Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

Status
Not open for further replies.
My problem with the MJ article is the gap between these lines:

Shortly after, Texas Rep. Matt Krause promised to introduce a bill in 2021, the next time the state legislature will be in session, to bar minors from using puberty blockers, a gender-affirming medical treatment that allows transgender kids to temporarily postpone puberty so they have more time to explore their gender identity.

...

“It doesn’t happen very often, almost never,” that a patient asks to stop hormone therapy.
Click to expand...

I dislike this benign "pause" selling point. Jazz Jennings was on this track, and by the time she was old enough she had never had an orgasm and her genitalia where too underdeveloped for regular SRS. How is that a recipe for happily exploring one's sex/gender? And if desisters are rare, as is claimed, then it isn't a temporary "pause" at all.

On the other hand, there is research that suggests efficacy for reducing distress and dysphoria. On the other, other hand the papers I read just looked at people who went on to have SRS, with no desisters or direct control.

The article is right that it is definitely being used as a wedge issue, so there is a lot of misinformation.
 
Last edited:
There's a lot of misinformation and there's also an alarming absence of systematic follow-up.

Being trans is not a barrel of laughs. Even the people who have successfully transitioned and say they're eternally glad they did it acknowledge that. Adults who go into it with their eyes open, fully informed consent and heavy-duty psychological support are one thing though. Children who have been told that yes of course God made a mistake and gave you the wrong-sex body but don't worry when you're a bit older the doctors will fix it all and give you the right body are something else.

Jazz Jennings will never know sexual arousal. (When adult males have sex reassignment surgery a "clitoris" can be constructed from some of the erectile tissue of the penis so they can still orgasm. This is not possible for a boy who never passed through puberty.) He has a "neovagina" which is a surgically-created blind-ending sac which has to be kept patent by being penetrated with a dildo a couple of times every day to prevent it healing up. If he has penetrative sex with a man, who is this for? Is he getting anything out of it?

Children don't understand any of this. A little boy who likes pink sparkly things cannot understand the medical and surgical future that's being mapped out for him. In particular he can't understand about never having an orgasm, never being sexually aroused and never being fertile. But the pro-transition lobby continually push to for these children never to go through puberty, after which they could make a much more informed decision, bank sperm, and have penile tissue preserved into a functioning clitoris. Why not? Because it would be more difficult to make them look female if they went through puberty first. It's all about looks, and almost nothing about function. You do have to wonder for whose benefit this is being done.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
The article is right that it is definitely being used as a wedge issue, so there is a lot of misinformation.
Click to expand...

Absolutely.

I feel a little bit guilty about contributing a little bit to that in my own way, but, as I say, I was irritated.

The article leads with "a new low", and the subtitle is "they're going after kids", so they start with well-poisoning before ever getting to the substance. Then, in the substance, there are misleading statements and half truths. Look at how it was received here. The article said treatment is "often less dramatic", and that got translated to "at most" social transition. Of course, that's the translation the authors intended.

Sometimes I wonder how many people actually care about transgender issues, and how many just want to bash liberals or bash conservatives.
 
The thing is, "social transition" is in itself a major psychological intervention. A little boy who likes sparkly pink tutus who is left alone to play with and as he likes, is under no pressure to go one way or the other. Justifications for social transition often include "bullying", by other kids and sometimes adults who see gender nonconforming play and mannerisms as something to be mocked and "corrected". But the solution to a kid being bullied isn't hormones and surgery, it's stopping the bullies. The solution to kids and adults forcing anyone into stereotypical gender norms again isn't hormones and surgery, it's smashing the gender norms so that we can be and do what we want irrespective of which set of reproductive organs we were issued with, and without any pressure to mutilate our bodies.

The brain is plastic, and when a little boy is continually affirmed as being a girl, with a female name and pronouns and female clothes and hair and toys, and grouped with the girls at school and play, his brain does become more feminine even without any other intervention. There is also the effect of parental and teacher reaction. The boy is feted as "stunning and brave" and special. Mother tends to be very proud and very protective of him. The mothers of trans-kids often seem to have a lot of emotion invested in their "little girl". How easy is it really for a child who might be having second thoughts as he approaches puberty to come out and say, I'm not sure about this, maybe I should try being a boy for a bit?

So even before any medical intervention happens, the social transition makes it a lot more likely that the child will persist in the cross-sex identity. Then the puberty blockers start. These things aren't even safe when used to treat precocious puberty and then withdrawn after a couple of years.

Drug used to halt puberty in children may cause lasting health problems

When used on a child who is going into puberty at a normal age and then continued well past the normal age, nobody is doing follow-ups. In particular since virtually 100% of transkids put on puberty blockers then move on to cross-sex hormones so that they never experience puberty, there simply aren't the test subjects to say what happens if the drugs are simply withdrawn. It doesn't happen. Far from being a "pause button" to give children longer to think about it, the drugs seem to be a stop button that stops the brain maturation that in the majority of cases (judging by statistics from earlier times when these drugs weren't used) would lead to the young person becoming reconciled to his or her natural sex. A study in England in relation to this aspect has been severely criticised on methodological and safety grounds, and the overall impression is that puberty blockers are in fact being used to stop puberty until the child is old enough in chronological years to be eligible for cross-sex hormones and surgery.

It's true the child may be very insistent that he wants this. But children can be very stubborn. They also, as I said, have little understanding of the medical and surgical future that awaits them. The permanent medicalisation, the sterility, the lack of sexual arousal, the side-effects, the shortened life-span, the risks of stroke and cancer and heart attacks and bone density problems.

And this is being promoted to parents and their children, very often by transwomen who transitioned as adult males who already have children of their own, and themselved have absolutely no intention of having genital surgery themselves. What on earth is going on here? How is this not child abuse?
 
Meadmaker said:
Absolutely.

I feel a little bit guilty about contributing a little bit to that in my own way, but, as I say, I was irritated.

The article leads with "a new low", and the subtitle is "they're going after kids", so they start with well-poisoning before ever getting to the substance. Then, in the substance, there are misleading statements and half truths. Look at how it was received here. The article said treatment is "often less dramatic", and that got translated to "at most" social transition. Of course, that's the translation the authors intended.

Sometimes I wonder how many people actually care about transgender issues, and how many just want to bash liberals or bash conservatives.
Click to expand...

I'm certainly not going to back MJ as being a paragon of balance, not by any stretch.

I just think between professional medical licensing associations and conservative-dominated state legislatures, I give the former a way higher degree of credibility on issues of medical care.

Concerns raised about adolescent transition should absolutely be part of the discussion. If the entire practice of medicine in that context is illegal, then there's no discussion at all. Even worse, much like with women's reproductive medicine, it could just go underground with terrible results and no development of safer, more effective treatments.

It's the same playbook as with abortion, in fact. Obstruct it, forbid it, complicate it, and starve it if funding. Then feign incredulous lament how bad the whole thing is turning out and conclude it should just be shut down entirely.
 
Rolfe said:
The thing is, "social transition" is in itself a major psychological intervention. A little boy who likes sparkly pink tutus who is left alone to play with and as he likes, is under no pressure to go one way or the other. Justifications for social transition often include "bullying", by other kids and sometimes adults who see gender nonconforming play and mannerisms as something to be mocked and "corrected". But the solution to a kid being bullied isn't hormones and surgery, it's stopping the bullies. The solution to kids and adults forcing anyone into stereotypical gender norms again isn't hormones and surgery, it's smashing the gender norms so that we can be and do what we want irrespective of which set of reproductive organs we were issued with, and without any pressure to mutilate our bodies.

The brain is plastic, and when a little boy is continually affirmed as being a girl, with a female name and pronouns and female clothes and hair and toys, and grouped with the girls at school and play, his brain does become more feminine even without any other intervention. There is also the effect of parental and teacher reaction. The boy is feted as "stunning and brave" and special. Mother tends to be very proud and very protective of him. The mothers of trans-kids often seem to have a lot of emotion invested in their "little girl". How easy is it really for a child who might be having second thoughts as he approaches puberty to come out and say, I'm not sure about this, maybe I should try being a boy for a bit?

So even before any medical intervention happens, the social transition makes it a lot more likely that the child will persist in the cross-sex identity. Then the puberty blockers start. These things aren't even safe when used to treat precocious puberty and then withdrawn after a couple of years.

Drug used to halt puberty in children may cause lasting health problems

When used on a child who is going into puberty at a normal age and then continued well past the normal age, nobody is doing follow-ups. In particular since virtually 100% of transkids put on puberty blockers then move on to cross-sex hormones so that they never experience puberty, there simply aren't the test subjects to say what happens if the drugs are simply withdrawn. It doesn't happen. Far from being a "pause button" to give children longer to think about it, the drugs seem to be a stop button that stops the brain maturation that in the majority of cases (judging by statistics from earlier times when these drugs weren't used) would lead to the young person becoming reconciled to his or her natural sex. A study in England in relation to this aspect has been severely criticised on methodological and safety grounds, and the overall impression is that puberty blockers are in fact being used to stop puberty until the child is old enough in chronological years to be eligible for cross-sex hormones and surgery.

It's true the child may be very insistent that he wants this. But children can be very stubborn. They also, as I said, have little understanding of the medical and surgical future that awaits them. The permanent medicalisation, the sterility, the lack of sexual arousal, the side-effects, the shortened life-span, the risks of stroke and cancer and heart attacks and bone density problems.

And this is being promoted to parents and their children, very often by transwomen who transitioned as adult males who already have children of their own, and themselved have absolutely no intention of having genital surgery themselves. What on earth is going on here? How is this not child abuse?
Click to expand...

Ending the "binary assumption" is a big hurdle even the trans-activists themselves wrestle with, absolutely. I really don't know how many children who discuss these issues with a therapist are then referred on to a specific social transitioning path, though. So I can't say whether your concerns about children being pushed along because of an essentially incorrect diagnosis are valid or not. A lot of the data presented in this discussion has been just within those children who are on a transition path.

It is almost an absolute certainty that even the most advanced thinking in this field is woefully inadequate.

It is almost an absolute certainty that banning any practice of it will not improve the situation.

ETA: Imagine the early days of cancer treatments. "You want to pump radioactive fluids through a person who's already sick? Are you out of your mind? Look at these atrocious fatality rates! Ban it!"

Where would we be now?
 
Last edited:
Rolfe said:
Drug used to halt puberty in children may cause lasting health problems
Click to expand...

From this article:
In interviews and in online forums, women who took the drug as young girls or initiated a daughter’s treatment described harsh side effects that have been well-documented in adults.
Click to expand...

I'm just wondering if this has actually been studied in a scientifically rigorous way. This appears to mere anecdotes. There are also online forums where people think that vaccines caused autism in their child.

Apparently the FDA is looking into the issue, but hasn't issued any firm conclusions:
Such complaints have recently come under scrutiny at the FDA, which regulates drug safety.

“We are currently conducting a specific review of nervous system and psychiatric events in association with the use of GnRH agonists, [a class of drugs] including Lupron, in pediatric patients,” the FDA said in a statement in response to questions from Kaiser Health News and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The FDA is also reviewing deadly seizures stemming from the pediatric use of Lupron and other drugs in its class. While there are other drugs similar to Lupron, it is a market leader and thousands of women have joined Facebook (FB) groups or internet forums in recent years claiming that Lupron ruined their lives or left them crippled.

But the FDA has yet to issue additional warnings about pediatric use, and unapproved uses of the drugs persist.
Click to expand...

The range of reported health problems seems to be all over the place. I guess the best we can really say at this point is that the true long-term risks are still not well understood. These health problems might be due to the drug, but they might be due to something else, as they are probably not unique to people who took Lupron.
 
I think that's a fair point, but there haven't been nearly as many safety studies on this as there have been on vaccines. There are people who were prescribed it for prostate cancer and some gynaecological conditions who report serious adverse sequelae as well. It's also a much more invasive intervention than a vaccine. We're interfering with a complex hormonal regulatory system and doing it at possibly the time of maximum risk.

I remember when the results of the first large-scale trial of HRT in menopausal women came in. The study was actually stopped early because iof clear evidence of an increased risk of breast cancer, even though that increase was numerically modest. The huge enthusiasm for prescribing it to every menopausal woman dried up and vanished overnight. They say now that one in fifty women who take HRT will develop breast cancer because of the HRT.

Replacing the oestrogen and progesterone that a female body has been used to doesn't seem like a particularly major intervention, but there you go. Actually stopping the body going through puberty and then supplementing with the hormones of the opposite sex is a massively bigger deal, but not only can there be no such huge trial due to the number of patients involved, data are not being gathered from the patients who are taking it and rigorous follow-up is not happening. It's an uncontrolled experiment and I would not care to put money on this being a harmless intervention.
 
From the telegraph:

Children's transgender clinic hit by 35 resignations in three years as psychologists warn of gender dysphoria 'over-diagnoses'

A transgender clinic has been hit by 35 resignations in three years, as psychologists warn of “overdiagnoses” of gender dysphoria among children.

The whistleblowers said too many children were being put on puberty-blocking drugs when they should not have been given the diagnosis.

Former staff said they were unable to properly assess patients over fears they will be branded "transphobic".

The concerns were raised by six psychologists who have resigned from London's children's gender-identity service in the past three years.

One psychologist, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "Our fears are that young people are being over-diagnosed and then over-medicalised.

"We are extremely concerned about the consequences for young people... For those of us who previously worked in the service, we fear that we have had front row seats to a medical scandal."

Thirty-five psychologists have resigned from London's Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust since 2016, the investigation by Sky News reveals.

One psychologist said: "The alarm started ringing for me... I didn't feel able to voice my concerns, or when I did I was often shut down by other affirmative clinicians. Looking back there are young people who I now wouldn't necessarily put on medication."

Data shows the number of children treated at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) has risen more than thirty-fold in a decade - from 77 to 2,590
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/1 ... dontremove
 
I watched the documentary. The Swedish politician who was pro-transition of minors was looking very uncomfortable when pressed, as indeed was the gender specialist clinician. No sound basis was identified for the repeated claim of 40% suicide rate among "trans" juveniles who aren't fast-tracked to hormones and surgery. The clinician who had a waiting list that was 18 months long reported no suicides during that time. A glimpsed document seemed to source the claim back to the same original self-reported survey that has been endlessly debunked. No actual suicides could be identified.

The point that adolescent and young adult women often come to feel that the discomfort with their bodies that led them to follow the trans pathway has not been alleviated by this, and that identifying as trans was a coping mechanism for other mental health issues that ultimately didn't work was made once again.

One interesting thing was that they featured a transwoman who seemed to be well adjusted and integrated. She was clearly HSTS, and this seems to be a bit of a pattern. But even she was brought up short by the statistics on disease prevalence in a follow-up study of only ten years (she had transitioned at the age of 21, so had a lot further than ten years to go on cross-sex hormones). She said she had no idea, and might have thought twice if she'd known. She started musing about how it might have been if she'd just continued as an extremely effeminate gay man, with a healthy body, but concluded there was no way to know.

The comments about the adverse health issues of pre and peri-pubescent transition - the cessation of growth, the lack of mineralisation of the bones and so on - were almost asides, but I found them quite chilling. Medical and surgical transition of juveniles is a very new thing and I fear there are going to be some very damaged and unhappy people same way down ths road.
 
Rolfe said:
I watched the documentary.
Click to expand...

I watched it on the train on my way home from work last night.

Toward the end, a woman who had resigned I think mentioned some figures. I believe it was something like 90% of their patients being treated for gender dysphoria had also been diagnosed with at least one other mental health issue, and 80% had two or more. Does that ring a bell?

The one girl who they focused on had previously had anorexia. She had hated her own body. While waiting to start her gender affirmation process she saw another psychologist who convinced her that her gender dysphoria might have something to do with her body dysmorphia. I think girls are particularly susceptible to this (boys too, but to a lesser extent) because we see ideal bodies every day on whatever kind of media we consume. It may be Instagram for younger people, or just TV or magazines or whatever. Images of gorgeous people with perfect bodies everywhere, and it's hard for the average person to measure up to what they see in the media. Maybe she just felt that it would be easier if she became male, and so could ignore all these insane beauty standards.

Looking for information, I found this:
Transgender college students four times as likely to experience mental health problems
The largest and most comprehensive mental health survey of college students in the US reveals that students who identify as transgender, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, and nonbinary face enormous mental health disparities relative to their peers. In a first-of-its-kind study published on Friday, August 16, in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Boston University researchers and collaborators found that gender minority students, whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned them at birth, are between two and four times more likely to experience mental health problems than the rest of their peers.

"There has never been a more important time for colleges and universities to take action to protect and support trans, genderqueer, and nonbinary students on campus," says study lead author Sarah Ketchen Lipson, a Boston University School of Public Health assistant professor of health law, policy & management.

The research team--which also included Julia Raifman, BU School of Public Health assistant professor of health law, policy & management, Sari Reisner of Harvard Medical School and The Fenway Institute, and Sara Abelson of the University of Michigan School of Public Health--looked at rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-injury, and suicidality in a sample of over 1,200 gender minority students from 71 colleges and universities. About 78 percent of the gender minority students included in the study met the criteria for one or more mental health problems, with nearly 60 percent of gender minority students screening positive for clinically significant depression, compared to 28 percent of cisgender students, whose sex assigned at birth aligns with their current gender identity.

Those findings stemmed from analysis of two waves of data collected between fall 2015 and spring 2017 through the Healthy Minds Study, a national, annual survey about campus mental health that Lipson co-leads with University of Michigan colleague Daniel Eisenberg.

The Healthy Minds Study, which more than 300,000 US college students have voluntarily taken since its launch in 2007, uses clinically validated methods of screening for symptoms of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and other mental health concerns. The survey includes space for participants to fill in their assigned gender at birth as well as their current gender identity, which allowed the researchers to filter their analysis and focus on the collective mental health of gender minority students. The Healthy Minds Study is part of the Healthy Minds Network, a larger effort dedicated to improving the mental well-being of young adults, based out of the University of Michigan and Boston University.

"Reports that more than 40 percent of transgender people have attempted suicide in their lifetimes suggested, to me, that there is a large and disproportionate burden of disease among [people in the gender minority] that public health research can contribute to addressing," says Raifman.

The Healthy Minds Study results reinforce the disparities facing gender minority students revealed by other research, which has shown that college dropout rates are higher among transgender students, and that they experience near-constant discrimination and harassment. Bathrooms and housing are some of the most stressful areas on college campuses for transgender students, with research showing that transgender college students are at significantly higher risk for suicide and attempted suicide when denied access to gender-appropriate bathrooms and housing on college campuses.

Along with a significantly higher prevalence of self-reported mental health issues among the gender minority community, the researchers also found that transgender men and genderqueer students are particularly vulnerable groups, a statistic that warrants further research, Lipson says.
Click to expand...

So among transgender men (females) the rates were even higher, apparently.
 
I think the really really serious nature of the interventions that are being carried out on what were previously healthy bodies is being dramatically underplayed. It's particularly strking in comparison to the gatekeeping enployed in just about any other comparable medical procedure. HRT for menopausal women practically has to be begged for because of the known risk of breast cancer. Doctors seldom sterilise a woman in her twenties "in case she changes her mind", and so on. Young women suffering from uncomfortably large breasts usually have to fight hard to get breast reduction surgery. But as soon as it's the trans topic, all that goes out of the window.

But having sex reassignment surgery and taking cross-sex hormones are far more severe interventions than HRT or having your tubes tied or even having large breasts reduced in size. There are major mutilations involved, and the long-term effects of the hormones are quite scary. And yet there seems to be a real reluctance to explain this to prospective patients. Many people seem to assume the whole thing is benign and just a consumer choice. It's being marketed to young people whose mature decision-making capacity is not yet formed and who have significant psychological co-morbidities, as a substitute for proper mental health care.

There have always been people whose mental distress is best relieved in this way, despite the side-effects and adverse sequelae. But medical and surgical intervention should be seen as a failure of psychotherapy and an absolute last resort for patients who can't be helped in any other way. Not celebrated as brave and stunning and authentic, as if a future as a permanent patient with a mutilated body and a shortened lifespan is the preferred outcome.

But I hear that suggesting psychotherapy and a period of reflection to be sure you're really doing the right thing is to be made illegal in Canada.
 
Last edited:
SuburbanTurkey said:
JK Rowling comes out in support of fired anti-trans bigot in the UK.

Rowling finally a mask-off TERF

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/19/jk-rowling-trans-row-court-ruling-twitter-maya-forstater
Click to expand...

"Court documents show that she had previously tweeted that “it is unfair and unsafe for trans women to compete in women’s sport”."

Well, yes, it is unfair. And in any contact sport, yes, it's also unsafe. The judge is an ass, and Rowling is right to support Forstater.
 
Off topic posts moved to a thread in the Sports section. Many members complain about other members going off topic or taking a thread over. That can only happen if you respond, if you think a post is off topic report it.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom