Transwomen are not women - X (XY?)

[Elaedith]

Originally Posted by Matthew Best

And you are toxic and nasty for doubting them.

The thing is though, when experts who know far more than LJ don't agree, then those experts are wrong.

[Rolfe]

This is an intriguing article.

The quiet removal of same-sex attraction

It details, by looking at the edit history of the relevant pages and the histories of the accounts that made the edits, how the meaning of the word "gender" was subverted in Wikipedia until the very concept of same-sex attraction no longer held any meaning.

Quote:

Anyone familiar with the current sex/gender debate will recognise exchanges like this. One person insists that the idea that men can be lesbians erases the very concept of lesbianism, and the response amounts to “get over it, men can be lesbians”, with deference to academic gender studies.

Essentially, from this point on, same-sex attracted people would be unable to assert their own existence or have a word in language for themselves without building up a significant body of academic work in justification.

Quote:

- Before July 7th 2010 - Homosexuality means same sex attraction

- July 7th 2010 - Homosexuality means same sex/gender attraction, where gender still means “sex”.

- October 11th 2010 - Homosexuality means same sex or gender attraction, but again where gender still means “sex”.

- October 18th 2010 - Homosexuality means same sex or gender attraction, where gender now means whatever sexist stereotypes the unethical quack John Money decided it means.

- August 30th 2011 - You can’t change homosexuality back to meaning exclusive same-sex attraction without an academic source.

The author goes on to discuss the accounts that made these edits, and how this illustrates the essential vulnerability of Wikipedia to both capricious editing of a page nobody is seriously thinking about, and vested interests pushing their personal agenda.

[LondonJohn]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

The thing is though, when experts who know far more than LJ don't agree, then those experts are wrong.

You know very well that the current mainstream medical position is that transgender identity is a valid human condition (as opposed to being a disorder or the product of a disorder). I can show you experts who believe the Twin Towers were brought down by Thermite placed there on behalf of the US Government. Do you think we should listen to those experts too?

And why do you think that 1) mainstream medicine's approach (in modern liberal democracies) is based upon affirmation of transgender identity and assistance in physical transitioning (if desired), while 2) mainstream medicine's approach to (for example) people who state that their identity is that of a dog will treat that as a disorder?

I realise that you, personally, don't believe in the validity of transgender identity. But that doesn't give you the right to try to claim that your position is in the mainstream. It is not. You can continue shouting your wishful thinking into the abyss all you like.

[LondonJohn]

Originally Posted by Matthew Best

And you are toxic and nasty for doubting them.

No, this thread is toxic and nasty. But thanks for your contribution - excellent stuff!

[Matthew Best]

It would be great if you would contribute something.

[Graham2001]

Spiked's contrarian's have released an article looking at the 'detransitioners' and their experience, as always take this with a grain of salt, but to me I find the parallels with 'Repressed Memory Therapy' becoming much harder to ignore.

Quote:

The phenomenon of ‘detransitioning’ is becoming harder to ignore. Take a look online and you’ll quickly find large and growing communities of detransitioners – people who have undergone hormone therapy and / or surgeries in order to make their bodies conform to that of the opposite sex, and who now want to go back to normal.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/1...er-be-ignored/

[LondonJohn]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

A bigot, too. You forgot that bit.

Nope. Just wondering why, and on what basis, you disagree so fundamentally with mainstream medicine on this topic? Are you better qualified to make that judgement?

Incidentally, I wonder what they called the people who refused to recognise homosexuality as a valid lived condition when it was finally classified as such in DSM, insisting instead that they were correct to think* that homosexuals were deviants with a mental health disorder? What do you reckon?


* And I imagine that such people would have been able to (selectively) quote publications that chimed with their viewpoint - such people probably could find plenty of published material today which supported their view that homosexuals are deviants with mental disorders.....

[LondonJohn]

Originally Posted by Matthew Best

It would be great if you would contribute something.

Oh dear.

[Matthew Best]

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

Oh dear.

I'll take that as a no, then.

[LondonJohn]

Originally Posted by Matthew Best

I'll take that as a no, then.

Ah, the old playground gambit! I suppose if it makes you feel better to think that, then go right ahead. I don't care either way, frankly.

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by Graham2001

Spiked's contrarian's have released an article looking at the 'detransitioners' and their experience, as always take this with a grain of salt, but to me I find the parallels with 'Repressed Memory Therapy' becoming much harder to ignore.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/1...er-be-ignored/

That's one of a number of articles that have been coming out recently, and I don't see anything in there I'd disagree with. I saw this earlier today, although I wasn't sure it was meaty enough to post the link here.

The parallels with the repressed memory scandal have been pointed up by a number of people for a while. Also to some extent the imagined child abuse scandals, where clinicials and social workers had been taught to see signs of abuse in all sorts of normal observations, and wouldn't even believe the children who denied that anyone was abusing them.

The other parallel which is pretty obvious is anorexia nervosa, certainly in the case of girls with ROGD. The disgust with their developing bodies, the desire to starve themselves back into a waif-like form, the feeling that by doing this the girl is taking control of a situation she really can't control, are all the same. And of course it's easy to observe that many of these poor girls showing off their mastectomy scars on Tumblr also have self-harm scars.

I haven't looked at the statistics myself, but someone did claim that as teenage anorixia prevalence decreased, teenage trans identity increased.

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

the current mainstream medical position is that transgender identity is a valid human condition.

*citation required.

[Rolfe]

John, at the moment we are discussing the transitioning of minors, principally the administration of drugs which will prevent a child going through puberty and leave him or her sterile, unable to experience sexual arousal, and very possibly with a host of serious medical problems in the near or not so near future.

We are discussing the unquestioning provision of mastectomies and testosterone injections to schoolgirls who are disgusted by their maturing female bodies, and the regret many of them feel when they get a little older and realise what they've done to themselves and that it cannot be undone.

We are discussing a particular scandal unfolding with Mermaids, which has resulted in its lottery funding being withheld and an investigation being mounted by the Charities Commission. They have been found to be encouraging children to identify as trans and praising them when they did so. They have been supplying harmful breast binders to girls as young as 13 behind the backs of parents who know these things are harmful - a procedure that is classed as child abuse by the Metropolitan Police (under the heading of "breast ironing").

And they have been discovered to have a trustee who is deeply involved at the very least in pederast apologia, and with a history that suggests he may well be a practising pederast. They have had to shut down their web chat service and their telephone helpline amid safeguarding concerns.

Could you maybe give us some idea on your position with respect to these topics, rather than just repeating "valid lived condition" like a stuck record?

[Ron Obvious]

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

You know very well that the current mainstream medical position is that transgender identity is a valid human condition

Unless we know how to define a "valid human condition", and particularly know how to distinguish it from an invalid human condition, this will remain nonsense.

[d4m10n]

Looking for other instances of the phrase:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22v...d+condition%22


Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

[theprestige]

The worst part is, if this view were actually being published in the mainstream medical or scientific literature, LJ would have long since pointed us at an exemplary paper or two, explaining that by valid lived condition he means what the experts refer to as a "legitimate experienced situation" or whatever the actual scientific term is.

[Rolfe]

The safeguarding team of one NHS Trust in England is circulating all its deparments with a memo instructing them to remove all mention of Mermaids from their literature and to avoid signposting anyone to them.

So. Lottery fund has put a hold on the money they were going to give them.
Charities commission has mounted an investigation of their condict.
NHS Trusts are starting to sever their connections with them.
They're in the middle of a big scandal about having appointed an apologist for pederasty to their board.
There is a general level of public concern about the organisation's activites.

I've seen quite a few people speculating that they will survive this. They're so entrenched in the establishment as "one of us". They're trying to paint themselves as the victims of a smear campaign (which itsef is not actually a good look for children's charity facing safeguarding concerns) and they're trying to claim they had no idea about Breslow's past despite it all being in the public domain and at the very least speaking to a terrible failure of due diligence.

Their biggest advantage is something someone referred to above as "sunk costs". So many people and organisations have supported them so publicly and enthusiastically that it's possible these bodies will simply be unable to do a u-turn on this and will continue to defend them. But on the other hand there is a possibility that many will be getting a whiff of this as the next Savile scandal and decide to get the hell out as quickly as possible rather than take the risk of doubling down.

I don't know which way it will go. Time will tell. But the fact that they're teetering now is in itself remarkable. The Tavistock, the Karolinska, and now apparently the Vanderbilt hospital in Tennessee which came under fire when a video came to light showing how enthusiastically administrators were pushing genital surgery as a money-making enterprise has stopped under-age surgery. This is on top of Texas Children's Hospital also stopping this a couple of months ago. Now this, with Mermaids.

People are waking up to what these treatments and surgeries actually entail, and the horrific consequences. I'm not sure it will be easy for Mermaids just to shrug off a scandal about a trustee, claiming ignorance, and somehow hold this line that giving harmful devices to children behind their parents' backs is better than the child being unhappy, in the present climate. If they lose the National Lottery grant they're in financial trouble, and if they lose their charitable status it's going to put a big crimp in their operation. These two things might not happen, but even a month ago would anyone have thought they were remotely possible?

[lionking]

Yes Rolfe, I think the tide is turning.

The people who so enthusiastically supported Tavistock and Mermaids as exemplars of “modern progressive medical authorities” should be ashamed of themselves.

[Rolfe]

There are so many different - though interconnected - aspects to all this that it's difficult to keep a balance.

Child transition is a horror. Permitting and encouraging little children to play-act as the sex they are not on a permanent basis is deeply damaging to them, and has an extremely high chance of setting them on a pathway that will lead to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, sterility, loss of sexual function, a life as a medical patient and serious health issues down the line.

Adolescent transition is not the same thing. These "kids" start to feel uncomfortable with their bodies as puberty progresses, as opposed to play-acting as pre-pubertal infants. Who doesn't feel uncomfortable with their bodies during puberty? Damn few. It's not a time for making permanent life-changing decisions that can't be undone.

Competent adults who decide to transition should not be prevented from doing so, but even there we see plenty of evidence that the cautious approach of 30 and 40 years ago, where transitioners were given a lot of psychological support and analysis to make sure they were doing the right thing has given way to a "well, OK, if that's what you want here's your prescrption and we'll put you on the surgery list" approach that itself is likely to see an increased level of regret.

And then we have the people (pretty much all men) who don't do anything to their bodies to "transition", but rather simply declare that they have womanly feelz so they are women and they'll take their beard and their baritone voice into the Ladies' whether anyone likes it or not.

It's common to see all these situations discussed as if they were the same thing. They're not. Child safeguarding should ensure that children and adolescents are protected from their own immature impulses until they are mature enough to make reasoned, permanent choices. There are reasons we don't allow children and adolescents to buy alcohol, have tattoos, drive cars and so on. There is no way a little boy should be being told yes, you're a girl because you like princess dresses, and there is no way an adolescent girl should be having a bilateral mastectomy because she's unhappy that her body is growing breasts.

There is also no way that adult men should be allowed to claim to be women while making no changes whatsoever to their male bodies. Basically -off with that one.

The question of adult people who sincerely want to be the opposite sex to the point of making major changes to their bodies and life-styles is a more difficult one. How much commitment is commitment? Is there any degree of intrusion into the spaces of the opposite sex that should be countenanced for this group?

This was the group that the original changes to the law were implemented to accommodate. The present state of affairs has been caused by the previous group, the fetishistic cross-dressers, demanding all the privileges without any of the commitment, and also demanding that these privileges should be legal rights for all rather than concessions dependent on decent behaviour. I don't see any easy way out of this while such irreconcilable differences exist. They want everything, and the feeling that a small number of people should maybe be given something is difficult to balance. It becomes an all or nothing game.

[Elaedith]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

I've seen quite a few people speculating that they will survive this. They're so entrenched in the establishment as "one of us". They're trying to paint themselves as the victims of a smear campaign (which itsef is not actually a good look for children's charity facing safeguarding concerns) and they're trying to claim they had no idea about Breslow's past despite it all being in the public domain and at the very least speaking to a terrible failure of due diligence.

I think Mermaids knew full well he would be 'controversial'. His name was apparently redacted (replaced with XX) on their list of trustees prior to this breaking. From what I understand, it only became public knowledge that he was a trustee as a result of the court case Mermaids brought against LGBA. And it isn't just his past - he lists 'the queer desires of the child' as a research interest on his university web page and collaborates with other queer theorists interested in 'deconstructing age boundaries'.

Of course, he will receive much more protection from his university than did Kathleen Stock.

[shuttlt]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

I think Mermaids knew full well he would be 'controversial'. His name was apparently redacted (replaced with XX) on their list of trustees prior to this breaking. From what I understand, it only became public knowledge that he was a trustee as a result of the court case Mermaids brought against LGBA. And it isn't just his past - he lists 'the queer desires of the child' as a research interest on his university web page and collaborates with other queer theorists interested in 'deconstructing age boundaries'.

Of course, he will receive much more protection from his university than did Kathleen Stock.

Indeed, and this is one of the troubling things that it is difficult to discuss. When people outside the academy find out about the views being promoted people like the Mermaids trustee, there is a fuss and professional consequences. When people inside the academy find out about the views being promoted by people like Kathleen Stock, there is a fuss and professional consequences.

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by shuttlt

Indeed, and this is one of the troubling things that it is difficult to discuss. When people outside the academy find out about the views being promoted people like the Mermaids trustee, there is a fuss and professional consequences. When people inside the academy find out about the views being promoted by people like Kathleen Stock, there is a fuss and professional consequences.

This speaks to the repeated observations about institutional capture. It beggars belief that multiple academic institutions, including those covering the biological sciences, could more or less simultaneously have decided that asserting the normal definitions of biological sex is hate speech.

[LondonJohn]

With friends like these......

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7k87...ted-kiwi-farms

[LondonJohn]

(I note the love and support from JK Rowling, the connection to the Catholic Church, and the unqualified support of the Daily Mail)

[Matthew Best]

On the other hand, there's this:

https://twitter.com/AlaricNaude/stat...18326767128578

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

With friends like these......

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7k87...ted-kiwi-farms

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

(I note the love and support from JK Rowling, the connection to the Catholic Church, and the unqualified support of the Daily Mail)

No response to the substantial points raised, then?

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

(I note the love and support from JK Rowling, the connection to the Catholic Church, and the unqualified support of the Daily Mail)

I love the link to Rowling, based on one Tweet.

Clutching at straws would be an overstatement.

[lionking]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

I love the link to Rowling, based on one Tweet.

Clutching at straws would be an overstatement.

The other amusing thing is that Vice News doesn’t even pretend to be unbiased. I can’t think what that link was intending to demonstrate.

[Rolfe]

You simply have to look at Hayden's history to see what's going on here. He's a serial vexatious litigant who is ignored by most of the police forces around the country. He has a group of women he goes after on a regular basis, and he's harrassed Caroline Farrow before.

Caroline Farrow is the wife of a priest (so presumably her husband transferred from the Church of England after their marriage) and has proof she was playing the organ in church when these "kiwi farms" messages were sent. Most of the messages Hayden has cited this time are things with no evidence at all to link them to Mrs Farrow.

The thread Matthew linked to is a fair summary of the lowlights of his history in this area.

This "guilt by association" thing is puerile. Do we accuse all vegetarians of being disciples of Hitler?

In 2014 I really didn't like Rowling at all. She was campaigning hard against Scottish independence. I imagine John was a big fan of hers at that time. But individual people have a wide range of views, and both unionists and independence supporters can be found on both sides of this issue. Rowling has turned out to be a much nicer person than I had pegged her for, and I'm glad I found that out. I'm also somewhat reconciled to Claire Heuchan (there is a photo of me somewhere in a group hug with her) after history in 2013-14 that was frankly adversarial. To put it mildly.

So saying, I think this person is vile, you think the same as he or she does, therefore you must immediately see the error of your ways and recant, is nuts. It's one of the stupidest forms of argumentum ad hominem I can think of.

Let's see what happens with Mrs Farrow. I'd put a moderate bet on everything being dropped and the police commissioner, who appears to be getting a bit fed up with rainbow-addled police forces taking sides in Twitter spats, rapping some knuckles.

[Rolfe]

I've noticed a similar thing to the Rowling/Claire Heuchan situation on the forum. Sadly, mostly working the other way. If you only encounter a poster in a thread where he or she has a decent grasp of the issues and happens to have chosen the right side, you can be fooled into thinking they are good critical thinkers. But then you come across them in a different context, where they've chosen the side of irrationality, and you see them repeating the same debunked talking-points time and time again and showing a complete inability to engage with or counter actual points made to them.

Fiona was a case in point, and I can talk about her since she deregistered. On some subjects she made decent sense, but then she'd get hold of the crackpot side on something else and nothing would budge her. I think that's why she left, in the end. She was getting a lot of pushback over her inability to defend the crackpot notion she'd espoused, and got upset about it.

This has all taught me that people are complex, and that if you only encounter them in one situation (like me with Rowling in 2014, frankly I could have slapped her) you can have a very skewed opinion of what they're really like. Then you get talking on an area where you both agree, and suddenly you realise they're human after all.

Or else you maybe thought they were reasonable at one point, for example Paul Kavanagh was someone I'd have backed for leader of the next Yes campaign at one stage, then you get some exposure to some of the rest of their opinions and realise, oh no.

So saying, if you agree with Rowling you're wrong - when? I agree with her now. I disagreed with her in 2014. I can hold these two thoughts simultaneously. That's what grown-ups do.

[Rolfe]

I just came across this twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/TullipR/status/1578872772729896960

Here's what I said above about this group of trans people.

Quote:

Competent adults who decide to transition should not be prevented from doing so, but even there we see plenty of evidence that the cautious approach of 30 and 40 years ago, where transitioners were given a lot of psychological support and analysis to make sure they were doing the right thing has given way to a "well, OK, if that's what you want here's your prescrption and we'll put you on the surgery list" approach that itself is likely to see an increased level of regret.

One repeatedly comes across horror stories of poor outcomes from genital surgery. These do not surprise me, because having trained as a surgeon myself I think these are very difficult and indeed hazardous procedures and I would expect a fair old complication rate. But we're always being told, these are rare cases, the overwhelming majority of surgeries go well and the patients are happy ever after.

This person has researched the complication rates for a range of problems, and they are not low at all. If you add all the complications together, about half of all MtF patients will experience at least one and a significant proportion will experience several. There are a lot of maimed, unhappy people out there. And as someone in the thread says, be thankful you're not FtM, because that's real butchery.

There is a common complaint that none of this was explained before surgery, or at best it was glossed over, with patients being led to believe they'd get a great result with full sexual function for the rest of their lives. This outcome is comparatively unusual. Good grief, I had to read and sign a form to show I'd had all the possible complications explained to me before cataract surgery. Without that surgery I'd have gone blind, and my surgeon had a documented complication rate of 1 in 750 (including - mostly - minor glitches). But I still had to be told every gruesome possibility.

And all this for what? Something that's not even a mental illness?

And this is the situation for adult males, which is the so-called "gold standard" where they have the best chance of a good result. As noted, female to male is pretty much butchery. And male to female on someone who was puberty-blocked as a boy is known to be far riskier than with an adult.

Competent adults arguably should be able to do what they want. But even there, we draw the line at letting them have healthy limbs amputated. The complication rate with genital surgery is such that allowing it to be done on bodies that were healthy at the beginning (as opposed to reconstruction after an accident, say) has to be ethically dubious.

But if it is to be ethically allowed, surely prospective patients need full information about how it can go wrong and how often it goes wrong before they embark on it. Surely they need counselling to see if maybe reconciling themselves to their unmutilated bodies might be a happier future in the long term. But no, that's being made illegal. That's conversion therapy.

This whole thing is a complete mess, and I am so sorry for anyone who gets caught up in it.

[Rolfe]

Oh my God, here we go again. As someone said on Twitter, if you work for a children's charity it should be impossible to find a picture of your penis on the internet. (Although past experience suggests this rule is not as rigidly adhered to as one might imagine. A few years ago a man who worked for the NSPCC posted a picture of himself in full rubber fetish gear, masturbating in the toilets at work. The picture was extremely explicit. The initial response of the NSPCC was to deplore those who criticised him as "homophobes".)

This person is the "Digital Engagement Officer" for Mermaids, that is he is responsible for overseeing the content of online material aimed at gender-confused children.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/sta...82671065792514

This is a screenshot of an "artwork" which features multiple images - including full frontal - of a naked (and erect) Darren Mew. It goes without saying that this link is not suitable for work.

https://twitter.com/STILLTish/status...32069321781249

Maybe Mermaids will go the way of the NSPCC and declare that criticism of this, er, artwork and of Darren Mew's behaviour is transphobic - apparently he identifies as "non-binary femme".

These people are completely porn-addled to the point that they think it's normal to be posting pictures of yourself masturbating all over the internet. They should not be within a million miles of vulnerable children.

[Graham2001]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

I don't know which way it will go. Time will tell. But the fact that they're teetering now is in itself remarkable. The Tavistock, the Karolinska, and now apparently the Vanderbilt hospital in Tennessee which came under fire when a video came to light showing how enthusiastically administrators were pushing genital surgery as a money-making enterprise has stopped under-age surgery. This is on top of Texas Children's Hospital also stopping this a couple of months ago. Now this, with Mermaids.

The detail about the movement being used as a 'cash cow' reminds me of a documentary that came out towards the end of the 'Repressed Memory' era that included a few cases of people being literally thrown out into the street in a desperate psychological condition (Induced by the repressed memory treatment.) because their health cover had run out.

[Rolfe]

There's no doubt there is an enormous amount of money to be made out of this. The pharmaceuticals aren't cheap, and the patients stay on them for life (unles they detransition). The initial surgeries are complicated and expensive, and they are very prone to complications that require revision procedures which again bring in the cash.

Then there is the aesthetic surgery - facial feminisation, shaving of the Adam's apple, some men even have their last ribs removed to try to create a feminine waist. (nobody has yet found a way of giving them smaller hands though.) Add to that the hair and beard removal - squillions of sessions of electrolysis. Especially necessary if you're having your scrotal skin used to made a facsimile of a vulva. Some men have complained of hair growth inside their neovagina cavities. Not to mention the wigs and makeup and the feminine-styled clothes made to fit male body shapes.

Early in this thread I pointed out what a cash cow it was, to be met with the assertion that there were so few trans people that it wouldn't be worth trying to build a market. Show me the evidence there's a lot of money in this! Of course, evidence tends to be rejected by people with closed minds.

I can see a definite link between organisations like Mermaids and the surgeons and physicians treating young people who present as trans. Young people seem much more likely to go for major body reconstruction, especially the boys. Most of the men who transition in middle age don't have surgery, but the "trans kids" who go on puberty blockers do, and it's more complex surgery than the adult version too, and more liable to need revisions. How many is Jazz Jennings on now?

If Amazon can sell suicide kits to young people, and when challenged set its lawyers to claim aggressively that it's entirely within its rights to do this (rather than saying, we're shocked that a third party seller got this through our controls, we'll discontinue it at once) then there is not one damn thing someone won't promote to make money out of it. Transing kids seems like a ticket to Fort Knox.

[Elaedith]

"The U.S. sex reassignment surgery market size was valued at USD 1.9 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.23% from 2022 to 2030"

[Rolfe]

Tell me this isn't Munchhausen by proxy. Tell me this isn't grooming. Tell me these children are the ones leading the way and their parents are only going where their children lead.

https://twitter.com/4th_WaveNow/stat...44614705467395

[d4m10n]

Anyone watch this one yet?

https://twitter.com/TheProblem/statu...77239855972354



Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

[Rolfe]

I started, but it was annoying me and I decided I had better things to do.

[Rolfe]

Now I really need the brain bleach.

https://twitter.com/4th_WaveNow/stat...61316828889088

Quote:

Gender clinicians KNOW their interventions interfere w/ sexual function. But instead of then considering that maybe, just maybe, this pediatric transition thing should end....they decide the answer is getting adults to train kids how to masturbate.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Now I really need the brain bleach.

https://twitter.com/4th_WaveNow/stat...61316828889088

I read all your posts, there are people I know in NZ who are deeply disturbed, so thank you Rolfe.
My late brother was a true would be trans, and his situation was lifelong, this led to mixed happiness.
Knives are to save lives, not destroy them. ( that idea just came to me....)