Munroe Bergdorf

[ripples101]

I am trans.

I was a follower of Munroe Bergdorf’s Instagram.

Munroe wrote a post about JK Rowling, calling her a dangerous woman to the trans community. Munroe stayed something along the lines of

“JKR is a dangerous cisgendered, white woman who is causing harm”

I replied to this post, asking why Munroe felt it necessary to mention JK Rowing’s racial identity.

I wasn’t Abusive. I just felt that it wasn’t necessary, in regards to what Munroe was being critical of, to mention JK Rowling’s ethnicity.

Within minutes my post was deleted and I was blocked.

I am trans, and Munroe has silenced me.

So it seems nothing can be questioned. Any intent to ask a question, or to strike up debate, will be met with being silenced.

This is fast turning into propaganda. This is fast turning into thought crime. This is fast turning into silencing. This is fast turning into something it should never have been.

When a trans person isn’t even able to question another trans person, what chance do “people who belong to sex that menstruate”* have?

• Christ, I don’t even feel like I can use the word women here without being controversial.

I am so sorry for people to whom I thought I identified alongside (trans people) who are doing this to you. I feel sick and ashamed of what I am, because of people who are representing me.

I feel like I literally have no space left. And I can’t help but feel that a lot of biological woman are feeling the same way. And you have so much more to lose than I ever will, so I simply can’t imagine how this is making you all feel.

Mainstream US, Catholics.

Her aim is to protect women and girls. She’s not campaigning for the removal of healthcare like you said. That is a lie.

I can show you opinions of trans-men who had to run a relentless gauntlet of HCPs asking "are you sure you're not just a lesbian?" before having their transness taken seriously

That’s good to hear. They weren’t rushed and all avenues were explored. I can show you opinions of lesbians who weren’t asked and whose families’ homophobia wasn’t considered.

She is no science pundit of any note. Her populist spiels do not help some very vulnerable people, or some very dedicated professionals

Plenty of people aren’t scientists in this debate. Doctors and scientists have raised concerns about puberty blockers and the lack of evidence for use in gender identity. Munroe Bergdorf isn’t a scientist but doesn’t seem to be able to analyse medical stats.

Rowling helps those who are vulnerable to attack from TRAs, they see they aren’t alone and she helps those vulnerable people like Keira Bell by giving them a voice.

She has little in common with anyone who is likely to use public toilets, changing rooms or DV shelters. She probably doesn't even peel her own grapes.

It’s called empathy. She’s been there. She has walked in their shoes. You should try it some time.

Puberty blockers are precribed for all sorts of conditions and have been for some time. NHS waiting times are measured in years

But their use for gender identity hasn’t been a long time, and it they have been, where is the evidence of their long term benefit? I’m talking decades?

It's interesting, isn't it? People who are born a certain sex and do not claim to be a different sex cannot talk about being trans according to certain trans people who claim to represent trans people.

However, trans women who do not have XX chromosomes can claim to talk on women's behalf and tell women what they can say and think, how to behave, what to wear, or not wear, who can enter single sex spaces and in addition dictate to women (the XX kind) which people women can find sexually attractive.

There seems to be an imbalance there.

One question no one ever answers is this:

Jazz Jennings is on public record as never experienced an orgasm as result of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, and following the finality of surgery never will. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

@HeistSociety

Mainstream US, Catholics.

That poor girl. It didn't sound like the UK but I didn't want to assume.

Ah, the lovely, Catholic church. Children always welcome

The fucking Catholic Church didn't cut off her breasts.

Whomever gave her T, and removed her breasts was personally and actively engaged in the conversion of a young lesbian into a form of palatable straightness.

Those are the people in your side, not mine.

Puberty blockers are precribed for all sorts of conditions and have been for some time.

The side effects are horrific.
www.lupronvictimshub.com/lawsuits.html

HeistSociety I get your anger, I'd probably share it in your shoes, but the situation you describe could never happen in a million years in this country, I'd bet my life on it. The mafia-like power of religion in small-town USA is the price you pay for living in the Land Of The Free. Us serfs and subjects on this side of the pond have a different set of rules.

@MadBadDaddy

NotBadConsidering

I'm sorry. You talk about empathy. Yet you are willing to dismiss MBs concerns about JKRs motives and credentials, in this case, because she used the word 'white'? And someone came here for a good ol' girly cry about it cos they were blocked for trolling her about it?

I am willing to dismiss Bergdorf’s - and your - lies about Rowling quite easily. Because they’re lies. It’s hard to show empathy for Bergdorf when all Bergdorf is doing is tweeting lies and falsehoods about Rowling. Rowling is showing empathy with those women who have been on the receiving end of abuse because she’s been there. What is it about Bergdorf that I am supposed to empathise with? The lecturing of women? The lying? The mudslinging? I can’t empathise with Bergdorf’s concerns about Rowling because they’re made up.

If you want to discuss empathy: do you have empathy with a biological male whose body has been frozen as a child at Tanner stage 2 puberty and permanently altered medically and surgically and as a result will never experience the pleasures of sex? Is this a good outcome?

TehBewilderness Cards on the table, I'm not a child, and my children aren't trans. So to a point my opinions are academic.

But what you and Heist are describing is child abuse, but in the form of parental coercion?

I cant even. This is so far removed from a person experiencing dysphoria and receiving treatment or not..

NotBadConsidering You are dismissing opinions as 'wrong' but to call them lies implies a motive to decieve.

The only thoughts I know of MB's are the post referred to by OP. My impressions of what JKR has been writing are that they are disturbing and damaging, not to 'TRA agenda' whatever that is, but to trans people. The reach she has and the populism she employs and the calculated nature of what she says and how she says it sends a shiver up my spine. There is nothing original in what she says, I've seen it all before, just never massaged into such a sales pitch by a pro author. She is being called out on it by stronger minds and voices than mine. The use of the term 'conversion therapy' is calculated and insidious.

@MadBadDaddy

TehBewilderness Cards on the table, I'm not a child, and my children aren't trans. So to a point my opinions are academic.

But what you and Heist are describing is child abuse, but in the form of parental coercion?

I cant even. This is so far removed from a person experiencing dysphoria and receiving treatment or not..

We do not care about you. We care about what is being done to women and children for your sake.

The only thoughts I know of MB's are the post referred to by OP.

It was obvious from the beginning that you were opining out of ignorance.

You are dismissing opinions as 'wrong' but to call them lies implies a motive to decieve.

I’m not implying it. I am saying it. It is my implication that Bergdorf is deliberately lying about Rowling with the intention to deceive and slur her. What else can you infer from the fact Bergdorf repeated the incredulous lie that Rowling took her pen name from some complete nobody who apparently practiced conversion therapy decades ago?

It’s not calculated and insidious to use the term conversion therapy. It’s the exact terms that people working at the Tavistock clinic have used. They have seen conversion therapy in action. Again, you’re more concerned with Rowling using the term than the fact that people working in gender clinics have seen young gay people progressing down a medicalised trans pathway because of their family’s homophobia. Why is it that Rowling shining light on this is what concerns you, and not the practice itself?

A biological male who has been down the medicalised pathway as a child has never and will never experience orgasm. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

MBD, several posters pointed out Home2018's erroneous assumption about 'the whole thread being white".

Oops, phone hadn't updated so I replied to a post from last night.

Just on concern about how GIDS has conducted itself in regards to safeguarding, Sonia Appleby the Safeguarding Lead at the Tavi is crowd funding to take legal action against GIDS for causing her detriment when she pointed out, amongst other things, that the GIDS management had discouraged her being involved in safeguarding decisions.

Seems that JKR, is in very good company.

Regarding the timing of JKRs tweets about the word women.

The actions that initiated it were:
a) a guidance released that week by the Scottish government (should they have held off the release because other priorities that were happening that week should have been the focus right then? )

b) activists were organizing themselves to post inappropriate content for children on a thread about a book project where children (or their parents) posted pictures and checked back for comments. Certainly these activists were not focused on appropriateness of timing (regards other issues) or anything really. And let’s be clear, these were trans rights activists (and I assume many are transgender people) who would post dicpics and threats in a place set aside for children.

c) an article able women and girls suffering period issue being headlined with the words ‘people who menstruate’ released just before her tweets about it. This article was about women and girls in developing countries and the headline uses dehumanizing language. Oh.... but their lives don’t matter in the progression of identity ideology obviously. Did their lives and dignity matter enough to be mentioned during an agenda fighting racism?

Maybr the timing of her tweets were entirely appropriate for the events that she was experiencing.

Or should she have cancelled her Ickabog project and disappointed her young fans who used it as an activity to alleviate the stress of lockdown, because the timing for her to highlight that this was happening was wrong? Should she have allowed the Scottish government guidance to go unnoticed and unopposed?

And should she not have pointed out the dehumanizing language used in that article so soon after its release? Maybe waited until it wasn’t as top of mind, so not as relevant but not to interfere with discussions on another topic that will be judged as more important.

The reach she has and the populism she employs and the calculated nature of what she says and how she says it sends a shiver up my spine.

People like you send a shiver down my spine. JK Rowling has the perfect right, like anyone with a platform, to stand up and speak up when she believes something is wrong.

It's interesting, isn't it? People who are born a certain sex and do not claim to be a different sex cannot talk about being trans according to certain trans people who claim to represent trans people.

However, trans women who do not have XX chromosomes can claim to talk on women's behalf and tell women what they can say and think, how to behave, what to wear, or not wear, who can enter single sex spaces and in addition dictate to women (the XX kind) which people women can find sexually attractive.

There seems to be an imbalance there.

Doesn't there just.

@Agrona

It's interesting, isn't it? People who are born a certain sex and do not claim to be a different sex cannot talk about being trans according to certain trans people who claim to represent trans people.

However, trans women who do not have XX chromosomes can claim to talk on women's behalf and tell women what they can say and think, how to behave, what to wear, or not wear, who can enter single sex spaces and in addition dictate to women (the XX kind) which people women can find sexually attractive.

There seems to be an imbalance there.

Yup. Its one of many, many imbalances.

Puberty blockers have a direct mode of action on hormones and their receptors. They are hugely damaging and if followed by cross sex hormones without being stopped, result in infertility, no sexual function, decreased bone density and lifelong medicalisation. Just like Rowling said.

Yes. JK Rowling is not the only person to have expressed a concern that this powerful medication is being given to children. The "problematic" Newsnight piece did too, as have many media pieces. As do many of the Tavistock Clinic whistleblowers, 35 of whom resigned over a 3 year period, one of whom was Dr David Bell, a senior clinician and former governor:

https://quillette.com/2020/01/17/why-i-resigned-from-tavistock-trans-identified-children-need-therapy-not-just-affirmation-and-drugs/

This paper by Oxford Professor Michael Biggs explains the background to the use of puberty blockers in this country:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/Biggs_ExperimentPubertyBlockers.pdf

The second problem is obvious. Blocking puberty effectively destroys the individual’s ability to have children. If the adolescent stops taking GnRHa, fertility should recover, but as we have seen, stopping is exceptional. The third problem is rarely admitted. Blocking puberty impedes the development of sexual functioning; some children given GnRHa never develop the capacity for orgasm (Jontry 2018). There is a strong taboo against mentioning this. The word ‘orgasm’ did not appear in the proposal for the 2011 experiment, and never appears on the GIDS website. When the endocrinologist at GIDS, Gary Butler, was asked about the effect of GnRHa on the ability to orgasm, he refused to answer.

So now women can’t talk about issues that affect women if:

-They’re white
-They’re rich
-There’s a BLM protest going on
-It’s pride month
-The issue they want to talk about also affects trans people

Did I miss any?

TheSingingKettle49

If they're an effective professional writer. How very dare they.