Charlie's story

[DdraigGoch]

Charlie Bentley-Astor describes how just one GP not affirming and not referring her for surgery led to her coming to accept her female body and her sexuality.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/28/had-gone-gender-transition-would-have-committed-suicide/

I read that article yesterday and it is a very moving piece that articulates well the concerns so many of us have with the affirmation model.

My only criticism or concern is the use of suicide as an inevitable end point.

As someone who has experienced their mum committing suicide, the way it is used so frequently within discussion about Trans issues is repellent.

We see all the time the statement that if we don't affirm then children will kill themselves and in this article Charlie says that if she had transitioned she would have ended up killing herself.

Why is it used so frequently as the only possible outcome?

…because suicide is romanticised as the ultimate ‘sacrifice’. Lots of musicians/artists who killed themselves have a cult following. It’s the plot climax point of many a film/book.

Except for those of us who have experienced a close friend/relative know the utter devastation and pain it leaves behind.

It is repellent. And the Samaritans have strict guidelines (rightly) on how it should be talked about in the media.

The only thing I can justify it with is that no one understands the horror until they have been through someone close doing this. I have unfortunately known a few people die but nothing compares to it.

This paragraph is key:

My pro-transition activist friends often said that contesting their gender identity risked driving them suicide. Yet, for me, it was only when I began to be challenged, and challenge myself and the gender-spin I'd been fed, that my own suicidal feelings finally began to abate.

It truly is like escaping from a cult.

sorry to be cheeky but does anyone have an archive link for this?

Yes. It’s extremely uncomfortable watching the concept of suicide being thrown around so lightly by the trans activists, and incredibly insulting to those families who have been touched by it.

I’m so very sorry about your mum.

web.archive.org/web/20220728173543/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/28/had-gone-gender-transition-would-have-committed-suicide/

(I always head off to the Wayback Machine to see if a kind person has archived an article and usually they have - thank you that kind person!)

thank you - good tip about the wayback machine

Now I have read the whole article (thank you for link) I need to emphasize my previous post was not about this individual girl talking about what she went through, but talk/threat of suicide to justify confirmation of trans gender acceptance without debate. Which I think the article was agreeing with in a sense.

The points Charlie raised confirm so many things we’ve heard time and time again on this forum. But stories like Charlie’s need to be heard in more wider circles so everyone recognises the obvious patterns and signs of many girls not wanting to go through puberty or being sexualised.

She mentions something that I hadn't thought of before - that if she had surgery she thinks she would have committed suicide afterwards as she would have realised it wasn't the answer to her problems. Are there any statistics about the number of people who do commit suicide following top or bottom surgery?