UK’s youngest transgender patient seeks to reverse “sex-change”
October 29, 2012
Ria Cooper- youngest pediatric gender patient in UK [DailyMail]
Ria Cooper now- embracing life as a trendy gay male [DailyMail]
From the DailyMail:
“Ms Cooper who was training to be a hair dresser as Bradley, believed at the age of 16 she was old enough to make the life-changing decision to give her ‘peace of mind’.
In 2010 Ms Cooper- then Bradley- told the News of the World: ‘I hate my body as it is now. I’ve known for years I’m a woman – I think and act like a woman, not a man. I don’t want years of misery.
‘I want it done as soon as possible so I can be the person physically that I am on the inside.
‘People might think I’m too young to make such a huge decision but I know my own mind and this is what I want.’
From the Mirror Online:
Ria has come full circle, now stating:
Sadly, the second youngest gender patient in the UK, Angel Paris Gordan- who had his testicles removed by NHS doctors at the age of 17- was in the news last August after being arrested for buying crack cocaine.
Ria was only two months away from his scheduled surgical castration and sterilization which was ordered by doctors at the London Gender Identity Clinic.
No word yet if Ria will file a lawsuit against those who diagnosed and “treated” him. In 2009 the Monash Gender Clinic in Australia was shuttered while investigations were made and settlements paid to ex-patients who filed claims against practitioners for misdiagnosis and surgical mutilation. From TheSundayAge, which covered those events:
“’I will never be able to have sex again. Ever’
May 31, 2009
Three former patients of Australia’s controversial sex-change clinic say misdiagnosis and wrongful surgery destroyed their lives. Jill Stark reports.
HE WILL never forget the noise. Lying on the hospital trolley being pushed towards the operating theatre, he heard nothing but a primal wail. He looked back to see his younger sister sobbing, traumatised by the enormity of what he was about to do.
Andrew*, born male, was minutes away from an operation that would make him a woman. Psychiatrists said he had a female brain in a male body. Gender reassignment surgery was the only way to ease the mental torment he’d endured since adolescence.
But as the wheels squeaked towards the operating table he was struck by an unshakeable thought: “It’s not right.” He remembers telling the surgeon: “I think I’m doing the wrong thing, it’s not right, I think we’ve got to stop it.”
The surgeon stroked Andrew’s face, telling him it was natural to feel frightened before an operation. He protested again, insisting it felt wrong. Then it went black. When he woke up he was sure the surgery had been cancelled. The romantic tales he’d read of transsexuals who awoke post-surgery feeling “reborn” convinced Andrew the operation had been halted, because he felt no different.
“Then I remember lifting up the sheets and putting my hand down and feeling it all bandaged and packed. I just started bawling my eyes out and screaming … I remember saying to myself, you f–king idiot, Andrew, how could you be so bloody stupid?”
Twenty years after surgery that left him feeling like a “desexed dog”, the grief can still overwhelm him. Now 42, Andrew tells The Sunday Age the operation he had as a confused 21-year-old has shattered him.
After psychiatrists from Monash Medical Centre’s Gender Dysphoria Clinic referred him for reassignment surgery — including breast implants, the removal of his genitals, and the creation of a makeshift vagina — he tried to make the most of his new life as a woman.
He grew his hair long and wore make-up in a bid to fit in. Doctors told him it was normal to go through a period of adjustment. In time he would feel like a woman. But something wasn’t right. “I remember thinking to myself, what would happen if I admitted the truth to myself? I’m a man and I’ve just been mutilated, that’s all.”
Silent tears fall as he describes the anger he felt towards the doctors who led him down this path. But most of all at himself for believing them. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s when, supported by a woman with whom he was having a relationship, he returned to the clinic seeking help to return to life as a man. He says his psychiatrist, Dr Trudy Kennedy, told him she could not see him.
“I rang her up, I was telling her, ‘I’m suicidal, I’m not coping’. She said, ‘Well, if you’re that bad you should go to the emergency department’.”
Dr Kennedy says she has no memory of that phone call. But she concedes what happened to Andrew was wrong. “I think it was a terrible mistake that he was allowed to go ahead with it (surgery) instead of taking the time to think about it.”
She says Andrew’s surgeon is now dead. But Dr Kennedy, who assessed Andrew’s mental fitness, admitted to The Sunday Age: “I don’t know if he was ready for it (surgery) or not. He said he was ready for it. He’d been hounding us since he was 18.”
It’s true that Andrew thought he was a transsexual. However, the broken childhood that preceded his referral to the clinic is a recurring theme among those who feel they were misdiagnosed. Born to teenage parents, his earliest memories are of being hit and spat on by his father.
Latching on to his mother, he became distraught when he had to leave her to go to school. Confusion about his sexuality was compounded when he was raped by two men at the age of 16. As he aged and started to resemble his father, he began to hate his male appearance. A chance discovery of a book about a transsexual was a pivotal moment. The story resonated with him. Perhaps this was what he was.
Another former patient, Angela*, was also an abused child. Sexually molested by a cousin between the ages of four and nine, she grew up hating her femininity.
She recalls punching her breasts and working out obsessively at the gym to “remove anything that reminded me I was female”. She was a 22-year-old university student when she was referred to the clinic by her GP, depressed and struggling with her identity. Dr Kennedy diagnosed her as transsexual at the first assessment, prescribing her male hormones and suggesting female-to-male surgery.
Within months Angela’s body was covered in thick hair, her voice deepened and she had a full beard. She had to shave under the covers every morning to hide the truth from her conservative Catholic parents. Two years later she had surgery to remove both breasts and was scheduled to have a full sex change. Angela could no longer conceal the truth from her family and began living as “David”. Thankfully, she says, she realised there had been a mistake before undergoing full genital surgery.
“I remember at one point looking at myself in the mirror with this beard, my breasts gone and thinking, ‘Oh my God, what the hell am I going to do?’ … I felt ugly. I was the classic bearded woman, a monster trapped between two worlds.”
She claims her pleas for help were also ignored by the clinic and her return to life as a woman was a nightmare that involved two years of painful electrolysis to get rid of facial and body hair and surgery to reconstruct her breasts.
Now married to a “wonderful” man, Angela has three young children and has slowly rebuilt her life. Looking back, she acknowledges she gave consent for the procedure but believes it was not informed consent. She feels she was mentally ill and that her childhood abuse played a part in her gender confusion.
This nature or nurture argument is at the centre of the controversy surrounding the Clayton clinic. Like many psychiatrists, Trudy Kennedy maintains people with gender dysphoria are born with a genetic predisposition. While the condition is classified as a psychiatric illness, they believe it has a biological basis and can be cured only by gender-altering surgery.
They reject suggestions that a history of abuse, conflict with parents or underlying psychological problems can cause gender dysphoria. Indeed, just months ago, Melbourne scientists added fuel to this argument with the discovery of a gene that seemed to be responsible for feelings of being born the wrong sex.
But what worries other psychiatrists is the mounting evidence that surgery may not actually improve the lives of those who feel they were born with the wrong body. A review of more than 100 international studies of post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham found there was no scientific evidence that surgery was effective and, in many cases, patients were left feeling more distressed. Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University — which housed one of the pioneer gender clinics — no longer performs sex-change surgery due to such concerns.
A recent British review found suicide rates of up to 18 per cent among people who had undergone gender reassignment surgery. Doctors from London’s Portman Clinic say they see many patients who feel trapped in “no-man’s land” after surgery, finding themselves with a body which is no longer recognisable as male or female. Psychotherapy, the experts believe, may have saved them from such a fate but few gender clinics offer it.
Reviews of the Monash clinic found psychotherapy was rarely, if ever, offered. While a patient would require a diagnosis as a “true transsexual” from two psychiatrists before being offered surgery, both opinions were from inside the clinic — one that operates under the fundamental ethos that surgery is the only cure.
Andrew describes his experience as like “being on a conveyor belt” — prescribed hormones on the first visit and getting breast implants and a nose job within months. He says he consented to the procedures, and the sex-change surgery, because he believed it was his only option.
Another former patient, a 66-year-old man who was sexually abused by his mother as a child, had his genitals removed in 1996 after a referral from Dr Kennedy, who said the abuse played no part in his feelings of gender confusion. The man says his GP described him as a “walking cloud of despair” following the operation, which he says he will never get over.
However, Vikki Sinnott, a Melbourne-based psychologist specialising in transgender issues, has seen many clients who have benefited from surgery. She believes the regret rate in Australia is “tiny … between 1 and 2 per cent”. But she concedes no studies have been conducted to test this.
Indeed, one of the most glaring problems uncovered by the government reviews of the Monash clinic was lack of patient follow-up. Ms Sinnott says this could be due to a lack of funding. “But it’s also about people’s willingness to be involved. Quite often people will say, ‘Thank you very much, I’m happy with where I’m at, I’ll now go and continue with the rest of my life’,” she says.
None of the misdiagnosed patients spoken to by The Sunday Age deny gender reassignment can be beneficial to people who are correctly diagnosed as transsexual. Some have even offered to be part of any research conducted by the clinic. However, the transgender community has harshly criticised them for telling their stories, accusing some of lying to doctors about their transsexuality in order to get surgery they later regret — an opinion voiced in the past by Dr Kennedy.
Angela’s husband, who has campaigned for years to make the clinic accountable for his wife’s ordeal, says even if that were true, a competent psychiatrist would detect the deception and conclude an underlying psychological problem was driving it.
“When patients report feeling like the opposite gender, that is genuinely how they feel at the time,” he says. “They are no more lying than someone with anorexia is lying when they say that they feel fat.”
For Andrew, it’s the small victories that keep him going. “I will never be able to have sex again. Ever. It’s taken a long time to come to terms with that, but now I can say it without crying,” he says.
“You can’t be angry forever. You’ve got to let it go for your own health, and the people who love you.”
*Names have been changed.
Here is the documentary covering Ria’s life as a “Transgender Child”
October 29, 2012 at 11:35 pm
Horrific stuff.
From one of the links (the crack one):
“Speaking after the case, Jordan said she did not consider herself strictly a transsexual but had been born intersex and classed herself as an hermaphrodite.”
True or standard issue bullshit? The funny thing is that you can’t look it up (well, I spent like two minutes
) because the media can’t seem to tell the difference between the two, either…
October 29, 2012 at 11:35 pm
oops, not the smiley I was expecting there, was going for the embarrassed type thing!
October 30, 2012 at 4:08 am
I feel sorry for the women who regret it. It’s not that easy for them to go back is it? I mean how can you reverse something like voice change, body hair growth or genital growth?
October 30, 2012 at 9:36 pm
I totally agree. I am a woman with PCOS. Although I don’t have higher than normal amounts of androgens, my endocrinologist says I’m hyper sensitive to the amount I do have. It wreaks havoc on a female body, trust me. If facial or body hair starts growing it is permanent, even after removing the extra T from the system. It has to be dealt with by laser removal or electrolysis. Then there are changes in muscle mass which leads to a thickening of the underlying bone structure and of course the hairline changes to a male’s pattern and/or they go bald.
It is much easier for a man to reverse the effects of estrogen than it is for a woman to reverse the effects of testosterone. It makes me cringe every time I hear a teen girl is going on T. I know the hell that is about to break loose on her system. Pursuing delusions comes at a high price.
October 30, 2012 at 7:51 am
Thanks so much for documenting this, Gallus. Endorsing gender (essentialism) because it’s the trendy thing is the cop-out that so many on the left go along with, but it is not the compassionate response. Thanks for helping us engage with the real-life impacts of genderism on vulnerable young people.
October 30, 2012 at 9:51 pm
So true. The compassionate response would be saying, “HELL NO” to the person who wants to transition, followed by some real therapy.
December 31, 2012 at 2:27 pm
I agree with getting these people real therapy before considering hormone therapy. I agree because now look at these people-they ruin their lives and now some of them want to blame the medical profession and that’s not right.
October 30, 2012 at 4:59 pm
I can’t help but wonder how many of these regret cases we will see in the future, particularly as it’s only recently become really “accepted” (in some circles anyway) to start transition before puberty.
It’s a weird Catch-22 for the people currently caught up in the gender-essentialist trans* trend, they know that their best chances of “passing” are if they never go through their biologically normal puberty at all, but do the transition early and only have the fake puberty that comes with cross-sex hormone treatments.
Yet that means forcing this huge decision at a VERY young age, doesn’t it? I just can’t imagine. I never made any decisions like that (hell, I don’t even have a tattoo or any piercings) and yet when I think back to being 16, while I was still ME, in many ways I am now a very, very different person. I can remember thinking that I was so old and wise and surely had my permanent outlook on life already when I was in high school (and thought that the six years of junior high and high school were such a very long time, at that), but it really is true that perspective changes.
Of course, the kids begging for treatment don’t understand that argument, and so as in this article it says they beg and beg for SRS, convinced they must have it, that it’s the only solution… and so I’m reminded of the “transabled,” who continually make the same argument. And yes as this article says, anorexic people also make that same argument too, they might really really believe but that doesn’t make them objectively right.
People going into this as adults at least have only themselves to kick in the pants later, but for the kids who later blame their parents for going along with this decision that they begged and begged for but now later regret, it will be interesting, I guess.
Absolutely though in those various “FTM” places on tumblr there’s hordes of 15 year old kids proudly posting how they’re on T, so their parents must be involved. Just… I don’t even know.
October 30, 2012 at 6:29 pm
You know, this “kids know what they want” is so dangerous in so many levels. You can see where this leads – I’ve seen, on Tumblr of course, someone saying we should decriminalize child prostitution because we were “prohibiting kids from making their choices” and “some girls are mature and they know what they want and they choose to be a sex worker” and shit like this. It’s vile, really – Treat a group of people that are immature and have almost no life experience (But an enormous feeling of wanting to be rebel and be taken seriously even if they want to get ridiculous tattoos and piercings they’ll regret in a year or two) and give, or force unto them the entire rethoric of “choice”.
They CHOOSE it, they KNOW they want it, saying kids and adolescents aren’t mature enough to make life-changing choices is BIGOTRY and AGEISM, geez, mom!
It’s a wreck, those people just want to use children to further their vile agenda. If a child can “choose” and “be mature enough” to decide to have a life-changing surgery and take hormones, what exactly would impede them of “choosing” to prostitute themselves, for example? Treating children and adolescents like mini-adults furthers abuse against them. I’ve seen, on Tumblr, too, an adult guy congratulating a young girl (15 years or so, I think) on being so mature and intelligent. Guess what – she was saying BDSM rocks and is totally a good, safe lifestyle (I doubt she even had an experience with BDSM, now all is theory but no life experience at all, so everything is fine because in theory everything is beautiful and safe but in pratice…) and arguing against radical feminists.
This is GROOMING and destroy’s child’s lifes!!
October 30, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Gross. Yeah, I’m not surprised you saw that on Tumblr, I suppose I should admit I mostly read Tumblr for the entire train-wreck aspect of it… and such “but they choose to be sex workers” is just a little hop step and a jump over…
I don’t think it’s such an accident that so many of the “social justice” trans*-oriented tumblr accounts are also very much into being “sex-positive” and posting porn and talking about BDSM and all of it, either. As a matter of fact one of the ones I was reading (owned by the child of someone very well-known, which is how I found Tumblr in the first place) posted a video of some simulated rape scene porn clip (no way in HELL I’m clicking that, either) with a thread of commentary of people complaining loudly, only to join in on the side of the people cheering such content on, because, well, you shouldn’t “Yuck someone else’s Yum,” I kid you not. It’s all safe don’t you know and it’s groundbreaking don’t you know because it’s so wonderfully outre and they’re exploring don’t you know and that helps some people heal, you know… if you complain about people liking such things, even just to express that you feel bad that they are in a place where they have come to like such things, well, you’re just hating. Bigot. Perhaps worse yet, you’re a prude and NO one wants that… *eyeroll*
And I do think a lot of this is coming from a place of wanting to rebel. On the one hand you have some gender-role obessed parents who want to force kids to be heterosexual, and yet on the other hand with some of the “I’m 14 and trying to figure out how to get on hormones without telling my mom and by the way I’m not just trans*, I’m gay too” crowd there seems to be this desire for breaking boundaries, because wanting to date boys and dress femme when you’re a girl is just too mainstream, or something. Far more interesting to fetishize gay culture and the entire idea of “queeniness” (speaking of that first Tumblr that opened this world to me…)
October 31, 2012 at 2:58 am
Yet if the same girl had a serious interest in, say, astrophysics instead of BDSM, the same guy would probably harangue her online and tell her she was too young to lock herself into such a narrow interest, that she was doing irreparable harm to her development as a person, that she was immature and Avoiding Life, and that what she really needed to be doing at fifteen was trying on different identities and “exploring her sexuality.”
When you’re fifteen, that guy is everywhere; his name is Legion. Actually, his name is Creepy Guidance Counselor, Lonely Middle-Aged Man Who Talks to You at the Café, Subtly Inappropriate Dad of One of Your School Friends, and now, of course, Sick F*** On the Internet. Every girl should receive a pamphlet about him on the first day of high school, if not sooner.
November 2, 2012 at 1:40 am
I agree. If I remember correctly reading Sheila Jeffrey’s SPinsters, it was women in the early 20th century (or perhaps earlier) who campaigned for “age of consent” laws in order to stop children being a free for all for men.
Put it this way, it was not male politicians, or men in general, who decided that creating an “age of consent” by law was a good thing. It was *women*, because they were looking out for children’s interests, specifically female children, who were the main targets of predators.
Anyway, my point is that whether children have their own sexuality or not, or whether teenagers know their own mind or not, is simply irrelevant in the context of the fact that men strive to harm rape and injure minors. And surgeons, it seems, put money/their desire to harm above anything else. In THIS context, the young person’s “right to choose” HAS to take a backstep.
Sure, if we lived in a vacuum, (where men didn’t go out of their way to damage young people’s bodies and minds) then, and only then, can we possibly have any discussion about children’s right to choose, or children’s “right” to sexuality.
November 28, 2012 at 3:48 pm
There is an alternative. Reversible hormone-blocking drugs can delay the onset of puberty and secondary sex characteristics until young person is old enough to make up their mind.
These drugs have been used for years to treat various pediatric hormone disorders, so we know they’re safe, and that they wear off when the kid stops taking them.
November 28, 2012 at 4:53 pm
Lindsay that is incorrect. Puberty blockers cause all sorts of changes the long term effect of which is unknown. For example, changes in bone density. Changes in regulation of blood glucose. Unknown brain changes. Possible correlation with onset of osteoarthritis later in life. Many other changes, the long term effects of which are unknown. That is why hormone-blocking drugs are seldom used, and used with caution, and for short periods of time in cases of children with endocrine disorders.
“Transgender” children have no such disorders. They are physically healthy. And impeding normal healthy maturity chemically in healthy children is not an approved use of these drugs. They are prescribed “off-label” because they are causing dangerous irreversible effects in healthy children solely for cosmetic purposes. And for purposes of stereotypic sex-role compliance.
They can make children horribly ill. See the experiences of the 2012 Trans Health Conference Key Note Speaker Ryan Cassada, who became so violently ill for weeks after each injection she was ultimately forced to stop “treatment”.
In addition, bone growth is stunted and the children are prevented from growing to their natural height. This is a desirable cosmetic effect for males seeking to adopt a female appearance, but renders the Female “FTM”s much smaller in stature than even their nature female height, which is not a good cosmetic outcome for female children whose parents authorize these profound metabolically systemic yet medically unnecessary experimental “treatments”.
Another note. All long term studies done on children referred for treatment due to “GID” clearly show that the vast majority of children report a natural cessation of distress following puberty. Most are gay. Yet the only long term study done on these experimental treatments showed that all 70 of the children placed on blockers at Tanner stage 2 – that is to say, 100% of the children- went on to start cross-sex hormones (which sterilize the children). Not one opted out. Significantly, the subjects were NOT followed past the start of cross-sex hormone treatments, so no data exists on their outcomes. This has caused wide speculation – and some alarm!- among medical practitioners who speculate that the use of puberty blockers actually CAUSES PERSISTENCE of GID symptoms in children who would otherwise undergo cessation of GID symptoms if left alone.
Anecdotally, Dr Norman Spack of Boston Children’s Hospital states that only one of his experimental pediatric subjects opted out of sterilizing lifetime cross-sex hormone administration following blockers.
Experimental treatments causing profound metabolic changes with documented permanent effects to bone density and unknown longterm effects – being given “off-label” to minors too young to consent- for purely cosmetic purposes, treatments that may in fact cause persistence of emotional distress that leads to opting into lifetime drug dependence, medicalization, and sterilization of a formerly healthy child simply cannot be framed as harmless. Nor reversible.
I suggest you investigate the matter instead of parroting the press releases of those championing these treatments. And while you’re at it, talk to some Intersex activists about what they think about medically “correcting” the bodies of healthy minor children. Also, medical ethicists.
You can start here:
http://mishmich.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/leave-the-kids-alone/
http://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/transgender-children-an-intersex-activists-point-of-vie/
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/trans-advocates/Content?oid=8743338
http://theconversation.edu.au/eugenics-and-the-practice-of-transgendering-children-3838
http://gendertrender.wordpress.com/?s=transgender+children
November 29, 2012 at 7:03 am
Two excellent responses by GallusMag to “investigative reporter” Lindsay Beyerstein. Further, one of those golden internet moments showing ‘Investigative Reporter Fails to Investigate’, and somewhat of a ‘Pink Slip Day’ for transgender supporters.
Radical feminists are repeatedly told by transactivists and their supporters to “go educate yourselves” on the issues surrounding transgenderism. The truth of the matter is, we actually are rather well educated on the issues of transgenderism, primarily from a feminist point of view, but the human rights violations do not escape our notice.
Transgenderism is a human rights issue, but not in the way presented by transactivists. It is a violation of human rights because of the mutilation and unnecessary surgeries upon healthy bodies.
The modern medical profession has a very mixed track record, some good achievements, but also a long catalogue of barbaric experimentation, like labotomies and electro-shock treatment. Transgender ‘treatments’ fall into the latter category, whilst also generating significant financial gains to the doctors who provide these ‘treatments’. Those doctors have no conscience about many of the permanent bodily mutilations they are performing, as trans-regretters will attest.
Whilst it is beyond the remit of radical feminism to really care about what happens to males who pursue this current trend – we only concern ourselves with the welfare of females, children and adolescents. Caring about men does seem to be within the remit of liberal feminists (with their general humanitarian viewpoint) who seem to care more about males. Liberal feminists, you are doing it wrong, even by your own standards.
I suggest that trans-supporting liberal feminists “go educate themselves”.
November 29, 2012 at 9:35 am
It’s frustrating because Lindsay has the skills, the time, and the resources to do research – and I suppose I’m glad she is reading here for at least some counterbalance to the falsehoods that are out there- but she chooses instead to publish uncritical non-investigative, trope-laden pieces on “transgender children”.
“Puff pieces” full of “played with dolls” and “born in the wrong body” and “loving supportive parents”. Total tripe. I assume it’s because she has no horse in this race so to speak, is not witness to the trans trend among adolescent females, has not experienced the swarms of hetero autogynephiles bullying lesbians and destroying female-only and female-centric organizing and gatherings. I assume the whole trans thing is a matter of a quick paycheck for her, a salable topic she uses to tide herself over while she investigates and researches matters of importance to her.
Briefly googling her transgender pieces I came upon one on illegal silicone pumping that seemed to hold promise: She actually went out and met one of the pumpers and one of the victims. So, she investigated, up to a point. But the POV she seemed to put forward is that pumping comes about because health insurance will not pay for extensive cosmetic surgery via licensed practitioners! There was no investigation into body dysmorphia, GID, BIID, other disabling “beauty” practices, other surgical black market cottage industries, no analysis of how such practices are largely unprosecuted, no analysis of why the transgender movement prefers to keep silent on the matter and tacitly supports the practice through that silence, no drawing of the lines between the “underground” beauty mutilation and the “overground” beauty mutilation of a medical industry that is increasingly prioritizing elective cosmetic medicine over research in and treatment of pathology, no investigation into non-invasive treatments for body dysmorphia, no history of beauty treatments that disable, maim and kill. etc etc etc. No nothin’. No depth. No analysis. Certainly no feminist perspective.
Again, I assume her interests are elsewhere and she finds transgender to be a quick paycheck. If her articles facilitate untruths and support the sterilization of sex-role nonconforming children and promotes the elective cosmetic medical disabling of such, it seems of little consequence to her.
I did her job for her and gave her enough information in my comments to facilitate her research should she choose to make use of it. I suspect she won’t, because I suspect she doesn’t really give a shit at all about the medicalization of sex-roles and the explosion of cosmetic medical practice across the board. Much less the way the transgender political movement is codifying the enforcement of stereotypic sex-role conformity into law worldwide. Hence my irritation. Sigh.
November 29, 2012 at 12:20 pm
I am told Beyerstein hangs with the other big names of liberal feminism, Marcotte (Pandagon) and Jill (Feministe). So I don’t really expect her or any of them to go much beyond the superficial.
Besides, they cannot question the malestream view on gender/trans, because they would suddenly find themselves without professional platform, which is what happens when one declines the mantle of handmaiden.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/category/trans/
November 29, 2012 at 12:37 pm
And if you were in any doubt that the “Big Think” site was anything other than lefty males wanting to get their legs over, this was the ad on Beyerstein’s profile page that came up for the UK (“Mature Dating UK”). In the US, you might not see it.
The Ad (link to the picture used)
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/simgad/12103787720518546015
Beyerstein “Big Think” profile:
http://bigthink.com/users/lindsaybeyerstein
These liberal feminists live in a world where ‘sex work’ is regarded as “yay empowering” and going shopping with a gay/M2T BFF is “so girly”.
October 30, 2012 at 6:08 pm
I’m not saying females don’t have orgasms (so let me put that out there up front), but I will say females do not have orgasms as easily as males. Women have been saying this for centuries. Correct me if I am wrong but it was one of the main feminist complaints among equality feminists, –how, in hetero relationships men do not take the time to make sure women are sexually satisfied.
I am focusing on orgasms because I think it is one of the most primitive elements not addressed in this whole transgender mess. Men don’t listen to women, never have. If so, males who wanted to be castrated would already consider the consequences of being castrated. No orgasm. Because males typically orgasm so easily I believe most of them take it for granted and just assume all will be the same post-surgery. Or in a paternal arrogance, believe they will be able to accomplish what females have not. Easy as before orgasms.
If you note a pattern, the major sexual deviants among the transgender cult always keep their penises intact. This is because to them, it is all about their sexual perversions. They are not going to risk losing the tool of their sexual perversions.
Not to conflate healthy sex with perversions.
It is the naive transgenders (almost always homophobic as well) who buy into the belief that they need to become the opposite sex (a biological impossibility) and it is not until it is too late that they discover what they have done. They have made themselves into people who will never have sexual satisfaction. It is no wonder so many are alcoholics, drug users, and suicidal. Not that sex is everything, but sexual intimacy means a lot to a whole lot of people. And post surgery limits sexually intimate opportunities.
The medical community is truly failing these people. They need therapy not drugs or surgery.
November 28, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Actually, MTF surgery carries over some of the male orgasmic advantage into the new female body.
The penis is essentially turned inside out to make the vagina, so all the nerves that used to cause orgasms are now lining the vagina. That’s like having the clitoris inside the vagina.
The surgery isn’t perfect, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many MTF women have better orgasmic function than many cis women. And lots of cis women have inconsistent orgasms and still manage to love life and sex.
So, obviously, the functionality of surgically constructed genitals is always going to be an issue. It’s certainly something trans folks and their doctors consider very carefully. But I don’t think the orgasm argument is especially persuasive.
November 28, 2012 at 5:34 pm
“Actually, MTF surgery carries over some of the male orgasmic advantage into the new female body.”
Actually, medical science cannot fashion a female body from a male one. It is a scientific impossibility. Did you misspeak?
A female’s reproductive system is vastly complex. What surgeon’s do to transgender males is create a hole into the abdominal cavity up through the male pelvic gap (which is actually in a different place than a female’s) and attempt to create an inverted sheath of tissue which is supported by scar tissue instead of vaginal ligaments. This bears little to no relation to a female body.
“The penis is essentially turned inside out to make the vagina, so all the nerves that used to cause orgasms are now lining the vagina. That’s like having the clitoris inside the vagina.”
HAHAHA. You are incorrect. That is funny though. Wow. You just make things up, huh?
The tissues used to create the fuck-hole/sheath vary depending on the surgeon and the procedure. The fuck hole/sheath is created using either penile, scrotal or bowel tissue, or a combination of the three. Experiments are being conducted transplanting buccal mucosa. The nerves are severed from this tissue prior to insertion into the surgical cavity. Those nerves are instead bundled roughly where a woman’s clitoris would be (I say roughly because due to the pelvic differences the “neo vag” can never be placed where a female’s reproductive organs lie and are always a few inches further back, between the prostate and the rectum. This often creates an overly sensitive painful lump resulting in decades of pain and suffering that you can read described here. http://www.susans.org/forums/index.php?topic=98958.0
BTW the prostate continues to ejaculate if orgasm is achieved post operatively, although of course the fluid contains no sperm. This can cause other problems depending on drainage.
Fistulas between bladder and fuck-hole or rectum and fuck-hole are common, as is chronic granulation, frequent bladder infection and prolapse. Read one account here:
http://www.bilerico.com/2010/06/sex_reassignment_surgery_when_things_go_wrong.php
Only one long term study of neovag/fuckhole outcomes has ever been done. High incidence of the above are reported, as well as a total average long-term fuck-hole depth of between only 2 to 3 inches, as the body succeeds in rejecting the surgical “neovag” fistula over the years.
Why don’t you actually investigate by listening to post-operative trans people themselves? Read Montreal Gazette columnist Jillian Page’s heartbreaking and cautionary account of his unhealing perpetually bleeding ulcerous “neovag”, still bleeding after three years post operatively.
Read Suzan Cooke of WomenBornTranssexual blog’s account of coming to terms with a lifetime urinary bladder to neovag fistula?
Go to transgender support sites and read what people are saying, and ask questions. You know, investigate. Don’t just regurgitate the press releases of surgeons hawking their wares.
Did you know that less than five percent of “full-time” transgenders ever get genital surgery? And of those males who do, many- like Autumn Sandeen, who bravely chained himself to the white house fence in a stolen military uniform- opt to simply have their balls removed? Why do you think that is? In the UK where SRS is free the percentages remain similarly low. So it isn’t a matter of cost. Unlike yourself, trans people actually listen to the things other trans people say about their post-operative experiences. Try that.
November 28, 2012 at 9:03 pm
If males orgasm easier than females, it’s a wonder nobody ever thinks of the obvious. Quite simply, it’s because patriarchy is the biggest turn-off in the universe for women, and the biggest turn-on in the universe for men. It’s a wonder women orgasm at all.
October 30, 2012 at 7:09 pm
“I am focusing on orgasms because I think it is one of the most primitive elements not addressed in this whole transgender mess. ”
I think this is a very interesting point. Despite stuff on the internet claiming that M2T can have ‘vaginal’ orgasms, given that they’ll NEVER have the whole mass of complicated erectile tissue that is the clitoris, then this is nonsense. Transplanting the tip of the penis, or whatever it is they do, ain’t the same, as we know. In fact, perhaps what they THINK is a ‘vaginal orgasm’ is just the prostate getting stimulated from penetration of their new second arsehole, hence same gay sex, just different hole (which means they get to call it hetero!).
UPDATE: After a quick google, found that yes, this IS the claim! They think that:
“They leave it in and it does become your G spot and the orgasm from it is quite pleasurable”
their prostate is their new girlie G-spot! Because magic oestrogen makes it so…………………..
More appropriation and mis-understanding of female anatomy……………..
F2T, as far as I understand, they keep the clitoris anyway, even with phalloplasty. Hence what they may think is their handy-dandy new penis (chunk of arm), is actually just the same ole clitoral tissue doing it’s job.
What is interesting is the LACK of knowledge of female sexual anatomy, either from those who think they’re going to GET it by means of their new arsehole, or by those who think they’re replacing it with a lovely penis.
Note: Looking for scientific papers, I found one measuring sexual response (whatever that means), butu DOES say that:
“We conclude that male-to-female transsexuals display male-typical category-specific sexual arousal following SRS..”
So, response is STILL male, as we might have guessed.
October 31, 2012 at 11:19 pm
@BadDyke, can you please supply the link to that study, “response is STILL male.”
October 31, 2012 at 11:24 pm
http://www.academia.edu/969757/Measurement_of_sexual_arousal_in_postoperative_male-to-female_transsexuals_using_vaginal_photoplethysmography
November 1, 2012 at 1:31 pm
GM, you’re a STAR!
Quick read of the paper, seems to show (however, SMALL numbers of M2T subjects) that the ‘male body female brain’ hypothesis doesn’t seem to be supported when responses are measured. In terms of other responses (where we can all be very sceptical anyway as to the degree by which males and females differ anyway), either intermediate between males and females, or in some cases MORE ‘feminine’ than actual females. Plus one participant who claimed to have switched sexual orientation (attracted to women before SRS, and claimed to be attracted to men afterwards), the physiological measures didn’t support that, and the authors hypothesize that he is CLAIMING to be attracted towards men because that legitimises his claim to be a woman.
Overall, seems to me like they are all trying to be what women are supposed to be, and in terms of the supposed gender -specific measures to do with spatial rotation, gender-specific vocabulary and all that jazz, PRIMING means that they will try and fit the pattern that is supposed to be the female one, because that is what they are convinced they are. In effect, if they know that women are supposed to be good at this, they will become better, just as men told men are supposed to be bad at this (and women better), will, surprise, surprise, tend to agree with that priming. Whereas if they’re NOT told it is some gender-specific test, but some test of intellectual ability, their scores will magically improve.
I note that the lead author of the above paper (Anne Lawrence) is M2T and admits to suffering from autogynephilia, and hence his name is mud amongst the trans community because he claims that that the female brain hypothesis is wrong.
November 29, 2012 at 10:38 pm
@BadDyke – I’d love to see a study go one step further, and feed the test subjects some FAKE DATA about “women are good at [some random task]” and then have them do some related task, not supposedly related to gender testing at all, but the task just HAPPENS to involve some aspect of the thing they were fed the fake data about, and see what happens.
I can’t help but be reminded of people who so desperately want to prove that they’re affiliated with some culture to which they don’t actually have any ties, that they learn a bit of the language and then drop words into their English (to pretend to be code-switching because they “can’t help it”) but in actually eff it up hilariously because they don’t actually have a natural grasp of the language they’re claiming they “can’t help using.”
November 1, 2012 at 5:54 pm
http://www.williamsons-solicitors.co.uk/clinical_negligence.html
this firm is meant to be one of the better ones and accepts legal aid and/or no win no fee.
November 3, 2012 at 11:43 pm
Holy crap, did you all watch that documentary on Ria? Start at 30:50 and look how Ria reacts with physical violence and threats when his sister tells him to stop drinking so much.
November 6, 2012 at 3:04 am
I get really bitter at times about these people. If only they hated their bodies as much as I do; then they’d know what it’s like to *really* hate their bodies. But what am *I* going to do, have gimp-to-able-bodied reassignment surgery? I wish…
November 12, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Another law firm recommendation: http://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/client-services/clinical-negligence-personal-injury
November 29, 2012 at 7:35 am
I am really struck, again, by how ALL the male “trans women” seem to have these ridiculously over-done “glamour shots” taken of themselves. I’ve been female for over five decades and I’ve never had a “glamour shot” taken — neither have the vast majority of my female friends and family, despite several being very physically fit and 100 times more beautiful than these dudes.
I can’t believe how OBVIOUS it is to me that this is abnormal behavior, yet the male “trans women” and their enablers all seem to think that spending endless hours posing and primping for the camera is normal female behavior. Bizarre.
The vast majority of us are TOO EXHAUSTED from working, caring for our families, exercising, running errands, paying bills, doing our arts or crafts, gardening, sharing quality time with our friends, volunteering for our community, etc. to spend thousands of hours and hundred of dollars on pseudo-celebrity style photographs of ourselves.
This obsessive production of self-porn should be a red flag to any competent psychologist or doctor.
November 29, 2012 at 1:33 pm
“This obsessive production of self-porn should be a red flag to any competent psychologist or doctor.”
Yep, autogynephilia and a perverse attraction to the male-construct of ‘femininity’ — NOTHING whatsoever to do with actual females.
November 29, 2012 at 5:34 pm
“And if you were in any doubt that the “Big Think” site was anything other than lefty males wanting to get their legs over, this was the ad on Beyerstein’s profile page that came up for the UK (“Mature Dating UK”). In the US, you might not see it.”
Hmmm, that site also reveals her as a total big pharma puppet, using the pretext of attacking Michele Bachman as a cover for pushing the pro compulsory vaccination line (which according to the NIH itself, isiatrogenically kills hundreds of thousands a year ) So not exactly radical, and not genuinely left, either.
November 29, 2012 at 10:08 pm
For years women/older women have been emotionally abused (or it has been attempted) by being labeled sexually frustrated when/if she ever expresses anything other than total submission in every environment, work/home/school. According to many men, her problem, regardless of what it has to do with, all boils down to her being sexually frustrated. Often the complaints women express are dismissed by men as the grumblings of a woman who not only “needs to get laid” but a woman who “cannot get off.”
In a sardonic, schadenfreude bout of irony, I say, males who have attempted to become “women” (they will never become female) have successfully achieved not actually becoming a woman, but becoming the trope that males have successfully used against real women. These men (M-t-t) are in fact sexually frustrated beings. They have become the stereotype that men have tried their damnest to create and use against women in order to silence them.
Honestly, I can do nothing but laugh my ass off. Congratulations, M-T-Trannie, you have become a copy of a stereotype!
November 30, 2012 at 5:58 am
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
when first we practice to deceive.”
– Scott
Yep. There is a soupçon of masochism blended into their narcissism. By indulging their unwholesome self-sexual obsessions, heterosexual male “trans women” render themselves sexually repellant to the vast majority of other human beings, male and female.
December 4, 2012 at 12:09 pm
You can see just by the video, when that dude went out with his sister and all, he was rubbing up and down on poles, hitting on guys right and left, indiscriminately, which they said no bio woman would do, and then at the end when his sister was disgusted with his(very male) and rude behavior, he hit her. and they got into a physical fight. So, his very male hormones were out of control, he hit a woman, and he sexualized himself in a way no bio woman would. DUDE no matter how feminine they are dressed.
Your factoids here fascinate me, thanks for the intelligent discussion, information and references..and what I could handle of that video…..there is NOTHING different about them, almost all MTF’s act in that prostitute I’m so fucking hot way, and the total obsession on femininity and ‘looking good’ but not the down and dirty jobs most women are relegated to, whether it’s childrearing or caretaking of others, or helping another woman whose been victimized by a dude, or something positive and nurturing like growing some flowers and beautifying an environment for others, not just for one’s narcissistic self.
Having gotten tattoos myself, which are permanent(unless you want the painful reality of lasering them off, which is a very intensive process that really doesn’t work all that well), I waited till I was 30, got clean and sober(all my tattoos have been recieved in sobriety), and really thought about what designs I wanted and what I wanted them to be…..to think I waited till 30, and yet these kids are being fucked with these hormones at teen, pre-teen years, permanent permanent changes that may or may not be able to be undone, is entirely SCAREY to me. I have changed much over the years, especially my tomboy teen years, where I didn’t fit in at all…and HATED being female and relegated to feminine roles I did NOT fit in with, EVER, and resisted all my life….to have a movement come along and say: You can be empowered and free if only you sign on the dotted line and take hormones and have surgeries…actually one therapist mentioned that choice(but FTM surgeries weren’t really being done then, 1980), and I thought about what it’d be like to have a penis for a week….after that week I made up my mind, YUCK. And shortly after that came out as a Lesbian! And NEITHER have I ever gone back!
Just saw a show on ‘American Sex’ tonight and basically it said you can’t tell anything about someone’s statement of their sexual orientation and though 9% of women have engaged in Lesbian sex, only 2% have said they were Lesbians…..and I thought, yep that’s the misogynist male media for you! Making us seem such a minimal part of the population!
And when I came out, I felt freer than anything….I can’t understand WHY they hate us so much(the FTM’s/Genderqueer) and want to mutilate their bodies so badly, except that sex roles have become even more stratified than ever before. Keep on keeping on the good work Sisters!
-FeistyAmazon
March 6, 2013 at 5:39 am
People changing their bodies how they see fit doesn’t mean that they “hate” you or anyone else. Please don’t make negative assumptions about strangers, especially based on their gender identity. You wouldn’t like it if people did the same to you, especially based on your lesbian identity.
March 8, 2013 at 10:10 pm
How do you get over feeling like you are a man if you are really a women?it is unacceptable in my family and I have no money for a psychiatric evaluation.I’m not crazy anyway.
March 9, 2013 at 12:46 am
https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/i-want-to-know-how-to-accept-myself-as-a-woman/