Rachel - I imagine there are lots of transsexuals like you who are really worried about the direction transactivism is taking. There is a massive difference between people who have experienced a deep sense of gender dysphoria from an early age and those who decide that they have the right to enter women's spaces because they like wearing a dress and lipstick occasionally.

Sunkisses
Does anyone know if any trans people have been murdered in the UK in 2017?

The best I could come up with (I was looking for this, too) was:
2017: 0 (as at November 2017)
from
transcrimeuk.com/2017/11/16/trans-homicides-in-the-uk-a-closer-look-at-the-numbers/

I think a lot of the issues (resentment??) around trans is the disproportionality. Any group can squeak and squeal about whatever their particular issue is all they please. We live in a (fairly) healthy democracy and within the bounds of decency we can say what we like. The problem I have is that all sense of reason and proportionality is being lost with the trans-lobby.

The real danger (to themselves and others) is that by shouting loud enough, suppressing debate/comment and throwing enough toys out the pram, trans-lobby are managing to change (or at least influence) UK Law, while balancing views do not get heard. Well - I'm trans and I have a balancing view! The UK Law is fine as it is! If anything, it's already gone too far!

To some extent, this is political genius! A small number of people being able to influence political thinking to this extent - Wow. Parties normally have to spend vast amounts of money to sway people to their way of thinking.

Good to hear from you Rachel40s. Would you be prepared to do anything about it? Lots of women are getting together in groups to tackle the proposed legal changes - lobbying MPs, giving opinions in the Scottish consultation, challenging policies in schools, etc. It would be good to have like-minded transsexual groups saying similar things to MPs and being a balance to the extreme transactivists. There was another MtF transsexual on these boards a couple of days ago, and see also mirandayardley.com

Hi Betsy

Wow - I'd never heard of Miranda Yardley before. It took some time to read through a load of the articles on her web page. I'm not Miranda "posting" under a pseudonym - I promise (jk) but our opinions on this matter are strikingly similar! It was both encouraging that to find there are others out there with these views and disheartening that we've been shouted-down so much by the trans-lobby that we're now something of a rarity in speaking up!

In answer to your question - yes! I would be most happy to do something about it. My MP(Cons) is a friend-of-a-friend (in the real world, not fantasy FB land) so I'll see how best to approach. I'll find out what groups there are in the constituency.

Thanks for your suggestion and encouragement.

R

I'm so chuffed by your response!

Miranda is very active in this area and I'm sure she would welcome your support. It's quite a heated environment, and we all have privacy concerns, so just prepare yourself for what is involved.

Can anyone remember the MtF transsexual who was here the other day with similar views? I'll have a search.

Just placemarking and wanted to say thank you also to Rachel for such a measured, articulate response

ferntwist
Just to confirm a small point (don't want to be picky, but it's important):
"I can imagine that transsexual people like you who have been through surgery and more would be horrified at the new proposals for self-identification, as it devalues your hard-won status".

It's not so much my hard-won status that's under attack by this bonkers proposal. I'm now perfectly happy with my status and the value it has to me is more resilient than this. What this proposal does is fundamentally devalue Women. On the (less talked about) flip side, it devalues Men, too! That's why I (and now, it seems many other trans) are indeed horrified. ...Just like the disproportionate number of woman being murdered horrifies me (hence, in my opinion, no statistical nor actual need for a separate "Trans Remembrance", which coincidentally brings me full-circle as to the reason for dropping in to this thread).

Thanks for your kind comment, though.

Rachel, welcome and thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and insight, and for your offer to speak to your MP.

That stats bashing is a great bit of work.

If ONLY some journalists looked at MN to try and find material for their latest article...

And, Rachel:

Thank you Rachel for clarifying, I feel really energised to know that you feel that way. It's so refreshing. I hope we can fight this together :)

Hi Rachel, thanks for adding your perspective

My favourite Miranda Yardley tweet is calling Paris Lees "brother" and calling Paris out on the continued misuse of the trans suicide statistics.

On that note, Paris has published this article about trans suicides. I'm hopefully picking my words very carefully, as this is obviously a sensitive subject. But has any real, statistically credible research been conducted on the trans suicide rate vs the non-trans suicide rate, does anyone know?

How did stonewall go from 'it gets better' to "medicalise your kids or they'll kill themselves"?

Why can't "it gets better" be used for all questioning kids? And, yes, perhaps it won't get better, perhaps for an individual, hormones and surgery are going to turn out to be the best way to cope, but surely you should try the less invasive route first, and painting it as doom and gloom isn't going to help with that.

It would be like saying 'gastric band or death' - rather than trying to help them with healthy eating and exercise first.

Regarding the trans suicide rate, I've been looking for solid evidence and it's quite hard to find any. There are quite a number of studies (internationally) which identify rates of trans individuals who self-report a past suicide attempt at around 40%, but by definition everybody taking part in this kind of survey has survived.

One would expect a heightened rate of attempts to be associated with a heightened rate of completed suicide, but who knows to what extent, especially given the self-selected nature of most of the samples.

The only actual head count I found was from a peer reviewed Swedish study which retrospectively identified the entire Swedish transgender population who underwent medical transition over a period of time and followed them up. This study found that post-op trans people were much, much more likely (HR 19.1, i.e., about 19 times more likely ... although the confidence intervals are pretty broad) to commit suicide than controls. This elevated likelihood was especially marked for trans men.

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885#pone.0016885-Eldh1

We don't know the rate at which trans people who didn't medically transition were committing suicide. But this result certainly doesn't suggest that medical transition is an adequate solution to trans suicide rates.

Hi Olennas
Your choice of words are perfectly fine! Asking for proper statistics seems like a great start to me! Sources and numbers behind the data are important because both sides can skew the numbers to suit their argument. Undoubtedly, there are plenty of cases where a trans person has committed suicide and (as with any case) that's awful. It also seems reasonable that trans groups or charities help out and raise awareness of trans cases - it's their thing. Trans groups are not going to worry so much about abandoned dogs and Dogs Trust don't campaign about suicides - regardless of the relative merits of each cause. I guess the only way to do this would be to look at Death Certificates which ruled Suicide, although checking whether they were trans (to any degree) would be more difficult - there's possibly no public record of it. It would, for example, be fairly easy to look at my trans history as there are public records. So - yeah - it would be really interesting, but I don't know of any proper research or figures.

Hey Fizzy!
Are you sure Stonewall in fact said "medicalise your kids or they'll kill themselves"? I guess that could just be paraphrase, but I'm trying to find the context of that text and can't. The phrase I seem to keep finding is "Support your daughter or bury your son" which was wording used my one mother to one father, but sensationally splashed across tabloid newspapers (great headline for luring in those who still fall for the clickbait). You are, however, absolutely right in saying that a less invasive route is the best option to start with. This sound, sane, logical approach seems to be being lost amongst the shrieking and yelling from the diametrically opposed sides of radical trans activists on one side and red-top tabloids with the parents and kids willing to be paraded within them!
.....And "gastric band or death" is absolute genius!

So - in trying to bring a little sanity to all this:
I know twitter is a bad place from which to get references, but this page seems quite well researched:
twitter.com/Transgendertrd
The most practical, level-headed advice seems to come from Tavistock Clinic - which is encouraging. That is an NHS Gender Clinic which takes referrals for children. Blue touch-paper for tabloids, surely! This article in the Guardian is good, but still worthy of some comment, I think:
www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/19/nhs-clinic-trans-rights-storm-gender-identity-specialist-centre-transgender

Right - talking about the massive increase in referrals. Adult and children - but only referrals. That's an important point. Some might not even end up going to their first appointment. Some (lots) might go to talk to someone and decide that they are fine as they are. So, if referrals are up by a squillion percent - so what? What's not reported is the number of those referrals who end up living perfectly happy lives as the gender they started. Are they up a squillion percent, too? "Transgender kid decides he can't be arsed after being referred to clinic (but still insists he's not eating sprouts)" doesn't make for a very good headline. Yet this could well be the overwhelming majority. We just don't know. I suspect the vast, vast majority of these "increasing referrals" do no form of medical transition whatsoever.

I personally only know 1 trans child. They made a social transition a few years ago (in secondary upper-school) and were well accepted. They used the toilets and changing facilities of their acquired gender without issue. They were referred to Tavistock and the individual is continuing with their transition, although they are still under 18.

....And do you know what medical intervention they've had? None. Zip. Ziltch. Nada. Although this child is struggling a bit, they are living quite successfully with clothing, hairstyle and friends typical to their acquired gender. I (and everyone else) refers to them as their preferred Pronoun and correct anyone who mis-genders them. The point is, if they decided tomorrow that it was all a big mistake and they want to go back - absolutely no harm whatsoever has been done (they won't, I'm sure). No front-page tabloid photo of them and their parents squeaking about how cruel it all is! And that's the point - Expression harms no-one. Let people express. Let kids investigate; explore. In many cases, they'll just get it out of their system. And if they don't - take it very slowly. Very.
Another point to make is that when we do see each other, it might be of interest to note that we don't even mention trans stuff. It's such a non-issue for both of us that it's not even worth mentioning. We're both just "us". With no pressure to be anything but "themselves", this child will be fine whichever way they wish to go.

Anyway - I'm sure many of you haven't made it this far, so I'll stop hogging the thread. There are far too many sides to this that we can't do it all in one thread of a forum! Keep safe. R

But has any real, statistically credible research been conducted on the trans suicide rate vs the non-trans suicide rate, does anyone know

It's an incredibly hard subject to analyse - because people don't know the number of trans people and secondly the recording of suicide / attempted suicide is not recorded for trans people.

I do think that if people who are trans are asked about it, then there is a high degree of self harm and other issues that can lead to suicidal behaviour if left untreated in some way. I know how much self harm I was doing during transition - and all the associate issues with it. Some days and weeks were very very very hard - as well as all the mental health issues over transition and everything to do with it.

After transition, you are left on your own. There are still many unresolved mental health issues I have that I sometimes struggle to cope with.

But this result certainly doesn't suggest that medical transition is an adequate solution to trans suicide rates

If you read that survey in detail, you'll notice that the suicide rates went down significantly after 1989 - to 2x the male rate. This may well be due to better acceptance of trans people from then onwards. Better acceptance by society helps mental health issues in many ways.

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885#pone.0016885-Eldh1

Welcome to the debate Rachel and thank you for your honesty.

Sorry sagamartha, where does it say that? The only info I can find on suicide likelihood by time period says 'not applicable due to sparse data'?

I do agree though, it's absolutely rubbish that the most reliable figures seem to be outdated unreplicated Swedish ones given that this is an increasingly important public health issue. We need well-designed case-controlled up-to-date prospective outcome studies.

transcrimeuk.com/

transcrimeuk.com/

But has any real, statistically credible research been conducted on the trans suicide rate vs the non-trans suicide rate, does anyone know?

I did some stuff about the trans suicide issue based on Samaritans stuff and the problems of suicide statistics on another thread not so long ago.

There are quite a few issues which relate to methodology, before you go anywhere near any numbers at all.

I think it was on a thread about a protest outside the department for health about trans health.

Trying to take a bit of a break from here but its very relevant to this thread so worth someone finding and linking here.

A short summary is that the classification if suicide is a pain in the bum both at the coroners stage and in how statisticians classify it in research.

The long and short of it is pretty much, anyone comparing one study on suicide with another is more than likely speaking out their arse. Cos methodology.

Deeper than that though at coroner level, certain communities are less likely to have a suicide recorded as a suicide for cultural reasons and it being taboo. Thus under reporting. But on the flip side of that if you had a community with an expectation of suicide, you might expect more deaths to be recorded as suicide (not more suicides, but more of a inclination and pressure on the coroner to record as suicide) than the general population.

Its such an absolute minefield its difficult to know where to start with the bad science analysis. Its like shooting fish in a barrel.

As I say, if someone wants to find it, I went into the detail of it.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3188440-tra-arrested-outside-department-for-health?pg=3&order=

My post at 21.03 on 8th March.

Thanks Red. Enjoy your break

Brazil is a country where transitioning is fully funded has one of the highest transgender murder rates because of the high level of transgender males in prostitution.
Transition advocates used to claim that transgender males were 12 times as likely to be murdered in the US.
Turns out they were co-opting the murder rate of prostituted people.
trans murder rate.jpg