Post with 45 notes
I’m finally off to Charing Cross.
In six months time. Towards the end of May 2012.
Well, at least I got it. What else can you say? I feel like I ought to be more happy. I feel glad more than happy, and angry more than that. Angry that it’s taken so long to get here and angry that it’s still six more months to wait. I’m also angry that the letter says it’s an assessment with a single psychiatrist, so even if everything goes absolutely perfectly that still means no surgical referral for me, not until at least the second appointment which could be another six months beyond that. For fuck’s sake.
I’m also acutely aware I’m one of the lucky ones. If I’m lucky, imagine what the unlucky are like.
Post with 1 note
A lot has been happening since I last posted.
An immensely positive thing was that I have finally approved for GNRH agonists - finally, well over 11 years since I embarked on this journey I will be free of the constant damage that testosterone is doing.
This morning I went to have the pellet injected, to sit under my skin doing it’s work for the next three months. I have an appointment to see the nurse. This was supposed to be a good thing, I was feeling a little scared since the needle is about the biggest thing that’s ever made a hole in my body, including piercings, but filled with anticipation.
Things start to look like they’re not going to plan when I forget to take it with me - the pharmacy gave me the injection kit with the rest of my drugs. Still, getting settled down, and the nurse looks at it, and says that she needs to look at something about it. Eventually she comes back and says that she isn’t qualified to inject the pellet, and it needs to be a GP. The GP is seeing someone, but if I just wait she’ll be right back.
Time passes.
She returns, there is only one GP who can do it, and he’s busy, but it will be fine and I’ll definitely have it today. In the mean time I’ve noticed that my notes are on her screen. There is something near the bottom from my endocrinologist, saying he has seen me and what he’s going to provide. About five weeks later there is a note that says roughly:
Telephone encounter, took message to pass to doctor. Inquiring about hormone therapy regarding her desire to be a female, but we have heard nothing about funding.
I’m sorry, what? My desire to be a female? I already am female, thanks.
The nurse suddenly comes back again and notices me craning forwards to read the screen. She immediately locks it and turns it away from me. Now for the bad news. She can’t do it, and the GP can’t either because he’s too busy seeing patients. So I’m not a patient now? She asks when I can come back … I can’t though, there is this thing called work and life, there was a reason I booked this appointment now. Now she says that the GP only does injections in the last appointment of the evening or morning block, and asks if it’s OK. I tell her it’s not, but what can I do?
The receptionist says I can’t have the morning block because that’s for emergencies only.
I wait in the reception whilst they’re trying to come up with some solution whilst I try to find out if I can have short notice time off work. As I’m sitting there, another employee comes out with some freshly laminated signs that state:
Polite Notice.
Patients are reminded that aggressive behavior and rudeness towards staff will not be tolerated.
There is another paragraph that I can’t see from where I am. She can’t see where to put it, so takes down some other notices to make room for it.
I look at the clock, it’s been half an hour since I sat down, so I approach the counter to ask what’s going on. Another “polite notice” has been placed on the counter directly in front of me. After a brief explanation, another receptionist scowls at me, and says:
Ah, you’re the one who wants the GP and the nurse appointment? They’re trying to sort something out, go and sit back down.
I back away from the advancing receptionist, and sit back down. Feeling very small.
Another ten minutes, and I take the opportunity to approach the counter whilst someone else is there. She explains she’s sorry, but she was waiting to hear back from the nurse, and she hasn’t yet.
Finally, 55 minutes later, and I have an email saying it’s ok to have some time off. I go to the counter and tell them that; I get an appointment for one evening that will mean I have to make up about three hours of work some other time. I explain that I’m considering just doing it myself, what could possibly go wrong? She laughs nervously, and states she’ll pretend she didn’t hear it.
So I walk away, and cry.
Apparently being aggressive will get me censured, but it’s ok for them to be aggressive to me. Again I am being refused treatment to which I’m entitled.
What the fuck, NHS? What the fuck?
This would be the prescient paragraph:
There are a number of interventions which should not be funded in Wales under any circumstances, including hair grafting for male baldness, gender reassignment surgery and caesarean sections for non-clinical reasons.
Apparently taken from a Public Health Wales document provided to the newspaper after a request. (Emphasis mine)
This is after a widely publicised policy change to make it available in 2009. I guess policies can change both ways, but they only get publicised one way.
I guess it’s time to break out the solicitors. I cannot convey how angry this makes me feel.
Post reblogged from DapperCat with 225 notes
1. More people challenging the binary/challenging cissexism is not a bad thing.
2. No one has any right to tell anyone that they are or aren’t gender variant. You know you better than I or anyone else can.
3. While I could say “no one does this for fun” (this: not “passing” in any bathroom, having your pronouns disregarded and disrespected, having people tell you that your identity isn’t legitimate (doesn’t that sound familiar?), dealing with any variety of cissexist responses to gender variance), it doesn’t even matter. Maybe someone physically transitions because they’re into body modification and it would be a fun adventure. Maybe someone is playing with gender identities because they think it’s sexy or fun. Maybe someone is experimenting with gender identities. So what? That’s just as legitimate as any other experience or use of gender. Which brings me to:
4. There is no such thing as an authentic trans or gender-variant experience. There is no one narrative of feeling like you were a boy since you were two and a half, of hating your body, of feeling you’re trapped in the wrong body, of being masculine or feminine, of using a specific pronoun, of transitioning or not in a specific way. And it doesn’t matter if you’re “sure”: maybe today, maybe for the next twenty years, you’ll feel very strongly female, and maybe over time your identity will shift, and that’s okay because gender identities are (sometimes, for some people) fluid. Everyone experiences or doesn’t experience gender differently. There are not people who transition (or don’t!) who are “really trans” and people who aren’t. There is not a hierarchy of gender variance with people who are “more” gender-variant at the top and people who are “just experimenting” or “just doing it for fun” or “not trans enough” at the bottom.
So, I can’t speak for all gender variant people, and I don’t claim to. But this is how I feel: I have no right to tell you what your identity is. You do not have to answer to the trans police or the genderqueer police or the anything else police about your identity or the way you express your gender. When I see or meet or hear about someone engaging in any kind of fucking with gender, I don’t think “oh man, you’re totally not as gender-variant as I am” or “I can’t believe you’re appropriating my experience” or “you’re not what you say you are.” I think “thank you.” For taking steps in fighting the binary. For making me feel like I’m not alone. For doing whatever you need to do to make your life more livable.
Maybe gender variance has become a fad. Awesome.
yes yes yes. read read read.
The thing that strikes me about reading this, is that some of the worse aspects of this, are things that came up in my dealings with psychiatrists over the last year or so. Really, as gatekeepers for the treatment I seek, they are the gender police, and they do seem to tell people that their identity isn’t real.
One that I spoke to wasn’t a “specialist” in gender identity at all, but he told me that once some time ago, he had come across “a man” who only thought “he” wanted to “be a woman” and had come to this psychiatrist for help. That the “man” in question was “delusional” and now he was “cured” of the issue. I sat and wondered to myself for a while, whether the “man” he spoke of had just given up trying to deal with the person in front of me, and sought treatment from someone else. Whether the psychiatrist I was with had dismissed this person as being “deluded” because their narrative hadn’t fitted some blueprint. I hoped that where-ever they were, that the person he dismissed as “cured” was happy in their identity; not still trying to live out a miserable existence because they had believed some privileged middle-aged white guy, when he told them they were wrong.
I feel ashamed to say the only thing I felt I could speak out against was when he dismissed the surgery I was asking for as “mutilation” of the genitals. I am a little happier to say that there was a good deal of frantic back-pedalling. Unfortunately this also came with words to the effect that it wouldn’t be mutilation for me, because I’m a “real transsexual” and it’s ok. I sighed inwardly. In my own validation I had seen the othering of a whole group of people, including me, as well as the denying of a whole group of people whose experiences and feelings didn’t match his blueprint.
It’s not without my own guilt, or a feeling of guilt, that I came to very slightly better my own situation by partly diminishing that of others. Though I do feel that in making my own situation better I have merely ended up back where I was a year ago, having fought through a year of crap forced upon me by the NHS in Wales.
Source: soft-animal
Reading the article behind my reblog just now has just crystallized something that I’ve been stewing in for a while.
I started on my journey over ten years ago. To begin with it all looked like it was going to go well. I went to see the psychiatrist, and he agreed with me. He gave me hormones to take, to change my body. We talked a little about the gender issues, and I started to grow in myself. Eventually he referred me to a surgeon and a second psychiatrist. The second psychiatrist agreed too! I was off to the surgeon next, and he too told me positive things; he could help me, but I needed to lose weight.
