusion. people tested more like their sex was expected to in empathy/spatial awareness tests when they were encouraged to identify themselves as their sex beforehand e.g. If they were told they were the female group and therefore were better at empathy, they tested better than if they were told they were students.

I wanted to ask her what the spectrum was in men and women and how the trans people's brains would compare with makes/females who were outside the accepted gender spectrum but happy with their male/female status.

"It's important to take hormones so I can be physically female as well as socially".

This programme is making so many massive, unchallenged assumptions... little Luke's mother told them that "there are drugs you can take that mean you won't get periods", and obviously this 11-year-old kid thought that sounded great and everyone took this to mean they are a boy... but when I was 11 I was terrified of getting periods too! What little girl looks forward to periods?!

Biologically????????

Not a surprise - the BBC's record on science-reporting is abysmal. They just don't care.

I have terrible spatial awareness but I'm really good at maths.

Yeah, the way you perceive rotating shapes means you should have a penis. Obviously

Seemed to show no downsides to surgery or hormones but I only caught the end. Did it show any during the rest of the programme?

@BMacklin Nope. No downsides or side-effects whatsoever according to this programme. Infertility wasn't even mentioned as far as I could tell.

I'm great at rotating shapes and I do rotatey/translatey stuff using maths, by writing code. (I haven't watched the program but couldn't resist joining in the imaginary big swinging dick competition which seemed to have started)

Errol I can feel your masculinity oozing through the internet

Gotcha ... I'm drying my long fair hair and wearing pink pyjamas.

pokemon Thanks for that. Why why Why not? Why isn't the BBC being impartial about this, as they are SUPPOSED to be?

I dont expect an answer from anyone I'm just ranting.

Catching up. The first person featured categorises themselves as trans but 'will be a woman' when the process is complete.

Hmm.

BMack Yeah I'm feeling the rant too. I just don't know. Like, it was good that it focused on trans people talking about their own lives - that is absolutely valid and important - but the contributions from the surgeon, the researcher and the parent all made these sweeping generalisations based only on narrow personal experience or, in the case of the researcher, one flawed study.

The surgeon was interesting and it was good to have input from a medical professional, but the coverage of surgical transition was really lacking in psychological content or consideration about medical side-effects or of people who choose not to have surgery. After the MtF person had her surgery there was lots of "you have a vagina and clitoris now!" congratulating, but no information about what that actually meant.

The person getting voice surgery in Korea struck me as sad. She seemed quite overwhelmed by it all. What an invasive and painful process, and so far from home, just so her voice can sound a little higher.

Pokemon "Infertility wasn't even mentioned as far as I could tell." Charlotte mentioned banking sperm.

It did indeed gloss over any issues to do with fertility, or anything like puberty blockers being dangerous at all.

I find it very interesting that people want to go through the processes like that voice treatment (just looked awful) and yet will openly appear on a programme effectively 'outing' them as trans.

Just finished watching it at
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b096k5dm/horizon-2017-being-transgender

Richelieu "The first person featured categorises themselves as trans but 'will be a woman' when the process is complete." they said 'Yes, yes, pretty much." But they were slightly put on the spot by the co-workers asking a lot of what looked like totally unstagedconversations.

Italiang Ah OK, I obviously missed that bit. In general I agree it did gloss over fertility issues though.

The bit where the surgeon marvelled at the size of her patient's "nuts" while she was removing them was a bit surreal.

Pokemon yes, the nuts comment was odd. I actually skipped most of the surgery. I am not normally squeamish but I could not look!

I wonder why it is (am I being sexist) that I feel more sad for the females who want to transition as trans men.

Perhaps it is that the only child featured was female (trans boy) and I just felt so sorry and sad for a child having such feelings of not being happy as being a girl. I totally agree with you, what little girl wants to get periods!

I cannot imagine how all this feels and I feel so sad that only one option is being presented. The progamme only featured three females who were trans, and one was a friend of one of the main featured people.

Where as there were twice as many trans women (with one being a friend of a 'main character' and one a doctor). So the presentation made it seem trans women were more common then trans men, but my understanding is that trans men make up quite an amount of those who are trans.

Plus all the trans men were quite young, 11 to about 18, where as the trans women varied in age from about 25 up to (I'm guessing) 40s.