Keira Bell

[MarieIVanArkleStinks]

I'm not sure whether this issue has been debated on this board, as I haven't been posting/reading here for a few weeks. But the story is here:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/22/former-transgender-patient-tells-court-sex-change-clinic-putting/

and here:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7926675/Witness-court-battle-against-gender-clinic-reveals-happened-cry-help.html

TLDR: The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs the UK's only gender identity development service (GIDS) for children, is being sued over concerns that youngsters are being given "experimental treatment" without adequate assessments.

Keira's view as to her symptoms, and lack of warning about them:

I had symptoms similar to the menopause when a woman's hormones drop. I had hot flushes, I found it difficult to sleep, my sex drive disappeared. I was given calcium tablets because my bones weakened.

Keira claims she was not warned by the Tavistock therapists of the dreadful symptoms ahead. 'My female hormones had been flushing through my body and, suddenly, a curtain came down on them. It felt pretty bad,' she recalls.

And as to now:

'The treatment needs to change so that it does not put young people, like me, on a torturous and unnecessary path that is life-changing. I feel like I've been lied to because it did not make me feel any better.

As she struggles to return to life as a woman, she adds, with feeling: 'I don't want any more kids to suffer like me.

That poor woman. This is unconscionable, and the mere idea of the opposite side of this view even having a case to answer in court is so frightening it seems to be bordering on dystopia. In the meantime (and not directly applicable to FtoM transition) I know someone who is currently experiencing hideous, debilitating menopausal symptoms, and is unable to get HRT. There just isn't any available. Instead, her GP has prescribed her with ... Prozac.

I'm curious to know whether MtoF transitioners are experiencing the same issue.

Do you really want a return to that?

We want a return to ‘watchful waiting’.

They're part of the NHS so can refer their patients to other relevant services within the NHS. There's safeguards in place to ensure patients are doing what they believe is the right thing. You're looking for someone to blame here and I'm sorry but there isn't anyone to blame.

No oopster you are seeking to minimise & disrupt discussions about serious Safeguarding failures within a NHS paediatric service.

This isn't just 'the opinion' of a few women on an internet forum.
There have been plenty of documents linked on this thread which detail the nature of serious Duty of Care failings.

Clearly you do not understand/respect(?) Safeguarding of children & vulnerable adults.

Im wondering why if oopster genuinely believes what they’re saying, they think that a judicial review has been approved?
And what they think the basis of the approval is, given there’s ‘nothing to see here’

I felt alone, scared, depressed throughout the majority of my childhood, I'm not the only one that went through this situation. Do you really want a return to that?

There isnt a binary choice & to frame it this way is not helpful (to anyone)

Every child matters & should be supported as well as Safeguarded.

BMJ published 29 October 2018
'Redesigning gender identity services: an opportunity to generate evidence'
authors: Richard Byng, general practitioner and professor in primary care research, Susan Bewley, emeritus professor of obstetrics and women’s health, Damian Clifford, consultant liaison psychiatrist, Margaret McCartney, general practitioner and freelance writer
(extracts)
"A recent feature in The BMJ implied that new services are all that’s needed to improve transgender healthcare. Providing timely, sensitive services for all, including those who decide to not pursue treatment or detransition, is important. But the article did not question the steep rise in referrals of mainly young women or the potential harms of medical overdiagnosis and overtreatment" (continues)

"Regulated medical practitioners should follow a framework of evidence, not simply respond to client expectations. Creating that evidence to inform quality standards is an ethical imperative. We need research to explore the interplays between gender identity, mental health and neurodevelopmental problems, sexual orientation, autogynephilia, and unpalatable gender roles" (continues)

www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4490

Oopster, yes you sound patronizing though I’m prepared to believe you are well meaning.

I imagine you would be indignant if Keira told you that your recollection of your childhood was wrong. But you seem entirely confident that her own knowledge of her treatment was wrong.

Why?

You seem unable to take in new evidence or admit that others - maybe especially female others - have different experiences to you.

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable when non-female posters make comments about female bodies in the context of 'transition', hormones and surgeries?

I do.

The differences in complexity between male bodies and female bodies is immense. Male hormone and reproductive systems are really quite simple. Female hormone and reproductive systems are astonishingly complex because we grow and feed babies. Every month for the lifetime of our fertility our body prepares to grow a human. That's a big ask.

I don't think most men (however they identify) get this at all.

Growing a baby isn't like laying an egg in your womb, where it all happens in a sealed cocoon, independent of the mother who's just providing a warm nest.

Girls and women who take hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones and undergo surgery have considerably more side-effects and lasting health problems because of the Increased complexity of our biology.

Yes I do
I also feel disquieted when adult males dismiss important aspects of Safeguarding frameworks intended to protect children.

I think it’s the tendency to dismiss anything they can’t possibly experience as unimportant, because their very important self can’t experience it.

Hence the very odd view that ‘woman’ means only the bits that a man could feasibly imitate.

Im disinterested in oopster bar my disquiet about the decision to hold court on this particular thread.

Oopster, it's very strange that you keep repeating the same things.

You are making a 16-year-old, who would already have been on track (16 was when she actually started to take the medication), responsible for the treatment doctors are providing.

There's safeguards in place to ensure patients are doing what they believe is the right thing.

I've rarely seen someone say anything quite as callous and misinformed as this.

Safeguards are not provided to validate and confirm what a patient is demanding!

You may as well say if a paedophile understands, fully, what they are getting up to in the children's changing room, then the safeguards have been deployed. They knew what they were doing, if it turns out we should have stopped them, it's not our fault, it's theirs.

You have an incredibly one-dimensional view of what is actually happening. Just because you are in the market for drugs to make you feel better, you are overlaying that on to young, vulnerable children.

It's extraordinary.

You're looking for someone to blame here and I'm sorry but there isn't anyone to blame. Keira realised too late that she'd made the wrong choices

I've said this several times already oopster, but I'll say it once more, in the hope that you finally understand.

If the doctors were not offering this treatment to children, because children are not capable of fully informed consent for such treatment, she would not have been able to make this 'wrong choice'. The people to blame are the medical professionals who are offering treatments to children which those children cannot give fully informed consent to because they are children. The point of this judicial review is to stop this treatment being offered to children, so that they cannot make these mistakes.

It will have no effect on treatment for adults.

If the child gender services weren't there, then kids with gender issues would be a lot worse off than they are now. I felt alone, scared, depressed throughout the majority of my childhood, I'm not the only one that went through this situation. Do you really want a return to that?

You don't seem to have read anything on here oopster. Nobody wants all services for children to be removed. But it should be psychological support. Counselling and listening to the child about the causes of their distress and helping to alleviate that distress.

Physical treatments such as hormone blockers, hormones and surgery should be restricted to adults who can fully comprehend the implications of these treatments in terms of sexual function and fertility.

I’m starting to wonder if the AGP denial of ROGD is motivated by determination to preserve the Imagined, fantasy female puberty.

Adult male transitioners are all obsessed with breast growth and tanner stage and the anticipation of an emergent ‘female’ sexuality. It’s all ‘cute’ outfits and dating apps and female orgasm and crying over missing out on pyjama parties and baton twirling/ballet.

When real female puberty is messy, greasy, awkward, terrifying, unwelcome and happening too fast. It attracts unwanted sexual attention from adult males, and comes with a new set of social rules (which often separate you from your male peers and your previous favourite activities). Periods can be especially awful for the first few years, painful enough to need special medication or days off school. Compulsory PE and swimming, changing in front of others who may be more or less developed than you. The beginning of understanding the misogyny and sexism that adult life will full of. The fear of moving from childhood to adulthood. Eating disorders, cutting, pernicious bullying, dying your hair green and wearing paraboots to try and repel the male gaze...

It’s a lot harder to wank at a real female puberty than a fantasy one.

It’s a lot harder to wank at a real female puberty than a fantasy one.

I am still laughing while huddled under a blanket moaning with period pain at 50!!! This is so true.

I also though feel very cynical when I feel that the denial of ROGD and agn is denied because it is validation to those who have transitioned. If ROGD can be turned into ‘it is just that society has progressed and girls just want to be their true selves now that it is acceptable’, it means ultimately growth of numbers to support the cause.

Just like shutting down those that desist.

Just like shutting down discussion that the studies being published are perhaps not robust enough to use as evidence.

I’m starting to wonder if the AGP denial of ROGD is motivated by determination to preserve the Imagined, fantasy female puberty.

Adult males fantasising about the development of girls aged 8 and 12 years?

I think it’s the tendency to dismiss anything they can’t possibly experience as unimportant, because their very important self can’t experience it.

That's a trait I've come across often in my former career when dealing with people who have narcissist personality disorder. In fact, I also dealt with a significant number of transpersons too and observed many similarities in the way that both groups behaved.

Teds There are recognisable patterns of behaviour.

It stands out from the Trans Widows thread.

If I seem a bit opaque about my posts, R0wan, it's because I'm still navigating my way around FWR Talk Guidelines.

My RL views pull no punches though

Yes
Narcissistic control patterns once experienced & understood do stand out.

Welcome to FWR.

No, it's not that at all. Are you going to pick apart everything I say and twist it? Is Keira trans? She thought she was, she may still well be, that's for her to work out. Some people transition, stop, detransition, transition again and so on. For some like me, it's a definite one or the otter binary, for others it's more of a spectrum, Keira sounds more like she's somewhere on that spectrum to me, but that's up to her / him / they to work out for themselves.

The medical people are offering the services because the services are needed by the patients. You're talking as if they've brought out this service and are encouraging people to use it, that's ridiculous! You have a condition that needs treating and then you get the services to treat that condition. You don't develop treatments for conditions then say "hey look, we can treat this condition now, why don't you all get or develop it?". You're being ridiculous.

Physical treatments are simply one part of the treatment as a whole.

Mask slipping a bit there...

Yes, there needs to be more of this locally to help kids explore the issues, but the problem keeps coming back to not enough money being allocated to these services, and too much ignorance being spread in the media. The same tactics being used against trans people were used against LGB people in the 80's, that were somehow wrong, perverts coming after your children, when all we want is the same as everyone else and that is just to be able to get on with our lives.