Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Reversing Gender Reassignment Surgery

With apologies to Shakespeare, if this be madness, is there any method to it? I am referring to the current debate over transgenderism. Now that the Trump administration is examining whether or not to limit the number of genders to two, decided at birth by biology, you should gird your loins for the coming anguished emotional hurricane.


After all, we have known, for decades now, that nearly three quarters of the children who believe themselves to be transgendered change their minds once they reach adolescence. The solution, proposed by activists-- give them puberty blocking hormones when they are children.


The second problem concerns the high level of suicide among those who have undergone gender reassignment surgery. The number is approximately 25%. The solution, now being offered by some clinics-- is gender reassignment reversal surgery.


The story appeared in the London Telegraph. It was republished in the Canadian paper, The National Post. (via American Digest)


The surgeon leading the world in both gender reassignment and gender assignment surgery is Prof. Miroslav Djordjevic, from Belgrade, Serbia. You will be discouraged to note that Prof. Djordjevic also plies his trade in New York at Mount Sinai Hospital-- which is a leading medical institution.


The problem is men who have been turned into a facsimile of biological women… who now what their external male genitalia reattached. In truth, I am not familiar with the way that this surgery is performed, and I am not that interested in the details. The story does spare us the details. One can only make sense out of this by imagining that some part of the male organ remains attached to the body. One also imagines that testicles cannot be reattached.


Anyway, here’s the story of an increasing number of transgendered males who transitioned into femalehood and who later changed their minds.


Five years ago, Professor Miroslav Djordjevic, the world-leading genital reconstructive surgeon, received a patient at his Belgrade clinic. It was a transgender patient who had surgery at a different clinic to remove male genitalia – and had since changed their mind.


Why did they do so? Professionals have know this for decades: these patients suffer from high levels of suicidal depression:


Those wishing the reversal, Djordjevic says, have spoken to him about crippling levels of depression following their transition and in some cases even contemplated suicide. “It can be a real disaster to hear these stories,” says the 52-year-old. And yet, in the main part, they are not being heard.


You might imagine that a surgeon would reconsider performing gender reassignment surgery. One does not know if this is the case. Doesn’t the Hippocratic oath begin with: First, do no harm.


So much for that.


Of course, the transgender lobby refuses to allow anyone to speak about these issues, no less research them:


Last week, it was alleged that Bath Spa University has turned down an application for research on gender reassignment reversal because it was a subject deemed “potentially politically incorrect”.


Given the media acceptance and even glorification of transgenderism, our culture is producing more and more transgender individuals. It is true in America and it is true in England. (Bath Spa University is in Great Britain.)


The story continues:


James Caspian, a psychotherapist who specializes in working with transgender people, suggested the research after a conversation with Djordjevic in 2014 at a London restaurant where the Serbian told him about the number of reversals he was seeing, and the lack of academic rigour on the subject.


According to Caspian, the university initially approved his proposal to research “detransitioning”. He then amassed some preliminary findings that suggested a growing number of young people – particularly young women – were transitioning their gender and then regretting it.


But after submitting the more detailed proposal to Bath Spa, he discovered he had been referred to the university ethics committee, which rejected it over fears of criticism that might be directed towards the university. Not least on social media from the powerful transgender lobby.


It is a case of pure bullying, one that many people are paying a very high price for. Most importantly, as noted, the cultural climate has put us in the business of producing transgenderism:


To date, all of his reversals have been transgender women aged over 30 wanting to restore their male genitalia. Over the last two decades, the average age of his patients has more than halved, from 45 to 21. While the World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines currently state nobody under the age of 18 should undergo surgery, Prof Djordjevic fears this age limit could soon be reduced to include minors. Were that to happen, he says, he would refuse to abide by the rules. “I’m afraid what will happen five to 10 years later with this person,” he says. “It is more than about surgery; it’s an issue of human rights. I could not accept them as a patient as I’d be afraid what would happen to their mind.”


Referrals to adult and child gender identity clinics in the UK have increased dramatically over the past 10 years. In April, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, the only clinic for adolescents in England, reported 2,016 referrals to its gender identity development service, a 42 per cent rise compared to the previous year, which in itself marked a 104 per cent increase on the year before that.


As I say, now that the Trump administration has declared its intention to challenge the transgenderist orthodoxy, you can expect an outcry. Apparently, Donald Trump is the only politician who refused to be bullied.

8 comments:

Sam L. said...

Now, is there any noticeable characteristic attached to those who both favor GRS and strongly DISFAVOR reversing it?

Cheryl said...

Seriously, this transgender wave is just bad parenting. If parents love, honor and care about their kids, they will feel comfortable in their own skin. This acting like being trans is normal is just madness. Parents of these kids should be prosecuted first for not giving their kids the basic care needed for normal emotional development and second for covering up their bad parenting by being accepting of their kids choice.

Ares Olympus said...

I don't know if I believe Cheryl's assertion that says transgender is all about bad parenting, while its worth looking at in a systematic way, if there are patterns in parental style.

The conflict for me is the existence of intersex individuals (1/2000) which can be objectively verified and where intervention makes sense, versus gender dysphoria which is entirely an internal state affecting say up to 1/200 while offering the same extreme solutions. And anyone who transitions wants to feel alone and encourage others to follow, regardless of whether that's a good idea. So motives of advocates have to be challenged.

For me it all shows that happiness and "choice" don't go together. If you accept you are who you are, then you adapt as best you can within society like that. But the moment you believe "science" can remake your biology or appearances into something else you open a place of impossible choice, and dangerous if irreversible, and any or all self-hatreds suddenly gain power over you, like people who get plastic surgery, there's no stopping place for self-mutilation for an imaginary ideal.

OTOH, breaking gender norms on appearances is a bit different, like young boys wanting to have long hair or whatever. Girls have had a long progress being freed from dresses and encouraged to be in competitive sports and free to be a "tom boy" as long as they like. Of course once puberty is reached, both sexes has an incentive to conform to gender stereotypes to be attractive to the opposite sex. While probably the "freaks" who can't or don't fit will always suffer no matter what we do. They'll always have higher vulnerability to suicide and self-destructive thoughts even if all bullying is removed.

Dymphna said...

Remember the Johns Hopkins head of psychiatry who said gender reassignment had been a terrible idea?

Here's what he said in 2016:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/6300/former-johns-hopkins-chief-psychiatry-transgender-amanda-prestigiacomo

Essentially, it's a form of acting-out, of exhibitionism.

Anonymous said...

Is there something more to this or simply meditation over genitals?

one of you baddies please inform my lack of awareness why this issue deserves attention?

Anonymous said...

Brother Ignatius define your "spectral" for us please?

Anonymous said...

Chelsea Manning

I always wondered what the heck CM was. Is the before and after CM 2 different people or was an involuntary sex change forced on CM as punishment?

Anonymous said...

Transgenderism reminds me of tattoos. Both have increased their presence in recent years, both are semi-permanent disfigurations, both are done without consideration of how one may feel about them in the future - that is, out of a sense of fashion, for the comfort and (short-term) gratification of doing something approved externally by pop culture, thus relieving one of having to think for one's self and of the potential social consequences of doing so. And both are totally mystifying for those without the group-follow mindset.