I'm so sorry about your friend,
End. I agree, it is a total waste and desperately sad.
We know this - if a female person has an early menopuase she is given HRT because we KNOW that without it she will have a higher risk of coronary heart disease, dementia and osteoporosis.
The NICE guidelines say that if you are under 45 and menopausal you should be given HRT. So, what happens if you are 17 and you make yourself menopausal by taking testosterone? Well, I personally hope that having a gender issue has some magical protective quality, because that appears to be what medicine is banking on.
The female athletes who were doped (without consent) in the 80s died young. Flo Jo doped and won everything and died at 38.
We know what will happen to these kids...and yet, my DD who is 17 has THREE friends who are all now on testosterone, which they cutesily call "T", and they are excited about their double mastectomies, which they cutesily call "top surgery".
I look at them and I get choked up. They are lovely kids, they really are. I've known two of them since they were toddlers. If they said they were lesbians no one would have cared, it would have been an non-issue in their family or their friends or their school or Scouts or judo or drama or any of the groups they belong to. One of the kids mum says to me that she thinks that her child is gay and she is just hoping that the kid comes to their senses soon.
I can't imagine how the mum must juggle the angst of watching what Keira Bell brought to the public eye, whilst also taking my child for the same treatment. That mother is terrified that her kid will self harm, she can't think past the bullshit that Mermaids has told her since her child first expressed a gender issue at 12 years old. She's had nearly 5 years of worrying that her kid will die if they don't pander to the child's EARNEST desire to get to a gender clinic.
The whole thing makes me angry, truly, I am incandescent. I grew up under section 28, no one was allowed to be gay when I was at school and once I was a student I was surrounded by joyously butch female and effeminate male friends. It was just wonderful - we honestly thought we had sorted this shit out in the 90s.
Where the fuck are the butch women now? Where are the role models for the little baby butch girls? Who does my friend's child look up to and think "yeah, she's cool"? It's appalling, society, and Stonewall has erased gay women far more effectively than Margaret Thatcher managed.
That is why I get so fucking livid when we get some moron saying "have you ever thought about the trans community? Eh? HAVE YOU?" on threads like this.
Yes mate, yes I have. I think about little else. I just disagree with you that the whole world should pretend that this is fine.