#transgender healthcare

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A new landmark study has found that access to gender-affirming healthcare significantly reduces rates of depression, gender dysphoria, and suicidality among transgender people.

While it’s no secret that providing gender-affirming care to transgender individuals who ask for it can greatly benefit their well-being, an increase in transphobic rhetoric and bans on gender-affirming healthcare has prompted thorough medical studies into the impact of such care.

Now, brand new research conducted in Melbourne, Australia, has found that allowing transgender people to access the care they’re after can reduce suicidality by a stunning 55%.

As part of the first-ever randomized controlled trial (RCT) on gender-affirming care, researchers took 64 transgender and gender-diverse adults who had been looking to start testosterone therapy and randomly split them into a treatment group and a control group.

While the treatment group was allowed to begin hormone therapy that week, the control group waited three months for their treatment to begin.

Before the study began, both groups were evaluated on depression, gender dysphoria, and suicidality. Three months later, the two groups were evaluated again.

RCTs for medical care can often be hard to conduct due to practical and ethical concerns. However, researchers of this study found a way to hold an RCT for this study by incorporating a shorter follow-up period. Rather than giving the control group a placebo drug, or no treatment at all, they were simply given a longer wait time.

The results showed a notable decrease in gender dysphoria, depression, and – most significantly – suicidality.

The group that received gender-affirming care right away saw a 55% reduction in suicidality compared to a 5% drop within the control group.

Depression scores in the treatment group decreased by half, while gender dysphoria rates also significantly decreased.

Breaking down their findings, researchers Brendan J. Nolan MBBS, Sav Zwickl, PhD, and Peter Locke wrote: “There was a statistically significant decrease in gender dysphoria in individuals with immediate [access to gender-affirming care] compared with delayed initiation of testosterone therapy.”

“A clinically significant decrease in depression and a decrease in suicidality also occurred with immediate testosterone therapy.”

“The findings of this trial suggest that testosterone therapy significantly decreases gender dysphoria, depression, and suicidality in transgender and gender-diverse individuals desiring testosterone therapy.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time that research has shown significant drops in depression and suicide rates among transgender individuals who receive gender-affirming care.

A 2022 medical study showed that young transgender people who have access to puberty blockers are 73% less at risk of suicide and report improved well-being.

But, as anti-trans activists advocate for further bans on gender-affirming care, one of the key arguments is that the evidence in support of the care isn’t up to scratch with GRADE (Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) standards.

So research like this landmark RCT is so significant to the transgender community and its allies as the fight for their healthcare rights rumbles on.

[pizzaback]

so because this comes up every time someone on the internet mentions it: yes people can get surgery to get both a penis and a vulva. you can get this if you have a natal vulva or a natal penis. you can have a phalloplasty or metoidioplasty and no vaginectomy. you can have a vaginoplasty and/or a vulvoplasty with no penile inversion, penectomy or orchiectomy. transgender medicine is wonderful and magical and can give you both a penis and a vulva.

[teethdreamer]

Hi all! As some of you may already be aware, I'm currently in the process of saving up for facial feminisation surgery. I'm about halfway there, but I'm still about $10,000 short. If you have anything you're able to chip in, it would mean the world to me.

Cheers 💜

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Fleeing persecution in the Republican Nazi state of Tex-ass.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[leministfesbian]

Institutionalized homophobia at the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children (part 1)

Clinicians who worked at Tavistock's Gender Service for Children (England) speak about homophobia in the transgender service: ‘I wouldn’t say we were overly sensitive,’ says Matt Bristow. ‘I think we put up with hearing homophobic remarks being made on a daily basis for a number of years. And when we tried to talk about that in the team, it was kind of ignored.’

"‘It could be completely silencing people who are gay,’ Anastassis Spiliadis says. ‘It could be dismissing the reality that sexuality can play a role in how someone identifies.’" [...] He recalls families who remarked, ‘Thank God my child is trans and not gay or lesbian.’ ‘We had this so many times.'"

"Some young people themselves would be repulsed by the fact that they were same-sex attracted. They did not identify as gay, because they did not see themselves as of their birth-registered sex. ‘I had kids telling me, “When I hear the word lesbian, I cringe. I want to die”… “I’m gonna vomit if I hear the word lesbian another time,”’ says Spiliadis."

"A large proportion of the teenage girls seen by GIDS were same-sex attracted. ‘Initially, some of them had identified as lesbian. And some of them had experienced a lot of homophobia and then started identifying as trans. It was almost like a stepping stone,’ explains Spiliadis."

"The level of homophobia she witnessed generally across her caseload shocked Entwistle. She says it wasn’t discussed in the team, and there was no training on how to talk about sexuality with young people. [S]he was surprised to find that homophobic bullying was not a ‘thing of the past’. Even more surprising, she says, was the language used by the young people themselves – ‘old fashioned slurs’ that she hadn’t heard since the 1980s."

"Matt Bristow came to feel that GIDS was performing ‘conversion therapy for gay kids’. It’s a serious claim. Some clinicians have relayed how there was even a dark joke in the GIDS team that there would be no gay people left at the rate GIDS was going. ‘I don’t think that all of the children there were gay, by any means,’ Bristow tells me. ‘But there were gay children there – in my view I think there were gay children – who were being pushed down another path.’"

Source: Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children (2023) by Hannah Barnes (x)

[d3nt4l-d4m4g3]

Welcome to my new project. This spreadsheet documents reproductive and urinary complications that trans men experience on testosterone, as described in posts on Reddit.

Categories: username, subreddit, post name, link to post, time on HRT, comorbidities, changes to medical care mentioned during HRT, medical help offered (efficacy?).

I only include posts that mention the users' time on HRT, or else I found the exact time in their post history. Additionally, I have forgone the use of pronouns, which I hope will encourage folks from across all aisles to use the spreadsheet as a resource. I will be updating this spreadsheet regularly.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

This is about the University of British Columbia (UBC):

"The February 13 AMS Council meeting demonstrated the AMS’s disregard for the health and wellbeing of Trans students and a failure to live up to its equity commitments.

Council voted to put two separate referendum items in this year’s AMS Elections ballot — one for a general $52.50 fee increase to maintain the current level of coverage and a separate $8 fee increase to add gender-affirming care coverage to the plan that is conditional on the first increase passing.

Councillors voted to separate the two items despite the Trans Coalition's specific request to combine them.

[...]

Trans students said separating the two referendum items — and making the item on gender-affirming care conditional on the general fee item passing — implies they should be treated differently than cisgender students by the AMS."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[one-whole-rat]

Help me afford top surgery <3

[she-is-ovarit]

Trans History: Trans Healthcare and the Nazis

[He cites this website]

[Clickable version of link he cites]

[Link to full thread on Twitter]. I didn't include some of Malcolm Clark's images to sources into this thread to condense and save spaces for his commentary.

Malcolm Clark is a filmmaker in the UK who produces documentaries.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Transcript Below:

John Stewart: "Why would the state of Arkansas step in to override parents, physicians, psychiatrists, endocrinologists who have developed guidelines? Why would you override those guidelines?"

Arkansas AG Leslie Rutledge: "Well, I think it's important that [of] all of those physicians, all of those experts, for every single one of them, there's an expert that says we DON'T need to allow children to be able to take those medications. That there are many instances where—"

JS: "Right, but you know THAT'S not true. You know it's not 'For every one there's one.' There's 'These are the established medical—’”

LR: "Well, I don't know that that's not true. I don't know that YOU know that—"

JS: "Then why did you pass a law, then, if you don't? If you don't know that it's true, wouldn't you have done some—"

LR: "Well, I know that there are doctors and that we had plenty of people come and testify before our legislature who said that, uh, you know, we have 98% of the young people who have gender dysphoria, uh, that they are able to move past that and once they had the help they need, no longer suffer from gender dysphoria. 98% without, uh, that medical treatment that—"

JS: "Mhmm. Right. Wow! That's uh, that's an incredibly made-up figure. That—that doesn't comport with ANY of the studies or documentation that exists from these medical organizations. What—what medical association are you talking about of these doctors?"

LR: "Well, we have all of that in our, uh, legislative history and we'll be glad to provide that to you. Uh, I don't have the name of that off the top of my head. I know it's something that—"

JS: "You don't have the name of the organization that—?"

LR: "Off the top of my head.”

JS: "Oh, ok."

LR: "Yes. But we have all of that cited in all of our briefs."

JS: "You're suggesting that protecting children means overriding the recommendations of the American Medical Association, the American Association of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society..."

LR: "We don't have enough data. We don't have enough to show that these drugs ARE effective and that these children ARE better off and that we should encourage these—"

JS: "'We don't have enough' or there's not enough for YOU? But, let me try and flip it a different way and see if maybe this can help... In Arkansas, if you have pediatric cancer, and obviously we all wanna protect children, I think we established that earlier, whose guidelines do you follow, for pediatric cancer?"

LR: "Well, I think if my child, who's 4, if I was faced with that terrible, uh, decision, then I would be speaking to my doctor. And if my doctor recommended something that I'd disagreed with, then I would get a second opinion and that's what I believe, that these parents need to make sure that they're encouraged to get numerous opinions when they're talking about an irreversible step in their childs—"

JS: "You're not letting them. The state's not saying 'Get another opinion,' what they're saying is, 'YOU CAN'T.' What you're actually saying is the opposite."

LR: "No, that's actually not at all what the state said. The state simply said that you cannot perform these procedures and so parents SHOULD get another opinion that they—and children SHOULD want to have another opinion, because again these are 9, 10, 11, 12 year olds."

JS: "But that's not—So, if your child is suffering from pediatric cancer and the state comes in and says to you, 'They recommend chemotherapy but we're not going to let you do that. You can't. We think you should get a different opinion and here's the organization we think you should get the opinion from. They're not the mainstream, but they're AN organization, so that's how you— that's who you have to be treated by.' Does that sound like something that you would accept?"

LR: "Well, I think that's a very extreme example. That's not at all in line with what we're talking about. We're not saying that at some point, because when you have cancer it literally is—uh, particularly pediatric cancer—and having friends that have lost children to pediatric cancer—"

JS: "Sure."

LR: "Having a 4 year old, I'm sure—"

JS: "I've got some bad news for you. Parents with children who have gender dysphoria have lost children to suicide and depression because it's acute."

LR: "They absolutely have."

JS: "And so these mainstream medical organizations have developed guidelines through peer-reviewed data and studies, and through those guidelines they've improved mental health outcomes. So, I'm confused why you follow AMA guidelines and AAP guidelines for all other health issues in Arkansas, because we checked, but not for this."

LR: "It's simply saying let those young people who are facing gender confusion and dysphoria, allow them to become adults and to make that decision. Allow a child to be a child."

JS: "So, here's where we have our—our crossroads. You've made the determination that protecting these children means not giving them access to the guidelines and care that have been designed by medical and mental health professionals for children expressing gender dysphoria and I'm asking you, again, what are your qualifications to step in and say, 'No, keeping you from that care is protecting you.' You've made that determination."

LR: "Well, these are irreversible decisions that these children at these young ages are making or that their parents are making—"

JS: "They're not making the decision. You're making it sound like a 9 year old walks into a doctor's office and says, 'Give me some testosterone.' And the doctor goes, 'Oh thank God, because we're wanting to create an army of transgenders, because we're crazy!' And they go right in, like—"

LR: "No. We passed a law to protect the children in Arkansas and I think that's what is important."

JS: "Again. The medical community disagrees with you that that's protecting children."

LR: "Well not ALL of the medical community..."

JS: "Who doesn't? Who—?"

LR: "We have had experts testify here in Arkansas."

JS: "Ok, from what medical organizations?"

LR: "Well, we have all of those in our briefs and I apologize that I wasn't prepared to have a Supreme Court argument today in front of you, but I—we are going to have arguments on this case—"

JS: "Right..."

LR: "—when the time comes."

Watch the episode, including the full interview, for free here:

[canyonroads]

Trans Healthcare is such a joke I can only complain in Greentext form.

>be me

>back on Testosterone for about a year now.

>getting these meds oddly difficult in my new state. They give me a very limited supply, and then regularly hold my Rx refill hostage until I "get more blood tests done"

>Overall, I'm getting bloodwork done like 1x a month.

>A few months ago, insurance randomly changes my doctors office. Old guy quit or something. It's really annoying bc it went from like 2 minutes from my house to literally 25 minutes. But whatever.

>New place just can NOT draw blood from me. I make 2 appointments and they fuck up both times- one time sending me home crying because they wouldn't stop poking me.

>Only other option is to drop in for blood tests at the nearby hospital (note: nearby my office, not me. So still like 25 mins away)

>Hospital had no problems drawing my blood but every time I go in I have to wait 1-2 hours before they can see me (they don't do appointments)

>Get a new job. Suddenly working a more regular Mon-Fri 9-5.

>Which means I can't go to this hospital for bloodwork, as their lab is only open same days/times.

>And again, it's a 1-2 hour wait and an eternity away so I can't do it on my lunchbreak.

>Beg my doctor to send my bloodwork somewhere that I can go on a weekend.

>She supposedly does. It's another drop-in hospital but it's open a few hours on Saturday and hey, it's even a little closer to my house!

>Go in today. I'm hydrated and I'm ready. I had to change my injection day and everything for this.

>Wait 1+ hours for them to call me back.

>Hospital has no record of my bloodwork and they don't even take my insurance.

>Honestly detransitioning might be easier than this.

>Also I'm hemophobic so already scared of getting my blood drawn. Yay!!

[pizzaback]

new metoidioplasty techniques are being widely employed (extended meta) and we’re already facing new rounds of misinformation and handwringing. saw a post on reddit about how extended meta is “~new and experimental~” and handwringing about how the penises made with extended meta are all still “fresh results” that are still swollen so all pics of them don’t represent their “true size” (false) and they’re upset about how it doesn’t allow for STP (true but not a big deal for some people)

[flintoaster]

Made this in graphic design. Help stop the genocide against us 🥰

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[leministfesbian]

Buck Angel interviews Briana, a 22-year old trans woman who started transitioning at age 13: 'I've had my entire face and body changed. My bottom surgery completely failed. There is no recovering it. Every surgeon I've talked to refuses to fix it, because it would probably kill me. And now I'm trying to figure out what I should do with my life, because it just hit me that this mission that I was put on is not real.'

'I had feelings of gender dysphoria when I was 6 or 7. I remember that vididly and that never changed. [...] I grew up in an environment where a lot of people around me did not like gay men. Being a feminine boy was very negative and I developed the idea really young that being gay was bad and I thought that becoming a heterosexual woman was better. Just me saying I was feminine, that I didn't feel like other boys... the doctors were like that means you are a girl. I'm 22 years old and now I'm thinking about who was I even supposed to be? I don't know.'

'I am happy with presenting as female but I miss my old genitals. I needed more time to figure things out. But I already had the idea from my interactions with the therapist and doctors that it is better to go through a full medical transtition and be heterosexually the other gender than being abnormal in that gender and gay. I did not like the idea of being gay. I was like let me have every plastic surgery and just be a girl instead.'

'Now I have to figure out how to live a life like this. I don't have sexual feelings or function at all. It has made being an adult really confusing. I'm also thinking about kids. They asked me if I wanted to have kids at 14, but of course I said no. I'm now completely sterile. At only 22 all the ideas about who I am are starting to contradict the way I felt as a kid.'

'I needed more time to figure out what is the right way to transition. Thank god I like presenting as female, but at 22 I'm still realizing that maybe I didn't need this. I don't know.'