Regretting sex mimicry surgery «the same as a woman regretting an abortion»

[turbonerd]

In a main newspaper in my country today, THE leading trans-expert says in response to a detransitioned male who now has no sex organs that
«it is completely impossible (to know if someone will regret surgery). It is just as impossible as when a woman says she wants to abort a fortid. We know that some will regret it, but we haven’t stopped the choice of having an abortion in Norway anyway.»

The Expert is Espen Esther Pirelli Benestad who thinks he is a woman half the week and a man the rest. I can’t remember which days he is which, and at this point I no longer care.

I need some help to formulate why his statement and comparison makes me baulk. It is really not right.

If you need to have an abortion it will generally be possible to have a baby at another point in your life. If you have your sex organs removed, well, once they're gone they're gone.
Also an abortion is unlikely to cause long term physical health problems but having your sex organs removed frequently does.

Exactly.

(Also: It is just as impossible as when a woman says she wants to abort a foetus. Transphobia? Cognitive dissonance? Why on Earth should anybody believe what he says?)

yes, it is such very different scenarios!

Do they not think this through? Do they understand that if a women doesn’t have access to an abortion and is not capable of looking after that child what the ramifications of delivering that human being into the world are?

Only someone who obviously has never thought about children’s needs would ever say such a thing.

Plus they are trying to make a natural process, pregnancy, equivalent to modifications for gender. A false equivalence.

what an ignorant thing to say.

And I also think that women and girls who choose abortion have the mental health support they need as well. Short and long term. Of course there will be regrets! For all sorts of reasons.

I'd question why a male was using a woman's right to abortion to argue their point?

The right to abortion is granted (or not) at the whim of the males/male institutions in charge, worldwide.

This reads like a threat to women: "Say you believe in my religion or I'll make sure you lose any rights to abortion".

When males do this they are leveraging the patriarchy against women to their advantage. They are letting slip that they do not themselves care whether women do or do not have the right to abortion.

«Plus they are trying to make a natural process, pregnancy, equivalent to modifications for gender. A false equivalence.»

Yes, this stood out to me. Like it isn’t bad enough they hitched the T on to homosexuals, now they are trying to wedge themselves in to the fight for bodily autonomy.

And this too: «This reads like a threat to women: "Say you believe in my religion or I'll make sure you lose any rights to abortion".»

The good news is that this was in a longer piece about a detransitioner - very Brave and honest about getting suckered in, chewed up and spat out without his mental health and possible reasons for hating his own body (bullying in this case) being explored.

It is a good piece, but not in English and I haven’t the time to translate.
Will put the link here for those who wish to put it through a bot.

https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/3E78we/det-siste-aleksander-tenkte-foer-narkosen-fikk-ham-til-aa-slukne-var-hjelp-meg-jeg-vil-ikke-gjoere-dette

Esben Esther knows as much about the psychology of abortion as I do about the psychology of prostate exams, punching walls in anger and getting addicted to Call of Duty, the dirty old fraud.

Is this the person?

https://reduxx.info/norway-prominent-trans-clinician-with-ties-to-wpath-has-medical-license-revoked-by-authorities/

This is indeed the Expert.
Him and his wife, from what I gather.

Just remembered that he also transed Jesus in a play just recently.

Will now read what reduxx says about the old charmer.

Will this help peak women in Norway? I'm in another Nordic country and am often surprised by how unaware women are. And the press seems determined to pat us on the head and tell us not to worry

No one is ever really pleased to have had an abortion other than it being the best option at the time. Regret in this sense is not the same as wishing you had made a different decision.

When an abortion is considered, there isn't just the option of doing nothing and life carrying on the same. For SRS, life changes considerably more (in an unnecessary way) by having the surgery.

The question "is there a good reason to do this? What happens if we don't?" has very different answers for these scenarios.

Our mini equivalent of the bbc is captured from what I am reading.
People very much want to be kind.
Our Minister of Equality wants to ban conversion therapy for homosexuality AND gender identity - as if they are the same.

Your average person finds it ridiculous and thinks it will never affect them.
Though the sports issue did rile rather a few.

So not quite peak-time in Scandinavia I don’t think.

I have been chucked off FB, or am just inept because I cannot log back on, so don’t know how the comments to these newer articles go.

Unless something goes badly wrong, abortion doesn’t lead to a permanently damaged, infertile body, which requires ongoing, lifelong treatment.

A real equivalent might be comparing it to sterilisation, or cosmetic surgery with poor success rate and frequent dissatisfaction and even then it’s not exactly the same as it ignores the fact that it is effectively a physical treatment for a mental health problem. Lobotomy might be the closest analogy.

But of course, the trans doctor who, by definition, cannot have an objective view of the patients’ choices, is trying to link this to abortion rights, just as transactivists attempt to make the same argument about it being equivalent to gay rights, while ignoring the gaping holes in the analogy.

How surprising that men who declare themselves to be women have so little interest in women’s rights - it’s almost as if they realise they aren’t actually women at all….

It would have made more sense to compare it to literally any other operation. Women who don't have abortions usually have children. Which they also frequently regret.

Even though it makes no sense, bracketing trans treatments with abortion is a well-worn TRA tactic. Look at Planned Parenthood in the States. The abortion rights fight in the US was so ineffectual in the last few years because TRAs hijacked it and started infighting about every protest and every banner and turned pro-choice messaging into gibberish.

They've tried it here too with the arguments about Gillick competence.

I think it's jealousy that abortion is a female issue that doesn't include males, so they have to pretend that they have something that's somehow the same. It's rather disturbing.

Yes, it is very disturbing!

And as many have pointed out the analogy is completely false.

Thanks for helping me hash out my objection.

Abortion has been heavily researched and so we have a decent idea of rates of both complications and regrets, so the women who choose it are able to give informed consent.

Transition? Not so much.