TransActual
The first barrier I faced being trans was over my use of contraceptives to suppress my periods. I had been doing this for years, but during a regular check-up a nurse decided that, due to my health issues, I was too high risk to take the oestrogen-based pill. I was upset and tried to explain that I couldn’t deal with having periods and being on a less reliable birth control pill, but she did not seem to understand.
I think no one teaches you how to be a patient, or how to advocate for yourself. It’s important to know yourself and your body and even do a bit of research before you go to an appointment.
While being treated with legitimacy and validity is rare in a medical field and legal system that doesn’t recognise us, there are those who will listen. And it couldn’t be more liberating.
It’s not easy for me to speak publicly about my autism, in large part because I’ve been taught all my life that ‘good’ autistic people are those who are not visibly autistic.
I’ve known some online forms to literally only give 2 options for gender. It’s paralysing. Hovering over those two alien concepts. It’s almost worse when they add a third, ‘prefer not to say’ choice. As though anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into one of the binary options should be embarrassed about it; as if it’s something we must want to hide. No, I DON’T ‘prefer not to say’; I prefer to have my enbyness recognised.