Hilary Cass on Woman's Hour 9.10.24

[WarriorN]

She will apparently be on the programme tomorrow talking about the impact of her report a year later.

I won't be able to listen but just a heads up if anyone else is interested.

No one would use that as an argument against anyone getting surgery.

I would use it as an argument against unnecessary surgery.

There is a word that describes a certain pp on this thread. That word is ghoul. I do expect to be deleted.

Behind a paywall, but looking at the references:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37556147/
n=139, 40.9% non response rate, ‘long term’ for responders is an average of just 3.6 years for responders and 4.6 for non responders. We cannot rule out all the non-responders regretting their decision as we have no data on them.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29463477/
Exactly as I stated in my pp - a review of patient files with regret defined purely as patients who had returned to the clinic stating regret even though a gonedectomy is clearly irreversible so pretty much no value in them doing so.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?doi=10.21037%2Fatm-20-6204
A survey of 154 surgeons at WPATH and USPATH who carried out the operations prior to 2017, 51 responded. On average they seem to have carried out over 500 surgeries each so big money for them. Regret was measured purely by them reporting that patients had come back to the surgeon who had mutilated them and requested a reversal. It also does not seem to have involved a systematic study of records of even that.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909023/
Did not consider regret, Self-selecting sample of those identifying as transgender (ie not detransitioners). No distinction between surgeries. Follow-up length not reported. Comparison between those who ‘endorsed’ surgery and had had some surgery and those who ‘endorsed’ surgery but had not had it.

Most of the comparison studies were breast reconstruction following cancer treatment or prophylactic removal due to cancer risk.

I should also add the above studies appear to be of adults who had treatment as adults.

@GillBeck l did find another site with a bit more detail about the study that is not paywalled

A systematic review of patient regret after surgery- A common phenomenon in many specialties but rare within gender-affirmation surgery - ScienceDirect

Methods
Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines, a comprehensive research of several databases from each database's inception to July 12, 2023, was conducted. The databases included PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Search terms were “regret” in addition to the following operations: breast reconstruction, breast reduction, breast augmentation, mastopexy, facelift, neck lift, abdominoplasty, blepharoplasty, brow lift, rhinoplasty,

This is the thing. We are constantly told that the brutality of these treatments are all for the good of these children and young people, based on no evidence to show this long term improvement.

This systematic review and literature review was designed to provide a framework to understand regret after gender affirming surgery in the context of other elective medically necessary surgeries as well as major life decisions. Unfortunately, some people seek to limit access to gender-affirming services, most vehemently gender-affirming surgery, and use post-operative regret as reason that care should be denied to all patients. This over-reaching approach erases patient autonomy and does not

Absolutely no bias there.

Those weren't comments, they were questions. To which you apparently have no answers.

The framing was repellent, and I disagree with the deeply transphobic sentiment and flawed premises of those questions. You simply aren’t worth engaging with.

It really is astonishing that there are people who think that it's better for troubled and confused children to have these extreme body modifications in order to superficially resemble the opposite sex, rather than have support to accept their bodies as they are and accept that it's not possible to change sex.

But I suppose if you have completely swallowed the idea that everyone has a 'gender identity' which is unrelated to their sex, and that people can literally be born in the wrong sex body for their gendered soul, then you're not going to think very rationally about these things.

So are you going to explain the difference between gender nonconforming people and transgender people? Or just give a definition of what makes someone transgender?

So we have established that the systematic review you linked does not provide evidence of regret rates. Only, as I said, how many people returned to the surgeon who mutilated them asked for reversal of permanent surgery and had this recorded in clinic notes. Do you have any better studies that do?

You need to read it again, because that’s not what the research says.

Surgery is not mutilation, and there are multiple studies. You can find them yourself.

Surgery is not mutilation

Most surgery isn’t - this surgery is. How can removing healthy and necessary body parts in order to “treat” something that (at best) isn’t properly defined and (at worst) is completely fictitious, at the behest of a child who is likely to be neurodivergent and otherwise distressed, and who has been persuaded by (at best) well-meaning but irresponsible and (at worse) perverted adults that they are something that they are not, be anything other?

You could organise all these studies that you keep mentioning in a nice handy reference manager and provide the reference that you think supports your point easily, Dadjoke, Mendeley is free IIRC.

there are multiple studies. You can find them yourself.

Ah, is it just apathy that prevents dadjoke from backing up his argument?

Cos people who appear the very opposite of apathetic are often absolutely paralysed by it when asked for links.

So you can’t provide any studies then?

Tavistock doctor said:

"the reality is that no one knows, because sex changes are 'the only medical or surgical intervention for which there is no follow-up data collected or follow-up studies'.
He said 26 per cent of his patients at the Tavistock and Portman regretted transitioning"

That's the problem. We don't have comprehensive data about detransition. Remember the academic who was refused funding for his research on this subject because of "transphobia"
I suspect in our post Cass world, he'd now be allowed to push on with this vital research.

If you're trying to convince others of your position, it's usual to post links to sources which provide evidence. If you simply say "You can find them yourself" people are likely to assume that you have no evidence, because if you did, surely you would have posted the links.

I have come to the belief that some
male posters are not here to convince people at all. That is not the aim.

I really don't think it is as low as you suggest. Even those who don't detransition often face regret and some degree of trauma over what they have done to themselves.

For me, the horror of people defending this on the basis of no regret is that these children have had their adult judgement capability removed, and then everyone is like oh they say they're fine.

The likelihood of Jazz Jennings detransitioning is small, given all that has been invested in his life, but you can’t convince me he isn’t suffering physically and mentally from vaginoplasty surgery, the complications that ensued and the lifetime of problems ahead.

🎯

That is very telling, though, isn't it? That gender clinicians and counsellors have been doing no longer term follow ups, as would be standard practice in normal healthcare. After cancer surgeries and treatments, for example, patients are called on regularly to monitor their recovery. You should certainly expect this in the case of children receiving such drastic measures as blocking natural puberty.

And as I understand it one particular surgeon ( I'm sure there are more), an Irish woman, actually gets her patients to sign a form saying that they will not take legal action in case of complications.