informed consent should fucking MEAN informed consent. Becuase right now having to jump through hoops and "prove" you're "trans enough" and fulfil all these bullshit criteria is NOT informed consent. It's still gatekeeping and forcing me to convince doctors I deserve the help.
and while we're at it, we need to extend this to hysterectomies too. Because cis women already struggle to get a hysterectomy, hell, even if you have a medical condition where the only fucking cute is a hysterectomy they get all precious about it and it's NEVER "oh it's major surgery", it's ALWAYS "oh but fertility!" -_-
At the end of the day, it's your body. A double masectomy should be no more difficult to obtain than any other breast surgery (though I have heard breast reductions are hard to obtain too, you need to "prove" a load of shit. But you want bigger tits? that's easy if you have the money. Which I think tells you a lot about the mysogyny involved in these procedures doesn't it?)
And HRT should be no different. Testosterone isn't that different to estrogen or progesterone and yet we give cis women the pill without in many cases even bothering to go through the risks nor indeed bothering to monitor her health. Shit, when they gave me the pill I ended up with my blood pressure spiking so high that I was in serious danger of a stroke. When they gave me progesterone I bled solidly for 3 weeks and my male flatmates dragged me to A&E after I turned a funny shade of grey and started shaking uncontrollably. A&E doctor was like "yeah, progesterone does that. Don't take that."
and yet at no point did any doctor bother to tell me there were major risks, no doctor bothered to monitor my health on those drugs. Shit, when they gave me fucking CLOMID which is a pretty damn dangerous fertility drug I had NO monitoring either! And that shit can cause hyper ovulation and it fucks your mental health very very badly (in fact, all through fertility treatment I was given zero mental health support. I was suicidal and nobody gave a shit. I was poked and prodded and violated repeatedly by medical procedures, had several traumatic ones that were so painful I was begging them to stop and they ignored me and yet, no support at all.)
Meanwhile, on cross sex hrt? Every 6-12 months I HAVE to speak to an endocronologist who will examine my blood results, take my blood pressure and weight and has a lengthy discussion with me about my mental health.
Basically the whole damn system needs an overhaul. IMO we need to decentralise trans care so that after an initial "specialist" consultation therapy session you can see a regular therapist regularly throughout the process IF you want to (I feel like having someone to talk to could be very very helpful as transition is fucking hard), pull endo out to the community endos as any damn endo can read blood results ffs and try to have as many appointments as possible at local clinics or hospitals instead of having these single point areas which not only results in huge wait times and oversubscribed services, but ALSO makes a pretty damn big target of those clinics to those who may seek to do harm.
Meanwhile fertility treatment also needs an overhaul. It needs to have its own waiting rooms AWAY from the maternity unit. It needs therapists who you can speak to throughout the process. It needs ongoing monitoring of your mental and physical health and it needs to seriously consider retraining medical staff to actually ACKNOWLEDGE consent.
And women's health could do with an overhaul too. Make elective sterilisation something that doesn't require an ongoing fight/argument, retrain medical staff to stop thinking of women as walking baby factories and reframe discussions around health NOT fertility, make sure patients being given hormones/contraceptives are aware of the risks and know what to look out for and ensure they come back in 3-6 months for a follow up to make sure they're okay.
A LOT of this comes down to funding and allocating mental health services honestly. But there's also a hell of a lot of unlearning patriarchal crap too. So much of women's health AND trans health suffers the same problems, this need to PROVE yourself, a tendency to act like the doctor knows your body better than you do, a lack of mental health care and a needless obsession with cisnormative appearance/beauty standards and fertility preservation regardless of the patient's wishes.
I've spent over 20 years fighting doctors about my health and bodily autonomy as a woman, and since transitioning? it's honestly kinda shocking how much overlap there is between those old arguments and the new ones. Often they're the same fucking arguments! It's ridiculous.
snowghoul
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
