UK: Scotland gender leak.

[jcat (imported)]

In June this year NHS Scotland published a statement that 'eunuch' should be an accepted gender. It was quickly jumped on by right wing press and associated with The Eunuch Maker' arrests and subsequently NHS Scotland issued an apology for the leak.

I was hoping that at last there was some real progress. All the work of Jesus, Wasserug and others in the UK health care system.

Forgive me if this has all been hammered out in other threads. I dip in and out of EA these days, largely due to pressures of work and illness.

I suppose the fact that NHS Scotland have been talking about it is a good thing. For once it seems the US is ahead of the UK in changing attitudes on gender. I see more clinics and doctors are prepared to perform castrations and penectomy now.

It is very perverse that that the academic world and the back street cutters are bringing this issue to the fore.

Of course a lot of the papers on the subject use data and experiences of those of us who have contributed via the safety of our very own Jesus to the debate.

One of the major changes in the UK is the rise of private Gender clinics in response to the huge backlog of cases in the NHS, sadly for commercial reasons. Desperate people will get themselves huge loans to get the gender affirming surgery that they should be getting on our health care system.

The clinics still only do orchidectomies in conjunction with MTF.

I hope there are others in EA who might be interested in the UK journey of male to eunuch and nullo. As I get older, I feel the pull of trying to do things to make a difference.

I have met and helped a number of dysphoria people of all types over the years and even got involved in the painful process of gender assessment as a supportive friend. I have met a few amazing therpists and surgeons willing when change comes to do other gender affirming surgeries.

We have to live in hope. My own journey has been one of nightmares and pain and I am still not where I would like to be. I am a lot more stable since my castration. But still have this dysphoria which for me me is now eunuch to nullo.

I hope this thread is the start of something. I am not sure what!

[black1980 (imported)]

Solidarity to your cause Sir. Scotland has always been in the forefront of progressive thinking.

[magusuk89 (imported)]

After I'd got over the initial shock of the rightwing press backlash I have actually come to see the leak as valuable -- as the other side showed their hand early. Their rhetoric was absurdly bound-up with a slavery narrative.

This will likely require explaining for those in the US and outside Europe.

An undercurrent in political rhetoric across Europe is Ottoman/Barbary Coast (N. African) enslavement of European people (c.1492 to c.1830), including an earlier history of slave trading in children as eunuchs through castration houses in Prague and Venice (Late Antique period through the Middle Ages). It is where the whole Pied Piper myth comes from, and you see the trope emerging in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, also. The recent "they're transing the kids" moral panic tapped into this cultural memory. These days in academia and its outlets the Triangular slave trade in the Atlantic perpetrated by white people (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) is centred, but that hides some of the political dynamics that inform the European right wing. Historically, for instance, the British song 'Rule Britannia' and Benito Mussolini's 'Mare Nostrum' policy explicitly related to the white slavery narrative.

Anyway... the various outlets covering the story were leaning on all this to incite horror and a backlash, but the thrust of the story actually involved adults actively opting to put themselves in danger to get an outcome they need -- the diametric opposite of an enslavement narrative.

So, yes, it was traumatic having a load of incitement and scaremongering from the press, but when it comes down to it, they do not have a coherent position they can express. The best rationalisation of their position is a combination of pro-natalism and anti-individualism... the latter of which sits badly with their positioning of slavery (the ultimate anti-individualism) as a unique horror.

Meanwhile a lot of readers have themselves worked out that what they are being asked to feel by the press is incoherent, and that people's fight to get treatment in spite of such bullying from the establishment is self-evidently sincere and holds its own dignity and nobility.

We have now had a lot of time to prepare and lobby politicians to remove frictions ahead of the actual launch of SoC v.8.

[magusuk89 (imported)]

Oh, something else of note ---- on a point of information. The NHS group who released the SoC v.8 early did apologise and remove the new guidance, but the apology was for releasing the information prior to ratification. The press implied the apology concerned the nature of the content, but that was not so. It was merely a procedural/administrative thing.

[Cseriess (imported)]

Any news on the official release date yet?

[Losethem (imported)]

Any news on the official release date yet?

Nope.

And nope again, the system won't let us respond with a post that short.

[JesusA (imported)]

Nope.

And nope again, the system won't let us respond with a post that short.

The "official" word from WPATH has gone from "August" to "soon". My prediction is that the paper copy will be released just in time to be passed out at registration for the WPATH conference in Montreal. That gives a date of September 16th. Since at least 17 sessions on the program will be referring directly to the text, it will need to be in everyone's hands by then. It will also go on-line at the WPATH site at the same time that the paper copy is released. It will be a free download at WPATH.org.

[Losethem (imported)]

I've said elsewhere the same thing as Jesus has said. It would be logical for something to be given, at least to WPATH members at their upcoming conference in Montreal next month. Logically, as they're going to be talking about it then, I think folks would want it in front of them to refer to.

[jcat (imported)]

Oh, something else of note ---- on a point of information. The NHS group who released the SoC v.8 early did apologise and remove the new guidance, but the apology was for releasing the information prior to ratification. The press implied the apology concerned the nature of the content, but that was not so. It was merely a procedural/administrative thing.

Very good point. I misinterpreted the apology. Amazing how easily the press confuse and twist the truth.

[jcat (imported)]

I think Magusuk89 is right the whole thing is good for the cause in the long term. The more exposure there is the greater the opportunity for discussion and awareness. I would not underestimate the voice of young adults in our world who seem to me at least, to have a much wider, more open consciousness.