Even I thought they couldn’t sink this low
Apr 19th, 2008 by Rebecca
via Nix Williams:
Erinkyan, of Fat Sexy Gender, has been told by the Monash Gender Dysphoria Clinic in Melbourne that they’re going to prevent him from transitioning until he loses weight. This is screwed to begin with - except that he can’t lose that weight because of a disability.
So I go to the doctor. I tell him what the problem is. I tell him that I need to lose weight in order to receive medical treatment. I tell him why I cannot lose weight the “normal” way - I already eat well and I cannot exercise due to that whole disability thing.
He spends 20 minutes telling me that I am disgustingly overweight and it’s all my fault. Oh, and by the way, I’m not really disabled - I’m just fat. And that whole thing where I can’t walk? The cure for that is to walk, apparently!
He is then offered a prescription for an amphetamine-based weight loss drug which he considers to be not safe and harmful to his health, and given a choice between taking it and being denied further treatment.
In short, these people are okay with their poor or lack of treatment leading to my death.
Because I am not human. I do not have human rights.
I am a fat, transgendered, disabled person. No, not a person. I am not a person. I do not have rights like people do. I do not have the right to quality of life, to good and caring medical treatment.
Because I am fat, transgendered, and disabled, all in one neat package. I am not human.
I’ve heard many an outrageous story relating to the conduct of the Monash staff over the years, but this tops them all. Those of us who are from Victoria have no option but to use the Monash clinic, in spite of their utter disrespect of patient autonomy (I don’t think they actually understand the concept), extreme gender-normative and heteronormative biases, long history of unprofessional conduct, and tendency to listen to the Standards of Care only when it suits them. It seems that what you end up with, if those attitudes are allowed to prosper, is conduct such as this - actually threatening someone’s life because you’re ignorant as blazes about disability issues.
Most of those I know who’ve been through the Monash clinic have their horror stories, as I have mine, which I’ll probably make the subject of its own post one day. But I’ve never heard anything like this, and this is an epic new low, even for them. The environment in which these sort of mavericks are allowed to hold transpeople in Victoria hostage to their personal biases needs to change. These people need to be stopped.