Quote from: Lara1969 on June 12, 2013, 04:23:13 PM
Dear C
I am also living in Germany. There is no need for a 1 year RLT to get the prescription for hormons. My therapist offered my during the first sessions the referral to an endo to get the presecription for hormons. It is even fully legal to prescribe estrogens to a male without seeing a therapists first. But only a few endos are doing that. And there is no law which states that you have to do a one year therapy first to get the referral or the prescription for estrogens.
So you should change your therapist to get the referral.
There are legal requirements to change your name and official gender. And there are rules for the social insurance to the SRS which require the RLT and a least to be at least for one year in therapy.
Everythink else is just plain wrong. I even now a transgirl who got the estrogens from an endo without having any therapy. This is legally because every MD is free to prescribe any legal medicine. This is the "freedom of therapy". But not many docs want to take the risk.
You can contact me for any further information. There are also some basic information on www.dgti.org (German Transgender Organisation).
Lara
Hi there, Lara!
Now that I have more time on my hands, let me explain the situation in the city where I live.
Where I live, there is a gender clinic by the local university which is universally regarded with horror. They're big on policing " ->-bleeped-<-" and insist on the one-year RLT, which is in the German standards of care. They and the endo there are part of a team, and (thankfully) it's almost impossible to get an appointment. So if you're to go the official route here, you have to live for one year with a male name as a man in a dress in order to even get hormones (plus get lumped in with sex offenders). No way am I doing that. Otherwise, in the state where I live, there are no "official" options.
But, there is a separate secret channel through which one can talk with a sane therapist and an endo. The trick is finding that channel because they don't make themselves known. I had to find by asking as many trans people I could find where they were able to actually get care--and I only found other trans people by questioning a gay activist friend. It turns out that there's a psych here who treats trans people on the side. She's humane, sympathetic, and actually helpful in dealing with things like stress (my big thing). She's not that organized, but she's a good person, and that's the important thing. And there is an endo who is actually respectful and helpful. The problem is, nobody gives any guidance on what to do--who examines you for what, who sends a letter to whom for what, that sort of thing. I had to wing it and to rely on the endo for guidance, since he's the one who gets to prescribe hormones. I played the part of a manager and coordinated the endo and therapist.
So, I've spent the past 5 months going back and forth between the therapist and the endo. I'm post-op and already part-time presenting as female (and going to go full-time once I get my presentation together a little better and let hormones work). I'm obviously trans, and my health situation can at least be helped by hormones. (Getting preventative care to prevent a bone fracture--that's another story.)
Last week I found myself ferrying letters across town and making people fax things to each other (watching to make sure they didn't fat-finger the wrong number). It worked. That problem is solved after 14 months, although I would still like to do something about my bone health if I could, since I have osteopenia morphing into osteporosis.
Already, after a week, I know that E is right for me.
Now to figure out how to do my name and gender change as a foreigner. I come from a place in the US where I can easily get a new name, gender marker, birth certificate, the works. The law of my home country governs this issue. This is good. I will do that sometime in the 12 months depending on how things proceed. Now to figure out which Amt here in Germany I take what to (my guess: the Einwohnermeleamt, and every piece of paper I've ever touched) after I get back from my big trip to the US.
(Not to complain so much. The name change procedure works in my favor, despite its complicated nature, since I'm foreign.)
