Recently we published a blog titled “Conversion therapy is happening in everyday practice and must stop!”. The post explained how not all forms of conversion therapy are extreme, with many instances taking the form of low-level resistance by doctors to acknowledge a patient’s requests for help, or providing obstacles to affirmative support.
We were interested to know what experiences trans people had encountered with medical professionals, so Dr Helen Webberley asked for feedback: “Tell us what you have been told by your doctor to persuade you not to transition.”
Tell us what you have been told by your doctor to persuade you not to transition. ‘Come back next year to see if you change your mind.’ https://t.co/Kr7VhQ4Rta
— Dr Helen Webberley 🏳️⚧️🧜♀️🏳️⚧️ (@MyWebDoctorUK) July 4, 2020
The post received many replies, which we have collated below. It’s an inciteful, if damning, commentary on the medical profession today that these sorts of comments are being made by doctors treating trans patients who are seeking help.
“At least one clinic refused to treat me because I was unwilling to change my name immediately due to issues with obtaining new documentation.”
Him: ‘what’s the real reason you feel sad’?
Me: ‘I’m a girl and I don’t understand why I look like this’
Him – clearly angry: ’pack it in, you’re too big for that sort of nonsense’
Cue 31 years of pain
“you’re probably just a lesbian” and
“have you ever actually had a relationship?”
I’m almost exclusively attracted to men and engaged to one but go off.
Ended up with an appalling and very upsetting referral letter.
Me to my psychologist: “You know, I just feel like I… feel and react, more like women typically do”
Him: “You know, I really don’t think that’s particularly significant”
(I learned this year that it’s literally one of the DSM criteria for dysphoria almost to the word)
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I started again in 2015 on the NHS, went private at the same time to get onto hormones, 5 years on I’ve only just had my second surgical consult on the NHS, I’ve been with my partner for 7 years, we’ve been engaged for 3, were due to marry earlier this year before covid so I’m loved, Once I was able to embrace myself I started to thrive in my real hobby ballet & I’ve travelled the world performing & spreading trans awareness, my family all still love me, I own my own company that employs 16 people, in short she was very wrong! I’m thriving.
This was the same guy who told me I wouldn’t be allowed to have the name “Alexandra” because the abbreviation “Alex” is too androgynous.
1st time I tired to come out to a GP and seek a GIC referral (aged 15) he told me ‘confusion’ was common at that age and that he’d refer me to CAMHS for my general anxiety and distress – my request for GIC support completely ignored. and to top it off, he never referred anyway
I never asked for their opinion tbh,I just went and said I’d like to be referred to a GIC which they did. The follow up tho has been difficult, no chance of a shared care agreement. Took three complaints and three senior partner meetings before they agreed to do my initial bloods.
At the same time they’re saying to me they are very inclusive and surprised at my attitude. My feeling is that they’ve used subtle medical language to justify their position of not wanting to support me.
Luckily I’m now on Medicaid with a super cool doctor who talked to me about my dysphoria, ran over informed consent, and got me started
My first psychiatrist tried to push that I had to cure my depression before I could transition, despite the fact that not transitioning was no small part of the cause of said depression
I have had no history of depression to this point before and after transition but as soon i turn up to my GP knowing I’m trans and ask for a referral to the GIC. its suddenly brought up that i may be depressed instead. I had to refuse the antidepressants to get my referral
“Why can’t you just live as a tomboy for now?”
Paraphrasing:
1. “a penis is the gift from God, you should enjoy being able to wee where you want!”
2. “Women got less pay, work more, not being respected in your job.”
3. “You woupd end up as an abomination, ugly and disgusting.”
I was told, “The test was inconclusive” and, “There aren’t enough indications.
If you have been affected by any of the topics covered in this blog post and you would like to speak to a member of the team please visit our Help Centre.
At age 25 I sought help, in Ohio, and was eventually referred through to a pshcyiatrist who, I was assured, was an expert. His eventual verdict was that I was a ‘borderline’ candidate for transition, because I was not bursting to become a housewife and adopt a couple of kids. Even in 1982 that was an old-fashioned view of women. I had a freshly minted Ph.D. at that point, and did not feel that I had trained to become some bloke’s skivvy. I was given a lecture on learning to cope with my gender, and told that I would achieve an ‘uneasy peace’ with myself.
So I got married on the strength of this promise that I would achieve an uneasy peace with my gender. My wife-to-be know the whole story before we married.
Thirty years later I could no longer stand the pressure to be authentic about my gender. My wife left me in horrified dudgeon. My daughter struggled, but eventually coped.
Ten years further on, I can see that my gender identity is entirely feminine; and I have never wanted to go back to living as a man.
So what do I think about this ‘expert’ from Ohio? The answer is largely unprintable. Suffice it to say that I don’t think he was much of an expert.
I haven’t even brought this up with my GP yet, despite being on hormones via Gender GP, because I’m so scared of what the reaction will be.
I was born assigned-male in 1956. By age 5, I was aware of disliking my name and wishing it was “Laura” and that I could be a girl. By age 8 I was cross-dressing when I could, but I didn’t really understand why I was driven to do this. All through my teens and 20’s I was in severe depression, but was never referred to a therapist and I would not come to realize that this was gender dysphoria until I was nearly 60. From age 29 to 57, I was married, very happily, in a very conventional cis-het marriage, and I was not in gender dysphoria (I assume that the emotional support of my marriage allowed me to suppress the dysphoria). My wife died in 2013, and in less than two months, I was back in gender dysphoria, and had re-discovered cross-dressing. Over the next two years the dysphoria became so severe that, by November 2015, I wasn’t sure who I even was any more. I joined a transwomen’s social support group in January 2016, began therapy in March 2016, had a transition-or-die gender crisis on June 4th 2016, and committed to transition at 7:00pm that evening. I started HRT on July 9th, filed for my legal name and gender change in November 2016, received my Court Order on February 28, 2017, and in September 2018, I had an orchiectomy. That’s my transition story and timeline told in as few words as possible.
Now, when I committed to transition, I was 59 years old, widowed, a retired State worker, and my parents had both been dead for decades. My daughter was 36 years old. No one ever tried to dissuade me from transition. Not my daughter, no one in my extended family, none of my friends, and none of my health care providers (Kaiser-Permanente Northern California Region). Everyone has been 100% supportive. I have a new life-partner, another transwoman, and her experience with Kaiser’s health care providers has been the same as mine: 100% supportive. California is a relatively good and safe place to be transgender.
During my uni year out in ’97 my GP referred me to a psychiatrist from the local mental hospital who did a “mental screening” and wouldn’t give me any advice on how to proceed. My GP said go to my uni GP. My uni GP said go to the SU counselling who were woefully inadequate – I scared the bejeez out of them! Post uni and with new GP in 2003 tried again, just put me off with “All I can offer you is standard counselling which is a 6-month min wait and you have to go when they say you go”, but I was working and didn’t fancy having to explain it to my boss. In 2014 I finally demanded that he refer me to the GIC. He referred me to the LMHS, but at least then the LMHS referred me. It was when I had to book my own initial bloods pretending that they’d been ordered, and had an argument with my GP about them that we parted ways. He claimed that the CCG wouldn’t pay for them, and I still had to go private for the dihydroT test.
I first told my doctor that I wanted to be a girl at the age of 17, which was back in 1990. He referred me to psychiatrists, and I was so intimidated that I backed out. My dysphoria didn’t go away, of course, and by the age of 28 I tried again. Nobody would explain to me a clear path by which to transition; it was only years later when I accessed my medical records that I discovered that I was “supposed” to start women’s clothes in public before they would give me a referral to start the process of obtaining treatment and hormones. I didn’t want to look like a transvestite and get abused – if only they had explained: electrolysis, facial surgery, hormones, voice training, etc., I would have confidence to begin.
Luckily, after being able to research on the internet, at age 31 I got a private prescription for hormones and kick-started the process, and managed to get a shared-care private/NHS arrangement going, and finally had SRS at age 33. But I won’t ever get back the years I wasted because they wouldn’t just tell me how transition works instead of going off the initial assumption that I was depressed! It should not be a mystery process in which you have to jump through invisible hoops; instead the risks and benefits and process of changing sex should be clearly outlined, and then they should facilitate your transition.