Just learned that “you have to live as your chosen gender for two years before you can access hormones or surgery” was still the 🇺🇸 norm a decade ago.
As a young trans kid reading about that requirement in the early 90’s, it seemed like a impossible hurdle to jump; as an adult, it scared me even more.
My own first two years of living publicly as trans haven’t been the horror I feared. Mostly because of the wonderful people around me, but also because of medical support. Support—not gatekeeping.
That really did cast a shadow over the next decades; it never occurred to me that medicine or culture might actually change, or that one might be a woman—in any sense of the term—without meeting some preordained standard grocery list of physical attributes.
In thinking thay way, I was unconsciously furthering the same stereotypes by which I was myself being bound.
I’m being super talkative today. ☺️ Mostly because this is the first day I’ve had entirely to myself in a couple of years.
😳
I only just realized the truth of that as I wrote it.
@nicole It's still ingrained into the systems within the UK, but without any actual support & waits of years to access basic healthcare 😔
If you're a trans kid, there is no care on the NHS.
@SleepyCatten Very upset to hear this. Watching now as so many states here try to roll everything back to where it was, I can’t be surprised that it might never have changed elsewhere.
I find these practices horrific and degrading. And I am always surprised at how desperately a super-majority wants to gate access to services that literally have nothing to do with them, and, at their core, are fundamentally about affirmation—a core human kindness.
All the older requirements placed such weight on being able to pass. And just as soon as I hit puberty and jacked upwards to become a 6,2” barrel-chested behemoth, I knew I could never meet those standards.
(I still don’t!)