Burning Words

There’s a great ScienceDaily article going around about the work of Dr Simona Giordano, an English ethicist who is taking up the cause of trans youth who are being denied treatment because of arbitrary gatekeeper guidelines, and suffering lasting physical and psychological damage as a result.

Giordano has gone on the attack against the English clinics that - as with the Monash clinic in Melbourne - will either not see or not prescribe anything to any patients under the age of eighteen. She is highly critical of these practices, arguing that non-permanent treatment (such as hormone blockers) should be adopted a lot more widely than they currrently are, and stating that “current evidence on risks and benefits of blockers in children and adolescents does not justify the strong resistance of UK specialists, especially considering the risks of refusal of treatment.” Beyond that, she blasts the nonsense excuse that doing nothing is a neutral course of action, noting that it carries serious physical consequences - both greatly impairing the physical result when the person does transition, and potentially causing much more invasive surgery to have to be performed down the line. She also covers the psychological consequences caused by those decisions, noting - accurately - how devastating it is for a lot of trans youth to be forced to live in their assigned sex for several more years for no good reason. It’s good stuff. So here’s to Dr. Giordano, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

The lack of clear guidelines for treatment by which clinicians can be held accountable by trans patients is a disgrace. We have a system these days where any clinic can essentially make up their own system for treating transpeople without any need to justify a particular course of action. Moreover, there are far too many people out there who seem to care less about the welfare of their trans patients than using the trans community as a lab rat for their own theories about transsexuality. And, if you are - as those of us in England and Australia are - caught in a location where there isn’t an alternative, one really has no recourse at all, or any choice apart from to sit down and take it.

This whole issue goes right to the root of so much of the disadvantage in the trans community, on top of the most prominent causes (discrimination, etc.). It is outrageous that we have a system that holds back treatment from many transpeople until it is too late. We have far too many people in our community who haven’t been able to graduate high school because of trans-related issues, and levels of university education that are so low that they’re almost without parallel. I have friends my age who will probably be on disability pensions for the rest of their lives because they were so badly damaged by the time they had the opportunity to transition. I know so many more who carry so many scars from before transitioning that many life and career opportunities have been closed off for them. You cannot prevent this curse from happening to generation after generation unless you break the cycle that prevents people transitioning until after the damage has already been done. Rather than discouraging them and waiting until they’ve had a breakdown or two, clinics should be openly supportive when approached by trans youth.

I’m one of the trans youth who had to work through a clinic that adopted these policies, but I’m one of the lucky ones. I have few physical effects from those years, and though I was a mess for a long time, things have turned out well in the end. However, I lost five years of my life for no good reason because the Monash clinic chose to jerk me around because of my youth, and for that, I will always be angry.

Tags: health, trans