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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Trans rights supporters -can we please unite on the cervical cancer issue

240 replies

speakingwoman · 17/06/2018 10:43

I’m very worried about the cervical cancer issue.
If you are an advocate of trans rights but believe that cancer research should address its screening calls to “women” please do say so here.

To everyone else, if this is going to fail can we just let it fail quietly please?

There are some things just as important as conflicts of rights, people not dying of undetected cervical cancer is one of these.

If I get any support I will write to Cancer Research.

OP posts:
homefromthehills · 17/06/2018 15:22

I am a transwoman and find nothing impolite about it. Anyone who insists on spaces for political correctness reasons has another space between the ears.

BettyDuMonde · 17/06/2018 15:23

I missed out on 4 years of yearly mammograms because the hospital clinic that referred me and the GP held different postal addresses for me.

With less and less people able to buy houses and more and more trapped in unstable cycles of private rent (6 and 12 month contracts) it’s not unreasonable to think a lot of folk fall through communication gaps.

R0wantrees · 17/06/2018 15:23

A few years ago the main charities joined together to produce a guide specifically for younger women diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer. It was produced in recognition that there were additional needs of this group of women and that the disease was associated primarily with women who were older / post-monopausal.

It won an award at the BMA and was very much led by women who had been diagnosed.

link here:
eveappeal.org.uk/gynaecological-cancers/ovarian-cancer/younger-womens-guide/

BettyDuMonde · 17/06/2018 15:25

Also, Cancer Research UK is an absolute giant of a cancer charity, and where it leads, others will follow.

Yet another reason to request to view their impact assessment.

LassWiADelicateAir · 17/06/2018 15:27

I am a transwoman and find nothing impolite about it. Anyone who insists on spaces for political correctness reasons has another space between the ears

I was asking because another poster is hinting at transphobia on this thread yet is using terms which, I had understood, were considered to be derogatory.

R0wantrees · 17/06/2018 15:27

Administrative management of cervical cancer smears is done by a central department in England.

GPs have to manually remove a woman from the records in order to cease the letters inviting a woman for a smear test.

Rufustheyawningreindeer · 17/06/2018 15:31

foxy

Haven't read past your post yet so i dont know if any comments have been made

I am assuming you are using the royal 'you' as I haven't attacked anyone and i think the OP was just interested in opinions over how it should be phrased

Obviously if you are not fussed either way then thats ok, there have been a fair few opinions already

placemats · 17/06/2018 15:32

most transwomen are usually recorded as having had a hysterectomy when they transition so I am told (so they don't get sent for screening )
most transmen have hysterectomys

I think you are told wrong. Trans gender health is very poor globally. This is an acknowledged fact. All trans women will retain the prostate, but the best way to examine it is via digital insertion via the anus and not the inversion. There have been recorded cases of transwomen dying from prostate cancer. What is worrying is that breast cancer is not exclusive to women. Men can get it too. Most transmen retain their internal organs but continue to use testosterone. Even with a radical hysterectomy, Transmen are not exempt from any women's reproductive cancer as they retain the pelvic epithelial lining that is biologically female. And don't get me started on bladder cancer which must include a gynaecologist and an urologist if natal born female. Natal born men have to see an urologist only.

homefromthehills · 17/06/2018 15:32

Lass, Sorry, yes, I appreciated that was why you were saying what you did.

I was just arguing that sometimes transhobia exists, but if you see it when someone excludes a space between words then you are looking too hard and will find it everywhere.

Which makes any sensible discussion well nigh impossible.

Rufustheyawningreindeer · 17/06/2018 15:32

foxy

Oh i am so sorry

My reading skills leave a lot to be desired today and i see you were talking in part to the OP already

Honest mistake on my part Thanks

placemats · 17/06/2018 15:34

internal reproductive organs

One would hope the internal organs are retained! Sorry!

BettyDuMonde · 17/06/2018 15:39

Placemats, thank you.

It’s my understanding that the majority of transmen don’t have any kind of ‘lower surgery’ (and frankly, it sounds both brutal and quite unsatisfactory so I can understand why) but I am an outsider.

The fact that transfolk need really quite bespoke care for the majority of their lives is as good a reason as any as not lump us all in as ‘cervix-havers’.

As I keep saying, this attempt at ‘inclusion’ by CRUK seems fraught with the potential of a negative impact on everyone!

(The percentages of men with breast cancer are very low though, not high enough to indicate universal screening will be suffiently cost effective. I only know this because I have spent 24 hours obsessing over it, having just discovered my late mother had BRACA2, which unlike BRACA1 can be inherited by boys)

R0wantrees · 17/06/2018 15:41

we haven't forgotten clause 28

Me neither, opposing this was the first time I joined in political protest. I am hetrosexual; it was appalling, cruel and unjust.

placemats · 17/06/2018 15:50

I agree the percentage of breast cancer is low in men, but when they take hrt for a very long time the impact on the breast tissue they retain is a health risk.

Thankfully, most men who transition now do not take hrt for a long period of time, and prefer to go down a surgical route to 'feminise' themselves. Basically, they get breast implants and have body hair removed permanently or moved to the scalp.

Some also go for voice box shaving and a reduction of the brow - this is minimal because of the risks involved and isn't always satisfactory.

loveyouradvice · 17/06/2018 16:03

CRUK have been beyond stupid in doing this.....

Everyone on here seems to agree that women and ... is appropriate.... I cannot understand why they haven't done this. And I bet there is some very robust internal scrutiny now - the negative publicity from this will be literally costing them millions - from donors put off by their foolhardiness and cavalier attitude to reaching those who need the message most)

On a secondary note, surely transpeople are more aware of their need for screens etc than others - they have spent hours with doctors discussing their medical needs, and am I wrong in assuming that this is one caution every doctor would give to anyone transitioning? That it is crucial they still have the tests relevant to their natal sex?

And I would imagine that any GP seeing a transperson for the first time in their surgery, noting their records, would ensure this factual conversation had taken place and record it appropriately....

So I would assume transpeople are far more aware of the need for various screenings than those with english as a second language, or (for example) lacking the knowledge of what a cervix is....

GahWhatever · 17/06/2018 16:10

I believe that the CRUK wording that the screen is for those with a cervix, rather than specifying women, is that there has been a recent US study which showed that 11% of the people who attended screening (women) no longer had a cervix. Obviously the technician doesn't know this before 'going in' and here in the UK this would be a massive waste of NHS resource.
I do not believe that the wording is designed with transwomen/transmen in mind, although I do know that my trans child (now adult) would not respond to a call for screening specifying women even though they have a cervix.

placemats · 17/06/2018 16:11

Section 28 or Clause 28

This was to prevent local councils from actively promoting homosexuality either in local literature, e.g. pride events or within schools maintained within the LEA. It applied only to Wales, Scotland and England. Scotland was the first to repeal it.

An abhorrent piece of legislation that disgusted me at that time.

placemats · 17/06/2018 16:12

Would they respond to 'Women, transmen and people with a cervix'?

Gah

R0wantrees · 17/06/2018 16:14

yes sorry! doing three things at once... (always drop one ball!)

should have clarified, Section 28

placemats · 17/06/2018 16:18

It is of course entirely up to your son Gah

My mother has never had a smear test or a mammogram and she is in her nineties!

LassWiADelicateAir · 17/06/2018 16:26

I do not believe that the wording is designed with transwomen/transmen in mind, although I do know that my trans child (now adult) would not respond to a call for screening specifying women even though they have a cervix

But the vast majority of posters are perfectly happy to keep the general reference to people who have a cervix.

Would you be happy that a natal woman would not realise she was the target audience because she didn't know she had a cervix?

Pratchet · 17/06/2018 16:29

'Women and trans people with a cervix'

Can't believe anyone could object to this

Kettlepotblackagain · 17/06/2018 16:29

Gah - CRUK have confirmed this was the reason.

MsMcWoodle · 17/06/2018 16:30

I went to an all girls school in the 1970s. We had one lesson of biology a week until we were 13. Then it stopped completely.
I don't know what a cervix is even now, actually.