The Transgender Experience

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@Jasper wrote:

We have a right to exist and we have a right to be genuine and to explore our gender identity in safe environments.

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Welcome to the Forums @Jasper,

I couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately, in comparison to other marginalized groups, it seems society is still trying to catch up on understanding and accpeting the transgender experience and the LGBTI at large. Change is happening, but it is slow.

I have a few friends who are transgender, and it's made me realise how deeply engrained things can be, such as the use of pronouns, or social roles - Many people takes these for granted, but it can create so many identity challgenges for others.

Can I ask you @Jasper what advice you would give to others who are seeking support, or are giving support?

I hope to see more of you on here.

CB

I guess I met a few trans people quite early on in my life ... when I was 17 and working on Fitzroy Street ... .... ha ha .... not like that ... but I was aware ....I also had 3 gay uncles and met a few trans socially through them ... I think gender can pressure us in many ways and cause so much pain and confusion ...

I am a tall woman .. who is a bit male identified and have had a comment that I looked like a tranny when I was dressed up ... if I was in Holland where my tall genes are from, I doubt I would have had that experience as a put down

You are very welcome here ... @Jasper ... I hope the world is kinder to you now that there is more awareness... I know there is a good choir in Melbourne for gender diverse people ... the conductor is a fabulous woman ... cool bass player and classical muso ....not sure where you iive.

Hi @Jasper, I am pretty new to the forums and just starting to meet new people here, I am glad you are here! I'm a cis woman and am glad to meet you here.

The scars and torments of a childhood lived being who we are not can be a huge backpack of pain and trouble to carry around, and while I have not had to live with the terrible consequences of being transgendered in a world that does not see or validate my experience - I do 'get' your lived journey in an empathetic way.

It is great you are here and I hope we can learn more from you and also that just through social awareness and acceptance here you also experience a safe place. We are all beautiful beings.

Thank you for your kindness. I am very well supported now and my life is dramatically better, but it has been a struggle to find health/mental health professionals that know what they are doing and have compassion. Seeking support for a mental illness can be hard anyway, but when you are also Transgender it can be very traumatic and problematic. If people refuse to call you by your preferred name and use your preferred gender pronoun (he/she) then that's the first thing that will put you off continuing with support. But there are also many professionals who have prejudice and ignorance that get in the way of providing even the most basic duty of care.

My gender psych 9 years ago wanted me to be mentally well and off my meds before he would give the go ahead for surgery, which is ridiculous. The psych eventually changed their mind thankfully. But I did not receive the proper care I needed, as the psych (although specialising in Transgender identities) didn't have much knowledge on the mental health and wellbeing of gender diverse people and didn't really have any therapeutic skills, except to find a topic that hurt me and then challenge me on it continuously. If I could have seen someone else I would have. I know lots of Trans people are still continuing to have to see this person in order to transition and it worries me. Just because a person puts their hand up to treat us, doesn't mean they have what it takes.

The best GPs, Psychs and counsellors I've seen over the last 9 years have been professionals who are willing to learn and explore along with me, to see me as an equal and to see the strengths I already have. I'm glad there are many youth services offering support to LGBTI youth now, and I hope the trend continues. I'm also glad to see more and more Trans people go into counselling and other helping professions and to offer training and consultation to services that know they could be doing more. But the fact remains, that Trans people are high risk of suicide along with many other risk factors and we receive some of the worst healthcare. Just an example, I went to hospital with UTI pain one night and the nursing staff were great until they found out I was Trans. Then they treated me like I was a leper, threw away my urine, did STI blood tests and demanded to do invasive investigations of my genitalia that were both humiliating and painful. I was then sent home and had to put up with the pain for a whole night and wait to see my GP the next day. I then had to wait another painful 24 hours for the positive UTI test before I could go on antibiotics. I am now too afraid to go to hospital again.

In the majority of situations, we Trans people don't even receive the most basic of healthcare and this is something that must change. It is no wonder that Trans people are 17 times more likely to suicide than the general population. It is almost impossible to find professionals that we can trust and certainly impossible to find health/mental health professionals we can trust without having to put ourselves at risk first.

Hi @Jasper and welcome to the forum.

My heart goes out to you and I'd like to just say that I admire and respect you for not only sharing your experiences but for being true to who you are!

I have said before that we are NOT defined by our mental illnesses and I would suggest that to also be the case for gender identification, sexual orientation, colour of our skin, physical appearance, spiritual beliefs, clothes we wear, etc, etc.

I believe all these things are outworkings of who we really are on the deepest level at the core of our being and it is not for anyone to judge anothers life or even how they choose to live.

I tell people all the time that the vast majority of people who get to know you past a casual meeting, do not even 'see' those things but get to 'see' and value you for the person you are inside.

Love and respect to you @Jasper for the sensitive, brave and wonderful person you are.

Hugs (((())))

Abiel

As a nurse, I was sorry to hear of your experience with health care. I was not surprised however! Hospitals are staffed with people from a diverse background, and often inculcated prejudices supersede professionalism. I have nursed one Trans gender person and must say I found her a not a good role model, she was very good at agro aging everyone, so there you go. Another aspect of nursing, is nurses tend to forget people are not at their best when in hospital, weird I know,but there you are again.

people with mental health issues are uniformly derided as being a waste of space and a waste of time. I trust that this belligerent culture is changing, but it can't change fast enough as far as I am concerned. My experience with the Public Health Service in Qld. As a consumer in the mental health arena was one of horror and revulsion.....I would not have entrusted a dead dog to them. Sorry, that is the way it was, I hope it has significantly changed in the last decade or two!

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@Jasper wrote:

"I went to hospital with UTI pain one night and the nursing staff were great until they found out I was Trans. Then they treated me like I was a leper, threw away my urine, did STI blood tests and demanded to do invasive investigations of my genitalia that were both humiliating and painful. I was then sent home and had to put up with the pain for a whole night and wait to see my GP the next day. I then had to wait another painful 24 hours for the positive UTI test before I could go on antibiotics. I am now too afraid to go to hospital again."

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I am so sorry this happened to you, and that it is such a common occurence for Transgenered men and women.

I was very sexually active young, being a survivor of CSA - and did not look after myself very well, never insisted on the use of condoms etc. When I was 19 (in the early 1980's) I contracted an STI and was very sick (I hid it from my parents whom I was living with at the time until the infection was life threatening). I collapsed at work and was taken to hospital in an ambulance in a rural Quennsland town. When the test came back positive for gonorrhea, the nursing staff treated me like a piece of filth. I was on intravenous antibiotics and one nurse used to shove the canula so hard whenever the drip was changed that I had huge haematoma under the skin of my hand and it hurt alot, she definately did it on purpose. No one would look me in the eye, every one called me MISS (last name) were grim and unkind and care was rudimentary, I felt punished and it was a devestating and shameful experience - particualalry as I was unwell and vulnerbale as it was from being ill. So, while I am not a transgendered person, I can relate to the shame and the bad behaviour of nursing staff, it might be a shared experience and it is terrible that it happened to any of us. ~

Oh yeah, just remembered, too - exactly the same kind of treatment i received at the same hospital when 5 months later I was admitted after a suicide attempt failed.

I have no shame now (or residual anger at them either 'they didn;t do well, but they didn't know any better either). We are resilient beings to still be here.

I do hope you never have to go to hospital again for something lifethreatening of course, and I wonder if you did have to go, could have a hospital 'buddy' a friend to go with you to buffer and to inform staff of your gender and a give them a few tips on best care?

Oh! Wouldn't it be would be great if there were people on staff who were trans-friendly to act as liason officers and make the very best opportunities and exeprience for

Yes, if I can help it I will have someone with me next time I have to go to hospital. We've got alot of work to do to educate medical people about mental illness and gender and sexual diversity. And I can't believe that we are still allowing doctors to do unnecisary surgeries on babies and small children when they're born Intersex. That just gets my blood boiling. But that's a whole other issue.

One of the difficulties comes when you need to go through the medical model for help getting medication or treatment (even when you know how stigmatising and costly that could be). I wish that, at the very least, mental health professionals, GPs and Emergency staff were all trained better. I've heard so many nurses say horrible things, especially about LGBTIQ people and people labelled 'Borderline'. There are so many flaws in our health system. Emergency rooms are not equiped for mental health issues and medical people often get upset that they are treating behaviours rather than 'real sick people'. I hope that in the future more medical people will see Transgenderism as a medical condition and not a mental illness. There is a slow movement in that direction. But it is how we treat our most vulnerable that test us as human beings and as a culture.