just got out of the mental hospital and the thing that was reaffirmed for me from being in there as a TME person is that there is that transmisogyny is very real but TME people barely experience any transphobia at all.
Just to preempt the devil's advocates here, I'm a non-binary person who has been on low-dose T for 9 years on the 24th of this month. Yes, I've had top surgery and my legal name and gender marker have been changed and that may make you think "well you're so far along that of course you pass so of course you didn't experience transphobia!" But no, I do look visibly transgender.
I was misgendering constantly because I do not correct people that seem cishet when they misgender me due to experiences with exorsexism/enbyphobia and I am almost a decade into purposefully transitioning to be androgynous. It is not possible to "pass" as a non-binary person but it is possible for cis people to not know what to think of you. About half the patients thought I was a man and the other half thought I was a woman. Cisgender people don't ASK, just assume.
All of that out of the way, I was actually ACCOMMODATED when I was checked in. It was a co-ed unit and I was given my own room instead of asked to share with another patient to "protect my privacy" and because I was non-binary. I was given my hormones every day except the first two days I was in the hospital.
The worst of the transphobia I experienced directly was from another patient and that was actually more specifically exorsexism and misdirected transmisogyny. I said "why?" when asked "are you a boy or a girl?" and the person then assumed I must be transfem and had a reaction to that. I don't believe in correcting transmisogynists who assume I am transfem as I believe it reinforces in their minds the belief that transfems are "lesser" and I am still the same lack-of-gender as any other agender person, just with some different experiences than transfem agender people.
Now for the comparison. My sister was hospitalized about 2 years earlier and had been on E, prog, and spiro for about 2+ years at that point was consistently, throughout the entire stay, denied access to her hormones. She was placed in the men's ward of a non-co-ed unit. She was constantly misgendered and she was also conveniently let out of the hospital the day she told the nurses she was going to detransition. She was STILL in active psychosis at that point and was very much a danger to herself and others. Their entire goal seemed to just be breaking the "delusion" that she is a woman.
Back to devil's advocate, you could say it was a difference between how long we'd been transitioned, my surgery, my name/marker being changed, and various other factors... but NONE of that justifies what happened to her. They very easily could have given her her hormones, given her her own private room, and transferred her to a hospital with a co-ed unit the same way they did to me. You don't suddenly earn respect after you've been through surgery and a legal process.
While I was not in active psychosis, they STILL diagnosed me with unspecified psychosis because I made the mistake of telling them I had hypnagogic hallucinations. Despite this, I was released without ever telling them I was going to de-transition. Being diagnosed with psychosis was not transphobia, it was general ineptitude of our mental health system.
So... what about how they were different hospitals? We were at different hospitals, after all.
There WAS another non-binary person(she/they) at the hospital I was at. She was transfem, younger than me by about a decade, but still transitioning. They were CONSISTENTLY deadnamed and misgendered by staff. At one point someone apologized to a staff member for misgendering her, because it rightfully upset them, and the staff member said, under his breath, that "[she's] in here for a reason"
So then.... why was I respected and they weren't?
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
gracieabrams
