Bindel V Trannies - The Rematch
This is a guest post by Sarah Brown
Back in October, David T wrote about a row which had erupted between LGB campaigning organisation, Stonewall, and some members of the UK transgender community, as well as some of our LGB and straight supporters and allies, over the nomination of Julie Bindel for Stonewall’s “Journalist of the Year Award”.
It may be worth taking a few moments to clarify why many trans people are so upset with Bindel. To hear her side of the story, one would imagine it was all about her 2004 article, “Gender Benders Beware”, where she pandered to negative stereotypes about us, suggested that we were all gay people who transition to avoid the social stigma of a same-sex relationship, and said that a world inhabited by transsexual people would “look like the set of grease”. She would also, I suspect, point out that she apologised for the tone of that article, and that she is only interested in honest debate.
The view from the other side of the “debate” is rather different. I am a trans woman (i.e. I transitioned from male to female) who is also a lesbian, and was one of the many people who chipped-in to make what ended up being the UK’s largest ever trans-rights demo, when around 150 protesters gathered outside Stonewall’s awards ceremony on a cold November evening, happen. My objection to Bindel has nothing to do with her pandering to negative stereotypes about me and people like me. Her 2004 article was ludicrous, it’s true. Transsexual people are not the stereotypes she portrays us as, we come in all “shapes and sizes”, just like the rest of society (girly girls and macho men, to butch lesbian trans women and effeminate gay trans men who sometimes enjoy a bit of drag).
The suggestion that we transition to avoid being seen as homosexual is also ridiculous. While it’s true in Iran, there are cases of people using gender transition as a last, desperate way to avoid execution for being gay, the UK is not Iran. Being visibly transsexual, a stage that most of us occupy for at least the early part of transition, if not forever in some cases, is to invite constant stares and threats of violence to a point where it’s a struggle to avoid having ones spirit crushed. It also ignores the rather inconvenient (for Bindel) point that after transition, transsexual people identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual in a far greater proportion than the rest of society.
No, where I have a real problem with Bindel’s work is with the stuff she hasn’t apologised for, much of which is far nastier than merely insulting a whole group of people in a national newspaper. Listening to Bindel talk about this (and she does, at length), one may form the impression that she’s invented her own version of transsexualism in her head. One where instead of us begging and fighting with doctors and NHS bureaucrats to obtain the one thing that helps end the pain of gender dysphoria, she pictures gender psychiatrists luring unsuspecting effeminate men and butch women into gender clinics. There they use their psychiatric mind-control powers, presumably accompanied by glowing, spinning eyeballs, to talk us in to having our willies or breasts “cut off”. This is because, so Bindel’s argument goes, transsexualism was invented in the 1950s by psychiatrists, motivated by a desire to make everyone conform to culturally oppressive gender roles. Since Bindel suggests gender (and here she seems to lose the distinction between gender identity and gender roles - a distinction which is crucially important for trans people) is simply a tool to oppress women, it follows that transsexualism is a medical plot to keep women down, presumably by maintaining a nice wide gap between “male” and “female” gender roles.
This too is ludicrous. For a start, the numbers involved simply do not add up - in the grand scheme of things there are hardly any transsexual people (5000 transsexual people in the UK is a figure that’s often quoted, although most agree this is an underestimate) , and far from being instrumental in enforcing gender barriers in society, we’re usually presented as figures of fun or contempt, sad pathetic people who are “fooling” nobody, or subversive deceivers who “trick” unsuspecting men into having “gay” sex. We have about as much influence on gender norms as a cork bobbing about in the wake of a supertanker has on its course.
But Bindel doesn’t stop there. She seems to be on a crusade to end this horrible conspiracy. In the summer of 2007, I sat in the audience for BBC Radio 4’s “Hecklers” debate in which Bindel took on four panellists in order to argue that “sex change surgery is unnecessary mutilation”. I listened to her paint a picture suggesting people like me are pathetic Emily Howard type characters, obsessed with girly shopping trips for blouses in pastel shades, and also say that “sex change surgery should not be available”, and that we “should be offered talking cures instead”.
That’s getting to the nub of why I, and many others, find Bindel’s views and agenda so objectionable; trans people represent an inconvenient diversion on the road to her genderless utopia (where everyone presumably “does gender” in the one true approved, vaguely masculine flavour of largely chaste grey androgyny). If we really are who we say we are, then we blow some of her vital assumptions about gender out of the water. Therefore we cannot be who we say we are - we must be deluded, the victims of a medical conspiracy.
And we have to go, for the good of the revolution.
While trolling the Facebook group set up to talk about the Stonewall protest, Bindel said that she did not support reparative therapy (the type of treatment favoured by the US religious right to “deprogram” LGBT people):
“I can confirm that I am strongly against ‘reparative’ or ‘aversion’ therapy, full stop.”
…but she refused to clarify her oft-stated position that we should not be allowed to have access to medical transition, that we just need to be talked out of it. I think she’s playing word games. She doesn’t “support” reparative therapy because she doesn’t believe what she’s advocating is reparative therapy; it’s not a duck, even though it quacks, waddles and can be found scrounging bread on urban riverbanks the length of the country.
Bindel likes to play the victim, to protest that everyone is harassing her. Presumably she believes that our programming by the evil psychiatrists is so pervasive that we can’t recognise her hand of friendship for what it is, and so bite it instead. She wants us to understand that she just wants to have a “debate”.
And that’s my second big problem with Bindel - the way she seems to think we owe her. She assumes our audience and participation in a debate she wants to have about whether we should be allowed to exist. It’s an academic exercise for her, but for us, this “debate” is about our lives. There seems to be absolutely nothing in it for us; we get to fight a rearguard action, justifying our right to exist, with the best possible (and extremely unlikely) outcome being that she stops being quite so gratuitously offensive towards us in her Guardian columns. Big deal.
One of the complaints many feminists have about the way men tend to behave towards women is the assumption that women will just drop what we’re doing to follow the agenda of a particular man who might be, for example, trying to chat us up (you were having a bad day, reading a book, just wanting to be left alone, none of that matters, can I pester you to have a cup of coffee with me? Oh, you’re a lesbian! Can I watch?) Bindel’s behaviour here is tragically ironic.
Even then, some of us decided to call her bluff. A forum was created in the Facebook group for this “debate” to happen in. A few of us asked questions. One woman asked:
1) Do you believe that ’sex change surgery is unnecessary mutilation’?
2) can a trans woman be (a) a woman; (b) a lesbian; (c) a feminist?
3) can/should we be ‘cured’ with talking therapies?
4) should we be denied hormone treatment?
In the same thread, I posted my questions:
1) Have you attempted to educate yourself on contemporary trans feminist thought by, e.g. reading Whipping Girl?
2) Do you know how easy oestrogen is to get without a prescription, and that there are non-UK surgeons who will operate with few questions asked?
3) What do you think of legal regimes which deny women legitimate routes to obtaining healthcare, thus leaving people such as back-street abortionists as the only route available?
Bindel did not respond to anyone. So much for her “debate”.
After the protest, she wrote an article in the Guardian where she declared she wanted nothing to do with other parts of the LGBT community. In it, she conflated queer people with those into “kinky sex” and said:
I for one do not wish to be lumped in with an ever-increasing list of folk defined by “odd” sexual habits or characteristics. Shall we just start with A and work our way through the alphabet? A, androgynous, b, bisexual, c, cat-fancying d, devil worshipping. Where will it ever end?
I just want to be left alone. I am not in your gang, I did not ask to be, so please don’t tell me I am one of yours, and then tell me off for offending your orthodoxy. Let’s have an amicable split, instead of ending up carrying on like The Judean People’s Front.
So imagine our surprise when, a few days later, trans campaigning group, Press for Change (who, despite having met with Stonewall’s supremo, Ben Summerskill to talk about the Bindel nomination were completely silent about the protest, and actively hostile towards some of those of us involved in making it work) announce that they are to be hosting “The Transsexual Debate” in Manchester on the 5th of December, between renowned US trans feminist academic, Susan Stryker, and “Stonewall award nominated journalist, Julie Bindel”.
Many of us can’t quite believe PfC are doing the very thing we were protesting about - giving Bindel the credibility that comes from being nominated for Stonewall’s Journalist of the Year and giving her another platform from which to conduct her “trannies as roadkill” agenda. Her opponent, Susan Stryker, is a formidable figure and I have absolutely no doubt that she will eviscerate Bindel’s position, but that doesn’t really matter. The mainstream press all but ignored the UK’s largest ever trans rights demo on the 6th of November outside the V&A, with the exception of Julie Bindel, writing in the Guardian. I’m not a betting woman, but if I were I’d put money on the only mainstream report on “The Transsexual Debate” being by Julie Bindel, in the Guardian.
One doesn’t have to read between the lines very much to realise that PfC feel that their noses have been put out of joint by the grass roots demo against Stonewall. There have been suggestions that they see the whole thing as some sort of a power grab against them (it’s not - we wanted their help, but they ignored us). I understand that within PfC circles, those of us involved are now being referred to as “those sort of people”. What comes as a shock is that they’re apparently willing to help such an unrepentant transphobe like Bindel push her agenda to reassert their dominance.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Comments
| 19 November 2008, 2:52 pm |
The news that Julie Bindel is a bigot is hardly news to straight men. It’s just unfortunate that it took her bigotry against another group for anyone to really notice.
P.
| 19 November 2008, 3:10 pm |
So the transsexual community are split on the issue then?
| 19 November 2008, 3:14 pm |
Conor - some are portraying it as a disconnect between grass-roots and queer-identified trans people, and the trans “aristocracy” of PfC and co, who it is felt have become out of touch.
| 19 November 2008, 3:16 pm |
I read something similar on Wochner about anger over the crapness of the LGBT ‘aristocracy’ over the failures over Prop 8.
| 19 November 2008, 3:28 pm |
Aristocracy seems to be a good comparison, fear of rocking the boat and losing their position.
Informative post. Thanks.
| 19 November 2008, 3:29 pm |
I don’t want to derail the thread, but I just thought that one paragraph was specially excellent and I wanted to copy it here, slightly modified:
And that’s my second big problem with x - the way she seems to think we owe her. She assumes our audience and participation in a debate she wants to have about whether Israel should be allowed to exist. It’s an academic exercise for her, but for us, this “debate” is about our lives. There seems to be absolutely nothing in it for us; we get to fight a rearguard action, justifying Israel’s right to exist, with the best possible (and extremely unlikely) outcome being that she stops being quite so gratuitously offensive towards Israel in her Guardian columns. Big deal.
The same problem, the same solution: don’t give the haters respectability.
| 19 November 2008, 3:35 pm |
I wouldn’t say the trans community are ’split’. Its simply the organisations that apparently represent us are falling to listen to the grass roots community (as Sarah pointed out). We’re all agreed that Bindel is a bigot - obviously - but Stonewall advocating her with the nomination is the thing. With the exception of Stonewall themselves (by nominating her), no organisations have actively “supported” their views - there’s just been an eerie silence and a lack of understanding of why this whole issue is important to us (hence the protest).
The only organisation who seemed to stand up against S’onewall’s nomination has been the Met Police.
| 19 November 2008, 4:50 pm |
I think it is more of a “disconnect” between the existing organisations and the grass roots, rather than a true split. Generated, I feel, by their lack of communication and interaction with us.
Picking up a point Paul Molony made in an earlier comment. Her bigotry in respect of the straight male has been known about for a long time, and has been balanced by columns in the mainstream press by straight male journalists. Trans people are in the main being denied that very opportunity. The largest trans-rights demo in the UK earlier this month didn’t get a mention in the mainstream press.
| 19 November 2008, 4:51 pm |
“I read something similar on Wochner about anger over the crapness of the LGBT ‘aristocracy’ over the failures over Prop 8.”
Yeah. Human Rights Campaign doneted some staff time to the No campaign while the Mormon Church was getting its members to donate a big chunk of the $16M on the Yes campaign. After the election HRC did and said nothing much while just regular folks tweeted and text-messaged together big protests in something like 300 towns and cities in the space of a few days.
HRC is useless. We used to donate, but no more.
| 19 November 2008, 4:53 pm |
A Guardian hack dictating to a minority about how they should behave and think? That sounds (depressingly) familiar. Frankly most journalists are self-serving scumbags; the thought of giving any of them a prize turns my stomach.
| 19 November 2008, 4:58 pm |
Fantastic post. My experience as a bi woman has been that a) Stonewall are useless and b) a huge proportion of the trans people I’ve met in the LGBT community have been bi. The whole Bindel situation is depressing, but unsurprising.
| 19 November 2008, 5:22 pm |
Isn’t the lesson that an energising issue, staffed by people with real passion and commitment working ad hoc - chaotic though that may be - will beat a bureaucracy, any day?
On Prop 8, the churches were the ones with the passion.
On Bindel, the grassroots seem to have stolen a march over Bindel
The other problem is that you’re caught in the middle of some very odd and counter-intuitive gender political theory. Bindel gets respect, because she’s a playa, and because she comes from an academic background which has set the tone with the governmental and voluntary sector mainstream for some time now.
| 19 November 2008, 5:44 pm |
On Prop 8, the churches were the ones with the passion.
The extra black turnout for Obama was probably the most significant factor.
| 19 November 2008, 6:04 pm |
Black people are not a large enough % of the pop of California, Mike.
| 19 November 2008, 6:17 pm |
I think the prop-8/race thing raises an excellent point, which ties in very nicely with this post. I understand that the “no on prop 8″ campaigns from the established organisations in California did pretty much what we feel Stonewall and PfC are about here - pushing a message based on saying to middle class, well-to-do people that, “look, we’re just like you”.
It presumably came as a huge shock that by focusing exclusively on pushing their message to a particular demographic (middle-class, white, generally), members of other demographics were not especially receptive to the message.
How many gay black people are there in California? How many of the anti-prop8 ads featured black people? From what I understand from people there on the ground, the answers are roughly “lots” and “none”, respectively.
Stonewall/PfC are behaving the same way - if you’re not “people like us”, or aspiring to be “people like us”, you don’t seem to matter.
| 19 November 2008, 6:19 pm |
Black people are not a large enough % of the pop of California, Mike.
If they turned out at their usual rate then it wouldn’t have been defeated. That’s what I meant.
I tend to agree with the black community anyway. What’s wrong with civil partnerships like we have in the UK? There’s no outcry for gay marriage here and everybody seems to be fairly happy with that.
These issues seem to take a life of their own in the US.
| 19 November 2008, 6:22 pm |
What really got up the black communities nose was the continued comparison with the civil rights struggles that blacks once faced.
| 19 November 2008, 6:48 pm |
Why is that Mike?
| 19 November 2008, 6:51 pm |
Because gay marriage is not in that category. People are not oppressed because they can’t have gay marriage. Marriage is a concept.
| 19 November 2008, 6:55 pm |
Being gay is something you do - it’s an action - whereas a race is something you are. Equating gay marriage in particular with black civil rights is very clumsy. I can see why they didn’t like it.
| 19 November 2008, 6:55 pm |
But it is correct to point to previous civil rights struggles. There is a direct parallel.
I think that what gave sexual identity struggles the real kick was that they mixed a “we’re people like you” message with a “we’re living our own lives”
We’re people like you is a message which chimes home with most people, including most LGBT people: because that is, in fact, the case.
What makes people not “people like you”, is the reality of prejudice and discrimination. In these circumstances, “we’re just like you” sounds rather… craven, apologetic, begging. What sort of politics pleads for acceptance? I wouldn’t buy into that - would you?
In the face of bigotry, the first task is to build up the self confidence and pride of the constituency pushing for change. And that doesn’t generally mean grovelling.
After you’ve won that struggle, then - if truth be told - everybody sits back and buys a 4×4 and can fund groups like Stonewall. Frankly, I don’t think LGBT is really at that point yet. Very close, but not entirely there.
RE: Civil partnerships… why discriminate between gays and straights?
None of the state’s business. And the choice in California was partnership rights callled “marriage”, or no partnership rights at all. Not “marriage” or “civil partnerships”?
Why not allow civil partnerships but not marraige between blacks and whites in Alabama?
| 19 November 2008, 7:00 pm |
Very good post and thanks to Harry for hosting it.
| 19 November 2008, 7:10 pm |
Why not allow civil partnerships but not marraige between blacks and whites in Alabama?
I don’t think it is quite the same; marriage has always been between a man and a woman who are forming a new family. Gay marriage is something new so I can see why people are asking if it is really necessary when civil partnerships are a decent compromise. They should have had that on the bill instead.
| 19 November 2008, 7:11 pm |
Marriage is a concept.
I think you’ll find that much of the objection to gay marriage amongst its opponents is that they believe marriage, rightly or wrongly, is a religious sacrament, an institution ordained by God not man, and therefore they do not consider it a civil right. Such people can be quite happy that lesbians and gays may enter a civil union which confers exactly the same legal rights and obligations but is not recognised by the state as a marriage.
I’m not clear from David T’s last post if he thinks that the passing of Proposition 8 eliminates the right to form a civil union in California. I’d point out that it doesn’t.
| 19 November 2008, 7:12 pm |
Marriage comes from a religious tradition. Why would gay people want to be apart of that? I don’t think they have thought it through.
| 19 November 2008, 7:15 pm |
John, yes indeed, the marriage concept comes from religions. It’s therefore not hard to see why religious people see it as baiting them when suddenly gays want to be apart of their traditions.
It’s a lot of fuss.
| 19 November 2008, 7:30 pm |
Possibly because they’re religious?
What about old people, or people who are sterile, or people who don’t want kids…
But I digress.
The point I wanted to make is that politics has to be fun and sexy if you’re going to win. Obama is sexy.
LGBT causes SHOULD be sexy. I mean, they centre around sex!
But actually, the politics of Prop 8 was dull
- po faced bores and
- professional organisations,
They’re a dead hand on exciting and fun politics.
| 19 November 2008, 7:32 pm |
“Marriage comes from a religious tradition. Why would gay people want to be apart of that? I don’t think they have thought it through.” (Mike)
Many things come from a religious tradition, most rites were born out of a sense of the sacred. I don’t get what has got anything to do with it and why gay couples cannot share in the sacred, while I, that don’t believe in God but am heterosexual can. Maybe I also did not think it through, Mike?
| 19 November 2008, 7:34 pm |
I have an idea. Let gay couples get married, and as a sign of protest, religious people who voted for Prop 8 will ask for a civil rights union for themselves instead.
| 19 November 2008, 7:43 pm |
But actually, the politics of Prop 8 was dull
- po faced bores and
- professional organisations, and
- Barack Obama and Joe Biden
| 19 November 2008, 7:56 pm |
“Because gay marriage is not in that category. People are not oppressed because they can’t have gay marriage. Marriage is a concept.’
Marriage is a legally recognized relational status. It confers close to 1,000 specific advantages on a couple in most parts of the US. it si quite a lot more than a concept. No judge is going to rule that you owe some woman money because she once agreed to have sex with you simply as a concept.
“Being gay is something you do - it’s an action - whereas a race is something you are. Equating gay marriage in particular with black civil rights is very clumsy. I can see why they didn’t like it.”
I agree here. teh tactically and stratgically correct approach was to equate gayness with freedom of religion. Although you are wrong that being gay is a behavior rather than being inborn, the polticially relevant point is that the superstitous, first-generation-to-wear-shoes, slackjaws that voted for this propostion agree with you - surprise, surprise - and they also seem to think that they have an inalienable right to practise their deviant distortions of Christianity - fundamentalism, literalism, voodoo-dancing, and Mormonism - so they would see the point if that were threatened. I know that Catholics were deeply involved in this effort, but I would leave them alone - divide and conquer. It shouldn’t be too hard to jam a wedge in anyway.
Do you, Mike, consider freedom of religion, as a matter of personal choice, to be a civil right?
There are two ways to present the threat. One is to rescind the power of clergy to act as agents of the state to perform legally recognized weddings. This is in reality no threat at all, but they would scream bloody murder. Take your ass to the courthouse or no tax benefit for you, or automatic inheritance, or health care as a legal dependent or any of the 1,000 other benefits.
The other approach is employment discrimination enforced through boycotts. Yes, we’d very much klike to buy this new….Chevy whatever, but first please sign this form confirming that your car agency employs no member of either the Mormon, COGIC, or other church that supported Prop 8, and please notice that you are signing as an agent of the company authorized to void the sale if it is later found that you do in fact employ such people, and that you are committing in writing to in fact void the sale if that becomes the case. No? You won’t sign? That’s fine; we were interested in a Toyota anyway. There is nothing illegal in a customer refusing to buy something, for whatever reason.
“Marriage comes from a religious tradition. ”
Well, too bad. If people want it to remain purely religious, they should not have any problem with the state ignoring thier arrangements. Or would they like the rest of us to state dictating what constitutes a valid communion, and imprisoning anyone who fraudulently performs a false one?
And in point of fact, Christianity, which is the only religion I care to recognize as having any moral authority, downplayed marriage for nearly a thousand years in the beginning. Jesus specifically states that there is no marraige in the Kingdom of Heaven, along with downplaying every other family obligation. and if other religions put some other emphasis on marriage, so what?
And as a historical matter, marriage predates any religion except maybe Hinduism, since there’s no set date of origin for it.
| 19 November 2008, 7:58 pm |
Being gay is something you do - it’s an action - whereas a race is something you are.
That’s not true at all. You can be gay without having sex with someone of the same gender. You can have sex with someone of the same gender and not be gay.
| 19 November 2008, 7:58 pm |
“Such people can be quite happy that lesbians and gays may enter a civil union which confers exactly the same legal rights and obligations but is not recognised by the state as a marriage.”
Such people are not the ones who passed legislation in Virginia barring any arrangement between two persons of the same sex that has any feature of marriage, period.
| 19 November 2008, 8:02 pm |
Paul downplayed marriage be he thought we were living in End Times.
He was wrong, thank heavens!
| 19 November 2008, 8:13 pm |
Excellent post. Well said.
| 19 November 2008, 8:49 pm |
Since when was this article about Proposition 8 and why are some commentors trying to derail the comments?
This article has nothing to do with marriage rights and everything to do with quite another kind of hatred. Let’s please try and stay on topic.
| 19 November 2008, 8:49 pm |
Julie Bindel craves attention. Desperately craves it. Amazingly, she regularly gets it by occasionally popping up on CiF with one of the two stock articles she specialises in:
1) Why I hate [x]*
2) Why the responses from [x]* proves that we live in a male-dominated world in which - woe! - I am persecuted and silenced. [Generally this should be a self-pitying as possible, and it must steadfastly ignore that the persecuted and silenced are not generally given column space on the Guardian website to write substandard articles]
——————–
* where [x] is one or more of: straight men / gay men / men who want to be women / women who want to be men
| 19 November 2008, 8:59 pm |
“This article has nothing to do with marriage rights and everything to do with quite another kind of hatred. Let’s please try and stay on topic.’
Excellent point, and I was the worst offender.
Let’s talk about Bindel’s particular brand of hate. first of all, what does everyone think motivates it?
| 19 November 2008, 9:22 pm |
what does everyone think motivates it?
Penis envy?
| 19 November 2008, 11:33 pm |
…what does everyone think motivates it?
Other people have lives and she’s feeling the lack.
| 20 November 2008, 12:57 am |
Oops, I just returned from the pub to notice my first comment set off a thread on Sarah’s journal. It was just a throw-away comment, honest and reading it now, I sounded snippier than I intended.
I have no plans to set up a Men Against Bindel group and stand outside the Guardian offices in a Batman outfit protesting. And I am aware that straight men generally have an easier time of it in life than the transgendered. Good on the transgender community for actually protesting against her.
P.
| 20 November 2008, 12:58 am |
If gay people want to say “Hey, we’re just like you, assuming you like both kinds of sex” then the transwhatevered don’t really fit in to that narrative. Most people think that gender dysphoria is best treated with psychotherapy (or possibly a dose of irony and nice hot mug of getoveryourself) not drastic and mutilating surgery and they aren’t going to stop; nor should they, because they are correct. That’s not to say if people really want to be mutilated in order to express their inner identity they can’t (though they should notbe able to take money away from cancer patients to do so), but why should gay people want to associate themselves with them?
Julius Caesar like to have sex with blokes so did lots of other cool people, like, err, James I. None of them, however, ever had their member removed and fake breasts added. Maybe some people in history did the latter (though one would imagine they’d have died), but not anyone you’d admire.
*None of them ever suggested something so preposterous as Gay Marriage though.
| 20 November 2008, 2:25 am |
“Most people think that gender dysphoria is best treated with psychotherapy (or possibly a dose of irony and nice hot mug of getoveryourself) not drastic and mutilating surgery and they aren’t going to stop; nor should they, because they are correct.”
Perhaps you’d like to point me in the direction of some of the literature demonstrating the effectiveness of psychotherapy/irony over “drastic and mutilating” surgery in the treatment of gender dysphoria?
| 20 November 2008, 8:39 am |
G - can we at least level the playing field and use the same sort of terminology for all surgeries?
“I’m sorry G - the bad news is that you broke your ankle when you fell over. The good news is that we can schedule you for ankle mutilation tomorrow!”
Or if we really wanted to level it:
“Yes, you have a broken ankle, but I think you should try psychotherapy for a few months first, then pretend it’s not broken for two years, run a few marathons on it, that sort of thing, then come back and see me again, then my colleague for a second opinion, then if your PCT agrees, and they probably won’t because, you know, the Daily Mail will only whine petulantly about it, we’ll look at getting you in to have it mutilated”
By the way, my breasts are not fake.
| 20 November 2008, 9:05 am |
A Nony Mouse wrote:
“Most people think that gender dysphoria is best treated with psychotherapy (or possibly a dose of irony and nice hot mug of getoveryourself) not drastic and mutilating surgery”
Ah yes, the invocation of the silent majority, who in my experience couldn’t actually care one way or another. Ok, my experience is with a small set of the silent majority. OTOH, I’ve never seen any research that supports the belief that “talking therapy” actually works for trans folk. It certainly didn’t in trying to “cure” Gay people.
GRS is drastic and major surgery, granted, but mutilation? No. Mutilation would be DIY castration for example.
Oh, and I’d prefer a nice mug of Hot Chocolate. kthxbai.
| 20 November 2008, 9:48 am |
Being gay is something you do - it’s an action - whereas a race is something you are. Equating gay marriage in particular with black civil rights is very clumsy. I can see why they didn’t like it.
You are proposing a watermelon-eating theory of gender identity. Being gay is not something you do, it is indeed something you are. It is not an action (which action?), it is a cause of action.
Equating the struggle for equal rights of one group with the struggle for equal rights of another is only “clumsy” if the comparison is bogus. It is not. But it doesn’t seem to be welcome. Why is that?
| 20 November 2008, 10:24 am |
Open the Second Front!
Here in Ipswich us lefties loathe Bindel with all our hearts. She was responsible for excluding our beloved comrade Teresa from speaking at the Trafalgar Square Rally.
| 20 November 2008, 12:47 pm |
Paul, thanks for apologising for that comment. A slight side point:
“And I am aware that straight men generally have an easier time of it in life than the transgendered.”
Some straight men are trans. Some trans men are straight. ;)
And to all the people who’ve tried to turn this into a discussion of gay marriage - you can expect your Stonewall nominations any time soon, I expect, for once again rendering the T in LGBT invisible.
| 20 November 2008, 1:23 pm |
Jack H: And to all the people who’ve tried to turn this into a discussion of gay marriage - you can expect your Stonewall nominations any time soon
I had assumed that the main topic of conversation was being handled and that it was worthwhile tackling pernicious OT nonsense.
I’m very sorry for inadvertently proving the point of the post.
Alice Chapman: GRS is drastic and major surgery, granted, but mutilation? No.
I don’t understand why people claim it is mutilation. Again I think this is the product of and a proxy for assumptions that they’d rather not state.
| 20 November 2008, 1:37 pm |
dirigible: Yeah, I mean, I don’t *feel* mutilated, and I actually think I now have quite pretty genitals, as genitals go anyway.
| 20 November 2008, 2:10 pm |
In it, she conflated queer people with those into “kinky sex”
It’s all vanilla in Bindel’s bedroom, I suppose.
| 20 November 2008, 4:42 pm |
MrsTrellis: [i]It’s all vanilla in Bindel’s bedroom[/i]
Would that be vanilla custard?
@Sarah: prettier than mine :)
I certainly have no idea why some (including my own mother) see it as mutilation.
| 20 November 2008, 7:44 pm |
G, you show your ignorance. “Talking therapies” have long been known to be utterly inefective, as have psychoactive drugs, shock therapy and all other similar quackery. The only therapy that works is HRT followed by reconstructive surgery. This is not mutiliation no matter how many times you say it is.
Please have that mug of getoveryourself yourself. Clearly you need it. Oh, and lose the “taking money from cancer patients” nonsense also. It’s further proof that you nothing of what you’re talking about.
| 20 November 2008, 8:13 pm |
Jessica C- The NHS does not have limitless funds, if money is being spent of gender realignment that is money that cannot be spent on cancer patients. Similarly, I may want a nose-job and I am perfectly entitled in a free society to pay for one, but I should not be able to claim one at other people’s expense.
Furthermore, while is very true that psychotherapy is not extraordinarily effective at treating people with gender dysphoria, it is similarly ineffective at treating depression or anything else really, that doesn’t mean we don’t do it. If you feel that surgery is the best option, again, fine, but there is no reason why other people should have to pay to subsidise your choice, that’s not what Nye Bevan envisioned. There’s also no reason why gay people should feel under some special obligation to associate with you.
Finally, the comparison to ankle surgery is simply rather silly. Being born a man or woman is not a defect. The defect is with your mind. There is no sense in which you were born a woman in a man’s body or vice versa: that implies some sort of essence of gender that simply doesn’t exist. You are pschologically unsound, just like millions of other people are psychologically unsound. Again, in a free society, if you feel the best way of curing your problems is with surgery that is absolutely fine in a free society. Similarly, many women with perfectly normal breasts feel the best way to deal with their body issues is to have breast augmentation surgery and that’s fine too. In both cases the defect is psychological.
| 20 November 2008, 8:44 pm |
G dear - I appreciate your insight into how I feel without actually being me. It’s really very helpful. Thank you so much.
I wonder, would you prescribe psychotherapy for a headache, or would you take a paracetamol?
Gender dysphoria is similar to that headache - having the wrong hormones in our bodies makes us feel like crap. The pain goes away when they’re replaced with the right ones. Take away the testosterone, in the case of a trans woman, and replace it with oestrogen, and it’s like a noise that’s been present all ones life just stops.
There are an increasing number of studies being done which show that, where brains exhibit sexual dimorphism, the brains of trans people align with our identified gender, and not our assigned sex, regardless of whether we’ve taken cross sex hormones or not. The Dutch BSTc study is perhaps the most famous of these, but I recently had a sneak preview of research soon to be published which looks at auditory processing differences which are known to show sexual dimorphism in humans, and it shows that transsexual women overwhelmingly hear like non-transsexual women, and not like men.
Also, we have been present in every society throughout recorded history, and as far as anyone can tell, as a stubbornly constant proportion of the population. If this is a psychological problem, it is one which is remarkably culturally independent throughout history.
Furthermore, the NHS funding argument is mean-spirited nonsense. The NHS spends vast amounts of money paying for the lifestyle choices of people who smoke, drink excessively, have children, eat poor diets, don’t exercise, and so on, and yet while it’s happy to sell me HRT at a profit, it did not pay for my surgery. Begrudging us the one thing that ends our pain when it costs peanuts compared to the amounts it spends without question treating the conditions that people have inflicted on themselves through their lifestyle choices demonstrates vindictiveness, intolerance and very poor taste.
I refuse to live in pain to satisfy the prejudices of loud-mouthed arseholes.
| 20 November 2008, 9:09 pm |
G: You really do need to get over yourself. You aren’t the one who lived for over 40 years in fog of just feeling wrong. Transition was the easiest thing by far for me to have ever done. It is right. It is not a lifestyle choice, it is a need. Oh, there was a choice, a choice between transitioning or ultimately committing suicide.
Putting oestrogen in my body rather than testosterone, stopped me being a psychological basket case. Something no amount of therapy could, I feel, have done. I am happy and whole, something I bever was before.
| 20 November 2008, 9:58 pm |
G. I’m so glad you know more about me than I do may be I can have your contact details so that next time I’m ill I can ask you rather than going to the doctor.
There are plenty of ‘psychological’ conditions that have material cures such as drugs;l for example depression, schizophrenia or even head aches. Its not that its all in the mind. Its that its all in the *brain*. The brain is a physical biological organ. Physical brain injuries do affect peoples’ behavior, their personalities and so on. This is just another manifestation of a physical condition as a mental one.
Yes I could have had psychotherapy (years of it). I could have been a basket case. Or I could have obtained treatment of the *right* hormones and surgery to put my body in sync. with my brain.
And yes the NHS paid for my surgery. As it paid for cancer and heart treatments for those who has smoked, as it has paid for liver transplants for those who have drunk excessively, as it pays for child birth. Those *are* lifestyle choices. Mine was not.
Actually if you do the maths it is far better to pay for my treatment using hormones and surgery than paying for the alternative treatments over long periods. Also since transition and surgery over a decade ago I have worked, as a stable member of society, in a high paying career which has more than paid back in taxes the money spent on my surgery. I am highly educated with a high IQ and work for international clients which is a net benefit for UK plc. So looking holistically my treatment was the best for me and the best for the nation. Oh and the standard prescription charge is more than the cost of the HRT I get on that prescription! Another gain for UK plc.
PS. I am gay *now* i.e. I’m lesbian. I do not have penis envy (I had vagina envy). I have my own, naturally grown, size D breasts and my nether regions are rather nice thank you.
| 20 November 2008, 10:25 pm |
“I refuse to live in pain to satisfy the prejudices of loud-mouthed arseholes.”
And you know what? No-one wants you to. Sure, there are some issues about allocation of scarce medical resorces (and there are plenty of people with very persuasive arguments for NHS treatment who get bupkiss), but, basically, do whatever the bloody hell you want. Doubtless there are also some people who’ll never be truly happy without a tail, or three legs, or a penis on their head, who can spin harrowing tales of confusion and adolescent despair, and, hell, who are we to judge? If they want to ingest a bunch of enzymes and have someone go to town on them with a surgical knife, that’s really their prerogative, and your’s. That’s the modern world: limitless choice and fluid identities for all! (Except small infants, assuming their choice is not being vacumned up and dismembered)
I’m not going to develop a sense of admiration for you lot and nor do I suspect you want me to. Nor is Julie Bindel and you shouldn’t want her to either, especially since she’s a kook. Basically I don’t really give a toss and, just to prove it, that’s the last thing I’m going to say on the matter.
| 20 November 2008, 10:42 pm |
G: “’I refuse to live in pain to satisfy the prejudices of loud-mouthed arseholes.’
And you know what? No-one wants you to. ”
Er, but they do. Or rather, Julie Bindel does, in that she argues against the availability of SRS. The original post was largely about that, as I recall.
It must be nice for you to be able to vacate your pram of its toys and not have to think about it again, anyway. I hope you found it cathartic. Not everyone has that luxury.
| 20 November 2008, 11:31 pm |
Charlie: quite. I wonder what part of “surgery should not be available” it was that G was having difficulty with. Perhaps I could have repeated it a few times in my article, for emphasis, but it was already getting kinda long.
| 20 November 2008, 11:44 pm |
I’d also add, “G”, that most people rarely spend time trying to upset people about whom they “don’t give a toss” by calling them “mutilated”, mentally ill, suggesting they need to “get over themselves”, etc..
On some level you clearly do “give a toss”, or you wouldn’t be doing it. You mentioned psychotherapy - I’ve had quite a bit and found it very helpful in developing my self awareness and self esteem. I can thoroughly recommend it.
Good luck.
| 21 November 2008, 12:03 am |
G. “Basically I don’t really give a toss and, just to prove it, that’s the last thing I’m going to say on the matter.” Why did you even bother saying anything at all if you don’t give a toss. Were you really that bored?
| 21 November 2008, 12:45 am |
G said:
“Furthermore, while is very true that psychotherapy is not extraordinarily effective at treating people with gender dysphoria, it is similarly ineffective at treating depression or anything else really, that doesn’t mean we don’t do it. If you feel that surgery is the best option, again, fine, but there is no reason why other people should have to pay to subsidise your choice”
So we’ve established that psychotherapy is not-terribly-effective at treating conditions other than gender dysphoria. Surgery, on the other hand (I’m not quite sure where you’re getting “enzymes” from), has been shown to be 80-98% effective in treating gender dysphoria. That degree of effectiveness is one good reasons for NHS funding of surgical as opposed to psychotherapeutic treatments.
| 21 November 2008, 1:10 am |
G: If you want to talk about scarce resources how about the fact that while on the NHS waiting list (6 bloody years) to even see a therapist about gender dysphoria I claimed enough Incapacity Benefit and Housing Benefit to pay for my surgery twice over. I didn’t even get the hot drink and ‘get over yourself’… Eventually I managed to finance transition due to a generous and sadly departed relative.
Now only 4 months out of finishing medical transition I am back in the job market and pretty mentally stable actually. I’m 27 and will be paying back the cost of my treatment in taxes easily rather than costing the system money. Not all trans people end up in the mess I did and I don’t wish to paint them all as a drain on the system pre-treatment but increased happiness and mental stability lead to increased earning power and so increased contribution to the system.
“Sure, there are some issues about allocation of scarce medical resorces (and there are plenty of people with very persuasive arguments for NHS treatment who get bupkiss), but, basically, do whatever the bloody hell you want.”
I agree there are scares resources, people in general aren’t realistic enough about this. However I don’t believe treatment of gender dysphoria is a drain on them. Our mental health matters and (sadly) unlike many other mental health issues, gender dysphoria has an established treatment that WORKS, I see no good reason, financial or otherwise to withhold it. Sadly our needs rarely if ever get taken seriously enough to enable an honest debate about cost-effectiveness to take place. ‘Dying cancer patient needs £10k of drugs to extend their life 6 months’ will always trump ‘tranny needs £10k for cosmetic mutilation surgery for issues that they should just GET THE HELL OVER’ in the eyes of the popular media.
| 21 November 2008, 2:13 am |
“I’m not going to develop a sense of admiration for you lot and nor do I suspect you want me to. Nor is Julie Bindel and you shouldn’t want her to either, especially since she’s a kook. Basically I don’t really give a toss and, just to prove it, that’s the last thing I’m going to say on the matter.”
So, you give a toss just enough to publicly state your views on the validity of our medical needs but not enough to actually stay and engage in any honest debate. How very Bindel-esque. People giving a toss to just this level and no further (thereby removing the possibility of learning and reaching an informed opinion) contributes significantly to misunderstanding and mistreatment of minority groups.
| 21 November 2008, 2:39 am |
I don’t believe G is gone so for hir benefit and that of others xe may have swayed, here’s a little exercise to put the kibosh on hir “taking away from the cancer patients” nonsense:
Transsexualism is a life sentence. It never goes away. Therefore if the only treatment option is therapy, that therapy will last for life. Let’s suppose an average lifetime of 80 years. Let’s suppose that the transperson will be in therapy for 60 of those 80 years. Let’s further suppose that the cost of therapy sessions will remain unchanging at £100 per session during that entire time. Let’s suppose that the patient will need therapy only twice a month.
Time to do the math: £100 X 2 X 12 x 60= £144 000.-
And that’s not counting any drugs. Anti-depressants are popular. Let’s make a Scientific wild-ass Guess that our patient will need £500 worth of anti-depressants annually for a further £250 000.-
£349 000.- for not taking money away from cancer patients. Gee, I’d call that a bargain.
Now let’s look at the alternative. SRS costs on the order of £10 000.- A couple of years’ worth of therapy even at the rates I estimated above (which is far more often than Charing Cross sees patients), that’s £4800.- An average dose of hormones costs on the order of £25 every 6 weeks. That’s £625 annually, working out to £5625 for the same lifespan in the example above.
Do the math again: £10 000 + 4800 + 5625= £20 425.- for a complete cure. That’s a cure. Our patient will never again be troubled by gender issues.
£328 575 buys a whole lot of cancer cures, G. Do you want to tell those poor patients what your ill-informed prejudice is going to cost them?
| 21 November 2008, 5:53 am |
G: “I may want a nose-job and I am perfectly entitled in a free society to pay for one, but I should not be able to claim one at other people’s expense.”
Unless your nose was causing you discomfort, in which case, you WOULD be entitled to treatment at (partly) my expense; I’m happy with that.
G: “while is very true that psychotherapy is not extraordinarily effective at treating people with gender dysphoria, it is similarly ineffective at treating depression or anything else really, that doesn’t mean we don’t do it.”
Firstly, psychotherapy can and has helped many people with SOME conditions, that’s why we do it; it does not, however, help trans people, or gay people, and as the medical signs point towards a physical cause for this, that might be why.
Secondly, NHS Pain Clinics routinely teach coping strategies to people in chronic pain when there is no treatment. People can cope with a LOT of pain, when they have to either mental or physical, but it’s not a good state to be in, so advocating a coping/reparative/talking therapy for any condition that has other options available prolongs their pain and is, therefore, cruel.
Lastly, please try and understand that the structure of the brain gives rise to mind; I AM me because of the structure of my brain as a product of the way it was at my birth. My stomach was born with a defect so it lets acid out and burns me, this is fairly common; my brain, well the truth is I don’t know, science hasn’t got far enough to understand brains fully yet, but I THINK, and FEEL, and AM, inately a woman. The structure of my brain causes this as it causes all my thoughts and feelings, or at least influences them. So maybe I have a defective brain, if you want to look at this as a defect, but either way, I’m not psychologically unsound; my ‘illness’, in the fullness of time, is almost certainly going to have its physical cause found, just like a broken ankle. That physical cause, by the way, will probably be in the area(s) of the brain that give rise to the ‘essence of gender’, wherever it will be found, that you think doesn’t exist.
| 21 November 2008, 5:38 pm |
Lovely article Sarah, very clearly explained, if only every journalist at the Guardian were as good at writing as you…
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