Times Scotland article - 16 and 17 year olds referred for surgery

[BeanieSue]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scottish-doctors-approved-breast-removal-for-51-trans-teenagers-qvkmz8r2c

I don't have a share token. I can only hope the Scottish newspapers report on this too.

“Chest reconstruction surgery”

I echo all the horror of all PPs on this thread. How ON EARTH can a surgeon agree to doing this??

I can't help wondering whether part of this is the idea of breasts as something that can easily be fixed if they regret later on (indeed, I believe a prominent surgeon in the US said as much) - after all, silicone tits are just the same no?

No money for CAMHS, but we'll lop of your breasts as a stop gap.

Why has my post been hidden @MNHQ? It only contained a link to the original story in the Telegraph.

BetsyM00 so they lied even when this information was already in the public domain?

Well, the journal article is dated Aug 2019 and the FOI Dec 2019, so it seems so.

If you allow trans lobby groups to go into schools to actively teach children about a fictitious gender identity with a fairy at one end of the spectrum and GI Joe at the other, this is what happens.

They believe they are in the wrong body and a trans child is created.

It's a conveyor belt towards cutting off healthy body parts and lifelong medication.

I am so appalled that politicians cant see this dreadful scandal for what it is.

@ditalini

I can't help wondering whether part of this is the idea of breasts as something that can easily be fixed if they regret later on (indeed, I believe a prominent surgeon in the US said as much) - after all, silicone tits are just the same no?

No money for CAMHS, but we'll lop of your breasts as a stop gap.

It's the same old male gaze: boobs are there for that purpose only, so it does not matter whether they're natural or silicone.

Internalised misogyny from the US paediatrician who said that. Here she is on the record saying 'If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them': Jo Olson Kennedy recorded 6th July 2018 at Gender Spectrum Conference. She is married to a transman who works as a counsellor. They both make a living from affirmative gender therapy.

twitter.com/Mum3Sun/status/1020707915873890305?s=20

'A Scottish government spokesman said: “A small number of young adults have been referred for chest reconstruction surgery at 17. '

Like collateral damage. Friendly fire.

To disguise the reality.

In this case. Reconstruction? So outrageous to use the word for women having reconstruction after mastectomy due to cancer.

And all to avoid using the actual term- double mastectomy.

I agree, NiceGerbil. I have friends who have had mastectomies. I can’t imagine what hell they went through.

This is a very shocking thread but thank you for bringing it to our attention, OP.

@BetsyM00

This is the article from a child mental health journal about the 16 year old who was referred, approved and on a waiting list (estimated time before op: 3 months) before deciding to have the double mastectomy done privately at 16.5 years old.

It was subsequent to this that the NHS said zero under 18s were referred for this surgery (which they call chest reconstruction)

The article is written by the mother of the child involved. She is a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry.

She previously worked at a gender clinic and appears to have immediately accepted that her child was transgender and the "only treatment" was surgery. Symptoms in her female child first appeared around puberty.

Somehow this is more horrifying when the mother is an educated woman with specialist knowledge in the area of child mental health.

@LizzieSiddal

The figures I’ve read say that 200 children a year are saying they are trans, in Scotland, of all ages. So this number of 50, 16 and 17 year olds is incredibly high! It’s absolutely shocking.

This can't be accurate - there are 4 trans and 2 non binary children at my children's primary school alone. I only know 3 families well enough to know that only one of them has been to the NHS about it (where they were told their child didn't have a developed sense of gender yet, not to transition - so they flounced off to Mermaids).

200 might be those diagnosed with dysphoria, but there is a wave of children who have grown up, socially transitioned, that the NHS won't see until puberty.

50 out of 200, presumably some will be boys so not needing mastectomies. That makes it standard practice.

This can't be accurate - there are 4 trans and 2 non binary children at my children's primary school alone

I agree. Even at a cursory glance those figures can't be accurate. I'm in England but I know a large number of family friends, neighbours, and people we meet through sports coaching session who all report this about their own children/wider family, children's friends, in their children's schools etc.

It may be 200 per year are seen at Sandyford and get an official diagnosis?

It's worth pointing out that I think the 50 patients referred for surgery was over the course of 5 years, so that's more like 50 out of 1000 - which is still a lot!

@LizzieSiddal

The figures I’ve read say that 200 children a year are saying they are trans, in Scotland, of all ages. So this number of 50, 16 and 17 year olds is incredibly high! It’s absolutely shocking.

Do you have the source for the 200, please?

It is too many anyway, especially if they are using suicide risk as a reason for it - as the suicide rate for under 18 girls is very, very low. The rate of people, groomed online as to what to say to health professionals to push through their transition, claiming to be suicidal might be high but that is becoming a useless indicator as to real suicidal ideation/risk.

I would also want to see that all mental health co-morbidities had been successfully treated so that consent was ethically gained. I don't believe this could be the case.

Do they push through young girls for boob jobs, who claim their flat chested-ness makes then feel unfeminine? Or do they wait it out to see what maturity brings, while only "feeling my body is too feminine" has to be treated drastically like a disease?

I feel like I live on a different planet!

And dictionary definitions are being changed around us in a real time newsspeak (see other threads on the redefinition of sexual orientation).

And if trans women are women when they have a penis why can't trans men who are still children and highly likely to change their minds, keep their breasts and still identify as a man?

Don't expect an answer to that one. I've been asking that question for years and I still haven't had an answer to it.

The figures I’ve read say that 200 children a year are saying they are trans, in Scotland, of all ages.

This FoI says 298 child referrals to Sandyford in 2018, and I've seen another that puts the figure closer to 400. In fact, every FoI request to Sandyford elicits varying figures.

And it's important to remember that the figures do not include the majority of 16 and 17 year olds as they are referred to the adult clinic at just over 16.

@BetsyM00

This is the article from a child mental health journal about the 16 year old who was referred, approved and on a waiting list (estimated time before op: 3 months) before deciding to have the double mastectomy done privately at 16.5 years old.

It was subsequent to this that the NHS said zero under 18s were referred for this surgery (which they call chest reconstruction)

Helen Minnis, the author of that article and mother of the child involved, who apparently immediately accepted that her child 'is transgender' (and that the only possible treatment was a double mastectomy ASAP), is the head of a research group at Glasgow University looking at treatments for autism.

www.aims-2-trials.eu/about-aims-2-trials/team/university-of-glasgow/

She is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Glasgow University.

www.gla.ac.uk/researchinstitutes/healthwellbeing/staff/helenminnis/

How much influence does she have over what is going on in Scotland?

@Datun

If you allow trans lobby groups to go into schools to actively teach children about a fictitious gender identity with a fairy at one end of the spectrum and GI Joe at the other, this is what happens.

They believe they are in the wrong body and a trans child is created.

It's a conveyor belt towards cutting off healthy body parts and lifelong medication.

I am so appalled that politicians cant see this dreadful scandal for what it is.

This is something I've wondered about quite a few times - why is that that so many people don't seem to understand things like social contagion, or the developing teen brain and sense of identity, or how the environment around us impact our sense of what is real?

Some of the gender ideology stuff around kids and teens seemed off to me early on because I remember the kinds of things I thought and felt at that time, or because I can see things like social contagion working among kids. I remember what middle school girls were like, and how I felt like my body belonged to someone else.

How do these adults not realize that if you tell kids something, they believe it, and interpret what they see and feel from within that belief system?

That's all kind of basic, isn't it?

That article / first person account of the process leading up to the surgery was absolutely chilling.

• Female child has perfectly average childhood/no body or emotional issues
• Approaches puberty and is becoming uncomfortable with self
• Psychologist parent predicts anorexia may be the next step, but phew! It's just body dysmorphia - luckily that's easily fixed!
• Child describes the feeling as having spiders crawling on the unwanted body part and can't leave her bed
• Psychiatrist tells family the only cure will be surgery
• Child had her breasts removed and is immediately cured.

If I felt like I had spiders crawling over one of my legs at 16 would they remove my leg?

What if I hated my eyes so much I couldn't open them. Would they remove my eyes at 16?

This is a sudden fixation with one body part which must be removed, and the same body part, amongst thousands of teenage girls all over the world. But no contagion here.