Cont: Transwomen are not women - part XI

[d4m10n]

Healthy people don't need surgery to treat their healthy lived condition.

You do realise that the mainstream medical community knows and understands this whole area hugely better than you could ever hope to do, right?

Do you mean the mainstream medical community in the UK, where providers require a diagnosis of dysphoria prior to undertaking gender affirming treatment? Or were you thinking of some other mainstream medical community?

 

[LondonJohn]

Do you mean the mainstream medical community in the UK, where providers require a diagnosis of dysphoria prior to undertaking gender affirming treatment? Or were you thinking of some other mainstream medical community?

Both.

 

[LondonJohn]

(To clarify: some national medical bodies nowadays consider that a transgender person can desire medical or surgical intervention without actually suffering from clinical gender identity disorder. Their view is that those transgender people would prefer to have surgical or medical intervention in order to affirm their transition, but they are not mentally disordered in holding that preference. I suspect that as the treatment of transgender identity and gender dysphoria grows and evolves, most national medical bodies around the industrialised world will gravitate towards settled views and policies in this area.)

 

[Ziggurat]

Well... all over the world, transgender people (with and without gender dysphoria) are having surgery to affirm their transgender identity, and have been doing so for many years now. So perhaps you'll enlighten me on how you're correct wrt the mainstream medicine knowledge & understanding on this issue, and how I'm "wrong about what their opinion is"? I await your response with interest.

Remember when you linked to that long list of medical organizations you claimed supported transgender identity being "valid", but instead it turned out to be a list of organizations that supported medical treatment of gender dysphoria?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

I think it's perfectly on-topic, since you're obviously making the broad contention that surgery isn't (or shouldn't be) performed on healthy people. But your evasion is well-noted. Thx.

Oh, there are some exceptions. Prophylactic surgeries (like mastectomy for women with high breast cancer risks) can make sense even for people who are currently healthy. But mastectomy for transgender identity is either to relieve distress, or else it's cosmetic in exactly the most superficial sense that you earlier objected to. And "bottom surgery", given the incredibly high risk and complications, is completely unjustified if it's not relieving distress.

 

[Ziggurat]

(To clarify: some national medical bodies nowadays consider that a transgender person can desire medical or surgical intervention without actually suffering from clinical gender identity disorder.

Does this mean you're backing off your prior claim of unanimity among the experts?

 

[Upchurch]

This got left of the cutting room floor from my previous post, but it's been rattling around in my head, so I'd like to point something out.

This:

And it's not like we're a pile of evil transphobes - we are all accepting of my nephew->niece.

Is exactly the same argument as:

• I can't be racist. I have a black friend.
• I'm not a misogynist. I have female family members who I love.

It is entirely possible, if not common, for people to like or love a member of a community and still show bigotry towards the community as a whole. That love for the individual can be in spite of a bigoted belief and isn't necessarily a refutation of it.

 

[d4m10n]

And "bottom surgery", given the incredibly high risk and complications, is completely unjustified if it's not relieving distress.

One famous Dutch study had a surprisingly high mortality rate.

To clarify: some national medical bodies nowadays consider that a transgender person can desire medical or surgical intervention without actually suffering from clinical gender identity disorder.

I'd be interested in reading what they had to say on this point, as to whether it makes sense to perform medical interventions in the absence of any diagnosis.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The payoff is $$$$$$$$$$$

Yep

 

[Emily's Cat]

EC, do you not see the vast hypocrisy here? A good part of your argument in these trans and drag threads have been that men should not speak for an experience that they have never been through and can never be through even when we are relaying the experiences and thoughts that women have conveyed to us.

Now, here, you are arguing to know what is better for the trans people in your life than the people who are actually living their own experiences, simply because you are witnessing it. You aren’t even trying to relay their views or positions, as others and myself were trying to do, but only your own opinion of it.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t shut down discussion because I am trying to relay the perspectives of women, trans, feminists, etc. that I know and have had these discussions with, because I happen to be a straight cis-man, and then pronounce judgment on people whose life experiences you will never know and, from the sounds of it, haven’t bothered to take the time to listen to.

Now, as I have been saying, I do know trans people. I interact with them on a regular basis for around 2 decades. When a former coworker announced that she was transitioning, I was able to connect her with the correct local resources to start the evaluations the right way. For all the fear mongering over doctors rubber stamping people, there are legitimate paths and evaluations to help facilitate the transition.

Realistically, I am speaking as an adult, about what is best for a child in the long run. That is something that adults are expected to do, it's part of the role of being an adult when interacting with minors.

And your coworker was also an adult, and not a child.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Mainstream medicine recognises transgender identity as a valid condition; that is to say, mainstream medicine does not regard transgender identity to be a mental health disorder. Gender dysphoria IS regarded (rightly) as a disorder. But the usual recommended medical pathway for treating gender dysphoria (in adults, especially) is to take steps to affirm the person's transgender identity (which, remember, is not itself a mental health disorder).

Furthermore, there are plenty of people with transgender identity who do not experience gender dysphoria. You seem to misunderstand this - and you also appear to misunderstand the fact that for someone presenting with transgender identity but without gender dysphoria, mainstream medicine will often consider it appropriate and therapeutic to intervene medically or surgically to affirm that person's transgender identity. In other words, the presence of gender dysphoria is not a necessary precursor to giving a transgender person medical or surgical treatments to aid their transition.

Can you provide any other situations in which something is NOT a disorder or a medical issue, but where a medical intervention is considered an appropriate medical treatment for the thing that's not a medical problem of any sort?

 

[Emily's Cat]

My wife shared it with me and I think it (starting around the 57 minute mark) lends support to what I was saying about how it really doesn't matter what we think about trans people and safe spaces. What matters is how the next generation or two thinks and they don't care about labels as much as my generation and older does. And, being mostly older feminists, they also touch on the safe spaces they fought hard for are becoming not as important and how that can be a good thing.

You know what? If younger females grow up without 80% of them having been subjected to multiple sexual assaults, and 1/6 of them not being the victims of completed or attempted rape... then I will concede that those single-sex spaces will no longer be important and necessary.

At present, however, I lack little faith in that outcome.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It's worth pausing here to ask whether the US or the UK is getting this right. I'd go with the UK, because it makes a lot of sense to limit (risky and often irreversible) medical treatment to those with genuine medical diagnoses.



ETA: Also b/c the U.S. has overly permissive regimes in some places and total bans in others.

ETA2: What other nations should we be looking at?

Finland and Sweden.

I concur that the UK is ahead of the US in this. I also concur that the US is way to political and not nearly enough medical on the topic. Which clouds the entire discussion to no end.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You do realise that the mainstream medical community knows and understands this whole area hugely better than you could ever hope to do, right?

Honestly? I really don't think they do. They certainly didn't know and understand homosexuality better than the average person. They certainly didn't know and understand repressed memory therapy better than the average person. They didn't understand lobotomies better than the average person.

The psychiatric community doesn't have a particularly good track record. Why should I trust them on a topic that is currently causing immense medical and bodily harm to a lot of young people? Why should I trust them on a topic where they're arguing that male-bodied males with male-typical criminality should be housed with females in prison because of the "lady feels" of those male prisoners?

And why should I trust them when the psychiatric community in countries with far more stringent and objective oversight than the US have backtracked and ceased their affirmation approach to dysphoria, including severely limiting access of minors to ANY medical intervention regarding gender identity? Countries like Finland, Sweden, and your own UK?

By the way, and with your above statement in mind, what do you think about the circumcision of baby males?

I think it's nearly as barbaric as FGM. It's also, however, entirely off topic.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well... all over the world, transgender people (with and without gender dysphoria) are having surgery to affirm their transgender identity, and have been doing so for many years now. So perhaps you'll enlighten me on how you're correct wrt the mainstream medicine knowledge & understanding on this issue, and how I'm "wrong about what their opinion is"? I await your response with interest.

Sure, sure. In Iran they're having all sorts of surgery to "affirm their gender identity" so that they can be homosexual without getting beheaded. Of course, that privilege is only afforded to males. Females don't have an avenue to "identify out of" their oppression.

 

[Upchurch]

Realistically, I am speaking as an adult, about what is best for a child in the long run. That is something that adults are expected to do, it's part of the role of being an adult when interacting with minors.

And your coworker was also an adult, and not a child.

So, you don’t see the vast hypocrisy you’re slinging around here.

You are speaking as an adult for someone who is not your child. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess your nephew hasn’t come to you to ask your opinion or your advice. I’d further guess you haven’t sat down and listened to your nephew and his perspective.

Your being an adult makes absolutely no difference in the hypocrisy of your argument.

 

[Upchurch]

You know what? If younger females grow up without 80% of them having been subjected to multiple sexual assaults, and 1/6 of them not being the victims of completed or attempted rape... then I will concede that those single-sex spaces will no longer be important and necessary.

At present, however, I lack little faith in that outcome.

As I’ve been saying, our opinion doesn’t matter.

 

[Brainster]

Gee,this headline from the Associated Press isn't too slanted:

Minnesota governor protects rights to gender affirming care

Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order Wednesday protecting the rights of LGBTQ people from Minnesota and other states to receive gender affirming health care, as he slammed the tide of other states rolling back transgender rights.

It will be interesting to see if it "protects" the rights of minors from other states coming to Minnesota for gender-affirming "health care," because the article specifically notes:

Walz singled out neighboring South Dakota, where Gov. Kristi Noem signed a ban on gender affirming care for minors last month.

I'm to the point where I think that particular issue will be resolved when the lawsuits start piling up from young men and women who realize they were rushed into life-changing medical treatments that for a problem that would have resolved itself without drastic intervention for a very large percentage of them. But that headline certainly indicates a hardening in attitudes in the media.

 

[Aber]

We need court cases that require judges to set precedents, then we can know if the wording needs changing. My own view is given the government's response to this petition and the guidance from the Equality bods when a new case goes to court the judges will take note of that and a change of sex even with a GRC will not override the right to single sex segregation based on biological/natal sex in certain circumstances.

The key point is that a court case has just happened which said that a GRC changes sex for all purposes.

This conflicts with what most in Parliament thought it meant at the time, and the position of the EHRC.

The simplest way to untangle this is for Parliament to be clear what it means by a simple amendment to the Act.

 

[d4m10n]

The "all purposes" language is in the original Gender Recognition Act. Exceptions are made for specific applications of the law such as peerages, sport, and sex-specific criminal offences.

 

[theprestige]

Gee,this headline from the Associated Press isn't too slanted:





It will be interesting to see if it "protects" the rights of minors from other states coming to Minnesota for gender-affirming "health care," because the article specifically notes:



I'm to the point where I think that particular issue will be resolved when the lawsuits start piling up from young men and women who realize they were rushed into life-changing medical treatments that for a problem that would have resolved itself without drastic intervention for a very large percentage of them. But that headline certainly indicates a hardening in attitudes in the media.

The more I think about it, the weirder the idea of "gender affirming care" for minors seems to me.

Gender is a social construct, right? Minors, still in the process of being socialized, cannot fully know what gender is. They cannot fully know what gender conformity means or will mean for them. Young children especially can have only the vaguest idea of the social construct of gender.

So what gender is there to affirm, in minors? Not their own, of course, since the construct has not yet been fully socialized in them. It has to be someone else's idea of gender, being affirmed in them.

But it also can't be the social construct. That's an aggregate of all the social interactions and affirmations they come across throughout childhood and into adulthood. If it's some other singular person's idea of gender being affirmed in them, that's a stereotype. It's their mother, or father, or one of their teachers, imposing their own personal view of what gender is and means, on a child. Whatever it is, we know it cannot be the child's construct of gender. Not fully socialized, the child doesn't have one yet.

And of course if it involves surgery or hormones, it's not gender-affirming care at all. It's a transsexual imposition.

If I had a nickel for every time a transgender issue turned out to be transsexual issue in practical terms, I'd be able to buy Twitter.