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Cheri DiNovo wants Ontario to ban 'conversion therapy' for LBGT youth

mark_alfred
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mark_alfred
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cheri-dinovo-wants-ontario-to-ban-...

 

Quote:

NDP member of the Ontario Legislature Cheri DiNovo wants the province to ban so-called "conversion therapy" for minors, a practice aimed at changing the sexual orientation of youth who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual.

DiNovo, the NDP's critic for LBGT issues, introduced a bill this week at Queen's Park seeking a ban on the therapy for people under 18. She also wants the treatment to be de-listed from the province's health care plan, so taxpayers aren't supporting it.


Brachina
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 I had no idea Ontario payed for that stupid shit, I agree 100%


Sineed
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Full disclosure: I used to work at Addiction Research Foundation, which is now part of CAMH, but my job was in the addiction medicine side of things and I had nothing to do with the gender identity clinic that is the direct target of this legislation.

In fact, "conversion therapy" is not explicitely paid for by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan because there is no working definition of what constitutes "conversion therapy."

Quote:
Ontario Minister of Health Eric Hoskins will ask colleges and professional associations to define “conversion therapy” and ban it through professional misconduct rules and policies.

http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/1325388/prominent-psychiatrist-speaks-o...

"Conversion therapy" is a term originally coined to describe a "treatment" that attempts to turn gay kids straight as promoted by fundamentalist Christians in the US. It is an unconscionable practice that has been completely discredited, and I'm not sure it was ever done in Ontario. But "conversion therapy" has now come to mean trying to convert transgender kids, a process that is much less studied and well-defined. This particular campaign is an international effort by a small group of trans activists who adhere to the "born this way" narrative of transgender, a theory that is widely disseminated in popular culture, but disputed even within the transgender community.

Quote:
Dr. Susan Bradley opposes the private members bill put forward by Parkdale – High Park MPP Cheri DiNovo, and has long practiced a type of therapy she thinks would become illegal if it passes.

...

DiNovo’s bill would ban “conversion therapy,” which aims to turn gay kids straight or trans kids cisgender. Bradley says that’s not the right name for what she practices, but what she does do would be considered illegal under the bill because it does treat young children so that they no longer wish to change genders.

...

With their therapy, young children who want to be another gender can change their minds, she said.

“They can feel better about themselves and give up the notion that would be better off if they change their sex,” she said.

She said parents have a right to seek that for their children.

Bradley said she believes a child’s wish to change genders is a “symptom” of underlying psychological factors, which she treats.

She takes the same therapeutic approach with child in the gender clinic as she does with children who have behavioural issues and eating disorders.

“We realize that for a significant number of kids who come with these symptoms, they have these symptoms for a reason, that’s what psychiatry is all about, isn’t it? They aren’t just behviours that are casual or non-significant, they have meaning,” she said.

She rejects the notion that there is a biological or inherent reason in the child for gender identity disorder, or gender dysphoria, and says that those who do believe that have no evidence.

“If you take that kind of position you could say you have no right to change the child’s feeling of himself of herself, but they don’t have any evidence it’s that way. We’ve done a lot of studies, we’ve looked at these kids up and down and can find no evidence this is an inherent issue,” she said. “It depends on where you’re coming from in your head.”

Bradley added that some of the cases, the kids are autistic and some have also pretended to be animals.

“We would not expect that parents would support their children pretending they’re dogs and cats,” she said. “I had a youngster many years ago who insisted he was a number and was very upset when people didn’t call him the right number, which he changed regularly.”

A study of past patients found the majority no longer want to change sex, Bradley said. Many are gay or lesbian, which she considers a good outcome.

In fact, 80% of kids claiming to be transgender grew up to be not trans, a study found:

Quote:
When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-sol...

As a health care professional, I am concerned about legislation being written on the basis of the assertion of activists who lack the evidence on which they base their claims.


6079_Smith_W
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Which activists are you talking about?

There are people with an agenda on both sides of this, and even if a study finds only one quarter of people had persistent feelings they would be better served by therapy that supports choice rather than suppressing it. It can take people years to sort out things like orientation, too.

Certainly this is a complex issue, doubly so because it involves children. But how honest is it to have this in the hands of a doctor who only recognizes one view of this simply because it is not something which is completely understood?

It wasn't that long ago that non-straight orientation was considered disease, and plenty of people in all camps still refuse to recognize bisexuality.

 


abnormal
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Manitoba has banned the practice

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/05/22/manitoba-bans-conversion-therapy

It's use on minors is already banned in a number of US states [calling it child abuse] while there is a push to enact Leelah's Law, named after Leelah Alcorn, to ban it nationwide.

 

 

 

 

 


Unionist
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abnormal wrote:

Manitoba has banned the practice

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/05/22/manitoba-bans-conversion-therapy

I've read this thread and have very little idea what this is all about.

The Toronto Sun article keeps saying Manitoba has "banned" "conversion therapy". I'm quite sure that's absolutely false. I'm quite sure all they've done is said, "don't bill Medicare for it". You have to read the caption on the photo to get a hint of that.

A province can't "ban" someone talking to people and encouraging them to be straight or cis. Otherwise, they could start by banning most religious education. And anyway, a "ban", to be effective, would have to involve criminal sanctions, which are not within provincial jurisdiction.

So, what is it, exactly, that Cheri DiNovo wants to "ban", and how? Is she speaking out against parents forcing their minor children to attend public Catholic schools? Or will her bill ban those schools from encouraging kids to follow the teachings of the Church about LGBTQ issues? Or is it the word "therapy" which bugs her?

I'll await more clarity, but Sineed's post seems to be pointing me toward asking more questions.

 


6079_Smith_W
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Apparently the political problem is not whether Ontario's parties support it (all do) but how:

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-bill-outlawing-conversi...

 


voice of the damned
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Unionist: I would assume she means that it would be illegal for someone acting in the capacity as an offically recognized health professional to offer procedures supposedly aimed at changing someone's sexual orientation.

And such procedures are a little bit different than someone saying "God does not want you to do thst". As a comparison, a teacher in a Catholic school might say "The Church does not want you to take the Lord's name in vain." It's a pretty silly rule, in my view, but that lesson is still not quite the same thing as a psychiatrist, a member of the College Of Physicians And Surgeons, setting up a practice, with his degrees hanging on the wall, where he performs Clockwork Orange-style therapy making people listen to recordings of blasphemous swear words, while pumping them full of nausea inducing drugs.

Now, you can argue, and I'd probably agree, that both the relgious and the pseudo-scientific forms of anti-gay propaganda are bad, and that consistency would dictate that if we ban one, we should ban the other. I'm just saying that banning "conversion therapy" does not a priori entail banning all anti-gay propaganda.

Unionist
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Oh, ok. So, DiNovo's bill would:

1. Not allow any health professional to bill OHIP for services aimed at changing anyone's self-identified sexual orientation or gender identity.

2. In the case of patients under 18, not allow a regulated health professional to seek to change a patient's self-identified gender identity or sexual orientation as part of providing health care services.

[My emphasis]

In other words, anyone is free to set up a private practice to offer "conversion therapy" - as long as they don't do it as "health care services" - including to minors.

The Catholics and others are free to carry on preaching their homophobia and transphobia in schools. In fact, I don't see what stops them from offering straight-up "conversion therapy" in school.

I was shocked (my ignorance) that such medieval practices are still funded by Medicare in some provinces (like to see the list, actually!) - so defunding it is a good step.

 


abnormal
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Unionist - agreed that the pic and the text of the article do not agree.  The pic says "shouldn't be billed" while the text says the province will "work to ensure that it's not practiced in the province".

The billing comment is going to be almost impossible to enforce since there is no specific billing code and, even if there were, I'm sure it would be easy to simply bill it as some sort of generic counselling.

BTW, Sineed's post links a WSJ article that references Paul McHugh - since that particular article is behind a paywall I can't access it in its entirety.  However, this article is publicly available and seems to be pretty much a summary of the WSJ one.

Paul McHugh is the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry and he shut down the gender reassignment clinic at John Hopkins.  He justified that in part based on a study he commissioned where he told the author what conclusion he wanted.   

Before we go on it's probably worth noting that this is the guy that defends Catholic priests facing sex abuse charges

Quote:
The bishops recently chose Dr. Paul McHugh, former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, as chief behavioral scientist for their new clergy sex crimes review board. Yet Dr. McHugh once said Johns Hopkins' Sexual Disorders Clinic, which treats molesters, was justified in concealing multiple incidents of child rape and fondling to police, despite a state law requiring staffers to report them.

But back to Dr McHugh and the WSJ article

Quote:
Clinging to a dangerous past: Dr Paul McHugh’s selective reading of transgender medical literature

In a June 12th opinion article in the Wall Street Journal, well-known anti-transgender psychiatrist Dr Paul McHugh attempts to make a case against supporting hormonal and surgical transition for transgender individuals. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, has been actively working against the medical treatment of trans people since the 1970’s. As the university’s chief psychiatrist, he was instrumental in closing the Johns Hopkins Gender Program in 1979, one of the first programs of its kind, citing the 1977 study by his Hopkins colleague Dr Jon Meyer, which claimed that surgical intervention did not improve the psychological functioning of the individuals treated.  McHugh himself admits to directing Meyer to conduct to further his anti-trans agenda in a 2004 article titled “Surgical Sex”. In the same article, McHugh also continues to preach the largely discredited “autogynephilia” theory of Ray Blanchard and J. Michael Bailey. McHugh is also known for filing an amicus curiae brief in Hollingsworth v. Perry, asserting that homosexuality is a choice, as well as for his participation of the campaign against Kansas abortion provider Dr George Tiller- who was murdered in 2009 by a anti-abortion activist.

etc ...

http://www.transadvocate.com/clinging-to-a-dangerous-past-dr-paul-mchugh...

BTW, interesting reading on the subject of aligning transgendered childrens minds with their bodies.

 

 


6079_Smith_W
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@ VOTD

I don't think it is Burgess's Ludovico Technique, in this case anyway, but it is bad enough that a doctor should work from an an assumption that transgenderism is a negative outcome caused by underlying problems that need to be cured. If this is going to all fall back on science and research (and I don't think it should, necessarily, because this is not all about sickness) I'd say at least some of the burden of proof is on whether there is any foundation for that one-sided idea.

According to that CBC article some people definitely did not get the help they needed.

 

 


onlinediscountanvils
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Thanks for that additional info, abnormal.


Sineed
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Doctors shouldn't work from any assumptions that haven't been validated in some way. It's unequivocal that fundamentalist Christians who try to force gay kids to be straight are abusing these kids by misusing therapeutic processes developed to help people.

But this:

Quote:
2. In the case of patients under 18, not allow a regulated health professional to seek to change a patient's self-identified gender identity or sexual orientation as part of providing health care services.

Gender identity is not the same as being gay or straight. Small kids may declare themselves to be the opposite sex just as they may say they are a cat, a dinosaur, or like that one patient of Dr. Bradley, who claimed to be a number that he changed all the time. Gender identity is not as fixed or immutable as being gay, and it may be a social construct on the basis of how we are forced into one gender straightjacket or another since birth.

If a child is defined as trans, this sets them up for a future of livelong hormone supplementation that may shorten their lives, and the possibility of fertility-destroying surgeries. If doctors are going to be prohibited by law from questioning whether a troubled young person really is trans, is that really an appropriate level of care for making decisions that have such significant and potentially life-long consequences?


abnormal
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Have to say that I was actually surprised that Fox aired something that was this balanced

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/04/24/psychiatrist-sheds-light-on-tra...

Back to Sineed's post for a minute.

She links to an article about Drs Zucker and Bradley at CAMH - in the middle of that article there is a link to this

Of particular note is the statement that 

Quote:

Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has stopped accepting new patients to its Gender Identity Services clinic for youth because of outcry from the public.

CAMH is reviewing the mental health services it offers to youth age three to 18 who are struggling with gender identity or require services related to being transgender.

Since CAMH is the only center in Ontario that is authorized to evaluate individuals to see if their treatment should be covered by OHIP that's not exactly a good thing.

 


TiradeFaction
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I don't know if there's any other trans people on this forum but CAHM for many years has become an internationally reviled name in I'd say about 90% of the transgendered community. Never had any personal experience with CAHM myself but high profile psychologists there such as Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard at one point were basically Satan amongst trans people (or at least activist minded ones). Haven't heard much about them for many years, and am kind of surprised it took this long for this controversy to reach the halls of the Ontario legislature. Also doubly surprised CAHM's still the only place (for children at least. Not sure if it extends to adults still) to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis in all of Ontario! I mean it's a big place...

 

Sineed wrote:

Doctors shouldn't work from any assumptions that haven't been validated in some way. It's unequivocal that fundamentalist Christians who try to force gay kids to be straight are abusing these kids by misusing therapeutic processes developed to help people.

But this:

Quote:
2. In the case of patients under 18, not allow a regulated health professional to seek to change a patient's self-identified gender identity or sexual orientation as part of providing health care services.

Gender identity is not the same as being gay or straight. Small kids may declare themselves to be the opposite sex just as they may say they are a cat, a dinosaur, or like that one patient of Dr. Bradley, who claimed to be a number that he changed all the time. Gender identity is not as fixed or immutable as being gay

I think you're missing out on an important factor. Folks like Kenneth Zucker, an important figure in the gender identity portion of CAHM have stated on record that being transgendered is a "bad outcome" and try their best to reconcile the mind with the body, as opposed to the body to the mind. It'd be one thing to be more neutral and have an approach that tries to figure out whether the child is really trans or not, and then go from there, it's another to work from the opposite assumption you're decrying.

http://www.npr.org/2008/05/07/90247842/two-families-grapple-with-sons-ge...

Alix Spiegel wrote:
Zucker, who has worked with this population for close to 30 years, has a very specific method for treating these children. Whenever Zucker encounters a child younger than 10 with gender identity disorder, he tries to make the child comfortable with the sex he or she was born with.

The NPR story is worth reading IMO, really goes into the two approaches into great detail on dealing with this issue.


Sineed
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tirade faction wrote:
I don't know if there's any other trans people on this forum but CAHM for many years has become an internationally reviled name in I'd say about 90% of the transgendered community. Never had any personal experience with CAHM myself but high profile psychologists there such as Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard at one point were basically Satan amongst trans people (or at least activist minded ones).

Yes, and the reason for the aggressive villification of CAMH by some members of the transgender community is CAMH psychologist Ray Blanchard's autogynephilia hypothesis, which suggests that some male-to-female transgender individuals are motivated by the paraphilia he dubbed, "Autogynephila," in which men are sexually aroused by the idea of having a female body. For some transwomen such as Lynn Conway or Andrea James, the autogynephilia hypothesis is offensive because it suggests that their identities as women are rooted in a fetish rather than an identity that may have a strictly biological basis.

The pertinent history: in 2003, psychologist Michael Bailey wrote a book that in part discusses Blanchard's work, "The Man Who Would Be Queen: the Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism." I'm reading this currently; it's a scholarly treatise with some dated ideas, and it discusses autogynephilia at length. Transwomen activists Andrea James and Lynn Conway were so offended by this book, they started a witch hunt against Michael Bailey that was so vicious, another transgender researcher, the bioethecist and college professor Alice Dreger, wrote a book about it called, "Galileo's Finger." The Wikipedia page provides a nice summary of the controversy:

Quote:
Bailey's book was based on the academic publications of psychologist Ray Blanchard, which Bailey interpreted for a lay audience. The larger audience and potential to influence public beliefs about transgenderism led a prominent transgender activist, Lynn Conway, to campaign against Bailey. Dreger concludes that the accusations levied against Bailey by Conway and others did not hold up to scrutiny. "Conway developed what became an enormous Web site hosted by the University of Michigan for the purpose of taking down Bailey and his ideas [and] that largely enabled me to figure out what she had really done and how Bailey had essentially been set up in an effort to shut him up about autogynephilia".[8] Dreger wrote that some activists had turned their horror at Bailey's findings into a very public vendetta against him and his family, including thinly veiled allegations that he sexually abused his children.[3] After researching them, she concluded that all the allegations against Bailey were false. Moreover, Dreger observed that "the most interesting mail, from my perspective, came from trans women who wrote to tell me that, though they weren't thrilled with Bailey's oversimplifications of their lives, they also had been harassed and intimidated by Andrea James for daring to speak anything other than the politically popular 'I was always just a woman trapped in a man's body' story. They thanked me for standing up to a bully."[9]

Lynn Conway's hatchet job on CAMH may be read here:

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/The_War_Within_...

So the controversy and this proposed legislation basically comes out of the activism of a small number of highly aggressive transwomen who are offended by the "autogynephila" hypothesis, and who also object to CAMH treating gender variant children in any way that doesn't validate their transgender identities. Since the autogynephilia hypothesis proposes that some transwomen are motivated by a sexual fetish, the existence of pre-pubertal children who identify as trans may help render it invalid.

The autogynephila question aside, I'd like to say a few brief words on the drug treatment of trans children. There has been an explosion in the number of children given potent drugs to stop their puberty and eventually destroy their fertility. They are given a very expensive drug called Lupron, a hormone blocker originally developed to treat hormone-dependent prostate cancers and also used for endometriosis. It's also known as "chemical castration" when we give it to sex offenders (something I have happily personally done). Its use in adolescents is off-label and experimental. When Lupron is followed by a cross-sex hormone, the child's fertility is likely to be permanently destroyed. From the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, a website that promotes this treatment:

Quote:
Ideal treatment for transgender youth is to get them onto cross sex hormones prior to the development of unwanted secondary sexual characteristics. Regardless of whether blockers are used or not, the use of prolonged cross sex hormones will make biological children very unlikely for transgender youth in the future. I say very unlikely, not impossible, because there are lots of trans folks who have stopped cross sex hormones and proceeded with the procreation process, but again, I am not familiar with each circumstance. If we treat correctly however, we would aim to feminize trans females early, and prior to the development of viable sperm. In trans males, the prolonged use of testosterone will likely render these men infertile over time. There is no data examining the length of time on cross sex hormones that solidifies infertility either for transmen or transwomen.

http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=protocol-youth

Normally, we give such potent drugs to children in the context of serious illnesses such as cancer or autoimmune diseases. Considering that most children who identify as trans grow up to be not trans, though frequently gay or lesbian, I think we need to be a little more cautious about administering treatment that permanently destroys children's fertility and gives them a lifelong dependence on hormones. This sort of cautious approach is what CAMH advocates, and for which they are villified.


quizzical
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thank you sineed.


6079_Smith_W
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Sineed wrote:

Considering that most children who identify as trans grow up to be not trans, though frequently gay or lesbian, I think we need to be a little more cautious about administering treatment that permanently destroys children's fertility and gives them a lifelong dependence on hormones. This sort of cautious approach is what CAMH advocates, and for which they are villified.

Yes, but some people going way overboard in protesting, and taking it to the point of personal attack  has no bearing on the need for good, unbiased therapy.

And while one needs to be careful about a process like this (and I believe that care is taken in any case) how fair is it to have that process be done with the assumption that transition is a negative outcome?


onlinediscountanvils
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I'll trust the lived experiences of trans people over the theories of cis doctors and other medical professionals any day of the week, because;

"Most of the people with power in this process are not trans. They are all white, straight, rich, nondisabled and almost all men. Their lives are very different than most trans people’s lives; for instance, Dalton McGuinty made $208,974 and Kennith Zucker made $123,950 in 2012 while half of all trans people live on less than $15,000 a year. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health is mostly non-trans people. These are the people who get to decide how trans people are categorized and treated."

What Kind of Operation is This?: An Illustrated Guide to the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic Surgery Process

Another person who is embedded in the GID in the DSM system is Ray Blanchard. He became been part of CAMH’s GIC since 1980 and is currently in charge of CAMH’s Clinical Sexology Services in the Law and Mental Health Program.

Blanchard argues that pretty much all trans women are either extreme homosexuals or autogynephilic (they are sexually aroused by the idea of themselves as women). Autogynephilia is now in the DSM as a diagnostic category. This, according to Mulé and Daley “theorizes reducing [trans women’s] motives to fetishistic sexual gratification rather than their attempts at achieving a harmonious gender identity.”

Blanchard was a part of the APA committee that decides how the new DSM classifies ‘gender disorders.’

He has said: “This is not waving a magic wand and a man becomes a woman and vice versa… It’s something that has to be taken very seriously. A man without a penis has certain disadvantages in this world, and this is in reality what you’re creating.”

There are obviously, then, some big problems with the fact the Blanchard has so much power over trans people, their access to health care and the way that the medical establishment constructs their identities.

and

I have a pair of Kenneth Zucker’s pants. The important part of this story isn’t that I got them from his son so that I could represent someone he was helping fight eviction at the Housing Tribunal.

The story isn’t about how his kid hangs out with a bunch of queers, genderqueers and trans folks and how outrageous that might be for his dad.

It’s not about how Zucker’s clinic at CAMH is believed to diagnose more kids with GID than anywhere else on the planet.

Nor is the story about how this jerk, Zucker Senior, believes trans kids are “saying each and every day by [their] behaviour that they are, in fact, not feeling good about who they are. Because they are constantly trying to be someone else.”

And, this story isn’t about how Zucker encourages parents to force gender non-conforming kids to give up the activities they love, their clothes, their friends, etc.

This story is really just about the pants. You see, these pants are not particularly masculine. I might even say that they are kind of unisex. They are cream coloured 34” waist Ralph Lauren pants. I was pretty underwhelmed when I got them.

I have to be careful about what I wear because I am trans. Once I wore a dress and vampire blood on my face for Halloween. Halloween! And for several months people had changed my pronoun from they to she. If I want my gender identity to be respected, I have to wear a certain kind of pant (which, btw is totally bullshit). Kennith Zucker is the boss of the gender identities of gender freaks across the country but his pants were not really gender suitable for someone like me who dresses fairly masculine.

But, should we really fault anyone for being a bit blurry on gender appropriate pants? It used to be that everyone wore dresses (call them togas or kilts or loin cloths or whatever) but then that changed. Pink and blue are only recent gendered constructions in the Western world, with American producers only definitively making the determination in the 1940s. So, the binary that guys like Zucker uphold has never been fixed the way that it is so frequently portrayed.

Nevertheless, think of the children. Even if it is tough to figure out a gender appropriate outfit given all the changes in fashion over the past few thousand years, it is important to set an example. How can the kids that are subjected to Zucker’s treatment know that they are being gender appropriate when their own psychiatrist is wearing confusing pants?

Of course, another option would be to stop forcing the gender binary onto people and to let people have access to the medical care they desire if they desire it in order to transition (and for whatever else). The way that the gender clinic system is set up right now, fully half of all cis women would not pass their tests to be considered real women – would not be able to get ‘women’s bodies’ if they didn’t already have them. HALF! There clearly isn’t a lot of room for gender diversity, flexibility or variance if normative women aren’t passing these tests.

Ok, back to the pants. Those pants are really only femmy or masculine based on the way they are socially interpreted. So, while they are really quite girly, at the same time, they are the most masculine pants I have ever owned because they came from the arbiter of masculinity – Kenneth Zucker himself. Those pants can also be other things in addition to just those two. While Zucker and his colleagues are working to uphold the gender binary, it isn’t like the world is going to implode into a black hole if kids and adults play with gender or live in diverse ways. What undoing the gender binary could help do is weaken cissexism, patriarchy and heterosexism – things that those who work at gender clinics are deeply invested in.

Regardless of Zucker’s hold on the gender binary, I can tell you one thing for sure: I am a better man than him – cunt and all.


Mr. Magoo
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Quote:
how fair is it to have that process be done with the assumption that transition is a negative outcome?

Is the assumption that transitioning is "bad" in and of itself? No matter the specifics?  I'd agree that that can't work.

But if, statistically, it has a four out of five chance of being the wrong outcome, how does one proceed with optimism and encouragement?

I have to say I do find it a bit odd that there's such acceptance of the idea that a three year old "knows" what gender they are already.  I say this in light of all the ink that's been spilled pointing out that even teenagers aren't ready to make some decisions, and that they maybe can't be held accountable for their choices and actions because they're cognitively just not ready any more than a toddler is ready to do calculus.  And I see no harm in parents treating even a three year old as they wish to be treated, seeing as that's non-permanent -- but fairly aggressive hormone treatments and similar?  Isn't that kind of like a tattoo for every cell in your body?  I'm not out on the streets fighting against it or anything, but I definitely have questions and doubts.


Sineed
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I would suggest that people read the actual work of Blanchard rather than the second-hand accounts of what people think he means. For instance, Blanchard himself actually says that autogynephilia should present no barrier to transition even though many transwomen say he invented the term in order to function as a gatekeeper and prevent people from transitioning.

Quote:
I'll trust the lived experiences of trans people over the theories of cis doctors and other medical professionals any day of the week...

The trouble with the whole "lived experience" thing is it basically shuts down conversation. After all, each of the 6 billion of us has our own individual "lived experience."

Speaking of the "lived experience" of trans people, here's one example:

Miranda Yardley wrote:

FC: What kinds of discrimination do you face, specifically as a trans woman? Why do you think that discrimination happens? How is it either the same or different than the discrimination experienced by females?

I am going to try to answer this honestly, I feel I’m going to now be saying some very controversial things, but there’s a reasoning behind it which I hope makes sense. I’m not trying to dilute or soften any abuse or difficulties other trans people may have faced.

Firstly, I am a white, educated transwoman who enjoyed male privilege some 40 years before transition. Discrimination has, more or less, been confined to what I would describe as homophobia, and is certainly no worse or to no greater degree than a young gay man or biological woman would experience, for example street harassment, public intimidation and even assault.

None of these are acceptable, but they happen not just to transwomen but women and men, gay or not. We live in an intolerant and violent society, a society where casual misogyny and sexism is still a norm. This is one of the common battles women and transwomen share.

To be clear, I do not accept ‘misgendering’ as being violence and neither do I accept the term ‘transmisogyny’. Transphobia is either discrimination or homophobia, and these should be fought. Transwomen make men insecure, and men’s reaction is often abusive or even violent.

I’d like to make it clear that being ‘misgendered’ by someone in, for example, a shop is not ‘transphobia’: significantly most transwomen look like what we are, let’s be honest, and making complaints about store assistants on a minimum wage for ‘misgendering’ is punching downwards.

http://ommadusk.tumblr.com/tagged/feminist-current


6079_Smith_W
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Joined: Jun 10 2010

Mr. Magoo wrote:

But if, statistically, it has a four out of five chance of being the wrong outcome, how does one proceed with optimism and encouragement?

Should we also turn sexual preference into a numbers game? We used to beat right-handedness into people for the same reason.  Who cares what the percentage is? If there are some for whom it is valid, then going into it with only one acceptable outcome is wrong-headed.

And while the validity of Blanchard's research isn't my point, I do wonder why it apparently only applies to MTF transsexuals.

 


Mr. Magoo
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Joined: Dec 13 2002

Quote:
Who cares what the percentage is?

I'm assuming that if 80% of children who believe they're misgendered are, in fact, not misgendered then that has some negative outcomes for that 80% too.  If that negative outcome is just "for three months, when I was seven, I wore a dress to school" then I don't really have an issue with that.  If the negative outcomes is "I was given regular hormone injections to stave off mis-puberty and now I'm infertile and need MORE hormone injections to replace what my body forgot how to make" then I think that's worth a consideration.

And again, if counsellors are telling anyone -- kids, pre-teens, teens or adults -- that transitioning is just wrong then I can't support that.  But how do you counsel a gender-conflicted kid if you know that there's an 80% chance that they've got it wrong, and that encouraging and supporting this transition will be leading them down a totally wrong path?

Can someone tell me, in a nutshell, why this is so urgent that it has to be addressed at three years of age?


onlinediscountanvils
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Joined: Jun 7 2012

Sineed wrote:

Quote:
I'll trust the lived experiences of trans people over the theories of cis doctors and other medical professionals any day of the week...

The trouble with the whole "lived experience" thing is it basically shuts down conversation. After all, each of the 6 billion of us has our own individual "lived experience."

Not all 6 billion of us have lived experience being a trans person (or female, or a POC, or disabled, or queer, or poor). That's why conversation isn't nearly as important as listening. When it comes to the lives and experiences of trans people, I don't need to be a part of any conversation. I have nothing to impart to trans people. The best I can hope to offer is to challenge other cis folks on our transphobia and transmisogyny.


6079_Smith_W
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Joined: Jun 10 2010

Magoo, I don't think anyone is suggesting someone has to start a round of surgery and hormones at age three. And I am sure most people concerned with this suggest proceeding with caution.

Two points. It isn't anumber's game, and despite the temptation to treat it like one, going into the process with the perception that one option is by definition the wrong one  seems to be what is screwing this up for some people.

 


Sineed
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Joined: Dec 4 2005

onlinediscountanvills wrote:
That's why conversation isn't nearly as important as listening. When it comes to the lives and experiences of trans people, I don't need to be a part of any conversation.

But you selectively only listen to the voices of some trans people. Is it not symptomatic of your "cis privilege" that you do not listen to all of them?

Miranda Yardley wrote:
Firstly, I am a white, educated transwoman who enjoyed male privilege some 40 years before transition....To be clear, I do not accept ‘misgendering’ as being violence and neither do I accept the term ‘transmisogyny’. Transphobia is either discrimination or homophobia, and these should be fought. Transwomen make men insecure, and men’s reaction is often abusive or even violent.

onlinediscountanvills wrote:
The best I can hope to offer is to challenge other cis folks on our transphobia and transmisogyny.

I don't personally identify as "cis."

6079_Smith_W wrote:
...going into the process with the perception that one option is by definition the wrong one  seems to be what is screwing this up for some people.

This legislation endeavors to ban the practice of treating gender-variant children with anything other than an affirmation of a transgender identity. It tries to meddle in medical practice. Do we really want to set the precedent of politicians dictating standards of medical care?


Mr. Magoo
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Joined: Dec 13 2002

Quote:
Magoo, I don't think anyone is suggesting someone has to start a round of surgery and hormones at age three.

OK.  At what age do they start?  Are hormones ever administered to a minor?

ed'd to add:

Quote:
I don't personally identify as "cis."

But do you identify as orthocephalic?  i.e. born with an average sized cranium, as opposed to those who are microcephalic?

Or do you make a special note that you you've been diagnosed with duosomy-21?  i.e. you don't have Down syndrome, as opposed to those with trisomy-21?

If those rare statistical outliers get a special word, shouldn't we all get a special word?


6079_Smith_W
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Joined: Jun 10 2010

Sineed wrote:

This legislation endeavors to ban the practice of treating gender-variant children with anything other than an affirmation of a transgender identity.

That might be reading a bit too much into the legislation - that is to say, I think you might be scaremongering there.

Anyone considering transition is going to go through a process to determine if that is what they really want. The point here is that it be a fair process, not one which treats transgenderism as a negative product of illness.

 


onlinediscountanvils
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Joined: Jun 7 2012

Sineed wrote:

onlinediscountanvills wrote:
That's why conversation isn't nearly as important as listening. When it comes to the lives and experiences of trans people, I don't need to be a part of any conversation.

But you selectively only listen to the voices of some trans people.

No. Perhaps that's your approach, but it's not mine. If a trans person wants to share their experience, I'll listen.


quizzical
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Joined: Dec 8 2011

imv sineed's observation is a truthful one. your comments indicate a one position reality.


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