Patronization, trauma and transition - my feelings

[November Fox]

I feel very passionately about patronization. Negatively, often.

I´ve dealt with numerous "professionals" throughout my life, and I write that between quotes because I do not consider all people with that title actually professional. The older I get, the younger the professionals get: I have been in contexts where somebody ten years younger than me was telling me how to manage my life.

Most often these people are individuals who have studied about my situation and I am also very grateful to them for their interest and their willingness to help me. However. In my opinion, the most valuable knowledge people can have come from them overcoming difficult experiences - not three years of writing essays in Uni.

Recently the whole process around transgender dysphoria in this country has been really irking me. We have the lucky (but in my opinion fairly natural) access to insurance coverage of the entire process (theraphy, certain types of surgery, and some types of hormones). This nevertheless comes at an emotional price.

The price is not the waiting itself (although depending on the situation, they can vary from months to years). For me, the price is having someone "evaluate" the truthfulness of my assertion that I am a guy. Said professional will take six to twelve months to decide this for me - a time in which I have to "just deal" with dysphoria.

It´s unnecessary to state that I understand the necessity of evaluating someone´s assertion of their identity, but I don´t understand that the amount of time for this is a static measure (at least six months, after you´ve been on a waiting list for another six+ months). I´d be playing it down if I said that this enrages me.

Personally (and I don´t expect others to agree with me) this is an affront to my integrity, my age, and my ability to thorougly weigh a decision like transitioning. I have been through innumerable problems in my life including the struggle while recovering from 10+ years of abuse, I have shown myself over and over to be a sensible creature.

For them to just completely ignore this - in fact deny my victories - is something that will bring me close to the edge. Once again, I feel as though this system is impersonal - it´s me versus a big corporation, filled with people that don´t really know me - and once again, I find myself desperately hanging on to my last shred of sanity.

[WorkingOnThomas]

I completely agree, Fox. It was incredibly enraging to ask for help regarding medical treatment, and be informed that I'd first have to sit through six months of therapy so that someone else could decide for me how my life was going to go from that point forward. I'm not an idiot, I'd thought about this a long time, and I am able to make my own decisions. It felt both pointless and patronising. And all that to get on a waiting list to see an endocrinologist - six months from now. Essentially, I feel like the medical community hoovered up a year of life for no reason, when I just want and *need* to get on with things. Dysphoria is crippling, and I do my best to cope, but knowing it'll be another half a year before I can do anything else about it is just depressing beyond my ability to express.

[Kylo]

Some of it is probably vestigial recommendations from how they dealt with transgender patients in the past - I mean it's only recently I was told (and only allowed in some clinics) that RLE is not a another necessity to "prove" you are serious. And in some clinics it still is one of the hoops to jump. They're way behind the times.

[November Fox]

Thanks for your replies.

So there it is. When I realize this, I remember two things patience and "treat others as you would want to be treated" and these get me through my day and my relationships.

MM, I think you are spot on. I often have difficulty connecting to more soft emotions and I´m not sure whether that is because I feel like a guy or something else. Lately I get enraged very easily because I feel trapped and the monopolistic attitude of gender institutions in our country isn´t helping.

Thomas, I´m glad you understand. Someone else on a (Dutch) forum said that sometimes the mentality of the gender therapists itself is a part of the problem that trans* people have. I´m referring in this case to Europe, not the US (although I imagine there are different problems there).

I´m considering following an alternate path and consult with my GP about taking hormones without having to go another six months through diagnostics (I´ve already been waiting for six months).

[Peep]

I agree that we're (i'm in the UK) lucky to have a system that offers us help but at the same time we shouldn't have to count ourselves as lucky for that - we shouldn't have to rely on the 'kindness' of the system, anywhere in the world...

[November Fox]

I´m not sure how it works in the U.K, the thing is that when there is a monopolization of gender therapists, they can monopolize and withhold knowledge and that´s exactly what they are doing.

It´s near impossible to have a say in your own transition, and when you want a second opinion, they say that they won´t cooperate because they are the only good knowledge source in the country. That´s pretty twisted in my opinion. I don´t want to have to rely on an organization with a mindset like that.

[Kylo]

we shouldn't have to count ourselves as lucky for that

Not when we still have to pay for it, no.

It's gonna end up like the U.S. though eventually.