According to the New Zealand not-for-profit Gender Minorities Aotearoa, the wait time for bottom surgery in the public health system is 10 to 12 years.
Holy shit, that’s a long wait time.
That’s cruel. There are more doctors that are qualified and willing to perform these procedures and I would argue that it’s the ethical responsibility of the public health system to do whatever it takes to utilize these doctors.
Tbh I’m always amazed by how trans care is so… whacky.
Like, the US is becoming more and more hostile towards trans people (especially trans women), and US healthcare means gender affirming care can be very expensive (especially surgery-related stuff). On the other hand, adults in the US can typically start HRT within a week of seeing a doctor because the US allows for informed consent; you see a doctor, request hrt, they inform you of the risks and effects, and if you consent, you can begin HRT. Then, if you have the money or really good insurance, you could be “”“finished”“” transitioning (be on hrt and have gender-affirming surguries done) within a year or two. You probably still won’t pass because I’ve been told it can take years for HRT to fully feminize/masculinize you, but at that point the only thing left is waiting for your body to do its thing.
Then you have Canada and European countries, where, based on what I’ve seen, they tend to be more accepting of trans people and trans care tends to be covered by the government (or so I’ve heard). However, they have all kinds of waiting periods, from being forced to wait several years to ensure you’re “truly trans”, waiting again to see if your surgery is approved, waiting again for an opening, waiting again because the doctor decided to take the week of your surgery off to go on vacation, etc.
Then you have Australia and New Zealand where you’re forced to wait and there’s no guarantee the government will cover the medical costs of transitioning.
Why is this so hard?
Why can’t people get their shit together so it doesn’t take a decade or more for someone to finish transitioning?
Considering the symptoms and side effects of gender dysphoria, it’s unlikely someone suffering from gender dysphoria will be functioning at maximum efficiency. As such, while it might appear more expensive on paper, it seems like the impact of prioritizing gender affirming care (similar to how I assume people with cancer and disabilities are prioritized) would be cheaper long-term. The faster you get them care, the sooner they can start working at their maximum potential; and the sooner they start working at their maximum potential, the larger the benefit they can provide to society.
You’ve also got to remember the US health system is user pays, but most of the NZ health system is free.
The US system is faster because patients are customers… well insurance is but you get the idea. Ours if free, but prioritised by the needs of the whole. If you go private in NZ you have similar or better wait times.
10-12 years is a long wait time, even for triage.
Medical gatekeeping is also very much a problem. I started petitioning for bottom surgery 6 years before I was actually able to get it. Not because of any wait list or qualifications or anything like that. Purely because my doctor and my counselor thought I wasn’t ready. Getting a new doctor here (Eastern Canada) takes close to a decade. So I had to wait till they decided I was ready. I was repeatedly told that my poor mental health made it so I couldn’t get surgery. My mental health never magically got better. They just eventually changed their minds and gave me referrals. Having bottom surgery saved my life and dramatically improved my mental health. I spent 6 years in abject misery when I could’ve gotten the surgery to begin with and spent that much more time happy and moving forward with my life.
I’m very happy to have had it and I for once in my life see a future for myself and a life that is worth living. But there is definitely a bitterness about the way that multiple health professionals all seemingly misunderstood that my anatomy was a significant contributor to my poor mental health.
That’s the real issue isn’t it. In an informed consent system if your GP is a transphobe or clueless or ill trained then they can deny you care based on moon logic. Theres similar issues with sterilization on all fronts. It’s rarer for vasectomies but still happens depending on where you are for the most part. You have to beg for sterilization because anything under the age of 40 is like " you’re too young - you might regret it. So I, a person who doesn’t even know you personally will tell you what is best for your situation and you’re going to have to live with it because I hold the power over your bodily autonomy in my hands."
Like dude, I’ll sign a waiver. It’s not your lookout whether I’ll regret it or whatever - just stay in your lane and do your bloody job. Made me angry enough I could have bent rebar between my teeth with how hard my jaw was clenched.
Like those are the practical arguments for informed consent, but I just keep coming back to a different reason: because it’s my body and that makes it my choice and my consequences.
A thing that is really frustrating about a lot of health care providers is they insist on using outdated “best practice” blood levels for trans fem HRT which puts our estradiol levels significantly lower than cis women.
Im lucky that I have a dr in cali who is good and insists on me having proper estradiol levels but in the past they were significantly lower with other doctors. And I can absolutely tell the difference I feel so much better with my current levels and physically the effects are noticable as well.
Then you have Australia and New Zealand where you’re forced to wait and there’s no guarantee the government will cover the medical costs of transitioning.
To clarify, in Australia, you’re forced to wait for surgery, and the government won’t cover it. But HRT is more accessible, and covered under our public healthcare system, so once you’ve got your prescription, it’s cheap to access.
Just to add, although the US allows informed consent for adults, some of us are still required to do a certain number of months in therapy and/or provide letters from mental health professionals before we can access hrt or surgery, because that’s what some health insurance companies require. Even then, ofc, the option does exist to do informed consent and pay out of pocket.
Yeah, 12 months lived in experience, 2 therapist letters (one had to have a PhD), and one primary letter to get me bottom surgery. Also they wouldn’t even do the consultation before I get all that done so it was almost another year after that.
Oof, that’s harsh. I’m glad you managed to trudge through it. It’s not unlike how difficult, if not impossible (and expensive) it is in some states (mine included :/) to get a legal name and/or gender marker changed.
They just gotta make it as hard as they can, don’t they… 🙃
the cruelty is usually the point. It’s not like there’s an excuse, certainly not one that can be taken seriously.
Yeah. Trans people and most of the major medical organizations have been presenting mountains of research and scientific fact to the ignorant and intolerant for decades, and we still have millions of people and most governments who willfully ignore it and oppose it because they have closed off their minds and fear and hate that which is different from them.
My 13-year-old daughter’s best friend is trans. His parents will not give him any sort of puberty blockers or hormones, but they do let him use a chest binder, which must be quite uncomfortable. They accept that he is trans and do not deadname him, but won’t go any further than that.
He has a lot of psychological issues.
I worry about him a lot.
Sounds a lot like they’re hoping it’s a phase and will “work itself out”.
My oldest is NB, they’re 15. I like to think we’re about as open-minded as it gets, but I still had the thought that it might be something brought about by seeing people they look up to being a certain way and not from internal, intrinsic reasons.
I hope your daughter’s friend ends up ok. If nothing else then knowing there are people out there that think of him might help with feeling isolated and misunderstood.
That’s definitely a possibility. I only met his mom once and only for a second, but they seem supportive enough to spend money on boys clothes for him.
I’m more worried about how he’s treated in school- they deadname him (and his parents have told the school not to), they make him use the girls’ bathroom and locker room, and once a girl was being bigoted, he slapped her for it, and only he got punished.
We took my daughter out of that school and put her in online school because she was bullied so badly it was giving her major psychological issues and she is cis, so I can’t imagine how bad he has it. I do know that at 13, he’s already vaping and smoking weed. And he cuts himself. If I could, I would take him out of that school and drive him to my house every day to do online school with my daughter.
and once a girl was being bigoted, he slapped her for it, and only he got punished.
Oh so they are capable of treating him like a guy.
Of course. Trans people are their true gender when it suits the bigots.
That’s awful. Man, it sucks seeing that kind of thing and not being able to help.
I still had the thought that it might be something brought about by seeing people they look up to being a certain way and not from internal, intrinsic reasons.
Funnily enough, that’s very similar to the thought process I had regarding masculinity when I came out to myself as non-binary.
Thanks for supporting your kid.
That’s super interesting! And I guess I can kind of see that point about masculinity, it’s an awful thing overall the way we treat the notion of “manliness”. Good on you, and thanks for the insight!
I wore chest binders for like 4 years. They’re not bad. It’s a great way to present masculine while deciding if you want to make a move that will dramatically change the course of your life.
Well I’m glad to hear they are not as uncomfortable as I had feared. There are a lot of other issues with him, unfortunately. Poor kid.
This guy wasn’t necessarily denied care but similar things could happen with bans in the US
Will happen. The same goes with self-abortions.
And the assholes are okay with that because they’re assholes.
I feel like calling them “assholes” unfairly defames assholes, but even “murderous fascist monsters” doesn’t adequately convey their sheer, staggering violence and inhumanity.
They’re more than ok with it, they revel in it. This is “god’s punishment” or some stupid bronze age bullshit we should’ve left behind centuries ago.
Facing a long wait for top surgery through New Zealand’s public health care system, a transgender teenager desperate to transition attempted a life-threatening mastectomy on himself.
A lack of funds for private gender-affirming care combined with the “significant psychological stress of having breasts at an upcoming pool party, pushed him to try the surgery himself,”
If you have to wait a year or more for medical care, and you cannot afford to jump the queue by going to a private practice, then I would argue that he is, in fact, being denied care.
Delayed care can absolutely be denied care, even if the delays aren’t intentionally weaponized against the patient.
Sounds like they ultimately found a way to jump the queue.
Omg the worst loophole. They earned it though.
Unfortunately healthcare is expensive and delays are not unusual. Italy has decent public healthcare overall, but my mom was still required to wait 9 months for a cat scan after a suspected stroke. It is the reality of many public facilities where funds get continuously slashed. If people wait for months and months for procedures needed for life-threatening conditions, I don’t see how other procedures (which are lower priority I would say) could not be delayed until much more funding is allocated to healthcare (which unfortunately is not very likely…).
9 months is not 10-12 years.
True, but 10 years doesn’t seem to be a “queue” problem, I bet there are obstacles of different nature (like hoops to jump, additional agreements to get etc.), which all together lead to 10 years waiting. 9 months it was instead literally just the queue for a single test.
That said, someone who might have had a stroke might be dead in 9 months.
A lack of funds for private gender-affirming care combined with the “significant psychological stress of having breasts at an upcoming pool party, pushed him to try the surgery himself,” according to the Journal.
The trans teen prepared for the procedure by watching a how-to video on YouTube, planning ways to control the pain and bleeding, and marking out the incisions to make around his left breast.
Several hours into the home surgery, he began to worry about nerve damage and sought medical attention.
In the hospital, the teen underwent a mental health assessment before surgeons completed the left mastectomy, as well as a “symmetrizing” mastectomy on the right breast.
Doctors noted deep cuts around his entire left breast. He was reportedly released the following day.
According to a post-op report a month later, healthcare providers noted the teen’s improved mood and self-esteem.
Wow, that poor kid. I’m glad it worked out so well for him.
That was a wild ride, good for him it worked out well in the end!
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Fucking ouch. That poor mother fucker. I’m glad they didn’t die and ultimately got the surgery they wanted but Christ that must have been awful
This is so sad
I mean, it has kind of a happy ending that the ER doctors then went and “finished” the surgery.
Not to mention released the next day, and reportedly in good health and high spirits since. Like, talk about best possible outcome.
The takeaway here seems to be 1. Get started on the surgery yourself, 2. Go to emergency room, 3. Have qualified doctors wrap things up.
^/s
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According to an earlier mental health assessment, doctors said the patient didn’t have any previous psychiatric diagnoses and wasn’t suicidal.
Sounds like a failure of the mental health system as much as the medical system. If you were seeing a mental health professional regularly and you had feelings about self harm, I would hope that this would be addressed before it happened.
Except the people who have feelings like these know they can’t express them to their therapist (if they have one) without threat of being put into a hospital that’s overpopulated and under staffed to the point that people with suicidal ideations are thrown in with people who have schizophrenia or whatever other disorder to the point you can’t sleep because a guy keeps screaming about the demons in his head.
Yeah people don’t understand how bad the MH industry can be. Its why these things shouldn’t be gatekept, it should just be available under informed consent.
Also part of the failure of the mental health system
Meanwhile they keep running ads to seek and get mental health help.
For the people running these programs it’s a double edged sword.
If someone expressed violent ideation and they weren’t admitted to a hospital and then they kill someone the program is seen as a failure. If someone expressed violent ideation and they were admitted and they kill themselves due to the conditions of the facility the program is seen as a failure.
So the program receives less and less funding exacerbating all of these issues.
I see it a more like someone feeling like they ‘did something’ by running an ad even if it isnt even useable.
Sort of like reporting something to Reddit admin about someone telling others to go KYS and their idea is to send out suicide links to the reporter and dust off their hands.
Just assholes dropping links and not reading let alone caring about actual problems
It’s not exactly a suicidal urge. Growing up trans before it was very commonly discussed I very nearly did this myself but ended up going the route of extreme binding, over exercising and eating disorder to avoid putting on weight that would go to places in the wrong distribution. I was in constant physical discomfort for years.
It’s more an extreme anxiety. You don’t necessarily want to die but management of that anxiety to self soothe means physical pain is less of a problem than the anxiety. A lot of people trivialize that with trans people. They think “oh it is just looks, it is surely not that important.” but how your gender is outwardly read colors every interaction you have with strangers. Not passing means you want to go out and participate in life less. The questions they ask suicidal people won’t nessisarily catch that because you are dealing with someone who is waiting to finally break out of that place to actually live… not wanting to die. The problem with framing surgeries as self harm is not realizing that the alternative is self harm. This guy just got pushed past the breaking point waiting for someone else’s permission to live.
Wanting to cut your boobs off may not come up in discussion of suicide but should come up in conversation if you’re being honest with your therapist.
Aside from that, I’m curious how this is different than somebody who needs other forms of cosmetic surgery to feel confident with their body and the way they are perceived by society?
Let’s say somebody is avoiding sexual relations because of the penis they were born with and tried to circumcise themselves because it’s not covered by insurance as an adult.
Should everybody be provided care to undergo whatever surgery they need to feel comfortable in their body?
Is anorexia not self harm if somebody does it because they can’t afford surgery and it gives them dysmorphia?
It’s a little different with gender. Like consider if I was ugly and I hate the experience of living in my body despite It’s generally considered pretty impolite to comment on that sort of thing. A barista saying “Good day ugly person, how would you like your coffee?” would probably elicit frowns and gasps from onlookers. Like it’s generally possible to go around knowing you’re not great looking because you are no surprise to yourself but it’s possible to exist in a state where you are not always conscious of the perceptions and thoughts of how other people code you because your attention can be allowed to drift. But the constant feedback snaps you back into place.
Gender comes with a whole bunch of assumptions, way people unconsciously react, restrictions on places and events where you are considered an oddity and commentary. How often does a person refer to you in the third person where you can hear? How often are you called “sir” or “ma’am”. Every instance of that happening in society is lke that person being called ugly by the barista above. You are suddenly aware of the way your body is preceieved and all the social baggage in your life that you have to deal with. For the rest of the world being called mister, sir, miss or ma’am doesn’t strike the same cord as “ugly” does in everyone. The people who feel nothing from those gendered words don’t even notice them. But when you are trans you are reminded the same way you are if you stand naked before a mirror.
Because when I was figuring myself out there wasn’t much information about the existence of trans people I didn’t really know surgery was an option I could pursue. There were issues with my body that puberty had already made irreversible and there’s a moment you realize no fairy godmother is going to come out of the woodwork to make things right. So I sobbed long and hard in the shower just in complete dispair that this was it. No one would ever see the real me, I would be invisible trapped my life would never be better. That this was it.
I ended up not transitioning for reasons of love. My partner whom I love more than life has a phenotype preference. Normally I have a lot of tricks to get through my day. I distract myself, I try never to linger in front of mirrors and when I do I try to focus on the clothes I am wearing or my hair or the scraps of my physical appearance I like. I ask my friends to use names, pronouns and social aspects of gender to help me continue on crutches through my social interactions… But whenever I am misgendered in public or on the phone a part of me goes right back to that moment in the shower every single time. It can happen multiple times a day because I don’t pass. People freely remark on my biggest hatred of my physical experience on this earth directly to my face and there is not a damn thing I can do about it but take the hit most days because out there what’s happening is normal. I live in that world because the sacrifice I made ultimately brings me joy regularly…but my relationship isn’t typical. It’s not everyone who finds someone they feel is worth making daily sacrifices to be with and it requires a lot of things to be going right in my life to be okay. But I still have bad days… If I remained stuck in that moment in the shower over and over again with nothing to show for my trouble and no way out that feels like relief I would be tempted to do a lot worse than just slice off a couple of chunks of flesh.
Being fat holds social stigma sure… But how strong could you be in the face of that if people, not just cruel ones, everyone, made oinking noises in your wake everywhere you go?
That all makes sense. I’m curious then, since the gender dysphoria is exacerbated by the way society treats people based on gender, would people no longer require gender affirmation if we abolished gender and we only referred to people as they/them?
Is being transracial different than transgender given that race and gender are social constructs?
During segregation in the United States, would you say that black people would have benefitted from the government providing them racial affirmation surgery if they felt that they were not comfortable in their bodies, were a different skin color and had to face it constantly?
To that point, is gender affirmation surgery a band-aid to the real problem of conformity to society’s gender construct?
I think you would probably see a massive upset in the binary trans community if there was a push to a fully “gender free” world. Consider that a lot of binary trans people don’t like the custom of introducing themselves with their pronouns. They want to allow the cultural signifiers to do the talking for them and some feel like having to constantly say their pronouns is essentially people not reading and validating their physicality. Pronoun introductions are an accommodation specifically for non-binary trans people who don’t have cultural visual signifers that allow that read. Gender presentation is a form of language. Like if you like to dress and culturally act like a woman that doesn’t nessisarily mean you are trans. Femboys might strike some as being trans people but they aren’t. Being trans ultimately comes down to a combo of how you feel about your physical body
Also just because two things are social constructs doesn’t mean they operate on the same rules. Fat is a social construct that we are actively working as a society to deconstruct. It’s basically on a culture by culture basis but because all human populations have differently sized people that’s a universal fight. Race however isn’t like that. It is tied into long histories with complex power dynamics. People around the world do have medical procedures to lighten their skim because of beauty standards caused by occupation by European powers that treated being the lightest beige as a moral issue. We are in the midst of trying to deconstruct that narrative and divorce it from the legacy of supremacy. Maybe in the far future when we’ve put those supremacist narratives to bed and not treated different peoples like the things that they hold as culturally sacred is something we can play dress up in for giggles then we could talk about cross racial stuff… But ultimately respect comes from honoring boundaries.
As for the question about black people in the states. I am not black. I can’t speak for that community with authority but I understand that a lot of the people I personally know would rather widen the constructs that exist around beauty to recognize what they have is also beautiful and wonderful. Like the people you love are beautiful to you. If the faces of the people who raised and loved you are a color that society values less it doesn’t mean you value it less you want other people to see them the way you naturally do.
Your last question is difficult because it’s not the gender construct but the construct of sex… Which I know is really weird but sex is also a construct. The preservation of the idea of what is phenotypically male or female has it’s own history as being constantly proven to not be a binary. “Gender” had the original origins of existing to try and preserve the idea of a sexual binary by applying a sort of sex supremacist narrative. There is a LOT of pressure trans people face to adhere to a cultural idea of sex and a lot of gatekeeping that happen regarding treating someone’s gender as valid only if they look the part… But that’s only half the story. I know trans women who would sell their souls to have periods and get pregnant and breastfeed and experience all the messy aspects of physical femaleness that women routinely complain about. That’s not a cultural desire. Personally I don’t care so much about ever having kids. I am functionally a gay man. Do I wish I could properly be a top and have boners and ejaculate and all that stuff. Yeah sure. It’s really hard to get aroused when you are limited by hardware you don’t like interfacing with but because I care more about other functionalities of day to day of getting by in society. Even if everyone called me by the correct pronouns without fail and didn’t treat me like I was at best a preteen boy and invited me to the cookouts it wouldn’t stop me from falling into a week long depression every time I had to buy a new pair of pants. I can never look good to myself this way. People who know what I need still fuck up from time to time and I can tell their brain codes me based on my physical characteristics. As much as they try to stop it that reflex is baked in and me asking them to help me is introducing a cognitive load that they don’t have with people who have physically transitioned to the point where the switch in the veiwer’s brain actually flips. So the answer to your final question is both yes and no. Some people would be fine with using non-binary coping strategies which would cause some people to be more content without resorting to surgery but ultimately others would not because the root isn’t always strictly cultural.
In a gender free world everybody would have the same pronouns. No need to introduce yourself. If society stopped reminding a trans person that they’re in the body of a specific gender, wouldn’t they then be on the same level of necessity as somebody who wants surgery because they do not like some other aspect of their body? If gender is not a thing, you only have to worry about your own perception of yourself, like how a fat person or a woman who wants a BBL does.
Are you saying that until we abolish racism there could not exist transracial people? The history of power dynamics with race also exists with sex/gender. We would have to then abolish sexism before transgender people could exists.
I don’t think being transracial would be based on beauty. Just like being transgender, being transracial means that you feel that you were born in the wrong body. If being transgender is dependent on beauty standards could we not expand beauty standards and widen the construct of gender to allow transgender people to feel more comfortable in their bodies? Men can feel beautiful and women can feel masculine. A penis can be beautiful and a vagina can be masculine. The question remains though. Should we provide medical care to people who are transracial?
To your last point, it sounds like even if we abolished gender, transgender people would still suffer from dysphoria, which I then wonder how much of the dysphoria is around how you are perceived vs how you feel about your body? It might then in fact be a band-aid to another problem in the same way somebody might get a BBL to make them feel more comfortable during sex.
As much as you seem to want trans racial stuff to be a thing at present it’s a pretty frowned on practice. Most of the trans community look at broaching the discussions about it to be straight up transphobic because there is at present one guy out there named Oli London who currently has used his desire to look like a Korean popstar and other antics more or less as stunts for attention and has become the sort of thing transphobes point to to regularly use to discredit both trans narratives and questions around disrespectful cultural appropriatation as being crazy or to derail and discredit people of color who have been very clear that they are not a costume or an identity group that accepts new members that way. If you want to try cosmetically race swapping that’s basically up to you but at present you’d likely be pretty isolated and potentially make a lot of enemies because you’d be seen as trying to pit trans people against people of color. Beyond what is ethical or not the subject makes me personally uncomfortable not the least because it’s a narrative that often seeks to try and pin trans people into some kind of double standard. We are a group of people who feel the way we do about sex and gender. We have zero insights into people who want to change racial characteristics. If they exist at all and not just for attention seeking troublemaking then what they are doing is a conversation to have with them and whatever racial group they seek to emulate.
Something I also notice is that you keep saying being trans is dependant on beauty standards… Which is misguided. While there are trans people who seek to be beautiful a lot of that os more from a hunger for validation. Cis people desire beauty just as offen. But most of the trans people in my immediate circle are more… How do I say this… Aiming for personal comfort rather than beauty? Like don’t get me wrong I would like just once in my life to dress up for a wedding and not feel like a dysphoric wreck for trying to find clothing that doesn’t bring attention to the issues of being the opposite proportion from what I wish I was…but I don’t feel the need to be a handsome bloke. I just want to wear clothes to a special event that don’t need to be tailored all to fucking hell, clean up a little nicer than usual and not feel like a complete steaming pile of shit… But if my partner was properly bi and someone was like “Okay you will be instantly fully transformed into a man but you will look like you hit every branch on the ugly tree.” yeah. I wouldn’t mind that.
I use being ugly as a parable to cis people because generally from what I have gatherered its not like the vast majority have an intrinsic internal gender preference at all. Most of you have, as far as I can tell, never experienced anything like actual gender euphoria so I can’t use the experience of what gender incongruity feels like directly. Because of that I have to use things as analogs though they are always imperfect. Description of some of the paradoxes of gender dysphoria and euphoria are really difficult to conjure properly because it properly has to do with a sense of recognition…
You know that reaction you have when you see another human and you instantly recognize whether they are of a masculine or feminine body type and if you encounter someone who could be either it inspires that curiosity and attention while you try and figure it out because there’s a chunk of your brain that treats that information as vitally important? Gender Dysphoria and Euphoria works through that mechanism. Your internal sense of yourself is one thing but your external peices register to yourself as not matching so it causes this strict mental disconnect. The result is you feel very empty. Your name never feels like it belongs to you. It’s something you respond to as a function but it feels like it belongs to someone else. Your existence feels like you are performing a part in a play. Your friendships exist behind this barrier where you want desperately to feel connected but they never quite understand you or it feels like they are somehow keeping you at arms length. Nothing feels authentic to you, you might as well not even really be there because it’s all functionality happening to someone else. Then enevitably you play around with gender performance somehow. Doesn’t matter what, a short haircut, you wear a dress, someone says “oh sorry sir!” when they bump into you and you get a sudden flash of existing. For that little moment you suddenly feel real. It’s a thrilling feeling like you have been invisible all your life but suddenly someone saw you! Desire flares up to connect and ne present and exist in your own skin because for a second it feels like you are actually THERE for once. Dysphoria can feel like intense jealousy for the things that make you feel more alive but more often than not it’s this sort of numbness.
Cis people often don’t nessisarily understand it until they actually experience a trans person they know transition and then there’s a moment somewhere along the line where that recognition mechanism kicks in and they actually start experiencing that person as their gender… or they see the difference in how someone who used to struggle and seem sort of listless, anxious and absent suddenly is very vibrantly living in the moment and is sharp and attentive. Unless you’ve properly transgressed that boundary yourself it’s difficult to properly explain the phenomenon.
Mental health systems are so overburdened that it’s not uncommon for someone assessing a trans person’s poor mental health to go “well, you’re experiencing [wide array of concerning mental health symptoms], but it’s my opinion that these symptoms are almost entirely attributable to gender dysphoria, and you’re already on the waitlist for the gender identity clinic, so there’s nothing more I can do.” and then they discharge them.
With such huge wait lists, it would make sense to keep someone on your books to keep an eye on them at least, if they’ve expressed feelings about self harm, but that doesn’t happen because the system hasn’t sufficiently acknowledged just how fucked the trans healthcare wait times are. Like, in the UK, there’s a statutory maximum of 18 weeks wait from when the referral was made until your first appointment, but the standard wait for an adult to have a first appointment at a gender identity clinic (which doesn’t involve any treatment, that comes months later) is literally years. But officially, you should be seen within 18 weeks, and under those circumstances, well the mental health people discharging you is reasonable if there’s little they can do to support you
Imagine mental health professionals should address this situation with gender dysmorphia in the same way their might address somebody who wants to get a BBL.
Let’s say the person has dysmorphia about their body and they are willing to undergo one of the most dangerous cosmetic procedures available (1 in 3000 mortality) in order to feel good about themselves. A good therapist/psychologist, and maybe in conjunction with a psychiatrist, should try to get them to a place where they are comfortable with their body and do not have feelings of self harm because of it.
I just want to point out, gender dysphoria is different from body dysmorphia, though the words look very similar. A person with dysphoria (eg, a trans person) sees their body the way it really is, but is uncomfortable with it. A person with dysmorphia (eg, someone with an eating disorder) sees their body as different than it actually is, and is uncomfortable with that perception.
That said, you can’t effectively treat someone experiencing body dysmorphia the same way you’d treat someone experiencing gender dysphoria, and vice versa.
What about the BBL example? They see their body the way it is.
Do they? I guess they’d have to figure out why they’re so set on getting that surgery, if it isn’t a matter of skewed body image. Any treatment is going to have to depend on that, I’d imagine. Has there been research on this subject?
I sincerely doubt a doctor’s first response would be to encourage the patient to get a BBL. Gender-affirming care (specifically here, hrt and surgery) has been extensively scrutinized and researched and has been proven effective for treating gender dysphoria, and other treatments (like conversion therapy) have proven ineffective. As far as I’m aware, the same isn’t true of BBLs and (is there a name for this phenomenon?). From what you said, it sounds like BBLs aren’t nearly as safe as gender-affirming care, so that might make it more difficult to justify. It’s also worth mentioning that gender-affirming care is justified by just how bad the outcomes are without it (e.g. suicide rates, persistent mental health struggles, quality of life). Afaik, similarly negative outcomes haven’t been observed in this case, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
*I’m typing this on my phone, but if you do want sources on the effectiveness and safety of gender-affirming care, effects of conversion therapy, etc., I’d be happy to provide them once I get home.
Idk that they’ve done a lot of research on BBL’s specifically, but people who I know have had cosmetic surgery did so because they were unhappy with how their body was, not because they saw it as something else.
I don’t doubt that gender affirming surgery can help people. I’m just wondering why one type of mental abnormality should be treated with surgery over another.
I’m curious, if society abolished gender, would people still feel the need to have gender affirming surgery? They would only ever be perceived as they them.
That’s too broad and assumption
Republicans are erect and salivating.
Christianity almost killed another one.
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Not to be an ass here but the article states pretty clearly in the first line that it was due to the surgery wait time. The pool party is only tangentially related.
Tangentially related in that bathing suits are revealing. The timing may have something to do with his decision
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Literally none of it has to do with peer pressure or pool parties generally, and I’m not sure why you think the article should spend any time on it.
He was experiencing severe gender dysphoria, which was made worse by the situation making him more aware of his chest and knowing it was going to take ages to get surgery. Nobody is saying it was a great decision that everyone should do.
If you think I’m going to find this cute you’re going to have to try it on someone else.
“A health system that works like people expect”
“10 to 12 year wait times”
Sure buddy.
Because idk maybe he wanted for one single second to feel happy and comfortable in his own body? Maybe the fear of missing out on an endless string of events and friends and time enjoying life drove him to try doing it himself? Are you under the impression this was the first time he had been invited to swim somewhere? Are you under the impression this is the first time he was ashamed and repulsed by his own body, and had to confront the reality that the health care system was failing him and he had to let precious years of his life waste away when a routine simple procedure could alleviate his suffering?
Do you think trans people are fucking stupid or something? How do you figure peer pressure factored into this? Do you think all the dysphoria just disappears if he doesn’t go to the pool party? I understand that this is outside your experience. Time to listen.
