The judgment in Keira Bell's case will be given tomorrow

[MaudTheInvincible]

The judgment of the Tavistock's appeal of the case will be given at 2pm.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/royal-courts-of-justice-cause-list/royal-courts-of-justice-daily-cause-list

Brave Keira. You have done so much to protect children from ideologically driven healthcare around the world. Your integrity and courage is inspiring and rare in this ridiculous day and age. 💚🤍💜

This is interesting Charley, considering Dr Steensma has indicated there is a difference in the cohorts and as such the ‘Dutch’ protocol may not be suitable at all for a portion of the young transitioners at the moment.

Fundamentally, it's -never- your decision.

Mmm. Despite me not saying anything about whose decision it is you came back with this. Twice.

I said parents don't want their children to have high risk surgery and it is the case that hormone treatment for children as young as 11 is a very high risk indication of surgery at 18 or younger in Scotland or other countries.

You dislike our language on mumsnet and yet we are supposed to be meek and mild when middle aged people who have transitioned from male are telling us and our children repeatedly it's never our decision.

Do you have children?

@FlyingOink

Navigating university with male genitalia in an explicitly lethally hostile world was an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone, but there was no other option.

I was ace at uni, but largely as a survival mechanism. You're stuck in an awful place where creepy people fetishise you and everyone else assumes you are a creep.

And I realise this is very personal, but as you have shared it, presumably you didn't pass at 18? Had you been on blockers? With regard to university being "explicitly lethally hostile", did you get any support from the university re death threats?
If you hadn't been on blockers, do you think they might have helped? If you were on blockers, and presumably then oestrogen as part of the seamless handover, do you believe that the wait for genital surgery was the main problem for you there?

Sure. I'll answer if it's helpful - hopefully if someone learns something then this'll be worthwhile.

I was quite lucky in the Great Genetic Lottery; I was occasionally passing before even going on blockers, and by the time I was 18 and had been on them for several years, I looked quite androgynous, which meant school and generally existing in public was an absolute nightmare but it was definitely better than the alternative.

Once I started HRT, it only took a couple of months before I couldn't pass as male if I tried. By the time I went to uni, I looked exactly like my mother at the same age - just taller - to the point where most people thought family photos of her were of me instead. I'm not a complete idiot, so I'm not going to post a picture here, but suffice to say that my experience of passing or not was one framed and resolved at a much younger age than most trans people - many of whom never get to that point - and I firmly believe it spared me an enormous amount of suffering on multiple levels.

Unfortunately, this came with its own set of struggles, as anyone who has experienced being read as female as a fresher at uni in the presence of drunken men can likely attest. I had a particularly notable early moment of sudden, stark sober clarity, standing swaying in the doorway of the bedroom of a 6ft2 bruiser with forearms the size of my thighs on the wrong side of a bottle of vodka, where I realised I was about to make a decision with a fair possibility of causing me to become a trans panic murder statistic; this was in my -first week-, and became something of a defining component of my late teens and early twenties. The person I was most afraid of was a decidedly predatory lesbian in one of the uni societies who kept making romantic overtures toward what was clearly a young, extremely insecure, absolutely terrified people-pleaser so I briefly dated her, but could never articulate -beyond feeble excuses- why I wasn't interested in our relationship taking on a sexual character. I got sick enough of having to constantly swat her hand away from my crotch that it finally overcame my fear, and I broke up with her, and then resolved that it was safer to just say I wasn't interested from then on until I'd had surgery.

The wait for surgery was agonising and completely unnecessary. I'd already long completed any semblance of a Real Life Test period - had been living for the best part of a decade in a world that treated me as a young woman in almost every relevant way. It was just senseless treadmilling for the sake of it. It felt like once I'd had it, I could just get on with my life.

If it hadn't been for blockers, I'd have spent that time - right up to today - in the same constant, crushing pit of insecurity that most trans people are locked in every day, doing their best to pass, wondering if they'll get abuse just walking down the street or going to the loo.

It isn't exactly an easy ride - the sheer degree to which trans stuff seems to flood the media and online discourse nowadays is quite painful, and I've often felt that my mere presence in the vicinity of other trans people is an active dysphoria trigger for them, which is an incredibly lonely place to live.

However.

The worst I have to put up with on an everyday basis is good old fashioned misogyny, and the background hum of transphobia in the press. Which is...well it's a different flavour of awful, but still awful.

I look in the mirror and I see the person I should see. When other people look at me, they percieve me correctly. Just living, every day, isn't a constant waking nightmare. That is absolutely due to having made that critical decision about blockers over twenty years ago. I'm living proof that there is a positive road ahead; that you can go on and live your life, and largely just get on with it - but that lifeline is so crucial.

There is nothing inherently magical about passing, beyond feeling comfortable in your own skin. However, we live in a world where everything is vastly easier if you do; where every day isn't a minefield of abuse.

Would they be remotely as significant if it wasn't for our culture's transphobia problem? Yes and no. They wouldn't be an escape from transphobia in a world where that didn't exist; they would, however, remain an escape from gender dysphoria - and one that is significantly safer and more reversible than just starting on CSH at an equivalent age.

I question the minimisation of the risks of medicalised transition, particularly for young female transitioners compared to skiing.

Medicalisation that even clinicians with decades of experience say is still experimental and has too little evidence to know how often it is actually helpful. There is also longitudinal European study that suggests that 8-9% of transitioners had detransitioned over around a 10 year period.

I don’t think it is helpful at all to use skiing as a comparator.

Once I started HRT

You have never been on HRT.

Hormone therapy for transgender or gender variant individuals, also known as cross-sex hormone therapy, is a form of hormone therapy in which sex hormones and other hormonal medications are administered for the purpose of closely aligning one’s gender expression with one’s gender identity.

The person I was most afraid of was a decidedly predatory lesbian in one of the uni societies who kept making romantic overtures toward what was clearly a young, extremely insecure, absolutely terrified people-pleaser so I briefly dated her, but could never articulate -beyond feeble excuses- why I wasn't interested in our relationship taking on a sexual character. I got sick enough of having to constantly swat her hand away from my crotch that it finally overcame my fear, and I broke up with her, and then resolved that it was safer to just say I wasn't interested from then on until I'd had surgery.
You passed so well that a lesbian sexually harassed you, and this was the cause of the explicitly lethally hostile environment? Presumably they weren't hostile to you because they knew you were trans, if you passed that well?
I have to be honest, this sounds like fantasy to me.

Well my bingo card is filling up quickly tonight.

Colourful stories notwithstanding, thank you for this
they would, however, remain an escape from gender dysphoria - and one that is significantly safer and more reversible than just starting on CSH at an equivalent age
which at least clearly states your view that blockers are safer and more reversible.

Can I ask, why do you believe they are safer when adults have a strict six month lifetime dosage limit, whereas with hormones an adult can be on them for life? That suggests blockers are more dangerous.
Also, why do you think girls are prescribed blockers when there is no masculinisation to block but adult height is likely reduced?

When other people look at me, they percieve me correctly

Gosh. How do you know? 'correctly'?

What I mean is, how can you judge someone else's perception as correct or incorrect? It's their perception, it's nothing to do with you.

I realised I was about to make a decision with a fair possibility of causing me to become a trans panic murder statistic; this was in my -first week-, and became something of a defining component of my late teens and early twenties.
Hang on, that incident became a defining component, or (presumably regularly) almost having sex with men who frightened you became a defining component? The latter doesn't make any sense, especially as you go on to date a sexually aggressive lesbian. Are you attracted to people who ignore your boundaries?

my mere presence in the vicinity of other trans people is an active dysphoria trigger for them
And is this because you pass so well as female that they are triggered by you? Or are you talking about people you have told about your trans status who are presumably jealous?

I think ultimately, ButterflyHatched, your ability to pass as a woman aged 38 or so isn't really relevant to whether teenage girls should be able to request blockers.
It's not clear to me what the benefit of blocking female puberty is, because blocking it results in a shorter and smaller transman than otherwise.

It's clear you think blockers have been very beneficial to you, as you pass so well. You say you were on blockers for several years. I hope you didn't suffer any physical ill-effects.

Absolutely! One of these decisions has a potentially significant impact on your happiness and future prospects and you'll regret making stupid decisions about later.

The other is about surgical complications. Which can and do happen. And it's horrible that this is the case, but this isn't an issue peculiar to GRS, so much as a general issue with major surgery.

Would this be a bad time to mention that I finished school with excellent grades in my GCSEs. In all three of the ones I got to do.

I went back later, did some more GCSEs out of interest. Now I have more than five GCSEs and I'm engaged in an Open University degree leading on from the second set of subjects.

Call me biased, but I'd rather do two separate sets of GCSEs and A-levels than surgical complications from anything. A-level revision isn't that agonising.

Yes, and genital surgery of this type has a very high revision rate, infection rate and complication rate, much more so than other types of surgery.
I'd rather do all my GCSEs all over again than be incontinent and have limited mobility in my forearm, but that's just me.

@Fitt

Fundamentally, it's -never- your decision.

Mmm. Despite me not saying anything about whose decision it is you came back with this. Twice.

I said parents don't want their children to have high risk surgery and it is the case that hormone treatment for children as young as 11 is a very high risk indication of surgery at 18 or younger in Scotland or other countries.

You dislike our language on mumsnet and yet we are supposed to be meek and mild when middle aged people who have transitioned from male are telling us and our children repeatedly it's never our decision.

Do you have children?

I think I'm failing to communicate tone in a fundamentally toneless text medium; my sincere apologies - it absolutely isn't my intention to minimise or offend here, merely present the world as we see - and saw - it, and then connect these two together to provide a long term post-GIDS transition perspective, as these are understandably incredibly rare.

(I'm pleasantly surprised by the good-faith attempts to have a constructive discussion here, for reference. Thankyou all so far)

We had a very different culture then to now in some ways; honestly, I think my generation was rather well served by dodging becoming a political football due to barely anyone even realising we existed, and certainly not seeing us as a worthwhile cause to fight over. There were so few of us, and we just disappeared into the woodwork and tried to get on with it.

Your concerns are extremely familiar, @Fitt - my mother was very cautious when it came to my own transition; it was a strange and unfamiliar thing she didn't really understand, and she was understandably worried I would come to regret it and holding out hope I'd desist and thus have an easier road through life. It was a pretty grim, uncertain future back then - I completely understand where she was coming from, and I think many of those concerns still exist today, even if the road is rather more well travelled nowadays.

She was one of the loudest voices of caution in my life; however, right from the start, she resolved that whatever I chose to do, she would try and support it and provide unconditional love regardless

She did frequently demand I preserve a sperm sample before I became infertile. At the time, I couldn't think of anything I wanted less - I frankly found the whole idea decidedly grim and a little tastless in light of the struggles I was going through at the time (just a personal perspective, certainly not a comment on the validity for others - but worth bearing in mind as a likely response to the notion) and I figured technological advances would probably cover for that by the time it became relevant.

We aren't quite there yet; the world has moved quickly in some ways and not so much in others.

I don't have children; that is a biological reality and component of womanhood I have no claim on, no cause to make a claim on, and which remains no small source of sadness. A stark and inescapable reminder of the past that no amount of blockers and hormones can fix.

My sister has a pair of wonderful children, for whom I am the designated 'fun auntie' and regularly involved in their care, and I feel I'm somewhat off the hook in the 'providing grandchildren for our parents' stakes. I've given her carte blanche to tell them my history if she feels it is relevant or necessary, but from her perspective, it's a story that ended twenty years ago and holds very little relevance today. It's confusing enough growing up in today's world without giving them yet another thing to bamboozle them!

I ended up watching two videos recently made by very young people going through what they call "phallo" surgery.

The first one was talking about the repeated distressing liposuction surgery on the thigh flesh used to try to bring it down from it's 10 inch diameter, and was at the point where the money had run out to do any more despite needing more fat reduction. Unable to get erect as it would be years before they could have a pump inserted.

The second person had hair growth and had to shave in the shower. This poor person said they hated is over and over in the video. Quite distressed. Not at all what they expected.

Circumference, not diameter!

Fitt
Yeah from what I have read, it's the least advanced of all these types of surgery. Commonly the lengthening of the urethra fails so the individual urinate from near the base of the neopenis, and is very often incontinent. Of the radial forearm flap phalloplasty, the donor site is left looking very scarred and bare as the flesh is removed to a reasonable depth, which leads to the loss of strength and movement in the forearm.
I understand metoidoplasty gives a better result in terms of feeling but only produces a (neo)micropenis.

"dodging becoming a political football"

This is most definitely not political football.

It's women we are working for, we are not fighting over you.

" It was a strange and unfamiliar thing she didn't really understand,"

Well in that case then my "concerns are not extremely familiar" as this is not a strange and unfamiliar thing I didn't understand.

I couldn't care less if you have children. I asked because it's absolutely obvious you have no experience of being a parent of a child going through this.

@FlyingOink

The person I was most afraid of was a decidedly predatory lesbian in one of the uni societies who kept making romantic overtures toward what was clearly a young, extremely insecure, absolutely terrified people-pleaser so I briefly dated her, but could never articulate -beyond feeble excuses- why I wasn't interested in our relationship taking on a sexual character. I got sick enough of having to constantly swat her hand away from my crotch that it finally overcame my fear, and I broke up with her, and then resolved that it was safer to just say I wasn't interested from then on until I'd had surgery. You passed so well that a lesbian sexually harassed you, and this was the cause of the explicitly lethally hostile environment? Presumably they weren't hostile to you because they knew you were trans, if you passed that well? I have to be honest, this sounds like fantasy to me.

Can't tell if deliberate misread or not; will assume good faith and respond accordingly.

I experienced being hit on by men and women regularly. I still do. Extensive experience indicates that none of them read me as anything but female. When I say I looked exactly like my mother did at the same age, that isn't hyperbole.

This isn't a fantasy. It's a reality. In my late teens and early twenties, it was often an intensely uncomfortable one. Do you understand what it's like growing up in a world where half the media coverage of people like you tells you that you're a ridiculous weirdo worthy of derision and hate, and the other half is full of stories of how people like you are murdered when their partners find out they're trans? Where idle conversation has people regularly making casual mention of how people like you should just kill themselves? Where jokes are regularly made about beating trans people to death? Where you are always the punchline of the joke, emphasis on punch? Where few people respected physical boundaries, where unsolicited sexual contact was a constant hazard, and where you were seen as odd and suspicious for not being interested in sexual contact?

This shouldn't be surprising. This was the world we lived in, and predatory behaviour toward first year students has been a well known phenomenon. It was bad times all around.

I understand it's hard to imagine a trans woman passing pefectly - we like to imagine we can always instantly tell, even amongst one another - but the reality is that you've probably met plenty and never even knew.

@Fitt

"dodging becoming a political football"

This is most definitely not political football.

It's women we are working for, we are not fighting over you.

" It was a strange and unfamiliar thing she didn't really understand,"

Well in that case then my "concerns are not extremely familiar" as this is not a strange and unfamiliar thing I didn't understand.

I couldn't care less if you have children. I asked because it's absolutely obvious you have no experience of being a parent of a child going through this.

Very true! I have no experience of being a parent of a child going through this.

What I do have is firsthand experience of being a child going through this, with the benefit of twenty years of retrospective on outcomes - a perspective from which there is vanishingly little information.

Do you understand what it's like growing up in a world where half the media coverage of people like you tells you that you're a ridiculous weirdo worthy of derision and hate, and the other half is full of stories of how people like you are murdered when their partners find out they're trans? Where idle conversation has people regularly making casual mention of how people like you should just kill themselves? Where jokes are regularly made about beating trans people to death? Where you are always the punchline of the joke, emphasis on punch? Where few people respected physical boundaries, where unsolicited sexual contact was a constant hazard, and where you were seen as odd and suspicious for not being interested in sexual contact?
Of course I do, I'm a lesbian.

Is this the so rare it will never bother you and simultaneously you have met so many that pass and never knew contradiction again.

I'm glad the media/comedy etc don't use trans people as a source of mocking humour in the way they did not so long ago.

The media coverage we have managed to get is about the conflict with women's lives that has built up and up over the past 15 or so years since the GRA.

It's actually about women and what we expect, need and want. We have heard what you want.

You use the word transphobic repeatedly as usual, because to you, women talking about what they expected and still expect is only ever about you. You think you are a football. Well we are kicking back at the lack of support for women, not a football.

What I do have is firsthand experience of being a child going through this, with the benefit of twenty years of retrospective on outcomes - a perspective from which there is vanishingly little information.

Oh blimey! Well of course we've never heard anything from anyone ever before with 20 years experience!

Splaining!

I experienced being hit on by men and women regularly. I still do.
You might pass 100% but you are in your late thirties, early forties and this is not the case for most women, regardless of how varied their social lives might be.
Certainly not getting "hit on" by both men and women. Where are you getting "hit on" by women, it is unlikely to be in Iceland. Do you spend a lot of time in clubs and pubs? Women rarely approach men to "hit on" them, lesbian and bisexual women are even less likely to approach a random woman or transwoman.

I'm glad you assumed I was posting in good faith, but again I have to say your posts sound like fantasy. You are humblebragging about your perceived attractiveness and linking it to being a victim of harassment and a potential victim of sexual abuse. That reads to me like some porny fanfic. Also you've derailed this thread and you aren't contributing to the topic of blockers in girls. I get that you are in favour, and that you credit them with your ability to live entirely in stealth mode, but there are numerous questions you've avoided and you seem to keep coming back to yourself, your looks, and your ability to pass.