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the impression I've got from my (admittedly vague, scatty and patchy) engagement with the subject is that many transmen (the majority?) don't have genital surgery at all.
*Nods*... most. I'm not entirely sure if this is due to less widespread desire for SRS, or largely because the cost is prohibitive - around £30,000, the last I checked. There may be a culture difference between transmen and transwomen, or perhaps different reasons on the whole for transitioning - I'm not sure how true it is, but I believe someone here suggested that transmen are likely to transition for more social reasons, and transwomen for more personal reasons. However, for many natal men their genitalia is considered a large part of their masculinity, or can offer more confidence in it, and a lot of MtFs have problems scraping together the £8,000 or so for SRS (particularly as it's notoriously difficult to find a job), so £30,000 may be a price not accessible to so many.
Now, a service which makes people live a "real life test" for a year before they're even prescribed any hormones
This is inaccurate. Standard practice at the Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic - and, as far as I'm aware, the more peripheral NHS ones - is for an individual in whom hormones are reckoned to be beneficial to have to live full time in the chosen gender role for around three months before prescription of oestrogens or testosterone.
Well, I'm not sure if they've changed their practices very recently, but someone I kind-of know and several transpeople I've come across on a message board state that Charing Cross would not give hormones for at least a year. Often followed by, "And that's for those who're lucky".
... Anyway, more on that. The two-year-plus wait on the NHS before being seen or given any help at all I'd think to be easily enough time for many people to develop some pretty serious "issues". But being forced to go through a year (or even three months) of real life test before being given hormones, is enough to make plenty of people commit suicide in itself; anyone physically male far out of their teenage years isn't likely to be able to walk in the street dressed as a woman without *every* single person stopping and staring. A year of that could only be unbearably stressful.
...try to avoid being overly dismissive of the psychiatric role(s) here
I really wasn't being dismissive of psychiatrists or the psychiatric role in general, but specifically the majority of the staff at Charing Cross, who from pretty much all the anecdotes I've heard, are absolutely hellish.
What's interesting to me is that this review was "conducted exclusively for Guardian Weekend", an idea suggested to them after they apparently talked to some vague somebody or somebodies who indicated that they might know someone or someones who weren't happy after their surgery or surgeries. In other words they hired researchers to find what they wanted to find.
The above article could be worse (though the message throughout and particularly emphasised at the end of, "Oh, you can't expect to be a *real* woman is a bit... argh), but as Our Lady says, it's far from rectifying a rather nasty record of transphobia. Their approach, I think, is undoubtedly intentionally sensationalist; at the beginning of the year, when Russell Reid was first challenged by the Charing Cross doctors, the journalist writing that article appeared on the Nuttycats UK TS forum with an opening line basically saying, "So: does anyone here have any horrendous stories of regret?", which doesn't seem like the most balanced angle to start from.
I'm rather disturbed, particularly in light of the case of Painton in that article, by the comment from the "how-could-you-mess-with-the-wonderful-body-GOD-has-given-you" evangelist near the end: I've heard a few stories of people trying to find a church and being preached against or turned away, and given that the nature of religion means that many people's lives are ruled by it, I'd expect there to be quite a few people pretty awfully ****ed-up by the conflict between the desire not to go to hell/please baby Jesus and wanting to actually live their life in the right body.
On the other hand this research does uncover a rather important point-- surgery in and of itself is not always or even often sufficient to make people happy. Surprise. I have yet to see an article entitled "Breast Augmentation Surgery Not Effective, Say Researchers: Studies show one-fifth of women who have had breast implants are still unhappy with their bodies."
No doubt more will argue on the basis of this research that trans people should be denied surgery as opposed to the more sensible suggestion that there should be better standards for psychological care for after surgery/transition.
Although most transmen tend to be able to pass and therefore be accepted by society, and I think reach a level physically which would fall pretty well within their range of "male body they'd be happy with", with hormones alone in a not particularly excessive amount of time, this isn't the case with most transwomen. While it's nice to now be able to look down when going to the toilet and be physically closer to my girlfriend without feeling uncomfortable, this is secondary to the wonderfulness of being able to go outside and not think that everyone's looking and thinking, "Is that...?". Being barely beyond the age of little girl, I'm fairly lucky (and even with being young, my shoulders and a couple of small things about my face still cause me a little mental discomfort, and I still pick my clothes fairly carefully), but for the majority of transwomen, there's plenty left to do after SRS. For many, the trauma of being stared at a fair amount and being reacted to badly doesn't go away, and plenty spend their entire life scraping together their money for more and more operations to reduce the number of people who say, "Sir", in shops and make them feel comfortable when they look in the mirror.
... And finally for now: I assume my parents will be reading every single article written in the Guardian on the issue. Their approach really doesn't help. Anyone want to judge what an average person with no previous knowledge would think about transsexualism just from reading the articles that have been published in the Guardian? |
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