Amnesty International say - 'no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’'

Transgender medicine for minors is dominated by nostrums: puberty blockers are a mere "pause button" on puberty; "kids know who they are"; "affirmation prevents suicide." Each of these is at best, wishful thinking—and at worst, a lie
I'm not sure why anyone would reach such judgemental conclusions. And the court decision was by no means as definite as has been posted. The ruling actually says:
The court considered that it was highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would be competent to give consent to the administration of puberty blockers. It was also doubtful that a child aged 14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences of the administration of puberty blocking drugs.
6. In respect of young persons aged 16 and over, the legal position is that there is a statutory presumption that they have the ability to consent to medical treatment. Given the long-term consequences of the clinical interventions at issue in this case, and given that the treatment is as yet innovative and experimental, the court recognised that clinicians may well regard these as cases where the authorisation of the court should be sought before starting treatment with puberty blocking drugs.

Some people seem to regard this as a sort of contest between those who are willing to allow transgender identity and those radically opposed to it. It is in effect no such thing it is an attempt to make life easier for a group of people who are more likely to self harm, more likely to have suicidal tendencies and who may use illegal and harmful drugs to alleviate their pain. The Keira Bell case is just as painful and damaging to the individual as denying access to treatment would be for others. It isn't a matter for any sort of celebration or point scoring.

nankate re your comment about transmen on strictly. Just for the record the pro dance was From the musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ,it's a musical with a book by Australian film director! So there were not 3 transmen but men acting the part!

Newsweek, today:
This week, Keira Bell etched her name into history. Her legal victory in the British High Court of Justice on Tuesday marked the first time a neutral tribunal has examined protocols for transgender medicine now provided to minors across the West. The court, rather obviously, was appalled.
Bell, now 23, struggled in adolescence. At 14, the daughter of an alcoholic single mother was lonely, anxious and depressed, according to court documents. Always uncomfortable with her femininity, she began spending a lot of time online where she discovered trans influencers and decided she, too, was transgender.

By 15, she was referred to Britain's Gender Identity Development Service, England's national gender clinic, where a few cursory appointments led to a prescription for puberty blockers —^medications that shut down the part of a pituitary that stimulates normal puberty. From there^, she proceeded through a typical medical regimen for teen girls who identify as transgender: cross-sex hormones (testosterone), and then double mastectomy. By the time she had reached her twenties, she had a deep voice, a male torso, an impressive beard, masculinized facial features and male swagger. But the changes didn't satisfy. She began to "nitpick" her appearance, noticing her hands were smaller than a man's would be and she had a woman's height. In her twenties, she realized that her physical transition had not made her any happier; the peace she had sought, still out of reach.
"There was nothing wrong with my body, I was just lost and without proper support," she recently told Tribuna Feminista. "Transition gave me the facility to hide from myself even more than before. It was a temporary fix, if that."
She quit the testosterone, resumed living as a woman and sued the national clinic, petitioning for judicial review of the "affirmative" medical process that she claims provides no real safeguard for confused adolescents. The court seems to have agreed. Its decision was narrow: Minors under 16 do not have capacity to give "informed consent" to highly experimental and risky hormonal treatments that put their future fertility and sexual function at risk.

The court's careful review of the clinic's "affirmation model," which directs therapists and doctors to agree with the patient's self-diagnosis of "gender dysphoria"—revealed a system recklessly unmoored from the cautious, evidence-based approach that characterizes other areas of medicine. Transgender medicine for minors is dominated by nostrums: puberty blockers are a mere "pause button" on puberty; "kids know who they are"; "affirmation prevents suicide." Each of these is at best, wishful thinking—and at worst, a lie.

I have just seen the introductory dance on Strictly. There were three transmen,or should I say transwomen so as not to offend anyone, taking centre stage for most of the dance. I think this will be the future.

There no doubt will be a few trans women who will do so for nefarious reasons, but just as we don't treat all men as rapists because a few men are we cannot make legislation to discriminate on the grounds of what the worst in society may do
*FarNorth I did say castrated men may be violent, but they wouldn't be able to commit rape so that would be sorted (I really am following the Swift tradition of suggesting the extreme as a solution )
Smilless2012 the point at which they begin to live as a woman is up to them, but as the law demands they do so for 2 years it would seem reasonable to suppose that they would begin this at a very early stage in their transition, possibly just as, or even before, they begin counselling.
MaizieD I think only someone who is trans could answer that question.

Smileless I thought that people had to at least live for 2 years as their prefered gender and be signed of by a psychologist to legally change gender. So yes it is a surprise to me because I hadn't seen anything saying they could do otherwise.

In that case, perhaps simply requiring official ID would solve most issues.

If people weren't "able to do this at whim with a form" Astral we wouldn't be having this discussion would we.

So would everyone feel comfortable if those who want to change gender have to go through a thoroughly checked and careful process? This would also make sure people were not likely to regret that decision.

Until recently I was honestly under the impression that was what did happen and I was a bit surprised to hear people are able to do this at whim with a form.

How would that stop someone infiltrating a safe space though?

Perhaps they really should chip us all to ensure we are all doing as we should.

Saying that, someone clever would only hack the things

FarNorth, I see that the meaning of:

'There is no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’ is nonsensical - if divorced from the rest of the sentence.

From a gender point of view, though, it does make sense. A person chooses their gender, regardless of their physical body.

There have been discussions, on GN in the past, about 'female only' toilets etc. with an accompanying concern about safety. At risk of repeating myself, nobody ever checks your genitals as you enter do they? Therefore, facilities are only 'female' by name!

Reference your post @ 18.02 trisher I am well aware of the fact that men wishing to transgender is nothing new. Your post @ 18.35 Farnorth was how I was going to respond.

There's a vast difference between men who go through the process of psychological assessment and counselling before beginning the process, and men who 'identify' as women and then wish to be accepted into women only spaces regardless of whether or not they have begun this process, or have any intention of doing so.

Hetty58
Amnesty said :
There is no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’ - a person’s genitalia doesn’t determine their gender.

I take no issue with the second part of that - the first part makes no sense at all.
They are denying biological reality.

If they want to claim that female/male now refers to gender identity and not to biological reality - why do that as it only causes confusion?
Feminine/masculine or some other terms could be used for gender identities, there's no reason to claim that biological female/male sex doesn't exist.

trisher said :
I can no more tell if a trans woman is predatory than I can tell if a man is a rapist. I've given you the ultimate solution to that problem if you really want to provide protection for everyone.

Exactly, that's why we have single-sex services and spaces.

Sorry, I've missed the ultimate solution.
What was it?

(If it was 'castrate all males', that doesn't remove a violent male's tendency to violence.)

I still don't understand how anyone who has not experienced being a woman could know that they are a woman without referring to the cultural 'norm'. No-one here is answering that.

Can you answer that MaisieD?

Chewbacca

^The question I would like answered that I cannot find an answer to is... What percentage of^ transgender woman are dangerous to other women.

Whilst searching for the data on that Astral, I stumbled across this:

The vast majority of reported sexual assaults at public swimming pools in the UK take place in unisex changing rooms, new statistics reveal.
The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Sunday Times, suggests that unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities.
Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities. What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms.
Of 134 complaints over 2017-2018, 120 reported incidents took place in gender-neutral changing rooms and just 14 were in single-sex changing areas.

In a further 46 cases, sexual assault allegations were made about attacks in other areas such as in the pool, in a sports hall or corridors.
Unisex facilities account for less than half the changing areas across the UK, but the number is on the rise - doing away with separate male and female changing rooms and toilets is seen as a ^way to cut staff costs and better cater for transgender people.^

Thank you but that didn't answer my question and I haven't advocated for unisex facilities because I do understand the concerns. I am just curious as to whether transgender women are statistically dangerous.

I do not want to blame transgender women for the behaviour of men macarading as women though to infiltrate safe spaces though and I am at a loss as to how we could prevent that happening.

I am still of the belief that a lot of problems do stem from the way children are raised and that does indeed seem to be changing, resulting in changed behaviour.

^ However I don't think on the whole it has ever been the ideal female image and the one primarily valued by men.^

I would rephrase that and say that the 'ideal female image' was one constructed by men and 'elite' men at that, because for many hundreds of years it was only mainly only 'elite' men who were literate and could express their ideas for a wider audience; a wider audience of mostly other 'elite men. (Yes, I do know that a number of elite women were literate, too) I'm trying not to confine this to Western cultural history, but that's the one I know best. Since the 11th C in Britain, until the late 19th C, 'elite' women had no legal status and were 'owned' by their men. The pressure to conform to their men's view of women was strong; as to reject it might lay them open to destitution because no man would want a woman who didn't conform to their construct.

On the other hand, the elite class would be far smaller in number than the 'rest' of the population in which women had to work hard to maintain any sort of life. So, while working women may not have been an 'ideal', they would certainly have constituted far more of the female population and have been the 'norm'.

So I find it curious that our idea of a gender 'norm' for women was created by men, and, that it is now men who wish to become women who are saying, or appear to be saying, that they know what a woman 'is'.

I still don't understand how anyone who has not experienced being a woman could know that they are a woman without referring to the cultural 'norm'. No-one here is answering that.

I think we used to use the words 'sex' and 'gender' as if they meant the same thing. (We may still read them as if they're interchangeable).

In recent years, though, 'sex' refers to a person's physical biology - whereas 'gender' is to do with identity.

In this context the amnesty statement (a person’s genitalia doesn’t determine their gender) makes perfect sense.

(a definition)
“Gender refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men, such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed.”

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232363

Galaxy looks like either gender means as non-binary people would tell you you are free to draw your own conclusions.
"live like a woman" is the term used by the authorities when someone wants to change gender.
FarNorth I can no more tell if a trans woman is predatory than I can tell if a man is a rapist. I've given you the ultimate solution to that problem if you really want to provide protection for everyone.

I think one of the problems here is that there are males, not transgender, who take advantage of the rights of men who genuinely identify as women. They use the laws to go into what are being called ‘safe places’. I think it unlikely that those genuinely feeling they are in the wrong bodies are going to sexually assault a female.
Sadly, it is because of these men that women are not happy about transgender people being allowed to use ladies loos, changing rooms and so on. This then reflects badly onto those men who really do feel they are women and wish to live that way.

I don't normally swear but i think my DH has just it up this crazy world perfectly, according to him it is all $hit, crap and bol locks

MaizieD

I'm afraid, trisher I'm finding your story of women having the strength bred out of them because of male cultural expectations to be a trifle fanciful and historically inaccurate.

While it 'may' have been true of women who could afford servants to perform all the physically taxing work of a household (many of whom would have been women themselves and so doing the physically taxing work) there wasn't much featherbedding for most women. Women cultivated fields alongside men, they carried water, they cleaned and fetched and carried; in addition to being frequently pregnant or having a baby to carry around.

Gauging women's historical 'strength' by their ability to fight in battle feels like a a curiously masculine viewpoint to me. There are more ways to become strong than training as an Amazon.

A wee example from those high Victorian days of 'helpless women. The little town I live in had a postwoman who walked the 10 miles to Durham city every morning to collect the post, walked back, walked her round to deliver it, then did it all over again in the afternoon so as to take local letters to the main post office and come back with the second post of the day to be delivered. By my reckoning that was somewhere in the region of 50+ miles a day, plus carrying the post bag (which may, or may not, have been heavy ). While it's a bit extreme it would be equally common for women to walk distances for marketing.

Or perhaps we could look at the lives of women servants in great and small houses who did the scrubbing, the laundry, the carrying buckets of coals upstairs for fires, or hot water for their mistresses' ablutions. Perhaps you know of the rather creepy 19th C guy, Munby, who married his maid of all work and wrote admiringly of her strength and brawny arms. He was rather keen on photographing fisher girls, another breed of brawny women; he especially like them to carry him across wet sand...

Please don't tell me that women were weak and feeble creatures for a couple of thousand years, because, on the whole, they weren't.

MaiziiD I think your post is really interesting and that there is (or was) a strength in some working class women that was recognised sometimes. However I don't think on the whole it has ever been the ideal female image and the one primarily valued by men. In similar ways their intellectual achievements were not valued either . There are always exceptions. I believe they are usually said to prove the rule.
I used the Amazons as an illustration because most people have heard of them and there is some documentation about them. . But also becuse they present such a contrast to the accepted version of female now prevalent. I'm sure not all the female dominated societies which existed before agricultural and sedentary settlements became the norm were as agressive

How many people have since then changed gender you don't know

I do know that people who got a Gender Recognition Certificate didn't just rock up and self-declare themselves to be the opposite sex.
They had to have counselling and assessment of their condition.

Although self-id of sex is not UK law, many organisations are acting as if it is.
The more this happens, the more likely it is that predatory males will take advantage of it.
trisher how would you know if a transwoman is a genuine person and no threat, or if they are a predatory male?

And live as a woman is I am afraid another example of restrictive gender norms or sexism. You (and I mean the generic you) are not breaking down gender norms you are reinforcing them Its the equivalent of building a tower of bloody gender norms.

Sorry trisher that doesnt make sense, you need to explain to me what looks like either gender means then.

Galaxy

I absolutely agree that not raising children to fit restrictive gender norms would be progressive. Unfortunately that's not what is happening is it. This is enforcing gender norms. If you wear dresses or have long hair as a man then you must be a woman. Because if a woman is not about biology then what is it about? Hair, clothes, activities you enjoy. Trisher has enforced gender norms already on this thread by saying non binary people look like neither male or female. What does that mean, is there a correct way to look male or female? We need to be really clear that the way we dress etc is absolutely nothing at all to do with being male or female.

Galaxy if this is how you truly feel I don't see how you can argue for changing rooms or loos that are women only or "safe spaces" for women. What are you going to do place people on the doors checking genitals?
What I said by the way was that non-binary people could look like either gender that doesn't mean I have a preconception of how male or females look just that people who look at them might choose to judge them one or the other gender. I really wish you would stop misreadng my posts.

Yes they were given terrible advice from the medical community even back then. As if there were such a thing as living as a woman. It is interesting that it seems to be transwomen from that time who are speaking up the most about the dangers of denying biology. Many of them are very clear that they are of the male sex.

Smileless2012

"such people have been living amongst us for years with few problems or the majority of the population" no doubt due to the fact that up until recently it has never been suggested that a fully intact man, identifying as a woman, could access women's spaces, and as Chewbacca has posted, compromise women's safety.

Smileless2012 you have no idea how many "fully intact" men have been living amongst us. One of the requirements of changing gender was that someone should live as a woman for 2 year. Jan Morris one of the first transgender women began transition in 1964- almost 60 years ago. How many people have since then changed gender you don't know but what is certain is that many of them have been using women's loos and changing roms wthout anyone being aware of them. The idea that it's a recent phenomena is just wrong.