Welcome to Transtopia

 

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In late 2015, my teenage daughter Jessie declared she was transgender and the experience tugged us into a rabbit hole of Orwellian double-speak and general insanity. I read so much during that time and it was such a vast learning curve that I felt compelled to bring all the threads together in an article.  I was especially struck by the exponential surge in the number of teenage girls who were ‘identifying’ as boys, usually young lesbians and usually after lengthy sessions on social media.

After Jessie desisted, I wanted to share what I’d read as well as what I’d learned and eventually I finished writing an article which contained over 100 links. Jessie added a short postscript of her own and I was delighted when 4thwavenow published it in December 2016 under the title ‘A Mum’s Voyage Through Transtopia – a tale of love and desistance’.

I’ve since re-published the article here on my own blog.

Before you ask me any questions; before you critcise or praise my stance on transitioning kids, or the appropriation of womanhood by men, please read that. It’s where it all began.

After Jessie re-realised she was a girl and things settled down at home,  I expected to put my time in Transtopia behind me and move on. Instead I became more fascinated- and angry- with the culture of misogyny and homophobia which underlies transgender theory.

For without stereotypes there can be no ‘brave transgender children’. Without the dolls and the pink tutus, a love of glitter, a gentle nature and a will to dance, what could possibly make girls of the little boys of ‘My Transgender Summer Camp’? What other than her love of Batman, karate and jumping around could make that short-haired, fierce little girl into a boy trapped in a female body? A feeling?  How does a boy feel? How does a girl feel?

Without sexism, there can be no transgenderism. Without the idea that there is a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’ way to be a boy or a girl there would be no need to beguile and medicate these kids in an attempt to make them ‘fit in’. Our current culture of blind affirmation is not doing anyone any favours.  It is nothing short of abusive to tell a child that they are ‘wrong’, that they have been ‘born in the wrong body’ or that medication and surgery can make them into the opposite sex.  Affirming a trans-identified child- and many of these kids are LGB, autistic, have suffered trauma, abuse or loss, or have co-existing mental health issues- is to set them down a path to becoming a life-long medical patient.

This first step down this pathway begins with agreeing with a confused girl that she is a boy.  21st century kids who undergo social transition young frequently progress to puberty blockers. Children given puberty blockers almost always go one to take cross sex hormones. This combination leaves a child sterile and without sexual function.

What would have happened if I had affirmed my child when she told me she was a boy?

I would have called her by her new name and ‘he/him’ pronouns.

This would have told her that I believed she was not a girl, that I thought she had been ‘born wrong’ and needed fixing in order to be her ‘authentic’ self. It would also have affirmed her delusion, every day.

I would have paid for her to see a private therapist.

Most private therapists will tell you trans-identified children become suicidal if not transitioned. The reality is, there is no data to support the idea that they are more at risk than any other child being seen under child mental health services.

I would have accessed my child cross-sex hormones.

Don’t believe those who tell you about lengthy waiting lists. If you are broke and follow the NHS route, yes. If you’ve got a couple of hundred quid spare, you can get hormones for your child quickly and easily. Gender GP is just one of the services that has prescribed testosterone for girls as young as twelve. Before we jump to blame the parents, consider: is it any wonder parents resort to this when they’ve been told their child may kill themselves otherwise?

Girls on testosterone often develop acne and male pattern baldness. They grow beards. The beards, baldness and deepened voice are irreversible. They are also at higher risk of heart attack and other diseased and illnesses. Most doctors recommend a hysterectomy within 5 years of being on testosterone.

Top surgery would be next.

Why wouldn’t it be? By this point everyone would have been using my child’s new name and pronouns. Everyone would be agreeing with her that she was a boy. She would probably be using a binder, with all the health risks that entails. It would seem like natural progression to have an elective double mastectomy. In the USA, girls as young as 13 have undergone this procedure.

She might have chosen to go on to have phalloplasty, where the skin of the arm is stripped to form a tube of flesh that’s attached between the legs. As you can imagine, a lot can go wrong with this procedure.

And there we would have it.

My dysphoric child would have been left dependent on drugs and the affirmation of others to maintain this illusion for the rest of her life. And you know what? She could still never be a man.

In what world is this progressive?

You can read mine & Jessie’s story here with a post-script by my daughter.

 

Posted in Opinion Pieces | 11 Comments

Moob Juice is Child Abuse – protesting men who ‘breastfeed’ for kicks

In May 2023, Children of Transitioners wrote to University Hospital Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, expressing concerns about their ‘Perinatal Care for Trans and Non-binary people’ policy.

Attention was also drawn to the policy by @ripx4nutmeg, who linked to a discussion on mumsnet. York & Scarborough NHS Trusts, among others, appeared to be using the same policy.

Those attempting to access the Trust’s document via that link will find it has now been removed. However, the internet never forgets, and a copy is archived here.

The policy is, predictably, an absolute clusterfuck of of ‘My Language’ preference sheets, hand-made pronoun stickers, ‘front holes’ and ‘genital openings’. 

Uaseful advice for adult human females includes: “Breast/chestfeeding or expressing may still be possible after top surgery, as long as the nipples have not been permanently removed… parents who have not had top surgery may wish to bind their chest during times they are not actively feeding or expressing. Binding may increase the chances of mastitis…”

As for testosterone, “Whilst there are possible risks to the infant, there is no clear evidence of harm…”

so that’s alright then.

But the section that caused the most consternation was section 5.5.7 on page 22.:

The content of Children of Transitioners’ letter to the Trust can be viewed here. Among other concerns expressed in their letter, the group expressed this:

“Sadly many of us have experienced abuse, both domestic and sexual, from a parent (usually our dads)… We are writing to you as the body responsible for NHS Safeguarding nationally to raise a substantial safeguarding concern about the sexual and emotional abuse of babies and children of transitioners that needs urgent action to protect children from further abuse… We have seen evidence that some hospital Trusts are making children of transitioners suck their father’s nipples- an act of sexual assault and grooming that deeply shocks us as NHS staff should be protecting COT infants not enabling their abuse.

“The policy gives no consideration to the wellbeing, safeguarding and protection of children/babies of transitioners from our fathers and other parents, including those who wish to feed babies drug induced bodily secretions as part of a sexual fetish.”

In August 2023, the Trust replied to Children of Transitioners (COT) apologising for its tardy response.

The policy “did generate a considerable amount of attention,” it acknowledged, blah blah ‘inclusivity fairness and equal treatement for all’... blah blah… “different viewpoints… open discussion…” blah blah…  “framework of tolerance and respect…”  etc etc

The Trust was very, very sorry that COT felt this way and would address COT’s concerns, but first it wanted to clarify something.

“In my letter the term ‘human milk’ is used instead of ‘bodily secretions’ which is used in your email. Staff further clarify that the term ‘human milk’ is meant to be neutral and is not gender-biased.”

The letter was signed by the Medical Director of the Trust, Consultant Cardiologist Dr Rachael James, on behalf of Chief Executive Dr George Findlay, a man with an excellent record in improving trust ratings and a canny awareness of when to keep his own hands clean.

Human milk- neutral and not gender-biased

Dr James’ practice ‘includes the specialist area of cardiac disease in pregnancy’ so we can presume she knows what a woman is, despite her inclination to come over all woowoo with this weird ‘human milk’ business.

She also runs a clinic for adolescents. What, I muse, could possibly compell an intelligent and compassionate woman, who works with the young and the pregnant, to sign her name to a letter containing such a phrase as ‘human milk’, or to infer that studies done on breastmilk could somehow be blindly applied to the artificially and chemically induced secretions of men??

“We don’t call cow milk ‘bovine milk, do we?” scoffed Iris.

Let’s imagine that we did. Let’s go a step further. The dairy industry informs the UK consumer that there is exciting news! The latest scientific advances mean they can artificially induce lactation in bulls using a cocktail of hormones and chemicals! It’s great! This ‘bovine milk’ is put on the market and sold to the public as the real thing, kosher, bona fide, JUST AS GOOD. Would the public buy it?

Of course not. Putting aside the fact that dairy cows, unlike human women, are already pumped full of hormones to keep them lactating, nobody would want to drink bull ‘milk’ because it’s so blindingly obvious that it is both wrong and unnecessary. As for being ‘just as good’, I just don’t buy it. And neither would you.

Incidentally, ‘milking the bull’ is an old-fashioned saying which uses the metaphor to indicate “an activity or enterprise that has no chance of succeeding; to do something pointless and futile.”

 

 

At the end of the letter, Dr James linked to five ‘papers’, ostensibly to support her claims about ‘human milk’, and we shall come back to these later.

But wait, I hear you say, before all that, haven’t there been cases of men lactating naturally? Well, seeing as you ask…

 

In 2002, IOL published a short article about Sri Lankan widower B Wijeratne, who claimed he was able to breastfeed his 18 month-old daughter after her mother died in childbirth. The article is often misreported as clamining he was able to exclusively feed the newborn, or both children.

An archive of the original article is saved here. It reveals that the newborn baby was formula fed, and the older child was initially given her father’s nipple to soothe her after her mother died.This is when he claimed to realise he could produce ‘milk’.

A local doctor observed “Men with a hyperactive prolactine hormone can produce breast milk.”

Charles Darwin was a believer in male lactation, writing in ‘The Descent of Man:

“It is well known that in the males of all mammals, including man, rudimentary mammae exist. These in several instances have become well developed, and have yielded a copious supply of milk.”

Sixteenth century missionaries in Brazil evidently told tale of “a whole Indian nation whose women had small and withered breasts, and whose children owed their nourishment entirely from the males.” So that sounds legit.

In a 2007 article titled ‘Strange but True: Males Can Lactate’, Nikhil Swaminathan points to examples both in fiction and in real life where men have ostensibly fed babies from their chests.

Citing the case of the Sri Lankan widow above, Swaminathan makes the claim that Wijeratne “nursed his two daughters through their infancy” which is notably different to the original report. And in this way are born the tales of withered-breasted women whose menfolk nurture the babes with manmilk.

There’s a bit in Anna Karenina where an Englishman ‘chestfeeds’ a baby, which clearly made no impression on me when I read it, because I couldn’t recall it at all. It continued to bug me until I sought the passage out, and I shall share it with you here.

If you’d like to read Anna Karenina, you can do so online, free, here.

In the seventies, anthropologist Dana Raphael claimed that stimulation alone could induce lactation in men. Modern physicians say that this is more likely to have been caused by the presence of benign pituitary tumors, which are surprisingly common and can provoke a condition called galactorrhea. Autopsy studies indicate that 25 percent of the U.S. population have these small pituitary tumors.

“Unless you are an Indonesian fruit bat,” Swaminathan lightheartedly warns his fellow men, “it (lactation) probably won’t happen naturally.”

Ah yes, the fruit bat. Of course, like the sex-changing clownfish, mother nature has chucked out a few curve balls. The Dyak fruit bat and the Bismarck masked flying fox have both been observed to lactate.

As usual though, scratch the surface and it’s not quite as it seems. Male bats notoriously do not assist females in ‘childcare’ and I could find no direct reference to breastfeeding males.

Evidently the male bats that were observed to lactate had swollen breasts when they were captured, which “produced milk upon being gently squeezed” by humans.There was nothing to suggest this ‘milk’ was being used to feed their young.

In fact, many scientists believe this ‘lactation’ in certain male bats may be caused by malnutrition or stress. And it’s not bloody surprising with humans going round trying to milk them.

But people only hear what they want to hear, and now rare fruit bats and a few self-reported instances of trans-identified men consuming enough drugs that they produce something means that – hurrah! – men have been able to breastfeed all along and OMG get with the program, bigot.

But is it tho?

Is this ‘milk’ the same as the milk of a lactating mother? It seems highly unlikely to me, but I’m no expert.

Post-doctoral researcher in Stem Cell biology and Human Nutrition, Dr Foteini Haassiotou, who has conducted research into the physiology of breastfeeding and breastmilk stem cells, probably could be called an expert.

Foteini’s research looks at the properties of the maternal stem cells that are present in breastmilk and their biological role, and the role mammary stem cells play in health and disease. “She aims at understanding the role of these cells for the breastfed infant…”

She has this to say.

But hey, never mind all that! Men can breastfeed now, right? Even those who aren’t claiming to be women!

archived here

Colerado Surrogacy has been feeling pretty positive about it all for a while now. After all, there’s money to be made and identities to affirm!

In 2019 Colerado Surrogacy (CS) ran an article filed under ‘LGBTQ’ on their blog, called “Inducing Lactation: Men can breastfeed too!’

Citing the two articles I mention above (which have now taken on the status of ‘anthropological evidence’) the piece adds blithely, “modern day doctors tend to suggest a combo of hormone therapy or medication and nipple stimulation to induce lactation in men and women becoming mothers.”

(Note that at Colerado Surrogacy female baby buyers are ‘women becoming mothers’ but pregnant woman are ‘gestational carriers’. But that’s a whole other piece.)

Not so ‘naturally’ then, but hey, it all sounds so easy. The author of the CS piece tells the reader she has a pituitary tumor which has caused her to produce milk since she was ten, and she now produces enough to feed 3-4 babies every day! Milk everywhere! So that’s nice. Perhaps it’s catching.

The CS piece ends with a perky “I hope to see more research being done in the future and more talk of men inducing lactation!”

While CS makes it sound easy, almost whimsical, more realistically, Mayoclinic suggests that a woman adopting a newborn may be able to induce lactation by pumping for months in advance, eventually for periods of up to 20 minutes every 3-4 hours. “Even if you’re able to successfully induce lactation,” Mayo warns, “supplemental feedings with formula or pasteurized donor human milk might be needed”.

Some new mothers are unable to breastfeed their babies for various reasons. It isn’t always plain sailing. And of course, I don’t have to remind you that a woman is not at all the same thing as a man.

In short, there are no properly medically controlled or documented studies concerning ‘moob juice’, although there is enough anecdotal evidence, and a few rather patchy records and reports that suggest that it can contain sustenance in some form or another.

“It validated my womanhood as much as any surgery ever could”

Dana Fried, quoted above, is an American who ‘breastfed’ his child. But it seems to becoming more popular on both side of the pond. Or at least, men are becoming more brazen about it.

Let us look at a recent case in England which grabbed public attention, that of Mika Minio-Paluello. Paluello is a TUC member who apeared in an ITV feature in July 2023, doing the washing up, loading the laundry and observing that times are “tough if you’re a mum like me”. A strange choice for several reasons. Firstly, Mika held a well-paid Climate & Industry role at the TUC at the time, so was unlikely to be finding times especially tough. Secondly, he is a man, albeit one who believes himself to be a woman, yet he was chosen to speak on behalf of ‘mums’ everywhere.

This did not go down brilliantly with the public.

‘I am sure this is a lovely, intelligent and decent human being. This was an important piece. This is not however a struggling ‘mother’, observed MP Rosie Duffield, tactfully.

Others were not so gracious, furious that once again a man had been chosen to speak on behalf of women, and that he would dare call himself a mother.

Attention was also drawn to a breast pump in the background of the video, which Paluello claimed was his housemate’s.

Shortly afterwards, Paluello responded to the hooha by tweeting a photograph of himself looking remarkably smug while ‘breastfeeding’ a baby  (I’ve cropped the baby out of the photo below)  accompanied by tweets appropriating the experience of lesbian mothers by pretending he thought people were disturbed by the idea of ‘two mums’ rather than by the pantomime of a man using a baby as a prop.

“Trans women can breastfeed, and I did breastfeed my child,” he declared.

Twitter went apopleptic. The papers stepped in. The Daily Mail quoted Maya Forstater: 

“A man is not a woman. A man is not a mother. A man having a baby suck his nipple is not breastfeeding,”

and Helen Joyce:

“I’m not sharing a pic of the bloke on a bus breastfeeding a baby because it’s also a pic of a baby being used non-consensually as a man’s identity prop.”

“But what of the studies in the letter?” I hear you cry.

Ah yes. Well, they aren’t actual studies, remember, because that would suggest controlled situations, data collection and peer review, not just the odd solitary bloke turning up with moobs, calling himself a mum. To be fair, Dr James (she of the letter) is not brazen enough to attempt to pass these reports off as studies, rather sher refers to them as ‘papers’.

Let’s have a look at the links in the letter…

The first link is a page on the World Health Organisation website. It tells us that less than half of human babies are exclusively breastfed for at least six months. Those that are, ‘perform better on intelligence tests, are less likely to be overweight or obese and less prone to diabetes later in life’ while ‘women who breastfeed also have a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancers’.

This is very interesting but has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with enabling men to produce nipple secretions, via a cocktail of drugs and hormones, so they can pretend they are breast-feeding mothers. If that doesn’t come under the umbrella of the ‘inappropriate marketing of breast milk substitutes’ that the WHO professes to be concerned about, then I don’t know what does.

The next link is to a la leche article which tells us, Breastfeeding is a close, intimate, physical and emotional relationship between two or more people who love each other. When both parents are breastfeeding, they share the caregiving role.… breastfeeding is possible no matter how much or little milk is produced—even if it is none at all!”

And there was me thinking it was about nourishing a baby. I imagine for a moment a world where all around me dads have been popping into disabled toilets to breastfeed babies as casually as put the kettle on, and everybody knew about it but me. This all seems more than a little mad. I am feeling hugely gaslit.

The next link leads to a 1977 study called ‘Breastfeeding the Adopted Baby’. I begin to read the abstract.Sixty-five women nursed adopted babies. Eighteen of the women had never been pregnant, seven had been pregnant but had not lactated, and forty had been pregnant and lactated before…”

So we can stop right there. None of these women were men. Therefore this article is also irrelevant to the question in hand. Links c and d lead to similar articles concerning induced lactation in females. Finally, the last link concerns itself with men.

This is the 2018 case mentioned in the letter. I’m just going to put this here for you to read for yourself.

.

A trans-identified man told medics his pregnant partner didn’t want to breastfeed and that he hoped to do so himself after the birth of her baby, which, it seems, he had adopted. An ‘intact’ man, who had taken hormones to grow breasts, had aquired a baby and planned to suckle it, and was enlisting a medical team to help him do that.

And the NHS thinks this is great.

A video on YouTube tells us how he was prescribed “experimental drugs and hormones, including an anti-nausea medication banned in the USA”.

The abstract tells us he was on domperidrome, estradiol, and progesterone. We also know that this patient was taking clonazepam and zolpidem for stress and insomnia.

After 3 months he was apparently producing 8oz of ‘milk’ a day. He used this to feed the baby.

In the YouTube video, Dr Funk explains how this person increased his dosages of oestrogen and progesterone, and added a drug called domperidome, an anti-sickness medication which helps release prolactin and increased his chances of producing manmilk.

 The NHS in England advises, ‘If your doctor or health visitor says your baby is healthy, you can take domperidone while breastfeeding but it’s best to only take it for a short time’.

The FDA in the USA has banned the drug altogether, stating, “Although domperidone is approved in several countries outside the U.S. to treat certain gastric disorders, it is not approved in any country, including the U.S., for enhancing breast milk production in lactating women and is also not approved in the U.S. for any indication.”

More on this later.

So many questions

graphic by @UTOTALBELLEND

It just all seems a bit weird and unlikely, mostly because so many questions are left unanswered.  For example, a newborn baby drinks roughly 2-3oz every 2-3 hours. That’s a heck of a lot more than the 8oz mentioned at the start. How do we deal with this inconsistency?

What about the colostrum, so important to the first few days of a breastfed baby’s life? What about the changing consistency of breastmilk that is so essential to a breastfed newborn’s development? 

Even if moob juice can provide nutritional content, how can it be measured with just one – or two, or three- assessments? Can moob juice offer parental immunities and benefits? And if this cocktail is so effective, easy and harmless a treatment, why is it not being offered to more women who have problems breastfeeding?

The 2021 case cited by the letter was the only one for which I was able to access full details.  It dealt with a trans-identified man who ‘took over’ the feeding of his 14-month-old son when his partner went back to work.

One of his three given reasons for wanting to ‘breastfeed’ was ‘to further her (sic) breast development’.

It is possible that there are women who decide to breastfeed a toddler for this purpose, but I have to say I’ve never come across one, either IRL or anecdotally. Yet it’s mentioned several times by men wanting to develop their ‘moobs’.

The screenshot above contains information taken from follow up clinics. Note that the liquid produced ‘was not enough to meet the nutritional needs of her (sic) child’. Yet this man continued to ‘suckle’ the child for at least six months, even when he was producing just a teaspoon a day. And BTW yes, his moobs got bigger.

The 2023 ‘study’ cited in the letter, that of a trans-identified man who had a pregant partner ‘not interested in breastfeeding’ was titled ‘Experience of Induced Lactation in a Transgender Woman: Analysis of Human Milk and a Suggested Protocol’ can be read in brief here.

All three men were taking spironolactone, estradiol and progesterone and added Domperidome to the cocktail. Two of the the men claim to have fed the baby ‘exclusively’ for six weeks.

In 2023 the Daily Mail referred to a case where a trans-identified man “co-fed a baby for four months after using domperidone and a breast pump to stimulate milk production”.

A ‘report’ on this man claimed that his milk contained “similar levels of lactose, proteins and electrolytes as normal breast milk.”

We know that the baby’s mother was co-breastfeeding, which raises the important question of whether the ‘milk’ sample analysed was procured under control conditions, or did this guy just roll up with a sample which could have belonged to anyone?

Oh, what was that baby’s mum thinking?

And was anybody looking out for her welfare?

Professor of Midwifery Jenny Gamble told the Mail that she was “unaware of any trans women producing enough liquid by themselves to feed a baby and that they must supplement this with another source”.

If you want to know more about individual cases, La Scapligiata addresses several case studies in detail here.

Drugs for baby

After the ‘success story’ celebrations, the article goes on to draw attention to two not insignificant points concerning medication. Firstly, that Spironolactone has been reported to have tumorigenic potential in rats.

Secondly, that there are concerns around Domperidome, an anti-sickness medication which helps release prolactin.

While the NHS is cautious, the FDA has banned the use of Domperidome in the USA completely, amidst concerns about its association with cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac arrest, and sudden death when used intravenously. The FDA has also specifically warned against Domperidone’s off-label use as a galactogogue due to its unknown risks to breastfeeding infants.

There’s a lot to unpack here, not least that while some science may be involved from an analytical point of view, these are tales of men who visited clinics on occassions sometimes months apart and self-reported what was going on between visits.  We have only the word of the patients that the babies were exclusively breastfed, and by them. Some appear to have been sharing accommodation or feeding with the baby’s mother or other nursing mothers. One is frequently left wondering what the babies’ real mothers think about all of this.

The 2023 report concludes: ‘The opportunity to chestfeed or breastfeed an infant can be profound for many parents. Further research is needed to meet the needs of TGD individuals who wish to induce lactation as part of their parental goals’.

Note that the report does not ‘recommend’ anything concerning the infant, whose needs are forgotten in the soft flow of affirmation.

I would add that breastfeeding a baby should not be seen as an ‘opportunity’. A fortnight’s holiday in Greece on the cheap is an opportunity, or a chance to study photography, or invest in your mate’s organic beer company. But breastfeeding? Maaate.

A letter is leaked

Last week, the letter was leaked to the Times (archived here) leading other papers to follow suit, and MP Rosie Duffield to declare, “Babies can’t be used as guinea pigs for someone else’s lifestyle choice.”

The Times reported that the Trust cited ‘five scientific studies’ in its response but as we have seen, that is not quite true. The snowball had started rolling though, and it all escalated very quickly.

Not ‘just as good’ – it’s even better!

The runaway glee at this new facet of insanity increased when UCL researcher, trainee lactation consultant and ‘enby’ Kate Luxion went on BBC News under the NHS banner, and told viewers “when you look at the research that has been done specifically about transwomen, there’s a case study that was done and published last year…”

But wait, no, it wasn’t really a study, remember. There was a report. On one bloke. But carry on, Kate.

“…done and published last year where they actually found that the nutritional value was either at or above of then (sic) the nutritional value of the meta-analysis referent that it used… it was seen to be at least if not higher quality.”

This is just so blatently misleading that I’m unsure where to start. I mean I suppose the substance might have been less toxic than the milk of a woman with a transmittable disease, a history of chronic drug use and severe malnutrition. It’s been suggested elsewhere (I can’t remember where) that analysis showed the ‘moob juice’ had a higher fat content, which Luxion may have erroneously interpreted as meaning it was in some way ‘better’. Either way, it’s utter nonsense.

“If we look at the evidence and what we can see from the science of it the baseline of what would be in a transmothers’s blood is going to be about the same as what is in a cisgender woman’s blood in terms of someone who has gone under gender-affirming care and is on hormone protocol…”

Wait… what? A trans mother?  A transmother? Is a trans-mother a man on hormones? A woman on hormones? Or just some bloke with a heart full of queer joy and the urge to have his nipples sucked? What sort of ‘gender affirming care’ is she talking about? What evidence? What science?

Luxion continues with a stunning bravado, enthusing about ‘the empirical studies that have been done’ and I can only assume that she, once again, is referring to the odd bloke who’s rolled up at a clinic a couple of times with some milk and said it was his. It should be noted that the NHS has made no attempt to refute her position.

 One for the girls

The final case Dr James cites in her letter is designed to reassure the reader that testosterone in female breast milk doesn’t harm babies. Analysis “measured infant milk testosterone concentrations with a calculated infant dose of under 1%, with no observable infant side-effects and undetectable serum testosterone concentrations during the five month study period”. The report adds that “the infant had no observable side effects”.

And this sounds reassuring until you read the details of the case and see it was that of a trans-identifed woman who started taking testosterone while she was still breastfeeding her 13-month-old.

A 13-month-old baby is not an ‘infant’ and anyone writing up a report using paediatric terminology should be aware of that. A child over one year is technically a toddler. The report doesn’t contain the most basic essential information. How often was the child fed breast milk? What percentage of his diet was breast milk? 5%? 100%? This information matters! Some toddlers at 13 months are exclusively breastfed, many are fully weaned, despite WHO guidelines suggesting breast feeding until 24 months. A 13-month-old male toddler in the UK weighs around 21lbs 13oz (9.9kg). A newborn baby boy weighs around 7lb 8oz (3.4kg). I don’t need a medical degree to see that a toddler is three times the weright of a newborn.

Obviously a toddler is at far lower risk from toxins than a newborn, yet this report is now being cited as a study which shows a certain level of testosterone in breast milk does no harm to babies. How shoddy is this? This isn’t science, it is misrepresentation at best, outright deception and neglect at worst. And it’s being promoted by our own National Health Service.

But back to the moob juice. Surely a man wouldn’t just suckle a baby in order to gain validation for his fantasy that he is female, would he?

Er. Sorry. Yes.

“They’ve spent furtive years fossicking about in their wives’ knicker drawers and a small fortune on hormones and often unspeakable surgery. From what I can gather, they fancy breastfeeding because they crave ever more definitive female experiences, chasing a feeling of final validation which recedes, like a mirage, as they approach.” wrote Mary Wakefield in the Spectator.

Harsh? Well, no, not really.

In the letter they wrote to University Hospital Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, Children of Transitioners noted that, “many press reports focus on the male secretion content rather than the ethics of unnecessary experiments with unlicensed drugs on babies or the use of infants in sexual paraphilias such as lactation fetish. There is no understanding that children with a parent who is trans should be safeguarded as other children are.”

We know that many trans-identified men have a breast fetish- take the teacher on the left, for example- for some this is just one step further.

There’s a whole porn subculture of lactation, and a subgenre of ‘lactating shemales’.

Yes it’s a genre, no, I wasn’t looking at it on a train.

Example #1

Trans-identified man Dana Fried writes about the sexual thrill of breastfeeding his baby.

Example #2

Lulu Solomon reports on Twitter of a man who decided he wanted to chestfeed shortly after he impregnated a woman. This 52 year old, HIV+ man is obsessed with breastfeeding his young son.

He writes: “my egg cracked a year ago on December the 12th and I realised I could nurse my baby already on the way that lit a fire under me and I have gone from having lean pectoral muscle in March to full B cups now and growing fast. I am humbled by my staggering privilege in my accessibility to medical expertise. I have 5 physicians in three clinics in two world class hospitals helping me that includes the Goldfarb Clinic. Fans of induced lactation will recognise the name.”

Example #3

He is not alone in being a ‘fan’ of induced lactation. ‘Naiomi’ (allmylinks some18+) claims to have had his breast milk analysed by a lactation lab and evidently it’s great. Naiomi also likes to post pouty pictures of himself as an ‘incredibly cuddly cow’. When not posing with a breast pump or dressed as a ‘trad wife’, Naiomi has an ‘only fans’ and a fansly. Of course he does.

“Beneath the phenomenon of male breastfeeding lurks an unpalatable truth – that there is often a sexual or fetishistic element at play when men seek to emulate women’s bodily functions.

If you peer into the darker corners of the internet, you’ll find a host of pornography sites that cater to the fantasies of transwomen ‘experiencing’ menstruation, childbirth, menopause and the like.” Jo Bartosh

Example #4

In a clip shared on Twitter, a man talks about how he can’t produce any milk for the baby his partner has birthed, but intends to continue suckling it. The baby’s actual mother (who thinks she’s a man and has had her own breasts removed) looks up at him adoringly.

“The baby has been able to latch on,” the man tells the film crew, “but I’ve not been able to produce any milk. It’s okay because we’re going to supplement with formula so that my baby is still getting the nutrients that they need.”

The baby doesn’t remain the focus of the piece for long, as soon the man starts crying because the baby’s birth certificate wont list him as its mother.

“This whole birth certtificate thing is really causing me a lot of hurt,” he sobs. “Trans women can be mothers. I’m your mother!” he tells the baby, snottily.

But of course, he isn’t.

If you’d like other examples, Google is your friend. Or possibly not.

What’s to be done?

The issue is not so much ‘is it possible for men to chestfeed’ as “WTF what kind of kinky perv wants to use a baby as part of his validation process?”

Many women were understandably shocked that the NHS would put its name to a letter supporting the use of babies as ‘validation’ props in such a manner.

Worthing Hospital board members were meeting at Worthing Hospital on Thursday February 29th. Standing for Women Locals decided to arrange a protest. How could I not go along?

It was a cold and wet morning and I had to get up far earlier than I would have liked and pay far more for my ticket than I would have liked. But armed with a flask of coffee and a copy of the letter I hopped on the train, was lucky enough to get a table seat, and the journey passed quickly.

Worthing is one of the less trendy seaside towns on the South coast of England. “More wheelchairs than buggies,” observed my mum, who was stuck there for a year with a screaming baby (moi) many, many moons ago. Worthing still has a vague 70s air about it and the hospital is no exception. I didn’t get to see the sea, which was a shame, because I had to be back in town by early evening.

Our numbers consisted of eight women, two men and a toddler. Out came the leaflets and stickers and a salmon pink loud hailer and we were off. You can watch the stream of the event here.

We set up about ten feet from the main entrance to the hospital, so we weren’t obscuring the doors or in the way of anyone who might want to avoid us.

One of the women in our group had put together some flyers, stickers and information sheets based on a graphic by @UBELLEND on Twitter, and these were handed out to anyone who came over and aproached us.

The livestream started and Iris was first to address the listeners.

“Hi everyone, we’re outside Worthing hospital and we are here to let the users of Worthing Hospital University Trust know that their board members endorse men feeding babies their… what would you call it?… their secretions,” announced Iris. “And the outrageous claim that men can chestfeed.”

 Iris spoke of how only women can breastfeed without the use of chemicals and of the inadequacy of evidence supporting the idea that men can lactate. She announced that some women would now talk about their own experiences as breastfeeding women.

Emily spoke next.

“I’m 32 years old and pregnant with my third child. I want to talk about pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Firstly the foods we eat play a significant role in our health, and during pregnancy, certain foods pose risks that should be avoided. As a pregnant woman I cannot eat the following:

Raw or undercooked meats, seafood, and eggs can harbor harmful bacteria such as salmonella or listeria, which can lead to serious complications for both mother and baby. Homemade mayonnaise, Caesar dressing, raw cookie dough. Unpasteurized dairy products milk, cheese. Soft cheeses like brie, camembert, feta, and blue cheese. Deli meats and cold cuts, refrigerated pâtés and meat spreads. Raw sprouts, including alfalfa sprouts, bean sprouts, and clover sprouts. High-mercury fish: shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish tuna should also be avoided, due to the potential for developmental issues in the foetus. Unwashed fruit and vegetables, coffee, alcohol.

Non-essential medications should be avoided Certain over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) and aspirin. Herbal supplements should be used with caution, as their safety during pregnancy is often not well-established. I have also been told that all forms of antihistamines, eye drops and even nasil sprays I had to keep away from…”

Emily spoke of how her own journey into motherhood began, how she struggled to feed her own baby as they were parted while the infant was in intensive care, and how she eventually needed to use formula to do what was best for her and her child.

“Yet, amidst these personal milestones, I find myself confronted with a disturbing reality—a reality in which the very essence of motherhood is being distorted and commodified.

It’s important to clarify that men cannot breastfeed babies… I implore each and every one of you to join me in speaking out against this insanity. Let us not allow the essence of motherhood to be diluted or distorted by misguided ideologies. Together, let us uphold the dignity and respect owed to all mothers, past, present, and future. Our babies are not a commodity or accessory, nor are they there to affirm mental illness and a man’s sexual festish.”

You can hear all of Emily’s story on the stream here.

After Emily had finished speaking, a man in a hiviz came over and spoke to Iris.

“The reason we are here at this hospital is because the board members are holding a meeting over there now,” Iris told the livestream. “What we would have really liked was for them to hear us but this is the closest we can get and hopefully it will get back to them that we are here and why we are here.”

The guys in the HiViz looked a little uncertain of what to do next.

“We probably won’t be here much longer,” I told them encouragingly.

Shirley was next to speak, drawing attention to the fact that the Trust had made a ‘dishonest claim’, and how this, and the use of the phrase ‘human milk’, contribulted to undermining the public’s faith in the NHS.

“Our bodies are not ‘gender based’, we have sex-based bodies. We are male or female and only females of the species can breastfeed. Men’s anatomy is different.”

Shirley drew attention to the poster being held up by the woman next to her. The poster featured the graphic below, and a more detailed explanation of the differences between male and female ‘breast composition’ can be found here.

Shirley pointed out that when they say (in the letter) “’here is clear and overwhelming evidence that human milk is the ideal food for infants’, they are taking research that was done on female-produced milk and claiming that that also applies to milk produced by males. And I almost can’t believe I’m saying these words…”

As she was speaking of the potential  dangers of off-label drugs, a man approached and interrupted.

“I’ll just finish my sentence thank you,” continued Shirley.

“She’s making a speech,” said Iris.

“What?” he scoffed, unaware of the livestream, “Who to? There’s no-one here. You’re disrupting patient care and saying things that are quite inaccurate.”

Do you think men can breastfeed?” demanded one of the women.

Well, we haven’t done so far, at this Trust,” he smirked. “I can’t help but think you may be taking headlines at face value.

This piece of mansplaining did not go down well. It was pointed out to him that all the information was accurate and in the letter. Except the bit about moob juice being ‘better than’ breastmilk wasn’t actually in the letter- although it was said under the NHS banner, on national television, and therefore had a far wider reach than if it had been included.

Mr I-work-for-the-communications-team was not particularly personable. He waved his arms around a bit and wandered off talking into a radio.

Iris read out the infamous quote from Dana Fried:

“These men have a fetish, which they want to use on babies – on infants! To validate their fetish. It’s not about feeding the baby, it’s about feeding the fetish.”

Iris and Shirley talked for a little longer, before the women decided they had said all they had to say for the time being.

As Iris lowered the megaphone, one of the women came back round the corner saying she’d been talking to two passers by and armed them with stickers. We decided it was time to pack up and head to the nearby Waitrose cafe for coffee.

“For this hospital Trust to say that men can breastfed,” concluded Iris, “It’s a lie. which is what it’s all about, lying to validate their fetish. It’s abusive to women and it’s a disgrace!”

“Moob juice is child abuse!” we chanted loudly as we left the hospital and walked up towards the main road. “Moob Juice is child abuse! Moob juice is child abuse!”

“It’s not feeding a baby, it’s feeding a fetish.”

I asked the women involved to give me some of their reasons for coming along, and this is what they told me.

“I was simply dumbfounded by the fact that I’m paying for a health care system and everyone who works in it through my taxes, only for women to be humiliated in this manner and for children to be endangered so viciously. It’s based on nothing but fantasies.” wrote Tina. “I was too infuriated to not do anything when the opportunity presented itself. I will always ‘sadly open my mouth’ until my last breath, to fight this deeply rooted sickness- for a better world for the children I would like to bear one day.”

“The midwives and health visitor took a keen interest in my diet when I was pregnant and breastfeeding my babies,” pointed out Caroline. “I had to avoid ordinary everyday foods and drinks… basic foods! If I had a headache, I’d avoid pain relief such as paracetamol, but in 2024 a trans-identified man can produce toxic waste and call it breast milk. It’s not breastfeeding a baby, it’s feeding a fetish and the NHS are promoting it.”

Andi told me, “My anger and disgust at the normalisation of a male sexual fetish taking precedence over the safety and future wellbeing of suckling babies was my reason for taking part. The majority of the public are mostly unaware of the details because the language being used is deceptive.”

“Apart from the risk to babies and the insult to women,” observed Shirley, “I see this protest as calling the Trust to account for undermining public confidence by making a claim about the equivalence of milk produced by men on such poor evidence and ignoring the health risk to babies. I believe that the Trust’s medical standards have not been applied objectively.”

“For me, it was voicing my visceral disgust watching a man force his fetish to the point where they have a National Health Trust supporting his obvious abuse of a baby, knowing what I know about these men and that particular fetish.” Iris told me. “It’s unbelievable that they, the NHS, can abandon their ‘Do No Harm’ policy to validate these fetishists.”

 

Afterword

It’s a week since the protest and it’s taken me the best part of that week to research and write this piece. As usual, the deep dive was deeper and divey-er than I ever expected.  It’s astonishing that our National Health Service is supporting such an idea, almost unthinkable, but remember this is the same NHS whose Birmingham Trust tells employees their first course of action should be to search unconscious patients for clues to their gender identity to ensure no misgendering takes place.

The capture of our National Health Service is as insane as it is destructive.

How to finish such a piece as this?

“What do you think about it all?” I asked Julia Long. “Can you give me a quote?” And she kindly did.

‘That an NHS Trust can endorse men acting out their fetishes on vulnerable, helpless infants beggars belief. The idea of forcing babies to ingest some kind of noxious secretion from the grotesque parody that is a male Franken-breast flies in the face of any society’s primary duty of care: the duty to nourish, nurture and protect its young. This is a child safeguarding issue of the utmost urgency, and it is a sad indictment of the times we live in that something so flagrantly obvious needs to be pointed out.”

I think that sums it up nicely.

.

 

 

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Time to Talk – a Sisters Salon event with Hannah Barnes & Helen Lewis

Plus- who is Katy Jon Went, and why did Lewis invite him to speak?

“Helen Lewis and Hannah Barnes will discuss the importance of evidence-based reporting on contentious subjects, their experiences as journalists in this difficult terrain, and – in the spirit of the original event – scepticism” read the event page, where you can read more about the event and a brief biography of the two speakers (also archived here.)

Helen Lewis is a staff writer at the Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights.

Hannah Barnes is an investigative journalist and author of the Sunday Times Bestseller’ Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children’

The audience was told that, as part of this event, Sisters Salon had sent out a copy of ‘Time to Think’ to every Brighton and Hove council member “to try and encourage an informed and necessary discussion about the best way to support our city’s children”.

Sarah tolld us that the current council trans inclusion toolkit was no longer in step with evidence-based practice. Following the Cass Review and subsequent closure of the Tavistock, she hoped that Brighton would lead the way forward in “support(ing) children in a more trauma-informed, evidence-based way.”

We were told we could live-tweet about this event, using the hashtag #TimeToTalk, reminded to put our phones on silent and told that “in keeping with the ethos of Sisters Salon we respectfully request that you use the toilet that aligns with your sex” or the mixed-sex disabled toilet.

 Hannah and Helen would speak for about 45 minutes after which the floor would be opened for questions via roving mics.

“What was your first encounter with the material in the book?” Helen asked Hannah.

 Hannah replied that in 2017, while on maternity leave, she saw a documentary on the BBC about young ‘gender questioning’ kids in Canada and became aware of the controversy surrounding Ken Zucker and accusations of conversion therapy. Later that year she read Janice Turner’s piece in the Times, which included two Tavistock GIDS clinicians speaking anonymously. Perhaps, she says, because she has a daughter, she particularly noticed how the vast majority of referrals to GIDS were now troubled teenage girls.

Lewis agreed that it had become clear that referrals involved high numbers of kids with mental health problems whose parents were ‘desperate to help them’.

“There are two types of medical scandals,” observed Lewis, “There’s ‘playing God’ arrogance, you see that for example in the Ian Patterson scandal, and then there’s saviourism ‘we have the answer’ and that is the story of lobotomies for epilepsy, or whatever it might be.”

Helen remembers asking GIDS if they were not concerned that this was ‘the new anorexia’ and they seemed disinterested. Hannah remembers GIDS being quite open about not following ‘evidence based’ practices, extending the protocols used for a specific group of dysphoric kids to treat young people with a variety of disorders.

“They were applying an evidence base which I would argue was weak to start with, to a completely different cohort of children. And they were open about it, and even more extraordinary was that the response from most of that cross-party committee of MPs was ‘why are you so cautious?’

Lewis added that for any other type of treatment, for example chemotherapy, the pros and cons would be weighed up carefully, and wondered why that had not happened at GIDS. Barnes replied that no attempt had been made to even measure or record what the benefits or costs might be. GIDS initially had reservations about the Dutch Protocol, and decided to do their own study. It became clear that the blockers weren’t helping many of the children, that they weren’t providing ‘time to think’, but there was no change in direction.

“There was no attempt to follow evidence-based medicine at all. When you get findings back that aren’t consistent with what you thought before, you change direction. But that just didn’t happen,” reflected Hannah.

Lewis suggested this may have in part been due to ‘sunk cost fallacy’ and compared the situation to the Post Office scandal. Perhaps GIDS, wanting to be ‘the good guys’ couldn’t allow themselves to grasp that some of these interventions may not have been as useful as they thought?

Hannah agreed. “As a human being, it’s kind of intolerable to think ‘what if I got it wrong’ for so many people.”

“Not all, “ she added, “absolutely not all. But it’s quite intolerable to think you might have harmed… particularly… children.”

 

“Was there an inappropriate relationship with activists, with organisations like Mermaids?” asked Helen, suggesting that such organisations had been ‘allowed to mark the homework’ at GIDS.

Stakeholders should be involved, said Hannah, but these lobby groups were in the back of clinicians minds all the time and were discussed a lot.

As paper trails and a data dump reveal, observed Hannah, Susie Green had been involved with the drafting of the service specification of 2016. GIRES also wielded influence at that time, and a Lib Dem peer was ‘acting as a go between’ for GIRES and Mermaids & the Chair of the Tavistock. Gendered Intelligence had come to wield more influence in recent years.

“Susie Green was allowed to directly refer to the Tavistock… but so were Allsorts here in Brighton and they still do, because they’re allowed to.”

Helen said she believed Mermaids got so much outside attention because of Susie Green’s ‘compelling story’, referring to Jackie Green as Susie’s ‘trans daughter’ who is ‘happy and successful’ and calling it a ‘fairy tale version of gender reassignment’ where ‘everything is really perfect’.

A quick aside from me – Whose version of events is this, I wonder, so blithely accepted and thrown out as truth by so many? Susie Green’s infamous TEDX talk (now removed from youTube) claims this denouement, but Jackie Green doesn’t speak of a fairytale ending. Indeed, Jackie recently posted (and later removed) public videos on social media, talking about an ongoing battle with loneliness, depression and sexual identity.

“… what a parent wants to hear is ‘it’s all going to be ok,’ and Susie Green’s story suggests that,” concluded Helen.

“What Susie Green is not is a clinician,”observed Hannah.“Obviously she’s entitled to her opinion but it’s not a medical opinion. Many people in this room, including myself, have children but I don’t claim to be an expert on raising children. Just because something has happened to you it doesn’t mean you’re an expert.”

Both Barnes and Lewis agreed that people who want to transition must be given “all the information available, both the potential benefits and the potential risks”, otherwise informed consent is not possible.

Helen mentioned surgeon James Bellringer, and Hannah told how he had approached GIDS with the information that 80% of the ‘young trans women who had started as male’ and had been puberty blocked did not have ‘enough tissue to make vaginas’. In such cases a more dangerous and less successful surgery had to be performed, using part of the bowel.

GIDS staff thought it important that families should be given this information, in order to ensure informed consent. A leaflet was drawn up but service director Polly Carmichael would not give approval for distribution. The talk with Bellringer took place in 2016, but it was not until 2019 that the information was spoken about openly.

“You say Marcie Bowers has been quite open about it.”

She was and then she wasn’t.”

“There’s a zoom meeting where she talks about it. She says if you are puberty blocked before Tanner stage two you will likely never achieve an orgasm as an adult.”

Another aside from me – Oh my goodness, she she her she she… again, both Lewis’ and Barnes’ willingness to use ‘she’ when referring to a man- any man- makes me dizzy. But about Marcie Bowers, in case you didn’t know, he is a transexual surgeon who flirted with celebrity when 17 year olld celebrity patient Jazz Jennings’ new neo-vagina split apart. Bowers has ‘built or repaired over 2,000 vaginas’.

Bowers’ idea of watchful waiting, according to his website, includes this observation: “early post-pubertal kids in their early teens still transition extremely well”.

I will never use female pronouns to refer to men, whether they support transitioning ‘early post-pubertal kids’ or not. It is a double-edged courtesy, one that allows for a world where a man might know more of womanhood than a woman, or a woman maight know less of womanhood than a man.

Using male pronouns to refer to women allows that somehow those of us left behind in the ‘cis’ camp are either enamoured with or oblivious to our sex’s oppression. We must stay in the box so others can leap out into the realm of authenticity. After all, surely we would change our own pronouns if we weren’t happy?

How can we protect single sex spaces- whether it be prisons, sports, refuges or aqua aerobics classes- while calling a man ‘she’?  A man is either a woman or he isn’t. And he isn’t. Some say it’s about respect. What about respect? Respect has to be earned, and it wouldn’t matter how much I respected you, you still couldn’t change sex.

Lewis talked about desistance and how information around this had only recently become available, with the Cass report reflecting that puberty can resolve or partly resolve dysphoria. Perhaps, she suggested, that information wasn’t available in back in 2000-early 2010s?

It was available, replied Hannah. There was a fairly consistent pattern, if you took a group of ‘gender distressed’ children, some would transition as adults and some wouldn’t, and most wouldn’t. Out of the group that didn’t transition the majority would grow up to be gay or lesbian.

“It was as if all knowledge of the past was forgotten,” mused Hannah. “I don’t think it was wilful, but they didn’t have time to think.”

Barnes suggested that GIDS was in part a story about “chronic underfunding of youth mental health services”. One of the problems GIDS faced with that CAMHS would offload children with a variety of mental health issues on to gender identity services, despite the fact that GIDS was not in a position to deal with other mental health issues.

“It is a story of incredibly weak leadership on every single level, of a complete lack of oversight from NHS England, of cover up, of denial, cultural malaise, scapegoating whistleblowers and a complete lack of evidence-based medicine,” declared Hannah.

The early Dutch studies were mostly among boys who had been gender dysphoric since they were very young, but the cohort had now become females, often with complicated histories of eating disorders, autism and trauma. Why had this changed? If this was a latent population that had never been identified before, then why was the presentation suddenly so different?

Helen said the conversation on social contagion- or lack of it-  had diminished her respect for many people, who say that they will look into it and then don’t.

Hannah referred to the often misquoted suicide statistics and Lewis mentioned the case of a young trans-identifed person whose suicide note was published in the press- contrary to Samaritans guidelines which advise not to publish notes, nor to attribute suicide to a single cause. The young person was turned into a ‘martyred saint’ in a ‘mawkish’ manner that reminded her of the death of Diana.

 Both Polly Carmichael and Bernadette Wren have made it clear that ‘suicide is thankfully rare’ said Hannah, and Helen reflected that you don’t hear the ‘would you rather have a live son than a dead daughter’ narrative as often nowadays.

Hannah spoke of the exceptionism surrounding gender. “it’s like gender creates this cloak of mystery and no one asks the questions.”

Helen asked Hannah how she had gone about reporting on the stories of those who were happy with their transition. Hannah said she just let them all tell their stories in their own words.

“It didn’t surprise me that people were happy with it. If everybody was unhappy then this wouldn’t have ever happened… It isn’t necessarily ones that still identify as trans that are the happy ones and the ones that don’t that aren’t.”

Lewis says she remembers the Kiera Bell case and reading through the judgement and thinking it had done two incredible things.

Judges were now on record saying, ‘we think this is an experimental treatment’ – that data needed to be gathered and that the treatment (puberty blockers/hormones) needed to be proven effective. Secondly, the Tavistock finally provided data showing that all the children they put on puberty blockers went on to transition. This debunked the myth. Both these things helped shatter the ‘it’s just a pause button, it’s completely reversible’ myth.

That case was a game changer, agreed Hannah, who had witnessed the hearing. “It didn’t really matter that it lost on appeal, what it did was it absolutely smashed it into the open… the whole of the world’s media was there.”

The judges, said Barnes, had expressed surprise that the Tavistock had not collected any meaningful data in 30 years: they didn’t know how many kids they put forward, what sex they were, how old they were, who got hormones or where they were now. Keira being brave enough to put herself in the public domain, and talk about her experience, showed that caution should be exercised and not every young person is happy in their transition. People had different experiences because they had different clinicians as well. The young people who had good clnicians had good care. Some children might have three sessions, others thirty. There was no continuity.

Question Time

A woman stood up and said she saw making changes to a child’s body as child abuse.

Helen talked about the complicated decisions that can need to be made involving children’s bodies, for example, cochlear implants for deaf children. At what age do you put them in? Do you put them in at all? Do you wait to put them in and maybe miss a window? She mentioned Andrew Solomon’s book Far from the Tree and emphasised the importance of informed consent.

“I don’t want to make any prescriptive rules about this. I don’t want to say that I’m completely against physical interventions,” said Helen. “I do think that what happened is that people were having physical interventions without the proper information..”

“Thank god, in this country we’re not seeing what we’re seeing in the States,” said Hannah, “with double mastectomies at 12. That’s just horrendous. We’re not seeing that, surgery here at an absolute minimum- I think 17 actually which I’m not saying is OK- but we’re not changing bodies.”

“I would be incredibly cautious, but,” she added, “I think that bans are counterproductive because they set children and their parents and clinicians against each other… bans not only remove a certain degree of flexibility from individual clinicians but they have a whole suite of unintended side effects.”

Hannah reminded us that the doctor’s creed is meant to be ‘first do no harm’ so it’s vitally important to ensure you start from that position.

A second woman stood up and said that what really struck her, as a charity trustee, about Hannah’s book, was that it was “a story of a catastrophic failure of governance at the Tavistock” and that was why Sisters Salon had fundraised to send a copy to every council member. Thery also planned to send some books to head teachers at local secondary schools.

Hannah observed that the Tavistock would now be in a terrible financial situation as GIDS made up 14% of their income in the last financial year. Hannah said she believed Paul Jenkins (who was CEO at the time) really did feel compassionate towards the GIDS children and saw them as needing help, but failed to address the safeguarding concerns of so many staff. She pointed out that the whistle blowing had started as long ago as 2005, with Sue Evans.

A woman pointed out that when we tell small children that there’s a thing called gender identity and that sometimes if you’re a girl but you don’t like pink you’re actually a boy, you can’t then tell them a few years later that there’s nothing that can be done about it.  “We can’t just look at the treatments, we have to look at what children are being taught at a very early age.”

Hannah said she agreed, you can’t present a problem and then say there’s no solution.

Because people can’t explain gender dysphoria or body dysmorphia to children they give a sanitised version to children that’s incredibly reductive and simplistic. Helen says she understands that some people might choose to change their bodies but the idea that there is ‘an essence of a male or female soul’ is where she draws the line.

 

Stephanie Davis-Arai of Transgender Trend said it was important that we acknowledge that there is an ideology behind this.

“There are medical ethics that, to me, say you don’t prevent a child’s growth at a critical stage of growth that turns them into adults, unless there is a life-saving reason for doing it. We have lost our ethics on this issue because there is a faith that underpins it.”

When this particular faith penetrates upwards into government and downwards into schools and throughout society should people who are believers in this new faith be involved with the new gender clinic hubs that Hilary Cass is setting up?”

“Should they be running them and in charge of them? No,” said Hannah, adding that  stopping anyone who’d ever worked in GIDS from working there would also not be a great idea, as the whistle blowers would also be ruled out. She said she found it staggering, when she reported for Newsnight, that it was considered that Polly Carmichael might be on the interview panel.

“She wasn’t, but to even consider that she might be beggars belief.”

A woman said that she wondered why the issue had become a left/right divide: she feels centre left but finds herself agreeing more with the right on this issue.

Hannah said it shouldn’t be a left/right issue. It can be true that people can transition as adults and leave happy lives, she said, but at the same time it can also be true that by not giving the right care to children we can do them harm. She said she wished we could separate child safeguarding from self-ID, which was an adult issue. These issues needed to be separate for there to be any concensus.

A man stood up and said he had bought Hannah’s book at Christmas and shortly afterwards one of his children had come to him and said they thought they were trans.

“What do you think that parents in a position like me with.. er.. gender questioning children should do? Because I’m terrified and I don’t know what to do.”

For some reason this was met with huge barrage of applause.

“Thank you for coming here to share your story,” said Helen, “and I understand you want to support your kid, the one thing I would say is that Katy Jon Went who is here tonight does run some services for parents of gender questioning youth and speaks to them about the idea about slowing down. I would say the best practise that we know of is talking therapy, just talk talk talk talk and get real support.”

 She also advised him to check out any other issues that might be affecting his child, adding “I’m not in any way qualified to give clinical advice.”

“I’m not a doctor, I’m not a clinician”, said Hannah. “Thank you for standing up. There are probably some parents in the room, I would say if you can  just keep the lines of communication open with your child and ask them what they’re feeling, but don’t rush into anything.”

After this exchange a woman stood up and warned the father to be very, very careful who he trusted and suggested he got in touch with the Bayswater Support Group who are “parents of children who are gender questioning.”

Hannah said ‘parents get lost in this a lot’ and there seemed to be a commonly held belief that parents were either pushing their kids to transition or terrible transphobes. She felt that view was inaccurate.

“The vast majority are loving parents who want what’s best for their children and they don’t know what that is and there’s nothing worse than seeing your children in pain.”

Helen agreed he should research the groups and “find one that you think you feel is the most in tune”.

“Might this be this an opportunity for Katy to say a few words, if you’re comfortable doing that Katy? Do you want to lift your hand up..”

“Let me give you a bit of background on Katy,” said Helen, enthusiastically.

There was a lot of she-ing and her-ing, and Linda Bellos and Julie Bindel were mentioned and Katy has evidently “been involved in a lot of dialogue between transgender activists and feminists” and she… and her…  and she and… I really appreciate her for bringing a different perspective that I don’t share so that’s the spirit in which I want her to speak to you tonight about the work she does.”

“I wouldn’t say I was the other side,” said Katy,with a light laugh,” in the sense that I’m open to new information… and continue to listen to both sides.”

“Full disclosure I was married to a psychiatrist…  

my own psychiatrist called me the most reluctant transsexual he’d ever met…

James Bellringer was my surgeon as an adult…”

At this point I was just imagining how that poor bloody father felt, having come here looking for some sort of guidance on how to help his child and now being obliged to listen to Wait telling a room full of people about his ‘gender reassignment’ surgery.

It all felt very surreal:  ironic that we were at an event where one of the main points of discussion had been unqualified people wielding undue influence, yet not only had Wait’s ‘parents’ group’ been recommended, but here he was talking to us all as if he was giving a presentation.

In fact, Katy Jon does give presentations and they seem to start pretty much the same way he addressed us. I have to say for a moment I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do, so I thought I’d better quietly leave the room. So I got up, and just stood there for a moment looking at him, and then left. As I was quite near the back,I doubt he even saw me.

Then I stood in the lounge, thinking to myself, ‘what the very fuck just happened?’

I didn’t go back until he had finished.

More on Katy later. 321, back in the room.

 

As I returned, a woman who had detransitioned was telling the audience how she had taken the private route for her transition and received no follow up from her surgeon, or clinicians, asking how she felt about her mastectomy or her experience of being on testosterone. She predicted that in the next ten or fifteen years there was going to be a surge of people coming forward, those who had gone down the private route like her, and received little or no follow up support.

Hannah thanked her for speaking up. Helen mentioned Helen Webberley and GenderGP and the problems that arose when people could set up an online pharmacy. Hannah said that even if the new services were staffed with good clinicians and given decent funding for mental health services, that would still only solve issues within the NHS. She suggested people read up on the judgement against the Webberleys and their ostensible exhoneration.

It was acknowledged that some people will need ongoing support- the 70% problem rate for phalloplasty was mentioned- and that the private sector has escaped with very little scrutiny, especially in America.

The government and the regulators in this country really need to step in, said Hannah.

A woman raised the issue of the numerous fundraisers for ‘top surgery’ and concerns raised around how easy it can be to bypass proper care. She felt there should be safeguarding around these fundraising sites. Mention was made of the fact that some detransitioners are understandably not keen on the phrase ‘mutilation’.

It was decided that it was time to stop there. The event ended to much applause, and people made their way out to the warm bar to continue the discussion, or out into the cold night and up the hill to the station to catch a train home.

It was an interesting and enjoyable evening, and I certainly went home with a lot of unexpected things to consider.

So, back to the sudden appearance of Katy.

There was some kickback about Went’s unannounced appearance at the event even before people knew he had been invited to speak. Sarah of Sisters Salon tweeted this picture of Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock and Katy Jon Went just before the event, calling them ‘esteemed guests’.

Some wrongly believed that it had been billed as a single-sex event, as most Sisters Salon events are. Many wondered what it was that Went had done to be considered ‘esteemed’.

Others, for example, @eve_entually, tweeted concerns that “many women who appear to be speaking for us are actively promoting men who have a fetish for pretending they’re women.

Accusations of guilt by association flew, countered by essays on totalitarian thought-policing, causing Kathleen to tweet this disclaimer at one of her detractors:

Sisters Salon have made it clear that it was not their decision to invite Katy to speak.

I am going to add my 2p worth about Katy Jon Went. Katy has a great deal to say for himself, and it seems reasonable that somebody who puts themself in the public eye, as he does, should be willing to have their position scrutinised.

Firstly, it was billed as a mixed-sex event. So he had every right to be there. Secondly, it was called ‘Time to Talk’ so there was no reason why he shouldn’t be allowed to speak.

However, there was more to his presence than that. To paint him as just another member of the audience would be disingenuous. And the event had certainly not been billed as ‘The Katy Show’, which is sadly- and predictably- how it may be remembered.

“It was a mixed-sex event and I specifically asked Katy to come and share her experience of trying to build bridges between different viewpointstweeted Helen Lewis.

Some supported her position, but others were not so keen.

Went rejected claims that he had been ‘centred’ at the event, asking “How on earth was I centred at a 95% female but open to all event?”

If I really, really have to, I will explain why.

Special treatment

No-one else present, other than the two speakers, received an introduction, or a request to speak. Some audience members were able to ask questions of the panel, and were asked to keep them short – why was there a different rule for Katy?

Went was introduced twice, once by Helen, and then again in his own introduction.

All the other audience members who spoke faced the panel, but Went addressed the audience from the front.

If it was planned in advance that Katy would speak, or if Katy was to be a special guest- as he clearly was- why was this not mentioned on the tickets? Or at least on the door. This appears to be because Katy was not invited by Sisters Salon, but by Helen. The audience was given no reason to believe we would be addressed by a trans-identified man. Given the option, some may have chosen not to attend.

Was Katy’s appearance planned to surprise the audience? Went suggests that the idea of him speaking may have been an idea sprung on Barnes just before the event started.

Why the she/her pronouns?

Grating as it was to hear Barnes and Lewis use ‘she/her’ pronouns to describe Marcie Bowers, Katy Jon doesn’t even care to use them. Why was Lewis so quick to use ‘she’ to address him? It seems somewhat over zealous, to say the least.

According to his website, Went used to use she/her pronouns but now prefers they/them pronouns. His ‘indefinable gender’ evidently leaves him feeling ‘technically more aligned with non-binary ‘they’, although he’s fine with ‘she’ and tolerates ‘he’. He explains further here:

Went uses a lot of words to describe himself. He is non-binary, bipolar, an ex-evangelical Christian, ex-missionary, sucide survivor, “a bibliophile, logophile, xenoglossophile, cibophile, oenophile, porphyrophile, and more philes!” A link from his website leads to a page which speculates cheerfully as to whether Hebephilia and Zoophillia should be included under the LGBT banner.

A late-transitioning male who was outed (and divorced) after his psychiatrist wife found cross-dressing photos of him on their computer, Went now describes himself as asexual.

“Some Christians… tried to deliver me of being trans, and to repent of any bisexuality – well I’m now post-gender and asexual.”

In the ‘Fifty Shades of Gender’ podcast, he tells listeners:

“When people say, ‘how do you identify?’, I say, ‘well I am, or have been, every letter of L-G-B-T-I-Q-A and P, and some of those letters even have double meanings.… I think there are seven billion shades (of gender)… there is one for everybody on the planet. You know, and if people ask me how many sexes there are I will go, ‘at least two’.’”

On the removal of his penis and creation of a neo-vagina he says, “I wish I’d had it 30 years ago… it was like having a lobotomy on my brain but the lobotomy was between my legs instead.”

 

So why Katy?

 Went was chosen to address the audience, and was recommended as a point of contact for the father of a newly gender-questioning child. Nobody else present was afforded that privilege. So what exactly is it that Went bring to the table? Let’s have a look.

Went believes children as young as five should be actively taught about gender identity in school and on TV.

Went appears in this clip from ‘The Mustard Show’ discussing the controversial CBBC program ‘I am Leo’, which follows the transition of an eleven year old girl. Went believes young children should be shown such things in order to help them ‘explore identity dilemmas’. Age five, he says ‘you begin to know what you’re not’ and that’s it’s ‘absolutely amazing’ that schools and kids TV are discussing gender identity with children as young as five.

Went supports teachers socially transitioning children behind parents’ backs.

In a December 2023 Times Radio interview, Went said he believed the new government schools’ guidance gave ‘enough wriggle room for everyone’ adding “ if social transitioning helps then great, I mean I do know, I’ve worked with trans teenagers and I run a support group for parents, as you mentioned, and in that situation you do get these difficult ones…”

Went is very vocal in his support for a ban on conversion therapy.

Certain aspects of the talking therapy that both Helen and Hannah quite rightly value so highly, would be eradicated by a ban on conversion therapy that included ‘gender identity’. Under a conversion therapy ban, it’s important to understand that it would be unacceptable for a therapist to, for example, ask a girl a question like “What makes you think you are a boy?”

Transgender Trend explains:

“Therapy for gender dysphoria is not ‘conversion therapy’. The government should not include ‘gender identity’ in any legislation on conversion therapy without specifically clarifying this point, nor conflate this term with sexual orientation. The addition of ‘gender identity’ to any policy on ‘gay conversion therapy’ leaves therapists with no option but to agree with a patient that they are really the opposite sex, foreclosing any possibility of exploration of feelings and meanings, or underlying issues/mental health problems that may have led to a cross-sex identity, for fear of being accused of ‘conversion therapy.’

Went perpetuates the suicide myth.

If you click on ‘training on gender’ on Went’s website, you’re taken to a page that features the very ‘48% of trans people under 26 attempt suicide’ myth that Barnes and Lewis were discussing. The same page makes the claim that ‘57% of trans youth in non-supportive homes attempt suicide, dropping to just 4% if supported’.

How is this man in a position to give advice to parents or work with ‘trans kids’? These are statistics from dubious sources, guaranteed to terrify most parents into immediate submission to the gender agenda. Which- I kid you not- is the name of the website. Founded and co-run by Went.

Went uses women’s toilets even though he realises he may be perceived as a threat.

In the 2023 Channel 4 documentary, Gender Wars, Went says, “it’s OK to recognise that you can be perceived as dangerous, it doesn’t mean that you are.” He then tells an anecdote beginning, “I remember being in a woman’s toilet very recently…” about realising that his male voice could be perceived as threatening while chatting to a female friend through the cubicles walls of a public toilet.

Went also uses other women’s spaces. He thinks this is ok, as he told GB News ‘I don’t choose to access a woman’s space unless I’ve been invited in or welcomed.”

So, let’s recap:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Setting the fact that he is clearly as mad as a box of frogs aside for one moment, what possible light could this man bring to a debate concerned with child safeguarding and medical professionalism?

 

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