Break it down for me?

[TortiousTortoise]

Hi all, I am fairly new to the discussion on the impact that transwomen are having on women generally and I want to more fully understand the issues (been trying to talk to my husband about it and am struggling to articulate it).

I feel so awkward writing about this as I definitely don't want to come across as sounding horrible about transpeople, I just want to understand.

Also there are a lot of acronyms being thrown about. Can anyone help me out?

bumping for any new visitors

This study is well worth a read.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26344041211010777

Published April 22, 2021
Kasia Kozlowska, Georgia McClure et al

Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service

Part of the conclusion

Our findings indicate that engagement with families, a trauma-informed model of mental health care, and ongoing discourse pertaining to the effects of unresolved trauma and loss need to be part of all gender dysphoria clinics and the services with which they collaborate. Because of their impact on subjective well-being and the development of the self, specific loss and trauma events present crucial opportunities for both long-term psychotherapy and more immediate, targeted treatments. The move to a more comprehensive, holistic model of care—one that takes into account the individual’s developmental history and the experiences that make up that history—has also been echoed in the work of other clinician-researchers (D’Angelo, 2020a; Entwistle, 2019; Giovanardi et al., 2018; Kozlowska et al., 2021; Williamson, 2019).

Our study found that the children and families who came to the clinic had clear, preformed expectations: most often, children and families wanted a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to be provided or confirmed, together with referral to endocrinology services to pursue medical treatment of gender dysphoria. Parents (vs. children) also largely came with the same expectations, though they were more likely to be interested in incorporating holistic (biopsychosocial) elements, including treatment of mental health comorbidities, family support/therapy, and long-term psychotherapy for the child. It was our impression that these expectations had been shaped by the dominant sociopolitical discourse—the gender affirmative model. It will be interesting to track the expectations of children and families in the years to come as sociopolitical discourses become more varied and diverse and as the voices are heard of both those who have done well and those who not done well via the medical pathway.

Our study also found that despite the high rates of family conflict, relationship breakdowns, parental mental illness, and maltreatment (see Table 3)—and our own clinical perspective that both individual and family work were indicated for the majority of families—few families rated themselves as being in a clinically severe range on self-report (SCORE-15). Coupled with the dominant sociopolitical discourse—the gender affirmative model that prioritizes the medical treatment pathway—it is not surprising that the large majority of children and families were not motivated to engage in or to remain engaged in ongoing therapy. These data bring three important phenomena into focus. First, when children and families were given the space and structure to tell the child’s developmental story—nested in the story of the family—they were able to identify and provide a detailed narrative of the key issues that had contributed to the child’s presentation and distress. Without this space and structure, the issues remain undeclared and unaddressed. Second, some families—but also some clinicians—function within a non-holistic (non-biopsychosocial) framework where the child’s developmental experiences are disconnected from their clinical presentation. This non-holistic framework is likely to promote a healthcare delivery model that dehumanizes the child (by not examining the child’s and family’s lived experience) and that promotes medical solutions (correcting the identity/body mismatch) for a problem that is much more complex. Third, as noted earlier, our experience suggests that, insofar as the gender affirmative model is taken as equivalent to medical intervention, clinicians (including ourselves) who work in gender services are coming under increasing pressure to put aside their own holistic (biopsychosocial) model of care, and to compromise their own ethical standards, by engaging in a tick-the-box treatment process. Such an approach does not adequately address a broad range of psychological, family, and social issues and puts patients at risk of adverse future outcomes and clinicians at risk of future legal action.

oh dear. That was a bit long. Sorry.

Maya Forstater Appeal

Skeleton argument BEN COOPER QC & ANYA PALMER
13 April 2020:
hiyamaya.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/forstater-eat-claimant-skeleton-argument-plus-low-res-pages-1-50.pdf

EHRC
(Karon Monghan QC for EHRC said they agreed with all of the legal points raised by claiments' legal team today)
hiyamaya.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/forstater-submissions-ehrc-final-amended.pdf

Index on Censorship
hiyamaya.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/forstater-eat-ioc-skeleton-final.pdf

thread with commentary of hearing:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4228233-Maya-Forstaters-appeal-skeleton

Maya Forstater
What is at stake?
(extract)
"The Tribunal held that, because of the risk of causing offence, both the use of language to refer to biological sex, and the beliefs which that expresses, are unacceptable in a democratic society. This means that ordinary words like man and woman, male and female, son and daughter, mother and father, gay, lesbian, heterosexual are all removed from use as a means to talk about the sexes.

As the skeleton argument states, the Tribunal’s approach is reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth’s Newspeak:
words themselves are to have their ‘undesirable meanings purged out of them’ along with the associated ideas, so that ‘a heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable at least so far as thought is dependent upon words’

As Janice Turner writes I am far from alone in having faced detriment, discipline or dismissal at work for expressing beliefs of this kind.
Guardian journalists, principled, progressive writers, who are terrified of uttering what now counts as WrongSpeak. As the tram-tracks of left-wing discourse have narrowed… suggesting a humane balance must be reached between trans activist demands and women’s rights, can result in vicious censure from colleagues, even demands that they are sacked. Questions imply criticism: disagreement is hate-speech.
She writes of feminist authors dumped by agents, who in turn are frightened for their own livelihoods. Female academics enduring professional defamation, petitions to no-platform them, exclusion from publications and talks cancelled. A corporate lawyer reported to her chief executive just for following feminist accounts on Twitter; a teacher reported to her head by a student intern who’d overheard her criticise the charity Mermaids. A charity worker faced a complaint to her board because she’d “liked” a JK Rowling tweet. A copywriter who queried why “woman” must be replaced with “womxn’ getting fewer chances to work.
I know far too many of these stories myself; ordinary people made terrified to speak up for fear of their jobs and careers. The most critical places where the surpression of the ability to speak truthfully and use ordinary words to talk about sex is when people’s jobs involve the safeguarding of children and vulnerable people, and establishing and implementing policies for their protection. (continues)

mforstater.medium.com/what-is-at-stake-18a8da1af6b7

solidarity and gratitude

Observer article by Rachel Cooke details some of the systemic Safeguarding failures at Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust:

'Tavistock trust whistleblower David Bell: ‘I believed I was doing the right thing’
The psychiatrist behind a critical report on the gender identity unit at the NHS trust on the efforts to silence him and his concerns about children’s access to treatment
(extract)
"While I was writing it, I contacted GIDS. I needed to know some basic stuff: the number of patients they’d seen; their gender; what psychiatric problems they may have had.” He received no answers. “I then got a rather unpleasant letter from Paul Jenkins, the trust’s chief executive. It said that GIDS was very busy and that its staff were not obliged to answer me.” Was it that GIDS didn’t have the data or that it didn’t want Bell to have it? “Both.”

In September, Bell sent his report to Jenkins and to Paul Burstow, the chairman of the board. For unspecified legal reasons, he says, they forbade him to send it to the council of governors, which oversees the board. “That was when I got myself a lawyer,” says Bell. His lawyer told him that, on the contrary, a failure to send it out might make him culpable in the event of any future legal case taken against the trust. When he did so, however, he received what felt like a “very hostile and threatening” note from Burstow. Nevertheless, the report was discussed at the next council, where it was agreed that a review of GIDS would be led by Dinesh Sinha, the trust’s medical director. In spite of this, in November 2018, Bell received two letters threatening disciplinary action. One of the grounds was “bullying”. He was not told whom he had bullied. He was also asked to agree not to speak any further to Sonia Appleby, the trust’s director of child safeguarding. (Appleby is bringing a whistleblowing claim against the trust in which she alleges that when she made “protected disclosures” regarding concerns raised by GIDS staff over patient safety, she was subjected to detriments.)

While Sinha’s review was taking place, Bell asked for its terms of reference. He wanted to ensure that those who’d talked to him could speak to the review safely, that their anonymity would be protected. He says he got no response. Bell wrote to staff at GIDS, reminding them of their right, as NHS workers, to speak confidentially. At this point, he says, the trust “went ballistic… they interfered with my emails so I couldn’t write to them again”. The trust’s review delivered its report in February 2019. Initially, Bell was not allowed to see it. He was then given 30 minutes to read its 70 pages (it was later leaked to him in full). “There was still no data. It mentioned intimidation, but no action was [to be] taken. However, it did acknowledge the inappropriate involvement of trans ideology groups in the work of the service.” The report was approved by the board and the council of governors, although one consultant psychotherapist, Marcus Evans, accused the trust of having an “overvalued belief” in GIDS expertise and resigned. Soon after this, Bell’s report was leaked to the press. “That disturbed me, until I read [the article],” he says. “The reporting was accurate. I started to think it was a good thing.” He says the trust began to suggest that Bell was unqualified to write such a report and to suggest that the cases in it were hypothetical. (They were not.)

In early 2020, procedures were set up for disciplinary action to be taken against Bell. “All the grounds were in connection with my activities as a whistleblower,” (continues)

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/02/tavistock-trust-whistleblower-david-bell-transgender-children-gids

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4233959-Observer-interview-with-David-Bell-about-the-Tavistock-case

Barracker wrote, Sun 02-May-21 13:31:55
"Legal recognition of the opposite of the truth. It doesn't work. At best, the law can recognise that a person holds a religious, unsubstantiated belief. But it must not confuse and conflate that belief with another group's actual physically recognisable status. Recognise a belief? Perhaps. But it can only be called by a word NOT already in use or used to define someone else's material existence.

For example, if a devout, practicing Christian declared themselves an atheist, then demanded that the definition of atheism be changed to include an active and zealous belief in God, requiring regular devoted worship, and an affirmation that atheism should affirm that God is real and loves us all? Perhaps with a side order of 'atheists who continue to profess that there is no God are not inclusive of God-worshipping atheists and are now guilty of hate speech because the definition of atheism has evolved to be inclusive of faithful believers. Devout, god-fearing atheists are REAL ATHEISTS.'

That's a no, isn't it? You can adopt any belief, however unsubstantiated, but you cannot misappropriate a meaningful word that already has a material meaning which excludes you, by definition. You cannot take a word which already applies to other people, and not to you, and demand that this word's meaning be changed to mean the opposite, for your benefit. You cannot do that, and then actively prevent the group of people this word previously described from distinguishing themselves from you.

Frankly put, you cannot force a square peg into a round hole. And if you chisel out extra corners to that hole to make it fit square pegs, you've simply created a square hole. It's not round any more, and nor is the square peg it was chiselled to fit. No amount of forcing people to 'recognise' obviously square holes and obviously square pegs as 'a different type of circle' works.

"It's still round, it's just round with corners and has been expanded to be welcoming and inclusive of square pegs. It's still a round hole, but with four sharp corners. All pegs that fit through this altered hole are round. Even square pegs. Which you must now recognise as round. Because they fit through the altered hole. Which is round. Round things can have corners now. Educate yourself."

Female/ woman is not a gender, it's a sex.
Women are round pegs. The word woman is the round hole through which we fit. And the law uses these words, these holes through which some fit and some don't, to ensure it caters properly to round pegs.

Because historically, and still currently, the law catered to only the square pegs. If you were a round peg, you couldn't vote. If you are round, you'll be paid less, you'll have to put up with being underrepresented, you'll be imprisoned for controlling that round peg of a body of yours in ways we don't want.

Men can try to chisel out extra corners to that hole, to that word woman, so that they can force an awkward fit through it. But it simply creates a square hole. It makes all the holes square.

And we can all still see the difference between square pegs and round pegs. And we can see that what was once a round hole has been chiselled into a square too. We will always know the truth.
There is no point in these laws that force everyone to pretend and lie and 'recognise' what isn't true. It takes a hell of a lot of chiselling and renaming reality, a hell of a lot of forcing square and round pegs through the same hole, compelling them to pretend they both fit it perfectly with no differences. And STILL people know.

There is no point to forcing any of this. Forcing people to pretend to recognise what isn't recognisable.

The sexes exist, and we are physically different. This cannot be changed. We cannot 'recognise' square pegs as round, and we cannot redefine round to encompass square. We can try, but people will resist, reality will prevail, and the effort will always fail.

Because we will always be different and THAT is what will always be recognised."
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4233957-Legal-gender-affirmation-improves-mental-health-for-trans-people

www.webmd.com/children/news/20210427/transition-therapy-for-transgender-teens-drives-divide

Sheila Jeffreys paper,
'The transgendering of children: Gender eugenics'
Women's Studies International Forum
30 August 2012

concludes:
"Ian Dowbiggin, historian of North American eugenics, writes about the way in which the medical profession adopted the practice of sterilizing the unfit in a fashion which could equally be applied to the adoption of the transgendering of children, “It is a story of human fallibility, of human beings who, when faced with the daunting challenge of caring for emotionally and mentally disabled people, resorted to extreme theories and practices. Most of these men and
women were convinced they were absolutely right, even when they might have known better” (Dowbiggin, 1997,p. x). The transgendering of children in the present shares with an earlier history of sexual surgeries the fact that progressive people, and even many feminists, feel that this is a reasonable practice and have not begun to criticize it. Feminist research and theory needs to recover the ability to criticize medicine and psychiatry and the way that the scientists of sex treat those who fail to conform to society's norms, if the transgendering of children is to be effectively challenged"
objectnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Transgenderingchildrenarticle.pdf

H/t Sarah Phillimore for sharing,
"Respect to the trailblazers - Professor Shelia Jeffreys writing in 2012 "The transgendering of children: Gender eugenics"

twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1391510764305985537

Julia Long, ''Transgenderism and Male Violence.'
From ‘Thinking Differently: Feminists Questioning Gender Politics’, a one-day conference held at Conway Hall, London, UK, on Saturday 16 July 2016

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHbn46HSvQI

Respect to the trailblazers

and gratitude.

'Thinking Differently ' Opening & Sheila Jeffreys

'The Social and Political Construction of Transgenderism.' Presentation by Professor Sheila Jeffreys.
13 Sept 2016

'Your Fantasy is my Nightmare.' Presentation by Jackie Mearns.

From ‘Thinking Differently: Feminists Questioning Gender Politics
Conway Hall, London, UK, on Saturday 16 July 2016.

Jackie Mearns (transwidow) describes the impact of her abusive ex-partner's behaviours.

A useful current thread with many important posts:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4241015-Terrified-of-regressive-modern-feminism

Worth reading/listening to Genevieve Gluck:

"I will never stop, I can't justifiably stop caring or wishing for a better world where women can be truly free rather than sold the lie that male objectification and the consequent subordination of women should be viewed as a pathway to our liberation."
twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1392176465593077761

"My aim was to draw attention to those who promote the sexual enslavement of women via the pornography and sex trafficking industries in order to justify their own reduction of womanhood to pornified fantasies, as part of a broader attempt to normalize their sexual fetishes."
genevievegluck.substack.com/p/gender-ideology-reduces-women-to

Bump

soberodent

Thanks for the live demonstration of someone who is not willing to engage and actually discuss the issues at hand for the Break it down for me thread. This is a very popular thread for reading and sharing examples.

The issues on this board are focused on progressing the rights of those who have experienced discrimination due to their sexed body. Those people have a body that is formed around the production of large gametes, regardless of whether they have or do produce those gametes or not.

If you believe that the above is hateful, perhaps you should start a thread as to why you think this is hateful. Discussion actually is quite limited on this particular thread. You could also mention on a new thread why you feel there is no other option than answering a poster with what seems like the intent to shame them for their views that don't align with yours and not engage with them in any other way.