Time To Start Thinking About Trans Senior Issues

[Butterfly]

Time To Start Thinking About Trans Senior Issues
Transgriot
By Monica Roberts
06 October, 2010


http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2010/10/time-to-start-thinking-about-trans.html


If we are already having drama and discrimination issues with the medical profession now, what happens when a senior transperson ends up in a assisted living center or is denied access to it because of transphobia among the staff, residents living there or the people who have power of attorneys to make decisions on behalf of their cis elders?

[rejennyrated]

an interesting problem particularly in the UK where the recent misnamed equality act bizarrely actually makes transpeople the ONE group in the WHOLE of society that it is explicitly stated can be LEGALLY discriminated against in the provision of certain types of goods and service. And why? well because the religious lobby got an amendment slipped into the legislation, presumably in revenge for the Gender Recognition act, on which they lost the argument.

Another thing I have often wondered is what happens when a Transperson gets senile memory loss? Such people usually gradually revert in their minds to an earlier phase in their life. Do Transpeople then have to suffer the indignity of forgetting that they have had SRS? Do they end up re-living the nightmare of transition. What a terrible prospect.

These are areas which need urgent attention both from the legal profession and from medical/psychological researchers.

[arbon]

Wow, very interesting questions.

[Janet_Girl]

As an aging Baby Boomer Transwoman I often wonder what my life with be like if I get to the point I can no longer care for myself.  Will I be treat with the respect due a senior citizen woman, or will I be treated as a Senior male, as I am still pre-op?   What will my life expectancy be if I were to enter a home?  Will this be the time that I face discrimination and bigotry at the hands of another because I could not protect myself?

[K8]

Perhaps when the wave of baby-boomers hits, things will be already softened up for them.  I'm not the only pre-BB trans person here.

But the blogger raises a good point: Do what you can to give health power-of-attorney to someone sympathetic.

- Kate

[transheretic]

As an aging Baby Boomer Transwoman I often wonder what my life with be like if I get to the point I can no longer care for myself.  Will I be treat with the respect due a senior citizen woman, or will I be treated as a Senior male, as I am still pre-op?   What will my life expectancy be if I were to enter a home?  Will this be the time that I face discrimination and bigotry at the hands of another because I could not protect myself?

As someone who worked for years in direct care nursing at a lot of nursing homes, be afraid, be very afraid.  If you are pre/non op and placed in one of these places your treatment will not be good.  I watched elder lesbians mistreated by staff in one nursing home, any outside the norm genital issues instantly becomes THE topic of nursing staff gossip.   I worked for years as what is called an agency aide, which is sort of a freelance position that sees you in many many different facilities, hospitals etc.  There wasn't a single one I would want to find myself in as a postie.

Nurses are not the bastions of tolerance thinking you might believe they are.

[Saskia]

This is really a scary prospect for the future. I really hope I never end up in one of those homes. I would rather end my own life than be at the mercy of nursing home staff.
I'd never thought about the senile aspect either, crumbs this is really quite depressing thought.

[lilacwoman]

I have seen articles about older TGs living in UK shelter homes and being treated quite nicely as the person they wish to be. 
There is plenty of antidiscrimination legislation in place to ensure that a person could go live in a care or nursing home as CD/TV/TS regardless of whether they have had surgery, HRT or any Gender certificate.
So basically we don't have a problem although it is possible that in these places there may be bigots and fools who will dislike the CD/TV/TS but that is a matter for the manager to sort out.
Lots of this accommodation is wholly or part-funded by local town councils and they are very strict on discrimation matters.

My neighbour, 85, spent a few weeks in spring a home after having her knee op and though she seems to be early Alzheimers or just vague the care she got was wonderful.   Each time I went to see her she and the others couldn't praise the place and staff enough. 
Obviously these homes vary and our new Government is looking for ways to reduce to the cost of older people but I doubt if we will ever make old folk live chained up in dirty cramped cells.

[Cindy]

This is an incredibly important issue for all of us, no matter our whatevers.


My wife is 55 , full time in high dependency care, horrible for her and terrible for me. You realise very quickly that there are very few HDC units. The governments have no plan, did they ever; I can see no way of being a tG person not being a joke in an aged care place. No matter how kind the staff are. Make sure you have plan B-Z.

Cindy

[lilacwoman]

you're forgetting that those old folk have an immense store of human nature and experience to draw on - they will have extended families contain all sorts of non-straight people - they just won't make life a misery for any transperson.