TRA arrested outside Department for Health

[TimbuktuTimbuktu]

"A protester who was taking part in an Women’s Strike UK action at the Department of Health and Social Care has been arrested, the group says.

According to the group:

Trans women and their allies were peacefully protesting the Department of Health this morning to call urgent attention to the failings in the provision of healthcare for trans people."

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/mar/08/international-womens-day-2018-live-protests-press-for-progress-live

I bet you a tenner it's one of our Action for Trans Health Pals.

15 years here for an endo diagnosis.

Years of contraceptive pill side effects.

One of best friends hospitalised with PND.

And every woman I know taking that kind of shit for granted because why would we expect anything better?

As a previous poster said, welcome to womanhood.

Another thing: what age do men and women tend to trans? Is there an underlying vulnerability at that age for both sexes (compare with suicide). Could be way off on this, but young women, middle aged men both figure heavily.

Why aren't we approaching things in this way?

I do think we are potentially being blinded by identity politics rather than using sex / age / gender as markers / risk factors for vulnerability.

blinded by identity politics

Identity politics is a contradiction in terms. Politics is for the body politic, it is collective.There is an irony of a socialist party based on representation of the marginalised, which has to include all women, BAME etc. and, seeking to eliminate from representation one of those groups. Like Putin being thrilled by brexit, the extreme right are licking their lips at this one.

1970s US Boston feminists saw importance of our own health as fundamental to women. They produced 'Our Bodies Ourselves' and formed a health care collective.
www.ourbodiesourselves.org/history/

Our ownership of our own pregnancies and births in this country Dr Sheila Kitzinger was a great advocate. She was absolutely vilified by the press, and some in medical community.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/12/sheila-kitzinger

We mostly know our own pregnancies, births and mothering. We are not encouraged to teach or help other women with it: with the obvious default of following professionals' advice. Our own experience is silenced.

Healthcare informed for and by women would simply save lives and improve our own.

Another thing: what age do men and women tend to trans? Is there an underlying vulnerability at that age for both sexes (compare with suicide). Could be way off on this, but young women, middle aged men both figure heavily.

Suicide rates peak for men and women in the 40-44 age bracket (but is higher for men). But adolescence is I think when you see the peak in self-harm in young women- and there is an established link between self harm and later suicide.

Healthcare informed for and by women would simply save lives and improve our own

Just to play Devil's advocate, isn't this essentially what some of the TRA groups are calling for? Trans health to be in the hands of trans people?

(I know that there aren't enough trans medical professions to make this a feasible situation, BTW, never mind the fact that drugs are being used without proper research and studies, as opposed to the millenia that women have been bleeding, conceiving, delivering etc etc)

Article in the independnt here, written by a couple of the protestors, and accompanied by a picture that doesn't show any of the masked protestors nor mention the arrest....

Women are calling for their voice to be heard to challenge political interference and ideological bias in healthcare so it is more ethical and evidence led. They want the opportunity to say whether this is being done. They don't want the power for themselves directly.

Trans community are calling for them to be heard over and above ethics and to force political interference and ideological bias in politics. They want to take the power from medicine and put it into their hands and the hands of whom ever has money and political influence.

One gives power to the many from the few. The other seeks to take it from the many and give it to the few.

If trans activists succeed it leads healthcare open to exploitation of big pharma because it gives the green light to political manipulation and the removal of ethics.

Given Labours position on health, they are serving as useful idiots to the capitalist neo-liberals on this one.

I haven't read the thread fully but I was suicidal for most of the first year of my daughter's life. Even now I can't bear to be around small babies.

Almost every trans person I know is severely mentally ill.

So they stick trans- infront of the word when it suits their purpose but shout trans-women are women because we are one and the same.

This [training for all frontline medical staff] must be properly resourced, and both delivered and monitored by trusted trans organisations.

Of course. Action for Trans Health, no doubt.

I really want to know who was arrested. I bet it is a familiar face.

Violent men are violent.

Re: The Domestic Shelter stuff and what happens if someone trans is turned away...

...well, this from Alaska published yesterday:
mustreadalaska.com/transgender-files-complaint-shelter-abused-women/
Transgender files complaint against shelter for abused women

Red, that sort of article makes me despair. That sort of situation is exactly what's worried me right from the start of becoming aware of self ID and its implications. 99% of the time, I am more than happy to share spaces with trans people. I may not share the beliefs of some of them (the radical genderist end of the spectrum who believe they literally and indistinguishably are women), but 99% of the time that doesn't matter. But we really do need to protect the other 1% of spaces - spaces where women get naked, or sleep and are vulnerable, or are incarcerated and can't escape. That women's shelter needs to know it can legally turn away drunk, drugged, aggressive male bodied individuals from a communal room where very vulnerable homeless women are sleeping.

“They make it very difficult for us to access any kind of trans healthcare. I had to try three different GP surgeries before they agreed to refer me to the GIC. Now it’s sixth months later and I still have over a year to wait until they even see me. Im desperate.”

I had to switch GP surgeries, and wait 2 years to be referred to the pain management service. During this time I had over 30 hospital admissions with severe pain. One of those admissions ended in a botched operation which made things worse. I was in severe pain near 24 hours a day for all of that time. If I did not have the children to think about I am certain I would have killed myself. After the referal, there was a further 24 month wait to actually be seen. During all of this time, GPs insisted there was nothing actually wrong with me, whilst A&E were extremely worried in all of my admissions and I did get some investigation done by them, and everytime they released me they did so with proper painkillers, whilst my GP kept telling me that I just had to wait and see if the pain went away and I should take ibuprofen and paracetamol.

So fuck your whinging about needing hormones on demand, whilst people like me are left in agony for years on end. Its not a conspiracy against trans people like some seem to think. If anything, trans people receive BETTER and faster service than others, from what I have seen.

I think we miss the point that a lot of these people are outsiders who feel bitter about a system that they don't feel they fit into. So the mentality is to destroy that system if given the opportunity to.

They don't feel they are loosing anything and they don't think they owe anything to other people who have excluded them.

I think unless you consider that and dismiss the idea of people doing that, because no one would be that malicious, you don't understand a huge disenfranchised part of society and the anger within that.

Good points Red.