Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Just out of curiosity, where do you live and what kind(s) of treatment is possible? And what rights and so on do transgendered people have in general?

I live in Denmark, and I think what we have is strange in some sense. They recently changed the law so that you can change your gender legally without having surgery or hormones. You just have to apply for it and then wait six months to make sure that you're still trans or something like that. Previously you HAD to have bottom surgery to be able to change your gender legally, which really sucked. So it's amazing that they changed that.
We have something called SK which is like the only public clinic where everything regarding gender and sex happens (surgery, hormones, therapy and so on). Otherwise you have to go to a private clinic and pay, but the government apparently don't want people to go there. A couple of years ago there was a case where a 15 year old transguy got top surgery in a private clinic, and when it got to the media SK made the surgeon stop doing those surgeries, otherwise he wouldn't be allowed to be a surgeon anymore...
Anyway, SK is literally the ->-bleeped-<-tiest place ever. The therapists clearly aren't specialized in transpeople, I once heard that a transguy was asked why he couldn't just change his mind instead of his body?! Like, what the f was happening to that therapist?!
When you go to SK, you are forced to have these conversations with such ignorant therapists before they're even considering that you might be transgender and have to have some kind of treatment...
Oh, and btw, transsexuality is on the list of mental diseases, like schizophrenia, depression and anorexia :) :) :) :) :) ???

Of course it's amazing that it's even possible to get the treatment you want to here, but I think we definitely need some improvement.

I live in Czech Republic. And we are required to have a SRS surgery to have a gender change. And married transgender people are required to divorce :(. Those conditions are major problems for me and the reason why I will not be able to have official gender change in near future.
It gonna be weird, female with male ID...

Montreal Quebec here

Name change possible before gcs
Gcs covered done by dr Brassard
FFS VFS not covered
Gender marker currently after gcs,but changes are coming to allow it before/without gcs
Anti discrimination laws are powerful here.
No issues with using prefered restrooms.
Same gender couples is legal

Quote from: Sarah84 on September 04, 2014, 06:43:00 AM
I live in Czech Republic. And we are required to have a SRS surgery to have a gender change. And married transgender people are required to divorce :(. Those conditions are major problems for me and the reason why I will not be able to have official gender change in near future.
It gonna be weird, female with male ID...

Why are they required to divorce?

Quote from: jakken on September 04, 2014, 06:55:50 AM
Why are they required to divorce?

Because marriage is not possible for the same gender people. I have a wife , she is female and when I change gender to female, our marriage can not exist anymore. For the same gender people here is an option to marriage, I don't know exact translation to English maybe "registered partners". But it has many disadvantages , you can't adopt children for example, you have less rights than people in marriage. So it is not equal :(.

Quote from: Sarah84 on September 04, 2014, 07:02:01 AM
Because marriage is not possible for the same gender people. I have a wife , she is female and when I change gender to female, our marriage can not exist anymore. For the same gender people here is an option to marriage, I don't know exact translation to English maybe "registered partners". But it has many disadvantages , you can't adopt children for example, you have less rights than people in marriage. So it is not equal :(.

Oh. It sucks. It used to be like that in Denmark, but now same sex couples can marry. I don't think there should be any doubt whether they should be allowed to marry. They should just have the same rights as straight cis-people.

Quote from: jakken on September 04, 2014, 07:13:00 AM
Oh. It sucks. It used to be like that in Denmark, but now same sex couples can marry. I don't think there should be any doubt whether they should be allowed to marry. They should just have the same rights as straight cis-people.

I hope it will be the same here one day...but it will not happen in near future. I would like to change my gender but I don't want to destroy our marriage. And I am not yet prepared for SRS. I think I will consider it in the future but not right know. I am in the dead end road regarding official gender change.

Quote from: Sarah84 on September 04, 2014, 07:17:46 AM
I hope it will be the same here one day...but it will not happen in near future. I would like to change my gender but I don't want to destroy our marriage. And I am not yet prepared for SRS. I think I will consider it in the future but not right know. I am in the dead end road regarding official gender change.

That's totally understandable. I think it's rude to force people to have SRS if they want their passport, driving license and so on to say their preferred gender... Not all people want surgery, but it's like the government doesn't really get that

I live in North East Kansas, United States.

I'm lucky in that Kansas State University has people who specialize in counseling trans people, though most of the work is done by students. They also have a speech therapy center that I am taking advantage of. There's also a doctor (...one to my knowledge, though it's possible there's more) in town who will help with HRT, though getting in to see her can be difficult. I'm unsure of the legal requirements to change my name on things like drivers license and such ... but I'll probably wait a bit until I'm officially on HRT for a while and go full time before doing that. Some things like the social security number are federal and can be changed, though I hear that the people in the office aren't always aware of this, so they sometimes give trans people a difficult time. I'm not looking into GRS at the moment as I can't possibly afford it.

One of the more frustrating things in Kansas, is that the state makes it difficult to change your gender on your birth certificate (note, impossible). So, while you can change your driver's license gender, you can't change your birth certificate ... and they use that to try to deny you voting privileges. Very frustrating.

Little to no rights in Bolivia and even if there is, there's nothing stopping them from shooting me on sight if I get outed.

Im danish, but Since im thinking of moving to norway I will talk about that.

In Norway the system is very simular to denmark in many ways. They got SK in Oslo where you would need a permission to get threatment after many sections of therapy. it all very hetronormative and generally take at least 3-5 years but many also wait 8 years or more + alot of people are being denied threatment. some people find privat doctors but theres no law who say whenever it legal or illigal so its a grayzone area where everyone is pretty carefull.
Stuff like getting name change is not difficult compared, things like X in passport is not an option.
sterilization is still required and I heard worse storys in norway than denmark where people are being signed up for sterilization without information.
norway have also decided they will change there ID system so IDs will be gender neutral but it not to say when it will be put into practise.
for stuff like adoptions and so I dont know. I think Norways transgender struggle with the same adoption problems as many other countrys, and since sterilization is a requirement so is it to destroy eggs or semen, the only way would be to get children by the biological way, or go to denmark where the laws for surogate and so is more flexible and then go back again.

Quote from: Sarah84 on September 04, 2014, 07:02:01 AM
Because marriage is not possible for the same gender people. I have a wife , she is female and when I change gender to female, our marriage can not exist anymore. For the same gender people here is an option to marriage, I don't know exact translation to English maybe "registered partners". But it has many disadvantages , you can't adopt children for example, you have less rights than people in marriage. So it is not equal :(.

yeah it very common issue. Even country who claim to have "equal marrige" like UK are still getting into problems because a gay and straight marrige is not the same so they have to divorce if one transition to getting marriged again. (at least how I understand it)

I live in NJ, USA. We have progressed very far but it's not where I would like to see it.

My old country is Trinidad and Tobago and even homosexuality is illegal there but the law is never enforced. The laws regarding being transgender I don't know. Jowelle DeSouza is a famous trans woman from there and she helped Trinidad trans rights to progress. These days the government  is talking about LGBT rights a lot so maybe they are headed in the right direction. I'm not that far yet obviously but I wonder what it would take to change my birth certificate there. I am a US citizen so it probably won't matter but it would be nice to have every last document corrected.

I live in Brazil, and the laws here are progressing... As far as I konw (i may be wrong, i'm not a law expert) the gcs is provided by our public health service, but, considering that our hospitals are bad, i very much doubt that is an easy quest to get one.
The brazilian justice just decided that same gender couple can marry and adopt, but is not a law. Officially we dont have any laws about same gender marriage nor adopting. Since this justice decision is still very new, we are yet to see the upcomings of that.

We are currently in elections period, so, the LGBT rights become some sort of elephant in the room. Some of the candidates are clearly anti-LGBT; the other criticize them of that posture, but none of them openly defends the LGBT rights; they took an ambiguous discurss so they wont lose votes from liberals neither conservatives electors. Its all so messed up!

France has a system a bit like the NHS in the UK. There are are certain number of centers (Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille and Nice) where pluridisciplinary teams are supposed to cover everything from therapy & HRT through to GRS. Apart from the fact that this means that there are no centers apart from Paris covering all of the northern half of France, these teams are totally underresourced and today there is only one decent GRS surgeon in the whole country, based in Lyon, with a waiting list of 18 months to 2 years once you have been approved for GRS on public funding. Once you are admitted to the publicly administered system I believe HRT and maybe a couple of other things like voice training are also publicly funded but nothing like FFS or BA is. 

Both because of the very limited interest in getting involved in a programme which puts all of the decision making about how you manage your transition into the hands of others for little benefit other than a publicly funded, two step, GRS, I believe that anywhere between 80 to 90% of French TG's manage their transition outside of the system. This is my own case and the case of all the people I personally know in France. Happily there are quite a number of trans friendly medical professionals to turn to and my own GP has been brilliant in every manner.

However, end of the day, apart from my medical appointments and medical tests (blood work, X-Rays, electrocardiograms...), I have paid for every step  of my transition from my own pocket, even HRT.

Getting name and gender changed in France is just as bad. For both, it is a full fledged legal procedure requiring the services of an attorney, putting together a file containing medical history and evidence that you are already living full time as a woman, a real Catch22 requirement since living as a woman with a male ID can be very complicated . Lastly, you have to produce evidence that you have made irreversible physical  changes to align with your "chosen" gender. For most jurisdictions, these means GRS. However, even then and no matter how good your file, the judge has total discretionary power to grant the change or not. For example I have heard of cases where the certificate delivered by a foreign surgeon was rejected by the court.

In my own case, I filed for a civil identity change last September, my request was approved by the public prosecutor in November but afterwards the court  simply sat on the file until the legal time limit was reached ie. the court has to make a decision within a year. My hearing was finally  scheduled for the 12th September (next week)  . My legal costs to date  ~ 4000$

The consequences of this are quite dramatic, having certainly contributed to the loss of my present job, totally preventing me from looking for alternative salaried employment and also preventing me from setting up my own business until it is sorted out. While I am pretty certain I will get a positive decision next week, it will still take another 5 - 6 months before I finally have all my new papers.  Fortunately I have the means to hold out for a while but without that, given the way things work here I would be facing total destitution.

Not a good story and on a scale of 1 to 5 for supposedly developed countries, I couldn't rate France higher than a 1, maybe 1.5 since we have same sex mariage which means I can get my civil identity change without going through a divorce.  My "Aggggghhhh" moment!
Donna

P.S. Just to attenuate this very negative story, I'd have to say that while the laws and administrations are a real bitch, by and large, the people I have been interacting with have been mostly great, both my friends and everyone from my doctor to my hairdresser.

I'm in Australia depending if you live in rural country or the cities there is a good amount of gender therapist/ councillors which when your ready to start hrt will direct you to any endo we have here. On the down side changing gender marker you have to have bottom surgery to do so. But if your married you will have to get a divorce first before you can change your gender marker which sux. You can change your name when ever you want.

Here in the US it's really different depending on what state you live in.  Some have same-sex marriage, others don't.  I live in Washington state which is pretty trans-friendly, but some other areas aren't.  Most states will change gender markers on ID or birth certificates before SRS, but there are a couple states that won't change it on birth certificates even after SRS.

And changing gender on your passport is relatively easy to do since they changed the rules a few years ago.

There is no national healthcare system, but some employers offer health insurance that covers transition-related care including SRS.  And California's state health program just started to cover it as well.

Quote from: katiej on September 07, 2014, 02:41:41 AM
There is no national healthcare system, but some employers offer health insurance that covers transition-related care including SRS.  And California's state health program just started to cover it as well.

While there is no universal national healthcare system like the UK NHS, there is Medicare and Medicare covers transition related care including SRS.There is also the VA for military veterans and they cover hormones but not SRS.

Considering medicare is only for retired or disabled, that doesn't help a lot. 5 states require trans related care to be covered.