Finding information

So the first ever start of it, I kind of, well I started to look on, online but without having any information you know you just put in you know Want to be a woman or whatever, and its, it’s such a wide variety of stories and information that it was hard to kind of try and pinpoint how I was feeling. So what I started to do was kind of reach out to trans women, I only ever reached out to two, and one of them actually became one of my really good friends who I met through working on, on the scene, so she came in and I, I knew of her anyway but didn’t know her at all but I knew she was transitioning, so as soon as she came into the bar, which was freaky really because I’d only been back at work for a couple of months, so I’d only just started to realise that this was what I wanted to do. And she doesn’t go out that often at all, so the fact that we kind of met and it was, it was kind of perfect timing.

And she is a very incredible open, you know, flamboyant person, she was very confident in, in what she was doing so I outright asked her, I was sitting on the door taking her money to get into the club and I just said, I would love to just sit down and just ask you a few questions really Just really get an insight on what you were feeling so I can identify whether I’m feeling the same Or even if it’s just a few things you know, everybody’s different. So, you can’t go on completely with somebody else’s, but it’s a great way for, you know, for some information and insights. So that night we ended up going to a bar after I’d worked. We got stupidly drunk and then we went back to my apartment in town and she, we sat up till six, seven o’clock in the morning just talking about everything, literally everything that she ever felt and you know her story kind of was very different to mine, her family wasn’t, I mean they support it, and she goes around and sees them often, but nothing like what my family were like, you know my family gave me the wings and just let me fly, whereas for a long time they still called her, her male name which I felt didn’t support her as much as what she should have been. But a lot of the things that we spoke about were very similar, and I noticed that our stories even though they were so different, our feelings were very similar. So that was my first, my first kind of information. And then I found a girl on, like on Facebook, we became like, you know alright friends as well. I don’t see her that often, but she was a friend of a friend. So yeah, she gave me some insight too. She was younger than me, whereas you know my other friend was older than me, and it was just again, it was just, it was almost like you know get through and see you know if, if it is continual and it was, so after that I really just knew that I was gonna, you know grab, grab the wheel and, and take it off straightaway.

I found that there is some, there is a lot of misinformation in the trans community. That’s one like main bug bear I’d say. Of course, the other main bug bear is the waiting lists and the fact that trans healthcare isn’t a priority of the NHS. If you go private, you know, exorbitant cost of it. it’s pretty bad. And the struggle to get on hormones in this country is quite disgraceful. Like finding out about trans healthcare, I think well I went to the first trans reach out and there was some people talking about the GIC and I found out about that. And so, I feel like, yeah, going to trans groups and stuff, the information has been readily available. There are always people who know stuff. The problem is that they are also the people who don’t know stuff, but talk anyway. That’s how misinformation happens and kind of, because my experience with the hearing about trans healthcare, yeah. I think it’s been what’s been quite difficult for me is, finding out about all the options there are and then which one to go for because I have this kind of selection anxiety. You know, like if you have all these options, for example, moving in here, oh we have to choose like an energy provider now. Well, fuck. You know, what do I do? Who do I choose? What are the differences? You know, and then you end up just picking something even though it’s not the best option just because to pick something. And that’s kind of been my experience of trans healthcare like this. I found out about, you know, Gender GP which is a much quicker and cheaper way of getting on to healthcare, but then someone said, they’re a bit dodgy. Which is bollocks. And that’s part of the misinformation, but then that set me back because I was like, oh, well, I’m not gonna go with this dodgy thing, you know, I’m gonna go via the correct pathway, which of course, turned out to be the expensive pathway. I’m gonna to go to this clinic, they have a nice website and everything. There’s a lot of and then there’s a lot of misinformation about hormones once you get them. And, I mean, I suppose it’s finding out about—and also trying to find out about where you can get the hormones for self-medding is really a difficult—cos people are quite prejudice against that and so it’s difficult to meet someone whose actually gonna say to you, okay, this is a really useful site. This is how much the hormones are. it’s safe. it’s a pharmacy. This is what you can do. And like, I try to be that person to people that I meet who are starting on their transition as much as possible like, you know? These are your options. This one is good for this reason. This one is good for that reason, you know? And yeah, because that’s been my—

What was useful to you at that time?

What was useful? What was useful was when I would meet a person who knew what they were talking about. A trans person and a trans group, usually. And you would say, okay, you should do this because this is quick and it’s cheap and it’s easy and this and this. There was, there was a non-binary trans woman I met who I am still friends with who has been so helpful with that. She really knows her stuff. She kind of just told me yeah, just everything I needed to know.

I feel like it’s something that is, on the one hand, very easy to get lots of information online about different healthcare options and different procedures, different treatments, all that kind of thing. Well on the one hand there’s a lot out there and on the other hand it’s all a bit, it doesn’t seem, it’s never seemed very clear to me, it’s all a lot of, just going on what other people have said about their experiences, or what they’ve, you know. And a lot of contradicting information at times. Yeah I know that you get sort of the basic stuff on, on an NHS website or on a private clinic’s website, or something like that but I feel like a lot of it is forums and people, people sharing their experiences, and then you know trying to, trying to patch things together from different places, and that that doesn’t really, it never really felt to me like okay this is the place I’m going to go to find out what I need to know. Which I would imagine is probably quite similar for a lot of health related things but yeah, in terms of having a clear idea of, okay this is how the process is going to work if I decide to take this, if I decide to pursue medical transition and if, or aspects of medical transition, and if I decide to get a referral to a GIC, and all that kind of thing, what is this process going to look like? Yeah, it, I guess, in one, on one hand there is information there but on the other hand for me it felt like a lot of trying to, and still does feel like a lot of trying to you know scroll through Google and find different bits of information to put together to really get any clear idea of what the process might look like.

Information sharing and everything else. The problem with it often is it’s unfiltered or unregulated and you know, one reputable source might be drowned in ten unreputable, histrionic or whatever else and there is a lot of misinformation out there. But, you know, I’m also part of like a trans DIY discord that has, you know, biochemists and pharmacologists and you know, other people and people having quite high level sort of academic discussion around how to best go about self-medding you know, and sharing links and resources and you know, okay, do this, you know, giving people access stuff, which I think is really important and you know, quite encouraging as an academic and as a scientist that people are that willing to go out of their way into and devote their time to these things and you know, and sometimes, you know, I’m very fortunate in that I have a IRL support community. But like, few people on the discord killed themselves over the last couple of months, you know, and it’s because it’s, you know, and that does affect you and also it’s just a realisation of like it’s tough out there, you know, it was tough for me and it is tough for me and like I’ve said, I’ve got it pretty good. You know, so I think those spaces are really important and like you know, that they’re curated and managed in a way that is responsible and sensitive and reactive to the needs of the community I think is really important.

I think like again it’s just another GP who hasn’t been trained in sort of like transgender people but it’s annoying because like as a GP the internet is right there you can just look, that’s what we’re all doing we’re all just looking stuff up, you know. We haven’t been told this by like a general like medical professional it’s all been stuff that we’ve had to go out and research ourselves. So I kind of, I guess it’s a little bit infuriating that a lot of GP’s sort of play the whole naivety card like well, you know, I don’t know about this, this is all so new and it’s like there’s been transgender people about for like hundreds of years, like, you know, there’s something you can quite easily look into yourself just get a few terms right and just learn what people sort of want to get out of that. And like 9 times out of 10 if somebody is coming to you with sort of like gender queries, you know, they’re questioning their gender you can just say to them would you like me to refer you to like to the clinic or there are trans groups about, like probably if there was more stuff in GP waiting rooms, you know, there’s loads of stuff about, you know, like ‘Oh get help’, you know, like ‘prostate checked’, you know, cancer screenings and stuff but there’s not, I didn’t see a single thing about being trans it’s all very like not like hidden but it’s not advertised, so I guess it’s sort of this idea that, you know, that you’re not gonna know a lot about it unless you research it yourself.

I wanna know what’s gonna happen to me. I think there’s this narrative that trans people need to educate their medical staff, which is great. it’s fantastic. It’s like yeah, yeah, like they need to learn. They don’t know what they’re doing. Often, I find myself doing that like I’ll be telling my doctor what’s up. I want like my doctor to just not assume that I’m an expert on my own body. Like I want a doctor to do some doctoring. You know to be like, this is what’s going to happen. Do you understand? It sounds pathetic, but like I kind of want to be shown some yeah. It’s like, you know, someone, who just has confidence. I don’t think GPs have enough confidence. That isn’t me empathising with their ignorance, that’s me empathising with their genuine inability to have been educated about it [Laughs]. It’s very strange that there aren’t trans GPs doing this. You would think that more trans people would have gotten out of medical school and started practicing by now. But no and that’s what’s really strange as well is it’s so disparate.

And I also think that, you know, the first informed consent clinic in London is about to be set up. Which is gonna absolutely change the game in terms of access. But what’s that gonna do in terms of like GPs feeling like they have the impetus to learn things. They’ll be like oh well that’s fine, they can get it wherever they need to now. Like as opposed to being like, wait, this is gonna to increase precarity and it’s going to reduce the amount of people applying to GIC which will overall effect statistics in the way the government isn’t taking it seriously enough and they won’t get any funding. The whole thing is going to collapse, like putting a band aid on the problem. GPs need to have the power to like examine people and help people and diagnose people with dysphoria if that’s what they need. And prescribe hormones if that’s what they need. It just feels, it feels like the whole thing about like you need to educate your GPs. It’s like, well, I shouldn’t. They should be good enough doctors to know [Laughs] I am sorry. It feels a bit like I don’t take much joy in having to construct my own transition. I want there to be a framework. I want there to be people who have some expertise. I feel like trans people, the whole thing about like trans people being experts of their own bodies. It’s like, ‘Well yes, but I’m not an expert of my own liver function. I’m not an expert of my own like my own spermatozoa production. I’m not an expert of my sleep cycle and my muscle to body mass ratio’, and these things are things that I want, I want an endocrinologist to talk to me about or a GP who knows something about endocrinology and trans people to talk to me about it.

Google and the internet and stuff is obviously a huge resource. But, from actual governmental sources there’s always been this kind of unclear language used. There has never been a definitive set of like, these are the terms that you use. This is what they mean and so there’s no uniform advice almost. it’s like you could just hear different things from different people and it all depends on what GP you have. Whether they’re even gonna give you any help like my GP wasn’t particularly supportive when we went to speak with him. I had to kind of circumvent that. I couldn’t get a shared agreement with genderGP and my GP for instance. So, there’s a lot of like I had to circumvent all that and luckily thanks to the internet there was places where I could get information about healthcare and stuff and resources and learn about like here’s what HRT is and here is what it’s gonna do to you. That was all great. But on the governmental side, I guess there wasn’t much help at all, really.

What resources were most useful to you? Or most helpful?

I’d say definitely like, but like social media of having friends who are knowledgeable about this stuff. Gender GP has been a big resource also. Throughout this process of going through getting hormones with them, they’ve always been there to give advice and support and be very definitive about things and like this is what you need to look out for. These are like this is the changes you are gonna have in your body. Do you consent to all this. They’ve been very clear in language and stuff about that and that’s how to do it. I fully understood the ramifications what I was doing when I was obtaining hormones and be like yeah, awesome.

A lot of it was just me reading through whatever medical journals I could find, online. The most useful stuff that I found was other people’s first hand experiences. More so than anything on the NHS website or anything that I heard from a doctor was just, you know, reading what other people had to say and what it’s like to be on hormones, physically and mentally, that sort of thing. That was helpful for me because, you know, no doctor has really known a lot about it that I’ve ever seen. Yeah, I think that the biggest and best resource out there is just other people at the moment.

I think it kind of just gives you a window in rather than reading something that is a medical journal and its very sort of scientific and impersonal. If you can actually read what other people have to say, it really helps you understand and know what to expect, really. Yeah, I think a lot of the actual medical stuff is just very vague and impersonal. it’s quite often hard to use as a resource.

Hormones especially regarding non-binary people is such a, always gonna be a pros and cons waiting, because well, I mean, can’t generalise on that. A lot of non-binary people that I’ve spoken to because you can’t pick and choose the effects and you might want some but not others. So, what really helped me decide that at least hormones aren’t right for me right now is knowing the fullness of the effects and the timescale that they tend to happen on. So, things like I would be really excited about voice changes, but less excited about a huge eruption of body hair. But body hair tends to happen a lot sooner than voice changes. So I know that you can’t have one without the other. And to being able to know obviously the timescales aren’t accurate for every person, because every person is different. But having a rough idea of when things happen and which of those you want and don’t want could help manage your expectations for how much hormones are gonna do for you.

I don’t want all the effects and obviously you can’t pick and choose, so that’s what’s kind of mainly holding me back at the moment. Especially things like hair loss is a big one, ‘cos that’s quite common in my family. And it tends to go back like here and so it’s not easy to hide either. But yeah and some of the kind of emotional changes and essentially having to go through puberty again is just exhausting to think about. I wasn’t a particularly acne-ridden teenager. But I could, I definitely could do without being an acne-ridden adult so.

I’ve found them endlessly infuriating, and in the kind of the way that it’s filtered into different spaces, and debates that I’ve kind of been engaged with, at various points it’s been really, really annoying, which is to put it like as an understatement, where just the constant flow of misinformation, and kind of vitriolic hateful, hurtful kind of discourse, that people, that because the media, and social media, and they’re kind of so intertwined now it’s hard to pull it apart, but you know the, the way that trans healthcare particularly for young people is represented in the media, which then spirals into social media, and spirals into people’s every day conversations, is just so filled with like dog whistles, and factual inaccuracies that I just, I find it so, that they put in enough words that sound, it’s the classic kind of populist tactic isn’t it, putting in nothing, something that sounds like it has a kernel of being reasonable, which it doesn’t, but you know as soon as you go, We have to protect women then it’s like, [gasp] Do we? Why And even though the things that they actually say around that, it’s like of course, no-one wants women to be actually you know in danger, but they’re not.