Brutal medico knife culture

Previously at “Iain Hall”, I have discussed how I think that surgery is a very poor fit for those individuals  with Gender identity problems. The permanence of mutilations and a total lack of real reverse ability means that this course of action has to be the ultimate “act in haste , repent at leisure” situation. Well the piece from the SMH That i quote below shows just what happens when doctors start to play God.

Andrew*, born male, was minutes away from an operation that would make him a woman. Psychiatrists said he had a female brain in a male body. Gender reassignment surgery was the only way to ease the mental torment.

But as he headed to surgery he was struck by an unshakeable thought: “It’s not right.” He remembers telling the surgeon: “I think I’m doing the wrong thing, I think we’ve got to stop it.”

Act in haste, repent at leisure

The surgeon stroked Andrew’s face, telling him it was natural to feel frightened before an operation. He protested again. Then it went black. When he woke up he was sure the surgery had been cancelled. The tales he had read of transsexuals who awoke post-surgery feeling “reborn” convinced Andrew, then 21, the operation had been halted, because he felt no different. “Then I remember lifting up the sheets and … feeling it all bandaged. I just started bawling my eyes out and screaming … I remember saying to myself, ‘how could you be so bloody stupid?”‘

Twenty years after surgery that left him feeling like a “desexed dog”, the grief can still overwhelm him. Now 42, Andrew said the operation has shattered him. After surgeons from Melbourne’s Monash Medical Centre’s Gender Dysphoria Clinic gave him breast implants and removed his male genitals, using the discarded skin to fashion a makeshift vagina, he tried to make the most of his new life as a woman. He grew his hair long and wore make-up in a bid to fit in. Doctors told him it was normal to go through a period of adjustment. But something was not right. “I remember thinking to myself, what would happen if I admitted the truth to myself? I’m a man and I’ve just been mutilated, that’s all.”

But It is not just men who have been mutilated in this rather brutal medico knife culture.

ANOTHER former patient, Angela*, was also an abused child. Sexually molested by a cousin between the ages of four and nine, she grew up hating her femininity. She recalls punching her breasts and exercising obsessively to “remove anything that reminded me I was female”. At 22, she was referred to the clinic by her GP, depressed and struggling with her identity. Dr Kennedy diagnosed her as transsexual at the first assessment, prescribing her male hormones and suggesting surgery.

Within months Angela’s body was covered in thick hair and her voice deepened. She had to shave under the covers every morning to hide the truth from her conservative parents. Two years later she had surgery to remove both breasts and was scheduled to have a full sex change. Angela could no longer conceal the truth from her family and began living as “David”. She realised there had been a mistake before going ahead with full genital surgery.

“I remember … looking at myself in the mirror with this beard, my breasts gone … I was the classic bearded woman, a monster trapped between two worlds.” She claims her pleas for help were also ignored by the clinic and her return to life as a woman was a nightmare of painful electrolysis to remove body hair and surgery to reconstruct her breasts. Now married to a “wonderful” man, Angela has three children and has slowly rebuilt her life. She acknowledges she gave consent for the procedure, but believes it was not informed consent. She feels she was mentally ill, and childhood abuse played a part in her gender confusion.

The rest of the article goes on to make the point that there is a great deal of pressure amongst the “transgender community”and their doctors to silence any dissent from their view that surgery is the solution to what is essentially a mental problem.

This is at the centre of the controversy surrounding the clinic. Like many psychiatrists, Dr Kennedy maintains people with gender dysphoria are born with a genetic predisposition. While the condition is classified as a psychiatric illness, they believe it has a biological basis and can be cured only by surgery. They reject notions that a history of abuse, conflict with parents or psychological problems can cause gender dysphoria. Just months ago Melbourne scientists added fuel to this argument, discovering a gene that seemed to be associated with feelings of being born the wrong sex.

Other psychiatrists worry about the mounting evidence that surgery may not improve lives. A review of more than 100 studies of post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham found there was no evidence that surgery was effective and in many cases patients were left more distressed. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore – which had one of the pioneer gender clinics – no longer performs sex-change surgery due to such concerns. A recent British review found suicide rates of up to 18 per cent post-surgery.

Look at it this way, if your PC statrted to think that it was a Mac would you take to it with an angle grinder and try to make it look like a product from Apple, or would you go in and work at fixing the obvious software problem? What these activists have been doing is swinging the angle grinder with, (dare I say it?) gay abandon and often the results please nobody, except perhaps the doctors accountants. One thing that is certain is that the lack of study of the real results of  mutilating their patients does nothing for the credibility of those who advocate surgery to treat a mental problem.

Cheers Comrades

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