Quote from: bethanyjadefowell on July 24, 2013, 12:08:16 PM
Yes, It's that as well. But you have to take all the crap that may come with RLE. Like a lot would say "I can't wear female clothes, I am still a man"

You can make yourself look as female as you like, but what the NHS are saying is, you have to be able to go out there and have people look at you funny or see you as a man.

My NHS DR said "you have to go out there as a man in female clothes". He did not say "you have to wear a skirt and high heeled shoes, and keep everything else like a man". He did say "so people can see you're a man in female clothes". But I am sure any NHS DR will know that not everyone will see you're a man.

Look what happened to me today: I was getting breakfast at the train station and the guy serving me said is that all "sir" and that's £2.95 "sir", then I had three people later that morning talk about me in another language, one asked me in english if I was "ok" then as they walked on kept looking back at me. But then in a shop someone called me " lady".

So the point I am making, you can make yourself look as female as you like, but you will get people who can tell you're a man.

Sorry you're wrong. Not everyone masculinizes fully or at all. When I present female nobody thinks I'm a man. In fact when I present male no one thinks I'm a man other then people who know me. The point of RLE isn't too look like a man it is to experience life as female. Not to be humiliated. Your doctor is a quack if he or she thinks that What the RLE is about.

Just an up date. The manager of our Red Cross shop has left Red Cross. That is all I know, though I have been asked if I want to go back working for the Red Cross.

I hope to fine out why she has left, but I am thinking it is becouse of what she said to me, otherwise, they could of asked me to go back before now.

I won't be at the same Red Cross shop though. I decided that myself, as I couldn't work with the manager, and now I just want to start a new at a different shop.

Good for you bethany.

As a trans girl on NHS, I find the whole system cruel. You are expected to look like something from the rocky horror show instead of a regular girl. I mean take a look at a clothes shop and count the number of skirts vs jeans and trousers.

They give you no support until 10-20 months after your first appointment, depending on where you get referred to... Not a hormone pill, wig, advice, anything.

The only thing they do is make you wait for months, require you to jump through meaningless and cliché based hoops and ask you ridiculous questions. I was asked by my gender specialist questions like do your partner and you like kinky sex? What the hell?

I believe this is because they are paying for it, even though it comes from our taxes, but still. They like to weed out the ones who might not be serious, and the ones they can push out into private health care because they are desperate to stop making themselves a target.

Joanna Dark - the Dr.s opinion seems *very* common in the UK treatment programmes. It's not so much that you are deliberately putting yourself up for humiliation, its more that they expect you to look like a transsexual and they have very clichéd ideas of what that is.

Rant over! Promise!

Akira :-)

The NHS are 20 years behind other countries. If you look at other countries, they say, you don't have to wear a dress or a skirt to make yourself look female.

And the waiting times are mad! But there is a way to jump the the NHS system so you can be seen in the same month and start treatment in around a months time. I did this in the end, and the two NHS doctors I saw were very understanding about me not wanting to wait for over a year.

MAN I just can't believe how things have changed! Everything seems to have turned into a huge bureaucracy of rules and procedures with common sense having gone out the window!

To the best of my knowledge there are no "laws" anywhere governing RLE - it is all procedures and guidelines. Any doctor has the option of following the guidelines or not and it is up to individual surgeons what requirements they set for SRS. Any country is free to set their own bureaucratic "rules" that they may require to FUND treatment but, again, those are bureaucratic guidelines and NOT law!

Back in "the bad old days", before all these "standards of care" were wide spread (I am thinking pre-1974 which is the period I am familiar with), common sense prevailed and all of the decision making fell to the doctors. HRT could be started at the doctor's discretion, with or without any RLE, and even SRS was at the doctor's discretion! Of course no medical professional wanted to put a patient in a worse position than before treatment so the number and nature of any "roadblocks" was largely based on how confident the doctor was in the patient's ability and determination to succeed in their new gender. If the doctor felt a patient would be "passable" and had shown a persistent determination to change gender, the road was straight and and unimpeded. I had heard of cases, however, where a patient's ability to integrate smoothly into their target gender was very questionable and in such cases the requirements for HRT and SRS were much more demanding.

At 14 I was living part time as a girl, whenever I could get away from home (- it was not permitted at home and would have got me thrown out!), at 16 I was diagnosed (by Dr. Benjamin), and at 17 I was started on prescribed HRT (without parental consent) and at 20 I had a one-day 'psychological assessment'. It was not until I was 24 that SRS became available and my pre-surgery meeting with Dr. Biber was more like an audition than anything else. I had more doctors "bending the rules" to help me along rather than throwing up roadblocks!

It wasn't easy in those days finding help but I would rather have gone through it all when I did than to encounter the bureaucracy of today - I simply would not have survived the delays today!

I wish the UK system was like that. Even now after 12 months I am still being f***ed about with. I've done everything I've been asked to do, and still I am at the first day I started.

I understand about the RLE, but I don't understand why the UK make you fight to get to where you want to be.

No one is saying that we should be able to get HRT when ever we want, but would be so much better if they put you on a treatment that worked (im still waiting), then people like that so called boss may not of seen me as a man in female clothes.

Another reason that the ICATH / Informed Consent model needs more exposure and advocates. This entire thread makes me so sad. No one should be treated this way.

What I am saying is, I had 9 months of HRT, but I was told that the blocker I was on would not even work, and now another two month of HRT, with no blocker. So when you see 6 doctors in 12 months with only little breast growth, that stop last November, I'd say I've been f***ed about. As I had to start my HRT again from the beginning (after seeing two new doctors in London), I am at a stands still. That said, I am seeing my GP Monday (7th DR), I am hoping shell put me on blockers, but that is only if she thinks I need them.

Quote from: bethanyjadefowell on September 14, 2013, 12:45:50 PM
What I am saying is, I had 9 months of HRT, but I was told that the blocker I was on would not even work, and now another two month of HRT, with no blocker. So when you see 6 doctors in 12 months with only little breast growth, that stop last November, I'd say I've been f***ed about. As I had to start my HRT again from the beginning (after seeing two new doctors in London), I am at a stands still. That said, I am seeing my GP Monday (7th DR), I am hoping shell put me on blockers, but that is only if she thinks I need them.

Scrape together £240 and go and see Dr. Curtis at Transhealth (private London clinic). Take evidence of your RLE (deed poll, etc), and blood test results - it's your right to demand copies from your NHS records - you've had done for your previous HRT (it's costly to get these done privately). He follows WPATH guidelines (properly, unlike the NHS) so I'm fairly sure he'd prescribe hormones (consistently, unlike the NHS) within one/two appointments and if you can prove a year's RLE he'll give you a letter that'll let you get SRS - though privately. There is a fight waiting to happen with the NHS about being able to choose your own surgeon abroad (as many private surgeons that are vastly more experienced than than the NHS bunch actually cost less than the NHS bureaucracy manages to burn - I've read £35,000 per operation o.o). Some people have actually managed this already on a case-by-case basis with decent and reasonable PCTs. If you have a good GP they'll work with a private gender clinic if you ask them nicely to do blood work and prescriptions (so you don't have to pay privately). Though you aren't really "entitled" to this as it's a grey area and there is a sense of the GP actually gaming the system.

Note: when I say "NHS" it's not generally that simple though, a lot of the work is actually done privately - even the gender clinics, specially commissioned by NHS PCTs. Of course, they go cheap with block contracts which means loads of people get funnelled through the primitive disaster that is "Charring Cross".