SSA Consciousness

I want to thank Jacob for his enormous bravery in speaking out publicly about how the “puberty blocker” (GnRH agonist) protocol and the medicalization of his identity affected him as a struggling trans teenager. 

I want to note before I share the article that stories like Jacob’s are being politicized by groups like Mermaids (the primary transgender child lobbying organization in the UK) to claim that while “blockers” are “safe” and “reversible” and ought to be immediately provided to trans children who are beginning puberty, that any problems with GnRH agonists indicates that clinicians should begin cross-sex hormone treatment early. Organizations such as Mermaids and various other groups in the US frequently claim that there ought to be no formal lower age bound for the initiation of cross-sex HRT (i.e. testosterone for female children, estrogen and an anti-androgen drug for male children) and Johanna Olson-Kennedy (a pediatric gender “expert” and head of the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles) advocates regularly for female children to receive testosterone at twelve and has possibly given children as young as 8 testosterone treatment. So in sharing this kid’s story, I want to be careful, since there is a real danger that exposing the harms of using GnRH agonists such as Lupron on gender-variant children will lead to a change in strategy where these children are merely dosed early with cross-sex hormones, a protocol that to my knowledge that we have zero long-term data on. (Children are given GnRH agonists as a means to halt precocious puberty, and in fact, these drugs are approved for this purpose, so we have some data on their effects already. As far as I know, there has been no previous medical reason to give female children testosterone or male children anti-androgens and estrogen.) The article is behind a paywall but I am transcribing it here: Puberty blocking drugs: ‘For the past four years I’ve been stuck as a child’ Jacob has just turned 16 and for the past four years the teenager’s body has been put on pause. He has been on hormone blockers to stop puberty while he decides how far he is willing to go to become a transgender man.

He claims that taking blockers was “the worst decision I’ve ever made”.

Jacob was born a girl but felt unhappy with his gender. “I always felt so weak and pathetic and inferior to the men.” He started using the male pronoun and imagined himself growing up and “dating a woman”.

When Jacob became one of thousands of young adolescents to be referred for puberty blockers by the NHS’s main gender clinic for children he was delighted. “It was sold to me as a  miracle cure for being trans,” he claimed. He told another trans school friend about them, who started requesting blockers too.

Hormone blockers are only licensed in Britain to delay the onset of puberty for children suffering “precocious puberty” — that is, those who start developing abnormally early before the age of eight or nine.

However, their use is promoted by the transgender campaign group Mermaids as a way of giving young people “a pause button” while deciding whether to graduate to the irreversible, cross-sex hormones that will trigger the life-changing, fertility-reducing jump from one gender to another, once they reach 16. The vast majority of children who begin blockers go on to take that step.

Blockers are physically reversible, insofar as puberty will eventually restart once someone stops taking them. But no one — not even the directors of the country’s leading gender clinic, the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service [GIDS] — knows their long-term impact, for example, on the teenage brain.

After just a few consultations at the Tavistock, Jacob was referred to the endocrinology clinic at University College London Hospitals [UCLH]. He claimed the clinic did not consider his background, such as the trauma of a sexual assault at primary school, or his parents’ difficult divorce. He and his mother were soon making regular visits to London from their small village in the west of England for the injections.

“They promise you that your breasts will disappear, that your voice will be deeper, that I would look and sound more like a boy. For me, that was the best thing that could have happened,” he said.

Only, Jacob found that wasn’t what happened at all. Far from becoming one of the lads, as he’d hoped, he felt even more alienated from them as their physiques changed and Jacob’s remained the same.

“At school, other people were maturing into adults. The guys I grew up with were growing hair and growing up. For someone who’s trying to fit in as a boy, that’s not what you want.” Jacob had always been the tallest among his friends. Now he was the shortest. When his little brother overtook him in height and strength, he found it too upsetting to be in the same room as him. “My little brother is 18 months younger and now he has completely outgrown me. I go to school and I feel like other people are developing and I still feel like a child,” he said. Jacob also claims he was not warned about the side-effects of the drugs. These have included insomnia, exhaustion, fatigue, low moods, rapid weight   gain which caused his skin to become covered with angry, itchy stretch marks, and a reduction in bone density. “I’d never broken a bone before [taking puberty blockers],” he says. “I’ve since broken four bones.” “I stubbed my toe, it broke. I fell over, my wrist broke. Same with my elbow.” As he took the blockers, Jacob’s mother watched her child become even more introverted and body-conscious. “The blockers contributed more to the self-image problems that were already there,” she said. Jacob found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on schoolwork. If sitting GSCEs is hard enough with raging hormones, it’s even harder without them, he said. “I’m someone with the developing mind of a 12-year-old who’s doing exams designed for a 16-year-old.”

He added: “The worst part was probably the depression. There were moments when I wanted everything to stop. Weight gain and depression — for someone who is already self-conscious about their body, that’s a lethal combination.” Clinicians who resigned from GIDS for ethical reasons said one of their main concerns was that young people were being sent down a medical pathway without proper exploration of the possibility they may simply be gay. Jacob is no closer to understanding who he may be attracted to at 16 as he   was at 12. “My friends are all talking about having sex and girlfriends, and going to prom… but I’ve never had a crush. I’ve never felt sexual attraction to anyone. I feel so out of place.” In hindsight, Jacob finds it surprising how little his background — and the reasons why he didn’t want to be a girl — were discussed before being referred for treatment. “They didn’t even look at my history or trauma,” claimed Jacob. “They sent a child whose circumstances and feelings they didn’t understand [for hormone treatment].” Jacob is speaking out about his experience to warn other transgender youngsters to think twice before starting blockers. “I was sold a miracle cure. They promised happiness with little evidence behind it. Then four years in, you realise, oh my God, I’ve no idea about the long-term effects.“

“They asked a 12-year-old to make a decision an adult would struggle with.” “It  was like, ‘here are the drugs’ and off we went. It’s a ridiculous process. It’s not gone the way they told me it was going to go.”

Mermaids, the transgender lobby group, claims that puberty blockers are safe and “completely reversible” and that not giving them to youngsters who   request them can be more damaging than prescribing them.

Gendered Intelligence, another trans campaign group, claims on its website that hormone blockers give children “breathing space to ensure that they are  sure about the permanent effects of cross-sex hormones, without the adverse effects of an incorrect puberty.” Jacob is scathing about such claims. “Breathing space! It really isn’t. I’ve not had any space to breathe the last four years.“

“They sell it to you as a break from feeling like a girl, and that’s fine for the first few months but as soon as everyone else around you starts developing it becomes ‘spot the transgender kid’, which is so easy because you’re stuck as a child.“

“If anything, I’ve been more depressed than before. My thyroid is messed up. I’m hungry all the time. I have no idea how my breast tissue will develop.” He claimed: “They push and push you on to this one-way train you’re not allowed off.” Asked whether it was misleading to promote puberty blockers as a “pause   button”, a spokesman for Mermaids said: “Mermaids cannot comment on   clinical cases as we are not involved in any individuals’ medical pathways.” “We offer young people and their families information, support and access to others in similar circumstances.” Gendered Intelligence declined to respond. Jacob claims the main focus of his treatment at the Tavistock was on the   milestones of transition — “how far you’re willing to go” — rather than discussion of the consequences.

He claims: “My Tavistock worker was saying to me, ‘once you have the testosterone, you’ll be a boy’. “But it shouldn’t be about milestones. Being trans is how you think; it should not be about how far down the line you’re will to go.” A spokesman for Tavistock said: “All young people considering the puberty blocker or cross-sex hormones are repeatedly made aware of the known potential impacts of these medical interventions… as well as the areas of impact that remain to some extent unknown.“

“The information that we give patients about the blockers makes it clear that they may get tired and experience low mood. We explain to young people that hormones give us energy and drive, not just our sex drive but our overall ‘get up and go’. “We also emphasised to them routinely that while on the blocker they would stay early puberty whilst their peers developed. This is a routine part of the discussion.“

I don’t know if any of my problems are due to it, but it definitely didn’t help me. Once I got my blockers and testosterone scripts, I was no longer able to obsess over them, and that void was filled by an eating disorder. The last few years have been filled with increasing mental illness. The day after my first testosterone shot, I was in hospital for self harm. I justified holding on to my self hatred because I blamed it on dysphoria- and you’re not allowed to challenge dysphoria, because “it’s just a part of your self”.

I am autistic so my social skills aren’t the best anyway, but I avoided so many people and situations and opportunities while I was trans identified that I’m so mentally and emotionally underdeveloped, I just feel like a child thrown in to the deep end of life.

I thought it was the only thing that could make me feel better. I thought my body was the problem and that nothing could be okay without changing it. But I was just clinging onto that as a solution for my mental illness, because it’s so hard to accept that maybe there’s no way to make it better. 

People tell me I should have thought more, that it’s my fault for being too impulsive, even though it was 2 years from identifying as trans to actually getting blockers.

It wasn’t my fault. I was 14. I was just a kid. I shouldn’t have been able to make that decision.

All of the negative effects mentioned in the article are absolutely true- insomnia. depression, weight gain, fatigue, etc. and I’ve noticed it. I feel disgusted with myself for doing this to myself, but also disgusted that they’re doing this to young children, blatantly lying to us about the effects. I’ve been on them for so many years I forgot what it feels like to just be normal. I don’t relate to any of my peers, male or female, and I haven’t had a crush on anyone since 6th grade.

I wish I had been given any other option, any type of therapy to deal with my dysphoria. I wish that the first message impressionable 12 year old me got when I told my therapist I fucking hated my body wasn’t “Obviously you’re really a man! Surgically altering your body is the only way to fix yourself or you’re going to kill yourself eventually!” But as long as trans activists keep pushing to streamline kids into the medical process of transition as fast as possible, this shit is gonna keep happening.

Let us support those who are/have de-transitioned.

Detransition often leads to dissociation. I've experienced the confusion, panic, and hopelessness that you're describing. Gender becomes too large for us, so letting go of it empties us. We lose our strongest motivating force, as we reject our gendered identity. It's like coming unmoored in a storm, given how we've used gender as a principle to organize self and society.

Finding solid ground involves developing new projects and community. I drew on @female-husband 's example and put myself out there, in local spaces, to find new connections. I also invested more in another part of my identity, enjoying an activity I loved. Very slowly, I found my sea legs.

It's horrible to feel dissociation, and I hope that this representation helps in the short term:

An earlier detransitioner, Crashchaoscats, still keeps a lot of her videos on YouTube, and her essays online. She went through many stages of reconciliation. If you need a discussion of coping with dysphoria and distress, Crashchaoscats is good. She is honest, searching, and resilient, accepting, and hopeful in tone. She's both analytical and expressive.

Radical feminists don’t exclude trans people because well, they recognise trans female people (transmen and non-binary female people) as part of their discourse and movements. Radical feminists recognise that a trans female person (transman) will still require access to abortion for example and male people can’t ‘identify’ into that. Across centuries of diverse female existence from ‘lesbian men’ ‘female husbands’ ‘transmen’ radical feminists look at the issues we face due to the nature of our bodies. You also have to understand that transmen and transwomen are different and there are also different issues underlining transition and dysphoria.

Radical feminism looks at the root issue of women’s oppression, our reproductive possibilities and female bodies (not ‘female identity’) because without male-female sexual difference, heterosexual-patriarchy would not even exist. As Angela Davis said “Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’”

To be a female person comes with a series of specific oppressions and women do not identify into our oppressions, you can’t identify into someone else’s body and oppressions. Radical feminism is concerned with female specific oppressions so it’s not even possible to exclude trans male people (transwomen) since radical feminism is rooted in the material basis of being female, that physical body which from birth faces gross oppressions because of its material substances/make-up/forms/.

We have to be able to name male-female materiality because this is the basis of sexism, misogyny and homophobia. All female persons need to know that femininity=/=being a woman and that you don’t need to conform to any expectations. Lesbians, all women, need to know that you can do ‘woman’ different and this these differences do not then make you a man.

This is not “reducing women to their genitals”:

a) a vulva is not a stand alone organ, ‘female’ is an entire body + socialisation (into femininity and heterosexuality), it’s an *experience of being born into a particular body;

b) we have to understand why and how women came to be oppressed under patriarchy, and we have to be able to make a class analysis to work to liberate all female people;

c) what else should we base being a woman on? Sexist stereotypes? A submissive femininity (to a dominant masculinity) which presents beauty and appeal to the male gaze as the ideal of who we are and what women should be? Pretty human adornments and objects for men to look at and ideally, posses? In this way, butch lesbians/lesbians would cease to be women. Also, femininity is culture specific, you can’t essentialise *all it’s qualities into one social and cultural framework. It has broad similarities but it’s not a set of universal qualities. Should a desire for motherhood and ‘gentleness’ define being a woman?

Women are oppressed because we are female not because we are feminine. Heterosexually constructed, feminine ideals are used to restrict women “women don’t do A or B, how will you find a man to marry you/be a lady and don’t-” et cetera.

What does “female aligned” even mean? You like dresses? And if I don’t? You feel a certain way? Really? You think there is some essential, universal quality of feeling like a female person? No. We all feel different. Those who claim to feel different and therefore to not be female? What makes people think they are feeling any unease that no woman has ever felt before? If ‘female’ is an identity, can all women across the world just identify out of sexist, misogynist oppressions? Should we all identify as men to escape patriarchy? Those women who don’t/can’t, do they just feel an alignment with being oppressed?

I’m not “brown skin aligned” I *am brown skinned, I *am female, you are just born this way. Doctors don’t assign you a sex unless you are intersex and intersex people are still male-female. There is no 3rd sex as in a fundamentally different set of sex characteristics, just a fundamentally different form of said characteristics.

Maybe you think it’s ‘mean’ to “exclude” dysphoric male people and male people who don’t embody masculine sex stereotypes but women’s backs are not a bridge (Donna Kate Rushin). We are not bridges! No one said “don’t organise and you can’t draw from feminism, you don’t deserve an activism/discourse to cater to your issues.”

Male people only derail us, distract us, dilute our critiques of femininity, demand we centre them, their issues and wants, and demand we talk less of our material natures (like menstruation) which are a basis for the oppressions women/female people face. Women are not social-justice mothers and mammies, we are allowed to focus on ourselves. We have a hard enough time of organising as is.

Also note that you can be lesbophobic, erase lesbian women’s pain, spew violent language, just add TERF and you’re good! It’s also a handy way to mark women and shut them down. TERF is the new “Witch!”

And saying you are “gender-critical” and somewhat of a half-assed radical feminist, (also, gender-critical=/=radical feminist) is not an excuse to call trans people “freaks” FFS. You are also saying lesbians are freaks, you aren’t helping anyone, I see you. Stop that sh.

The whole thing comes from a deeply egocentric method of understanding gender that is totally unwilling to listen to the histories and empirical evidences that trans women have been presenting on the specifically misogynist violences they face. On top of that, to say that it is all lesbophobia completely erases the fact that most of the women who have been discussing these issues have also been lesbians.

It also deeply misses the point of materialist feminism, which says that “identification” is an unchosen process of Becoming in a gendered world, not something someone decides to be. If you accept that, then you must accept that trans women never chose to be women, but were conditioned to become women just like all cis women. Sure, it happens in some differing ways… but it carries the same principles: trans women are trained to be sexually, physically, emotionally, and economically subservient to men, trans women are trained to be the punching bags and scapegoats, trans women are trained to hate their bodies and do whatever they can to change them, trans women are trained to allow all others to define who they are but themselves, trans women are trained to view themselves as the problem and not men, trans women are trained to internalize the sexual, phyiscal, emotional, and psychological abuse they face (ie: “this is just what I deserve” etc).

Trans women’s agency in bodily autonomy is stripped. Trans women are forced into sex work at the highest rates per demographic. Trans women face the highest rates of sexual and physical assault and abuse per gender demographic. Trans women face the highest rates of economic violence (homelessness, unemployment) per gender demographic. Trans women experience the highest rates of suicide and murder per gender demographic, and the lowest life expectancy. These are not things reserved for men.

And of course, when you dig into all of this, most of these women are women of color all over the world.

The statistics are all there, easy to be found if you truly open your heart and mind to the possibility that your understanding of what creates womanhood is false. Not your personal experience, of course, but your paradigm. There are plenty of radical feminist/lesbian theories on how gender forms and functions that do NOT exclude trans women from the experiences of womanhood, including sex-based oppression.

To answer your question on how we define womanhood? We have to define all of gender. It is a power-based system used to extract value/resource from other bodies. It varies a great deal amongst women in order to keep the system afloat.

White upper middle class women can fulfill the roll of “progressivism” and become successful, independent women to further male goals. White middle class women are prime mothers and lower wage white collar workers. Poor white women are lesser mothers  who are lower wage working class workers. Women of color are experimental bodies on which to test reproductive tech. Women of color are undesirable mothers who create more bodies of color to become the punching bag for white supremacy. Women of color are the caretaking labor for white women’s children so they can pursue progressive independent lifestyles. Women of color are bodies that can fulfill fetish outbursts of typically white men (but also women). Trans women are bodies that can take the brunt of patriarchal violence without objection (most trans women are already cast out from families etc). Trans women fulfill the fetish outbursts of men and cis women (sex work, sexual fetish violence, etc). Trans women are the ideological scapegoats of patriarchy (ie: trans women are the TRUE male invaders). Lesbians are also the ideological scapegoats of patriarchy. Etc. The list goes on.

But when you get down to it, you see that there is SO MUCH MORE that patriarchy can extract from a woman than you defined. The only thing that defines a woman is the person, who by some yet unknown process, begins to identify with a gendered position, typically by the age of 18 mos, often sooner, and then internalizes all the messages inherent. For men, that’s, “Go extract value, labor, and resource from women!” For women, that’s, “You are just an object to the extractor - let them take it!” All women experience this, including trans women. And trans women can have a whole lot of “use value” for patriarchy - there is a lot that men and cis women can get out of abusing/oppressing trans women.

Anyway, that’s a short version. Here are some statistical links to read: x x x x x  (warning for some transmisogynist language/paradigm in some of the links)

Here are a couple links I encourage people to read. The first is an account by on old Radical feminist on the history of TWEFism in the women’s lib movement. The second is a theoretical post that’s a little edgy maybe but also breaks down how socialization works for trans women. There‘s plenty more where that all came from.

And there were some really basic questions that you didn’t answer. Like what makes someone a woman? 

Sex based oppression is done to female people because they are female. Sex based oppression is not the only oppression, but female people are allowed to have a movement just to ourselves.

Does this person know how many teenage girls and women are forced into rape trades/sex trafficking every week, globally? Do you understand what internally displaced people go through? What the poorest people face as groups, across the world? These are the false statements organised in American media, supported by general ignorance and inabilities to fact-check. 

FtMs are not giving themselves double mastectomies and metoidioplasties and phalloplasties and hysterectomies. Surgeons are. Doctors and therapists are signing off on it. Insurance companies are approving these as medical necessities. Parents are helping their kids get these surgeries. In some places, the State pays for these surgeries. Hospitals are accommodating patients for these surgeries, nurses are attending to patients who get these surgeries.

When there are complications? When there are blood clots or strictures or fistulas, who left the scars? Who did their job badly? This is not “self harm.” It is medical abuse.

Psychologists are diagnosing the condition that allows their patients to be eligible for surgery and hormone replacement therapy. Boards of clinicians are making decisions about the future of care for dysphoric people. Someone is out there teaching and licensing the people who give these diagnoses. Plenty of people are out there making money off “informed consent.”

When someone takes a prescription medication in the prescribed dosage as instructed by a doctor, they are not “self-harming” with testosterone. They are following a doctor’s orders. They are taking a medication prescribed by a doctor based on a diagnosis that some psychologist gave them.

When there is harm done (BY WHO?) to the patient during medical transition, this is medical abuse: there are virtually no studies on the long-term impacts of testosterone on our health; they treat us as less than lab rats not worthy to even keep data on. They use us for experimental surgery and do their jobs so poorly that some patients have brought lawsuits against them, for example Dr. Curtis Crane.

Butch women of past generations didn’t do this because it wasn’t offered, wasn’t pushed, wasn’t made into the only option, wasn’t paid for by insurance, wasn’t something you could walk into a planned parenthood and receive, wasn’t encouraged by the lgbt community, wasn’t available.

I recently saw someone asking if trans-related surgeries should be considered “self-mutilation.” It is misguided, victim-blaming, and willfully ignorant to say yes. There is a huge, complex web of people who created this situation we are now in, with doctors who are making a living solely from doing transition-related double mastectomies, one after another, every day, like a factory, giving out hormones after a 15-minute discussion and a single page printout of information, and leaving us to fend for ourselves when something goes wrong or doesn’t work out in the process of transition.

With most any other feminist issue you will find not just willingness to name the agent, but a direction of approach that focuses on naming the agent and placing the spotlight on the perpetrators. In other feminist issues, it’s much more emphasized to dig out and shed light on the underlying institutions that created and perpetuate the problem. But not this one. When it comes to females who transition, radical feminists love to place focus on the victim herself as being problematic. I think it’s appalling that radical feminists can name trans ideology as a cult, but turn around and make fun of women and girls who get caught up in it. And I think it’s purposefully provocative and obscuring to use language like “self-mutilation” in reference to life-changing surgeries that are simultaneously named as patriarchal creations to subjugate women. It’d be nice if more women could look up from that headless photo online used without permission long enough to see the big picture here.

Please stop fixating on the victims you claim to defend with objectifying, dehumanizing language and look instead to the plethora of perpetrators that can be named and that feminists could take action against.

Reconciling/reconciled: Catch-all term for detransitioned and reidentified people, also refers to the process of reconciling with former identity

Detransitioned: Someone who transitioned physically, with hormones, surgery, or both, before reconciling

Reidentified: Someone who did not physically transition before reconciling

The sad reality is that 5 of Ethiopia’s 7 medals have been won by Oromo athletes, whose people back home are being slaughtered. Feyisa Lilesa showed his solidarity to his Oromo family knowing he risked being killed or imprisoned once he went back to Ethiopia. Never forget this man’s courage. Never.

Israel explains that conifers were planted because they are “fast growing plants” and therefore give “life” to an “empty” land. I have also heard that they were planted to make the settlers feel “at home”. 

Israel’s way of making the dessert “bloom” is literally uprooting Indigenous life and replacing it. People and plants.

Conifers are catagorized as “invasive species”, their ability to spread fast damages native environments, as its the case with New Zealand, South Africa and Palestine.

the full circle of settler colonialism:

Israeli made conifer forest in Palestine. 

then think about  young girls who are taken to ISIS camps to become their brides and be raped. and then think about female fetuses in China who are aborted.

what does gender mean in those contexts - in those countries? is gender something you can explore, bend, twist for those people? if the answer is no, why not? how is gender used in those countries?

The Criminal Unrapeability of Black Women

By KALI NICOLE GROSS

(via

ablackwomansurvivingrape