Earlier this week, I met up with my life coach, who helped me through some very difficult times at university with depression and anxiety, and has some awareness of my gender issues. It was actually really refreshing to see her again, and she asked me about this sort of thing, and I explained to her something that's happened with my doctors.
Before I go further, here's how my time with the NHS has been
- Asked for counsellor, who got mad at me for even looking up transgender topics while I was experiencing horrible dysphoria.
- Sent to doctors again (interestingly, the medical student told me 'you have to do whats right for you') while the doctor made a note of it in my medical documents as 'sexuality issues.'
-Another counsellor, who asks me the following things
1. Why do you want to be transgender?
2. Sure this isn't depression?
Anyway, the last counsellor said she was going to get in touch with some gender specialists, and I'd see her in a month. A month goes by and no surprise, she didn't put it down to poor identity concept and has shipped me off to high intensity cognitive behavioural therapy, saying if I'm not absolutely definite I want SRS I'm not trans.
After explaining this to my life coach, she actually asked me. So what is it you do?
-cross dress
-wear make-up
-prefer female pronouns
-want to look feminine and be addressed as female
-remove aspects of my body that are masculine (Body hair, muscle, my harder features etc)
- that while Im not certain of what I want to do about hormones since I do want children someday, Im still figuring it out.
And her question was then: 'so what's wrong with that? Older cultures had extra gender roles, why are they pushing you at the doctors so much?'
Funny isn't it that sometimes doctors lack compassion.
