Wrong side of history

[LyraPotter]

Here is something I know to be true: those campaigning against trans rights will fail. Your money will be raised and spent and wasted. Your legal challenges will not succeed. Your relentless attempts to do injustice will fail. You are on the wrong side of history. Your children will grow up knowing better than you. You cannot stop progress. Your efforts are in vain.

And every time I'm proven right - every time a court judgment goes against you and every time a law protecting trans men and women is passed and every time equality is further enshrined in the laws of this country I am going to return to this thread for the pure and petty purpose of telling you I TOLD YOU SO.

thebewilderness - total agree with you. The questions you ask are vital.

Dr Risotto - thanks for posting that blog. It's brilliant. I'd like to post it on another thread if that's OK.

I feel very ignorant about Jazz Jennings and this feels like a stupid question but have they only had puberty blockers so far? And if they stopped them now would they still go through puberty and develop. It's fairly heart-breaking to think of them having child-like genitals forever and completely losing their sexual functioning. It's such an important part of adult identity.

It reminds me of children being severed from their daemons in Northern Lights.

Jazz Jennings was put on puberty blockers at 11. Then cross sex hormones.

At 17, he has the penis of a child, but the body of a woman, breasts, etc.

Quite unbelievably, his surgeon said the drugs have done you a favour there, indicating his breasts, but not down there, indicating his genitals.

As though it was some bloody surprise.

He has never had an erection, and has no libido. There is not enough penile material to create a neovagina. So they will either have to use part of his colon, or his torso. Which has no sexual sensation.

Nonetheless, jazz is celebrated and feted as a poster child for trans.

Jazz is depressed.

I don't watch his reality TV show but I have seen clips. A memorable one was him asking his father quite how much of his mother's vagina he saw during sex. The father left the tea table covered with embarrassment.

Jazz was obviously worried about what his genitalia would ultimately look like.

The fact that his sexual function is compromised forever, and he is permanently infertile, and on drugs for the rest of his life doesn't seem to bother his family.

And that’s Jazz whose family knew from a very early age that their boy was in fact a girl, because among other things he unbuttoned the poppers on his baby vest. This apparently means he was trying to make it into a dress.

I hope Jazz gets the best outcome possible for him as an individual, whatever that looks like, but that family’s behaviour is appalling.

Of course beach it is an excellent read that deserves to be widely spread.

Good blog post Dr Risotto, thank you for posting it.

And I just have no idea what kind of a future he can have now. He'll never be a woman. But even if he were to decide to accept himself as a man and live that way, his boyhood has been stolen from him now, and his puberty. His chance to spend his formative years as a boy are gone.
How is he going to reconcile his adult life with his childhood.

How do you forgive your parents for not just failing to correct you as a child, when you thought liking barbies meant you were a girl, but for facilitating this change to your body and altering the path of your life accordingly.

I don't know how you come back from that.

I don't know how you come back from that.

I don't know either. But his show worries me. He seems to be operating quite firmly within the framework of what has happened to him. Not trying to question framework.

I don't know whether that is because he has no context on which to base a challenge, or whether his maturity has been stunted, or whether it is actively discouraged because he is a cash cow.

Whether he is truly happy (despite being depressed...)

The Jazz Jennings story is so unbearably sad. I hope he finds some happiness.

Another point that Jazz's situation helpfully raises... if they will never experience sexual sensation or have any libido, what is the neovag for? Neolabia one thing - to have the external appearance and "fit in", but not a neovag. No ones gonna see that unless they're looking in detail!!

It enforces the view that vaginas are literally just fuck-holes for men, that women are just objects to fuck - not humans who experience sexual feelings for themselves.

Here's what I know - when future generations look back at the current period and realize that a generation of gay and lesbian people were steered towards sterilization and surgical alteration as children because their gender nonconformity made other people uncomfortable, they'll look at those who thought that was a good idea in much the same way that we look at those who thought lobotomy was a good idea now.

Leave children alone.

I think (hope) Jazz may be OK. If you never really know what adult sexuality can be, it's possible that you simply never miss it. It's also possible that being seen as female, or beautiful, or 'womanly', or whatever, is of such huge importance to Jazz that it outweighs any lingering regrets.

I don't know.

I do have at least two friends who are entirely celibate -- one who is uninterested and would now probably have to call themselves ace-panromantic-with-kittens or something, the other simply deeply religious and single. They both seem at ease with that and just get on with a single, busy, work-and-hobbies life.

Maybe Jazz will be fine.

The lack of genuine puberty in the sense of maturing into an adult, though - that worries me. Does anyone know if cross-sex hormones do the job in that sense?

It enforces the view that vaginas are literally just fuck-holes for men, that women are just objects to fuck - not humans who experience sexual feelings for themselves.

Exactly. Misogyny at its finest.

Apart from anything else, apparently the depth of the neovagina directly correlates to the length of the original penis.

Which, in jazz's case, is tiny.

Does anyone know if cross-sex hormones do the job in that sense?

We had someone on here awhile back who understands endocrinology and they said it doesn't.

Cross sex hormones didn't affect the brain maturation, apparently. Although someone who understands this stuff, might be able to comment more comprehensively.

Apart from anything else, apparently the depth of the neovagina directly correlates to the length of the original penis

There are other other options such as skin taken from elsewhere, or a section of the colon.

Jazz also apparently has an eating disorder (hence the weight gain currently preventing their surgery) which would seem to demonstrate some sort of unhappiness?

No, I do agree that it sounds like Jazz is damaged and depressed. I'm just trying to say that a busy, meaningful and fulfilling life can be found in other ways than through sexual relationships. I hope Jazz manages that.

It's all the cognitive stuff that usually happens during puberty that worries me. If normal puberty is blocked does that cognitive development still happen, happen only when the "blockers" are stopped and cross sex hormones introduced, or not happen at all? Can a person who's been through that process really be considered capable of informed consent even when they're 18 or over if that cognitive development doesn't happen? Not only do we not seem to know, nobody seems to be interested in finding out either.

Jazz seems very immature for his age. Part of that could just be having been trapped in the reality TV bubble and a dysfunctional family for so long, but I do wonder if the medical stuff that's been done to him is part of it too.

It's been found - not from trans treatments but from previous use in precocious puberty - that puberty blockers reduce IQ by somewhere between 5 and 10 points.

This tweet has 1400 replies that are mostly saying 😮 at Labour's selection from it's "all women shortlist" for the Rushcliffe PC. Great stuff, our point is being proven for us.

twitter.com/markacollett/status/953523145394327552

Some of those tweets are awful. Genuinely intolerant, nasty, bigoted gits just putting the boot in.

Still, stopped clock and all that...

Yes, the actual bigots are out in full force I'm afraid. Makes us TERFs look reasonable by comparison.

Yeah some of those replies are awful. Mainly from men, oddly enough. Not from feminists

Don’t see anyone jumping in and telling the actually bigoted hate mongerers to die in a fire. No that’s just reserved for feminists

Perfectly nice person, with EU views I agree with. Just NOT selected appropriately. And now subject to really nasty abuse. It's a mess. And I would go to the barricades for that person to wear those clothes and make up and express themselves as they choose. No mean stuff about eyebrows FFS.

But not a woman.

Can I just point out that Mark Collett is a former Chairman of the Young BNP? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Collett

I don't think he's going to help the cause, to be honest.