Talking to non GC people

[Sausagenbacon]

I've been chatting to a few people recently about gender issues, and their opinion runs roughly like this ' we should all listen to each other, and not be so unpleasant. But of course, men shouldn't be in women's sports'
Which begs the question that, if GC people hadn't been 'unpleasant' men would have been firmly in women's sports.
So, should I be pleased that public opinion has shifted slightly, or should I be banging my head against the wall?

Sport is significant. There can be no going back with sports. Sporting organisations effectively experimented with going along with prioritising belief over established science and when the outcomes showed that actually that belief didn't change the sex of someone, they have been changing it back.

One of the reasons that this is significant is that there seems to be some people who think that sporting federations will flip back to 'inclusion' some how. Based on what I have no fucking idea. It is magical thinking.

And if male people are not really female for participating in sport, then there is no truth at all that those male people are female in any other way either. There is no logic to the claims.

It will take time for it to filter through. I think that some people who are not engaged will just go along with what ever. But I cannot see governments continuing to go along with this for the long term. They cannot force a population to accept such a direct falsehood and the laws and policies based around this have already been shown to be harmful to female people.

The bit that caught my eye was

"However, she was very clear that she was worried about anyone - not just children - altering their body permanently if there was a chance that they may change their mind."

(1) Surely the existence of one child detransitioner means no child transition. Ditto one young adult (18-25) means no young adult transition and one over 25 with a fully developed brain means no transition at all, by her own criteria?

(2) If it's a mental health issue worthy of the medical profession getting involved then sure it needs to be compared to other similar conditions - do we affirm anorexics or people with BIID? Why is trans different? Surely we don't cut legs off men who want to be amputees because it does harm, irrespective of whether the person may or may not come to regret it? How is trans different?

(3) Surely desiring medical interventions because you cannot accept your sex is the very definition of mental ill health, and how can people consent when mentally unwell? Surely no trans person who desires medical transition is mentally well enough to consent, and the only way you can possibly prove to be mentally well enough to consent is to not want it?

(4) What about society? If we discovered that sacrificing babies cured cancer every time would we do it, or would we say "no, the harms to society of the only 100% certain cancer cure we have are too great - we will have to leave those with cancer untreated"? I believe the harms to society of transition are too great.

When the only thing trans people have is the adherence to opposite-sex, sex-based stereotypes then it is absolutely inevitable that trans people are going to resist being gender non-conforming (ie by abiding by correct-sex stereotypes).

The societal expectation that one should conform to gender expectations is NOT the problem. People erroneously believing that gender non-conformity is bad are the problem.

Why do you not believe that your body dysmorphia (SSBIID? Sex-Specific Body Integrity Identity Disorder?) has no medical cure and either can only be cured by learning to accept yourself for who you are, or, potentially, cannot be cured - it is something that people simply have to live with and do their best to cope with?

Are they not victims whose only hope of not being victims is to be talked (or shaken by blunt misgenderers / straight talkers) out of it?

Is there not an argument that total of the harms to society of affirmation massively dwarf the harms (if any, long term) to trans people of sex realism? That even if being blunt causes misery or worse, that the opposite - to play along and allow the continued destruction of sex based rights affecting everyone - is much much worse.

I have a lot of sympathy... but...

So, a man who chooses to wear a dress and call himself Samantha, risks unfavourable treatment?

What if he blacks up and calls himself [insert stereotypical afro-carribean name here]?

What if he wears a cap with "paedo" written on it?

Why is cross-dressing worthy of protection in particular?

I understand your point, and find a man donning a dress and saying he's a woman as problematic as the ethnicity example you gave.
However, my approach is that Samantha is a man choosing to wear a dress, and that isn't a reason to treat him unfavourably when compared with the way we treat other men.
So he should not lose out on a promotion simply because of his presentation, or forbiddem to use facilities available to men because he has a dress on.
The important part is to ensure he has no less rights than men who don't have a TI.

"Samantha is a man choosing to wear a dress" - precisely... he is making a choice. Choices are not immutable characteristics that need protection.

"and that isn't a reason to treat him unfavourably when compared with the way we treat other men." 100%, If Samantha is discriminated against it is not because "he is wearing a dress" it is because he is dressing unprofessionally, or is making outrageous demands like "I want to use the women's toilets" or is making outrageous claims like "women with female bodies are no more womanly than I am and I have a d**k".

If Samantha has crippling gender dysphoria then he has protection under the PC of disability.

If Samantha is choosing to play dress up and wants to argue against and seek to destroy the sex-based rights of women and LGB people then sorry, I have no problem with people being sacked for playing dress-up at work, or campaigning against or impinging upon the rights of others.

Note to mumsnet - I know the rules and try to follow them - if I have erred I would love to know how I erred to minimize the chances of doing so again.

Why do you not believe that your body dysmorphia (SSBIID? Sex-Specific Body Integrity Identity Disorder?) has no medical cure

Hmm, good question... I guess because in the absence of serious research in the matter, I don't see any reason to believe that nothing at all can be done about it?

and either can only be cured by learning to accept yourself for who you are, or, potentially, cannot be cured - it is something that people simply have to live with and do their best to cope with?

But then we get into the question of what "doing their best to cope with it" involves. If body modifications help to relieve the mental stress, and those modifications are offered by medical professionals, then why shouldn't one go for them if one wishes? Of course, if they weren't offered, then one would have to find other ways to deal, but that's not the case for now.

If hormones and surgery had not been available to me... Hmm, I guess I would have done as much of the rest as I could. I would still try to present as masculine as I could, because that's what feels right to me. The hormones and surgeries just make that easier.

Masculine can be done without surgery though, surely? It seems heavy handed to alter healthy tissues with drugs and scalpels - the complication rates are awful. And, there is always something more to be done - I read about pelvic surgery to try and make trans men’s hips narrower. Shoulder narrowing surgery for trans women. Robin Moira white had his ears operated on to make rhem more feminine. Where will you stop, because there can’t be an end as you cannot change sex. I worry about that, it looks to me like some people are being exploited in the same way as people having hundreds of plastic surgery operations are. If you can pay you can have it, whether it solves your problem or just shifts your attention to a new one.

Masculine can be done without surgery though, surely?

Sure, but the one surgery I chose to have done (the double mastectomy) really helped, because I had a massive chest. And the testosterone gave me a bit of a beard, which also helps in presenting as a man.

It seems heavy handed to alter healthy tissues with drugs and scalpels - the complication rates are awful.

Yeah, the complication rates are the reason I went "lol no!" as soon as I looked into phalloplasty.

And, there is always something more to be done - I read about pelvic surgery to try and make trans men’s hips narrower.

Nooope, not messing around with the skeleton itself. Those surgeries have "crippling pain not so far into the future" written all over them. I hope to be wrong, but there's no way I'm gonna take that risk myself.

I worry about that, it looks to me like some people are being exploited in the same way as people having hundreds of plastic surgery operations are. If you can pay you can have it, whether it solves your problem or just shifts your attention to a new one.

Absolutely. I'm convinced that's a feature, not a bug. Some people with a lot of money invested in pharmaceutical companies just happen to be pushing the trans movement. Not a coincidence.

Always fun to hear “you’re gonna get r**ed anyway”

Can I ask you an impertinent question about your mastectomy, @Seethlaw ? My friend got physio to help her shoulder after she had one breast removed for cancer - did you get any through the gender clinic?

Correct. Nobody can change sex. There are no stable, scientific definitions of "gender" or "gender identity" nor are there any stable diagnostic criteria for the prescription of GnrHAs to prevent chronologically normal puberty, nor for testosterone suppression to improve mood, nor for opposite-sex hormones or radical surgeries such as castration, bilateral mastectomy, vaginectomy, metiodoplasty, phalloplasty or any of the many sugeries bereft of proper surgical standards that pretend to create vaginas & vulvas for men, all to make people - what? Not dysphoric? It doesn't work, the symptoms merely attach to a new body part or function.Congruent? With what? A fantasy of being what one can never be - you don't think it's odd for clinicians to inculcate cognitive dissonance? It sure as hell does nothing to prevent suicide, even Chase Strangio had to admit that in Skrmetti before the Supreme Court.

You need only read the WPATH material disclosed to the Arkansas courts (Brandt et al v Routledge et al) to understand that in relation to "gender", for all their published effluvia, gender clinicians are operating far outside medical & scientific norms & their vaunted consensus is false.

I was what could be called a "true trans child". That's even the reason why I ended up transitioning as an adult: because I could remember "feeling that way" for more than 30 years, so there was no reason to assume it was ever going to change

This is where a fundamental difference in belief comes into play. To someone who believes in gender identity, this is plausible. To someone who doesn't (like me), there will always be an underlying explanation for this kind of distress.... and it will always be possible for it to be addressed in a different way from transition. However, it's never that simple really because belief is incredibly powerful.

As an analogy, I was talking to a (now former) work colleague in Eastern Europe about this type of thing and he shared an utterly heartbreaking story about the experience of a friend of his. The friend was a doctor and had to respect the wishes of his patient's parents (the patient was a young child) who were orthodox Christian and had chosen to refuse his medical treatment on religious grounds. The doctor had to listen to his patient saying he didn't want to die 😓 The child died not long after 😓

To my own ethical standards, any medical treatment (or withholding of treatment) where the consequences are loss of health/life as a result of a belief that someone holds are wrong. However, if the parents had been witholding their own treatment and the consequence was their own death, I would have reluctantly accepted that they chose this of their own free will. I would still find it sad (that their belief led to this) but in a different way.

If someone believes themselves to be "true trans", remains happy throughout their life about their transition (no matter what the health consequences), doesn't require anyone else to "affirm their gender" and was over 25 at the point when they did anything permanent, I would feel a similar reluctant acceptance (but without the sadness if they are still alive and it doesn't shorten their life) IYSWIM.

I accept that my own standards of belief (or lack of, in both cases) don't hold any sway over their fervent belief. None of this feels easy or simple ethically, but that's the point at which I hit my "live and let live" threshold.

They should be made to understand that they will have to wait until they are adults before taking any lasting decision.

Personally, I would rather no medical options were available at any age. However, that's going back to my own (lack of) belief standards, so my reluctant minimum would be 25. I would only accept this if the person had received truly neutral support to unpick why they felt the way they did about themselves. To be truly neutral this would have to be without any active affirmation of any kind (e.g. complete pronoun avoidance, so that the person feels neither upset at sex-based pronouns nor "colluded with" via preferred pronouns) and would be about exploring the physical dysphoria and whether it may have a trauma, sensory or other origin.

My minimum age has moved upwards, the more I've learned about the harms associated with "gender affirming care". Previously it was 18, now it's 25 with a preference for a complete ban.

From my personal experience, if I had to declare one environment to be an echo chamber, it would be the trans community, certainly not this board.

I can well imagine.

All very good points.

From the conversation that she and I had had, I should imagine she would say the same.

She wasn't pro-surgery at all. My recollection of the conversation is that we both said none of it (medical transition) sounded like a good idea in general and that we both had similar thoughts about Botox and general cosmetic surgery procedures.

I didn't go through a gender clinic per se, but the surgeon who operated on me does primarily cancer-related mastectomies, so he would have known about such post-surgery needs and never mentioned any for me, or for another transman who I know personally and who also got his surgery from him. And we indeed didn't develop any difficulties anywhere. I suspect your friend possibly had a more invasive procedure than I did? Maybe she had some muscle tissue removed or something?

This is where a fundamental difference in belief comes into play. To someone who believes in gender identity, this is plausible. To someone who doesn't (like me), there will always be an underlying explanation for this kind of distress.... and it will always be possible for it to be addressed in a different way from transition. However, it's never that simple really because belief is incredibly powerful.

Thing is, I'm pretty sure there is an underlying explanation! I'm thinking either neurological anomaly or unconscious trauma response, but it could be something else still. Problem is: nobody is trained to figure it out. There's - literally - nobody I can turn to to investigate those avenues. So I just went with what's offered, even if it's only treating the symptoms and not the cause.

Personally, I would rather no medical options were available at any age. However, that's going back to my own (lack of) belief standards, so my reluctant minimum would be 25. I would only accept this if the person had received truly neutral support to unpick why they felt the way they did about themselves. To be truly neutral this would have to be without any active affirmation of any kind (e.g. complete pronoun avoidance, so that the person feels neither upset at sex-based pronouns nor "colluded with" via preferred pronouns) and would be about exploring the physical dysphoria and whether it may have a trauma, sensory or other origin.

I actually completely agree with all of that, including the 25 year minimum. I have no doubt that there would be very few of us remaining if this happened. And hopefully, there would be no young detransitioners anymore. The very fact that they exist breaks my heart; they should have been protected!

DH about his trans colleague, this very minute (I asked him) "Of course I don't really think she's a woman, but she likes being called her, no big deal. Plus she's a bit odd and really ugly already, so I don't want to be mean. And she's made trouble once. But she's kind."

🙄

As an analogy, I was talking to a (now former) work colleague in Eastern Europe about this type of thing and he shared an utterly heartbreaking story about the experience of a friend of his. The friend was a doctor and had to respect the wishes of his patient's parents (the patient was a young child) who were orthodox Christian and had chosen to refuse his medical treatment on religious grounds. The doctor had to listen to his patient saying he didn't want to die 😓 The child died not long after 😓

As an aside this would not happen in the UK. Children are not the property of parents to do with as they will. In the UK if a parent refuses to give consent this can be overruled by the courts if treatment is thought to be in the best interests of the child. In an emergency doctors are legally permitted to make their own decision that treatment is necessary & overrule parents.

What a fascinating insight into male thinking. 'She's' kind enough to be a woman, but not as aesthetically pleasing as you'd expect from a woman, which is a shame.

And ‘she’ makes trouble if you don’t comply, don’t forget.

I agree. What a bizarre thought process. He looks like an "ugly" woman so I'll call him 'her' as a consolation prize.

I’ve heard lots of men say that a TiM “made the effort” - being fiuckable is their measure of womanhood.

I wonder if he makes a special effort to be kind to female women he thinks are unattractive, or whether it's just the male ones.