Penny Mordaunt has made her position at Women & Equalities Committee

[SwearyG]

She said what trans people face is misperception.
She said that this is like the fight for gay rights in the 80s.
She said we are frightened and have no experience of trans people.
She said that the videos and lectures going around are bigotry
She said that they need to show solidarity, but that won’t be set out in anything because questions have to be asked neutrally.

She’s a fucking woman and she said that we’re (and I am paraphrasing) misinformed bigots for caring about the rights of women and children.

I am so right now.

WRT puberty blockers and hormone therapy she says that these will only be offered to over 16s (rarely offered to under 16s) and only after careful diagnosis and following protocol. These are fully reversable.

Lies. Puberty blockers rarely offered under 16? Not reversible either, and the effects are largely unknown but what we do know says they certainly are not harmless.

And I thought you had to be 18 for cross sex hormones. If puberty is blocked though, given we don't know how much brain development is blocked along with it, we could potentially be allowing 10 year olds to decide to go onto cross sex hormones.

I think the fact that puberty blockers are used off-licence should be of massive concern to the NHS.

Surely that needs to be assessed? In terms of safety and legal culpability.

Well guys, I stood up today at the launch of the alleged review of the Equalities Act and shouted my disgust at Penny calling women bigoted.

She was not there, I just let the room know what the Minister for Women and Equalities thinks of women.

’WRT puberty blockers and hormone therapy [Mordaunt] says that these will only be offered to over 16s (rarely offered to under 16s) and only after careful diagnosis and following protocol. These are fully reversable. surgery is not offered to under 16s’

• not true that they are reversible and that’s absolutely appalling that hormones or blockers are given to under 16s EVER, let alone ‘rarely’. We don’t know what the effects are on kids long term.
• surgery IS offered to 16, 17, years olds then, does that mean? Good grief. I thought you had to be 18 at least in the UK?

This is terrible. 16 is way, way, way too young for anything surgical. 18 absolute minimum.

Doctors would (rightly) never give a vasectomy to a 16 year old lad when asked for one (which is in any case potentially partly recoverable via further surgery )
They would (rightly) also shoo away a 16 year old girl requesting a permanently sterilising operation.
What on earth are we doing here? How has this been legimisied. It is scandalous.

Sorry bold fail. Was quoting endoftheline’s post above.

PM just needs educating like the rest of us wimminz. (She just needs a different education, not the shut up and sit down TRA's advocate for us).

OMG - sorry there is a typo:
Surgery is not offered to under 18s. NOT 16s.
She also says that the government expects private doctors to adhere to the same standards as NHS doctors.

I couldn't copy and paste because of the format in which the document was sent to me. So unfortunately I missed that 18 in a paragraph full of 16s.
I thought her comments on the GGA policy was completely different from what I have read on other threads. I wonder if she is unaware of the current discussion around that?

Is she just really uninformed?

8! 8? that is a disgrace

What's the point of puberty blockers at age 16? There's not much left to block, is there?

Exactly. Most young people will have pretty much gone through it by then. I thought you had to do it about 11ish?

well done picasso

Yes I'd heard that in the US they often start at 8-9, and transactivists want that here.

Picasso

I think it would be interesting to see what the response would be to specific questions. Maybe several people could write to her?

I included quite a number of points in my letter and not all were addressed.

The impression I got was that the government has a hands off approach in terms of allowing organisations to just set their own rules.

I would like more information around refuges for example.

If puberty is blocked though, given we don't know how much brain development is blocked along with it, we could potentially be allowing 10 year olds to decide to go onto cross sex hormones.

Exactly. And consequently they are being asked to make a decision while too young to grasp the consequences which will mean whether or not they can have children and will change their lives forever.

Thank you endof for clarifying though still shocking the endorsement of anyone medically and surgically altering teenagers in this massively irresponsible way.

Most politicians I've met have been disappointing in their intellect and inability to grasp systemic issues where women and children are adversely affected - sometimes I wonder if they were selected because of that - as they won't rock any leaders' boat and are easily led

I think they foresaw their main purpose to be to prevent discrimination (for the good of those with certain characteristics), and didn't put enough thought into how the EA should be used to enable discrimination (for the good of those with certain characteristics).

So how to use it to both include AND to exclude when necessary.

They preferenced the former, but it really needs to be both.

Good point Rat.