London trans activists call for boycott of sham demo on October 17th
ETA, Monday, October 12: Those people who are still subscribed to Mr Hambridge’s STP Facebook group have received the following message:
After due reconsideration and-> most valued advice from Transpersons, Intersexual persons or those who work in conjuntion with them, in majority<-it as been agreed and/or decided to cancel the above rally for this years STP 2012 campaign.
I understand that, as a consequence, the proposed counter-protest has also been cancelled.
—————
We are a group of trans activists who wish to make known our concerns about a demo, claiming to support the depathologisation of trans people, in London on 17th of October. The facebook group for the demo can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=147494409183
The description of the event reads:
“Being transgendered is not a mental illness. We are simply part of the diversity of humanity. Gender Identity Disorder is therefore not a valid diagnosis. Homosexuality we removed as a mental health diagnosis in 1987. For us to achieve true liberation and recognition we need to throw off this unjust stigma. We are not ill, just different”
A large number of people were invited by the demo organiser, a non-trans man by the name of Dennis Hambridge, and some of us were initially concerned by the rationale for the demo. In particular, we were worried that campaigning for the removal of Gender Identity Disorder as a medical diagnosis without proposing an alternative mechanism by which transsexual people would be able to access medical transition resources was premature and dangerous, especially in a climate where NHS primary care trusts need only a minimal excuse to deny funding for our hormonal and surgical procedures. We do not support the labelling of our gender identities as disordered, and realise that our relationship with the medical community is far from ideal, but do not wish to support a movement which may give the impression that we seek complete divorce from the medical community.
These concerns were put to the Facebook group by a number of trans activists. Rather than address them, Mr Hambridge entrenched his position, making claims that gender dysphoria was an artefact of society and the medical community, and that removal of any form of classification of gender dysphoria by the WHO was “non-negotiable”.
In moves more reminiscent of the actions of transphobic radical feminists than supposed allies of trans people, Mr Hambridge started deleting some of the comments from those trans people who were concerned about our future access to hormones and surgery. Subsequently he banned a number of those trans people from the group, silencing them in that space.
To reiterate – Mr Hambridge, who is organising a demo which is allegedly supporting the rights of transsexual people is using his position as a group organiser to silence and shut out the voices of the very people he claims to support.
In light of Mr Hambridge’s intransigence and refusal to listen to the voices of actual transsexual people, we are calling on all activists who support the concept of transsexual people having a say in our own medical care to boycott this demo. We further call on Mr Hambridge, who is not trans himself, to stop claiming to speak on our behalf when he is ignoring our protestations and silencing our voices, and to call off his demo.
Please spread this open letter widely.
—————
Cross-posted at Bird of Paradox
Jesus. Cis people really can’t have a clue about such things. I really have to wonder what their motives are sometimes.
z
October 11, 2009 at 1:42 am
My personal favorite cis-not-getting-it moment is when I tell them I’m into other women. That said, the demands of the campaign include access to medication and surgery on demand. Hambridge isn’t listening to his own movement.
Valerie Keefe
October 11, 2009 at 8:03 am
Where the event description states “being transgendered is not a mental illness; we are simply part of the diversity of humanity,” is the author suggesting that people who have mental illness are not part of the diversity of humanity? Or when it states “we need to throw off this unjust stigma,” is the author implying that people with mental illness suffer from “just” (deserved) stigma?
emigrl
October 11, 2009 at 12:50 pm
It is not clear which group authored the call for a boycott. Was it accidentally left off the end of the notice? Was it put out by Dick Green and similar enemies?
It is important to note that this demo is not new, this is the third year that STP2012 has held demos, in roughly 100 cities, it is just new to the Anglophone world. Probably because STP2012 has few English speaking members, they are mostly in Spain, Germany and Argentina (France too since the abolition there last Summer).
Henry Hall
October 11, 2009 at 12:55 pm
emigrl: Valid questions, which I think serve to highlight how little Mr Hambridge actually knows about the subject.
Helen G
October 11, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Henry Hall: I have no idea who authored the post – but I agree with its message.
To reiterate: the counter-protest is not against the STOP2012 campaign itself but the way it’s been co-opted by one individual whose concerns appear to be completely at odds with a number of transsexual women in London.
Helen G
October 11, 2009 at 1:00 pm
@emgirl it states “we need to throw off this unjust stigma,” is the author implying that people with mental illness suffer from “just” (deserved) stigma?
I believe the implication is that the stigma of mental illness is unjust, but it is doubly unjust when applied to transsexual people because they are not mentally ill. Transsexual people have plenty enough stigma of their own to fight off without our “friends” dumping knowingly and hatefully on us the additional stigma of mental illness by automatically referring presenting transfolk to psychiatry.
There is a well known saying that to a [psychiatrist] who has only a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
Henry Hall
October 11, 2009 at 1:01 pm
@HelenG the counter-protest is not against the STOP2012 campaign itself, but the way it’s been co-opted by one individual
If that is the case then STP2012 needs to step in urgently and reassert control. It is important the demo goes ahead. And if it benefits STP2012 that Hamridge steps down then fine. But the anonymous “Call for a boycott” damages STP2012 and that is more important than any dispute around Dennis H. I still suspect “Sissyboy syndrome Green” is somehow behind this.
Henry Hall
October 11, 2009 at 1:07 pm
The boycott call comes, as the letter says, directly from trans activists in London, some of whom have been censored by Hambridge. We are angry at this arrogant cis man claiming to speak on our behalf and yet completely ignoring us.
I would say the chances of an STP demo going ahead in London, or anywhere else in the UK this year are about zero. Hambridge has thoroughly poisoned the well.
Richard Green has nothing to do with any of this, and I for one resent the insinuation that trans people objecting to being silenced and misrepresented are somehow motivated by the likes of Green.
Sarah Brown
October 11, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Iawtc
Helen G
October 11, 2009 at 1:45 pm
To clarify, I mean the chances of an STP demo *supported by the UK trans community* going ahead are about nil. It’s entirely possible that Hambridge will still hold his demo and end up marching up and down Whitehall with a megaphone clumsily giving the impression that transsexual people do not want hormones or surgery.
Sarah Brown
October 11, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I would also like to add that if Hambridge does not stop what he’s doing, then there’s every chance you’ll see transsexual people reluctantly holding a counter demonstration on Saturday calling for GID to be *retained*, just as an act of damage control. None of us want to do that – it would leave a horrible taste in the mouth, but Hambridge is *not listening* to us, and we can’t risk creating the impression that we support the loss of NHS treatment for transsexual people.
Sarah Brown
October 11, 2009 at 1:48 pm
@a counter demonstration on Saturday calling for GID to be *retained*,
Well, I guess you do or you don’t want GID to be retained. This is not a parochial or short-term matter.
It is time to fish or cut bait. (I prefer that expression, despite its New World connotations, to the equivalent coarser Briticism involving a pot)
Henry Hall
October 11, 2009 at 5:10 pm
@ Henry Hall: “It is time to fish or cut bait. (I prefer that expression, despite its New World connotations, to the equivalent coarser Briticism involving a pot)”
Ha! I had heard that expression (the latter, British one) so many times in the media before, but I only *just now* got that it meant an *actual* pot.’Til now when I noticed you used “involving >a< pot" instead of just "involving pot", I had always thought the expression was referring to "pot" as in the nickname for cannabis, and had thus always been confused by it's meaning.
Can brunettes have so-called “blonde moments”?
@ Valerie Keefe: “My personal favorite cis-not-getting-it moment is when I tell them I’m into other women.”
Yeah, I get that one too. As if liking girls are somehow mutually exclusive with regards to being one and having a penis.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand: What I fail to comprehend is this Dennis Hambridge’s motivations for doing this, if he is both cissexual and wholly disinterested in the perspectives of *actual* trans-people – the latter to the point where he would rather just censor us outright than even attempt listen to us, let alone address our concerns.
Why? Why would a privileged, cissexual male go to all the effort of arranging such a feat and electing himself spokesperson for the trans-girls and trans-boys of London, while in the same instance actively silencing real trans-individuals whom comment on his work with real issues he continues to ignore?
I simply don’t follow. Is it some sort of conspiracy to wipe us out in that area by taking away our access to HRT and medical procedures, under the guise of doing us a favour? I mean, WTF?
Shay
October 11, 2009 at 7:08 pm
From some discussion relating to this around “self-serving political opportunity” comes to mind.
Agent_J
October 11, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Dennis has a long history of trying to co-opt activism in London, presumably to increase his own political capital. He seems to be very much a manarchist.
Sarah Brown
October 12, 2009 at 3:19 am
Henry – I don’t speak for anyone else who has taken it upon themselves to protest what Dennis is doing, but I very much get the impression that none of us want to risk providing an excuse to end NHS gender services. What Dennis is doing is highly irresponsible and, if successful, will kill people.
Sarah Brown
October 12, 2009 at 3:21 am
Sarah- Couldn’t agree more. The depathologization movement always is at great pains to note that access to transition services should be MORE, not less, available. Dennis seems to be falling into the subversive/conformist binary with his language, and frankly I find it rather alienating. I was always going to ‘defy the gender binary’ regardless of where I ended up being able to live on it, I just will be a lot more together if I can have my body and my endocrine system and my skin. Recognition is important, I agree. Being understood and respected for the first time in my life was like a shot of oxygen. It was the best day of my life, but I rather suspect that ultimately it will not be enough.
Valerie Keefe
October 12, 2009 at 4:59 am
What I just don’t get is how this “more access to transition services” -bit can be realised without any diagnosing?
The cis taxpayers are going to roll over and pay for the services just ‘cos we ask/demand them to? Err, I somehow can’t see that happening; I can see them asking for some kind of checks as to who gets surgery, and on what condition, ‘cos they’re paying. I can’t see, for the life of me, why other people would’ve paid for my transition costs without any checks on their part, no matter how much I demand them to do so. As far as I can fathom, surgery-on-demand is either a fantasy (if someone else is supposed to pay) or a reality (you can get plenty of surgery with minimal fuss right now if you can pay). Mebbe I’m just stupid or something, but I really can’t see anything workable coming out of this as far as publicly-funded medical stuff is considered.
Carto
October 12, 2009 at 5:35 am
Grand news! I just got a note from Dennis via facebook that the demo’s been canceled! Apparently the cranial arsectomy was a success!
Also Carto, I can’t even get spironolactone in Canada on demand, so I may just be dealing with a different regime. But no, I don’t think people really care. They call SRS a vanity procedure today anyway. If there didn’t have to be thousands of women prostrating themselves with “traditional trans narratives” (TM) there might actually be more of a respectful dialogue… just my opinion.
Valerie Keefe
October 12, 2009 at 5:52 am
Yeah, I couldn’t get anything without being diagnosed first, either, and I did get hormones, vaginoplasty and tracheal shave at the taxpayers’ expense. But I fail to see what would come in stead of some kind of control as to who gets all that. I’d very much have preferred something else instead of psychiatrists, but even if it had been regular GPs, there still would likely have been some control over my access to meds and surgery, ‘cos it was the taxpayers who were paying (myself included, of course – I work, I pay taxes). Say, a diagnosis of “misgendered at birth”, which then opens up the path to suitable meds and surgery, if wished for.
Carto
October 12, 2009 at 6:16 am
The British Government already depathologized transgender Brits, and the NHS still funds transition. I think we need to realise that WPATH is not like the WTO. It has only as much power as the psychiatrists who enforce the program are given.
We need non-prescription hormones on demand. Blood work and consultations given freely, as a public health measure. Basically asking for what cis people have, and yes, this means slightly relaxing the standards on testosterone. GRS after understanding the consequences and being cleared for surgery on medical grounds, and perhaps some counselling.
As long as we retain a diagnosis as the basis for treatment, we’ll never have informed consent. It makes no sense. You don’t need to be obese to speak to a doctor or get a referral to a dietician, why should you need a diagnosis to transition? I’m not about to go policing transness for the sake of avoiding another half-dozen regretters out of 60,000 who don’t de-transition and conflate their lack of dysphoria for their lack of ever having had it. Consider it an odd jobs’ lot for Julie Bindel.
Valerie Keefe
October 12, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Sure we *need* over-the-counter hormones. Are we likely to get them? As far as estradiol and progesterone are concerned, we might. There’s no use for them otherwise and they’re not particularly dangerous substances. Testosterone is much more iffy because of its other uses in doping, and antiandrogens might be restricted, too, due to their potential toxicity.
I think informed consent -approach to surgeries would mean in practice that the person needing the surgery would have to pay for hirself. I don’t see publicly funded healthcare systems going into that direction: as far as I can understand there’s precisely no surgery whatsoever that’s offered for anyone who asks, on the basis of informed consent. Actually, there’s precious little publicly funded healthcare that’s available just for the asking, without a diagnosis or a check-up of some sort. I’m not too sure I’d like such a system myself, either, as a taxpayer.
I’m not concerned about regretters: if you really want to, you can talk your way to surgery. The then Finnish psychiatrist-in-charge admitted as much. In the end, no-one can stop you, no psych, no doctor, not anyone, if you’re determined enough. Besides, if you’re so terminally stupid that you go get surgery and then start whining that it wasn’t what you wanted, there’s no helping you anyway.
I don’t really care about policing, either, but I do care about the money going into health care: I like evidence-based medicine, and vaginoplasties for trans women, or, say, suitable HRT for a transgender person definitely are evidence-based treatments that do alleviate suffering and result in a better quality of life. It’s just that I’d like someone, to do a reality check and evaluate that the procedures do help, and are sorta worth the money, as there’s not an endless supply of that stuff.
What I strongly disagree about the current system is that the checks in place now are extremely ineffective, needlessly pathologising and so slow they cause more damage due to transphobia instead of repairing the damage. The current WPATH style is too cumbersome, too slow, too cis- and heterosexist and way too expensive way of vetting who’d benefit from HRT or surgery. It isn’t rocket science.
No, I don’t think we’re going to get rid of the doctors as gatekeepers in toto, nor do I think it’s necessary, either. Just get rid of the silly mentalising and needless complexity and stupidity.
Carto
October 12, 2009 at 11:57 pm
The British government has already depathologized, the NHS still covers everything it did when they had not clarified trans sexuality to not be considered a mental illness and the parliament has told local authorities to drop the WPATH standards, or at least loosen them. That’s where the problem currently is; there’s a lot of red tape needs cutting. People won’t suddenly respect us less if we’re not called sick, they’ll respect us more. This is just a bit of preventative medicine, like dietitians or OBGYNs. All that happens with pathologization is that we’re called incompetent to know how we should be treated, how we should remove the considerable stress that results from gender dissonance. If we don’t, then doctors who would make Harry Benjamin spin in his grave get to decide. They get to make treatment look like Toronto and like this:
http://auntysarah.livejournal.com/63977.html
(Apologies to Sarah, if she finds me appropriating her words, but I’d submit that if the government thinks you’re mentally ill, they certainly won’t think you’re competent to decide your own treatment privately, let alone privately, and living in Canada, where I can’t tell my doctors to go get stuffed and set my own estrogen level, or where my friend’s on a post-hysterectomy dose of 2mg after her surgery, costing her development, tone, a lot of secondary sexual characteristics, because that’s what the endocrinologist feels is medically necessary, I can tell you exactly what that sort of treatment is like.
What you’ve gotten with a diagnosis of GID may work for you, but it’s been an abject failure in my corner of the world, for teens fighting with their families and hoping they won’t have their growth spurt this month, for twenty-somethings not wanting to have to battle until they’re thirty-somethings, or who want the green light to start removing hair permanently and would kill for just a minor dose of spironolactone. I desperately need to stop being treated by my general practitioner as an incompetent. I’ll have to pay for my meds regardless, at about $1,500 a year. Laser and electrolysis will cost $5,000. I’ll have to pay for a home so that I won’t have to fight landlords for the rest of my life at about $90,000. I’ll have to finish my economics degree to ensure I won’t be marginalized, unemployed, and forced into sex work, which, for a lesbian, would be exceptionally traumatic, and that’ll cost me about $18,000. I’ll have to pay for the flight to Montreal, the accomodation, or Thailand… either way, I’m out of pocket for another $3,000 – $10,000. The SRS being funded because I’m considered an incompetent, (which by the way, it isn’t anymore in Alberta) would save me $20,000. Even cutting out housing, that’s going to amount to less than half of my transition expenses. About half of trans women don’t get bottom surgery, and it’s about more than class for some of that half.
Do you know what making treatment of GID medically necessary in Canada has done? It’s taken the role of gatekeeper from the psychiatrist to the finance minister. Wait lists to see the psychiatrist or two in your province who can refer you to an endocrinologist are over one year long! Or you can get jerked around by your GP for a few months before you find out you’ve gotten nowhere, and that waiting list is just as deep even in the most left-wing parts of the country, because trans women emigrate to British Columbia and Ontario as a result. And because we mandate that there can be no parallel private system for a service that is provided publicly, we ARE gate-kept in a more assuredly, callous, and damaging fashion than a private, cosmetic surgery model will have ever been. At least then I can pay. Others can’t. I’m not about to forget or let the world forget where I came from. I will work for them and fight for them, but I can’t do it when I can’t bear to get out of bed and face myself in the mirror.
Valerie Keefe
October 13, 2009 at 11:21 pm
I think informed consent -approach to surgeries would mean in practice that the person needing the surgery would have to pay for hirself. I don’t see publicly funded healthcare systems going into that direction: as far as I can understand there’s precisely no surgery whatsoever that’s offered for anyone who asks, on the basis of informed consent. Actually, there’s precious little publicly funded healthcare that’s available just for the asking, without a diagnosis or a check-up of some sort. I’m not too sure I’d like such a system myself, either, as a taxpayer.
I’m not concerned about regretters: if you really want to, you can talk your way to surgery. The then Finnish psychiatrist-in-charge admitted as much. In the end, no-one can stop you, no psych, no doctor, not anyone, if you’re determined enough. Besides, if you’re so terminally stupid that you go get surgery and then start whining that it wasn’t what you wanted, there’s no helping you anyway.
I understand that your focus here is funding. But I don’t know if the WPATH approach actually does work to dissuade people who shouldn’t transition, or track people who are having problems. I don’t know if it offers more opportunity to reflect.
I wonder if the more traditional approach was one of the reasons I wasn’t able to keep checking in with myself. The supervisory model placed me very firmly on a trajectory, and made it my job to belong there. It was about succeeding. And when I did start reversing, the response was more or less, “Prove it,” all over again.
I think this is another reason why the gatekeeper model is so clumsy and burdensome. This second time, I was headed in the right direction, to the extent that I’ve got one. I still got here in an unnecessarily exhausting, damaging way–thanks in part to the professionals who are supposedly in the process to help. It’s not just the inevitable sexism and cissexism. Gatekeepers force you to be determined, to be listening to someone else’s preferences, when you should be looking after yourself.
piny
October 14, 2009 at 2:51 am
One last point on expense: A fully funded transition, start to finish, costs roughly $30 K on average, maybe $40,000, not including the less than five dollars a day that hormones cost. The most generous estimates on people who would have their lives improved by transition is 1 in 50, ($800/person) And with an incidence of 1 80th that, $10/person/year in taxes, we’re looking at an absolute pittance, plus the economies of scale. Anyone who’s going to oppose that amount of money’s not doing it on grounds of expense, they’re doing it on grounds of “no money’s going to anything I don’t like.” And those people want us to be sick. Because, as the argument goes:
We hear people absolutely convinced they’re Napoleon too. Do we humor them, or do we pump them full of Thorazine if they refuse to accept reality?
Being sick instead of having a source of emotional stress makes us unable to be considered competent. I’ve been there, had the condescending, hmming doctor give me a milligram of finasteride and tell me it tends to work well for “young men like you,” and put me on a waiting list for a waiting list. And then I did what I do best. The reading, the politics, and it’s become a bit of a campaign for me, almost something I’d relish, if I didn’t have to deal with a body causing me distinct emotional damage on a daily basis. God help someone else less seized with righteous anger and more likely to harm themselves.
Valerie Keefe
October 14, 2009 at 5:03 am
Well, my transition cost me something in the order of a couple of thousand euros – I haven’t kept books or anything so I can’t give exact numbers. Most of that money went to the private electrologist (nowadays you can get laser on public health, too); meds were like 30-40€/mo, vaginoplasty bill was ~300€ – right now I pay 5€ for 3 months worth of estradiol: it’s heavily subsidised because I’m officially hypogonadic (another diagnosis, but well, I bloody am, no gonads whatsoever). The whole of it took four years, two and a half of which I spent basically waiting in various treatment queues. Not too bad IMO.
@piny: Like I said, I don’t think any amount of psychiatric counseling can protect people from themselves, and I’d really like to see the psychs removed from the gatekeeping business. But I do think there will be a gatekeeper of some sort in the future, too, and a diagnosis to match – I don’t find that problematic in principle. What bothers me is the current, rather flawed execution.
And yeah, sure one particular procedure doesn’t cost much per capita, but as all publicly funded procedures are gatekept anyway, I see no cogent reason for removing all gatekeeping from trans-related treatments. Why should they be the exception? You can’t get anything else on public money, either, unless a doctor or a nurse prescribes it.
(As it happens, I also don’t care much about the principles if the treatment is available and accessible – sure I couldn’t “tell it like it is” for the gender team, but who cares – I got everything I wanted, and in retrospect, it honestly wasn’t that much of a burden)
The reason costs are so much on the forefront of my mind is that costs, that can perhaps be borne by people who are employed full-time, are certainly not bearable by an 18-year-old leaving school unless she’s incredibly lucky. She needs that public funding, as it is independent of her parents and does not depend on her income. That’s the bit I want to keep in place, and improve on – here, anyway. I’d really hate to see a backsliding into the system where copays increase (or, $DEITY forbid, no public funding at all), ‘cos that would raise the (monetary) barrier to transition, and that would hurt IMO the poorest the most.
Carto
October 14, 2009 at 6:54 am
Forgive me, the length, and also if the formatting doesn’t come out how I hope, but here are, what I would feel, to be some cogent replies:
[i]I also don’t care much about the principles if the treatment is available and accessible.[/i]
One year to see a psychologist who can refer you to hormones isn’t available and accessible. Being led around on the end of a tether isn’t available and accessible. And having the experience that people have reported to TS roadmap, from the gender clinic in Toronto, where Blanchard had made of himself a fixture, where trans women who were uncomfortable dressing, were asked to dress, had pictures of them surreptitiously taken and used in an ‘arousal test’ is not available and accessible. It is forced emotional prostitution.
[i]nowadays you can get laser on public health, too[/i]
Not in Canada. Nowhere in Canada. Only cosmetic they’ll cover is a shave if the trachea is outside the female range, and, and this is only in British Columbia, about 1/9th of the country, will they pay for implants if you’ve had absolutely no breast development.
It all comes down to vaginoplasty, and I hate to say it, but stuff vaginoplasty… well, one imagines one would, but the people at the absolute end of their tether, the ones about to kill themselves because they see no way out from what’s staring them in the mirror every day, are the people who have to go through a year’s fight to get hormones.
[i]The reason costs are so much on the forefront of my mind is that costs, that can perhaps be borne by people who are employed full-time, are certainly not bearable by an 18-year-old leaving school unless she’s incredibly lucky.[/i]
But most of them are. You’re talking something on the order of $300 a month, (180 Euro) drugs and laser, to finance transition, not SRS, but transition. The drugs and the social transition are, the financing on a vaginoplasty isn’t. You ask an 18 year old, who has a year before her skeletal structure is more or less set, or better yet, an emancipated 16 year old, if she’d rather have more of an ability to blend, to not feel incredibly tall, or hell, just to feel the chemical balance in her body be somewhere near correct for once, or whether she should be asked to pay 8 months’ income to finance the last step of transition, and I think I’ll tell you which answer you’ll get. And I know for a fact which answer will save more lives.
I’ll reassure you, because the British model has gotten, if anything, more progressive after depathologization, while the Canadian model has gotten less so, not being called sick will not cost you your funding, will not cost you your copay. Being called quite possibly delusional costs lives.
[i]You can’t get anything else on public money, either, unless a doctor or a nurse prescribes it.[/i]
Birth Control. They’re moving to make birth control available on demand. Lots of medicines are available on demand, or the doctor better have a bloody good reason for refusing to prescribe. Do you know what many opponents of terror laws often found so objectionable about the provisions? The reverse onus: The person who is having their rights impinged upon was the one responsible for demonstrating why they shouldn’t, instead of the person doing the impinging. I go into a doctor’s office, asking for estrogen, it shouldn’t be my job to tell them why I am such a good, deserving, little trans woman, when they start out from an assumption of me not being one.
There’s a GID department at one hospital, Grey Nuns, in the whole of Northern Alberta. The doctor who runs the department… sorry, the doctor who IS the department, works about half the week on GID patients. We’re talking about 20-30 patients he can see in a good week. 20-30 out of one and a half million, which means about 10,000 intensely trans persons, with an incidence of 1/80th that, means that we’re treating 20-30 out of about 125 who need it in any given year. The rest have to pay not just the full cost of the treatment, but any cost for grey/black market hormones, and you better believe there’s a premium required there.
The waiting lists are of similar length in other provinces. We’re treating 1 in 5. In Canada, you know, one of the first countries in the world to legalize same sex marriage? So I’d rather pay what amounts to one year’s tuition for hair and voice, and what amounts to three years’ tuition for SRS then have it denied, and, I don’t know how low income you have to get before that’s not the issue.
I’m under the low-income cut-off in this country, and the freedom to go private, with all the wonderful class privilege that entails, just like transportation too, I might add, or family rearing, or every thing else that I’m intensely aware of pushing me just a little further to the margins, is the denial of a positive right. But I don’t even have the freedom to deny myself something else for transition. I don’t even have a negative right. I don’t even have a freedom to self-expression.
So yeah, you better believe I care about the principles of it. And I know the politics of it too. Hell, the Calgary Sun (right-wing rag) asked the premier if he didn’t have any puppies to kick around instead when he de-listed SRS. There’s a consensus forming in favor of transition. It’s happening slowly, but it will happen before I’d be old enough to regret that any children I’d parent don’t have funded access to SRS. And that consensus will only be stalled by pathologization.
We’ve argued against positions that don’t make sense before, like radical feminists and the womyn-born-womyn trope. The logic of their arguments seems weaker every day that ours is strengthened. Playing politics with other trans women’s lives, treating a basic right to immediate treatment as negotiable for a lower copay, when no government on the planet, save mine, is moving in that direction, simply makes no sense, and it gives aid and comfort to our enemies.
We are not sick, but we are sickened by being forced to live in bodies that do not fit, and then, as an exacerbating factor, we are further sickened by the stress of worrying about availability of treatment and we are even further sickened by the deliberate policy of those who pathologize us to INITIALLY discourage transition. Sarah Brown can attest, and it’s visible on her blog, one of the statistics Charing Cross was very proud of was their high drop out rate.
Depathologization is not the same as being opposed to medical transition on feminist or subversivist grounds, in fact they both have a very common thread: That transition is harmful, and that wanting to transition is on some level a delusion which must be cured.
I don’t need to be cured, I need my damned body chemistry set right; fast, good and cheap, pick two and I’ll take the first two.
Valerie Keefe
October 14, 2009 at 7:52 am
180€/mo is a shitload of money for a student in this neck of the woods. It’s simply unaffordable. That kind of sums would make the care unaccessible for everyone who’s not employed full-time, and pretty hard for a lot of them, too.
Mebbe that’s the principle I hold on to.
Note, too, that ICD-10 is a global standard – changing it changes things everywhere, and from IMO a flat-out depathologisation would be a disaster.
I needed my body cured. So there.
Carto
October 14, 2009 at 8:21 am
I need mine cured, and it doesn’t matter if I’m a millionaire. Actually if I’m a millionaire, I can ‘holiday’ in a friendly country and get my treatment out of pocket, you’ve taken transition from everyone but the upper class so that you can get a subsidy that will still be there when they depathologize.
They make me wait another year, with my biological clock ticking with all the quietude of a tympani drumbeat. I’ll work 5 hours a week to afford hormones, thank you, school or no school. Just let me have them.
But again, my point is, look at the evidence: Depathologization does not discourage quantity of treatment at the expense of quality, it improves it! Look at countries that depathologize. There were no groundswells of public opinion in favour of trans rights other than by trans people for the most part, and yet, in countries where you stop treating transition as the last hope for treating the delusional, you see an improvement in all factors of care. Yay for you, you got yours subsidized. I live in a country with complete single payer that says no medically necessary service will go unfunded. They’ve de-listed everything except the doctor who refers you to an endocrinologist! You thingk 180E is expensive? Try paying 18,000E and having no private system to use because they just cut the public one to shreds.
Valerie Keefe
October 14, 2009 at 9:49 am
I certainly don’t mind if Canada removes TSity from its list of diseases – I don’t care much one way of the other. But I do mind very much if such a tactic is proposed for implemantetion on a global scale, because health care systems are not the same the world over, and forcing one way of treatment globally would entail all kinds of unintended and unhoped-for consequences.
Yes, I understand 18000€ is a hell of a lot more than 180€/mo, but both would be completely unavailable for a poor transitioner. Doesn’t matter how much something is out of your reach – if you can’t reach it, you’re stuffed.
I’d also like to see just how depathologisation has in fact worked out: while the UK bill may say something to the tune of “trans people are not mentally ill”, has the diagnosis F64.0 indeed been struck out of case files, too? Doctors don’t diagnose people as having TSity? I somehow doubt that, but I may very well be wrong – and the poor in the UK don’t seem to get that good a treatment (as in funding for treatment) from their PCTs, if the internet is anything to go by. Having a private option benefits only the people who can afford it. Not everyone can, and everyone should be able to afford the care they need. I’m a bit of a commie there.
Carto
October 14, 2009 at 10:29 am
Transition costs about 20% of poverty-line income, so I can’t, being poor myself, define that as completely out of reach. I can call it a trans tax, demeaning, a social justice issue, but I can’t call it unaffordable, because it isn’t. I can call it bureaucratically denied me, however, because it definitely is. Doctors sort of quietly hope for us to wither on the vine instead of bloom.
Valerie Keefe
October 15, 2009 at 6:21 pm
“Transition costs about 20% of poverty-line income, so I can’t, being poor myself, define that as completely out of reach. I can call it a trans tax, demeaning, a social justice issue, but I can’t call it unaffordable, because it isn’t. ”
If that’s your situation, and your other expenses don’t interfere with saving something every month, great (not “great”, but you’ve said it’s dealable for you). Some surgeries are outrageously priced and completely out of range for those of us below the poverty line. Well below the poverty line. It ain’t a tax. It’s an impossibility. And we rely on the government to cover this stuff.
romham
October 15, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Carto, I know a lot of girls who can’t make it two and a half years queueing up to transition. That’s all I’m going to say. I’m glad that money is the greatest of your concerns, but a lot of women aren’t in such a fortunate place. Queing for transition is literally killing people. That’s all I’m going to say on this subject.
Valerie Keefe
October 16, 2009 at 3:27 am
There’s nothing fortunate about it, for anyone.
romham
October 16, 2009 at 8:36 am
Well that’s disingenuous. If nobody here was fortunate under the current system, nobody would be fighting a change to its most paternalistic underpinnings.
Valerie Keefe
October 16, 2009 at 10:30 am
It’s not disingenuous at all. i may be entirely misinterpreting what you’re saying, and we don’t have to get into it further if you prefer not to, but are you suggesting that those of us not able to pay for our surgeries etc aren’t fighting this?
romham
October 16, 2009 at 11:47 am
Perhaps I try to state my priorities in one more way:
Queueing is not nice. It’s godawful.
But if you haven’t got the money, you can’t even queue. There’s not even the hope of some day getting your medical stuff on.
In my opinion both problems should be eradicated, but if I have to choose, I’d exterminate the second first. I sure hated the queueing, but not being able to queue, or access care at all would have killed me for sure. I couldn’t have lived like that interminably, without a clear hope that the horror will end within a few years. Having that hope kept me going.
Carto
October 16, 2009 at 12:53 pm
@romham I’m suggesting that if one defends the current system that one is sufficiently served by it. And no, I’m not expecting that people pony up for their surgeries, it’s very wrong, and, I’d say this is very neatly related to another discussion going on elsewhere on a completely different subject, but it all comes down to how people respond to incentives. You couldn’t pay me thousands of dollars to live another year as male, but of course, that’s the system that is set up. Whether it be through unemployment, or lower wages, or health insurance not providing coverage if one is discovered to have ‘a pre-existing condition,’ such as GID.
What pricing does, or a parallel system does, is let people respond to how desperately they need treatment. Our current system has no concept of triage, treats the person in crisis almost identically to the person who’s finally come forward to get treatment because all of her ducks are in a row.
People are being denied what they need for the sake of an ideal, and this is because transition is being treated like a hip replacement, as completely elective and as emotionally similar as hip replacement is physically similar. But with hip replacement, they’ll give you pain killers, same day, if you mention that you’re in pain. You’re not going to have to spend a lot of time convincing your doctor that you may have a different tolerance for pain than your neighbour, that you may require a different level of care or a different standard of care. It’s assuming a degree of similarity for transition that we would be offended to hear a cisgendered politician trumpet, so why does it suddenly become okay to homogenize one group of trans women for the sake of another group when it’s a trans woman doing it?
Valerie Keefe
October 16, 2009 at 3:32 pm
@Valerie: thanks for clarifying. On this: “if one defends the current system that one is sufficiently served by it.” we will fundamentally disagree. My dependence on a system (whether its the messed up system trans folks need to go through for medical care here or the welfare system, for example) doesnt mean im unable or unwilling to fight it. People gotta eat, and as a disabled person living thousands of dollars below the poverty line, a system where people have to pay for surgeries and meds is simply untenable for me. It couldnt happen, i dont have options. But being stuck with the current situation doesnt prohibit me from fighting for something better. i have an intimate knowledge of how it works (and how it doesnt) that i arm myself with in that fight.
Different strokes i suppose.
romham
October 16, 2009 at 4:18 pm