"Abnormal structures of the body caused by congenital defects"

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Anybody like to take a guess which body parts we're talking about?

twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1345537060958945280?s=20 (thread)

It's a ruling to do with health insurance in California, confirming there doesn't need to be a lower age limit for double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery on trans men because it's not classified as cosmetic surgery. "... in an individual diagnosed with gender dysphoria, who is born with female characteristics and identifies as male, the presence of a female chest is an abnormal body structure caused by gender dysphoria..."

Utterly appalling.

One reply reminds us about Dr Johanna Olson-Kennedy, "medical director of the largest transgender-youth clinic in the United States, one of four directors of a multi-million-dollar National Institutes of Health (i.e., taxpayer-funded) experimental study on early intervention in transgender youth, and one of the most prominent clinical activists in the United States".

www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/12/09/the-tragedy-of-the-trans-child/ Extremely hard-hitting article about the James Younger case in Texas - parents in dispute about a male child whose mother claims now identifies as a girl, father disagrees, it went to court.

Odeneal: Well, if you remove the breasts from a young woman, she will never be able to lactate or to breastfeed an infant; is that correct?

Olson-Kennedy: Well, I, I don’t advocate removal for breast tissue from young women. I advocate for chest reconstruction in young men.

Olson-Kennedy: Well, I, I don’t advocate removal for breast tissue from young women. I advocate for chest reconstruction in young men. That's some serious gaslighting from someone who passed medical boards.

Well, JOK out of the Children's Hospital Los Angeles will be thrilled. She's already doing double mastectomies on 13 year olds.

I wonder how long the insurance companies will be happy to cough up before they seriously hike premiums. The majority of which are borne by employers

Is there anything more misogynistic than defining a normal female body as congenitally defective?

Reading this sends shivers down my spine. It's chilling this is where we are.

Reading this sends shivers down my spine. It's chilling this is where we are.

Mine too. When to carry out your work, you have to describe normal body parts as abnormal in order to justify doing it, something is so far out of place that it should be sounding alarm bells to everyone sane.

Wow! No words!!

@MRC20

Reading this sends shivers down my spine. It's chilling this is where we are.

Family friend’s daughter had a double mastectomy at 17 and that was shocking enough. Thirteen is just I just can’t get my head round anyone accepting this.

I read that on Twitter last night. It's so horrifying I don't have the words to describe how I feel

Plenty of British links to Olsen-Kennedy.

Here is a cut and paste, and some edits for clarity, of a post of mine from a year ago referencing earlier material:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3542000-Johanna-Olson-Kennedy-visiting-Professor-at-Bristol-University

Note as well as hosting some ‘leading’ gender law experts, Bristol is a national centre for medical ethics.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3374926-What-influence-does-TELI-have-on-government-public-services-and-charities-policies-Co-founders-include-Jess-Bradley-Tara-Hewitt-and-Michelle-Hudson

Olsen-Kennedy is closely aligned with Dr Webberley's, Gender GP, Mermaids & Susie Green's preferred affirmative medical approach to treating children. The link between people like Joanna Olsen-Kennedy and Mermaids et al seems mainly through an organisation called WPATH linked with USPATH
www.wpath.org/uspath

mobile.twitter.com/green_susie100/status/1170353735714910208

(Actually Susie has deleted this. I wonder why? She was a regular at WPATH conferences)

A few Bon mots from mimmymum Helen, who has worked on Mermaids marketing

mobile.twitter.com/mimmymum/status/1060076183616917504?lang=en

And whilst people are enjoying the Bristol links here are another couple

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3455712-Bristol-Law-Professor-Joanne-Conaghan-weighs-in-on-the-Gender-Debate

2014-2018 Prof Conaghan was Head of the University of Bristol Law School and is now working on two projects, one on rape law and theory and the other on tort and gender.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3674204-Raquel-Rosario-Sanchez-Bullying-by-trans-student-could-cost-me-my-visa-in-Times-today

Then to bring us up to date, and to link with other current threads, the new co-chair of Green Party Women is Kathryn Bristol, based in Bristol and an employee of Gender GP.

This gets more HORRIFYING as the weeks pass on.

In case it goes, I might as well copy the text of Helen/Mimmymum’s tweet from November 2018. (Sorry, have not worked out how to do screen shots.)

*That Susie Green was chosen by WPATH as the only non-medical/research contributor to the Children’s chapter, shows how highly they consider her

That @Girlguiding and many other reputable UK orgs listen to Mermaids on areas of trans inclusion is a ringing endorsement

You are...? twitter.com/MsHelenWatts/s…*

This type of language approach has been used before. In Australia drugs are funded by the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme (PBS). They determine what criteria determine the funding of medications. Testosterone is restricted for particular conditions. I assume this is to make sure dodgy doctors don’t just prescribe it freely for men who might use it nefariously for body building etc.

But for females who are transitioning, doctors are using this justification:

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) criteria for androgen deficiency apply if gender markers are male or female. For people requiring masculinising hormone therapy for gender dysphoria, we use the authority indication “androgen deficiency due to an established testicular disorder”. The patient must be treated by or in consultation (including teleconsult, phone or email) with a paediatrician, endocrinologist, urologist or sexual health physician. The specialist's name must be given in the authority application. Gender markers can be male or female.

They’re saying that an “established testicular disorder” is being born female without testes. They’re saying that because the PBS restriction doesn’t specify male or female you’re able to claim that never having testes because you’re female is able to be shoehorned into “testicular disorder”. They’re effectively justifying defrauding the government drug scheme by twisting language, then they published it in Australia’s main medical journal.

www.mja.com.au/journal/2019/211/3/position-statement-hormonal-management-adult-transgender-and-gender-diverse

Helen Webberley hosted a livestream event in 2019 with Olson-Kennedy.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3539048-Live-stream-session-with-GenderGP-on-31st-March

Still on facebook (at the moment).

www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=587005788464364&ref=watch_permalink

These “diagnoses” and “treatments” make no sense.

”the presence of a female chest is an abnormal body structure caused by gender dysphoria..."

This is backwards. People with gender dysphoria say that their dysphoria is caused by their (normal) “body structures” not that dysphoria causes their body structures to be “abnormal”.

This does not suggest that removing the “abnormal structure” will cure the dysphoria because the causal relationship postulated is:
dysphoria causes an “abnormal body structure”.

If so, what is “dysphoria”?? And why treat the symptom (body structure) rather than the cause (dysphoria)??

This really is analogous to starving someone or giving them liposuction in order to remove the “abnormal body structure” (normal body weight) caused by anorexia.

These people are all driven by ideology because none of this makes sense.

That Australian “medical” explanation make no sense either because, unless I am missing something, there is no way to use a reverse of those “pathology” arguments to describe someone who is “cured” or “in remission”, ie. who has “desisted” aka “detransitioned”.

A female who detransitions is not cured of a “testicular disorder” because she does not have any testicles that are now healthy and functioning normally.

These people all need taking to court and having to explain the medical bases and logic of their nonsensical assertions, the same way the Tavistock was required and failed so miserably to do.

This is backwards. People with gender dysphoria say that their dysphoria is caused by their (normal) “body structures” not that dysphoria causes their body structures to be “abnormal”

Agree - it implies that dysphoria has a causal effect on your physical development. It doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe it sounds medically illiterate because the party involved is an insurance company and there is a disconnect between the responsibility of a doctor and an insurance company?

I think the difference between this and the Tavistock case might be that the Tavistock case examined the diagnostic process.

This case doesn’t seem to question whether gender dysphoria can be diagnosed accurately, or whether a mastectomy is suitable treatment, maybe because that isn’t the insurance company’s responsibility?

This is utterly horrifying

This where we need ambulance-chasing lawyers to start sniffing big profits from representing the victims of these atrocities. For once they would be doing good.

Apart from the language, it's the implication that dysphoria causes abnormalities. And using the words congenital means that dysphoria was there in the womb. It's born in the wrong body stuff.

When we appear to be making such good headway in protecting our children in the U.K., the fact that states like California are doubling down is even more troubling. Such ugly hateful language from a place that has always been seen as the last bastion of liberalism

This case doesn’t seem to question whether gender dysphoria can be diagnosed accurately, or whether a mastectomy is suitable treatment, maybe because that isn’t the insurance company’s responsibility?

Yes, this is the US "healthcare system" in all its glory.

This is an argument about who pays - if a "doctor" says that a girl "needs" this treatment, is a medical insurer required to pay for it?

This the government (or part of the government) saying "yes". And it's no skin off their nose - it doesn't cost the government anything, and it doesn't really cost the insurers anything. Insurers probably don't care much either way as long as the rules are consistent so they can't be undercut by competitors. They'll just add it to premiums, making general health insurance a little more unaffordable than it already is.

it implies that dysphoria has a causal effect on your physical development

Weird to see postmodernism in a medical context. In their lingo it's "abnormal" because of one's view of it. So a viewpoint (in this case of the individual, but it could be of society) "causes" the "abnormality", despite no actual change to physical reality.

There's a grain of sense in there, in as much as "who defines what's abnormal?", but usually those arguments are used pushing back on unnecessary medical intervention (such as on DSD infants). This is doing the opposite - embracing a view that I thought all these queer folks were against. Surely viewing certain body formations as "normal" or "abnormal" was what they opposed?

(I know, I shouldn't try so hard to look for consistency - it's a toolkit, and they'll deconstruct in whatever way's convenient in any case).

This makes me sad and furious in equal measures. Perfectly normal sexed bodies are being deemed defective to enable young people to have extensive surgery.

There's a grain of sense in there, in as much as "who defines what's abnormal?", but usually those arguments are used pushing back on unnecessary medical intervention (such as on DSD infants). This is doing the opposite - embracing a view that I thought all these queer folks were against. Surely viewing certain body formations as "normal" or "abnormal" was what they opposed?

Agree - none of this makes any sense except through the lens of souls and wrong bodies.

Holy shit.

Ordinary, working ovaries are not an ‘ established testicular disorder’.

I thought we were trying to move past all that ‘females are defective males’ bullshit?

Here comes trans ideology, yanking women back down the ladder by their ankles.

This could surely backfire as a congenital defect is surely diagnosable with objective tests?

My sister was born by a congenital defect of the heart, they wouldn’t have given her a heart op without proper diagnosis of the defect!