Outcome
Trans man knows what it’s like.
I am a 48-year-old transgender man. I was thrilled when the medical community told me six years ago that I could change from a woman to a man. I was informed about all the wonderful things that would happen due to medical transition, but all the negatives were glossed over. Since then, I have suffered tremendously, including seven surgeries, a pulmonary embolism, an induced stress heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, arm reconstructive surgery, lung, heart and bladder damage, insomnia, hallucinations, PTSD, $1 million in medical expenses, and loss of home, car, career and marriage. All this, and yet I cannot sue the surgeon responsible—in part because there is no structured, tested or widely accepted baseline for transgender health care.
Does that sound worth it? For something so nebulous and uncertain as transitioning to the “right” body? What kind of “right” body puts you through all that?
Read that again: There is no structured, tested, or widely accepted baseline for transgender health care. Not for 42-year-olds, and not for the many minors embarking on medical transition in record numbers. It is not transphobic or discriminatory to discuss this—we as a society need to fully understand what we are encouraging our children to do to their bodies.
Or maybe we just need to stop encouraging. Allowing, maybe, but encouraging, how about never.
Throughout transition, I second-guessed my decisions, but each counseling session and doctor’s appointment amounted to one more push convincing me I could be cured of being born in the wrong body. The truth was that I didn’t fit in as a dominant, aggressive, assertive lesbian. The dream of finally fitting in dangled like a carrot: The idea that I could fit in catapulted me to a time much like adolescence, with its drive for acceptance, inclusive peers and the fantasy of being normal.
“Normal” is overrated.
During my post-operation 17 months of sheer survival, I discovered that transgender health care is experimental and that large swaths of the medical industry encourage minors to transition due, at least in part, to fat profit margins. I was gobsmacked. Each day I researched more and became increasingly appalled. As I jumped from ER to ER desperately seeking help, I realized that nobody knew what to do. Each physician told me to return to the original surgeon.
It’s lobotomies all over again, I tell you. It’s bleeding people for every illness. It’s sacrificing an animal to appease the god who sent the fever.
H/t Sackbut
I understand this desire, believe me. I’ve felt it for nearly 60 years now, and never found that silver bullet, that holy grail. It just doesn’t exist. So I’ve spent a lot of therapy time trying to learn to live with it. I am horrified to think that if I were a girl now instead of a woman, and a scientist, they might be discouraging me from living with it, from learning how to be glad I don’t fit in with my Trumpista neighbors, etc. They might be encouraging me to think being a man would do it.
I’m not a lesbian, and I’m not aggressive or dominant, but I am strong and independent, and don’t believe in taking shit off people. That does not make me a male, anymore than being a dominant, aggressive lesbian makes you a male.
This poor woman destroyed her body because society insists on pigeon holding people into gender roles that don’t fit. Instead of learning how to be okay with not fitting, or changing society so they don’t insist you have to be “feminine”, a lot of people have decided it’s easier – and apparently more profitable – to change the bodies instead. That doesn’t surprise me; our species often takes the easy way out. What does surprise and horrify me is how many people who should know better have jumped on the bandwagon, announced that this regressive behavior is actually progressive, and spend many hours trying (and sometimes succeeding) to destroy women who think otherwise.
This is tragic. What a cruel, cruel lie to tell somebody. It’s the equivalent of a magician claiming to be able to actually saw somebody (and it’s usually a woman…) in two and put them back together again.
Looks like the issue of informed consent is a problem for more than just minors. I suppose when you’re promising the impossible, you don’t want too many realities to intrude.
It would have been hard work, but, I imagine, so much easier and less destructive and dangerous to attempt to tune the mental state to the body, rather than torture the body into submission to the mental state. Surely self acceptance would be most important to start with? If you don’t have that as a foundation, carving off bits of yourself is not going to help. You can only go so far. How do you know when to stop? Being told you’ve been “born in the wrong body” and that you can change sex are lies that are not going to lead anywhere good.
This is just part of the dark side that comes with accepting the impostures of larpers like Pippa Bunce.
This is a tragic story. Your Name’s not Bruce? #2
Opinions on social and political driving forces for “identity” are expressed by Dr. Alexander Korte (https://vimeo.com/373705766 interview on gender, puberty blockers …)
referenced at https://theelectricagora.com/2021/02/06/the-power-of-words/ where the host, Daniel Kaufman, echoes the key issue raised repeatedly at Butterflies and Wheels: “Those of us who are concerned about women’s hard-won prerogatives and rights are alarmed at the pace at which they are being dismantled.”
Well, when you hear her description of what happened, that seems obvious, but I can tell you, it’s no picnic to try to tune your mental state to your body. I haven’t achieved that yet, and I’ve been in therapy quite a bit of the time since I was 26. Probably spent over a million myself; thankfully, I’ve had decent insurance most of the time (during the 90s, I had neither money nor insurance, but my doctor worked with me to find ways to help me out; I was fortunate. Not many doctors will do that).
I can see how facing that seemingly endless road of depression, anxiety, and therapy could seem daunting, and the promise of becoming a man was made to seem easy. In reality, it turned out it wasn’t easy, but without that information going in…how could you possibly make the right choice? Years…maybe a lifetime…of therapy against a few quick snips and tucks. Seems like a no-brainer.
Therapy, while not easy, and maybe not even easier, would not destroy your body. It might wreck your marriage, but if it does, you’re probably better off (I know I was). It would not send you from surgery to surgery to surgery, always hoping to fix what went wrong. Yeah, things go wrong in therapy. But…I think I’d prefer that any day.
I have nothing but sympathy for the writer. It sounds like they’re in a lot of pain of all kinds.
But I would advise the rest of us to take it with a grain of salt. First, I don’t consider Newsweek to be a very trustworthy publication these days. Second, there’s no indication that any reporting went into this — it’s strictly a first-person account. Third…
Thankfully, I have never been sued for malpractice in my career. But every lawyer has encountered a client who swears that you (or their previous lawyer) promised them certain victory, didn’t disclose the costs and risks, etc. etc. — except that the file shows that you (or the previous lawyer) did, in fact, say just that. (This is why lawyers send “CYA” letters to clients — they have a convenient habit of forgetting what you told them verbally. Doctors don’t tend to do that as often, sometimes to their detriment.)
I’m not saying that’s what happened here; I couldn’t possibly know that. I’m just saying that it’s possible. And you can dismiss that as professionals sticking together or whatever, but I suspect everyone here has encountered the phenomenon of people hearing what they want to hear and ignoring what they don’t. So I have a bit of doubt when I see someone claim that “nobody told me the risks.”
On a related note, apparently there is now a “detransitioner” who has “de-detransitioned,” and is now saying nasty things about the detrans community, how they’re all a bunch of “TERFs” being funded by sinister religious right groups, etc. This, too, I take with large amounts of salt.
I know from personal experience that I would destroy the planet if it would make me feel *just* ok… So I feel that sort of thing.
‘The truth was that I didn’t fit in as a dominant, aggressive, assertive lesbian.’
The last description may be something you’re stuck with. The second to last may make it harder to ‘fit in’ in environments where women are expected to be submissive; this person might have been better off spending more time in a less misogynist culture. The first two are behaviours, not innate traits–no one likes a ‘dominant, aggressive’ anyone, and it would be better to maybe learn to play well with others than to expect others to put up with your hostile behaviours. I guess anyone who really feels a desperate need to be ‘dominant and aggressive’ could take up a sport or hobby that rewards these behaviours, within the context of the activity.
Many trans rights activists would insist that’s conversion therapy; she’s really a man and trying to convince her otherwise is an act of violence.
I’m a gay guy who grew up a little too sissified to fit in with the high school boys but ended up too independent and “butch” to be a good homo. I never fit in anywhere. “Gay” culture has always felt as fake to me as sports culture, etc. Never thought being a female would be some kind of cure. Instead, I found another misfit guy like myself and have attempted constructing bliss. Life is learning to live with the pain of being yourself.
There is a huge leap of logic required to get from ‘I don’t fit in as I am’ to ‘sex-change surgery will solve my problems’. There never seems to be any explanation as to how such a drastic intervention is going to be the answer.
As YNnB said, tuning the mental state to the body, learning to accept yourself, if you will, has to be the better answer. Unfortunately, as iknklast said, this can take years of therapy, and nowadays long-term projects are out of fashion: everything has to be solved now, not some vague time in the future. So when people with such identity issues are given the promise of a quick fix they’re going to grab it with both hands, and more so if they are being pressured into believing they are something that they’re not, as so many young women are at the moment.
Sorry, I should have said “better” rather than “easier.” I’ve never had to deal with any long term mental health issues, so imagining is all I have to go by. I meant “easier” than trying to do something that’s impossible. No intention to be glib or cavalier. My aplogies if I came across that way.
Indeed. Transing the gay away should be classified as “conversion therapy” too, but which takes “precedence,” if that’s the word? In the current Miscellany room, I posted a letter to my Member of Parliament about an ammendment to the Criminal Code regarding “conversion therapy,” with “gender identity” added to (riding the coat-tails?) of “sexual orientation.” I may be wrong, but my guess is that this bill has been crafted more in defence of trans interests than homosexual ones. Again, I’m not sure, but it looks like the legislation is designed to prevent transition from being classified as “conversion therapy.” Here’s the act’s definition:
Would this result in therapists encouraging desistance or detransition as being accused of conversion therapy?
Yes. I think of young women pursuing this route as trying to escape a burning building. Given the realities and expectations for women in a patriarchal culture that is, in many ways, more restrictive and limiting than it was 40 years ago, who wouldn’t want to avoid that box? Connection to social media makes the messaging much more immediate, personal, and private. Peer pressure, embarassment, and shame are yours, instantly, at the touch of a button.
Speaking of burning buildings…. The subtitle of this four-part series is ‘fleeing womanhood like a house on fire’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8taOdnXD6o
Screechy, I understand your hesitation, and accept that, but one reason the story is easy to accept is that it fits so much with other things that we have seen and heard. For instance, the reports of GIDS. And the constant insistence that there is little to no risk in puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and other transitioning, and that it is all good. So was she told the consequences? Maybe…but it could be even her doctors didn’t know the potential consequences, but didn’t explain it well. It seems doctors who recommend transitioning seem to hesitate to describe negative outcomes. So while I am willing to consider it as a possible “not true”, I see it as ringing true in many ways.
And when there is something in medical records that disagrees with the patient, it doesn’t always mean the patient has misheard. I had the opportunity to examine my medical records, and some of my doctors (always therapy, not physical) had a real knack for hearing something other than what I said. To be fair, they were older and Freudian, which could be part of the problem, because they had to fit everything I said into a Freudian landscape. So going solely by what the doctor’s wrote is problematic, but without other documentation, like recordings or something, I have no idea how a legal case would proceed in any other fashion.
‘Cause doctors are human too (as are lawyers), and capable of misinterpretation and misreporting just as much as the patient is.
Oh, but surely not! I have a young male friend who says otherwise! He is in his 20s, and male, so he knows. He spent quite some effort explaining to me what it was really like to be a woman in the 80s. I didn’t know until I met him that my high school did not, in fact, allow girls to wear jeans starting in the mid-1970s, but required us to wear skirts below the knee until somewhere around 2010. I had no idea. I would swear I wore jeans to school.
Must just be the faulty Baby Boomer memory. After all, if someone who was not alive then, and not female, tells me it was so, I must believe!
To me, the main points of the article are not so much this woman’s personal history, but the long list of criticisms of medical transition practices and claims, with links to supporting information.
Based on everything I’ve read, gender clinics are only too eager to downplay the risks of transition, and every “woke” person I know who opines on the topic seems to think there are not any real risks. Suicide threat is the big hammer, and is one of the items disputed in this article.
Re suicide stats, here’s a TIM who actually did some research:
https://www.queermajority.com/currents/tdor-trans-death-and-trans-life?
iknklast,
Those are fair points, and I basically agree. I certainly think there’s a likelihood that doctors and therapists who deal with these issues can adopt a “everything looks like a nail” approach and recommend or encourage transitioning for patients for whom that might not be the right solution.
Out of curiosity: What are the major differences that you have noticed between 1981 and 2021? I wasn’t born until 1984, and, being a man, I see this stuff less.
This is going to be more a list of symptoms than a diagnosis, but here goes:
The rise of the use of “I’m not a feminist, but…” among women distancing themselves from the “wrong” kind of feminists while trying to articulate a critique of some cultural phenomenon arising from patriarchal structures. The atomization of liberal feminism has hobbled and isolated many women who would benefit from the more complete and in depth analysis that second wave feminism provides. The replacement of second wave thought with what Ophelia calls “choosey choice feminism,” that allows women to argue that prostitution and pornography are “empowering” choices that women can make, is part of this.
Trans activist pressure and pushback against women only spaces and organization, and against lesbians in particular. Noticing how many “official” Pride events covered online featured stories of opposition to lesbians celebrating as lesbians, for being “transphobic” for excluding TIMs. Even straight women are going to get the message that “excluding” TIMs is evil. The fact that women join in this pushback is an indication of how successful the discredting of second wave feminism has been.
The re-pinkification of toys for girls. For a while at least, some toys were marketed in a less gender steretypical way. I recall seeing a comparison between Lego adds from the 70’s and more recently. The older add showed a girl with standard, multi-coloured Lego; the more recent one with pink Lego. A small point, but I think an indicator of tightening aspects of gender policing.
The trans activist movement itself seems to be based upon refied, sexist stereotypes. I’ve never seen a definition of “gender” that did not fall back upon them. And who are non-binary people exactly, if there are not plain boring binary people, stupidly sitting in their gender boxes, while the brave, stunning Enbees get to be Special and Unique? Hell, I’m “gender non-conforming,” but boring old me, I just call it “personality.”
Since patriarchy is still alive and kicking, most men have it easier than most women. Patriarchy was able to blunt some of the challenges and critiques offered by second wave feminists, and at the same time discredit them as “shrill,” “strident” “extremists,” to the extent that many women will disavow being feminists while making perfectly valid feminist points, depriving themselves of the solidarity and sisterhood of connecting to a larger struggle amongst more supporters.
That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Anyone else have anything in support, or in refutation?
Another thing – the “Mommy” movement. The excessive focus on women who leave work and return to the home to be stay-home moms, to have children and do it “right”. The focus on women who don’t work (almost all of them in high-power jobs with husbands in high power jobs) because they know that the mother must be there for the kids. This has been pervasive and extremely damaging. Constant talk about the “biological clock”, and the need for women to have children has been much more prevalent than it was when I was a late teen/early adult.
Bic for women. Need I say more?
Male brain/Female brain nonsense. The idea of fuzzy lady brains has been around a long time, but now they are backing it up with poorly done studies that don’t show what they claim to show, and it has grown legs.
Others…another was in my mind, but I lost it while I was writing because I am multitasking six or eight things at a time, and my brain can only stay on so many tracks.
Hope this helps.
I would add the pressure to be “empowered”, which apparently somehow occurs when you like or want the horrible shit patriarchy dishes out. Being violently assaulted during sex, for instance. A campaign called We Can’t Consent to This looks at the large number of times a man has raped and murdered a woman, and as his defence basically said that she liked it rough, and it was just an accident. Quite a few have succeeded in convincing juries and judges of this, which shows how widespread and pernicious the idea is that women would commonly request sexual practices that lead to their own deaths.
And the proliferation of violent porn.
Yes, and how common violent porn is. The most popular porn (80+% on the biggest sites) typically includes acts of aggression against women (name calling, hair pulling, spitting, choking etc), and most of the women in this scenario are either accepting these acts neutrally or claiming to like it. Amanda Palmer released a podcast just recently celebrating porn, noting that anal tears are just a regular work hazard. I mean who wants boring love and tenderness (so vanilla) when you can “enjoy” a man choking you unconscious, spitting in your face and calling you a dirty slut, right? It’s got to the point where what I’d call a straightforward sexual attack with resulting bruises and bleeding is considered perfectly acceptable sex acts that women typically like and ask for, and that men apparently like to do.
I also cannot understate the influence of trans ideology on what makes a woman or a man. It states that non conformity with stereotypes is sufficient to make it difficult for a person to continue to be considered a member of their own sex, simply because their discomfort for the stereotypes associated with their sex is too great (that used to be foundational to feminism that femininity was not required to be a woman), now it’s enough to get you literally considered to be the other sex.
Stephanie Davies Arab points out that being considered not of your sex on account of stereotypes will have the perverse effect of making otherwise neutral children move towards their own stereotypes, in order not to be questioned on what their true sex is.
Drifting a bit from the main topic, I’d like to mention a good experience I had with a doctor in Berkeley. In the summer of 1974 I went back there for a couple of months. During the first week I felt very ill and had a high fever, so I went to see a doctor. I forget what she prescribed, but it worked. When it came to paying she didn’t charge me anything, because, she said, I was British and she was a great admirer of the National Health Service, and wished they had that in the USA. I wish I remembered her name, but I don’t.
Thank you, iknklast and arcadia. Publish this! (Maybe Ophelia will allow it as a guest post on the blog?)