The Guardian again; Celebrating double mastectomies, filing it under "health and wellbeing"

[AstonsGerbil]

This just makes me feel sad; with a close family member who died of cancer, a friend who can't breastfeed due to breast cancer and who carries that sadness and pain and a MIL who had a double mastectomy due to aggressive breast cancer and who is in extreme pain with it every day, that these young women have elected to do this to themselves because they worship at the alter of gender ideology is just really depressing.

If these women are truly, truly happy, then I do hope they can cope with the pain they will carry now, but I just can't see why this would be filed under "wellness" and health and wellbeing in the newspaper. The Guardian really have sunk deep into the ideology now. I don't think there's a way back for them.

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/nov/19/trans-nonbinary-top-surgery-scars

I'm sure they'll get even worse, in the Bluesky echo chamber where they'll face minimal challenge or disagreement.

Very disturbing article about deeply disturbed women.

It's just so...disturbing, you're right. The tone of the article as well. I miss the old guardian, I hate what it's become.

Jesus, what a rag 🙄

I agree OP. I still read the Guardian but I can't stand articles like this. It's just so sad that young women are harming themselves like this.

Yes @AstonsGerbil . Wonder what writers like Jill Tweedie would have made of it all. Or Claire Rayner? She had breast cancer. I know she mostly wrote for other papers but still.

Bloody hell that's grim. The writer AND the subjects are trying to make it all "being able to be my true self" and "isn't it wonderful" when staring us all in the face is a story of botched surgeries, abusive or grasping surgeons and very understandable doubts and fears they can barely suppress and have to rename.

I also couldn't help but notice that phrases like I wished that I didn’t live in a world that has these very binaristic standards of what kinds of bodies are masculine and It’s essential to them feeling at home in their bodies don't seem to crop up much in reverse when it's transwomen being discussed. Oh no, they just get to have a girldick/"her penis" and everyone else is expected to reframe their idea of what a woman is.

Patriarchy trains women to find themselves unacceptable as female and have body parts removed by uncaring men who get big bucks, and women then worry about "transphobia" instead of misogyny. Just.... gaaaahhh

I so hope Claire Rayner would have seen through this crap. I think she would.

Well said @WhatterySquash . You've articulated my feelings in a really good way, and you're right; misogyny and the patriarchy strikes again. Always it's the women who lose.

I saw that article. Just when I thought perhaps The Graun had started to be a bit more pro women, it publishes this profoundly anti women article. Disseminating the idea that women’s bodies are there to be rejected and mutilated. In a national newspaper. Really depressing.

Ironic that the same digital front page has this article on registering sex at birth. Such cognitive dissonance. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/19/baby-girl-registered-wrong-sex-mansfield-registration-office

They found three people to give their accounts.

Person one: abused by the surgeon, and operated on for a revision under local anaesthetic which I assume to be for cost reasons.

Person two: felt intense grief at the time of the procedure. Describes the realisation that the body will never look how they imagine, and describes awareness of others for whom body dysmorphia just moves to other areas. This is a classic symptom of Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

Person three: again, BDD symptoms. Then horrible botched surgery. Five appeals to get the revision covered. Then describes the typical social media nonsense of still being seen as “privileged” for having scars that have been lucky enough to fade🙄.

These are the three they chose and I can’t see them as being positive stories. They didn’t even include anyone who openly regrets their surgery completely. Or anyone who has subsequently been unable to breastfeed. Or anyone who had it done at 13, funnily enough.

Just really wtaf Guardian? This article is posted under All About Breasts by a they/them writer whose been published in NPR Music, Teen Vogue, MixMag, Crack Magazine, and them?! Jesus. When it used to publish women the likes of Orr, Moore and Freeman. I despair.

Glorification of self harm on a hugely destructive level. I despair.

Adverts, articles, TV shows.... Why do they always show the "top surgery" scars?

Is it a religious kind of thing?

The Guardian has become increasingly dependent on its 'progressive' american readership.

I miss Hadley, I loved her film articles but also her serious women-centred articles too. Deborah Orr as well. There was an AIBU about the the left; the left left me I saw a few weeks ago. It sums it up. They've just been such a disappointment. To continue to employ Owen Jones despite all his nonsense just proves it. This article is just so desperately sad, dressed up as something to celebrate. Ugh.

I have long since taken the Guardian app off my phone and won't click on the article because I don't want to popolarise it. Treat it with the derision it deserves.

Speaks volumes that it's in the "Lifestyle" section. Being trans or non-binary, or at least a staunch supporter, very much is a lifestyle for a lot of people.

Also saying it's not elective surgery is bollocks.

I know what you mean, a part of me didn't even want to share the article for that reason tbh. I've taken it off my phone too. Had a bit of a row with DH as he re-subscribed. His money I suppose but after all I've been saying over the past few years he still won't stop paying for it.

"I wished that I didn’t live in a world that has these very binaristic standards of what kinds of bodies are masculine"

This phrase was repeated by two of the young women.......definitely part of a script.

‘Top surgery’ FFS.

Depressing and ignorant in equal measure. So pleases I cancelled my sub to this comic many years ago.
Hadley Freeman, Julie Bindel & Suzanne Moore regularly write for the Times, Telegraph & other media. They haven't let themselves be silenced.

Brainwashed.

I got rid of the app ages ago, and have never subscribed. I loathe the fawning “fandom” tone of the article. There’s no hint of oh, wait a minute…

Yes. WTAF. They’ve elected to have double mastectomies.

I saw that article and there was an unrelated article on the same day about a couple whose baby had an error on the birth certificate. The guardian managed to shoehorn the trans agenda into that even though it was not the issue.
This was my final straw from this paper. It has been my newspaper of choice most of my life and I have watched in dismay as it becomes more and more pro trans and favours fetishes of all kinds.
I won’t be making the guardian a daily check in anymore.