god i hate being asked for my pronouns. the implicit question is “how do you WANT to be seen, how do you CHOOSE to be seen.” i didn’t want to be female and the only “choice” i made was facing up to the reality that i can’t control.
when i frown and say “she,” i’m reporting nothing more than i was born female and i refuse to hide it or run away from reality anymore. but you hear “i LIKE this gender role, i CHOSE this gender role” and it’s so insulting and so utterly counter to my lifelong struggle to make peace with the things i cannot change about myself that it makes me want to scream :)
Jacob has just turned 16 and for the past four years the teenager’s body has been put on pause. He has been on hormone blockers to stop puberty while he decides how far he is willing to go to...
I want to thank Jacob for his enormous bravery in speaking out publicly about how the “puberty blocker” (GnRH agonist) protocol and the medicalization of his identity affected him as a struggling trans teenager.
I want to note before I share the article that stories like Jacob’s are being politicized by groups like Mermaids (the primary transgender child lobbying organization in the UK) to claim that while “blockers” are “safe” and “reversible” and ought to be immediately provided to trans children who are beginning puberty, that any problems with GnRH agonists indicates that clinicians should begin cross-sex hormone treatment early. Organizations such as Mermaids and various other groups in the US frequently claim that there ought to be no formal lower age bound for the initiation of cross-sex HRT (i.e. testosterone for female children, estrogen and an anti-androgen drug for male children) and Johanna Olson-Kennedy (a pediatric gender “expert” and head of the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles) advocates regularly for female children to receive testosterone at twelve and has possibly given children as young as 8 testosterone treatment.
So in sharing this kid’s story, I want to be careful, since there is a real danger that exposing the harms of using GnRH agonists such as Lupron on gender-variant children will lead to a change in strategy where these children are merely dosed early with cross-sex hormones, a protocol that to my knowledge that we have zero long-term data on. (Children are given GnRH agonists as a means to halt precocious puberty, and in fact, these drugs are approved for this purpose, so we have some data on their effects already. As far as I know, there has been no previous medical reason to give female children testosterone or male children anti-androgens and estrogen.)
The article is behind a paywall but I am transcribing it here:
Puberty blocking drugs: ‘For the past four years I’ve been stuck as a child’
Jacob has just turned 16 and for the past four years the teenager’s body has been put on pause. He has been on hormone blockers to stop puberty while he decides how far he is willing to go to become a transgender man.
He claims that taking blockers was “the worst decision I’ve ever made”.
Jacob was born a girl but felt unhappy with his gender. “I always felt so weak and pathetic and inferior to the men.” He started using the male pronoun and imagined himself growing up and “dating a woman”.
When Jacob became one of thousands of young adolescents to be referred for puberty blockers by the NHS’s main gender clinic for children he was delighted. “It was sold to me as a miracle cure for being trans,” he claimed. He told another trans school friend about them, who started requesting blockers too.
Hormone blockers are only licensed in Britain to delay the onset of puberty for children suffering “precocious puberty” — that is, those who start developing abnormally early before the age of eight or nine.
However, their use is promoted by the transgender campaign group Mermaids as a way of giving young people “a pause button” while deciding whether to graduate to the irreversible, cross-sex hormones that will trigger the life-changing, fertility-reducing jump from one gender to another, once they reach 16. The vast majority of children who begin blockers go on to take that step.
Blockers are physically reversible, insofar as puberty will eventually restart once someone stops taking them. But no one — not even the directors of the country’s leading gender clinic, the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service [GIDS] — knows their long-term impact, for example, on the teenage brain.
After just a few consultations at the Tavistock, Jacob was referred to the endocrinology clinic at University College London Hospitals [UCLH]. He claimed the clinic did not consider his background, such as the trauma of a sexual assault at primary school, or his parents’ difficult divorce. He and his mother were soon making regular visits to London from their small village in the west of England for the injections.
“They promise you that your breasts will disappear, that your voice will be deeper, that I would look and sound more like a boy. For me, that was the best thing that could have happened,” he said.
Only, Jacob found that wasn’t what happened at all. Far from becoming one of the lads, as he’d hoped, he felt even more alienated from them as their physiques changed and Jacob’s remained the same.
“At school, other people were maturing into adults. The guys I grew up with were growing hair and growing up. For someone who’s trying to fit in as a boy, that’s not what you want.”
Jacob had always been the tallest among his friends. Now he was the shortest. When his little brother overtook him in height and strength, he found it too upsetting to be in the same room as him.
“My little brother is 18 months younger and now he has completely outgrown me. I go to school and I feel like other people are developing and I still feel like a child,” he said.
Jacob also claims he was not warned about the side-effects of the drugs.
These have included insomnia, exhaustion, fatigue, low moods, rapid weight gain which caused his skin to become covered with angry, itchy stretch marks, and a reduction in bone density. “I’d never broken a bone before [taking puberty blockers],” he says. “I’ve since broken four bones.”
“I stubbed my toe, it broke. I fell over, my wrist broke. Same with my elbow.”
As he took the blockers, Jacob’s mother watched her child become even more introverted and body-conscious. “The blockers contributed more to the self-image problems that were already there,” she said.
Jacob found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on schoolwork. If sitting GSCEs is hard enough with raging hormones, it’s even harder without them, he said. “I’m someone with the developing mind of a 12-year-old who’s doing exams designed for a 16-year-old.”
He added: “The worst part was probably the depression. There were moments when I wanted everything to stop. Weight gain and depression — for someone who is already self-conscious about their body, that’s a lethal combination.”
Clinicians who resigned from GIDS for ethical reasons said one of their main concerns was that young people were being sent down a medical pathway without proper exploration of the possibility they may simply be gay.
Jacob is no closer to understanding who he may be attracted to at 16 as he was at 12. “My friends are all talking about having sex and girlfriends, and going to prom… but I’ve never had a crush. I’ve never felt sexual attraction to anyone. I feel so out of place.”
In hindsight, Jacob finds it surprising how little his background — and the reasons why he didn’t want to be a girl — were discussed before being referred for treatment.
“They didn’t even look at my history or trauma,” claimed Jacob. “They sent a child whose circumstances and feelings they didn’t understand [for hormone treatment].”
Jacob is speaking out about his experience to warn other transgender youngsters to think twice before starting blockers.
“I was sold a miracle cure. They promised happiness with little evidence behind it. Then four years in, you realise, oh my God, I’ve no idea about the long-term effects.“
“They asked a 12-year-old to make a decision an adult would struggle with.”
“It was like, ‘here are the drugs’ and off we went. It’s a ridiculous process. It’s not gone the way they told me it was going to go.”
Mermaids, the transgender lobby group, claims that puberty blockers are safe and “completely reversible” and that not giving them to youngsters who request them can be more damaging than prescribing them.
Gendered Intelligence, another trans campaign group, claims on its website that hormone blockers give children “breathing space to ensure that they are sure about the permanent effects of cross-sex hormones, without the adverse effects of an incorrect puberty.”
Jacob is scathing about such claims. “Breathing space! It really isn’t. I’ve not had any space to breathe the last four years.“
“They sell it to you as a break from feeling like a girl, and that’s fine for the first few months but as soon as everyone else around you starts developing it becomes ‘spot the transgender kid’, which is so easy because you’re stuck as a child.“
“If anything, I’ve been more depressed than before. My thyroid is messed up. I’m hungry all the time. I have no idea how my breast tissue will develop.”
He claimed: “They push and push you on to this one-way train you’re not allowed off.”
Asked whether it was misleading to promote puberty blockers as a “pause button”, a spokesman for Mermaids said: “Mermaids cannot comment on clinical cases as we are not involved in any individuals’ medical pathways.”
“We offer young people and their families information, support and access to others in similar circumstances.”
Gendered Intelligence declined to respond.
Jacob claims the main focus of his treatment at the Tavistock was on the milestones of transition — “how far you’re willing to go” — rather than discussion of the consequences.
He claims: “My Tavistock worker was saying to me, ‘once you have the testosterone, you’ll be a boy’.
“But it shouldn’t be about milestones. Being trans is how you think; it should not be about how far down the line you’re will to go.”
A spokesman for Tavistock said: “All young people considering the puberty blocker or cross-sex hormones are repeatedly made aware of the known potential impacts of these medical interventions… as well as the areas of impact that remain to some extent unknown.“
“The information that we give patients about the blockers makes it clear that they may get tired and experience low mood. We explain to young people that hormones give us energy and drive, not just our sex drive but our overall ‘get up and go’.
“We also emphasised to them routinely that while on the blocker they would stay early puberty whilst their peers developed. This is a routine part of the discussion.“
“In the end the decision to go on blockers is a balancing act weighing up these factors against the perceived distress of undergoing puberty in the ‘wrong’ gender and developing unwanted and potential hard to change secondary sexual characteristics.”
Jacob decided to come off the drugs on turning 16. He began to feel the benefits almost overnight.
“I grew taller, I lost weight, I felt livelier. It was like getting the poison out of my system,” he said. He will now wait until reaching 18 before making any big decisions.“I’m just fed up with all of it. I’ve felt like a guinea pig from day one. [Blockers] only made my life more complicated and it was pretty complicated already.”
He added: “I’ll be 18 in two years, but for the past four years I’ve been stuck as a child. Blockers took away the chance I had to grow up with other kids. Now I want to give my body a break.”
I’ve never seen anyone talk about this aspect. I’m only 17, but after being on puberty blockers for a few years and having started puberty late, I feel like I’m stuck in a child’s body. I go to uni, I have a job, I have semi-adult responsibilities, but my physical and emotional growth was frozen for years. The whole time I took Lupron I never experienced any sexual attraction, and only now that I’ve stopped have I been able to discover that I was a lesbian.
I don’t know if any of my problems are due to it, but it definitely didn’t help me. Once I got my blockers and testosterone scripts, I was no longer able to obsess over them, and that void was filled by an eating disorder. The last few years have been filled with increasing mental illness. The day after my first testosterone shot, I was in hospital for self harm. I justified holding on to my self hatred because I blamed it on dysphoria- and you’re not allowed to challenge dysphoria, because “it’s just a part of your self”.
I am autistic so my social skills aren’t the best anyway, but I avoided so many people and situations and opportunities while I was trans identified that I’m so mentally and emotionally underdeveloped, I just feel like a child thrown in to the deep end of life.
I thought it was the only thing that could make me feel better. I thought my body was the problem and that nothing could be okay without changing it. But I was just clinging onto that as a solution for my mental illness, because it’s so hard to accept that maybe there’s no way to make it better.
People tell me I should have thought more, that it’s my fault for being too impulsive, even though it was 2 years from identifying as trans to actually getting blockers.
It wasn’t my fault. I was 14. I was just a kid. I shouldn’t have been able to make that decision.
And now, still, I’m stuck being just a kid, because of what I was allowed to do in early teenage-hood. It was not my fault.
I want to thank you for speaking about this because it’s rare to hear from people who have actually been on puberty blocking medications for any length of time. I think a lot of us who are dysphoric really feel “stuck” and underdeveloped in a lot of ways– my detransitioned girlfriend, who started passing in her late teens and began her transition in her early twenties, often feels like she has no idea how to live as an adult woman, and I, although I never transitioned, never developed a coherent gender or sexual self-concept until I was in my late twenties and still feel completely lost in how to navigate a social reality most people begin learning about when they’re twelve– but there is something extremely pernicious about this “frozen”, “feral”, “undeveloped” kind of state being formally medicalized in this way. You were just a kid, and you still are, and I’m sorry that this is what people around you thought you were worth when you were struggling with growing into a world full of people and what that means for you.
I’m frankly startled at how aware you and Jacob from the story are about what is going on (I certainly wasn’t at your age) and while I think that’s a good thing it’s got to be excruciating. Do you know of anybody else who has had a similar experience to you, are you talking with others? I hope you all can find each other and work things out. This is such a unique and scary experience that an older cohort of detransitioned and similar-type trans-experience people has not really had to deal with. (Anyone else with similar experiences can feel free to use the notes of this post to find each other, if you aren’t already connected.)
Im so glad to see this being talked about, because this is exactly how I feel about what happened to me, and I’ve felt so alone in this situation. Im 16, I got my puberty blocker implant at 12 years old, and the implant is still in my arm. I don’t know what it actually is to be honest, I’m praying it isn’t lupron but they never told me. The doctor said it was 100% reversible and caused no negative effects, but as I’ve read more about the subject I’m terrified for the future, and I’m going to try to get it out as soon as I can.
All of the negative effects mentioned in the article are absolutely true- insomnia. depression, weight gain, fatigue, etc. and I’ve noticed it. I feel disgusted with myself for doing this to myself, but also disgusted that they’re doing this to young children, blatantly lying to us about the effects. I’ve been on them for so many years I forgot what it feels like to just be normal. I don’t relate to any of my peers, male or female, and I haven’t had a crush on anyone since 6th grade.
I wish I had been given any other option, any type of therapy to deal with my dysphoria. I wish that the first message impressionable 12 year old me got when I told my therapist I fucking hated my body wasn’t “Obviously you’re really a man! Surgically altering your body is the only way to fix yourself or you’re going to kill yourself eventually!” But as long as trans activists keep pushing to streamline kids into the medical process of transition as fast as possible, this shit is gonna keep happening.
Anyway.. to the people in this thread who had similar experiences to me, if you wanna talk I’m always open. We don’t need to be silent just because sharing our reality isn’t convenient for people supporting trans medicalization
It looks like there are several different drugs delivered in implant form. One is the same drug as Lupron (leuprolide or leuprorelin acetate, the implant name is trademarked under the name Viadur) and the other is called histrelin acetate (brand name Vantas or Supprelin LA for the implant). Goserelin is also used as an implant but it looks like they’re in pellet form and provided short term, and I don’t think it’s commonly used in pediatric transition medicine in implant form (it’s typically provided as injections). The leuprolide implant and the histrelin implant seem to be very similar so I don’t think you would be able to tell without access to your medical records. If the doctor you went to has an online portal for making appointments and seeing your appointment records then it’s very easy to get a hold of your medical history and records– see if you can set one up or get access to it somehow.
I’m not sure why it’s still in your body because the implant’s intended to last only one year. Did they replace it ever? If not that’s not even standard practice to just leave it floating around in there, and I would probably seek to have it removed no matter what.
I’m sorry to hear you went through this. Keep talking, don’t let anyone silence you.
Not to derail or anything, but lupron messed up my body a good bit even though I’ve only been on it short term for post-surgery healing (due to chronic health stuff). I wasn’t even allowed to have the surgery till sixteen specifically due to concerns about how lupron could affect bone formation if I had the surgery any earlier. I CAN NOT imagine the damage it could cause long-term on people who are not past their primary growth phase yet.
Not to get too personal on this blog but I need somewhere to put my thoughts that's public enough that I'll remember them come tomorrow or the next. But I feel like I'm losing the plot. I'm very disconnected from myself lately. My thoughts and actions and body and hands, none of these feel like me or mine. I look down at myself and in mirrors and see a stranger. I can feel myself unravelling and becoming more and more unhinged with each passing hour or second or day. Who am I? What am I? Where do I stand in this world and do I deserve to stand at all?
It feels like my entire past has been building up to this moment; one bad choice after another, coalescing into a cliff that topples and buries me whole. I don't feel real or alive or human. I'm a woman caught in a body that she chose to make into a man.
I'll post some YouTube videos. I've found it has an immediate benefit to see someone like me, and hear her voice, and know she's deliberately making herself visible to me.
Detransition often leads to dissociation. I've experienced the confusion, panic, and hopelessness that you're describing. Gender becomes too large for us, so letting go of it empties us. We lose our strongest motivating force, as we reject our gendered identity. It's like coming unmoored in a storm, given how we've used gender as a principle to organize self and society.
Finding solid ground involves developing new projects and community. I drew on @female-husband 's example and put myself out there, in local spaces, to find new connections. I also invested more in another part of my identity, enjoying an activity I loved. Very slowly, I found my sea legs.
It's horrible to feel dissociation, and I hope that this representation helps in the short term:
An earlier detransitioner, Crashchaoscats, still keeps a lot of her videos on YouTube, and her essays online. She went through many stages of reconciliation. If you need a discussion of coping with dysphoria and distress, Crashchaoscats is good. She is honest, searching, and resilient, accepting, and hopeful in tone. She's both analytical and expressive.
And please find some time today to be in the natural world, even to be in moving air and natural light for a few minutes. Best of all to move and pay attention to how it feels, physically. Sweat if you can: make it so you can't ignore your heart, your lungs, your constant exchange of energy and matter, down to a molecular level, with the world.
To be clear, the idea of a “TERF/TWEF” ‘trans exclusionary radical feminist’ and ‘transwoman exclusionary feminist’ is a false idea, originating from a lack of understanding of radical feminist discourse. It’s also aimed at trans people, people who are not radical feminists, lesbian feminists who don’t align with radical feminism nor see themselves as radical feminists, and lesbians for being unapologetically same-sex loving.
Radical feminists don’t exclude trans people because well, they recognise trans female people (transmen and non-binary female people) as part of their discourse and movements. Radical feminists recognise that a trans female person (transman) will still require access to abortion for example and male people can’t ‘identify’ into that. Across centuries of diverse female existence from ‘lesbian men’ ‘female husbands’ ‘transmen’ radical feminists look at the issues we face due to the nature of our bodies. You also have to understand that transmen and transwomen are different and there are also different issues underlining transition and dysphoria.
Radical feminism looks at the root issue of women’s oppression, our reproductive possibilities and female bodies (not ‘female identity’) because without male-female sexual difference, heterosexual-patriarchy would not even exist. As Angela Davis said “Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’”
To be a female person comes with a series of specific oppressions and women do not identify into our oppressions, you can’t identify into someone else’s body and oppressions. Radical feminism is concerned with female specific oppressions so it’s not even possible to exclude trans male people (transwomen) since radical feminism is rooted in the material basis of being female, that physical body which from birth faces gross oppressions because of its material substances/make-up/forms/.
We have to be able to name male-female materiality because this is the basis of sexism, misogyny and homophobia. All female persons need to know that femininity=/=being a woman and that you don’t need to conform to any expectations. Lesbians, all women, need to know that you can do ‘woman’ different and this these differences do not then make you a man.
This is not “reducing women to their genitals”:
a) a vulva is not a stand alone organ, ‘female’ is an entire body + socialisation (into femininity and heterosexuality), it’s an *experience of being born into a particular body;
b) we have to understand why and how women came to be oppressed under patriarchy, and we have to be able to make a class analysis to work to liberate all female people;
c) what else should we base being a woman on? Sexist stereotypes? A submissive femininity (to a dominant masculinity) which presents beauty and appeal to the male gaze as the ideal of who we are and what women should be? Pretty human adornments and objects for men to look at and ideally, posses? In this way, butch lesbians/lesbians would cease to be women. Also, femininity is culture specific, you can’t essentialise *all it’s qualities into one social and cultural framework. It has broad similarities but it’s not a set of universal qualities. Should a desire for motherhood and ‘gentleness’ define being a woman?
Women are oppressed because we are female not because we are feminine. Heterosexually constructed, feminine ideals are used to restrict women “women don’t do A or B, how will you find a man to marry you/be a lady and don’t-” et cetera.
What does “female aligned” even mean? You like dresses? And if I don’t? You feel a certain way? Really? You think there is some essential, universal quality of feeling like a female person? No. We all feel different. Those who claim to feel different and therefore to not be female? What makes people think they are feeling any unease that no woman has ever felt before? If ‘female’ is an identity, can all women across the world just identify out of sexist, misogynist oppressions? Should we all identify as men to escape patriarchy? Those women who don’t/can’t, do they just feel an alignment with being oppressed?
I’m not “brown skin aligned” I *am brown skinned, I *am female, you are just born this way. Doctors don’t assign you a sex unless you are intersex and intersex people are still male-female. There is no 3rd sex as in a fundamentally different set of sex characteristics, just a fundamentally different form of said characteristics.
Maybe you think it’s ‘mean’ to “exclude” dysphoric male people and male people who don’t embody masculine sex stereotypes but women’s backs are not a bridge (Donna Kate Rushin). We are not bridges! No one said “don’t organise and you can’t draw from feminism, you don’t deserve an activism/discourse to cater to your issues.”
Male people only derail us, distract us, dilute our critiques of femininity, demand we centre them, their issues and wants, and demand we talk less of our material natures (like menstruation) which are a basis for the oppressions women/female people face. Women are not social-justice mothers and mammies, we are allowed to focus on ourselves. We have a hard enough time of organising as is.
Also note that you can be lesbophobic, erase lesbian women’s pain, spew violent language, just add TERF and you’re good! It’s also a handy way to mark women and shut them down. TERF is the new “Witch!”
And saying you are “gender-critical” and somewhat of a half-assed radical feminist, (also, gender-critical=/=radical feminist) is not an excuse to call trans people “freaks” FFS. You are also saying lesbians are freaks, you aren’t helping anyone, I see you. Stop that sh.
[edit] I’m not really a radical feminist myself but I think (I know) that the basis of feminism must be radicalism or it’s essentially useless to all women’s liberation. Lesbian feminism also looks at the material nature of oppression (at least it should) so it greatly intersects with radical feminism.
This whole post is deeply gaslighting of the communities of women on here that have spoken against transmisogynist discourse, including a lot of the stuff mentioned here.
The whole thing comes from a deeply egocentric method of understanding gender that is totally unwilling to listen to the histories and empirical evidences that trans women have been presenting on the specifically misogynist violences they face. On top of that, to say that it is all lesbophobia completely erases the fact that most of the women who have been discussing these issues have also been lesbians.
It also deeply misses the point of materialist feminism, which says that “identification” is an unchosen process of Becoming in a gendered world, not something someone decides to be. If you accept that, then you must accept that trans women never chose to be women, but were conditioned to become women just like all cis women. Sure, it happens in some differing ways… but it carries the same principles: trans women are trained to be sexually, physically, emotionally, and economically subservient to men, trans women are trained to be the punching bags and scapegoats, trans women are trained to hate their bodies and do whatever they can to change them, trans women are trained to allow all others to define who they are but themselves, trans women are trained to view themselves as the problem and not men, trans women are trained to internalize the sexual, phyiscal, emotional, and psychological abuse they face (ie: “this is just what I deserve” etc).
Trans women’s agency in bodily autonomy is stripped. Trans women are forced into sex work at the highest rates per demographic. Trans women face the highest rates of sexual and physical assault and abuse per gender demographic. Trans women face the highest rates of economic violence (homelessness, unemployment) per gender demographic. Trans women experience the highest rates of suicide and murder per gender demographic, and the lowest life expectancy. These are not things reserved for men.
And of course, when you dig into all of this, most of these women are women of color all over the world.
The statistics are all there, easy to be found if you truly open your heart and mind to the possibility that your understanding of what creates womanhood is false. Not your personal experience, of course, but your paradigm. There are plenty of radical feminist/lesbian theories on how gender forms and functions that do NOT exclude trans women from the experiences of womanhood, including sex-based oppression.
To answer your question on how we define womanhood? We have to define all of gender. It is a power-based system used to extract value/resource from other bodies. It varies a great deal amongst women in order to keep the system afloat.
White upper middle class women can fulfill the roll of “progressivism” and become successful, independent women to further male goals. White middle class women are prime mothers and lower wage white collar workers. Poor white women are lesser mothers who are lower wage working class workers. Women of color are experimental bodies on which to test reproductive tech. Women of color are undesirable mothers who create more bodies of color to become the punching bag for white supremacy. Women of color are the caretaking labor for white women’s children so they can pursue progressive independent lifestyles. Women of color are bodies that can fulfill fetish outbursts of typically white men (but also women). Trans women are bodies that can take the brunt of patriarchal violence without objection (most trans women are already cast out from families etc). Trans women fulfill the fetish outbursts of men and cis women (sex work, sexual fetish violence, etc). Trans women are the ideological scapegoats of patriarchy (ie: trans women are the TRUE male invaders). Lesbians are also the ideological scapegoats of patriarchy. Etc. The list goes on.
But when you get down to it, you see that there is SO MUCH MORE that patriarchy can extract from a woman than you defined. The only thing that defines a woman is the person, who by some yet unknown process, begins to identify with a gendered position, typically by the age of 18 mos, often sooner, and then internalizes all the messages inherent. For men, that’s, “Go extract value, labor, and resource from women!” For women, that’s, “You are just an object to the extractor - let them take it!” All women experience this, including trans women. And trans women can have a whole lot of “use value” for patriarchy - there is a lot that men and cis women can get out of abusing/oppressing trans women.
Anyway, that’s a short version. Here are some statistical links to read: x x x x x (warning for some transmisogynist language/paradigm in some of the links)
Here are a couple links I encourage people to read. The first is an account by on old Radical feminist on the history of TWEFism in the women’s lib movement. The second is a theoretical post that’s a little edgy maybe but also breaks down how socialization works for trans women. There‘s plenty more where that all came from.
I encourage people to go out and learn differing theories here because it’s vitally important that we open ourselves to the experiences and theories that trans women are offering. It will only strengthen our communities as women and help heal the damage of patriarchy.
And there were some really basic questions that you didn’t answer. Like what makes someone a woman?
Sex based oppression is done to female people because they are female. Sex based oppression is not the only oppression, but female people are allowed to have a movement just to ourselves.
This is not denying other oppression, it is saying that feminism is about female oppression.
"Trans women are forced into sex work at the highest rates per demographic. Trans women face the highest rates of sexual and physical assault and abuse per gender demographic. Trans women face the highest rates of economic violence (homelessness, unemployment) per gender demographic. Trans women experience the highest rates of suicide and murder per gender demographic, and the lowest life expectancy. These are not things reserved for men." None of this is true.
Does this person know how many teenage girls and women are forced into rape trades/sex trafficking every week, globally? Do you understand what internally displaced people go through? What the poorest people face as groups, across the world? These are the false statements organised in American media, supported by general ignorance and inabilities to fact-check.
No one said (male) trans people don’t face oppression? Whatever these various struggles and oppressions, however adverse and brutal, they are specific to trans people-homosexual people, issues of poverty and so on - these conditions of oppression may intersect but not on the basis of trans males being female. Whatever male trans people face, they are not female. We are all always becoming. Trans people don't choose anything, that's not the issue, the issue is how you characterise feminist movements and how male trans people characterise their sense of self as "being a woman" and ‘being female’. Trans people who are male don’t experience oppressions based on being female because they are simply not and will never be female. Trans and queer discourses attempt to gaslight girls and women in phenomenal ways! Like tarotable said, you have not engaged with what I said.
To all the transmen in denial of biological sex. Please don’t get so far into denial that you stop going to the gynecologist.
I know that dysphoria sucks, none the less going to a doctor that forces you to discuss that reality. Testosterone increases the likely hood of uterine cancer and dfab-specific cancers, because they aren’t made to handle certain levels of testosterone.
In addition, please note that a double mastectomy doesn't erase *all possibilities of breast cancer, specifically if it's in your family history. Many of you may face expulsion from your family rejection and homelessness but ask any family members if you can. You may still be at a specific risk.
I love your TERF/TWERF is the new Witch post. You're really well-spoken and just thought I'd let you know I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!
Hello! Sorry this is so late! I just logged out of all social media because I needed to reorientate myself. Thanks a lot. It’s one of the most liked posts and I am really glad I wrote it.
FtMs are not giving themselves double mastectomies and metoidioplasties and phalloplasties and hysterectomies. Surgeons are. Doctors and therapists are signing off on it. Insurance companies are approving these as medical necessities. Parents are helping their kids get these surgeries. In some places, the State pays for these surgeries. Hospitals are accommodating patients for these surgeries, nurses are attending to patients who get these surgeries.
When there are complications? When there are blood clots or strictures or fistulas, who left the scars? Who did their job badly? This is not “self harm.” It is medical abuse.
Psychologists are diagnosing the condition that allows their patients to be eligible for surgery and hormone replacement therapy. Boards of clinicians are making decisions about the future of care for dysphoric people. Someone is out there teaching and licensing the people who give these diagnoses. Plenty of people are out there making money off “informed consent.”
When someone takes a prescription medication in the prescribed dosage as instructed by a doctor, they are not “self-harming” with testosterone. They are following a doctor’s orders. They are taking a medication prescribed by a doctor based on a diagnosis that some psychologist gave them.
When there is harm done (BY WHO?) to the patient during medical transition, this is medical abuse: there are virtually no studies on the long-term impacts of testosterone on our health; they treat us as less than lab rats not worthy to even keep data on. They use us for experimental surgery and do their jobs so poorly that some patients have brought lawsuits against them, for example Dr. Curtis Crane.
Butch women of past generations didn’t do this because it wasn’t offered, wasn’t pushed, wasn’t made into the only option, wasn’t paid for by insurance, wasn’t something you could walk into a planned parenthood and receive, wasn’t encouraged by the lgbt community, wasn’t available.
I recently saw someone asking if trans-related surgeries should be considered “self-mutilation.” It is misguided, victim-blaming, and willfully ignorant to say yes. There is a huge, complex web of people who created this situation we are now in, with doctors who are making a living solely from doing transition-related double mastectomies, one after another, every day, like a factory, giving out hormones after a 15-minute discussion and a single page printout of information, and leaving us to fend for ourselves when something goes wrong or doesn’t work out in the process of transition.
With most any other feminist issue you will find not just willingness to name the agent, but a direction of approach that focuses on naming the agent and placing the spotlight on the perpetrators. In other feminist issues, it’s much more emphasized to dig out and shed light on the underlying institutions that created and perpetuate the problem. But not this one. When it comes to females who transition, radical feminists love to place focus on the victim herself as being problematic. I think it’s appalling that radical feminists can name trans ideology as a cult, but turn around and make fun of women and girls who get caught up in it. And I think it’s purposefully provocative and obscuring to use language like “self-mutilation” in reference to life-changing surgeries that are simultaneously named as patriarchal creations to subjugate women. It’d be nice if more women could look up from that headless photo online used without permission long enough to see the big picture here.
Please stop fixating on the victims you claim to defend with objectifying, dehumanizing language and look instead to the plethora of perpetrators that can be named and that feminists could take action against.
Give those of us with a trans history the respect of listening to our perspective before using us as a talking point. Stop ogling sensationalist, circular, dime-a-dozen shock articles/blog posts/etc and thinking it’s doing anything to help the women who are harmed by medical transition. Name the agent. Name the perpetrators.
Reconciling/reconciled: Catch-all term for detransitioned and reidentified people, also refers to the process of reconciling with former identity
Detransitioned: Someone who transitioned physically, with hormones, surgery, or both, before reconciling
Reidentified: Someone who did not physically transition before reconciling
Retransition: Some people prefer this term over detransition, because they don’t view their reconciling as “going back” but as continuing their transition in a different direction. Also refers to transition reversal procedures such as genital reconstruction or taking hormones to counteract the effects of HRT.
telling butch lesbians to “be ugly” when rejecting feminine beauty standards is nice but butchness is something that lesbians find beautiful and desirable so maybe instead of telling butches to accept that they are ugly in a het world tell them that they dont have to live in a world where they’re considered ugly. you dont have to accept being ugly bc you arent ugly to us.
Oromo people all over the world are crossing their hands above their heads as a sign of their solidarity and support. This is a peaceful method of protesting and it is being done by the Oromo protestors in Ethiopia (Oromia). This, is not violent and this should not be met with live ammunition and brutality by the police.
The sad reality is that 5 of Ethiopia’s 7 medals have been won by Oromo athletes, whose people back home are being slaughtered. Feyisa Lilesa showed his solidarity to his Oromo family knowing he risked being killed or imprisoned once he went back to Ethiopia. Never forget this man’s courage. Never.
why does israel destroy the olive trees? (i hope i don't come off as offensive or antagonistic i'm just honestly curious) (i'm on anon because i'm nervous and anxious about asking questions not because i want to start an argument or something)
hi you’re okay anon i know you’re not being antagonistic it’s alright. israeli settlers and idf soldiers burn down and uproot olive trees both as literal violence and cultural violence. olive farming is a major industry of palestine and provides for tens of thousands of families. these trees are ancient, they are beloved by their communities and have been taken care of for generations. it takes at least 20 years for olive trees to bear fruit!!! although farmers plant new olive trees, this has been going on for over forty years and is systematic - the livelihood of these communities cannot be regrown overnight.
Another reason they destroy olive trees is purely for expansion and land grab reasons. Often, most Israeli settlements are built on village lands. If it’s not for settlement reasons, then it’s usually to expand the wall. You get the idea.
not only do they uproot and burn Olive trees, a native plant to the land, but they have planted thousands of Conifers, which are non native to the land and actually native to Europe.
Israel explains that conifers were planted because they are “fast growing plants” and therefore give “life” to an “empty” land. I have also heard that they were planted to make the settlers feel “at home”.
Israel’s way of making the dessert “bloom” is literally uprooting Indigenous life and replacing it. People and plants.
Conifers are catagorized as “invasive species”, their ability to spread fast damages native environments, as its the case with New Zealand, South Africa and Palestine.
everytime you think “gender is fluid” or “gender is a spectrum”, make sure to follow it up with: “for who?”
then think about young girls who are taken to ISIS camps to become their brides and be raped. and then think about female fetuses in China who are aborted.
what does gender mean in those contexts - in those countries? is gender something you can explore, bend, twist for those people? if the answer is no, why not?
how is gender used in those countries?
is gender the power being enforced on the people, or is it something which the individual person actually has any control over?
In the days of old, Black sexual perversions went like this: Black men were all rapists, and Black women were all ‘whores.’ Our criminal justice system played a fundamental role in the sexual objectification of Black women. It decriminalized sexual assault against them, both during enslavement and in practice long after. Instead of punishing their attackers, society engaged in victim-blaming on a massive scale. Then as now, Black women were supposedly hypersexual to the point that they were always sexually available–they were essentially unrapeable. They could not be victims, girlfriends or wives, and certainly not ‘true’ women. Their bodies belonged to whomever wanted to violate them, despite persistent messaging that Black women were also inherently undesireable.
