Frack's reference post

[FrackOff]

Hi All
I have been asked in various threads for references. I am starting a new thread as I've lost track of all the conversations. I wasn't going to bother as people usually don't want to read them but since one or two have said they really do want to read them with an open mind, here are a few.

Reidar Schei Jessen & Katrina Roen (2019) Balancing in the margins
of gender: exploring psychologists’ meaning-making in their work with gender non- conforming youth seeking puberty suppression, Psychology & Sexuality, 10:2, 119-131, DOI: 10.1080/19419899.2019.1568290

ABSTRACT
The past 15 years have seen the growth of puberty suppression as the prevailing approach to supporting gender non-conforming children and youth. Puberty suppression is considered to provide time for weighing up the pros and cons of medical transition. Research based on binary under- standings of gender has demonstrated that a carefully selected group of gender non-conforming youth benefit from physical treatment and gender transition, but the research that details how psychologists can best support young people during this time is limited. This is the gap addressed by the current research. The purpose of the present study is to explore the meaning-making framework within which some clinical psychologists and gender non-conforming youth approach discussions of puberty suppression. Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with clinical psychologists working with gender non-conforming youth. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. The results indicate that there is pressure on gender non- conforming youth, often coming from families, friends and mass media, to buy into heteronormative and binary discourses regarding gender and what constitutes a good life. The results also indicate that the participants deploy affirmative and exploratory therapeutic strategies in their work, in order to enable gender non-conforming youth to make informed decisions regarding puberty suppression. Participants emphasized the importance of therapeutic approaches that explore non-binary gender discourses, alongside the use of puberty suppression and other medical interventions that enable clients to fit more with gender norms. The therapeutic balance between affirmation and exploration may shed light on how both research within the binary tradition and critics of binary assumptions are in danger of oversimplifying the process of gender identity development. This research highlights the importance of understanding the complex negotiation of gender discourses that are in tension with one another.

Thanks from me too @JoanneMumsnet

@Datun I agree, I don't like what Jazz Jennings' family have done either. Maybe they are actually very calculating- but then we have to take into account the terrible shortage of affordable healthcare in the US. They may have started down this road to try and fund her healthcare. Most people who are new to getting involved in the media don't know how horrific and out of control it can get.

I also have a big problem with mostly male surgeons thinking they know what trans women's surgery should constitute. I think it's based on patriarchal ideas of women's sexuality and heterosexual sex. Juno Roche wrote about this in her book Queer Sex.

I also have a big problem with mostly male surgeons thinking they know what trans women's surgery should constitute.

How would feminist GRS differ from patriarchal GRS?

I agree, I don't like what Jazz Jennings' family have done either. Maybe they are actually very calculating- but then we have to take into account the terrible shortage of affordable healthcare in the US. They may have started down this road to try and fund her healthcare. Most people who are new to getting involved in the media don't know how horrific and out of control it can get.

Could you be more specific? What that Jazz's parents have done do you dislike? Medicating their young child with off label experimental drugs? Rendering their young child anorgasmic for its entire adulthood? Or just funding this via reality TV?

I also have a big problem with mostly male surgeons thinking they know what trans women's surgery should constitute. I think it's based on patriarchal ideas of women's sexuality and heterosexual sex.

Interesting. Does this apply in the case of Jazz Jennings? How do you regard Jazz's surgeon, Marcie Bowers, who self describes as a woman with a transgender history? Male or female? What about homosexual sex? Does patriarchal homophobia form part of the urge to medicate and operate upon effeminate male children, do you think?

@Datun I agree, I don't like what Jazz Jennings' family have done either. Maybe they are actually very calculating-

Have you ever listened to the TEDTalk that Susie Green made? The mother of a male born individual who was put on hormone blockers, fast tracked to cross sex hormones and was castrated on their 16th birthday in Thailand?

Susie greens complete and utter adherence to gender stereotypes being innate is shocking when you hear it.

In her TEDTalk she explains how she had to take all her (then) son's toys away, because they were girls' toys. The child begged his grandparents for a doll for Christmas, but please don't tell mummy and daddy. Green goes on to say, of course, what was my alternative, I had to take him to the doctor.

She truly believed that this child's preference for the toys that a toy manufacturer had deliberately gendered in order to increase their profits, made something wrong with him.

This child was under absolutely no illusion that they were the wrong sex for the toys that they liked.

Do I think that jazz's parents are calculated and cynically making money? I certainly don't think it started like that. They, like very many other hopelessly unthinking sexist and misogynistic people, simply cannot comprehend that gender stereotypes are something society imposes, not something that we are born with.

Furthermore, it's really absolutely zero surprise to most women that young girls want to disguise their emerging sexual body. Most girls are subjected to objectification from the age of seven or eight. Who would not want to identify out of that?

Please. Remove gender stereotyping from your narrative and thinking. Remove the objectification of young women and then tell me what it means to be trans?

Tell me what gender dysphoria is trying to be a cure for?

Jazz Jennings parents were not from a poor background. They did not publicise their child's life out of a lack of affordable healthcare.

I don't like the media stuff Jazzs parents are doing.
I know her surgeon is trans and I would critique her in the same way.
Feminist surgery (what a concept) would be much more sensitive to a patient's voice and needs and reflective about sexist ideals about bodies and sex than what most trans women receive.

Content warning: self harm

I'm really not into gender stereotyping. My own kids are supported to play with and wear as wide a selection of things as they want. Our kids' books include feminist and gender non-normative characters. My own gender presentation varies widely. My several trans, nonbinary, and non trans friends and acquaintances do too, from girly girls and girly boys to macho men, tomboys and butch women.

I had a close friend once who had been sexually abused as a child. She hated her breasts and cut them repeatedly with a razor. In the 90s she heard about the idea of being nonbinary and felt it fit her really well, but it was still very uncommon and stigmatised so she didn't feel she could do anything about it. She has identified all her life as a butch lesbian. Over the years she smoked and drank a lot due to her painful relationship with her body. A big reason for her smoking was to try and get breast cancer so she could have her breasts removed. She used to wish it on herself constantly. She had a lot of psychotherapy and counselling. She now has COPD. I think if there was space for people like her in treatment pathways she might not now be dying of a preventable disease. I'm not saying that would necessarily have involved removing healthy tissue but her gender could at least have been discussed.

I know her surgeon is trans and I would critique her in the same way.

You would critique Marcie Bowers in the same way? How do you mean? This is your only critique so far of MTF surgery:

I also have a big problem with mostly male surgeons thinking they know what trans women's surgery should constitute. I think it's based on patriarchal ideas of women's sexuality and heterosexual sex.

You're applying this to Marcie Bowers?

I just want to be clear.

This is beginning to look remarkably odd, Frack. Are you still defending the use of puberty blockers - with all the lifelong implications they have, such as reduced cognitive function and anorgasmia - on an affirmation basis? Why would you advocate for this in young children but suddenly start suggesting alternative pathways for adults?

I find this er... (ponders impenetrable guidelines) er.... concerning. Are we allowed to say concerning?

I think perhaps we should get back on (your) topic. Puberty blockers.

I dunno,frack.

I still can’t work out from your posts where you are going from your opening post

You use words like gender presentation and non normative. And I don’t know why

I find it very difficult to understand what you stand for or what this whole thread that you started is about ?

Oops crossed with Lang there

Yes, Marcie Bowers.

I'm seeking nuance and to test the holes and gaps in all the arguments, including mine. I'm trying out ideas and thinking them through.

Thanks JoanneMunsnet. Too much important discussion on here to lose it.

I think it's based on patriarchal ideas of women's sexuality and heterosexual sex

I am not an academic

I like concrete, real life examples to help me understand things

Are you saying males shouldn’t be advised to have surgical neo vaginas fashioned?

I would be 100% with you on that by the way

Are you saying males shouldn’t be advised to have surgical neo vaginas fashioned?

I took it to mean that Frack thinks that surgery is being imposed on XY people who want to be women by XY surgeons with patriarchal attitudes to what makes a woman (that is, no penis allowed). So the anti-medicalisation route for transness - aka self-ID.

Which makes Frack's enthusiasm for puberty blockers all the more worrying.

Yes, Marcie Bowers.

Right. Gotcha. I think.

So, you're saying: puberty blockers for Jazz = great, super, fandabbydozy; surgery for Jazz = imposed by patriarchal male surgeons, one of whom is Marcie Bowers, so bad.

Have I got that right?

It does seem to be a rather disjointed, inconsistent view

Unless we’ve misunderstood Frack ?

Is there any evidence of trans women having patriarchal neo-vaginas imposed on them? What is it that they would rather have if their surgeon was a sensitive, listening, feminist?

Erm, so Jazz keeps Jazz’s genitals (totally with you so far)

But only after they have been rendered functionless for anything other than urination by hormone blockers and other drugs?

That’s the vision?

Yikes

I am totally befuddled as to what Frack is advocating by now.

I have no idea what patriarchal views of women's sexuality have to do with genital surgery on artificially prepubescent males.

Is there any evidence of trans women having patriarchal neo-vaginas imposed on them? What is it that they would rather have if their surgeon was a sensitive, listening, feminist?

Is it bad to burst out laughing on a serious thread about drastic medical intervention in children? I suppose we all need the occasional time out from the horror of it all? I can justify it this way?

(I have so many suggestions for alternatives but am mindful of the ROOLZ so will self censor.)

I'm really not into gender stereotyping.
My own gender presentation varies widely.

The second statement here seems to contradict the first. If you don't believe in gender stereotyping, why would you describe your 'presentation' as anything to do with gender?

I am totally befuddled as to what Frack is advocating by now.

It has occured to me that this might be intentional.

Am not sure at all what frack. Wants , believes or anything tbh

It’s veryn confusing