MNHQ: I'd like to start a thread about the reality of phalloplasty without it being deleted

[BarrackerBarmer]

MNHQ has already deleted one thread "not in the spirit".

Fair enough.

Please lay out exactly how I can start a thread about phalloplasty, with images (of arms, not of penises).
This is important. Thousands of girls are identifying as boys, and the medical pathway for those girls includes breastbinding, double mastectomies, hysterectomies and phalloplasties.

Guidance from many institutions is unquestioning affirmation.

I want to discuss this. Truthfully.

Tell me how I can do this without MNHQ deleting my thread and I will follow your rules to the letter.

Or tell the thousands of women on this site that we are forbidden from discussing the outcome of SRS for girls entirely.

What are your rules please?

the worse things are, the less we're permitted to talk about them

Indeed.

I dunno barrack.

Makes me sad and makes me mad for every single fecker who is colluding in this fecking madness

A lifetime of drugs and surgery wit no hope of a n adult relationship

Just being on internet wit fuckwits cheering you on

we shouldn't judge what they & their medical advisors decide for their individual case

I would bet a lot of money that 'medical advisors' in the cases where phalloplasties have been done are private cosmetic surgeons who stand to make thousands from these procedures.

Even in this country there will be cosmetic surgeons doing far more minor procedures on patients who don't need any surgery simply because they're being paid. It isn't the most reputable profession, let's face it

@MNHQ

I've just noticed you wrote this:
We also appreciate that it's already been circulated elsewhere and that you were using it to discuss your point. That said, given that this is a photo of a person who could end up reading the thread, we didn't think that basing the discussion on them in particular was in the spirit.

I must categorically refute that I based a discussion on anyone in particular. This was an anonymous photo and all identifiers were redacted AND the discussion did not reference them in particular AT ALL.

The thread is no longer standing but I would hate for posters to imagine this was a personalised thread. It absolutely wasn't and that comment from MNHQ is very off the mark. I redacted the identifiers myself despite the subject of the photos making them, and their identity, entirely public and searchable. I actually respected their privacy more than they did themselves.

Brava Pencils, wholeheartedly agree with all of that.

It's nothing to do with judging them. It's genuine concern that people are starting along this path without fully understanding where it leads. Surgery will never be able to create anything near to a real functioning penis or vagina. Kids are starting on a road that is made up of small steps, but it's more like a treadmill that becomes increasingly difficult to get off.
They need to know before they set off that the road leads to infertility, sexual dysfunction and body mutilation.
I think need to see photos of the reality.

I accidentally saw a horrific photograph not of the phalloplasty but of the utter mutilation of the patient's forearm. It resembled a hacked kebab, with barely enough flesh to keep the hand alive. It was grotesque - how can surgeons bring themselves to do this? The 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein springs to mind. Do transmen truly have the faintest idea what would be done to them in this surgery?

That sounds like the photo I posted, timeforadebate

People absolutely should be upset by this and we absolutely should be judging the medical professionals who are doing this to women's healthy bodies. The image wasn't 'fairly hard hitting' it was horrific. Because this is horrific.

Here are some lovely penguins to make everyone feel better.

(From Penguin Land - a book by GIRES aimed at nursery and infant school children)

Holy shit, that book is terrifying

I saw the pictures on twitter.

I showed my husband.

His questions were:

"Does it work?" ie. can they get an erection.

And: 'do they pee through it?'

I can't answer those questions for him (he's be most grateful if anyone can.) I'm too horrified to look into it an further.

What the hell is happening? Our girls, our beautiful girls - rejecting womanhood like this. Rejecting their own perfectly healthy, functioning bodies.

I can't answer those questions for him (he's be most grateful if anyone can.) I'm too horrified to look into it an further.

To get hard it has a saline solution pumped into it, using a miniature pump concealed in one of the testicles.

Or it can have a metal pin in it to create a permanent erection.

I find the surgery as brutal as anyone but this didn’t sprung from nowhere. We are quite happy - and have been for decades- for plastic surgeons to develop more and more invasive surgeries for purely aesthetic reasons, allowing our sisters and daughters to have their breasts, labia, faces, buttocks and limbs operated on for non-medical reasons based on an ideal aesthetic of what a woman should look like. (And I am not talking about repairing breasts deformed or removed due to malignancies).

We should have said more then, because we have been part of the whole development of interfering with perfectly functional bodies to look like perfect people.

This is an inevitable next step and fuck knows where it will stop. I don’t think it will until we have the world plunged into the chaos of war, famine or disease, when it will be forced off the table by circumstance.

Urbanbeetler that is an interesting point and one I had not really thought through. I would add two things:

Body modification via cosmetic surgery is augmenting the natural form, not changing it completely. I also think there was criticism of cosmetic procedures and unrealistic body ideals for women. Of course when you can get Botox on the high street, it is clear that criticism has not stuck. But augmenting one’s features is surely qualitatively different from destroying them to change sex (which is not possible). No-one is lying when they say breast augmentation gives you bigger breasts, or Botox takes away wrinkles, whether you agree with it ethically or aesthetically.

Secondly, aside from facial feminisation surgery, these are not procedures which have come through cosmetic roots. They are gynaecology procedures, such as hysterectomy, co-opted to a new purpose. Or they have come from medical intervention to the intersex community. Both these things have now come under question.

I was surprised yesterday to read that the first mention of ‘gender roles’ came from the medical community doing intersex surgery in the 1950s. I thought it was second wave feminism. Every day is a school day.

I completely see your point @KataraJean but when we started agreeing to treat body dysmorphia by changing the actual body surgically rather than treat the symptoms of the person who hated their perfectly functioning body parts, we paved the way to the same approach to body dysphoria.

I object to the use of the word ‘we’ because none of this is done with overall consensus that it is right and certainly it is not something I agree with.

But that apart, I am not disputing what you are saying, just trying to think it through as I had not previously made that connection. I had got as far as one of the ingredients for this trend being the ability of surgeons to do these procedures whereas you have now also added - and the societal acceptance of this.

I am so glad the government has launched an inquiry into ROGD among young women (today’s Sunday Times). And that the Tavistock urges watchful waiting, despite pressures otherwise.

Watchful waiting seems by far the most sensible way forward.

I apologise for ‘we’ - I didn’t even mean ‘me’ as I have always been vocal about my feelings that cosmetic surgery for dysmorphia in most of its forms is a slippery slope (those surgically enhanced breasts are now the perfect ones, with their lumps of plastic amidst the milk ducts. And if you aspire to them - they could be in your reach! So the more they are seen as available, the more they are desired.)

Rather I meant we as society.

Is this generally the ambitions of ftm teenagers does anyone know? I wonder if there’s a similar thing to lots of Mtf choosing to keep their male genitals? I am perhaps grasping at a small straw of hope...

I don't think this is a case where the thought-terminating cliché "don't judge them" applies at all.

As PP have highlighted so eloquently, this barbarity is the end result of all the glitter and rainbows and "finding your true self". A flayed arm and some very real risk of severe, life-changing complications. We need to make the connection, keep on making the connection, and keep on challenging the narrative being pushed by Mermaids and GIRES.

Because once you set children on this path - vulnerable children who often have multiple co-morbid psychiatric issues - you're then relying on THEM to have the courage to say "No. No futher". When they've been groomed and encouraged to believe that all of this is a natural and inevitable path?

It's verging on immoral not to get your judgement on about that.

Maybe these images should be posted on the websites where the teenage girls are being groomed?

Dear lord. I think you should post photos so as to show the reality of the surgery.