The Cruelty of UK Trans Healthcare

i’m currently getting ‘the best i can get’ from trans healthcare in the uk.

this is a choice of:

• Estrogen Gel
• Estrogen Patches
• … that’s it (for monotherapy)

let me outline why both of these options suck.

Gel

gel really fucking sucks. you have to put a lot of it on your body once a night. see ../routines/ for why that’s an issue for me. also it feels bad on my body. it made me postpone sleep a lot because i didn’t want to contaminate my covers with alcohol-smelling gel.

Patches

patches really fucking suck. first off: patches are twice a week. 3.5 days. this is immediately way harder to conceptualize than daily, weekly, etc. like.

okay i can conceptualize it but only if i make a diagram for it.

so like, monday at 00:00 and thursday at noon? i’m obviously not taking meds at midnight. let’s shift it forward to a reasonable 9am.

so monday at 09:00 and thursday at 21:00. okay.

i hope you can see why this is annoying.

um. secondly. the glue is really fucking annoying. patches have to be on you for all of your life. you have to shower with them. if you haven’t had the energy to shave your legs and one of them happens to slip you’re going to get hair pulling on your legs for maybe hours. i don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.

just let me do injections

please. i’m going to go diy and this is the main reason. i just want injections. i want to do een every 7 days. i don’t want the glue on my fucking legs anymore.

topic change

nhs gender identity clinics are literally evil. i was referred for GIDS (the one featured in this video) as a 14 year old. i didn’t join the clinic before i turned 18, and was referred to “the adult clinic”.

here’s what Tavistock GIC has done for me:

• voice training

here’s what they haven’t done for me:

• medications (my gp handles this for me already)
• facial hair reduction

People diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria, under the care of an NHS Gender Dysphoria Clinic (GDC) are entitled to access facial hair reduction as part of treatment. This is funded to a maximum of 8 sessions of laser treatment (each session covering the whole face/neck area), or 16 hours of electrolysis, or an equivalent blend of methods where one laser session = two hours of electrolysis
— NHS Guidance Leaflet

during my interview with them they did:

• press me about trauma,
• insinuate that my teenage ████ ███ caused me to become transgender,
• diagnose me with a fake disorder ‘Gender Dysphoria’,
• tell me literally nothing i hadn’t heard already.

let me spell this out clearly. Gender Identity Clinics are a fascist gatekeeping system designed to make things harder for transgender and nonbinary healthcare patients. this has resulted in real deaths.

i’m lucky

maybe this is survivor’s guilt talking, but i am lucky to be in one of these clinics. i’m lucky to be with a GP that respects the autonomy of transgender people and doesn’t require a decades-long waiting list in order to get life saving medication.

i haven’t had a supply of patches in a week.