The use of Latin terms such as trans and cis is appropriate given the Roman fascination with eunuchs and hermaphrodites, culminating with Sporus

Terminology

The articles often use words such as transsexual and transwoman, which have largely been replaced by the term transgender.  The prefix trans is a Latin noun meaning 'across', 'beyond' or 'on the opposite side'.  The articles use trans in the context of people making changes to their physical characteristics (hormonal and surgery) and lifestyle to match this to their gender.

A significant development since c.2014 is the use of the prefix cis, e.g., in words such as ciswomen, cisgendered and cissexual.  Cis is actually another Latin term, meaning 'on this side', and is increasingly used in the context of women (usually but not always genetically XX) who were assigned a female gender at birth, and whose bodies and their personal identity have always agreed with this.  It does make sense as an alternative to awkward phrases such as "genetically XY women" that I have resorted to in some articles, and I've been using this when revising text. 

I support the substitution of the term Gender Confirmation Surgery (GCS) for the very inaccurate term Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) that dates to the 1950's, but due to age of the articles some still extensively use the abbreviation SRS.

The March of Time

It's impossible exaggerate how much things have changed since 2000.  For example, in 2020 I was watching TV when two of the commercials in a prime-time ad break featured female models whom I knew were MTF transgender.  Twenty years ago, either ad would have resulted in a major newspaper story!  Now alerted, over the next few weeks I spotted advertisements in magazines and newspaper supplements featuring transwomen working as models promoting shampoo, perfume, make-up and even lingerie.

In 2000 there were about 60,000 post-GCS women in the entire world - and most had used a few dozen surgeons whose individual merits were intensely debated within the trans-community.  Fast forward to 2020 and a million post-GCS women might be an under-estimation.  Thailand has overtaken the USA as the 'market leader' due to the low price and generally high quality of the surgical procedures performed there.  Small clinics in Thailand have grown into specialist hospitals which each conduct thousands of gender confirmation procedures annually (over 90% on foreigners), with a surgical 'production line' operating on up to ten patients in a session.  One Thai surgeon, Dr. Kamol, claims to be performing 2,000 MTF operations a year - equating to about half of all operations performed annually, world-wide, at the start of the millennium!

Because of the huge increase in the number of transwomen (at least 1 in every 200 women has become a widely accepted ratio) they are no longer rare "freaks" that occasionally appear in an afternoon television show or a tabloid newspaper expose.  Most people (particularly in younger age groups) now personally know someone who is transgender - a family member, classmate, friend, work colleague, etc.  This is changing attitudes to the extent that going deep stealth after transition is no longer the goal of every transwoman who can pass convincingly as a woman. 

In early 2014 the 22-year old top-100 male model Andrej Pejic had gender confirmation surgery.  A year later she reappeared as a female model - Andreja.  The big story is that this made no headlines and she failed to find a major media company to film  her transition and GCS.  A short documentary was eventually made using $60,000 of Kickstarter funding.

Other major developments since 2000 include:

• Laws recognising transwomen as women and prohibiting any discrimination based on sex or gender. [A legal case taken by Caroline Cossey in 1989 played a huge role in starting this process] 

• Transwomen born with a male birth certificate can legally marry as a woman in many countries. Some faiths/orders (e.g. The Church of England) will perform a religious marriage ceremony as long as the couple identify and marry as a "a man and a woman"

• The acceptance by the modelling industry of transwomen as female models, e.g. Andrej (now Andreja) Pejic and Lea T

• An acceptance by the medical profession of the need to treat children under age 18 with gender identity disorder - with singer Kim Petras setting a famous example

• A huge shift in the median age of western transgender patients having GCS, this has dramatically moved from the early 40's to the early 20's

• Medical advances - both surgical and endocrinological.  The announcement of the first MTF transwoman to gestate and give birth to a baby is a case of when rather than if.

Another significant change is that in late 20th century, Gender Identity Disorder (GID) was a condition that was primarily associated with men.  In 2000 male-to-female (MTF) surgical procedures out-numbered female-to male (FTM) procedures by roughly 3-to-1.  Whilst transwomen still dominate public attention, there has been a quiet but dramatic explosion in the number of FTM operations.  By 2020 many clinics were performing more FTM than MTF gender confirmation operations.  The transition and subsequent surgery of actor Elliot (previously Ellen) Page belatedly woke up the media to the fact that not all transgender people are transwomen.  If current trends continue then by the mid-2020's there will be more post-GCS men than women, although I suspect that very few people would guess that if asked.

A print screen from the website of the Scottish Mirror newspaper on 14 March 2023.

Going to Far?

By the end of the 2010's the transgender bandwagon was on an immensely successful roll.  For example:

• It had become essential for UK government bodies and all but the smallest companies to prove their LGBT credentials by employing advisors such as Stonewall and Mermaids at considerable financial cost

• The International Olympic Committee and other sporting organisations allowed transgender athletes to compete as women, without even GCS

• The UK's National Health Service (NHS) had purged its website and guides of words such as "mother", "breast feeding", and "breast milk", instead uses terms such as "birthing person", "chestfeeding" and "milk from the feeding parent".  Many other organisations followed suit, e.g.:

  • The UK's General Medical Council removed the word "mother" from all of its pregnancy related publications

    On 22 December 2022 the Scottish Parliament passed the Gender Reform Bill Scotland. This allows anyone age 16 or more to self-identify their sex for legal purposes. The UK government blocked the legislation and it has not yet become law, despite determined attempts by the ruling SNP.

  • The Welsh government removed the word "mother" from its maternity support publications

  • The charity Oxfam issued guidance to its staff telling them to avoid using the word "mother"  as this could offend

• The NHS was avoiding using the word "woman", replacing it with the term "people who have ovaries" and suggesting that "some people" are likely to get pregnant, have a miscarriage, have an abortion, suffer from cervical cancer or have a menopause

• In 2019 the NHS published guidance that allowed "physically intact men who identify as women" to be "housed on female-only wards"

• Always, a manufacturer of sanitary pads, asked a parenting website that it sponsored to remove the words "women", "girls" and "females", and similar, as these had now become controversial

 

It's cheaper to provide one 'Gender neutral' mixed toilet than separate Men's

Backlash

The huge successes of pro-trans activists in the 2010's has perhaps led to the pendulum swinging too far their way. There is an increasing backlash from the 99+% of the world's population who don't consider themselves to be transgender, particularly from cis-women who increasingly feal threatened.  For example, in the UK against:

• The proliferation of "gender neutral' toilets", to the horror of most women

• Transwomen participating in local female sports events when they are often much taller, heavier and more muscular

• Having to share female hospital wards with other patients who are physicaly male but possess a female Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC)  

• Having to attend at work mandatory courses on subjects such as unconscious bias, gender diversity, inclusivity and trans rights

• Female rape victims ("people with a vagina") being treated by counsellors who are pre-SRS transwomen, some without even a GRC

• When Adam Graham was convicted of raping two women in 2023, the Scottish Prison Service sent him to a women-only prison as he now self-identified as a woman, calling himself Isla Bryson.  He was not receiving any medical treatment and had a fully functional penis.

  Violent male rapists and child abusers avoiding jail or being send to women's prisons after applying for and receiving a GRC as a woman

• The removal of the honorific titles "Miss" and "Mrs" from forms, correspondence, and other communications

• Needing to avoid using sex specific words such as   "she", "female","woman", "women", "mother" and "girl" in documents and even conversation  -  fundamentally changing the English language

• Children under age 16 being prescribed puberty blockers and even hormones without the knowledge of their parents.

The result is that some of the hard-won rights of transwomen are now in danger of being reversed.  Sadly I find it difficult to strongly argue against this given the increasingly negative impact of trans-activist demands on the half of the UK's population that are ciswomen, and even decades long transitioned women such as myself.

Finally ... I'm always delighted to hear from readers, contrast experiences, and perhaps attempt to answer any questions.  I can no longer provide a convenient email link due to the bombardment of my inbox by spammers, but my email address (no spaces) is shown at the bottom of the page.

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