First, Do No Harm-The Long Term Effects of Surgeries and Hormones on Children

[notidentifying22]

If gender affirmation is a valid concept, then why are anorexic girls forced into treatment for anorexia? First Do No Harm It would be medical malpractice to affirm their skewed body images and promote surgical options such as liposuction to affirm girls' anorexic body dysphoria.

Their self-perception tells them that they are fat, right through to the point where they die from the effects of starvation. What is the difference between this cohort and the ‘trans’ girls? Both have underlying untreated mental distress, and are controlling their appearance to deal with their issues, but only the girls who claim to be boys will be affirmed in their delusional beliefs.

Someone like my (male) DP, who is fully TWAW, would say the difference is that with girls who want to transition, they are likely to commit suicide if they're not permitted to, so affirmation/puberty blockers etc do the least harm.
I don't know if that's true about suicide, although I do think I've read that at least some of the stats Stonewall (and probably others) use are dubious as they were drawn from small and narrow samples of self-nominated people, and the people who ran the studies won't publish their methodology.

This is the decent-person but-haven’t-really-looked-into-it-response. I expect lots of us started where your DH is.

Once you learn that the real danger zone for suicide risk isn’t pretransition, but 7-10 years post transition (when the patient has exhausted all the medical, surgical, legal and aesthetic options for transition, still feels shitty about themselves and no longer has a ‘next step’ to look forward to) the ’transition as harm reduction’ argument falls apart.

I don't know if that's true about suicide

It's not.

My DP would also argue that the regret rate is vanishingly low. Detransitioners you see speaking out on social media he dismisses as outliers/a tiny minority. I don't know where he gets the regret rate stat from either.

BTW, in case it's not clear, I'm with the OP on unquestioning gender affirmation being analogous to the idea of 'affirming' girls with anorexia. I do know real gender dysphoria exists, but AFAIK it's rare; I think many of the people wanting to transition more recently have other issues and the trans thing is the way they're expressing them. So talking treatment, watching and waiting etc are IMO more appropriate approaches.
It's my DP who believes TWAW and that not allowing kids puberty blockers is a forced transition.
Yes, we've talked and argued about it. We just seem to fundamentally disagree on this basic tenet. In fact he hates the use of language like 'tenet' and 'ideology' and thinks trans rights are simply human rights. I find it ironic that he would like me not to say these words, and others like 'trans-identifying man' etc, and cannot or will not see that this in itself is ideological.

If your DP believes TWAW does he believe that women don't have the right to single sex prisons, sports, rape crisis support, toilets and showers? Because that's what it amounts to.

The rate of suicide among gender dysphoria persons does not change wether they transition or not.

My DP would also argue that the regret rate is vanishingly low.

They haven't done any proper record keeping on this though (one of the biggest criticisms of Tavistock in the Cass report), so how would they know?

What has become of the Hippocratic oath? It's just mind blowing to me that this is happening.

The post transition suiciders are a different group to the detransitioners.

The detransitioners still have enough hope left to try and turn back.

There are a large number of regretters who do neither, but instead remain stuck (and wish they’d never started on the pathway) and there are detransitioners who say they feel no regret because it was something that had to try.

It’s lots of different experiences and with no one actively trying to document and categorise, it’s unsurprising that everyone who transitioned and found it unhelpful in the long run can be whittled down to a tiny number (only those who are alive to transition back in social, legal and medical terms, and only those who actively state regret and have that regret recorded by a clinician).

By those parameters, Keira Bell is not a detransitioner (because Keira Bell has a GRC and a birth certificate that states she was born male and there is no mechanism to reverse a GRC. Keira would have to do the same process over as man, another GD diagnosis stating she is now transitioning from MtF, to ‘live as a woman’ for two years and to be approved by the GRC panel for the second time).

Detransitioners you see speaking out on social media he dismisses as outliers/a tiny minority.

Without having looked into it in any depth, I've probably seen 10 individuals sharing these stories on SM. That's before getting into the ones I haven't seen or the ones that haven't shared for whatever reason or the ones that will share eventually.

But is that not enough to conclude we should have more stringent guidelines around these practices, to be sure that transitioning is the right thing for people?

What number would justify reviewing the approach?

It does come to that, but people who really believe this, which is common in some circles, typically really do believe that trans people are the gender they identify as. Most have a medical model of that, they think it is a type of intersex category.

So there is no contradiction for them.

He thinks men should be allowed to compete against women in sport (his argument when I brought this up was that Lia Thomas has lost more than (s)he's won and that a sportswoman would have an advantage over many men).
The rest, he seems confident that the Equality Act provides enough protection. I asked how he'd feel if I were raped, went to a support group and then said I couldn't go back because there was a man there, and he said he'd support me in whatever made me feel most comfortable, but again brought up the EA. I pointed out that there's at least one ongoing case where there is no single-sex provision made and the woman affected is having to sue. Can't remember his response but I think he basically thinks it's necessarily case by case and whenever this happens a woman should object. I think someone who's been raped or traumatised has probably got enough work to be doing with putting herself back together, but <<shrug>>

Anyway, I've derailed the thread and I apologise.

It does come to that, but people who really believe this, which is common in some circles, typically really do believe that trans people are the gender they identify as.

Im not sure I agree with that. For all the waffling on about intersex, I've never come across anyone who actually believe people can change sex.

I don't think my DP thinks trans people come into a type of intersex category. He said at one point in our discussion that 'I think we should let people be whoever they want to be.'
Whereas I'd say we should let people dress/identify/think of themselves/express themselves as whoever they want to, but there have to be limits when this right to self-expression comes up against sex-based rights. Which he thinks is covered by the EA. I don't.

Hi @DameHelena I think lots of well meaning/haven't thought it through people are where your DP is at.

Although I'm always curious as to the blanket refusal to explore evidence to the contrary in people like this. Its almost as if, unconsciously, the issue they're defending so rigorously isn't really the issue at all but instead serving another purpose...

Anyway Stats for Gender is where I go for fact-based backup.

www.statsforgender.org/

Boarding that thought train and taking a window seat, I do recommend listening to You Must Be Some Kind Of Therapist, Stephanie Winn's podcast. The latest episode has some very interesting discussion around Reaction Formation

The medical establishment is corrupted by profits to a degree you would find unfathomable,

The medical establishment is corrupted by profits to a degree you would find unfathomable

Certainly in the US, but what about the U.K.?

Yes, still huge pharmaceutical profits and it's a multinational industry and you can see that they are causing harm with the trans policies, and they are with other policies. The vaginal mesh debacle for instance, one of many examples. Many drugs are prescribed which cause harm, many drug companies are fined huge amounts for fraud, bribery, and yes they operate in the UK, Pfizer for instance. You can look up their fine records. Why would you assume the UK was less corrupt?

Why would you assume the UK was less corrupt?

I'm not saying it's less corrupt, I'm saying the financial motivations of doctors working in the nhs are less obvious/clear cut.

I get why the US clinics push this stuff through for profit reasons, but I'm not sure how big a motivation finance is for an nhs doctor working in the Tavistock (for example).

Yes @RaininginDarling . That's an excellent podcast!