Binders. The world has gone mad.

The problem is Trisher that they can have surgery and still live a life which makes them deeply unhappy. As I said, sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a magic wand.

So what's your solution to a child who insists they are not the gender they have been designated at birth OnwardsandUpward? Should they live a life which makes them deeply unhappy?

Thanks Trisher, I will. I have not even covered it here- but there is a real need for intensive counselling and information. My friend had surgery and never wore a binder, but it would be awful for someone to have surgery and regret it. Even he regretted that he would not be able to breastfeed the child he so longed to have, but actually never had.

Whatever happened to Body Positivity?
Whatever happened to accepting yourself AS YOU ARE? What happened to just dressing as the gender you want to be rather than chemically or medically editing that body?

From deep conversations with trans friends (who transitioned as adults, not kids) - I think the counselling should be better and the risks clearly outlined.

If kids are going on Puberty Blockers that reduce their bone density, predispose them to certain cancers and affect their future sex lives, fertility etc, how they mature enough to understand what risks they are taking before editing what nature gave them?

Why is it ok to do this without their parents consent? Are they signing something to say that they are liable for their own decision, or can they later sue?

How are binders that stop girls exercising (because not being able to breathe deeply) any better than the Victorian corsets that made women faint through lack of oxygen?

We have a government that welcomes modifying children. We have a society that hates itself. My trans friends are suffering, they are not ok. What has been prescribed is not the answer.

OnwardandUpward

I read Keira Bells story and am so glad she's told it because there are so many people fighting to be trans that I don't think they always know what it really means further down the line.

I have a friend who is living as a Transman (had top surgery and is taking testosterone) and he's phoned me so many times in bits. He told me he still gets periods every month even on Testosterone and because of taking the hormones it puts him at huge risk of female reproductive system cancers. The only way to be safe of this is to have a hysterectomy, but that's a final blow to any fertility. So he soldiers on wanting a baby but not finding the right partner and living in uncertainty, risking cancer.

He also told me all he wants is a baby. But he doesn't know if it's possible. He said that if he were able to get pregnant he would be happy to live as a woman again because he thinks the pregnancy would be easier. He also said that taking testosterone makes him cheat on his partner. He is very unhappy. I have not spoken about this before for fear of being considered anti trans, but there are very real concerns. It's most definitely not without significant health risks. The psychological risks are huge.

I learned from my friend that you can have top surgery, take hormones so you look like a man- but you will still have periods and the biological clock will still tick. You can look the most masculine of men, with a hairy chest and big muscles yet still bleed every month like the woman you were born as.

OnwardandUpward your friend sounds as if he needs some serious and professional counselling. I hope he can find this and it will lighten the load for you. I looked for figures about "female"cancers and testosterone there isn't much research available but I did find this www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5868281/
It doesn't seem to indicate a strong link. I do know there are many people who have very real if totally unfounded cancer fears and these don't depend on their gender.
It is great that you are able to offer him a listening ear but I think he would definitely benefit from some professional counselling, could you perhaps try to steer him in that direction?

Thanks for saying thanks for sharing! I have held this inside for many years due to fears of being seen as a TERF. I have tried to support my friend, but the issues he faces are impossible to resolve. Many years later and he grieves for the family he did not have, in a body that still bleeds every month and he looks as rugged and handsome as ever.

Onwardsandupwards thank you for sharing. It demonstrates how very complex this matter is, far more than most of us, myself anyway, realise. There is no magic wand to transfer from one sex to another. If it’s something you’ve always longed for and felt was right for you it could be very disappointing and interfere with your mental health to find it’s not an absolute change. These poor souls agonise before and even after can still agonise. There are no easy answers.

Your poor friend. It’s heartbreaking.

A couple of things stand out to me from your post. First that you have felt unable to share his story in case you were thought anti-trans, which you very clearly are not. It is impossible to discuss the subject when people feel censored like this, but stories like his do need to be told,

Another thing is that his desire for a baby is something that should have been picked up in pre-op counselling and thrashed out so that he wasn’t left in this situation. The desire to give birth is huge for many women (dare I say a female instinct?) and seems to me to be entirely incompatible with the notion of ‘knowing that you are a man’. It’s very sad.

I’m less convinced about the hormones ‘making’ him cheat on his partner, but that’s another matter. I am aware that this is leaping to conclusions from a position of no real knowledge, so please don’t be offended, but was he given enough counselling do you think? It does sound as though he may have issues above and beyond his transgender feelings that could have been sorted out in a less drastic way.

I read Keira Bells story and am so glad she's told it because there are so many people fighting to be trans that I don't think they always know what it really means further down the line.

I have a friend who is living as a Transman (had top surgery and is taking testosterone) and he's phoned me so many times in bits. He told me he still gets periods every month even on Testosterone and because of taking the hormones it puts him at huge risk of female reproductive system cancers. The only way to be safe of this is to have a hysterectomy, but that's a final blow to any fertility. So he soldiers on wanting a baby but not finding the right partner and living in uncertainty, risking cancer.

He also told me all he wants is a baby. But he doesn't know if it's possible. He said that if he were able to get pregnant he would be happy to live as a woman again because he thinks the pregnancy would be easier. He also said that taking testosterone makes him cheat on his partner. He is very unhappy. I have not spoken about this before for fear of being considered anti trans, but there are very real concerns. It's most definitely not without significant health risks. The psychological risks are huge.

I learned from my friend that you can have top surgery, take hormones so you look like a man- but you will still have periods and the biological clock will still tick. You can look the most masculine of men, with a hairy chest and big muscles yet still bleed every month like the woman you were born as.

VioletSky

It actually didn't occur to me that people might lie just to make a point.

I will consider that in future

It's not that people will necessarily lie, although that's always possible, but that sometimes people's truths differ.

Anyway, where research is concerned it always pays to question who is funding it (eg research saying smoking is not really too bad for you might be suspect if it is funded by the tobacco industry), who carried out the research and whether it was peer reviewed (eg a sixth form project is not likely to be as reliable as one carried out by a university research department, and whether the methodology used is thorough and appropriate (eg a study of teens in Utah might not tell us much about middle aged people in Liverpool).

VioletSky

It saddens me that what I posted would be questioned at all because the differences in the mental health of trans people who are accepted by their parents versus trans people who aren't accepted by their parents seems so completely obvious.

But that is the two ends of the scale - complete acceptance and understanding and complete non-acceptance. There will be a huge range of emotions, feelings, information to be explored in between those two extremes.

It actually didn't occur to me that people might lie just to make a point.

I will consider that in future

It saddens me that what I posted would be questioned at all . . .

What is the point of debate if people can't ask questions? I have always questioned as much as possible - what's the alternative? To just accept what others tell you, regardless of their expertise or possible motive?

Keira Bell's parents "listened to her".

The Keira Bell story is heart wrenching. Referred to the Tavistock at 16 and "after a series of superficial conversations with social workers", was put on puberty blockers; testosterone shots by 17; a double mastectomy at 20. By mid twenties, she knew she'd made a terrible mistake. She saw many other very young children at the gender dysphoria clinics, some as young as 3. It's a distressing read:

www.persuasion.community/p/keira-bell-my-story

It saddens me that what I posted would be questioned at all because the differences in the mental health of trans people who are accepted by their parents versus trans people who aren't accepted by their parents seems so completely obvious.

The source of that information is vital if it is to be taken seriously.
Who produced the statistics?
What qualifications did the people who produced the statistics have?
How many were in the study to produce that evidence? Percentages have no meaning without an overall total.
My experience of suicides is that most will continue to try and that suicidal thoughts may be assuaged by help from a mental health team and use of antidepressants, but may well return once help is withdrawn.
Over what time period was it decided that 65% of the unidentified total didn’t attempt suicide?

Chewbacca the study the article quoted was reviewed at the end of 2017 and published in 2018. The statistics were shared in the article about it I placed in my comment.

You are welcome to pay to read the entire research (the name of which was in the article I posted). Or you are welcome to see if you can find the full study free from another source but as I said, it's bedtime for me and too late for me to be spending my time finding proof I don't need when I already fact checked and shared the correct information in the first place.

www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(18)30085-5/fulltext

I'm dipping in and out doing other things, but at first glance the links are to articles reporting the findings of a research study, but have no detail of the methodology or (more importantly) who sponsored it.

I'm not a psychologist, but I don't know how you would count thoughts, as many of them are subconscious, and/or fleeting. Symptoms of depression are fairly vague, too, and the results are very specific for something like that. Suicide attempts are at least quantifiable, but even then, not all will be reported.

Also, the respondents for the first study were from a community scheme for transpeople, so whereas they may have been representative in a demographic sense, they are a fairly discrete group, who may or may not be representative of society as a whole.

The second one was very small-scale, and doesn't reach any real conclusions.

Reports of research findings are very often inaccurate and sensationalist. They are necessarily simplified for a non-specialist audience, and need a 'good story' to hold the readers' interest. Both are interesting, though.

Thanks Rosie I am hopeless with links

I have read both articles, the first is about preferred names, and the second is very clear about the bias that may exist in their methodology, the conclusion is that further studies need to be undertaken,I would fully support that.

Galaxy

Marcia Bowers, US surgeon, has carried out thousands of gender reassignment operations, and has just started to say hold on something may not be ok here. I am so conflicted about how I feel about this but obviously marcia is very experienced in the field. I am conflicted because I want to shout maybe there was an earlier time to say this?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10058951/Leading-transgender-medics-warn-children-given-gender-reassignment-surgery.html

Not just Marci Bowers, but Erica Anderson too.

No VioletSky they're 5 years old and that's a very long time in the current climate with the trans gender issues having increased so much in the last couple of years. I won't be Googling the research to support your theory because, as Galaxy pointed out in her post at 22.09, there has actually been very little research done lately. I'm more interested in knowing more about the provenance of the stats that you provided:

Parents simply using a trans child/teens preferred pronouns:
Reduces symptoms of severe depression by 71%
It reduces suicidal thoughts by 34%
It reduces suicide attempts by 65%

What is the source for this information? Who did the research and how recent is it?

Ohh maybe it was better when men were men and the sheep were nervous.

Marcia Bowers, US surgeon, has carried out thousands of gender reassignment operations, and has just started to say hold on something may not be ok here. I am so conflicted about how I feel about this but obviously marcia is very experienced in the field. I am conflicted because I want to shout maybe there was an earlier time to say this?