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. 💚🤍💜

@Fitt

Not huge outliers at all, actually complete irrelevancies to women approaching their forties.

Women in their thirties are generally not taking regular medication or facing Damoclean swords over future health effects. It's really sad this is being presented as acceptable damage to health.

@rabbitwoman

I assume you feel the benefits our weigh these health concerns, though?

I am very worried in deed that the whole procedure has been mis sold. I am certain young people are completely unaware of any side effects (I know. I work with kids).

Not only that, they have been told its all reversible, they can change their minds at any time.

Not ONLY that, they are being told they actually CAN change sex, they WILL be their chosen sex, and the adults around them are also repeating this.

When we see say trans women ARE women, we mean OF COURSE trans women are just as good, equal and valued as anyone else in society, but knowing they aren't actually physically women and never can be...... No one tells the kids that, Butterfly.

I wasn't aware blockers even existed when I attended my first appointment at the Portman clinic! I had read about antiandrogens (spiro etc) and suddenly was being told about GNRH Analogues; how they were a new treatment that they were wary about keeping me on for too long due to worries about bone density, etc.

These definitely aren't new concerns; they're valid ones and they still deserve to be treated seriously and politely, however, especially when coming from concerned parents.

I don't have a great deal of patience for when they come from completely unrelated adults with no horse in this race, but equally, it's clearly a matter of great concern.

I understand what you mean when discussing the realities of sex, gender and the current availability of medical techniques to adjust these characteristics. It's important to be honest and realistic about outcomes. Hormones feel like magic, but their effects have limits. Surgery is only as good as the available material, the technique used, and the skill of the surgeon.

I really do think the framing here is actively harmful, however, in a very real and tangible way, when it comes to presenting narratives on the subject of changing sex.

I typed a bunch of Paragraphs here about gendered perception and performance and the impact of language on these things, but I don't honestly think anyone cares; this has already ended up running pretty long and I'm not really interested in turning this thread into a definition battle everyone's already been through a million times already. Suffice to say, I think there are ways to be open, clear and realistic about expectation management which don't involve dismissing people's lived experience.

@OldCrone

Oh I've definitely had a whole host of health issues - they're a regular topic of discussion with my GP and I'd happily offer them if anyone ever formally approached me for a followup study.

Have you approached GIDS and offered your experience for a follow-up study? I think I read that they have no idea what has happened to patients once they have left their care for adult services, so it's unlikely that they would approach you as they probably wouldn't know where to find you.

If you are also in contact with others who went through GIDS at the same time you could all offer valuable information to them which could help current and future patients.

This, I was not aware of! Thankyou for the information.

Ok. That sounds like a pretty solid way to help combat the general climate of misinformation and uncertainty out there with actual data. I just don't want to contribute to increasing their already clearly overwhelming workload - it really does sound like they're struggling to keep up with demand in a more connected, better informed world.

These definitely aren't new concerns; they're valid ones and they still deserve to be treated seriously and politely, however, especially when coming from concerned parents.

I don't have a great deal of patience for when they come from completely unrelated adults with no horse in this race, but equally, it's clearly a matter of great concern.

You're on a site called 'Mumsnet'. Everyone has a 'horse in this race'.

I was just about to ask if they'd forgotten they are on the UK's biggest parenting site.

And to add to that, the narrative you dislike is the narrative of the biggest parenting chat site so it might be worth taking that into account with your harmful theory.

Or you could take a look at Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv's "narrative" being published widely in Canada where he talks about the state funded surgeon specializing in "12 year old girl pussy" or "porn star pussy".

Is that the preferred narrative?

@ArabellaScott

These definitely aren't new concerns; they're valid ones and they still deserve to be treated seriously and politely, however, especially when coming from concerned parents.

I don't have a great deal of patience for when they come from completely unrelated adults with no horse in this race, but equally, it's clearly a matter of great concern.

You're on a site called 'Mumsnet'. Everyone has a 'horse in this race'.

Even if someone didn't have a child identifying as transgender, it's not wrong to be concerned about the risks of treatment. Like it's not wrong to be concerned about thalidomide victims or women in Yemen or any other topic that doesn't directly affect you as an individual. Plenty of people have genuinely unhelpful views on bariatric medicine or the treatment of addiction, but that doesn't mean that discussion of these topics is somehow taboo.

Not ONLY that, they are being told they actually CAN change sex, they WILL be their chosen sex, and the adults around them are also repeating this.
There are some really disturbing accounts on reddit of post-operative individuals coming to terms with having been misled about outcomes.

ButterflyHatched, were you told as a child you could become a woman, or was the discourse more about passing? Do you feel clinicians were honest with you about potential pitfalls?

Anyone with a child or who cares for a child is likely to be concerned about these issues. Especially those of us in Scotland, who are seeing propaganda brought into schools that suggests to children they can change sex and that sex is a spectrum, and that they can keep secrets at school from their parents.

As evidenced by reports from Helen Webberley's court case today, there is no evidence. Children are being prescribed medication off label with no proven benefits and with some potentially very serious side effects. They're being sold medication (quite literally) as some kind of treatment for a condition that isn't apparently a mental or physical illness and is undefinable.

They're being 'affirmed' on a pathway that leads to lifelong medication and told that any form of therapy is akin to 'conversion therapy'.

No, thank you.

That's a such a good post Arabella that summarises the attitude of most of us who are parents, work with children and are watching in horror at the targeting of children by adults with a vested interest in this ideology.

Public policy, especially relating to the medical and psychological treatment of children should never be directed by the self interested. The fact that children's medicine has been so easily influenced by adults seeking to weaponise this issue is shameful. Children are not pawns to be deployed in adult debates about identity.

@FlyingOink

Not ONLY that, they are being told they actually CAN change sex, they WILL be their chosen sex, and the adults around them are also repeating this. There are some really disturbing accounts on reddit of post-operative individuals coming to terms with having been misled about outcomes.

ButterflyHatched, were you told as a child you could become a woman, or was the discourse more about passing? Do you feel clinicians were honest with you about potential pitfalls?

The discourse from clinicians - in my case, Brain and Viner at Middlesex who were the staff who conducted the actual 'give me blockers! Please!' evaluations after my initial appointments with Wren - was never particularly concerned about passing, other than as a means to mitigate the inevitable dysphoria that comes from being gendered incorrectly in every day life. Passing wasn't the objective; couldn't be the objective, as many people who came to them were already at a point where that wasn't going to be a realistic, reliable possibility. They were very clear and honest about the effects of having already undergone partial puberty, and what I could expect going forward. Information was provided openly and clearly. I was never under any illusion as to the known side effects. Bone density was a matter of some concern, and once again they were open and honest about this - which terrified my mother more than it did me, to be honest.

I was never told I could become a woman. I was never 'told' things in that framing by clinicians at all. That simply isn't how they operated - they never presented or offered; only listened and evaluated. They asked questions; asked me how I felt and what I wanted. What was going on in my life; how I felt about myself, my parents, my family, my friends.

Moving onto the GIC at Charing Cross, oh I was 'told' plenty of things. It was extremely clear that I was interacting with the old-guard of gatekeepers; the nonsense peddlars who would claim you hadn't socially transitioned if you turned up in jeans and a t-shirt. That was patently and clearly ludicrous - I'd often see my sister in the morning wearing outfits like that and laugh at how bizarre medical gatekeeping was that I had to go along in a skirt, but my story happened to match their criteria so off I went.

Nobody ever told me I could become a woman. Quite the opposite. Please understand; I grew up under an atmosphere of people telling me I wasn't a real girl; could never be a real woman; would forever be living a lie. It felt like being constantly gaslit by the whole world.

I internalised so much of it, and it made me a really messed up young woman for a while when I got there, struggling with devastating insecurity even while I was quite literally living the reality that the rest of the world kept claiming couldn't be real. The psychological scars from that dissonance are absolutely real, and they follow you. Anyone who has existed under the shadow of stereotype threat; who has found their voice sidelined and marginalised in male-dominated spaces, knows full well how damaging it is to exist in an environment that tells you with every passive-aggressive word that you don't belong; that your experiences are less valid; that you are lesser simply because of who you are.

Heaven knows I get more than enough of that in the workplace still without adding a whole other component to it. Some things change, others stay the same...

Nobody ever told me I could become a woman. Quite the opposite. Please understand; I grew up under an atmosphere of people telling me I wasn't a real girl; could never be a real woman; would forever be living a lie.
Do you think it would have been more or less psychologically damaging to be told the opposite, as children are now?

That's not gaslighting, Butterfly. That's the cold, hard reality of the situation.

@FlyingOink

Nobody ever told me I could become a woman. Quite the opposite. Please understand; I grew up under an atmosphere of people telling me I wasn't a real girl; could never be a real woman; would forever be living a lie. Do you think it would have been more or less psychologically damaging to be told the opposite, as children are now?

By GIDS? I'm not sure what you want me to say here.

I've just said that being told all these things that I have then gone on to pointedly defy for the last twenty years was a really great way of making my teens and early twenties unnecessarily miserable.

GIDS never told me I could be a woman; they never told me I could not be a woman. That just wasn't the language they used; wasn't how the whole matter was framed. In a world that was full of hate and indifference, they provided careful honesty, sense, professionalism and, ultimately, medication that I desperately needed.

So long as they remained honest about outcomes and careful that I understood the risks, I don't think it would make much of a difference.

As for the rest of society? Yeah I think I could have done without years of being gaslit and told all my experiences were invalid by the world at large. That would have been really great.

By GIDS? I'm not sure what you want me to say here.
No, not necessarily. But we know young children are being taught in school that humans can literally change sex and it leads to some confusion.
I was curious as to how they framed it with you, and you have explained they took a detached and professional approach, which is good to hear.
In what way do you believe you have been gaslit? Which experiences are deemed invalid?

told all my experiences were invalid

Butterfly, you seem articulate and thoughtful. Could you explain what 'valid' actually means, please? I see it used SO often, and it just doesn't really make sense to me at all.

Bone density was a matter of some concern, and once again they were open and honest about this - which terrified my mother more than it did me, to be honest.

Of course it did. You were a child with a child's level of understanding and maturity. This is why this case about whether children have the maturity to consent to this treatment was brought in the first place. Your comment indicates that you are aware from your own experience that children don't have the maturity and understanding to give fully informed consent to this treatment.

Was the likelihood of impaired sexual function and infertility also discussed? And was your mother also more concerned about this than you were?

I think it's a scandal that the young people who received this treatment 20 or 25 years ago were not closely followed up throughout their lives. The information (positive or negative) that's been lost would have been invaluable to those embarking on treatment today.

@ArabellaScott

told all my experiences were invalid

Butterfly, you seem articulate and thoughtful. Could you explain what 'valid' actually means, please? I see it used SO often, and it just doesn't really make sense to me at all.

Sure. Bit of an overused term, really, alongside a bunch of other buzzwords in modern feminist discourse. I think this one has value, though.

It's a nice sentiment - to say 'of course trans people are just as good, equal and valued as anyone else', but the truth is that it's a lie, isn't it?

Trans women aren't women, and trans men aren't men, unless other people say they are and treat them in a way that is congruent with their own experiences. If you aren't allowed to live that truth, then while it still gets to be true for you personally in your own internal life - nobody but you is the arbiter of that - you're just one-handed clapping. You experience what you experience while the rest of the world glares at you, shuffles their feet awkwardly and tries to find excuses to be somewhere else.

I've found myself doing this too around people who were in the middle of that uncomfortable period of early transition weirdness - despite having once been there myself. It happens. Learning the Rules of Gendered Presentation is hard and we're primed to sneer at people trying it out for themselves, in much the same way that our culture sneers at teenage girls. I had great guides - a mother and a sister and a small group of school friends who could tolerate being around me. A lot of people who go through this journey later on...don't, and it's really awkward. For everyone. Especially them.

The weird, vast amorphous thing that is Gender seems to behave as a two-way road; it is a social participatory experience as much as an internal one, and saying things like 'some kinds of women aren't actually women and can never be' just slams the door. I can see why that would feel desirable - what right do other people have to claim something that's yours; how dare they appropriate your experiences as their own - but I think there are other worthwhile approaches.

There -are- parts of womanhood and manhood that aren't accessible to trans people; this has always felt like a temporal, technological issue rather than a fundamental, essential quality, but it does stand currently. If you want to phrase that as incomplete womanhood, or false womanhood, then I suppose that's your perogative. I've always felt like a part of myself was missing, but I don't think the missing part invalidates the whole, and the entire notion of infertile women being lesser in some way is just horrendous anyway.

I don't really worry myself too much about what things are called; meanings change and language and society is an ongoing, evolving project. I do care about how people are treated, and the very tangible impact that has on their lives.

That's what I mean by valid. I don't need anyone to tell me I'm special and wonderful and unique and magical; to hold my hand and lay down the red carpet while heralding my arrival with a brace of trumpets. That would be cringeworthy, senseless nonsense.

I just ask they try to believe me when I say my experiences of womanhood are real; and if they can't do that, then at least be polite enough to not dehumanise me and cast me as a duplicitous, dangerous predator. It really is the least we can do.

@OldCrone

Bone density was a matter of some concern, and once again they were open and honest about this - which terrified my mother more than it did me, to be honest.

Of course it did. You were a child with a child's level of understanding and maturity. This is why this case about whether children have the maturity to consent to this treatment was brought in the first place. Your comment indicates that you are aware from your own experience that children don't have the maturity and understanding to give fully informed consent to this treatment.

Was the likelihood of impaired sexual function and infertility also discussed? And was your mother also more concerned about this than you were?

They were, though I'm now a little unclear as to what you mean by impaired sexual function; if you mean, er, nuts and bolts mechanics then yes, I was made aware both of pre and post surgical outcomes in that regard. An awkard conversation, to be sure, but a necessary one.

If you mean reduced sex drive, then I was also very much aware and actively welcomed it. Testosterone is awful (I wish trans guys all the best in the world; I'm sorry they have to put up with it, as I never experienced it as anything other than intensely harmful, but I'm sure they'd say the same about estrogen - that is, after all, rather the point...)

Mum realised pretty early on that this was going to mean I wouldn't be able to have kids, and made her peace with that. While she did spend a while trying to convince me to preserve some samples, I was eventually able to communicate to her how abhorrent a concept I found that to be and how much I really did not appreciate the subject being brought up. I completely understand the perspective, and understood it at the time; I just didn't want to have anything to do with it, and wasn't really fussed about the whole notion of passing on genetic material. I figured if it ever became something I was at the right point in my life to do, I could always adopt; or who knows where technology would be by then.

I understand what you're angling for here; that there was no way I could have known the significance of those decisions. Believe me; there was little more starkly apparent to me than the significance of those decisions. That was why I was empowered to make them.

I've always felt like a part of myself was missing, but I don't think the missing part invalidates the whole, and the entire notion of infertile women being lesser in some way is just horrendous anyway.

I do hope that this apparent appropriation of the experiences of infertile women is just due to poor phrasing and that it was unintentional.

I just ask they try to believe me when I say my experiences of womanhood are real

You don't have experiences of womanhood though. Your experiences are different from those of women. No less 'valid' if that's the term you like to use, but different and distinct. You can no more experience what it is to be a woman than I can experience what it is to be a transwoman.

Womanhood is simply being an adult human female. No more, no less.

I understand what you're angling for here; that there was no way I could have known the significance of those decisions. Believe me; there was little more starkly apparent to me than the significance of those decisions. That was why I was empowered to make them.

I view that question in a different light. It's well known that many children and young adults find the idea of reproducing offputting, and know with absolute certainty that they never want to have children. And this is perfectly normal. With time however, many of those people change their minds about that, especially once certain things become more important for them.

Allowing the child to go through puberty and delaying a medical transition preserves what doctors call the child's "open future". It's one of the most important principles in pediatrics that doctors choose a path that keeps the child's future open.

Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones close that future. And given that the evidence of PBs+CSH curing gender dysphoria or alleviating distress or reducing depression and suicidality is non-existent or of low to very low quality, there is no justification to abandon this principle.

As I said earlier, PBs are proven to cause depression and suicides (that warning is now mandatory on patient leaflets in the UK), so it's irresponsible to give them to prevent suicidality in children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Sorry, it's mandatory in the EU. I don't know if it's still mandatory in the UK

A a child I knew that you needed to see to hear anyone
Adults felt otherwise and hit my ears fixed

As a child I knew I was a boy
The adults felt otherwise and mostly ignored my childish beliefs

As a child, sex was DISGUSTING

I've always felt like a part of myself was missing, but I don't think the missing part invalidates the whole, and the entire notion of infertile women being lesser in some way is just horrendous anyway.

I do hope that this apparent appropriation of the experiences of infertile women is just due to poor phrasing and that it was unintentional.

So do I otherwise it's extremely offensive, your infertility Butterfly is not even in the same ball park as that experienced by women.

The irony in this statement is overwhelming:

then at least be polite enough to not dehumanise me

considering the wholesale dehumanisation of women and their experiences that is currently underway with the added kick in the teeth of appropriation of our lives and experiences.

The only people in this whole sorry saga who are being invalidated are women.