Sterilization threat darkens Europe's transgender quest for identity

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/07/us-gay-rights-europe-idUSKBN0MY00X20150407

Reuters/by Kieran Giulbert   4/07/2015

'OSLO(Thomson (Reuters Foundation) when clothes she had discovered in the cellar of their home,submarine captain John Remo received a call from his wife to ask about a bag of women's , he feared his secret would end his career.'

Yeah, people here at Susan's (especially those from Scandiavian countries) have been complaining for quite a while about their countries' "One True Way" approach to ->-bleeped-<-.

It would be nice if society would catch up to us. The person is in pain and the way to stop it is transitioning. Not that difficult of a concept. The funny thing is that all those who are so anti-transgender or think its just a delusion may very well be in close contact through work or other to a transgender and don't even know it.

sam1234

I was one of the last people to be sterilized under the old law before they changed it and that was not that long ago (2011) it was required to change of me if I wanted to change my gender marker to male. And also my social security number to male. Scandinavia is always praised for being so open-minded and for human rights etc. But when it comes to transgendered people we really are 40 years behind. I'm no expert but I think that the US doesn't force their citizens to get sterilized and alot of other countries doesn't either.

I blame alot on the healthcare system. Don't get me wrong free healthcare is great but in alot of ways it also contributes to the "one-size fits all" system.

Pardon the ignorance, but when you say they forced sterilization, were they holding back hormones? If you were going from F to M, they often take everything including the ovaries, but that would be part of the process. From M to F, the testes would be taken out. So I'm guessing that if you were going from F to M, and wanted to keep the ovaries, they would require you to remove them?

I know people have different preferences for how far they wish to go with surgery, but it should be the person's choice, not the government. I think China may have had forced sterilization at one time or at least talked about it to control the population, but that may be misinformation.

sam1234

It worked like this, there's a team of doctors (1 team) that "examines" all cases of transsexualism. They evaluate you and do all sorts of tests to determine if you are a "true" transsexual or not. I could rant on about the whole process but I'm gonna try and keep it short. It takes about a year to a year and a half and during the process I asked to save eggs so that I in the future could use them with my girlfriend or wife so that she could have a child with my genes. The doctor told me it wasn't allowed and that the government would force me to destroy the eggs once I got my diagnos in order to persue hormones and surgeries. She also said that she had a patient who was MtF that had saved sperm through a private doctor but because of free healthcare everything about you goes in your journal in a computer system so the government found out and told her to tell her doctor to destroy the sperm otherwise she would never get her gender marker changed to female (which would mean she couldn't change her first name to a female name since that wasn't allowed under law or change her passport to say female ect.)

So after hearing that I knew that bridge was burned. I then figured id wait for them to change the law so that I could save eggs and then get my gender marker changed and my social security number (in Sweden males and females have different ones, you can tell by someone's social if they are female or not without knowing anything else about them like their name or what they look like and so on)

But it took way too long and having a female social security number and a female name with a full beard is really hard. I got questioned by everyone I couldn't function as a normal person at all. And I couldn't get the surgeries I wanted without agreeing to a full hysto. So that's the short story of it.

The requirements where as follows:

At least 18 years of age
Unmarried
Sterilised
Swedish citizen

Quote from: Mackan on April 09, 2015, 08:45:07 PM
It worked like this, there's a team of doctors (1 team) that "examines" all cases of transsexualism. They evaluate you and do all sorts of tests to determine if you are a "true" transsexual or not.

This nauseates me.

Makes no sense in any other context:

"A team of Christians evaluate you to determine if you are a true Muslim"
"A team of Belgians evaluate you to determine if you are a true German."
"A team of accountants evaluate you to determine if you are a true farmer."
"A team of poker players evaluate you to determine if you are a true knitter."

That's the ultimate degradation. Having cisgender people tell us who we are.

Our community desperately needs to find its voice.

I just wanted to share that on 10 March 2015, the Chamber of the ECHR (7 judges) adopted judgment in the case of Y.Y. v. Turkey stating that requirement in Turkish Civil Law which required that the person concerned must be permanently sterile in order to be allowed to undergo SRS, breached the right to respect for private and family life guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Protection of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.
Still, turks have 2 months to decide whether they want to ask the referral to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR (17 judges), and unless requested so, the judgment will become final on 10 June 2015, and will serve as an indication of the current trend in the ECRH towards greater respect and recognition of the rights of transsexuals.

Quote from: suzifrommd on April 10, 2015, 07:11:46 AM
This nauseates me.

Makes no sense in any other context:

"A team of Christians evaluate you to determine if you are a true Muslim"
"A team of Belgians evaluate you to determine if you are a true German."
"A team of accountants evaluate you to determine if you are a true farmer."
"A team of poker players evaluate you to determine if you are a true knitter."

That's the ultimate degradation. Having cisgender people tell us who we are.

Our community desperately needs to find its voice.

Yes it really is sick, I had to suck up to this people because my life was in their hands. I had no control over it and if I wanted my hormones and surgeries I had to fit in the box. Alot of times I just simply told them what they wanted to hear.

It's so depressing to hear that so many people are fighting to be who they know they are, is the problem that we are a minority, is it that we are still perceived as "sick", is it that we are just not important enough... The problems highlighted in the press release just crystallize why so many still view us in a discriminatory way... Hopefully this will change well before I am at peace in another place.

I am honestly appalled that such a practice is commonplace in, of all places, Europe. You'd think that this would happen here in the states where we are supposedly backwards in terms of trans rights.

When I seriously considered transitioning in the States back in the mid-nineties, all of the literature I was reading indicated that if I wanted to transition, I had to be attracted to women, and I could not have been molested as a child. Other literature indicated that my proposed transition would not be approved unless I intended, and unequivocally stated my intention, to go through the pretty terrible genital surgeries practiced at the time. I didn't know that things were already changing and that the material I was reading wasn't even fully current. However, our practices have taken a long time to shift. Quite a number of individual practitioners still adhere to older models or have a very antiquated notion of what "qualifies" us to obtain transition-related medical services such as hormones and surgery. We read about these injustices here on the boards, although I think that things are rapidly improving. Still, I can't change my birth certificate, some of my friends can't get top surgery, and the clinic I used to go to presumably still bullies people into doing things the clinic's way and outs them on prescriptions (I don't think much will have changed in one year).

Europe is more forward-thinking in some ways than the U.S. is, but the U.S. still has a long way to go, too. I believe that both will evolve to more just systems, but it's going to take time. Always time. And it won't be soon enough for some of us.

I keep thinking of Dylan:

"Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand.
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'."