@mysteryperson706

1 month ago

I'm not going to lie I've been in a bit of a state since the yesterday. I came out at around 15 and the process for me getting HRT was arduous. Counter to belief there are many barriers between young trans people and accessing healthcare, and they exist long before you step foot into a gender clinic. Keep in mind this was now about 15 years ago; the services i might have accessed as a girl are no longer available to people coming out today, its got harder not easier. I didn't get any treatment until my early 20's. That is because of a process called RLE - I ended up living socially as female for many years until I got my physical transition needs met. During that time I was constantly expected to justify myself to anyone who asked. I had to demonstrate I was not some sort of fetishist to panels of male doctors, I had to prove I was mentally sound enough to consent to treatments that are routine all over the world, I had to show a willingness to be suitably demure and feminine and pretty enough to transition. It was a process that has left me with a frankly broken self image, forcing me to constantly self scrutinise in a way nobody else is expected to do in order to get their healthcare needs met. I've been medically transitioning for a long time now having jumped through all those hoops. Fortunately puberty was light touch for me and I pass well now. But I still am painfully aware of all the ways my body masculinised in the years between coming out and accessing HRT. Its like looking in the mirror and seeing scars measured in millimetres of bone. Except the scars are invisible to everyone. In fact all of this is invisible to people; people generally see just an ordinary woman and do not understand the amount of medical mistreatment I endured to get to this point. To me those features that changed because I could not access puberty blocking medication as a girl are not simply physical signifiers of testosterone fuelled development, they're a reminder of how I was let down by parents, institutions, doctors. And how I was thrown into a medical system designed to break people so that only those who suffer the most can access care. I wear all that on my body. I am extremely bleak feeling to think how many young people are already enduring that, and moreover how much more brutal things are going to get for people going forward. I am thinking of 15-year-old-me and how she deserved better, and how as time goes on things get worse. And I am so, so terrified of the day when my ability to access the care I went through such much to get is withdrawn. Because I think there's a very real chance that in the next few governments (assuming they actually last a full term, this time) trans healthcare across the board will become near inaccessible. I've not been able to do anything today, I've just been feeling this huge weight on my shoulders. Thinking about how I waited for so long, and how in some ways I am still waiting for some transition related healthcare services 15 years later, only to find the society I live in so eager to take it all away again. This stuff saved my life. I'm exhausted. And I am so frightened about how far this flavour of social conservativism might go in brutalising us. I am making plans to leave the UK asap and advising any trans person who will hear it to try to do the same, this country is not a hospitable place for women like me.

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