Abigail Shrier - Marci Bowers - critical of puberty blockers

[ArabellaScott]

Well, this seems potentially very important.

Marci Bowers, well known surgeon who has treated many 'trans children' is critical of the usage of puberty blockers in this interview with Abigail Shrier. Bowers and a fellow medic call the treatment of 'trans children/young people' reckless and sloppy.

Bowers is slated to lead WPATH as of next year.

bariweiss.substack.com/p/top-trans-doctors-blow-the-whistle

The really striking thing for me in the article is this:

nearly seven in 10 children initially diagnosed with gender dysphoria eventually outgrew it

So we're putting kids on powerful drugs that reduce their bone density, render them sterile, prevent them from ever becoming functioning sexual adults, and impact on the heart. And put them on a conveyorbelt to major and repeated surgeries that will render them incontinent. And have a real risk of killing them.

For a condition that two thirds will simply grow out of.

It's.... I'm struggling to find polite words, to be honest.

Not exactly cast iron scientifically based medical decisions making, this zig zagging stuff, is it?

I don't know many other major invasive "treatment" and operations that allow this amount of experimentation.

Rather reminds me of lobotomies practised on the poor and struggling.

@OldCrone

There seems to be a lot of 'we didn't know' coming from Bowers. Why would a surgeon working in this area not be up-to-date on what other doctors were doing elsewhere in the world?

The Dutch doctors had been treating children with puberty blockers since the 90s, 15 years or more before Jazz Jennings.

Another problem created by puberty blockade — experts prefer “blockade” to “blockage” — was lack of tissue, which Dutch researchers noted back in 2008. At that time, Cohen-Kettenis and other researchers noted that, in natal males, early blockade might lead to “non-normal pubertal phallic growth,” meaning that “the genital tissue available for vaginoplasty might be less than optimal.”

But that hair-raising warning seems to have been lost in the trip across the Atlantic.

Why didn't Bowers and all the other doctors involved in this seemingly not know about what had already been done in the Netherlands and elsewhere? This problem was also mentioned in the documentary about Susie Green's child who she took to Thailand for this surgery. How could Bowers not know anything about this while working as a surgeon doing these operations?

I've wondered a bit about this. I know a doctor working in trans care with children who has taken a very affirmation positive approach. One thing I noticed discussing it with her a bit is that she seemed very unaware of concerns that I had read about from medical sources, for example with puberty blockers. There seemed to be a very strange narrow focus going on.

Why would a surgeon working in this area not be up-to-date on what other doctors were doing elsewhere in the world?

Surgeons are primarily interested in surgery. It's a very specialist skill.

The details of surgical techniques would be the main thing they'd be staying up-to-date on.

I can imagine their focus would not be on the wider pictures of "dealing with childhood identity issues".

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

Are MNHQ going to reinstate the women who received strikes and bans for pointing all this out now that the great surgeons themselves…have admitted what we were all saying is true?

No. And there's an interesting general history behind this aside from the obvious point that nobody wants to be reminded of a time when they were on the wrong side of history.

There's a phenomenon known as 'premature anti-[X]' and two of the best known instances are to have been a premature anti-fascist or a premature anti-Nazi.

‘Premature anti-fascist’ was the name by which the Lincoln Brigade veterans of the Spanish Civil War were known by the US Army in World War Two. This service and knowledge didn't distinguish them for a leadership position, it was counted as demerit on their record.

In John Platts-Mills' autobiography (barrister and post-war Labour MP), he recalls being ‘excluded from any form of normal war service by the stupidities of Bevin’. He noted: ‘An anti-Nazi history, was of no help and to have been prematurely anti-Nazi was a positive hindrance … we were condemned throughout most of the 1930s on the grounds that only Communists were against the Nazis and this hostility carried over into the war years.’

Commenting on (British?) veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Platts-Mills wrote that ‘many lefties who had served in Spain were called up or were accepted when they volunteered. Several more got in only after a tussle with the authorities.’

I wonder if some of the women deplatformed from various social media will find themselves labelled 'premature anti-authoritarians' or some other 'premature anti-[X]'.

That is so interesting and one of the reasons I love this forum. I had never heard of this before, but it makes perfect sense.

When we are all vindicated, as I am sure we will be one day, we'll be told that although we were right, it was for the wrong reasons. We were just transphobic, whereas the people who now understand the surgery is wrong have come to that conclusion after careful consideration of the evidence. That will be the line.

There is very little on this whole issue around children that doesn't enrage me, from the silencing of concerned women and mothers raising their heads above the parapet here to ask "is this really safe?" to the so-called world renowned experts now saying, "I don't think it is now actually, I've changed my mind"...but today I'm thinking about how Jazz might be feeling after reading this article.

To know you were essentially a guinea pig for some egotistical medical professionals to experiment on, following a childhood of gaslighting, makes me wonder what Jazz might be feeling, if indeed Jazz is even aware as this could quite easily be kept 'off radar' - some might even say made so by 'stealth'.

It will never be anything other that rage-inducing. These are children.

I notice Stonewall are focusing on Black History Month on Twitter and Mermaids are mainly retweeting Stonewall. I await their statement.

@littlbrowndog

And Scotland sending girls to England to get double mastectomy

Has there been any studies done on the outcomes of performing this major surgery on young girls

This came up in the trigonometry interview with Posie Parker on Sunday. Francis Foster mentioned that he has a close relative who is due to undergo a mastectomy and he spoke about just what major surgery it actually is.

I had a neighbour who had a breast reduction after losing a lot of weight; she ended up needing two blood transfusions after the surgery and it was a bit touch and go for a while.

I do wonder whether this minimising of the procedure is actually some sort of leakage from cosmetic plastic surgery culture, where, say, a rhinoplasty is not seen as a big thing, so a mastectomy is viewed in a similar vein.

There seems to be this notion that having things surgically removed and changed for cosmetic reasons is somehow else dangerous than having them removed for reasons of disease or illness.

As an aside, it does make me wonder what the heck will happen to post-op individuals if they get infections that are antibiotic resistant.

@IvyTwines2

"When I asked Bowers if she still thought puberty blockers were a good idea, from a surgical perspective, she said: “This is typical of medicine. We zig and then we zag, and I think maybe we zigged a little too far to the left in some cases.”'

Is it 'typical of medicine' that those who warned they 'maybe zigged too far to the left' got subjected to death and rape threats, had their social media accounts deleted, were no-platformed at universities and even hounded out of their jobs?

Quite.

Zigzagging is just a horrible minimisation of what is going on.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

Are MNHQ going to reinstate the women who received strikes and bans for pointing all this out now that the great surgeons themselves…have admitted what we were all saying is true?

No. And there's an interesting general history behind this aside from the obvious point that nobody wants to be reminded of a time when they were on the wrong side of history.

There's a phenomenon known as 'premature anti-[X]' and two of the best known instances are to have been a premature anti-fascist or a premature anti-Nazi.

‘Premature anti-fascist’ was the name by which the Lincoln Brigade veterans of the Spanish Civil War were known by the US Army in World War Two. This service and knowledge didn't distinguish them for a leadership position, it was counted as demerit on their record.

In John Platts-Mills' autobiography (barrister and post-war Labour MP), he recalls being ‘excluded from any form of normal war service by the stupidities of Bevin’. He noted: ‘An anti-Nazi history, was of no help and to have been prematurely anti-Nazi was a positive hindrance … we were condemned throughout most of the 1930s on the grounds that only Communists were against the Nazis and this hostility carried over into the war years.’

Commenting on (British?) veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Platts-Mills wrote that ‘many lefties who had served in Spain were called up or were accepted when they volunteered. Several more got in only after a tussle with the authorities.’

I wonder if some of the women deplatformed from various social media will find themselves labelled 'premature anti-authoritarians' or some other 'premature anti-[X]'.

Wow, that's fascinating! Thank you for that; I had no idea.

And yes, I can see how it might apply now.

One thing I noticed discussing it with her a bit is that she seemed very unaware of concerns that I had read about from medical sources, for example with puberty blockers. There seemed to be a very strange narrow focus going on.

It's entrenched silo thinking. This issue has all the markers: no shared vision, different priorities across silos, limited collaboration and data flow. No one is really thinking about the whole person throughout the trans journey and no-one is thinking about what that person will be at the end.

It's a problem you see increasingly when services specialise and expand. For reasons of specialty and efficiency, you end up with a production line with one "operator" doing the same task over and over, assuming that the previous operators have done their necessary bit and that someone else has the overall vision.

It's particularly a problem in medicine because of the nature of training required for different fields.

@IvyTwines2

'I think there was naivete on the part of pediatric endocrinologists who were proponents of early [puberty] blockage thinking that just this magic can happen, that surgeons can do anything.'

NHS England have just opened a gender clinic in the UK that is actually called 'CMAGIC'. Here's the logo.

And there we have again one professional group throwing it back on another - surgeons now saying that it's the endocrinologists fault for expecting too much.

Surely any responsible surgeon faced with a request that they think is unlikely to be successful should stop and say so, rather than thinking - well they seem to be expecting magic, but I'll have a go, it'll be interesting to try . . .

For surgery on children. Mutilating surgery.

I watched the clip posted earlier of Marci and Jazz Jennings. It showed a bit of the doctors disagreeing in theatre. But the other thing that struck me was Marci was wearing dangling earrings whilst operating. I thought that was a strict NO?

@Cwenthryth

“If you’ve never had an orgasm pre-surgery, and then your puberty's blocked, it's very difficult to achieve that afterwards,” Bowers said. “I consider that a big problem, actually. It's kind of an overlooked problem that in our ‘informed consent’ of children undergoing puberty blockers, we’ve in some respects overlooked that a little bit.”

Overlooked by trans rights activism and “transgender healthcare” advocates, perhaps, but gender critical voices have been raising this concern for years and been widely dismissed as “transphobic”, “perverts”, “obsessed with” children’s genitals/sex lives. FFS. If lay (non-medically trained) feminists could see this was a glaringly obvious issue, there is zero excuse for HCPs administering these treatments “overlooking” it.

This is transparent arse covering. But, these are the people who need to be on board in order for children to stop being harmed. So, good that they are finally waking up to the reality of what they have been doing.

Exactly. How fucking dare they. It's only been overlooked by people deliberately ignoring issues for ideological reasons.

As many have said above IT'S SO OBVIOUS that if puberty is blocked, then the changes of puberty won't happen! Genital development and growth won't occur. Sexual function won't develop. It's there as an intended outcome, not even as a side effect. They mean to block puberty, and they do.

@Melroses

With trans health care, there is very little space between those who are providing the treatment and those who are receiving the treatment. There must be an ocean of conflicting interests.

Yes, that's a really good point. It seems to be much more so than in any other area of medicine, that the surgeons doing the surgery, the clinicians providing the services, have the condition themselves.

@Datun

Is Bowers the who who hand waved at Jazz's chest and said the drugs did you a favour there, but not there, pointing at Jazz's groin?

As though it had come as a total surprise? After the event.

Shocked that taking drugs to block puberty actually bloody blocked puberty.

When thousands of normal, not HCP, not medically trained in any way, women have been jumping up and down, horrifyingly shouting stop!!! Because they knew it would happen?

Is that Bowers? Or is that another off-the-chart negligent surgeon actually confessing to mutilating children as though admitting it mitigates it.

And YES, the women here, on a parenting site, have been sanctioned for voicing concerns.

Censored for saying exactly what the surgeons are now saying.

It's kind of an overlooked problem that in our ‘informed consent’ of children undergoing puberty blockers, we’ve in some respects overlooked that a little bit.”

Overlooked? Overlooked??? Women across the globe have been yelling it at you through bloody megaphones.

Few, if any, other doctors acknowledge as much. The Mayo Clinic, for instance, does not note that permanent sexual dysfunction may be among puberty blockers’ risks. St. Louis Children’s Hospital doesn’t mention it, either. Oregon Health & Science University Children’s Hospital and University of California at San Francisco don’t. Nor was there any mention of sexual dysfunction in a recent New York Times story, “What Are Puberty Blockers?”

None of them warn the children or their parents? They don't tell anyone of the two major side-effects of this bloody surgery??

I sincerely hope that the litigious happy Americans will sue their arses to fucking kingdom come.

Yes, and it doesn't seem to be a very female point of view, talking about drugs "doing you a favour" of getting bigger breasts. The whole way of speaking by this surgeon seems incongruous with their female presentation.

I mean, any woman who's had any sort of vaginal examination will surely be very unlikely to refer to it as "like being a porn star".

Not a female point of view. And I think even for males, it's a very particular objectifying type of male view.

In addition to blockers stopping pubertal development, the use of oestrogen further shrinks what development has managed to happen. So the 11year old will in fact have the genitals of a much younger child. I won't go into details but exact measurements were aired on I Am Jazz and they were shocking.

@NecessaryScene

Why would a surgeon working in this area not be up-to-date on what other doctors were doing elsewhere in the world?

Surgeons are primarily interested in surgery. It's a very specialist skill.

The details of surgical techniques would be the main thing they'd be staying up-to-date on.

I can imagine their focus would not be on the wider pictures of "dealing with childhood identity issues".

But it's the details of the surgery that seemed to come as a surprise to Bowers. That blocking puberty early would mean that the penis was too small to do the same type of surgery as was performed on adults. So a different type of surgery would be required on children who had had their puberty blocked from an early age.

Why wasn't Bowers aware of this? There's plenty of published research about this as in this paper from 2008 which discusses the effects of suppressing puberty in adolescents:

ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/Europe/Cohen-Kettenis%20JSM2008.pdf

Finally, for the MtFs a non-normal pubertal phallic growth, the genital tissue available for vaginoplasty may be less than optimal. However, appropriate adjusted techniques exist to deal with the shortage of tissue

This is directly related to the surgical techniques Bowers is using. As Abigail Shrier put it in her article: But that hair-raising warning seems to have been lost in the trip across the Atlantic.

It seems like surgeons just doing surgery on a body

Not thinking about why are we doing this to this person when there is no medical reason

@WarriorN

It's a bold divorce from Susie Green who I believe has WPATH membership.

It really, really is. This shatters the Mermaids’ affirmation model of care for children. Maybe there are massive rows going on at WPATH behind the scenes?

I hope as this story unravels that beyond the obvious anger, there’s some compassion for the children and their families who went along with early puberty blockers.

Surely if the most well known surgeon in trans medicine is saying puberty blockers are a disaster this must change policy? I mean, they can’t dismiss Bowers of all people as a big meany terf, can they?

[quote WarriorN]Linking this thread here. I've not been able to bring myself to watch it

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4364606-The-Phalloplasty-Philes-You-tuber-documents-trans-surgery-realities[/quote]
I watched that and fell down a bit of a rabbit hole. A strange and terrifying rabbit hole. The things that surgeons and doctors are doing to these children and young adults is in Mengele territory, it really is.

It reminds me of the opioid scandal, the sheer level of destruction. I don't know how they get away with It.

I know wee donkey

I watched 3 of the videos

Imagine doing that to young peoples bodies. And the complications that they had

Operation after operation and nearly dying

Skin grafts. Catheters for months.

It reminds me of the opioid scandal, the sheer level of destruction.

That and also the thalidomide scandal - I suppose when you will essentially experiment on unborn babies, children of any age are simply subjects for whatever mad 'science' your ego comes up with.

And the talk about fistulas, incontinence, lack of mobility in their arms and the serious life threatening infections they have as if Oh Well, just one of those things.

Its clear they have little or no understanding of what is being done, the obvious complications and the lifelong problems they're going to encounter. How is that informed consent?

This makes me so angry. These are physically healthy young people who need therapy, how are these botched surgeries going to help their disphoria?