Feeling disheartened

[EdinburghFeminist]

Am I the only one just feeling really drained by all this constant having to fight for every tiny right to any single sex provisions and the ability to talk about women’s issues without being overrun by TRAs or just not being able to speak for fear of being called transphobic? The sudden influx of goady threads in the last couple of days really hasn’t helped but even with a lot of positive GC news stories recently it all feels a bit overwhelming and crap somehow.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

Please give an example of anyone trans being denied access to a medical facility that is a matter of life or death.

One trans man I know was being denied access to a hysterectomy he wanted because he had diagnosed uterine cancer, under the excuse that 'he's trying to bypass the GIC process'.

Trans women have died from heart attacks because the doctor's didn't take into account that due to their hormonal balance, their symptoms wouldn't be the ones typical to cisgender men.

A trans man's child had likely died because he entered a hospital saying he was pregnant, is a trans man, female, who stopped using testosterone a year ago, and his water broke and the hospital staff handled him as a fat cis man with a false story until hours and forms later, they decided to give him a pregnancy test.

Regularly, trans people get denied access to facilities they need because their appearance, voice and name doesn't match with the usual clientelle, or that we need 'specialized treatment' for anything (being referred to the GIC for having pneumonia, or for an unrelated surgical procedure that had ruptured are ones I recall from my local community).

Seems like biological sex might be kind of important and a useful thing to know within a medical setting.

Do trans women want to be treated as women for medical purposes? Because... you do understand that means being treated badly, right? The heart attack example is particularly galling, and if you're not sure why, please go 'educate yourself' about women's health and female presentation of heart attacks.

So biology and sex absolutely matters then, over whatever people identify as or how the present or appear. Sounds like a good argument against gender ideology.

[quote Evarish]@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

Please give an example of anyone trans being denied access to a medical facility that is a matter of life or death.

One trans man I know was being denied access to a hysterectomy he wanted because he had diagnosed uterine cancer, under the excuse that 'he's trying to bypass the GIC process'.

Trans women have died from heart attacks because the doctor's didn't take into account that due to their hormonal balance, their symptoms wouldn't be the ones typical to cisgender men.

A trans man's child had likely died because he entered a hospital saying he was pregnant, is a trans man, female, who stopped using testosterone a year ago, and his water broke and the hospital staff handled him as a fat cis man with a false story until hours and forms later, they decided to give him a pregnancy test.

Regularly, trans people get denied access to facilities they need because their appearance, voice and name doesn't match with the usual clientelle, or that we need 'specialized treatment' for anything (being referred to the GIC for having pneumonia, or for an unrelated surgical procedure that had ruptured are ones I recall from my local community).[/quote]
I nearly died after being told I had a UTI when actually I had massive internal bleeding because of an undiagnosed (but with 95% of the obvious symptoms) ruptured ectopic pregnancy. I feel like many female medical issues get dismissed (eg the time to diagnose endometriosis).
The issues you describe are excellent examples of why it’s vitally important to recognise that TWANW and are in fact TW (and vice verse for TM) because the medical care that is needed is specific to their sex, and in fact why it’s essential that biological sex is recorded in medical notes as well as what pronouns someone prefers. And, indeed, why it’s essential that medical research is done so that HCP have a greater understanding of the specific needs of trans people. Chanting ‘TWAW and TMAM’ and ‘No debate’ does no good to anyone and harms the trans community. Campaigning for greater research and understanding of the differences trans people face as well as 3rd spaces and specific health care provision would benefit the trans community so much more. Perhaps if happy and healthy trans people really was the desired outcome of the TRAs then that is what they’d be campaigning for.

[quote Evarish]@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

Please give an example of anyone trans being denied access to a medical facility that is a matter of life or death.

One trans man I know was being denied access to a hysterectomy he wanted because he had diagnosed uterine cancer, under the excuse that 'he's trying to bypass the GIC process'.

Trans women have died from heart attacks because the doctor's didn't take into account that due to their hormonal balance, their symptoms wouldn't be the ones typical to cisgender men.

A trans man's child had likely died because he entered a hospital saying he was pregnant, is a trans man, female, who stopped using testosterone a year ago, and his water broke and the hospital staff handled him as a fat cis man with a false story until hours and forms later, they decided to give him a pregnancy test.

Regularly, trans people get denied access to facilities they need because their appearance, voice and name doesn't match with the usual clientelle, or that we need 'specialized treatment' for anything (being referred to the GIC for having pneumonia, or for an unrelated surgical procedure that had ruptured are ones I recall from my local community).[/quote]
None of these anecdotes is an example of people being denied treatment because of being trans. At most, they are examples of people not getting the optimal treatment, or their preferred treatment, because of limited understanding of their trans status.

I flat out do not believe your first example. No doctor is going to refuse a TM a hysterectomy for uterine cancer - to do so would be totally contrary to the doctor's own self-interest, because it would create a cast-iron case for negligence against him/her.

Trans women have died from heart attacks because the doctor's didn't take into account that due to their hormonal balance, their symptoms wouldn't be the ones typical to cisgender men.

This makes it sound like their bodies are more like women. Oestrogen is thought to have a protective effect on women's cardiac health. MTF trans people taking cross sex hormones are more at risk. As are FTM trans people.

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/04/05/transgender-men-and-women-may-have-higher-heart-attack-risk

If you're exhausted discussing dressing rooms and toilets and being called transphobic, woo, wait until the day you're denied access to a medical facility you need...

Obviously it's a serious matter if someone doesn't get the medical treatment they need, regardless of the reasons for it.

It's also a serious matter if women are being raped in prison by males, to take the extreme example.

Hi EdinburghFeminist

Yes. I feel like that a lot now and I realise your government is a bit ahead than mine in the old Throw Women Under The Bus campaign so you just be bloody knackered.

As others have said take time away when you need to regroup. I looked at the forwomen.scot website a moment ago - and I'm sorry this is going to sound overdramatic but hey ho - I felt a bit teary but incredibly uplifted. The words on those banners and tags are so true and so eloquent and written in a way I don't think it's possible to disagree with. They come from a place of wanting fairness not pain. But it's clear their authors won't be pushed to the side. I wonder what their writers look like? I wonder if I walk past woman like that in the street (on essential journeys obv!)

Due to my job (Education) I still feel I need to stay under the radar so I'm doing what I can a bit quietly. I liked the idea upthread of a £1 in a pot when the red mist descends ready for the next gardening. I've just got some bags from Stand up for Women and used all of them when food shopping this week. I'm going to buy a suffragette colours face mask later from Radical Tea Towel. As Posie said - Wearing is action.

It's weird .... I don't think I've ever had a time in my life when I've felt so angry but also felt such solidarity with people I've never met, as I do now.

And I absolutely bloody love this place. You lot

sending hot tea, buttered crumpets to OP

LangClegsInSpace

Agree on all counts. The Twitter noise is just sound and fury. It signifies nothing.

If you're exhausted discussing dressing rooms and toilets and being called transphobic, woo, wait until the day you're denied access to a medical facility you need...

Perhaps you need to hang around. Read some of the birth trauma threads, or the threads where women have been sent home in pain and/or have nearly died because their conditions (such as sepsis) were life-threatening, but they were dismissed and told they were overreacting. Yes - and women's cardiac problems are often overlooked because the model and teaching standard is male and symptoms appear differently. Women have been dealing with this shit for fucking centuries in different ways, and we have also been lobotomised and sterilised against our wills and at the request of husbands and fathers. We have been denied adequate reproductive care. Our clitorises have been excised by doctors both because of FGM and because in one era this was thought to cure women of psychiatric disorders... and on that score don't get me started on mental health professionals who have told us we have fantasised abuse and rape.

We have not just been denied medical treatment or given inadequate medical treatment we wrote the fucking manual on how this has happened.

I don't think you have any idea about what it means to (sorry, not finishing this because I don't have the mental energy to contort myself to avoid deletion).

Spartacus
👏 👏

@Zinco

If you're exhausted discussing dressing rooms and toilets and being called transphobic, woo, wait until the day you're denied access to a medical facility you need...

Obviously it's a serious matter if someone doesn't get the medical treatment they need, regardless of the reasons for it.

It's also a serious matter if women are being raped in prison by males, to take the extreme example.

Definitely. We should discuss how prisons should be abolished, as often male guards (I believe the statistics indicated 60% of rapes in women's prisons), as well as female guards and inmates (though the UK law refuses to list it correctly as rape due to patriarchal standards that refuse to acknowledge severity when a woman performed the rape), will rape --

Oh sorry this was about wanting to boot trans women from women's prisons again, right, not actually to indicate giving a fuck about women being raped in prisons?

op, and thank you to you all.

Definitely. We should discuss how prisons should be abolished

Only if we have gone insane... prisons exist for a reason, e.g to punish and detain sex offenders and other serious criminals.

If you want to argue that X types of prisoners don't need to be there, that's a different argument; but you can't seriously abolish prisons.

Obviously you need good policy in place to protect prisoners from sexual assault, wherever that comes from. Part of that is keeping males out of female prisons.

Oh sorry this was about wanting to boot trans women from women's prisons again, right, not actually to indicate giving a fuck about women being raped in prisons?

So in your mind, I'm not sincere on the issue, because I'm not mad enough to want to abolish prisons... what you are suggesting is fringe crazy far-left impossible stuff.

*Only if we have gone insane... prisons exist for a reason, e.g to punish and detain sex offenders and other serious criminals.

If you want to argue that X types of prisoners don't need to be there, that's a different argument; but you can't seriously abolish prisons.

Obviously you need good policy in place to protect prisoners from sexual assault, wherever that comes from. Part of that is keeping males out of female prisons.*

So what's your plan on abolishing sexual assault in prisons, given the majority is carried out by the staff? I don't think anyone should be a sitting duck for sexual assault by being housed in with people in full control of their every day life regardless of what crimes they committed.

@LangClegsInSpace Thank you so much! I hope your personal and family stuff has all improved! 💐

What’s your plan for it, Evarish?

Why do you keep ignoring the questions asking you why you don’t put your energy into campaigning for trans specific spaces and healthcare?

Why do you keep ignoring the questions asking you why you don’t put your energy into campaigning for trans specific spaces and healthcare?

Because trans people shouldn't be segregated into third spaces.

If not a third space then Evarish, why not a space relevant to their biological medical condition/need? Why must they be validated at every step at the expense of another group?

@Evarish

Personally I'm more pre-occupied with ensuring children don't get arrested for playing sports, people who need (immediate) medical care don't get barred access due to definitions in law and ensuring others have access to work spaces and safety because most facilities simply can't be accessible to trans people while enforcing single sex exclusive spaces.

If you're exhausted discussing dressing rooms and toilets and being called transphobic, woo, wait until the day you're denied access to a medical facility you need in terms of life or death because they're by definitions of their own treatments not allowed to cover your care.

And here we bloody go again! Again. And again. Just so fucked off.

What’s your plan for it, Evarish?

Imprisonment has been proven to be relatively ineffective in combating second and further offenses, as well as a deterrance for first offenders. Instead there should be focus on reaching out to communities, preventing offenses from ever occuring to begin with, both by handling impoverishment (and associated disgruntlement) and disordered thinking (a very broad use of the word, here).

Not putting someone in an enclosed space as a sitting duck for sexual abusers to begin with would wholly get rid of sexual assaults in prisons.

If not a third space then Evarish, why not a space relevant to their biological medical condition/need? Why must they be validated at every step at the expense of another group?

Because the 'expense' is fictional and lives in your heads.

Take care folks. Could be some screenshots occurring.

Something certainly is fictional and lives in peoples heads and I can tell you, it is not this.