title: "Gatekeeping and Trans Care" summary: "A short one about the difficulties faced in getting healthcare as a trans person as well as in other areas of life as a way to inform those without direct experience." date: "2019-02-23" description: "A brief discussion about the difficulties involved in getting healthcare, both gender affirming and general, as a transgender person." tags:

• "queer"
• "fb-rants"
• "compilation"
• "transgender"
• "analogy"
• "discomfort"
• "dysphoria"
• "doctors"
• "transition"

• "gatekeeping" words: 425 img: "/images/PrideLogo.png"

Gatekeeping and Trans Care

I had a conversation recently with someone I love dearly. He is a wonderful person, and he helped me to realise some things that I needed to know. Specifically, he reminded me that a lot of the things I take as clear and obvious are unknown to the general public. What follows is a bit of information regarding some issues transgender people face in the world and our reactions to those issues.

• Transgender people, especially trans women, face a great deal of harassment and physical violence from cisgender people, especially cis men. This behaviour is often excused under a defense often called "trans panic". As a result, a lot of transgender people are hesitant to come out, especially to cis men.

• Despite the accepting environments in some places, friend groups, organisations, et c., transgender people often feel isolated because of the environments outside of those various settings. While our friends might be the best people in the world, our coworkers might be terrifying as hell. While our current city might be open and inclusive, our hometowns might be nightmarish hellscapes of bigotry and closed-mindedness. As a result, transgender people often cut themselves off from people, including supportive people, whom they love.

• Access to healthcare for transgender people is awful. If we can find a provider who will work with us, there's a strong chance our insurance won't cover our transition care (if we choose to go that route). What's worse is that some doctors will refuse to treat transgender patients at all, regardless of whether they normally treat cisgender patients with the same issues. As a result, transgender people often just go untreated for everything, or worse, try to self-medicate.

• General understanding of transgender issues is so minimal that cisgender people who try to be helpful by offering "perspective" might completely miss the issues that are actually causing trouble. Because it is hard to see past our own knowledge bases, both sides fail to communicate clearly about the issue, and it never gets fixed. As a result, some transgender people will just stop talking about the relevant issues that we face, shutting down the conversation entirely and preventing any further growth.

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While I admit that none of these are universal among all trans people, I will note that they are prevalent enough that closeted trans folks will often be too frightened to come out, which just makes matters far worse. I know it was tough for me.

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I know it's a wall of text. I had things to say. Oh well.