When I first noticed the shift from gender dysphoria to gender incongruence seemed to me to be primarily about normalizing an ever-widening range of body modifications.
This is a relief to read. If the outcomes were more positive, I would be concerned. It's not that I don't want transgender people to have good outcomes. But if they did, it would go against the grain of everything I know about humanity.
Years ago there was a show which gave free cosmetic surgery to people with what you might call mild deformities. For example, one woman had a hook nose and buck teeth. When those things were repaired, she felt dramatically better about herself. Now, THAT'S what you could call "affirming" surgery, because it made her more attractive as what she already was, a woman. But when a person is imagining that they were born the wrong sex, and they get surgery to change the appearance of their bodies, that's not anything that could be called an improvement.
So what about people who have true gender dysphoria? Are they made happier by their surgeries? If they are, that could only happen if (1) the surgery was successful, without serious complications, and (2) the person getting the surgeries is convinced that his or her body has actually been changed to the opposite sex. What I think happens in most cases is that they eventually realize that the surgeries are fake. Sooner or later they face the fact that they have fake breasts and fake vaginas and fake penises, not to mention that many of them are sterile. When they start to face those realities, their satisfaction evaporates and the dysphoria returns.
I've mentioned this before in my comments, but it deserves saying again. I once saw an interview with an extraordinarily handsome man who wanted to become a woman. But he was so extremely handsome as a man, I found myself thinking, "Why sacrifice your perfection as a male to become a strange-looking and imperfect female?" On an emotional level, I guess I still don't get it.
I actually see quite a few incredibly beautiful/handsome pre-transition pictures of both men and women (Scott Newgent for example was a stunningly gorgeous woman). Many are also very intelligent. My pet hypothesis which I heard from my sister in a different context is that they are victims of peer jealousy. Their peers (subconsciously) saw them as dangerous competition in the life fight for survival and procreation and tried to destroy them as sexual competitors by bullying, gaslighting, etc.
I see that. Not explaining all, but, yes, can definitely see that happens. Girls are nasty to each other, especially in adolescence. We need a Tina Fey of the 2020s for this generation (;
I looked up the definition of incongruence on APA website. Each of the three definitions fits trans crap delightfully https://dictionary.apa.org/incongruence. From "one’s subjective evaluation of a situation is at odds with reality" to "lack of alignment between the real self and the ideal self" to "a lack of genuineness, honesty, or open expression on the part of the therapist in his or her interactions with a client"... Boy, this is it for real. So, basically they admit that the logic goes something like : "Hey, this person doesn't see the reality so let's move reality closer to what this person sees."
Patients, parents, and activists need to start hearing the message that EPATH and WPATH are making more and more clear: WPATH and EPATH are not patient advocacy groups. Their mission is protecting the professionals, the providers. SOC 8 removed all age minimums and the ethics chapter for the benefit and legal protection of the providers. The eunuch chapter seems to be more of a vanity project of a castration obsessed university academic than a serious attempt at creating anything that resembles good psychiatric or medical care. And now the slippery, constantly changing language - gender incongruence, gender journeys - is all about protecting the providers, not the patients.
That org is also about advocacy for mutilating hormones and surgeries and has never been a credible org in my opinion and given its lack of evidence for its advocacy it's a thin reed for practitioners to lean on.
Extrapolating a bit further, "gender incongruence" becomes "body incongruence", so even more cosmetic procedures (including elective amputation of limbs etc) become acceptable to healthcare funders, to the advantage of the suppliers' share prices.
Waiting for these lunatics to start "treating" those with dissociative identity disorder (DID) by surgically trying to make the body match one of the "identities" of the person with DID. Perhaps if there's more than one "identity," the butchers can do one side of the body as one identity and then the other side of the body to match a different identity.
You don’t have to wait bc that’s already happening. The whistleblower of a gender clinic at U Washington named Jamie Reed mentions in a Gender Wider Lens episode that they did in fact give either puberty blockers or hormones to a patient claiming DID where not all the identities were trans. 🤦♀️
Maybe they can have the patient only take the puberty blockers/hormones only on those days when "identifying as trans." Why does humanity have so many "educated" lunatics?
So given these findings are they going to be treating a non-existent 'illness?' How do insurance companies justify paying for what have always been plastic/cosmetic interventions when there is no longer a classified illness? Am I missing something?
T. Lister, you make a very, very good point. If gender dysphoria is now referred to as gender incongruence, and it is no longer classified as a medical condition, then perhaps fewer insurance companies will cover it, and the number of procedures will drop.
Since so many trans people are just imitators who have jumped on the trans bandwagon, I think the day is coming when a lot of them will just declare themselves the opposite sex and dispense with medical treatments. That would certainly make being trans less damaging for children.
Yes, the children will be better off but women's rights, opportunities, and spaces may not be unless we go back to distinct sex-based categories for men and women and diligently enforce them. The male fetishists are predatory and unrelenting in their attempts to colonize women's sex-class including their private spaces. As the saying goes: 'The good men stay out so the bad ones stand out.'
There's no doubt in my mind that society is tolerating the incursion of she-males into women's spaces because society has never grappled with its own misogyny. Men have decided that women's spaces can be sacrificed for men pretending to be women. That is exacerbated by the tendency of women to be sympathetic to wounded people (part of the mothering instinct, I think), and trans people are as wounded as they come. Consequently, too many women are welcoming the men in. A lot of women have internalized society's misogyny. It just doesn't seem to be in the nature of women to be tenacious fighters for their own rights, and men are taking advantage of that. Thank God that women like J.K. Rowling, Martina Navratilova, and Eliza aren't afraid to speak up.
Quite right Perry. Though I will say that I think so many women are finally getting pissed off enough that you will see anger from them such as you have never seen before.
To be honest, I think that will only happen if more women find their toes being stepped on. Right now, trans people (despite the many imitators) are still a small group, too small to anger huge numbers of women with their antics.
Another problem is that too many judges are misogynists. I remember a few years ago, a judge made a ruling allowing a trans woman who had not had bottom surgery to dress and shower with the women. The judge basically said that if the women didn't like it, they would have to lump it (although he didn't use that language). Men are pigs, aren't they? Even I, a gay man, think that they are pigs.
I so think many and most of us women, those who know about this and are not captured and manipulated into “believing”, ARE pissed off, but we’re also scared as saying “no” especially to these men that are backed up by the system-these men that are many times violent and harassing -poses a major risk to us, and our family and children too when we say no.
And we are primed from very early on to “be kind” and not stir sh*t up ofc too.
But even just the ostracising that occurs when we women say no to this is on a whole different level, losing jobs, losing most or all friends, our kids suffering in schools - all because these people can’t respect our NO’s.
More women WILL say no as they stumble upon sausages and w*nking skirties in their spaces, or when they at last have the ability to read accurate reporting in the news.
Not fluff and reporters presenting it with whitewashed words that tell of this oppressed oppressor.
We need more men to support, to shield, to back up a woman speaking, by our sides, and more men giving credit where credit is due too: all the silenced women who have talked against this for decades.
Men who share women’s works, words, tweets, and don’t back down or take credit for the wheel that women already invented.
And I AM so happy to see more men do this, but also tired of hearing “where are the feminists/women”, as we’ve been protesting for years.
Gender Incongruence replaced Gender Dysphoria and Transsexualism in the ICD (not the DSM) not just in name but also in category. GD and TS were in mental health conditions/disorders category in previous versions, then they were deleted and substituted with GI, but GI got moved to another category in the update, which is conditions of sexual development or something similar. The move was done precisely to mitigate or sidestep stigma related to mental health and diseases through obfuscation and reframing while still not shooting themselves in the foot by risking losing the insurance stuff if it got declassified completely. On youtube and articles you can see for yourself the statements behind the decision.
Thanks for sitting through all of that! I think there should be in person interviews at length with men like my ex-husband, who had the surgeries and turned our lives upside down 25-30 years ago. I bet if you caught them in an honest, candid moment (hard to do, don't I know) they'd actually express regret and talk about the fact that heterosexual men are just not interested in this kind of "woman." I just posted a parallel bit about these practitioners' conflicts of interest. This piece shows the conflict and the first phase of their "detransition," in my opinion. They can't face the enormity of their medical malpractice. The question that hangs in the air over their heads is this. Will they tell the patient that "treatment" with hormones and surgeries will not alleviate their co-existing issues, perhaps work on those first would make more sense.
Thank you for sharing your information. It just seems that the lunatics are running the asylum. Hadley Freeman article at link re doctors' concern about 'gender' treatments. https://t.co/tuk2IKoeKv
Any attempt to improve on God’s image of ourselves as humans is fraught with evil outcomes. Governments incapable of governing have found a convenient way to rebrand eugenics toward population control, give based people something to expend energy against, and expedite the destruction of the economy simultaneously. Just my 5 cents.
Let’s see if the Weffers come out of this Big Crazy and enjoy the Big Ugly as they’ve pissed off billions of jab victims too.
I replied to one of your previous Substacks, supplying links about the rise of childhood bipolar diagnoses, etc. as previous examples of medical fads/scandals.
I don't know if this is of use to you, but if you ever need another example of a medical scandal with many similarities to gender medicine please look into the rise and fall of high-dose chemotherapy with bone-marrow transplant (HDC/BMT) for breast cancer in the 1980's -1990's.
Wikipedia's description of this episode sounds eerily prescient;
""From its birth in the 1980s to its denouncement in the late 1990s, HDC/BMT transformed clinical practice, activist-driven legislation on healthcare insurance coverage, public health policy and drove a two-decade long period of entrepreneurial oncology. It also gave rise to one of the most serious cases of research misconduct of the 20th century..."
The procedure ended when the original data were proved to have been faked - which explained why subsequent studies were unable to replicate the astounding results.
Prior to that there had been tremendous pressure by activists on both state governments and the courts to legislate that insurance companies had to pay for the treatment.
In the United States insurance companies denied payment on the basis that they considered the treatment to still be experimental. A fight ensued over what constituted experimental treatment. Many people - myself included at the time - were suspicious of any position embraced by the insurance industry.
This became a very public, very emotional fight over what was perceived as a life-or-death medical decision. My memory of that time is that there were frequent news stories and talk shows that focused on the heart-rending plight of young women - especially young mothers - facing imminent death from aggressively metastasizing cancers if they were denied BMT.
In reality, it turned out that the treatment itself actually killed 10-20% of the patients, and the promised cure rates didn't exist.
But, before that was proven, an unprecedented jury award led to insurance companies agreeing to pay for what they still considered an experimental treatment.
"The award, $89.1m, was the largest “ever levied against an insurance company for refusing to provide health coverage benefits.”
New York Times 1999: Hope For Sale - A Special Report. Business Thrives on Unproven Care, Leaving Science Behind
"In fact, small earlier studies had reported a high mortality rate from the therapy itself, and European and American oncologists hadn’t been seeing close to that [claimed] 50% cure rate [from the fraudulent study]. But there it was, published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and Bezwoda’s study became very influential. Women worldwide were offered this new therapy, and life or death decisions were made based on this study."
Scared of dying and encouraged by misleading claims of effectiveness by prominent doctors, patients chose this unproven treatment so overwhelmingly that it became difficult for American researchers to find women willing to enroll in clinical trials that could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of BMT versus traditional chemotherapy.
........
New York Times 1996 - Women Resist Trials to Test Marrow Transplants
Reprint of 1995 NYT article: Breast Cancer Researchers Frustrated on Marrow Therapy
"Her concern is that transplants are rapidly becoming the treatment of choice without the scientific proof that they are the best therapy. Under pressure from lawsuits, many insurance companies have agreed to pay for the treatment."
"With insurance companies paying often more than $100,000 for the treatment, women who fervently wanted a bone marrow transplant went to doctors and hospitals that provided them outside of the studies. Many women were reluctant to enroll in studies in which they might be assigned to a group that received conventional chemotherapy for comparison."
"As a result, as many as 30,000 women had bone marrow transplants in the 1990s, while only 1,000 participated in the scientific studies."
BMJ 2002: Presumed benefit: lessons from the American experience with marrow transplantation for breast cancer
"Comments made to the press, however, were less cautious. In the news section of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, one author said: “I think this shows that ABMT can be a very effective form of treatment.” A similar sentiment appeared in the Los Angeles Times: “A combination of bone marrow transplants and very high doses of anti-cancer drugs may be able to double the survival rate of patients with advanced breast cancer, a Boston researcher reported last week.”
In the U.S. "The Science" seemed to be overwhelmingly on the side of this new treatment - at least in the press.
-Dr. Bezwoda, who headed the study that proved to be fraudulent appeared to have an impressive track record. He was the co-author of 188 previous studies and his BMT study was published in a prestigious medical journal. [See below for how shockingly bad this study turned out to be.]
Politicians took a side - also note the support from major academic medical centers here;
"There was also political pressure. In October 1993 54 members of congress wrote to demand that the Office of Personnel Management cover the procedure.23 They cited statistics from a report at Duke University claiming transplantation and high dose chemotherapy were “eight times more effective than conventional dose therapy.” (The statement was loosely based on an article on bone marrow transplantation in high risk primary breast cancer reporting a 72% 5-year survival rate compared to 35% in historical controls.24) In June 1994 the directors of five major academic cancer treatment programmes wrote to the office, presenting even more favourable data. Finally, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton led a hearing in August 1994, with testimonies from federal employees who had been denied coverage. Despite hearing the National Cancer Institute position that “formal scientific evaluation (ought) to proceed the routine use of such a toxic and expensive therapy”25 she called for the Office of Personnel Management to re-evaluate its policy."
This all occurred at a time when breast cancer was becoming a cause celebre in the media. Pink ribbons for breast cancer and the Presidential Proclamation of a National Breast Cancer Awareness Month ( which had begun to be celebrated on a limited basis in the 1980's) both appear to trace back to 1991 per my research. A breast cancer awareness stamp was issued in 1996. I remember the issue being frequently portrayed in the media and in advertising.
............
"Ribbons had arrived. Overnight, every charitable cause had to have one. After just a short time, they were so ubiquitous that The New York Times declared 1992 “The Year of the Ribbon"...
..."Carol Cone set out to teach [corporate] America how to do well by doing good. In the late ’80s, she engineered Reebok’s successful adoption of the human rights issue. And in 1993, she set about helping Avon cosmetics stake out a claim on breast cancer..."
"In 1995 the Journal of Clinical Oncology reported on the first randomised trial of bone marrow transplantation in metastatic breast cancer.26 South African oncologists led by W R Bezwoda reported a complete response rate (no evidence of tumour) of 51% in women randomised to transplantation, compared with 4% in those receiving conventional therapy. The benefit in median survival was even more impressive: 90 weeks versus 45. The article was cited about 300 times before concerns about its validity. Four years later at the 1999 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, Bezwoda reported equally impressive results for transplantation in high risk primary breast cancer. At the same meeting, however, four other randomised trials were presented (Lotz JP; Peters W; Scandanavian Breast Cancer Group).15 None supported the use of the therapy (table). Bezwoda's results suddenly seemed too good to be true. Leading oncologists decided an on site review was essential."
........................................
"The ABC story includes important details about the investigation. Fifteen-thousand sets of medical records from the two Johannesburg hospitals where the study was done were scoured, and only 61 of the 90 patients in the publication had any records at all. Of those 61, only 27 had enough detail to know if the women should have been eligible for the study; and of those 27, most should not have been in the study at all—some had the wrong kind of cancer or the wrong stage of cancer.
Only seven of the 61 women, whose records could be found, had survived; and some of those never even received the study protocol treatment. There was no evidence that any patients were randomized, and some treatment records appeared to be entirely fabricated.
There were huge ethical issues with the study, too. None of the records showed that any of the women had consented to the treatment, and many of the women who were supposedly enrolled were illiterate and couldn’t have understood what they were signing up for. In short, this was very bad science, about as bad as it could possibly be.
The Penalty for a Science Fraud
Dr. Bezwoda was dismissed from his job, and he just faded into obscurity. Cases of fraud like this are rare, but rarer still are times when researchers face criminal charges or jail time."
Bezwoda 1985 Breast Cancer Transplant Study Fraudulent
"Although Dr. Bezwoda reported that no treatment-related deaths occurred, the auditors said they found at least three possible treatment-related deaths in the high-dose group. No patient consent forms were found, and the auditors concluded that the protocol was not written until the 1999 study was audited...
Oncologists began to rapidly abandon the treatment. But academic medical centers failed to lead the way;
Abandonment of High-Dose Chemotherapy/Hematopoietic Cell Transplants for Breast Cancer Following Negative Trial Results
"Hospitals that produce new medical knowledge, that is, teaching hospitals and National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Centers, did not abandon HDC/HCT more rapidly than nonteaching, non-Comprehensive Cancer Center hospitals. These findings are somewhat surprising given that these hospitals produce, and thus ought to be more responsive to, new medical knowledge and research..."
...[Article speculates that this may have been partly due to] "physicians whose careers were closely tied to the continuation of research on HDC/HCT in women with breast cancer."
Presumed benefit: lessons from the American experience with marrow transplantation for breast cancer
Summary points
For over 10 years bone marrow transplantation for breast cancer was seen as an example of the general dilemma about who should pay for costly new life saving therapies
This characterisation obscured the more basic question: Did it work?
Intermediate outcomes and inadequate controls made preliminary evidence misleading
Statements by physicians in the literature and the general press reinforced the presumption of benefit, as did the decision of government bodies to mandate insurance coverage
The findings of major randomised trials did not support the use of the therapy
This experience provides lessons relevant to complex cancer therapies currently in development
Lessons
For over 10 years desperately ill women had sought bone marrow transplantation as their best chance for survival. Many physicians encouraged this judgment. Fearing bad publicity and lawsuits insurers reluctantly agreed to pay the considerable charges. A strong presumption of benefit and equally strong financial interests impeded progress towards finding an answer.
The obvious lesson from these events was articulated in the New York Times by two of the treatment's most visible critics. “As a society we have to accept that rigorous evaluation of a new treatment is essential . . . Skipping this step may seem like a compassionate act, but it can have devastating consequences.”
Accepting that new therapies are experimental is difficult in our culture. Given the increasingly commercial nature of medicine, we can expect aggressive promotion of new therapies.
All would be well served by a press that displayed the same scepticism about pronouncements from medicine as it does with pronouncements from government.
"In the 1990s more than 41,000 patients underwent high-dose chemotherapy plus autologous bone marrow transplant (HDC-ABMT) for breast cancer, despite a paucity of clinical evidence of its efficacy. Most health plans reluctantly agreed to cover the treatment in response to intensive political lobbying and the threat of litigation. The results of five recent major randomized trials showed that HDC-ABMT offers no advantage over standard-dose treatment for breast cancer. Our experience with HDC-ABMT coverage cautions against allowing politics to overwhelm science in the area of evaluating experimental procedures, and against relying on the courts as a means of resolving disagreements about coverage of these interventions."
"An increasing number of untested treatments are being sold to desperate patients with ailments like cancer, heart failure and Parkinson's disease. Today, experimental procedures can be purchased outright from community hospitals, university medical centers and even from publicly traded companies."
"To better understand the workings of this system, The New York Times examined one of the most widely offered procedures -- bone marrow transplants for solid tumor cancers like breast cancer. *****The examination found that this procedure entered the medical marketplace in the 1980's before studies to test its effectiveness had even begun. By the time testing was under way, the business had taken on a life of its own. ***** Patients were unavailable and tests were delayed for years or had to be abandoned."
As Helen Joyce has pointed out every parent who thinks they are doing the right thing with puberty blockers and surgical interventions becomes a fierce advocate of the ideology because it's too horrible to contemplate that mistakes have been made and that they have been complicit in their child's disfigurement.
the 21st century truly is an incubator of pathologies: this sounds like Stockholm Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, and "Gender Dysphoria" all rolled into one.
Helen Lewis' article in the Atlantic this week is a good start toward acknowledging the complexities of the issue. If the right/left overlay can be transcended it would help a great deal.
What is so frustrating is that if you're against what has happened to so many young people re the 'transitioning' lunacy and women's and even LGB's sex-based rights being supplanted you are defacto 'right-wing.' It does not seem to register w/ 'trans' adherents that you can be liberal and not support the absurdity that is 'gender identity' ideology.
A cancer patient is cured when he has no more cancer. No one keeps treating cancer in a cancer-free patient. By contrast, "transition" has no end point where further procedures are no longer necessary.
I never did that kind of stuff as a kid, and I didn't end up being stunted or anything. It is a little disturbing that anyone would vandalize a billboard with a beautiful woman on it by making the woman look to be murdered.
This is a relief to read. If the outcomes were more positive, I would be concerned. It's not that I don't want transgender people to have good outcomes. But if they did, it would go against the grain of everything I know about humanity.
Years ago there was a show which gave free cosmetic surgery to people with what you might call mild deformities. For example, one woman had a hook nose and buck teeth. When those things were repaired, she felt dramatically better about herself. Now, THAT'S what you could call "affirming" surgery, because it made her more attractive as what she already was, a woman. But when a person is imagining that they were born the wrong sex, and they get surgery to change the appearance of their bodies, that's not anything that could be called an improvement.
So what about people who have true gender dysphoria? Are they made happier by their surgeries? If they are, that could only happen if (1) the surgery was successful, without serious complications, and (2) the person getting the surgeries is convinced that his or her body has actually been changed to the opposite sex. What I think happens in most cases is that they eventually realize that the surgeries are fake. Sooner or later they face the fact that they have fake breasts and fake vaginas and fake penises, not to mention that many of them are sterile. When they start to face those realities, their satisfaction evaporates and the dysphoria returns.
I've mentioned this before in my comments, but it deserves saying again. I once saw an interview with an extraordinarily handsome man who wanted to become a woman. But he was so extremely handsome as a man, I found myself thinking, "Why sacrifice your perfection as a male to become a strange-looking and imperfect female?" On an emotional level, I guess I still don't get it.
I actually see quite a few incredibly beautiful/handsome pre-transition pictures of both men and women (Scott Newgent for example was a stunningly gorgeous woman). Many are also very intelligent. My pet hypothesis which I heard from my sister in a different context is that they are victims of peer jealousy. Their peers (subconsciously) saw them as dangerous competition in the life fight for survival and procreation and tried to destroy them as sexual competitors by bullying, gaslighting, etc.
I see that. Not explaining all, but, yes, can definitely see that happens. Girls are nasty to each other, especially in adolescence. We need a Tina Fey of the 2020s for this generation (;
I'll have to think about that.
I looked up the definition of incongruence on APA website. Each of the three definitions fits trans crap delightfully https://dictionary.apa.org/incongruence. From "one’s subjective evaluation of a situation is at odds with reality" to "lack of alignment between the real self and the ideal self" to "a lack of genuineness, honesty, or open expression on the part of the therapist in his or her interactions with a client"... Boy, this is it for real. So, basically they admit that the logic goes something like : "Hey, this person doesn't see the reality so let's move reality closer to what this person sees."
Really good point.
Patients, parents, and activists need to start hearing the message that EPATH and WPATH are making more and more clear: WPATH and EPATH are not patient advocacy groups. Their mission is protecting the professionals, the providers. SOC 8 removed all age minimums and the ethics chapter for the benefit and legal protection of the providers. The eunuch chapter seems to be more of a vanity project of a castration obsessed university academic than a serious attempt at creating anything that resembles good psychiatric or medical care. And now the slippery, constantly changing language - gender incongruence, gender journeys - is all about protecting the providers, not the patients.
That org is also about advocacy for mutilating hormones and surgeries and has never been a credible org in my opinion and given its lack of evidence for its advocacy it's a thin reed for practitioners to lean on.
Extrapolating a bit further, "gender incongruence" becomes "body incongruence", so even more cosmetic procedures (including elective amputation of limbs etc) become acceptable to healthcare funders, to the advantage of the suppliers' share prices.
Waiting for these lunatics to start "treating" those with dissociative identity disorder (DID) by surgically trying to make the body match one of the "identities" of the person with DID. Perhaps if there's more than one "identity," the butchers can do one side of the body as one identity and then the other side of the body to match a different identity.
You don’t have to wait bc that’s already happening. The whistleblower of a gender clinic at U Washington named Jamie Reed mentions in a Gender Wider Lens episode that they did in fact give either puberty blockers or hormones to a patient claiming DID where not all the identities were trans. 🤦♀️
Maybe they can have the patient only take the puberty blockers/hormones only on those days when "identifying as trans." Why does humanity have so many "educated" lunatics?
If transition is the cure for dysphoria, then why do the rest of us have to keep playing along afterwards?
Transitioning doesn't work if everyone doesn't play along. Trans people are basically performers, and performers need the reaction of the audience.
The boundary-violating males want more than validation, they want domination.
So given these findings are they going to be treating a non-existent 'illness?' How do insurance companies justify paying for what have always been plastic/cosmetic interventions when there is no longer a classified illness? Am I missing something?
T. Lister, you make a very, very good point. If gender dysphoria is now referred to as gender incongruence, and it is no longer classified as a medical condition, then perhaps fewer insurance companies will cover it, and the number of procedures will drop.
Since so many trans people are just imitators who have jumped on the trans bandwagon, I think the day is coming when a lot of them will just declare themselves the opposite sex and dispense with medical treatments. That would certainly make being trans less damaging for children.
Yes, the children will be better off but women's rights, opportunities, and spaces may not be unless we go back to distinct sex-based categories for men and women and diligently enforce them. The male fetishists are predatory and unrelenting in their attempts to colonize women's sex-class including their private spaces. As the saying goes: 'The good men stay out so the bad ones stand out.'
There's no doubt in my mind that society is tolerating the incursion of she-males into women's spaces because society has never grappled with its own misogyny. Men have decided that women's spaces can be sacrificed for men pretending to be women. That is exacerbated by the tendency of women to be sympathetic to wounded people (part of the mothering instinct, I think), and trans people are as wounded as they come. Consequently, too many women are welcoming the men in. A lot of women have internalized society's misogyny. It just doesn't seem to be in the nature of women to be tenacious fighters for their own rights, and men are taking advantage of that. Thank God that women like J.K. Rowling, Martina Navratilova, and Eliza aren't afraid to speak up.
Quite right Perry. Though I will say that I think so many women are finally getting pissed off enough that you will see anger from them such as you have never seen before.
To be honest, I think that will only happen if more women find their toes being stepped on. Right now, trans people (despite the many imitators) are still a small group, too small to anger huge numbers of women with their antics.
Another problem is that too many judges are misogynists. I remember a few years ago, a judge made a ruling allowing a trans woman who had not had bottom surgery to dress and shower with the women. The judge basically said that if the women didn't like it, they would have to lump it (although he didn't use that language). Men are pigs, aren't they? Even I, a gay man, think that they are pigs.
I so think many and most of us women, those who know about this and are not captured and manipulated into “believing”, ARE pissed off, but we’re also scared as saying “no” especially to these men that are backed up by the system-these men that are many times violent and harassing -poses a major risk to us, and our family and children too when we say no.
And we are primed from very early on to “be kind” and not stir sh*t up ofc too.
But even just the ostracising that occurs when we women say no to this is on a whole different level, losing jobs, losing most or all friends, our kids suffering in schools - all because these people can’t respect our NO’s.
More women WILL say no as they stumble upon sausages and w*nking skirties in their spaces, or when they at last have the ability to read accurate reporting in the news.
Not fluff and reporters presenting it with whitewashed words that tell of this oppressed oppressor.
We need more men to support, to shield, to back up a woman speaking, by our sides, and more men giving credit where credit is due too: all the silenced women who have talked against this for decades.
Men who share women’s works, words, tweets, and don’t back down or take credit for the wheel that women already invented.
And I AM so happy to see more men do this, but also tired of hearing “where are the feminists/women”, as we’ve been protesting for years.
Gender Incongruence replaced Gender Dysphoria and Transsexualism in the ICD (not the DSM) not just in name but also in category. GD and TS were in mental health conditions/disorders category in previous versions, then they were deleted and substituted with GI, but GI got moved to another category in the update, which is conditions of sexual development or something similar. The move was done precisely to mitigate or sidestep stigma related to mental health and diseases through obfuscation and reframing while still not shooting themselves in the foot by risking losing the insurance stuff if it got declassified completely. On youtube and articles you can see for yourself the statements behind the decision.
Once again the voice of clarity and reason. Thank you Eliza.
Thanks for sitting through all of that! I think there should be in person interviews at length with men like my ex-husband, who had the surgeries and turned our lives upside down 25-30 years ago. I bet if you caught them in an honest, candid moment (hard to do, don't I know) they'd actually express regret and talk about the fact that heterosexual men are just not interested in this kind of "woman." I just posted a parallel bit about these practitioners' conflicts of interest. This piece shows the conflict and the first phase of their "detransition," in my opinion. They can't face the enormity of their medical malpractice. The question that hangs in the air over their heads is this. Will they tell the patient that "treatment" with hormones and surgeries will not alleviate their co-existing issues, perhaps work on those first would make more sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwmfOFsMKBs&t=1s
Thank you for sharing your information. It just seems that the lunatics are running the asylum. Hadley Freeman article at link re doctors' concern about 'gender' treatments. https://t.co/tuk2IKoeKv
Any attempt to improve on God’s image of ourselves as humans is fraught with evil outcomes. Governments incapable of governing have found a convenient way to rebrand eugenics toward population control, give based people something to expend energy against, and expedite the destruction of the economy simultaneously. Just my 5 cents.
Let’s see if the Weffers come out of this Big Crazy and enjoy the Big Ugly as they’ve pissed off billions of jab victims too.
Hey Eliza,
I replied to one of your previous Substacks, supplying links about the rise of childhood bipolar diagnoses, etc. as previous examples of medical fads/scandals.
I don't know if this is of use to you, but if you ever need another example of a medical scandal with many similarities to gender medicine please look into the rise and fall of high-dose chemotherapy with bone-marrow transplant (HDC/BMT) for breast cancer in the 1980's -1990's.
Wikipedia's description of this episode sounds eerily prescient;
""From its birth in the 1980s to its denouncement in the late 1990s, HDC/BMT transformed clinical practice, activist-driven legislation on healthcare insurance coverage, public health policy and drove a two-decade long period of entrepreneurial oncology. It also gave rise to one of the most serious cases of research misconduct of the 20th century..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dose_chemotherapy_and_bone_marrow_transplant
.................................................................................
The procedure ended when the original data were proved to have been faked - which explained why subsequent studies were unable to replicate the astounding results.
Prior to that there had been tremendous pressure by activists on both state governments and the courts to legislate that insurance companies had to pay for the treatment.
In the United States insurance companies denied payment on the basis that they considered the treatment to still be experimental. A fight ensued over what constituted experimental treatment. Many people - myself included at the time - were suspicious of any position embraced by the insurance industry.
This became a very public, very emotional fight over what was perceived as a life-or-death medical decision. My memory of that time is that there were frequent news stories and talk shows that focused on the heart-rending plight of young women - especially young mothers - facing imminent death from aggressively metastasizing cancers if they were denied BMT.
In reality, it turned out that the treatment itself actually killed 10-20% of the patients, and the promised cure rates didn't exist.
But, before that was proven, an unprecedented jury award led to insurance companies agreeing to pay for what they still considered an experimental treatment.
"The award, $89.1m, was the largest “ever levied against an insurance company for refusing to provide health coverage benefits.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123033/
........
New York Times 1994 - Patients' Lawyers Lead Insurers To Pay for Unproven Treatments
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/28/us/patients-lawyers-lead-insurers-to-pay-for-unproven-treatments.html
........
New York Times 1999: Hope For Sale - A Special Report. Business Thrives on Unproven Care, Leaving Science Behind
"In fact, small earlier studies had reported a high mortality rate from the therapy itself, and European and American oncologists hadn’t been seeing close to that [claimed] 50% cure rate [from the fraudulent study]. But there it was, published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and Bezwoda’s study became very influential. Women worldwide were offered this new therapy, and life or death decisions were made based on this study."
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/03/us/hope-for-sale-special-report-business-thrives-unproven-care-leaving-science.html
........
Scared of dying and encouraged by misleading claims of effectiveness by prominent doctors, patients chose this unproven treatment so overwhelmingly that it became difficult for American researchers to find women willing to enroll in clinical trials that could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of BMT versus traditional chemotherapy.
........
New York Times 1996 - Women Resist Trials to Test Marrow Transplants
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/15/us/women-resist-trials-to-test-marrow-transplants.html
........
Reprint of 1995 NYT article: Breast Cancer Researchers Frustrated on Marrow Therapy
"Her concern is that transplants are rapidly becoming the treatment of choice without the scientific proof that they are the best therapy. Under pressure from lawsuits, many insurance companies have agreed to pay for the treatment."
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Breast-Cancer-Researchers-Frustrated-on-Marrow-3044922.php
.........
"With insurance companies paying often more than $100,000 for the treatment, women who fervently wanted a bone marrow transplant went to doctors and hospitals that provided them outside of the studies. Many women were reluctant to enroll in studies in which they might be assigned to a group that received conventional chemotherapy for comparison."
"As a result, as many as 30,000 women had bone marrow transplants in the 1990s, while only 1,000 participated in the scientific studies."
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2000/02/16/insurer-halts-pay-for-cancer-therapy/
...........
BMJ 2002: Presumed benefit: lessons from the American experience with marrow transplantation for breast cancer
"Comments made to the press, however, were less cautious. In the news section of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, one author said: “I think this shows that ABMT can be a very effective form of treatment.” A similar sentiment appeared in the Los Angeles Times: “A combination of bone marrow transplants and very high doses of anti-cancer drugs may be able to double the survival rate of patients with advanced breast cancer, a Boston researcher reported last week.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123033/
.........
In the U.S. "The Science" seemed to be overwhelmingly on the side of this new treatment - at least in the press.
-Dr. Bezwoda, who headed the study that proved to be fraudulent appeared to have an impressive track record. He was the co-author of 188 previous studies and his BMT study was published in a prestigious medical journal. [See below for how shockingly bad this study turned out to be.]
https://www.cancernetwork.com/view/bezwoda-1985-breast-cancer-transplant-study-fraudulent
-"79% of oncologists believed that HDC/BMT was an appropriate treatment for women with locally advanced breast cancer."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dose_chemotherapy_and_bone_marrow_transplant
Politicians took a side - also note the support from major academic medical centers here;
"There was also political pressure. In October 1993 54 members of congress wrote to demand that the Office of Personnel Management cover the procedure.23 They cited statistics from a report at Duke University claiming transplantation and high dose chemotherapy were “eight times more effective than conventional dose therapy.” (The statement was loosely based on an article on bone marrow transplantation in high risk primary breast cancer reporting a 72% 5-year survival rate compared to 35% in historical controls.24) In June 1994 the directors of five major academic cancer treatment programmes wrote to the office, presenting even more favourable data. Finally, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton led a hearing in August 1994, with testimonies from federal employees who had been denied coverage. Despite hearing the National Cancer Institute position that “formal scientific evaluation (ought) to proceed the routine use of such a toxic and expensive therapy”25 she called for the Office of Personnel Management to re-evaluate its policy."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123033/
This all occurred at a time when breast cancer was becoming a cause celebre in the media. Pink ribbons for breast cancer and the Presidential Proclamation of a National Breast Cancer Awareness Month ( which had begun to be celebrated on a limited basis in the 1980's) both appear to trace back to 1991 per my research. A breast cancer awareness stamp was issued in 1996. I remember the issue being frequently portrayed in the media and in advertising.
............
"Ribbons had arrived. Overnight, every charitable cause had to have one. After just a short time, they were so ubiquitous that The New York Times declared 1992 “The Year of the Ribbon"...
..."Carol Cone set out to teach [corporate] America how to do well by doing good. In the late ’80s, she engineered Reebok’s successful adoption of the human rights issue. And in 1993, she set about helping Avon cosmetics stake out a claim on breast cancer..."
https://www.bcaction.org/about-think-before-you-pink/resources/history-of-the-pink-ribbon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_ribbon
Estee Lauder and Self Magazine jumped on this marketing campaign
https://www.mygoodtimes.in/lifestyle/fitness-and-health/breast-cancer-pink/
..............................
"The Science" starts to fail;
"In 1995 the Journal of Clinical Oncology reported on the first randomised trial of bone marrow transplantation in metastatic breast cancer.26 South African oncologists led by W R Bezwoda reported a complete response rate (no evidence of tumour) of 51% in women randomised to transplantation, compared with 4% in those receiving conventional therapy. The benefit in median survival was even more impressive: 90 weeks versus 45. The article was cited about 300 times before concerns about its validity. Four years later at the 1999 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, Bezwoda reported equally impressive results for transplantation in high risk primary breast cancer. At the same meeting, however, four other randomised trials were presented (Lotz JP; Peters W; Scandanavian Breast Cancer Group).15 None supported the use of the therapy (table). Bezwoda's results suddenly seemed too good to be true. Leading oncologists decided an on site review was essential."
........................................
"The ABC story includes important details about the investigation. Fifteen-thousand sets of medical records from the two Johannesburg hospitals where the study was done were scoured, and only 61 of the 90 patients in the publication had any records at all. Of those 61, only 27 had enough detail to know if the women should have been eligible for the study; and of those 27, most should not have been in the study at all—some had the wrong kind of cancer or the wrong stage of cancer.
Only seven of the 61 women, whose records could be found, had survived; and some of those never even received the study protocol treatment. There was no evidence that any patients were randomized, and some treatment records appeared to be entirely fabricated.
There were huge ethical issues with the study, too. None of the records showed that any of the women had consented to the treatment, and many of the women who were supposedly enrolled were illiterate and couldn’t have understood what they were signing up for. In short, this was very bad science, about as bad as it could possibly be.
The Penalty for a Science Fraud
Dr. Bezwoda was dismissed from his job, and he just faded into obscurity. Cases of fraud like this are rare, but rarer still are times when researchers face criminal charges or jail time."
https://www.wondriumdaily.com/the-dark-side-of-science-dr-bezwodas-cancer-study/
...................
New York Times 2000: Breast Cancer Researcher Admits Falsifying Data
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/05/us/breast-cancer-researcher-admits-falsifying-data.html
...................
2001 - Key Breast Cancer Study Was a Fraud - Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-apr-27-mn-56336-story.html
......................
Bezwoda 1985 Breast Cancer Transplant Study Fraudulent
"Although Dr. Bezwoda reported that no treatment-related deaths occurred, the auditors said they found at least three possible treatment-related deaths in the high-dose group. No patient consent forms were found, and the auditors concluded that the protocol was not written until the 1999 study was audited...
https://www.cancernetwork.com/view/bezwoda-1985-breast-cancer-transplant-study-fraudulent
........................
Oncologists began to rapidly abandon the treatment. But academic medical centers failed to lead the way;
Abandonment of High-Dose Chemotherapy/Hematopoietic Cell Transplants for Breast Cancer Following Negative Trial Results
"Hospitals that produce new medical knowledge, that is, teaching hospitals and National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Centers, did not abandon HDC/HCT more rapidly than nonteaching, non-Comprehensive Cancer Center hospitals. These findings are somewhat surprising given that these hospitals produce, and thus ought to be more responsive to, new medical knowledge and research..."
...[Article speculates that this may have been partly due to] "physicians whose careers were closely tied to the continuation of research on HDC/HCT in women with breast cancer."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3393031/
..................................................
The lessons we should have learned;
Presumed benefit: lessons from the American experience with marrow transplantation for breast cancer
Summary points
For over 10 years bone marrow transplantation for breast cancer was seen as an example of the general dilemma about who should pay for costly new life saving therapies
This characterisation obscured the more basic question: Did it work?
Intermediate outcomes and inadequate controls made preliminary evidence misleading
Statements by physicians in the literature and the general press reinforced the presumption of benefit, as did the decision of government bodies to mandate insurance coverage
The findings of major randomised trials did not support the use of the therapy
This experience provides lessons relevant to complex cancer therapies currently in development
Lessons
For over 10 years desperately ill women had sought bone marrow transplantation as their best chance for survival. Many physicians encouraged this judgment. Fearing bad publicity and lawsuits insurers reluctantly agreed to pay the considerable charges. A strong presumption of benefit and equally strong financial interests impeded progress towards finding an answer.
The obvious lesson from these events was articulated in the New York Times by two of the treatment's most visible critics. “As a society we have to accept that rigorous evaluation of a new treatment is essential . . . Skipping this step may seem like a compassionate act, but it can have devastating consequences.”
Accepting that new therapies are experimental is difficult in our culture. Given the increasingly commercial nature of medicine, we can expect aggressive promotion of new therapies.
All would be well served by a press that displayed the same scepticism about pronouncements from medicine as it does with pronouncements from government.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123033/
................................................
The Controversy Over High-Dose Chemotherapy with Autologous Bone Marrow Transplant for Breast Cancer by Michelle M. Mello, Troyen A. Brennan :: SSRN
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=280907
"In the 1990s more than 41,000 patients underwent high-dose chemotherapy plus autologous bone marrow transplant (HDC-ABMT) for breast cancer, despite a paucity of clinical evidence of its efficacy. Most health plans reluctantly agreed to cover the treatment in response to intensive political lobbying and the threat of litigation. The results of five recent major randomized trials showed that HDC-ABMT offers no advantage over standard-dose treatment for breast cancer. Our experience with HDC-ABMT coverage cautions against allowing politics to overwhelm science in the area of evaluating experimental procedures, and against relying on the courts as a means of resolving disagreements about coverage of these interventions."
..........................................................................
Please feel free to use these comments without attribution.
Reprint of a 1999 New York Times Article;
"An increasing number of untested treatments are being sold to desperate patients with ailments like cancer, heart failure and Parkinson's disease. Today, experimental procedures can be purchased outright from community hospitals, university medical centers and even from publicly traded companies."
"To better understand the workings of this system, The New York Times examined one of the most widely offered procedures -- bone marrow transplants for solid tumor cancers like breast cancer. *****The examination found that this procedure entered the medical marketplace in the 1980's before studies to test its effectiveness had even begun. By the time testing was under way, the business had taken on a life of its own. ***** Patients were unavailable and tests were delayed for years or had to be abandoned."
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA149796523&sid=sitemap&v=2.1&it=r&p=EAIM&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E8243a6b
As Helen Joyce has pointed out every parent who thinks they are doing the right thing with puberty blockers and surgical interventions becomes a fierce advocate of the ideology because it's too horrible to contemplate that mistakes have been made and that they have been complicit in their child's disfigurement.
the 21st century truly is an incubator of pathologies: this sounds like Stockholm Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, and "Gender Dysphoria" all rolled into one.
Helen Lewis' article in the Atlantic this week is a good start toward acknowledging the complexities of the issue. If the right/left overlay can be transcended it would help a great deal.
What is so frustrating is that if you're against what has happened to so many young people re the 'transitioning' lunacy and women's and even LGB's sex-based rights being supplanted you are defacto 'right-wing.' It does not seem to register w/ 'trans' adherents that you can be liberal and not support the absurdity that is 'gender identity' ideology.
Trust the science!
A cancer patient is cured when he has no more cancer. No one keeps treating cancer in a cancer-free patient. By contrast, "transition" has no end point where further procedures are no longer necessary.
"tuberous cocks and balls"
LOLOL
def not what i'm lookin for in a girlfriend ;))
Well, I AM looking for tuberous cocks and balls (wonderful image), but I definitely don't want them attached to someone who looks like a woman.
How did you know I'm a poet, and one who writes a little like Larkin no less?
Is that poem really about the murder of a cross-dressing man? That's how I interpret it. How gruesome. I don't write THAT much like Larkin!
Ah, I just read an analysis of the poem. The poster was defaced with the image of a murdered woman -- still disturbing.
I never did that kind of stuff as a kid, and I didn't end up being stunted or anything. It is a little disturbing that anyone would vandalize a billboard with a beautiful woman on it by making the woman look to be murdered.