I've posted this article a few times, about a person who was arrested and sexually assaulted by the police because they stopped hem when hey was traveling with (legally prescribed!) testosterone. but I want to bring it up again.
Here hey described it like this:
“One officer said, ‘It smells like you’ve been having a party in here. Is that right?’” Fransisco, a white nonbinary person in their 30s, told Filter. “He said, ‘Well, if you haven’t been having a party, you won’t mind if we check your car.’”
Moving quickly, the officers violently handcuffed Fransisco, took their keys and called animal control to confiscate their dog. Then they searched the car.
“One yelled, ‘Show me your track marks, you fucking junkie! We found your needles and drugs,’” Fransisco said. The cop held up their prescription bottle of testosterone. “I said, ‘Those aren’t drugs, that’s my medication. I’m trans.’”
"Legal issues might arise" this person was, again, sexually assaulted in a blatantly transphobic way, and also had their service dog taken away and had to pay to get it back, alongside having to pay $2,500 to get out of jail, something they could only do with help from friends/family. Not everyone can afford that.
And again, this is all when hey had a genuine legal prescription. If hey was traveling with illegal T, what fucking then?
And then there's also the level of how tracked testosterone is. That second article also talks about how testosterone prescriptions, because of its status, gets put in a database than clinicians and law enforcement can access. It includes an account of one trans man who was meeting a psychiatrist he had not come out to as trans, who he was outed to because she was able to see he was prescribed testosterone.
Is that not fucking dangerous? And what happens when your body is clearly androgenizing, but a doctor or cop can see you haven't been prescribed T? What happens when the trans person in question is Black or Latine or Native and there's more risk of these people deciding to treat them as a criminal?
I don't want the message from this to be "DIY T is always bad and you should never break the law!" because I don't agree with that. But my lord, the fucking dismissiveness just kills me. It feels so condescending? Like the author is writing this thinking "well I have to address this so no one can say I didn't, but I really want to emphasize that these risks are basically immaterial and as long as you aren't an idiot you'll be totally fine!"
And you know people would treat this all entirely differently if it wasn't transmascs affected. Folks are out here telling transfems to not go into certain careers because of the risk of transmisogyny, but genuinely think transmascs that they are being whiny birthday boys for literally just pointing out that there are real legal risks that should be acknowledged.
To be fully fucking honest, how the hell are we going to talk about how getting banned from tumblr will literally kill trans women, but testosterone being criminalized doesn't pose any unique or important dangers????????? Like I'm not even saying the bannings don't matter or can't genuinely deprive people of their only source of community or income. But you simply do not get to talk about how bannings are a form of social murder and also pull the "well you can just get it from gymbros and there's like noooo way anything bad will ever happen lol you are just being dramatic!"
I'm just saying. If someone is going to use weed medicinally in a country where it is illegal, even if its not the most criminalized drug, I think we can support that decision while also giving them actual advice on how seriously to treat the illegality and how to keep themself safe, especially when racialized. This (screenshots) is not that, in my opinion.
