What you all said was coming

[Pippinbird]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10947483/Anguish-young-man-sex-organs-removed-NHS-regretted-day-SUES-NHS

I have to say I do agree with what you're saying here. It shouldn't be getting done on the NHS at all. It is effectively ruining working body parts. True!

Can't really argue against that or I can't find one and frankly don't want to, I think I raised enough counters.

I can't even get decent thyroid treatment on the NHS, so I am baffled at the willingness to prescribe incredibly strong hormone treatment to healthy individuals and undertake such extreme surgeries on healthy bodies

Thank you for cementing why this is wrong in my mind. I was trying to get past all the counter-arguments I could bring up and others will say to me.

I agree, the NHS should not be doing or funding this kind of surgery.

Why should tax payers be funding this? Many of them women who cannot get or expect any where near decent healthcare for medical issues that only affect or impact on women?

Hewitt

I posted earlier but have only just rtft and have to say I'm quite shocked at the lack of empathy for Tulip. Whether or not you believe Tulip had capacity to consent, or should have done more research, or got what he asked for, the truth is that there is no positive evidence base for these surgeries.

In my view, there is no place for these surgeries, especially not in the NHS which WE fund.

A lot of people Pps have talked about how we don't remove other healthy body parts. To that end, this (very long) article is FASCINATING

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/

The thing is the NHS may - I don't know - have been offering such treatment for decades to Trans individuals without blowback

Yes it did, but to be a candidate for surgery, the patient had to have gone through extensive psychotherapy. That is why the old-fashioned transsexuals are often quite wise souls.

I don't think it is good enough to say "well the patient wanted it". Since when has the NHS operated on a system of self-diagnosis?

I have heard from staff who worked on that service that even after therapy etc, there was regret and complications. It wasn’t uncommon at all.

I understand why some, despite sympathising extensively with Tullip, think the nhs are not culpable. But if Tullip was capable of doing his research, so was the nhs. But instead they allowed themselves to be led by the nose by gender activist organisations such as stonewall. In recent years as a result of activism from 'GC' people and groups they have been forced to modify their website on a host of issues surrounding transition. I think their wholesale adoption of gender ideology is the big weakness in their case and even if they win, it will throw a load more sunlight on everything.

Stephanie from TT speaking out:

”Last night, Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of Transgender Trend, a group advising parents of trans children and young people, said: ‘This young man’s compensation battle shines a light on the NHS adult gender identity clinics where older teens and young people are getting treatment, and referral for surgery, with little exploration into underlying mental or social issues pushing them towards wanting to change gender.
‘We want an independent inquiry into the work of the clinics where young patients are allowed, by law, to make their own decisions on life-altering medical procedures that they may later regret.’”

I hope Tullip’s case helps highlight the need for a move away from the current model.

www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/news/society/195278/we-need-an-urgent-gender-op-inquiry-say-campaigners

You could just as easily say that if people suffering from anorexia were capable of doing research, they'd understand that their condition is all in their mind, they are dangerously underweight and if they don't start eating properly they will die.

Obviously I can't be sure, but one wonders how many of the downsides patients are actually exposed to, bearing in mind the fact that Caspian's important research into regret is still being prevented.

The NHS are usually pretty hot on the precautionary principle, when a friend of mine had a knee replacement recently her surgeon listed the disadvantages so comprehensively, and in such detail, he nearly put her off altogether, even though she was in agony.

If sex reassignment surgery fell entirely on private practices, would there be more in the long term because the NHS waiting times have the effect of giving people time to change their minds?

A bit like the waiting list for gender clinics and clinicians having the effect of allowing teens to naturally desist?

Or would people not be able to afford private? There's only so many crowdfunders / money lending people can do?

I think if it entirely fell on private we'd have a massive cohort if " half done-ers"

People unable to work or live after being unable to afford repairs and revisions . Thay wouod end up falling to the nhs and as much could end up being an emergency , causing even longer waits for everyone else.

It also removes any incentive to be any good..if your patient has no choice but to come back to you, the only surgeon in the area who does it, why bother doing a good job, you get the money when Gary come back.you can stuff it up and string it out all you want.

It Simply should just not be done. By anyone.

Here is what I don't get.

Tulip was an adult who was "living as a woman" what does that actually mean? Wearing lippy and a dress?

I couldn't tell you when I last had a dress on but my lippy was last out for mothers day.

Back in the early 70s there was a teenager who lived in my road. I think everyone thought he was gay and it wasn't an issue. It turned out he wanted to be a transwoman and there was no help, or maybe very little help, on the NHS so he started working as a prostitute to make the money for his op. He was slightly built and very quiet, he got beaten up more than once and was clearly in danger. He was working as a female prostitute and inevitably depending on the service being paid for sometimes men found out he wasn't female and then he got a worse beating.

He eventually married and I think he had all the surgery. I moved away but I hope his story worked out OK as I think his life was pretty tragic.

I would love to hear the perspective of the surgeons who carry out these surgeries. I had a mastectomy for breast cancer and it was touch and go whether they should remove my nipple entirely because the cancer was very close under the nipple. My (female) surgeon spent ages trying to figure out if she could keep the nipple intact and it was me who said to remove it because for me it was more important to make sure the cancer didn't return than to have a nipple. The surgeon was genuinely sad about the fact that I would lose my nipple and that was despite the fact that it was potentially life saving. I cannot imagine that surgeon agreeing to remove someone's healthy tissue. Who are the surgeons that are doing this? If they're in the NHS do they get a choice not to carry out these surgeries? Surely it goes against the hypocritical oath.

That's the million dollar question. What does it mean to live 'as' a woman, without resorting to stereotypes?

I have heard from staff who worked on that service that even after therapy etc, there was regret and complications. It wasn’t uncommon at all.

Without data collection, we're nowhere in being able to conduct an evidence-based evaluation.

No, that is not what I meant by research. I was talking about research into the surgical procedure itself and the physical after-effects. Something that is relatively easy to do in our time.

I was not talking about investigating ones own dysphoria. Clearly a person fully signed up to such a philosophy isn't going to be inclined to seek alternative points of view and probably can't, even if some part of them wanted to.

But looking at the bare facts of a procedure can be done. And again, no one simply walks into a serious and complicated surgery in the NHS. There is consultation beforehand. Unless this person was not told how complicated it would be or appraised of the potential downsides, in which case that's another point.

But this is moot as overall I agree there is an argument that the NHS should not be doing these procedures in the first place.

I don’t know enough about this young man to comment on his case specifically.

Having been part of group therapy however I can speak to how every single one of us in therapy had to some degree (& most to a large degree) a wish for a ‘magical fix’. Even though we all had differing experiences of trauma, differing family support etc this one thing we all had in common - so acutely distressed we desperately wanted something, anything, that would make us ‘better/normal/less in pain’ etc

Something instant - an epiphany from therapy, a medication that would solve our distress, an understanding from family, justice from courts, an acceptance of responsibility from those that harmed us, a label even to point to that would help us understand ourselves or be understood by others.

A significant number of sessions, and parts of many other sessions, were based solely on trying to get us to understand that there is no magical fix.

That we will be working on ourselves, and working on our distress to get it down to a level that is as manageable as we possibly can, for many months/years or perhaps even for the rest of our lives.

Many illnesses, including mental distress, cannot be ‘cured’ but only managed as best we can.

If children, young adults, or even older adults, are being sold a ‘magic fix’ then I can absolutely understand how someone in acute distress would leap on it.

And then be even more distressed when the magic fix leaves them with the original distress and additional severe problems on top.

It is heart-breaking and why I have sympathy with anyone misled into believing transition is a cure for what may well be multiple psychological issues, instead of ongoing therapy and support to best manage those issues in a way that allows us to live as reasonably well as possible.

And my group therapy was NHS - they are fully aware that patients with severe mental distress are nearly always absolutely desperate for a magic fix.*

My DS espouses never consider malice before incompetence.

Personally I cannot for the life of me see how so many ‘professionals’ and professional bodies who knew full well previously and know full well in other areas to this day can have an ‘incompetent’ block on this specific area at this specific time.

I won’t post my own personal theory as it is definitely likely to be seen as inflammatory. It is also the only logical reason I can see for the current situation, and as silencing victims is part and parcel of it, it’s beyond ironic that I can’t post it.

That's the million dollar question. What does it mean to live 'as' a woman, without resorting to stereotypes?

In my view, nothing. There are 3.5 billion women on the planet and the only thing we all have in common is belonging to the same sex class.

That's a really interesting post, @ASmallCat. One tentative explanation I have for why all common sense and research has been chucked out of the window in this one area is that policymakers have swallowed wholesale the assertion from Stonewall et al that LGBT is just an extension of gay rights, which almost everyone now accepts are now not something requiring medical or psychological treatment. The fact that the T part is actually a totally different thing seems not to have sunk in. And once policy changes HCPs have to go along with it for the sake of their careers and their finances.

How could you be a man and work as a prostitute pretending to be a woman? Of course men found out!

OT: How could you be a man and work as a prostitute pretending to be a woman? Of course men found out!

I would assume that not all purchased sexual activity is penetrative of the vagina rather than mouth or other orifices.

I'd like to hear your theory. Would you PM it to me, please?

I would be interested to hear it too.