Amongst the many possible motives why a man might wish to magically transform himself into a woman, being able to contract the highly painful womb-related disease of endometriosis is not one you may think ranks highly amongst them. Yet this was the initial impression given by medical charity Endometriosis South Coast (ESC), which last week announced the appointment of a transgender woman now known as Steph Richards as its new head.
Alongside a fetching image of Steph in a dress, ESC also posted a short quote: “Isn’t it ridiculous that I’ve got to my 40s, before any medical professionals even mentioned endometriosis?” The natural conclusion most readers may have drawn would be that Steph himself was asking this, and that the answer to his question would in fact be: “No, it’s perfectly logical, as endometriosis is primarily a disease of the female womb, which you don’t have, because you are a man.”
However, it turned out the quote in question was really from an authentically female member of “the endo community” who had previously made use of the charity’s services, not 71-year-old Steph at all. Apologising for the “misunderstanding”, ESC explained Steph had been hired due to his alleged past background in the general field, not “because they [sic] have their own endo journey”. But, according to critics, Richards allegedly has no meaningful medical background, apparently being an ex-hairdresser and beautician. Still, a nice new haircut and some lipstick are all you need to become a woman these days, aren’t they?
Endo the Line?
In response to widespread criticism, ESC released this statement: “Helping those in need has nothing to do with ‘sex’ – proven by the fact there are thousands of cisgender male gynaecologists and midwives based in the U.K. and beyond.” Besides the fatuous use of inverted commas around the word ‘sex’ there – implying such a crude phenomenon no longer even exists – this is not a wholly unreasonable point. As Steph further explained, the CEOs of homeless charities “don’t live in tents”.
That isn’t really the main problem here, though. If you read ESC’s PR material, the charity was willing to call a man like Steph Richards a ‘woman’ (there are some inverted commas of my own), but actual women were merely called ‘people’ by it: it is as if Richards is considered more authentically female by the organisation than, you know, actual females, or something. Indeed, its website specifically carries material saying that using “gendered language” like ‘woman’ in relation to the disease is something “steeped in racialised and heterosexist stereotypes of female passivity”.
Steph Richards called criticism “transmisogyny”, but the true danger is the perplexing mixed messaging being sent out. If Steph had been quietly appointed purely because of his ability to perform an effective job, with no reference made to his transgender status, then it may not have been as much of an issue. However, his self-evident constant campaigning stance could end up overcomplicating actual health messaging, thereby harming the charity’s actual main supposed purpose: to help women suffering with endometriosis.
The head of his own organisation, TransLucent, Richards is also a Women’s Officer for Portsmouth Labour Party, which says everything, and formerly operated a ‘safe space’ where grown men could come and dress up as schoolgirls or brides in wedding dresses without being laughed at by the general public. As ESC’s current Chief Executive, Jodie Hughes, a (real) woman with her own personal ‘endo journey’ herself, also has a background in trans activism, it seems highly likely Richards’ appointment possessed some deliberate political purpose to it. After all, Steph has in the past posted tweets like this:
I’d rather not “see you in the loo” if it’s all the same with you, Steph, thank you very much. Back when you were still called ‘Stephen’, I might have expected to have seen you occasionally standing around using a urinal, though.
In a subsequent interview on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour – which, despite its name, does allow male guests – Richards defended using the generic word ‘everyone’ to describe sufferers, rather than the word ‘women’, as this was more inclusive of the “something like 5,000 to 5,500 trans men [i.e., women pretending to be men] who have endometriosis who probably feel rather left out”.
His boss Jodie Hughes, meanwhile, a self-declared “cis heterosexual woman”, told Woman’s Hour that “I was brought in… to raise awareness of endometriosis full stop. … It’s pretty amazing that within five days [of ostentatiously appointing a transgender person] I have achieved that and the vehicle that’s done that is transphobia”. That sounds perilously close to saying Steph Richards’ whole appointment was a publicity stunt. But, even if Steph’s appointment did “raise awareness of endometriosis”, in what precise way did it do so? If it did so in a fundamentally inaccurate and confusing fashion, then that’s not actually much real use, is it?
Womb for Confusion
Plenty of people – including many women – don’t know what endometriosis is, allowing unsympathetic doctors to dismiss patients as neurotic, a successful diagnosis sometimes taking years. They need to know it is a condition where womb-like tissue grows in places it really shouldn’t, like the fallopian tubes or ovaries, causing symptoms like period pain, discomfort during vaginal penetration and difficulty getting pregnant, symptoms that can only ever be experienced by actual women.
Yet some generic symptoms – generalised abdominal pain, queasiness, etc. – can be felt by men too, during innumerable other illnesses. So: can you actually join up with ‘the endo community’ if you’re biologically male? According to this online guide from U.S. “queer sex educator and wellness journalist” Gabrielle Kassel, who also has a sideline in “reviewing pleasure products” (which I think means she gets paid to use dildos), such a miracle is actually possible.
Kassel explains that “prolonged exposure to oestrogen therapy”, traditionally during prostate cancer treatment, can sometimes give a man endo. And yet, despite this fact, “it can be tricky [for a man] to get an endometriosis diagnosis” – even more so than for a woman.
Can this be true? Sort of. See this genuine 2018 medical paper, where it is shown that, on extremely rare occasions, “endometriosis has been found in the lower genitourinary tract of men”. How often, though? Well, at point of the paper’s publication, there were 17 known such cases in all of recorded history, whereas perhaps one in 10 women of reproductive age on the planet currently have it: about 190 million women vs 17 men. This is clearly characteristically a female disease.
Possibly transgender ‘women’ of tomorrow, pumped full of oestrogen not merely for an unavoidable condition like cancer, but as part of their voluntary and medically unnecessary gender-transition, may one day begin to muddy the waters a bit. Indeed, may it not be guessed that the current boom in sex-changes might actually fuel an unwanted future increase in endometriosis amongst males? By promoting transgenderism, misguided bodies like ESC could well end up inadvertently causing a rise in cases of the condition they ostensibly seek to abolish.
Men-Struation
The whole situation gets worse when we consider the even greater impossibility of male periods and related problems. I well remember some schoolboy bullies once convincing a particularly effeminate male classmate of ours that they had all had their first period already, and wanting to know if he had too, and if not, why not? Eventually he caved in and ‘admitted’ he had, to much cruel laughter all round. These days, an activist teacher might have stepped immediately in to affirm the poor boy’s delusions with a box of free Lil-Lets.
Cases are now on record of transgender women claiming to suffer common PMS-like symptoms like sore nipples, mood shifts, irritability, tiredness, bloating, cramping, nausea, headaches and so forth. What is unclear is whether these have any genuine physiological basis, perhaps triggered by some male-to-female wannabe sex-changers being fed HRT doses, or whether they are purely psychosomatic in nature. Such broad indicators could be simply self-imagined due to a pathetic desire to undergo an imaginary period on any such individual’s behalf; I’ve had most of the above-listed symptoms myself at some point in time, but I’ve certainly never needed to wear a tampon.
Nonetheless, you can now easily discover bizarre Blue Peter-style online guides for men in dresses who want to fake having heavy periods using spoonfuls of food-colouring and Ribena, despite this being wholly impossible: “Here’s a mess I made earlier.” According to one online trans activist – who also speaks of men he knows who have had “a lot of really bad period shits” too – “periods aren’t just for vaginas any more”.
Neither is endometriosis, it would appear. Apparently, this is called ‘medical progress’. They said that about lobotomies and leeches once, too, you know.
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s and Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets, which is out now.
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I remember a consultant lecturer at medical school quoting sadly from a book by a well-known psychic healer, “Cancer of the prostrate [sic] is rare in women.”
Nowadays the consultant would be struck off, and the healer would be running a female prostate cancer organisation.
Being retired and living quietly in a very rural spot, I haven’t met anyone like Steph, but I would like to so I could give him a piece of my mind. I am heartily sick of my sex being appropriated and, in my opinion, diminished, by certain men. I think this is often the general idea – to belittle and trivialise women, and, by extension, the conditions that only affect women. I would think a great many of these men pretending to be women are not doing it because they genuinely would like to be a woman, but because they feel they have some sort of political statement to make, and, tbh, a lot of them seem to hate women, which is ironic and telling at the same time.
Well said and I agree. It’s just another form of misogyny. Mind you, this word is totally unisex as it can aptly be applied to actual women who enable and empower these sorts of mentally ill male individuals, in the form of men parodying women taking part in sports events or receiving some sort of award, for example. I’m wondering if any women supporting this sort of woke, illogical, unethical nonsense are not in fact just females that suffer from some sort of self-hatred, so they transfer these feelings onto others of the same sex.
Of course, misogyny is rife in the context of Islam and pertaining to women who follow that ideology. Examples abound, such as women taking part in so-called ‘honour killings’ ( even of their own daughters ), carrying out FGM on young girls and there are even female ‘morality police’ in Iran, who hunt down girls/women who don’t wear their hijab correctly or at all. The woke virus is just the more recent, depressing example of the reality that the world is full of women who will screw over other women. It’s a case of ”every woman for herself”, nowadays I think.
such as women taking part in so-called ‘honour killings’
Someone who murders an isolated woman has no honour. European and muslim culture apparently differ in this respect. And we should avoid using their terms for this.
Trans is deeply misogynistic. Witness three of the male evangelists for Trans. Owen Jones, Peter Tatchell and Billy Bragg – all open women haters.
This guys has obviously a pretty bizarre attention whoring problem. See me in the loo, the me in the changing room isn’t usual human behaviour except towards close family and even then, it’s more of a side-effect of living together and not something undertaken in its own right. I wouldn’t be surprised when there was some special term for man who enjoys being watched while taking off women’s clothes.
He’s not “trans” in the form of gender dysphoria. He’s a perv – autogynephilic – a sexual perversion. Which the law in its utter stupidity has made legitimate.
Well here is a man simultaneously pretending to be a woman and a Rabbi. A first for me anyways….Actually his voice does sound somewhat feminine. The facial hair does rather negate that though;
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1726692600563081295
He’s also supposed to be 71. Why isn’t he retired?
Yes – a trans exhibitionist!
The intent is to erase the female sex. And when Labour are elected, they will legalise that. If a man can be a woman, what then is “woman”?
Women – Vote Labour. Vote erasure of the Female Sex
Agree wholeheartedly. This is misogyny by some gay men
If men identified as kittens they would now be suffering from cat flu.
And here is the proof
I admit that I’ve never heard of endometriosis before, so
However, considering that I’m a man who’s not a doctor, what’s the f***ing point?
You might have a partner who has (or) had it. It is very nasty and very difficult to deal with. Even without men claiming to have it (which should mean immediate psychiatric help. Or better, sectioning).
In this case, no disease-marketing ‘charity’ would need to tell me of it. People spend to much time worrying about rare conditions, anyway, because it’s almost impossible to escape constantly being bombarded with ‘information’ about them. This is really just another instance of scare propaganda. The general statement about that is still: Anybody who wants to push people in a certain direction by scaring them is up to something that’s better for him than for them.
This was always going to happen when law favours women in so many practical respects. Men, at least the weird weak ones, were going to pretend they were women. Ultimately the ideology that insists men and women are identical rather than perfectly complimentary is as poisonous as any other ideology one can think of.
Well I think many of these men parodying women are basically sex pests/perverts/paedophiles, and there’s much evidence to support that. It’s quite the glaringly obvious loophole they’re exploiting. And certainly in the context of sports, especially high level sports, we have the case of men performing really badly against other men so they then ( non-coincidentally, I’m certain ) decide they want to identify as ‘female’, then lo and behold, they’re hoovering up all of the medals and are guaranteed a place on the podium. Inadequate male athletes get a boost when they’re identifying as female and the flaming women just sit back and take it!! That’s the kicker for me. Where’s the unity, the collective opposition from the women? I would just refuse to compete because it’s literal cheating. May as well just make doping legal and have done. Come back Lance Armstrong, all is forgiven!
What about good old Ben Johnson though? The goat cheater for me.
I’m glad Steph realises that he’s going to Hell.
Anyone who calls this male a “Cis” male will be reported for misgendering me. I’m male. Not “Cis” male. That’s hate speech. Two can play at that game eh?
I really wish someone had stopped me before I read that penultimate paragraph! There are some things I just don’t want to even think about.
Shout out to my trans sisters… for inventing the radio. Come on!
The question is way too big to be answered on the mundane level. You could choose from about thirty potential causes from toxins in our environment and changes in climatic conditions to the cultural tendencies away from the vigorous virtues, the absence of fathers, the decline of industrial society, you could go on forever. I think it can be said that this force has its locus of attention in the western world and represents a strategy to destroy it. Not a foreign enemy but machinations within the afflicted countries and that this enforced blindness has the purpose of destruction. Those asserting this destruction seem to me to be blind to it. The deeper questions are there to be asked but you won’t get anywhere without examining the higher level. You will just have your lamentatons and despair and all along the malaise was asking you to look deeper.
Enough money has been wasted converting toilets in public spaces from Ladies & Gents to single cubicles for all.
If you are a man look out for prostate & testicular cancer and if you are a woman look out for ovarian, cervix, breast cancer because you cannot change you original biology and your life may depend on these checks.
If you’re a human being, I have an unfortunate piece of new for you: You’re going to die and no amount of worrying about incurable diseases while this hasn’t yet happened is going to change that.
Now I’m just confused. I thought the problem was that there were women pretending to be men who pretend they haven’t got endometriosis when they have, not that there are men pretending to be women, pretending that they have got endometriosis when they haven’t.
I have laughed out loud several times and I haven’t even finished reading the article. Many thanks to the author for this.
We are pandering to mentally ill people who are taking the Pee out of a weak society. Javier Milei tactics are required.
Will someone pleeeaaase reopen the lunatic asylums (they should never have been closed) and keep mentally deficient transpervs in them! Also admit the cissy lunatics who appoint pretendy-women to roles in raising awareness of XXchromosome-only ailments such as endometriosis and other real-women issues such as menstrual periods.
What would men feel if an authentic woman was appointed to highlight issues such as prostate cancer? What the f*** would a genuine XXchromosome woman know about how it felt to be an anxious man with a prostate except what a man told her?
Yes, I AM a TERF female and proud of it, but ashamed of all the real-women who enable this misogynist crap to be bandied about to the detriment of our SEX.
Simple answer if he is claiming to have endometriosis is to administer the operation to fix it, anaesthetic optional.