your first barrier to entry is in convincing your GP that you are trans and that they should refer you to a Gender Identity Clinic (GIC). GP's in this country are unable to give a gender dysphoria diagnosis and prescribe hormones or other treatments.
Oh, a general practitioner will refer you to a specialist?
As such this referral is your only means of accessing life saving healthcare. So it's fair to say that for many trans people in the UK public healthcare doesn't exist.
Outside of all the other life saving healthcare to treat life threatening illness, injury or disease, and all the other routine healthcare that resolves specific issues, obvs.
So in an underfunded public health system where triage is necessary, having a flag and a slogan doesn't make
actual objectively life threatening illness or injury at the same level as not fully self actualising.
Or do you want a pop at why
your tit job is more important and deserving of public money than, say, reconstructing the survivor of a double mastectomy.
Many of our doctors (and I speak from direct experience here) know nothing about trans healthcare. I cannot book an appointment with my doctor if I have a question about my body's reaction to hormones, my estrogen levels, my dosages or any other aspect of healthcare related to being trans because he doesn't know. This is an incredibly isolating feeling, one that is resolved through community support. Through seeing other trans people share pictures or testimony of their bodies, by openly describing their healthcare. Not through any one person, but a collective effort to gauge an overall sense of what is not only right, but safe.
This isn't uncommon either. It is continuous.
Just this past week I have been asking trans people about their experiences of progesterone and when (or even if) one should add it to their healthcare routine. There is no consistent scientific literature on it, there is very little literature on trans healthcare in general. Studies that do exist are frequently outdated, flawed in methodology or reflect a transphobic bias. This is another aspect of being trans that is buttressed by community and shared understanding. Do the people who would jump at the opportunity to call me pathetic to my face know when or if I should start taking progesterone, what dose I should take, what the risks are? Do they understand how disconcerting it can be to change the biology of your body with no firm basis of support?
It isn't just fleshing out an understanding through questions or following people kind enough to share their journey in detail though. It's also about accessing such healthcare in the first place. Anyone who has spent any length of time browsing trans twitter will know the immense support network of mutual aid that occurs there. People who can't afford the money for private healthcare, or the time to wait decades for public healthcare, frequently create fundraisers that are shared across trans accounts to help ensure as many in our community can access the care they need. Do those who disregard them as hit dogs have hundreds of thousands of pounds spare to replace this support network, so people can continue to access the healthcare they need and deserve?
Soooooo the interesting thing here is that this personal anecdote could be the story of someone who has suffered medical negligence.
It would also reflect the experience of someone who
isn't fucking trans.
Their GP interviewed them and made a conclusion not to refer, they did not give them any prescriptions, and
ofc cannot answer any questions about whatever cocktail 'people on twitter' diagnosed to self medicate something that is not the underlying cause of their problems.
I'm also curious what reputable medical studies are inherently transphobic to the extent that whatever presumably peer reviewed and published findings should be ignored because of your feels.
Which further begs the question, if you are not in fact what you claim to be, although you are not receiving the medical treatment you
feel you need and deserve, isn't the system working exactly as it should be working, especially when that treatment comes out of the ever dwindling public fund?
I'm sure someone with phantom pain from a long ago healed injury self diagnosing that its still there feels they need and deserve a refill of whatever flavour opiod they were initially prescribed, but not doing so is not denying life saving healthcare.
Let's move on from healthcare to the news since trans genocide is something cisgender people have taken a fancy to throwing around and in the faces of trans people. Currently twitter remains the only consistent place I know of and, importantly, trust to access news on how that genocide is progressing.
