Quote from: TanyaG on April 27, 2025, 09:19:52 AMI came across a paper recently which did a good job of summarising the psychological issues trans people struggle with, so I've translated it from psychosocial speak into English!

I'm posting it because if you're in the early stages of suspecting you are trans, or dealing with having accepted you are trans, it provides a checklist which may help you make sense of some of the thoughts and emotions messing up your mind. It may also help when you first engage with a therapist, because you'll be able to pick up on important themes straight away and make faster progress.

The authors picked up on four main branches, which I've reduced to three along with adding some background and explanations to help get you going. It's as brief as I can make it and isn't exhaustive, but picks up on the major things that bug us.

Wow, this is a great article.  Thank you for putting it in terms that make it easier to grasp. This is right to the point. I have not been to individual therapy as of yet. I am trying to find my way by resources available to me. I have found this place very helpful. I have my first support group on 1 May. I do plan on seeking therapy in the future. I can definitely say by being here has helped tremendously. This article hits home and I can relate to so much. Thank you. 🤗

Quote from: Annaliese on April 27, 2025, 09:40:05 AMWow, this is a great article.  Thank you for putting it in terms that make it easier to grasp. This is right to the point.

Thank you, Annaliese! It took a slice of time to write and I was worried I'd condensed it down too much!

Quote from: TanyaG on April 27, 2025, 09:42:00 AMThank you, Annaliese! It took a slice of time to write and I was worried I'd condensed it down too much!

You're welcome,  not at all. It was something I think was on point.

The position of trans people in the UK has been in the news a lot recently, but because news and social media are fighting for readership, both have amplified the loudest voices on either side of the debate. With due respect to everyone involved, they've handed a megaphone to the last people who are going to help navigate us to a compassionate solution, because neither group is interested in anything but a crushing victory over the other side.

Despite all the heat and light, we've had a parade recently which was attended by a lot of people who aren't normally associated with the trans movement, one of a number of hints there's a pool of moderate people who'd be happy with a compromise.

Which is what we had before the Scottish Parliament made what the Supreme Court defined as an act of overreach.

Briefly, the situation now is that the law in England and Wales about trans people remains unchanged, but in Scotland, it has. In respect of England and Wales the Supreme Court has clarified how the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 apply to both cis and trans people.

The emphasis throughout the debate has been on trans people who were assigned male at birth (AMAB) with scant attention paid to trans people assigned female at birth (AFAB), who gender activists on both sides would prefer not to exist. Non-binary trans people have been left out more or less completely, which I find astonishing given they form one third of all new referrals these days.

Why have AFAB trans people and non-binary folk been sidelined? They don't fit the narrative, which was successfully leveraged into a debate about women's toilets with the implication that all trans people in the UK were male sex offenders disguised as women. Nowhere in the media was there any mention that the majority of newly diagnosed trans people are AFAB, because it would have shot the campaigners' fox and killed the story.

The dust will not settle for a long time to come, but I'll get on to that. In the short term, the Equality Commission (EQ) has sprung into action and made numerous announcements about how it's going to get tough on hospitals which have allowed AMAB trans people access to women's wards. This is Britain, so it's natural for toilets to dominate the debate and another EQ pronouncement has focussed on women's toilets throughout the land. Changing rooms have been introduced as a kind of side salad.

The ultimate irony is the EQ is what's called a Quasi Autonomous Non Government Organisation, which should put it in the line for the axe, because the narrative about QANGOs is they are an undemocratic gravy train for political appointees whose chief executive's mouths are stuffed with gold. Right now our government is giving QANGOs the hard bear stare, so it's tempting to see the EQ's new found activism as an attempt to save itself from what was otherwise looking like a nasty encounter with the sharp side of the treasury's chopper.

What are we left with? The government must be wishing it never got involved in this one, but it's on them because a dimly sighted person could have seen what's coming. The Gender Recognition Act still applies and still gives trans people a 'protected characteristic' as does gender affirming surgery.

The EQ is making so much noise about cis women's rights they've accidentally flagged up an awareness that trans women also have rights under UK law which, yes, include access to toilets. No-one has any good ideas about how to solve this which don't involve substantial investment.

We still don't have a watertight legal definition of what a 'biological woman' is in the UK, despite everyone from the Supreme Court judges downward behaving as if one exists. It is still the case that anyone with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) is legally entitled to change their sex on legal documents including their birth certificate. The Supreme Court stated in its recent judgment that that includes the right for AMAB people to call themselves women and for AFAB people to call themselves men.

Since natural variability and the rarity of trans people ensures there are many times more cis women who look like men that there are trans women who look like men some innocent bystanders are going to find themselves in the firing line. A holder of a GRC has the legal right not to disclose they have one, so short of giving out 'biological women' certificates to be displayed on demand at every public toilet there's no clear way out of this one. Nobody seems to have thought about this.

In short, what was a mess we muddled through thanks to compassion and tolerance (ugly words in the like wars) has been turned into a political hot potato, which statements by the Equality Commission has hurled so high into the air it's impossible to ignore. Yet it will have to be fixed, somehow.

That will be interesting enough to watch on its own, but what everyone in the media, government and legislature is forgetting is soon we will have as many trans men and we have trans women, nor will it be long before the number of non-binary people equals either group. This will triple the number of trans voices and my advice for politicians and judges alike is we need to stop pretending this begins and ends with where people pee.

This weekend, the British Medical Association Residents' Committee voted to condemn the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex as scientifically illiterate. While in fairness, the Supreme Court's brief was to clarify what UK law means in the narrow terms of the Equality Act 2010 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004, the vote is significant. Why? Residents are doctors in training, about two thirds of whom are members of the BMA and who in total comprise just under 30% of the total BMA membership.

This means we're looking at the opinion of a substantial slice of medics in Britain. Although it is mentioned only in passing in most news stories, a key line of the Residents' statement is that they believe the Supreme Court decision will cause real-world hard to the trans, non-binary and intersex communities in the UK. Given that anti trans activists have left no stone unturned in their attempt to gaslight others into seeing all trans people as male abusers in disguise, this was a brave and much needed declaration.

The Residents Committee press release drew immediate and predictable responses from the usual suspects, which make entertaining reading, because taken at face value, the organisations concerned don't consider the majority of doctors in the UK aged under about 32 know enough about medicine to be able to treat them.

Which should prove interesting, because in a few years, the Residents will be senior doctors and what are the objectors going to do then?

The Residents are the people who will be staffing gender affirming services in the future and their views deserve respect because few understand the complex relationship between sex and gender identity better than doctors fresh out of medical school. It would be tough to find another group of similar size whose faces don't go blank at the mention of such apparent minutiae as 5 alpha-reductase type 2 deficiency but instead think 'intersex,' nor one whose knowledge of embryology is so great as to understand just how complicated human development is.

Part of the Residents' statement makes it clear that they, as most doctors do, understand sex and gender as complex aspects of humanity, which are independent of each other, even if gender usually aligns with sex. It has scarcely been possible to leave medical school since the 1980s without being aware of this, yet the Residents' critics are making desperate efforts to portray this teaching as indoctrination by trans activists. No evidence has been put forward to support the activists' accusation, nor can there be, because it is a flat out lie.

Is the Residents' Committee announcement pleasing? Yes. Is it unexpected? No, and I'll get onto that, but it's another sign that Gen X and Millennials are taking a much more compassionate view of trans issues than Boomers. There are plenty of Boomers who are good with trans, just as there are Gen X who feel the opposite way, but within the UK the overall trend has been toward an age-based split in attitude between older antis and younger pros.

What do older groups fear? Don't forget many of them were born long before the Equality Act, against which members of parliament fought a rearguard action until 2010, when the last pockets of resistance were overwhelmed by the obsolesce of their views. A lot of Boomers had to work through that era, the consequences of which are still being unpicked (women's pensions remain a live issue) and memories of how hard they had to fight for justice remain strong.

You would think any group which has had to fight for its cause would be sympathetic to the next group to find itself in a similar situation, but human nature doesn't work like that. Instead, having won its own battle, each group disarms and joins the establishment in the fight to ensure its successors' claim to compassion is denied, in a kind of weird Stockholm syndrome merry go round. So while it's possible to understand Boomer women's attitudes to the rights they won, as a member of their generation who supported them to the hilt, I'm not impressed with the vitriol they've focused on a group they are not only statistically unlikely to meet, but who have every reason not to draw attention to themselves.

In passing its clarification of the law regarding the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010, the UK's Supreme Court has unwittingly pulled the cork from the bottle. What the Residents' Committee has helped to do is underline the law is a mess and that we've been limping along for far too long by pretending it isn't.

Trans people remain rare, but the Residents have been kind enough to point out that makes us too vulnerable to be forgotten or left to the vengeance of groups who've won their own fights against discrimination and are actively conspiring to stop others following in their footsteps.

Now the genie is out the bottle, it isn't going to go back in. Compassion is needed in this debate and it's fantastic to get some from the Residents Committee. Hey, I used to be a junior doctor, it was long ago, but I cared then and I still care now.

But then Labour have said birth sex for single sex wards.

Quote from: davina61 on Yesterday at 03:53:00 AMBut then Labour have said birth sex for single sex wards.

This is the genie out the bottle and starting to play, so it depends on whether you're a half full or half empty person! The Equality Commission is bearing down on the NHS Executive, which is going to be interesting in itself, because both are Quangos and the NHSE is due for the chop. Starmer and Streeting appear to have got an inkling that the genie isn't going to be an easy one to handle, but they're stuck with the Supreme Court interpretation of the Equality Act 2010, which says 'biological sex' is the basic building block of the Act.

Not only that, they've got to deal with issues like trans men who haven't had bottom surgery and who become pregnant. Not to mention say, people with congenital androgen insensivity who are to all intents and purposes female outwardly, but are 46,XY and need gynae procedures. Or anyone non-binary, a group who are as forgotten on Susan's as they are everywhere else, but who are increasingly common. The genie says this isn't about single sex anything, it's about what do we do with the entire scope of trans?

One of the few groups who have grasped the implications of this are the Residents. They've stepped forward when they need not have done and they've addressed all of these points in a way no-one else has done. Because they will become the consultant physicians and surgeons of the future, they will lead GAC and if there's a key group to have on their side, they're it.

So while this isn't going to sort out straight away, it isn't like everyone's hand is against us. We have more support than we think.

Quote from: TanyaG on Yesterday at 04:33:11 AMThey've stepped forward when they need not have done and they've addressed all of these points in a way no-one else has done.

A most enlightening discussion, TanyaG! Probably a similar scenario is playing out in the US. But we will need to abide until the Orange-haired boy finally fades away before any substantial progress can be made overcoming all the hate and disinformation. Please continue to provide such thoughtful analyses of the contours of the battlefield. They give me hope.

We have a new development, hot on the heels of the BMA Resident Doctors Committee declaring trans people need support on compassionate grounds at the weekend. The dust is still settling on that, but yesterday Britain's only publicly 'out' transgender judge declared she has backing to challenge the Supreme Court ruling in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

To recap, the situation in the UK is the Supreme Court ruled on 16th of this month that in respect of the Equality Act 2010 (EA2010) the word 'woman' means 'someone whose biological sex is female'.

Less in the headlines is they have also confirmed that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA2004) still applies and that someone who has either a Gender Recognition Certificate or has undergone Gender Reassignment Surgery remains a woman in the eyes of that Act.

Notice there is no mention here about transmen or non-binary people (despite the EA2010 protecting some transmen) because neither the EA2010 nor the GRA2004 mention non-binary folk. The Supreme Court ruling on 'what is a woman', is purely in within the scope of the EA and the fallout has been that no-one but people whose 'biological sex' is female can use female facilities.

Background: In the UK the number of trans people of all descriptions is thought to be about 0.5% right now. Non-binary people are becoming more frequent, although they probably represent a small fraction of that percentage right now, but if we assume half of that 0.5% were assigned male at birth (AMAB) and all of them have either started treatment with hormones and surgery, and have been out of their homes in the gender of their choice, that means we're talking one in four hundred of the population who might have accessed female facilities and who are trans.

This is in line with astronomer Piero Sicoli's calculation of the odds that asteroid 2023 DW would hit the earth. Could you name this asteroid? Did it fil your nights with fear in case it landed on a public toilet?

Whatever, keep this figure in mind, because there are pressure groups who are acting as if this tiny number of individuals (virtually all of whom desire more than anything else not to get noticed) are the thin end of a fifth column whose evil mission is to roll back women's rights in their entirety.

Being fair, there have been errors in force and direction on both sides (I'm particularly looking at you, Stonewall), which haven't done anything to lower the temperature, but we got to where we are now because the law relating to gender has been an accident waiting to happen for 21 years. That's on our government and its predecessors.

The judge who plans to bring the case to the ECHR had applied to be make a submission to the Supreme Court, only to be declined along with at least one other trans person. Yet the Supreme Court did hear the views of cis people, despite the case involving the protected rights of trans people.

Until a short time ago, the judge concerned was held up by the judiciary and the government as an example of how inclusive the legal system in the UK has become.

However, she resigned last year when became increasingly obvious her transness was being (this is not her word) exploited by a system which, as the Supreme Court judgment has demonstrated, did little more than tolerate trans rights under the GRA2004. She didn't mince her words in her conclusion that, 'the national situation is no longer such that it is possible in a dignified way to be both 'trans' and a salaried, fairly prominent judge in the UK.'

The legal system isn't exactly hot on women's rights, either, just count the number of female supreme court judges. Pale, male and stale doesn't begin to describe it.

So, our new heroine, and that's what she is because the path she's chosen will be a hard one, has made it clear the issues she's taking to the ECHR are relevant not only to transwomen, but to all women and especially women who are perceived as unfeminine.

The latter group are in the firing line now the genie is out the bottle, because unfeminine looking women are an order of magnitude more frequent than transwomen (remember, transwomen are at most 1:400 of the population) and it seems only a matter of time before women who don't match the stereotype of femininity are facing questions in toilets. God forbid we should come to this.

Our judge has also made the case she has female genitalia and that it's not safe for her and other transwomen who have had bottom surgery, to use men's toilets. Since a major plank of the anti trans movements campaign has been about making  women (who have female genitalia) safe from men (don't make me write it) this is slap your forehead stuff. But despite coming from the Journal of the Bleeding Obvious, it has taken all this time for someone to say it.

How will this appeal do? I have no idea, but I can't believe we'll ever find a better advocate, nor one as well resourced. One weakness of the Supreme Court decision is that while they glibly talk of 'biological sex' the attempts to define such a thing under UK law have failed to provide something which stands up to scientific scrutiny.

Intersex hasn't been mentioned, but the Supreme Court judgement leaves the majority of such people, who even anti trans campaigners would think of as being women, defined as men. So there's that, but there's also the issues the Residents Committee and our new judicial champion have raised, which are about compassion, dignity and respect, not one of which our opponents are willing to concede us right now.