Trans Care Now!
No more waiting lists or diagnoses, for self determination and decentralisation.
On Saturday 26 June 2021 at 1 pm, Trans Care Now! organises a demonstration at the George Gershwinplein in Amsterdam, against the miserable state of transgender health care and for a structurally different system of transition care based on self determination and decentralisation.
Two to three year long waiting lists, outdated and humiliating diagnostic procedures, incompetence and abuse of power; in the past weeks, the Instagram page VU Gender (Mis)Treatment has painted a clear picture of what is going wrong. In the year 2021, transgender people are still taken less seriously if they are nonbinary, and care is delayed if people are autistic or depressed, or have a traumatic past. Whoever wants to transition is forced to comply to the doctor’s outdated image of what a trans person is. They have to obediently respond to inappropriate questions about their sex life and masturbation practices. Few patients dare to criticise this, because of the power the doctor has over them. Assertive patients who talk back too much notice that they are obstructed and that their care is delayed or denied.
These problems are nothing new. They’ve been going on for decades. The claim that the gender teams cannot anticipate the growing number of patients once seemed believable, but does not hold ten years later. When it comes to the treatment they offer, the gender teams repeatedly promise improvement, but nothing comes of it. They continue to stick to nonsensical diagnoses and protocols and refuse to give up the power they hold over patients. Promises, such as no longer making patients repeat the diagnostic phase and taking nonbinary people seriously, are not met. It is clear that we cannot expect a solution from the gender teams. They neither want to nor can provide one. A structural change in transgender care is necessary.
Our demands:
1. No waiting lists.
The waiting lists of the gender teams, of two to three years, force transgender people to put on hold important parts of their lives, and cause unacceptable suffering. By decentralising transgender care and making it accessible without diagnosis, the waiting lists can be made a thing of the past once and for all.
2. No diagnosis; complete self determination.
Being trans cannot be diagnosed. The diagnosis is nothing more than gatekeeping: cisgender doctors decide who is ‘trans enough’, and how that person gets to express it. The process of diagnosis gives doctors power over trans people and enables the malpractices in trans health care. This has to stop. Transgender people need to have complete self determination, and access to all forms of transition care without a diagnosis. We want the control over our own care and our own bodies.
3. Decentralise trans care, break the monopoly.
In order to realise sufficient, good, and accessible care, transition care has to be divorced from the gender teams. Most transition care is not specialist work, and can be provided fast, locally, and safely by general practitioners. GPs are already qualified to prescribe hormonal treatment, and could do so even more expertly with a short training and access to advice from an endocrinologist in the case of complications. Treatments such as speech therapy and laser are already available locally, the only thing that’s necessary is reimbursement by health insurance for trans people who look for this care without a referral from a gender team. Hospitals, finally, should concentrate on rapidly expanding surgery capacity, and opening it up to all trans people in need of this care, regardless of whether they’ve been to a gender team.
4. Transgender care in transgender hands
Transgender patients must be able to find care providers who understand their experience. Transgender students and care providers who want to focus on transition care, must be provided the means to do so. Transgender people who have already become experts in the area of transition care, must be able to get the right qualifications to provide it in an accelerated way. Trans people who have been obliged to take their own care into their own hands, should immediately and unconditionally get access to safe medication and blood testing. Information on medication and hormone values must be accessible to everyone.
We will no longer tolerate humiliating conversations with psychiatrists in order to prove that we are ‘trans enough.’ We will no longer wait for years in order to access essential care. We demand an end to the power of the gender teams and realisation of fast, local care based on bodily autonomy. Join us on Saturday 26 June 2021 at 1 pm on George Gershwinplein, Amsterdam.
Trans Care Now!