Stirring, yesterday morning, i am momentarilyh surprised to be greeted with a cry of “Happy Fanniversary!”
But i click, quickly enough.
Though it seems like a matter of weeks, it is now the first year anniversary of a surgical event that to many seemed, still seems, one of the biggest decisions you can take in your life….and to me was but a temporary inconcenience. Read the rest of this entry »
Two outwardly unrelated stories about the NHS, cropping up in the last couple of days, maybe provide some insight into the way in which public, press and, yes, trans community, too, deal with issues in the media spotlight.
Let’s start with some special privilege awarded to a group whose gender creds (and orientation) might just be considered by some members of the public to be ever so slightly dubious. I mean, of course, dancers. Read the rest of this entry »
(with thanks to Natacha Kennedy for info)
There is to be a demonstration outside the Swedish embassy on Monday 30 January, 4.30 pm to 6.00 pm.
Read the rest of this entry »
We-ell, it looks like the Sittingbourne Messenger has just removed a rather silly reference to a £45k grs cost in a piece they wrote a couple of months back.
A new guide – “The cost of gender re-assignment” by writer and campaigner on sexual rights, Jane Fae – is published today as rebuttal of increasingly inaccurate cost information provided by the UK national media in respect of this subject.
I get the feeling that today is going to make me cross. Very. And i will probably end up getting in trouble with my fellow journo’s again.
However, am i the only person starting to get seriously sick of this vindictive and, in the end, pointless obsession by the family of a homicide victim?
Simple story. Back in 2000, Robert Page killed Clive White in the course of a bungled burglary. The killing was particularly vicious – and there can be little sympathy for the perpetrator. Initially convicted of murder and sentenced to life in 2001, Page’s crime was marked down to manslaughter on appeal two years later.
Not clear what the tariff was at that point – though technically it could be longer than the original.
Even then, there were rumblings about the possibility that Page was (repressed) trans of some form – and in the years since, that fact has bloomed, to the point where Page is now taking hormones, called Emma and en route to grs. Possibly. As all of those who have gone thru the system know: there is no certainty of that until it is pretty much done.
Family outrage
In between times, the victim’s family claim to have been told that Page would never be allowed to transition. That’s bad. No professional psych would breach confidence in that way: whereas if police or probation officers were saying that, one really has to question their judgment…pronouncing on mental health issues in which they have no expertise and no direct involvement.
Clive’s brother is up in arms, having been alerted recently to Page’s progress thru the system by a well-balanced story in the People (er…that was sarcasm!).
Apart from just wanting Page to hang – which would be a novel development for manslaughter – they are also jumping on the bandwagon of prisoners not being allowed treatments “like this”.
Not too clear like what: presumably prisoners should get SOME medical attention. But for all i sympathise with the individuals concerned, they are a graphic example of why victims and their relatives should be involved in the judicial process – but that involvement does not give them expertise in the law or other specialised matters.
Yellow Press
Well, the family outrage is understandable, though perhaps becoming just a bit shrill.
Less forgiveable is the press response. I’ve been tracking the cost figure in the story since it appeared (£45k for grs: £200 per week for hormones) and, when i can, sticking an oar in and asking for it to be changed.
It is very clear that the press does not have any reason to print that – beyond the fact that the People put that figure up in the first place and therefore that allows some of the cleverer journo’s to write that Clive’s brother “has been informed the op will cost £45k” (you see what they did there: not technically inaccurate, even if the end result is).
But overall, the more i grapple with this cost issue, the more disgusted i am with the newspapers. Its the defensiveness that gets me.
It is absolutely clear that 9 out of 10 papers have not done any hard research on this figure. Each one is following the previous, slavishly. So, if journalism was genuinely about the truth, you’d think they’d be happy to put the facts straight.
But no: call after call is leading to nit-picking defence based around the phrasing used. IN some cases, if one is utterly literal, it is clear that no inaccuracy has been printed: but the impression given is plainly inaccurate.
ANd what is beginning to grate, and why i am going to be losing my rag later today is: they mostly don’t care. Mostly they prefer to defend what they have done, than admit…concede even that they might, just, possibly have got things wrong.
jane
xx
One bit of the trans summer prog that amused me last night was the interview with surgeon, Mr Bellringer. Now there’s dashing, i thought to myself, and…
…where have i come across similar dashingness before? Oh. Yes. Mr Thomas – another of the UK surgeons that specialises in grs. He strikes me as equally dapper, equally charming…and seems to come across just as well in the documentary that we were involved in.
So what is this? Are all gender specialists sent off to The George Clooney finishing school for eminent surgeons before they get to practise? And is it just co-incidence – or are they now slugging it out through the medium of reality TV, in an effort to determine who is Prince Charmingest?
Dunno: though it definitely makes one think.
Sad that Jimmy Saville has just passed away, else he might have fixed it for us to find out. In his absence, it seems but one course of action remains: the anonymous letter to TV savant and generally wise person, Harry Hill, in the hope that he will invite the pair on to his show and settle this question once and for all with his gentlre invitation: “let’s fight!”.
In the intersts of safety, though, i’d sincerely hope scalpels would not be allowed.
jane
xx
I called the Star, who were very insistent that anything i had to say on the issue of grs costs was simply “opinion”.
However, they checked the story – presumably on some online system that supposedly checks where they got their various story inputs from – and told me that the figure of £60,000 for a sex change came directly from Cathy Ann Daniels.
Anyone out there know her? Anyone able to ask her to confirm whether or not she spoke with the press and if so, whether she gave out a figure for the cost of her transition?
Even so…add in oestrogen, testosterone-blockers, therapy and a bit of electrolysis and i can’t see how the total bill can go much in advance of £15,000 – though very happy to see any evidence to contradict this.
The newsdesk person then started to get a bit shirty…insisted on calling it “opinion”, whilst inserting various opinions of her own: i didn’t know what extra procedures had been required, whether there was any extra work, and so on.
She also did a bit of teaching granny to suck eggs: tried to “explain” to me what was involved in the grs procedure. A little bit about how complicated it all could be and how i couldn’t know what was involved in Cathy’s case.
All very plausible in principle. However, the remarkable similarity between the figure quoted in the Star and the same figure being quoted all over the web by other tabloids leaves me suspicious.
I’ve put a call in to Lancashire NHS to ask if they gave out a figure to the press – and also what they would regard as indicative costs for this procedure.
Meanwhile, i am left with an interesting dilemma. It IS possible that Cathy gave out a figure. If so, i’d be interested to know where on earth she got it from, since i didn’t think that the NHS was in the habit of telling patients what their treatment cost.
Alternatively – and this is quite serious if it is the case – the Star’s automated system of fact-checking is just a pile of poo. Because, of course, any and every databzase is only as good as the data that gets fed into it…and i can easily see how data indicating that the cost was based on a direct quote from the individual could, itself, be misconstrued within the system.
We’ll see. I remain spectacularly unconvinced that the press did get this figure off her…but if she did, that adds a whole new dimension to community foot-shooting.
jane
xx
Ah, lovely. Last night i started my onw woman crusade to eradicate the dread £60,000 figure from the pages of our national press.
You’d think it easy enough. After all, its a single figure in a story each time. My post on how it appeared to arrive there is pretty comprehensive, setting out how most of the press were quoting £10,000 for MtF surgery before 2009 – and how they switched to £60,000 after a Sun piece on a FtM transition in that year…and seem to have got stuck.
And if you’re writing for the national press (or local, come to that) stories can come in and need to be written, checked and up within a very short time frame indeed. My record, i think, was twenty minutes from release of government budget figures to haveing 450 words written and filed: other journalists work just as fast when needs must.
However, for some reason that’s not how it goes when one attempts to correct something. First stop last night the Sun newsdesk, where a nice young man gave out the MD’s e-mail address and explained i’d have to write to him.
But…i started. No but’s: that was “procedure”, and i had to rein myself back to prevent the dialogue turning into confrontation.
Similar story this morning with the Telegraph, who tried to get me to submit an official statement to their “complaints department”. No thanks. I rang the newsdesk instead and got a helpful woman who gave out an e-mail address and asked me to drop a line.
However, several hours on and neither paper has done anything.
Meanwhile, over at the Lancashire Telegraph an initially amicable conversation with somebody editorial threatened to turn a tad sour when i said i didn’t wish to take the matter to the pcc. Er: was i threatening? No. Honest: i’d rather not take the matter to the pcc, cause i know what a dog’s breakfast they make of stuff like this and i know that local press could do without the hassle.
Anyway, written submission made, and i wait developments – although, again, nothing back from them several hours later.
Meanwhile, i am having difficulties talking with Southend. That is, the rag down in that neck of the woods that coarried the £60k figure in context of the Miranda Lee story. Perhaps they don’t work on a Monday. I’ll try again – and try tomorrow.
Last up, a good chat to the Press Officer over at West London Mental Health who, after what felt like initial suspicion (omg! a journo asking about gender re-assignment costs) was very helpful and promised to see what cost figures she could extract for me.
So there you have it.
Papers are very very quick to put stories up when it suits them. But getting them down again always seems to involve “procedure”.
Forgive me if i suspect that is just another word for foot-dragging.
Jane
xx
OK. Still a need for a detailed costs paper – just to show the reptiles that there is an alternative version. Meanwhile, however, here’s the intriguing story of how we ended up with the myth of a £60k cost for MtF grs. Many thanks to Andrea for the ferret…
As far as her research goes, the first mention of £60,000 in connection with grs turned up in January 2009. Before then, apart from the fact that papers picked up on detail and sometimes got the number of potential ops wrong, they were mostly quoting £10k, which was about right.
This was in a policy document produced by the East Midlands Clinical Priorities Advisory Group, which came out with £60k as an upper limit for more complex FtM re-assignment surgery (but a range of £20k to £60k quoted) and £12k for MtF.
Fast forward to March of that year, when the Sun referenced that figure in respect of a story about “a Turkish transsexual woman” (sic) granted UK asylum. The focus, doncha know, is how awful it is that these bleedin forinners come over here and take our resource. And the upper limit of £60k has magically transformed into “at least £60,000-worth of NHS surgery”.
Interestingly, the writer of this piece uses the phrase “£60,000 spent already”, which is to cover ”the first phase of the complex surgery”.
Roll on April 2010 when a transsexual had the gall to threaten legal action over a boob job. Miranda Lee, 40, claimed she had been left “half man, half woman” and wanted her health authority to pay for her to become a “real woman”.
The journo behind this piece in the Sun added: “Her transformation has already cost taxpayers £60,000 and the breast op could add another £8,000”. Huh? Recycled copy? Perhaps.
The local press then followed the Sun, stating: “It is thought operations like Miranda’s can cost up to £60,000.”
Like. Huh? It is thought? As though this is a prediction for climate change, when a single simple phone call could actually establish exactly how much the amount actually is.
At about the same time, E Midlands NHS trust were still quoting £12,000 for MtoF and £20,000-£60,000 for FtoM. However, by the time Miranda’s case came to court all the papers were quoting the figure as money she had spent: the Telegraph, f’rinstance, happily gave £60,000
One minor light in the dark: an interview given by a certain woman of trans history to the Stamford Mercury led to the correct figure being quoted.
In September of this year, the Sun turned back to considering FtM transition, with the story of Lee and a procedure which “involves several major operations and costs in excess of £60,000”.
And that brings us pretty much up to date with the case of Cathy Daniels. I’ve covered that one off and I will be interested in following this a bit further tomorrow. Basically, the trail starts with the Lancashire Telegraph which quotes the £60,000 figure as gospel, runs on into the Star with the same figure intact, and then pops up in the Sun with some rather spiteful digs about taxpayer funding added on top.
jane
xx
P.S. I’ll be phoning the Sun newsdesk tonight to inquire about where they got their figures from…and the Lancashire Telegraph tomorrow. WIll let you know how it turns out.
