Another Mermaid statement: about Good Morning Britain and Caroline Farrow

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Apparently Farrow will be on GMB tomorrow.

There are some interesting bits in this statement:

Jackie is, of course, deeply upset by the reference to her as being mutilated, castrated and sterilised.

Jackie is also distressed at the assertion that this was something that was somehow done ‘to her’. The only people deliberately doing anything 'to her' are the online trolls using the most abusive language about her. She would like the online abuse to stop.

At 16, she undertook extensive psychological assessment from independent experts before she was cleared for, and undertook, gender reassignment surgery. Her competency and full knowledge of all the implications was clear.

At 25 she still considers that surgery, for her, was lifesaving, and is distressed at the implication that she was not capable and mature enough to make this decision.

I'm never going to find it now, but somewhere on here the other day there was a screenshot from a 'trans kids' type forum. A mother was talking about her 'trans' teenager who had discovered mastrubation and was wanting to stop their hormonal medication because it 'intereferred' and the mum was looking for advice as to how to persuade her child that this wouldn't necessarily be a good idea.

It was on this thread.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3531622-4thWaveNow-has-some-incredibly-disturbing-stuff-from-Facebook

twitter.com/4th_WaveNow/status/1105667219814526976

Video by Erin two days ago:

Well meaning parents perpetuate the myth that a child can be born in the wrong body. These parents who advocate for the affirmation and transition of gender dysphoric children are harming children and using emotional blackmail when they tell other parents that a gender dysphoric child must be affirmed or else the child might kill themselves. Parents are not supposed to affirm or encourage the delusions of children. Loving and supportive parents need to know that most gender dysphoria will naturally resolve and that when it doesn't, treatments like cognitive behavior therapy can help children overcome dysphoric feelings. Trans activists who suggest that children are transgender if they are gender dysphoric are wrong. Just because a child has gender dysphoria does not mean they are transgender. Just because a child is gender non-conforming does not mean they are gender dysphoric.

From the video linked:

"Children rely on adults to create reality for them, if we start creating a reality that is untrue, telling children they can be born in the wrong body .... we are talking about something meta physical.. to be told you can be born in the wrong body is very confusing and scary for children even if you don't have dysphoria"

relevent extract from a young woman (aged 19) who spoke from the audience at the end of 'We Need To Talk' meeting in Washington.
Transcribed by PencilsinSpace

"Additionally - so when I was going to get my double mastectomy after identifying as trans for four years, I just had to go to a doctor, say 'I'm trans and I want top surgery' and then they're like, OK, you know, then they'll ask me some questions about my life, but there's no like, maybe you're a lesbian who doesn't want to be seen as a lesbian because you live in a homophobic area, maybe you're dealing with - you need to deal with some sexual trauma. Maybe there's other things, other than this sort of idea. There's none of that, it's just like, OK! And so then the next time they were just like, OK I'll write a letter to your insurance saying they should pay for it.

You know, it's just - women are really being let down, especially lesbians.

And I don't know, it's just very - going on what you were saying? I just feel so bad about my peers because it's very hard to get out of. It's such a cult-like mindset because if you talk to anyone different you are going to be excommunicated, right? You're just not going to be allowed to interact with people. I mean it's like my friends who just dropped me, you know, it's really difficult - I don't know if I'm over my time limit - I just, I don't know, when people were saying about how it's really hard as a young person to not be accepted by your peers - it is terrifying, it is so ... scary, but it's really an important thing because so many women I know, every lesbian I know in my day to day life who's not a complete normie who's never been online, has identified as trans, even if they haven't transitioned, has previously identified as trans.

Because it's just - being a lesbian sucks, guys.

I mean it's wonderful once you're able to accept it and interact with other women, but this is a terrifying societal position to occupy and I'm completely proud and out now but it's just a really scary thing because these people who are supposed to be supporting you would rather you be anything but a lesbian." (continues)

full transcript of her comments in thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3507109-Pique-Resilience-Project-young-detransitioned-women-sharing-their-personal-stories

'Healthy functioning body parts' are removed eg elective mastectomies following BRCA+

But this is still done for a medical reason, because women with these genes are at high risk of cancer. This isn't comparable to 'gender reassignment surgery' which is done purely for cosmetic reasons.

The whole issue of transitioning children is based around cosmetic reasons for early transition.

YY OldCrone the point I and AstonishedFemalePersonator have made is that it isn't true to say 'healthy functioning body parts' are never removed.
There are a number of examples with specific reasons and justifications.

There are a number of examples with specific reasons and justifications.

But the reasons and justifications are either medical or religious. If they are medically justified there will be a clear reason why the medical professionals involved view the treatment as necessary or in the best interests of the patient. It is not universally accepted that those which are done for religious reasons, such as circumcision in young boys, should be happening at all.

My point is that administering puberty blockers and hormones and carrying out surgery on people to make them resemble the opposite sex are cosmetic procedures. There is no medical justification. There is only a religious justification if gender identity ideology is a religion, but I don't think its adherents accept that it is. And even then it should be subject to the same scrutiny and debate as other procedures carried out in the name of religion.

OldCrone I dont think we have any disagreement with regards the point you are making. The point of my post however was specifically in response to an assertion.
With regards cosmetic procedures then there too 'perfectly healthy body parts' are often removed.

Yes, R0wantrees, I think we agree, but we're making slightly different points, and I realise mine wasn't clear at all from my last post.

You're absolutely right that healthy body parts can also be removed in cosmetic procedures. My point is that this is what is being done with 'gender reassignment surgery'. These are purely cosmetic procedures, which can seriously impact the future health of the person who undergoes them. Puberty blockers and hormones are also given for purely cosmetic reasons, again with the risk of serious side effects.

I think this is a point which needs to be made, particularly when children are involved. Children are being given powerful drugs to stop their natural development - for purely cosmetic reasons.

YY OldCrone
There is such a need for clarity.

AstonishedFemalePersonator & I were replying to PP assertion:
"Body parts have a function. We operate where they are not fulfilling their basic purpose. We don’t mutilate (and Catholic moral theology uses that word) or amputate healthy functioning body parts."

But with elective hysterectomy/ mastectomy , where a woman has a vastly increased risk of cancer at a young age, then that surgery is prophylactic, not cosmetic. In breast reduction surgery, which may be cosmetic, but seems to normally be medical, then the breast is not entirely removed. I can’t think of any other surgical procedure where healthy parts are removed in their entirety ?

The only thing comparable is infibulation.

I was thinking of things like this.

A tattooist who called himself “Dr Evil” has been jailed for three years for carrying out ear and nipple removals at the request, and with the written consent, of two of his customers.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/dr-evil-trial-sentence-brendan-mccarthy-tattoo-gbh-wolverhampton-a8833811.html

I agree about religious justification Rowantrees, but it was an interesting point (at least for me) about when it’s acceptable to cut things off. I know sometimes castration/orchidectomy is needed to be carried out to stop the spread of prostrate cancer.

I also wonder whether because I have read a lot of this theology it might subconsciously have been involved in the word mutilation which I was thinking of in a philosophical as well as factual context?

Bioethics constantly makes reference to SRS using the term, mutilation.

A tattooist who called himself “Dr Evil” has been jailed for three years for carrying out ear and nipple removals at the request, and with the written consent, of two of his customers.

Its a really important recent case which concerns the nature of 'consent'

Also with regards breast binding by young females who identify as transgender
cf 'abuse'

BBC article today:
'Breast ironing awareness 'needed in school'
(extract)
Breast ironing awareness should be made part of the mandatory school curriculum to protect young girls from abuse, the National Education Union has said.

The practice involves ironing a girl's chest with hot objects to delay breasts from growing, so she does not attract male attention.

Conservative MP Nicky Morgan said teachers must also be educated, as they have a "very important role to play".

The Home Office said teachers have a duty to report concerns. (continues)

'Hidden crime'
There is no specific offence for breast ironing, but the Home Office described it as a form of child abuse and said it should be prosecuted under general assault laws.

Angie Marriott, a former gynaecological nurse who now works as a safeguarding lecturer for Cheshire Police, said that the true scale of breast ironing in the UK was being obscured because of under-reporting.

She described it as a "sensitive, hidden crime", with women afraid to speak out for fear of being "ousted from their communities".

"I know this is happening because people have divulged it to me," she said.

"And they've said it's the first time openly that they've ever spoken about what's happened to them, and they felt ashamed." (continues)

www.bbc.com/news/education-47695169

Worth reading the whole article

Fascinating debate. I've often wondered how it became acceptable to carry out surgery on a patient who to most people would seem to have a psychological problem rather than a physical one. I know about Lili Elbe who died in 1931 from infection after an operation to implant a womb and construct a neovagina. Any earlier instances? From my layperson's knowledge I'd have thought the Elbe case was always doomed to failure because the body would have rejected the transplanted organ.

I agree about religious justification Rowantrees, but it was an interesting point (at least for me) about when it’s acceptable to cut things off

Caro for context I am very aware of cancer treatments having being diagnosed and treated for Gynaecological cancer at a relatively young age.
It involved me having quite a lot of 'things cut off'
I also have a number of women close to me who have had to consider whether to have elective mastectomies for BRCA+

I saw that breast ironing article and did wonder why that's totally unacceptable and schools are being urged to identify and report it, while the very same schools are advised to let girls wearing breast binders sit out their PE lessons if they're finding it difficult to breathe.

www.transgendertrend.com/breast-binders-in-uk-schools/

Anyway, back to psychiatry. In this layperson's view it's not one of the most advanced branches of medical science, because the brain must be just about the most complicated organ in the body and I don't get the sense that we understand all that much about how it works. But as other branches of medicine made great strides in the early 20th century it looks as if psychiatry, then a brand new specialism, was desperate to try to keep up. This is judging by this Wikipedia article on lobotomy which accords with the little I do know about psychiatric practice in the early and mid 20th century.

**
n the early 20th century, the number of patients residing in mental hospitals increased significantly[n 3] while little in the way of effective medical treatment was available.[n 4][27] Lobotomy was one of a series of radical and invasive physical therapies developed in Europe at this time that signaled a break with a psychiatric culture of therapeutic nihilism that had prevailed since the late nineteenth-century.[28] The new "heroic" physical therapies devised during this experimental era,[29] including malarial therapy for general paresis of the insane (1917),[30] deep sleep therapy (1920), insulin shock therapy (1933), cardiazol shock therapy (1934), and electroconvulsive therapy (1938),[31] helped to imbue the then therapeutically moribund and demoralised psychiatric profession with a renewed sense of optimism in the curability of insanity and the potency of their craft.[32] The success of the shock therapies, despite the considerable risk they posed to patients, also helped to accommodate psychiatrists to ever more drastic forms of medical intervention, including lobotomy.[29]

The clinician-historian Joel Braslow argues that from malarial therapy onward to lobotomy, physical psychiatric therapies "spiral closer and closer to the interior of the brain" with this organ increasingly taking "center stage as a source of disease and site of cure."[33] For Roy Porter, once the doyen of medical history,[34] the often violent and invasive psychiatric interventions developed during the 1930s and 1940s are indicative of both the well-intentioned desire of psychiatrists to find some medical means of alleviating the suffering of the vast number of patients then in psychiatric hospitals and also the relative lack of social power of those same patients to resist the increasingly radical and even reckless interventions of asylum doctors.[35] Many doctors, patients and family members of the period believed that despite potentially catastrophic consequences, the results of lobotomy were seemingly positive in many instances or, at least they were deemed as such when measured next to the apparent alternative of long-term institutionalisation. Lobotomy has always been controversial, but for a period of the medical mainstream, it was even feted and regarded as a legitimate if desperate remedy for categories of patients who were otherwise regarded as hopeless.[36] Today, lobotomy has become a disparaged procedure, a byword for medical barbarism and an exemplary instance of the medical trampling of patients' rights.[3]

Its a really important recent case which concerns the nature of 'consent'

This tattooist was jailed for 3 years for carrying out these procedures on adults who had consented to them.

Helen Webberley is still walking free, and although suspended, has not been struck off, despite prescribing testosterone to a 12-year-old girl. Presumably her parents consented on her behalf, but neither they nor Webberley were acting in her best interests. This child will have to live the rest of her life with the effects of taking testosterone.

Helen Webberley is still walking free, and although suspended, has not been struck off, despite prescribing testosterone to a 12-year-old girl. Presumably her parents consented on her behalf, but neither they nor Webberley were acting in her best interests. This child will have to live the rest of her life with the effects of taking testosterone.

It would also be very significant if any of those treated by Dr Webberley were 'Looked After' children etc

Sorry to hear that Rowantrees and don’t get me wrong, not that it matters, but that’s the kind of preventative treatment which Catholic bioethics would support. (Though I appreciate it’s irrelevant for many/most people)

I was just musing from an abstract perspective about when it might be acceptable to remove healthy functioning tissue and I guess the answer is only for legitimately medically recognised preventative purposes.

And the different between a birth defect such as a heart problem and being ‘born in the wrong body.’ It’s all about weighing up risks and rewards isn’t it? A heart needs operating upon for a baby/child to survive. Whereas SRS removes healthy tissue and uses the rest to fashion into the simulation of an entirely different body part.

It’s definitely an unethical and risky way of treating a psychological problem in children.

I was just musing from an abstract perspective about when it might be acceptable to remove healthy functioning tissue and I guess the answer is only for legitimately medically recognised preventative purposes.

Although as AstonishedFemalePersonator posted, circumcision?

Long and important article which is relevent and will I'm sure contradict those who have claimed/promoted/affirmed the belief that some children have a boy brain in a girl's body or visa versa.

"NEUROGENDERINGS
Eight Things You Need to Know About Sex, Gender, Brains, and Behavior: A Guide for Academics, Journalists, Parents, Gender Diversity Advocates, Social Justice Warriors, Tweeters, Facebookers, and Everyone Else
by Cordelia Fine, Daphna Joel and Gina Rippon

sfonline.barnard.edu/neurogenderings/eight-things-you-need-to-know-about-sex-gender-brains-and-behavior-a-guide-for-academics-journalists-parents-gender-diversity-advocates-social-justice-warriors-tweeters-facebookers-and-ever/

Shared by OP NeurotrashWarrior current thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3543317-8-things-you-need-to-know-about-sex-gender-brains-and-behaviour-by-cordelia-fine-gina-rippon-and-daphna-joel