US woman sues after 'gender affirming' double mastectomy

[ArabellaScott]

'The defendants 'transgressed the bounds of socially tolerable conduct by abusing their positions of trust and authority' by recommending 'unnecessary, irreversible treatment' without weighing Kiefel's mental problems, says the complaint.

Because of the surgery, Kiefel must endure a 'lifelong inability ever to choose to breastfeed a child' and doubts she will ever find a 'life partner sexually and romantically attracted to a woman without breasts,' it adds.

Kiefel has called for a jury trial and seeks up to $850,000 in damages.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11399015/Oregon-woman-sues-trans-care-team-abhorrent-misdiagnosis-left-MUTILATED.html

Brace yourselves. The lawsuits are starting.

Personally I think there probably are people out there with severe enough dysmorphia that removing sexual organs is in their best interests.

I expect this is an absolutely minuscule amount of people. And that it's obvious that they suffer from serious mental health issues. And that even for them, surgery should be a last resort when all other therapies fail.

Maybe the more suings the better, it will make surgeons and gender counsellors think twice. There are so many gender confused youngsters on YouTube deeply regretting their decisions, it’s heartbreaking really.

How informed are the choices of someone with a mental health issue. Would you recommend letting an anorexic starve themselves after all it's their choice not to eat 🤔 I think the entire point of the case is that she was unable to make an informed choice.

But no one "is trans" though. There is no inherent transness that exists.

Doctors are not actually expected to recognise who is or isn't trans because of this.
Doctors also aren't expected to recognise who is or isn't genuinely experiencing "gender dysphoria" which again is not a tangible thing, but a concept.

Doctors are actually expected, in the case of duty of care, to provide care that aids the patient in line with NHS protocol. They are not considered negligent if they follow protocol and they are only considered negligent if they make a mistake that is outwith what their peers could be expected to have not made.

Who says she wasn't able to make an informed choice? If those she is suing can evidence she was deemed to have capacity to make choices is her case over?

Having only briefly read the article and assuming it's been accurately reported then it does seem a very short period of time for someone to affirm a life altering decision.

However, I would imagine the clinicians started at the point of "she says she's non-binary (or maybe they say), so it must be true and therefore cutting off breasts affirms this belief and is fine." They haven't started at a neutral POV.

This appears to be what the trans community have pushed for and sadly this woman has been caught in the ideology with irreversible consequences.

Sad.

Ultimately it's that woman at GIDS Tavistock who pushed affirmation only on no evidence, isn't it? Also WPATH in US, but I know very little about how things unfolded in the early days over there. The Tavistock woman here somhiw got her mad ideology accepted and ordered by the whole NHS. How on earth does that happen?

To answer this question, they'd need to define what 'genuinely trans' means. Is anyone 'genuinely trans'?

Exactly so. This is the nub of the problem. If you accept the premise that some people are genuinely trans and would therefore benefit from having their breasts removed, then you would ideally want to carry out a lengthy psychological assessment over a period of months, if not years, to make sure the person understood what they were doing, was giving informed consent, and did not have any signs of mental illness.

We know that doesn't happen. We know that in reality, in the US, 14-year old girls are given mastectomies without very much in the way of prior assessment. We know that a lot of them have histories of mental health problems.

However, even if you did that thorough assessment, and the individual appeared to know what they were doing, was mentally healthy etc, then there is still a case for arguing that a responsible doctor shouldn't be performing double mastectomies in healthy breasts - just as there is a case for saying doctors shouldn't amputate the leg of someone who has a "genuine" desire to be disabled. First, do no harm.

I'm only amazed at the low figure of $850k, thought these kind of things were in the millions.

That'll be compensatory damages, i. e. calculated from the individual circumstances if the victim. The multimillion-dollar punitive damages awards you're probably thinking of are awarded on top of compensatory damages and are calculated looking at the financial capacity of the perpetrator to ensure there's actual deterrence rather than just a slap on the wrist. That's why they're common against major corporations especially in environmental type lawsuits.

If you accept the premise that some people are genuinely trans and would therefore benefit from having their breasts removed, then you would ideally want to carry out a lengthy psychological assessment over a period of months, if not years, to make sure the person understood what they were doing, was giving informed consent, and did not have any signs of mental illness.

Why are people accepting the premise that some people are genuinely trans when nobody can define what 'genuinely trans' means? If doctors are going to remove healthy body parts from young people and inject children with damaging drugs, surely the least they can do is define what it is they're treating.

I've been reading about this for about 6 years now and I have yet to see a convincing argument that anyone is 'genuinely trans'.

Yes, there seems to be a general understanding that you take the pink pills to grow breasts and the blue pills to grow a beard. So if you removed your breasts and then decided your special inner gender required them again, you'd just take the pink pills.

Best not to underestimate the level of ignorance that several years of disinformation have produced.

However, even if you did that thorough assessment, and the individual appeared to know what they were doing, was mentally healthy etc, then there is still a case for arguing that a responsible doctor shouldn't be performing double mastectomies in healthy breasts - just as there is a case for saying doctors shouldn't amputate the leg of someone who has a "genuine" desire to be disabled. First, do no harm.

Yes. I can see absolutely no difference at all between 'body dysmorphia' wrt trans identies and 'body dysmorphia' wrt BIID. Only doctors who've performed amputations for the latter have been struck off, I believe.

The only difference is the idea that a 'gender identity' is somehow more credible than the idea of an 'amputee identity'.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19132621/

@GiantKitten
I agree
She was 30 not a child, she asked for this.

If I asked for this surgery and the risks, rehab are presented to me then surely it's my choice to have it?

To those doubting children can be trans - dn knew he was different as soon as he can remember, cut up dresses, refused to wear skirt, he didn't know the name 20 years ago, he told his mum at 5 he was a boy not a girl.

Yes, this is the paradox.

The poor woman.

To those doubting children can be trans - dn knew he was different as soon as he can remember, cut up dresses, refused to wear skirt, he didn't know the name 20 years ago, he told his mum at 5 he was a boy not a girl.

Can you explain how these clothing choices make someone 'trans'? Many girls and women hate wearing skirts and dresses without being trans. If a 5-year-old child says that they're a cat or a dog do you think this is also an important statement about their identity? Why is declaring that they're the opposite sex different?

I have agree with the scepticism of 'genuinely trans', I think it's a shorthand for someone who is so determined to mu alter themselves that they will not be dissuaded. I fail to see a difference between this and any other BIID. Even if the patient will not be dissuaded, I can't see that it's an excuse for a HCP to participate in a delusion.

There are some people someway along the criminal justice pathway for carrying out ca amateur surgery on consenting adults. If it's wrong for them, a medical qualification shouldn't make any difference imo.

Someone quoted me upthread, iirc that the Doctors are following clinical guidelines and not doing anything outside what any Doctor would do in similar circumstances. The guidelines are wrong and there's plenty of blame to go around.

I feel huge sympathy for this woman, and also commend her for bringing this lawsuit. I hope she wins big, and it stops this from happening again unless proper consent and safeguarding is happening (and no, I don't know what that would entail, perhaps a long waiting period? Plus referrals to clinicians who can fully explain the numerous downsides of such surgeries...'your body will never be the same, they don't grow back, you will never feed a baby' etc...)

To those doubting children can be trans - dn knew he was different as soon as he can remember, cut up dresses, refused to wear skirt, he didn't know the name 20 years ago, he told his mum at 5 he was a boy not a girl

So children can feel that they aren't comfortable with the societal expectations put upon them because of their sex. I agree. Does that change the reality of their sexed body? No. Is it kind to go along with their belief that they are the opposite sex? No again

Poor woman.

This is the problem at hand. It is not supposed to be a mental health issue - to say so is offensive, and I'm sure at the height of her dysphoria, this woman would have passionately agreed - but the concurrence of mental health and trauma and abuse in those suffering dysphoria is heavily evidenced. As is people who are Autistic and/or homosexual and are experiencing challenges with societal expectations of gender and confusing information around gendered expectations and being born in the wrong body.

Under these circumstances, to do something so permanent, drastic and damaging to a person as this kind of irreversible surgery risks that the person may come to find that they a) now regret those decisions b) do not feel that they had the ability or capacity at the time due to their other unmet needs to have been able to make this decision and to have allowed them to was irresponsible of those who carried out the treatment (to put it mildly compared to how I have heard detransitioners voice these feelings) and c) that they were encouraged and hurried towards these drastic solutions with a lot of affirmation and encouragement, which makes those parties involved and responsible.

There is not a way to fix this. Miranda Yardley has described in great detail the need to do the next thing on the list in chasing the dragon of feeling better, of the distress being ended, and the awful realisation when everything is finally done that it has not been the solution after all, and the distress is still there. Yes, some end up happy and fine with their choices; the number of those who are not, who are permanently harmed, is building. Some of the children currently on the experiment of blockers and hormones may end up adults too ill to earn a living or without the capacity to ever have an adult relationship as well as having lost fertility.

In essence: this is one of the reasons why capital punishment was ended. However small the risk of wrongly permanently destroying a life is in the big picture, the process of investigation and trial is not sufficient to justify the harm caused. It is not reversible if it's later found to be, despite everyone's best and sincere efforts, wrong.

We have clinicians in Scotland on record saying they rely on the patient's self reports to decide to pursue treatment (hormones & surgery). By definition the patient is someone who is suffering.

It's asking people presenting with distressing mental health issues to suggest how those issues should be solved. Akin to asking a suicidal patient their best ideas for solving those suicidal feelings.

It is not tenable as a treatment model.

I cannot believe we have got to where we are.

If I asked for this surgery and the risks, rehab are presented to me then surely it's my choice to have it?

Yes. Provided you are of sound mind, appropriate age, understand the actual risks, likely outcomes and potential benefits of the surgery.

However, if you are mentally ill, don’t get the risks properly explained, OR have a false idea of the “benefits” then you shouldn’t be allowed it. And doctors which acquiesce to such requests deserve to be sued and struck off. IMO, that should include the ones who complete the surgery, the ones who failed to properly explain the risks, the ones who mislead the patient regarding “benefits”, AND the ones who failed to recognise capacity to consent being limited by mental illness.

And no child should be allowed elective cosmetic surgery. They aren’t even legally permitted to consent to tattoos in the UK, and in many US states those under 18 can’t consent to sex either.

Trying to imagine what a conversation would be like between a gender-dysphoric patient and a doctor that actually followed that model of informed consent.

I've been reading about this for about 6 years now and I have yet to see a convincing argument that anyone is 'genuinely trans'.

Agreed. I feel massively sceptical about the whole thing. But my argument is that even if you think some people are genuinely trans, you'd want to make sure of that before you cut off healthy body parts.

You've used to cutting up clothes/not wanting to wear a skirt as the reason why your DH thought they were the opposite sex?

Obviously that's not a reason, people can cut up clothes or not wear them for all sorts of reasons.

So presumably, you mean it's a symptom.

Can you actually explain, what you, or your DH, or their mother thought was the actual reason why they were the opposite sex?

Because it can't just be 'cutting up clothes'.