This is what the Portman Clinic had to say about Gender Transition in 2002

[BarrackerBarmer]

...pre Gender Recognition Act, following the court case which precipitated the GRA.

8 Portman Clinicians wrote this letter to the Telegraph:

"Sir - The recent judgment in the European Court of Human Rights (report, July 12), in which a post-operative transsexual person was granted permission to marry in his adopted gender role, is a victory of fantasy over reality.

The experience of many psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists working with transsexual patients is that they are individuals who, for complex reasons, need to escape from an intolerable psychological reality into a more comfortable fantasy. By attempting to live as a member of the opposite sex, they try to avoid internal conflict, which may otherwise prove to be too distressing.

It is a measure of the urgency and desperation of their situation that they frequently seek surgery to make their fantasy real. By carrying out a "sex change" operation on their bodies, they hope to eliminate the conflict in their minds. Unfortunately, what many patients find is that they are left with a mutilated body, but the internal conflicts remain.

Through years of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, some patients begin to understand the origins of their painful conflicting feelings and can find new ways of dealing with them, other than by trying to alter their bodies. The recent legal victory risks reinforcing a false belief that it is possible to actually change a person's gender. It might also strengthen the view that the only solution to psychic pain is a legal or surgical one."

(Bolding mine)

AngryAttackKittens you are entitled so see me as you want and i have no power to change that. but if you feel that is all that im doing and all that you have as a response in these discussions then we will never move forwards in this, but maybe you dont want to actually move forward as you have found something that gives you vaule and if this debate ends then what would we all do then.

(Points up)

Narcissism is a hell of a drug.

that's all you really have pointing at the person. it's a shame. there are some amazing posts on here discussing things and you can just point

Not to worry, I'm sure someone who it's worth my discussing things with will turn up soon!

In relation to the original post, I am interested that it was written in 2002.

Up until the early 1990s, the Tavi and the Portman were independent of each other. The Portman’s focus was mental health and delinquency/ criminality. When they came together under a single NHS trust, the Portman’s focus remained different, but complementary to the Tavi’s. It is still a setting for people with problematic criminal, violent and sexual behaviour.

I expect a significant change in thinking took place when trans and gnc switched to being addressed at the Tavi, as opposed to the Portman.

I don’t know when the switch happened but I am interested that the letter is dated 2002, which is some time after the trust was formed.

Huh, now that is interesting.

That letter was very prescient really.

It doesn't fit with the "feelings trump science" approach of today.

I wonder if it will re-surface in years to come when the class action lawsuits are filed and a generation of children are furious that they were mutilated, experimented upon, left sterile and asexual?

And, despite the propaganda that I often come across, the prevailing view within the field of medicine is that invasive treatment is not ‘corrective’ due to an organic issue, it is provided to alleviate distress that is deemed to be intolerable. Whether this is labelled a mental health disorder, condition or not, I have yet to meet a professional working in the field who thinks that invasive treatment is the preferred option.
So much spin and nonsense goes on around this!

(Are NBs and pomo-addled blue-hairs the "worried well" of the trans movement? Perhaps the catastrophically dysphoric might better view them as Trojan horses capturing resources than as actual allies?)

I wonder about this. It might sounds harsh but I think that some people also project their own feelings of low self esteem and how they wish they had not felt judged or been bullied at school for example. They want to stop the harm of 'being judgemental' and shaming/othering people, but go to the complete other extreme and apply no judgement (critical thinking) at all.

You see it on the other boards and in RL where some parents who mean to be nice always let their child choose what to wear and let them choose what to eat. Then suffer the chaos that comes from a child being in charge, nd the child grows up to have little empathy or sense of ebing able to get on well in society.

Agreed, a lot of the lack of critical thinking about this issue stems from attempts at empathizing. The hardcore TRAs are a totally different thing, obviously, but a lot of the more wishy-washy support seems to stem from "well it's not nice to be picked on for something you can't help" and there's a distinct unwillingness to think about the impact that that indulgence has both on others and on the recipient themselves in the long run.

So many say 'live and let live' but I think they really mean is I don't really want to think about it or be troubled by it.

Interesting - I agree with this statement.

It takes me back to Heather Brunskell Evans talk - where her taxi driver said to her "live and live, that's what I think" and also - her dog-walking chum, who said "but what should we do with these trans kids?" - i.e. a lot of people accept the premise of being "born in the wrong body" - which I do not. You are born with a body - you have a body.

I also agree that some form of social transition could be helpful to young people suffering gender dysphoria - but that can take the form of name change/ clothes/ haircut. I have always been against strict gender roles for boys and girls. The fact that society has suddenly morphed so quickly into young people demanding puberty blockers, surgery, sex hormones and so on - is just incomprehensible to me.

And the fact that certain campaign groups are demanding that people can change sex (they can't) and illuminating buildings with "Repeat after us. Transwomen are Women" really is trying to hail fantasy over reality. It is an attempt at indoctrination, bullying people into submission, into accepting an ideology with no basis in science.

It is spiralling into craziness so quickly - and as usual, the young, the vulnerable will be the ones to suffer - left infertile, dependant on drugs for their whole lives, or suffering the side effects/after effects of those drugs/surgeries.

Yes attempts at empathising kittens. Of course one cannot properly empathise with something one doesn't understand and some trans activists are doing very well at skewing what people understand.

That and waht seems to be the manipulative tactic of being trans and mentally unwell when it suits their arugment and then being female and it not a mental health disorder when it doesn't suit.

I hate to raise Brexit but some of the 'kind liberal' arguments seem similar - that we should be absolutely welcoming to any amount of inward migration, especially from 'troubled and vicitmised' groups, without any recognition that it is poorer and dsiadvantaged people who face the biggest effect on terms of competition for housing and coincil homes, and without recognition for that fatc that some of these troubled people are, whilst no doubt victims of horrible polictical envronments, may actually be sexist, racist, torubled prioducts of their society and bring their problematic attitudes here whitout seeing the need to change them.

I may not be wording this well, but it is like people say 'just adopt' without realsiing that many adopted chidlred have suffered much trauma and have MH and behavioural difficuties that are not their fault but that require educated and expert care, can cannot just fit right in with their new life.

It is irrational optimism and toxic.

Things are more complex than most people can be bothered with, so all this 'inclusion' its just a liberal form of 'I'm alright Jack-NIMBYism', that leave the most disavantaged to fight it out amongst themselves.

Sorry for the slight incoherence. I have brain problems!!!

That's really interesting, and a resource. Thank you, Barracker .

There's a very eminent, if controversial, American psychiatrist, Paul McHugh, who stopped genital surgery at his hospital, John Hopkins back in the 70s because although his patients seemed better short term, in the longer term they were just as unhappy, with as poor MH, as they had been pre transition

He may be 85 but he's still pretty active professionally. He's written articles for lots of publications recently, trying to counteract what he sees as madness

Paul McHugh also led the professional charge against "false memory syndrome", which was much more of a thing in the USA than it was here, presumably because there are more trust fund kids there.

You see it on the other boards and in RL where some parents who mean to be nice always let their child choose what to wear and let them choose what to eat. Then suffer the chaos that comes from a child being in charge, nd the child grows up to have little empathy or sense of ebing able to get on well in society.

Yes. Related to helicopter parenting. And you're right about Brexit too.

I don't think middle class liberalism understands how classist it is, how it captures resources meant for the actually marginalised and thus creates hostility among the "lessers". They don't understand the actual precarity of most people's lives. This is how the US got Trump; this is how we got Brexit. And, quite likely, this is how we have got extremist transactivism - it's a toxic mix of male and middle class entitlement.

OP and others - do you know if Private Eye have ever covered these issues? The 2002 letter shows how much things have changed (from a clinical point of view) in a relatively short time - it might be the type of thing that MD would investigate and cover.

That's a great point Manderley. Perhaps us worth pinging an email to the Eye and covering off some of the salient points, including how "get the L out" was covered in the media?

I don't think middle class liberalism understands how classist it is, how it captures resources meant for the actually marginalised and thus creates hostility among the "lessers". They don't understand the actual precarity of most people's lives. This is how the US got Trump; this is how we got Brexit. And, quite likely, this is how we have got extremist transactivism - it's a toxic mix of male and middle class entitlement.

I was thining about this having read some of the 'are we the baddies' thread.

Are these people the products of Blair maybe? People who think they are left wing and all socially 'nice' but are actually right wing individualists, who, having misidentifed the victims and minimised the issues, will throw everyone in together in the name of inclusivity then move onto the next fashionable topic, without waiting to see who sinks or swims :( oh and then be horribly surprised when it vulnerable people get hurt.

Are these people the products of Blair maybe? People who think they are left wing and all socially 'nice' but are actually right wing individualists, who, having misidentifed the victims and minimised the issues, will throw everyone in together in the name of inclusivity then move onto the next fashionable topic, without waiting to see who sinks or swims sad oh and then be horribly surprised when it vulnerable people get hurt.

I think we are of a mind!

would rather be utterly wrong though and have everyone genuinely getting along nicely!

LangCleg just seen your posts ont he apocalyptic thread!! Interesting stuff.

There are many connections to a bigger picture, aren't there?

Economically-speaking, I think individualist neoliberalism died with the financial crash of 2008. But we haven't found an economic model to replace it that works yet, so on the social sphere we still have neoliberalism running rampant even though it is backed up by nothing but the ashes of that financial crash.

I think there is a bumpy road ahead and transgender ideology is just one facet of it. I worry though, that if we're not careful there will be a return to de facto feudalism.

Manderley

Private Eye are aware of this. They've published a letter and a few cartoons and been contacted by a couple of people to approach it in an investigative way. The fact they've not done so makes me worry they don't think it's a big deal.

An approach to MD might be a different way about it

I hate to raise Brexit but some of the 'kind liberal' arguments seem similar - that we should be absolutely welcoming to any amount of inward migration, especially from 'troubled and vicitmised' groups, without any recognition that it is poorer and dsiadvantaged people who face the biggest effect on terms of competition for housing and coincil homes, and without recognition for that fatc that some of these troubled people are, whilst no doubt victims of horrible polictical envronments, may actually be sexist, racist, torubled prioducts of their society and bring their problematic attitudes here whitout seeing the need to change them.

I may not be wording this well, but it is like people say 'just adopt' without realsiing that many adopted chidlred have suffered much trauma and have MH and behavioural difficuties that are not their fault but that require educated and expert care, can cannot just fit right in with their new life.

I agree- it's not racist to shepherd one's resources and the problem as I see is these neocons open the door to migrants by waging war somewhere and displacing huge numbers of people into refugees. But as in male violence in the home, the dots aren't connected. Thus the original violence that caused it is ignored. So if they're going to wage war they need to take account of the civilians displaced.

Then countries like the UK open their doors and don't increase any of welfare, housing, education, health etc budgets to cater for the extra people. So the native poor get poorer and more estranged plus subject to all sorts of new cultural and structural issues with no support - and then blamed if they complain. And btw Blair was responsible for unlimited migration when other EU countries implemented a more restrictive and measured approach - Blair cocked up.

And yes people from cultures with endemic male violence bring that with them and guess what - no extra DV resources and don't you dare mention race in the same sentence as abuse -

It's all so reminiscent of the divide and conquer tactics of abusers - so the rich asset strip whilst the rest of us deal with the chaos their policies cause on the ground.

It's so facile and disingenuous with no listening for the real problems people face. And yes it's the appropriation of politics by career politicians rather than representatives of the working class. Plus not limiting psychopathic behaviour (neocons).

Economically-speaking, I think individualist neoliberalism died with the financial crash of 2008. But we haven't found an economic model to replace it that works yet, so on the social sphere we still have neoliberalism running rampant even though it is backed up by nothing but the ashes of that financial crash.

No one who caused it had consequences so we're still using the same model that caused 2008 and expecting different results. No extra economic safeguarding has been implemented to replace that dismantled by Thatcher and Reagan Blair and Clinton