This is the fourth time I've seen someone say that not having to lie to your doctor about your gender to get HRT is a privilege
Leaving the inadequacy of the 'privilege' framework aside
Folks
Folx
We're all lying to our doctors
The foundational work of transfeminism, Sandy Stone's Empire Strikes Back, talks extensively about the proud history of trans women swapping answer sheets and tips from the Harry Benjamin guidelines
Folx doctors hate us and don't want us to have care and trying to extract anything more than The Turing Treatment from them is like pulling teeth
Folx a lot of us aren't getting our HRT from doctors because they wouldn't give it to us
Folks stop having the most naive view of transition possible and engage with reality folx I AM BEGGING
My partner was told to wear a pretty dress and some lovely chandelier earrings and a bold red lip and then she'd feel better. She's a trans woman who was asking this psychiatrist about anxiety medications.
The psychiatrist I was seeing to get my HRT process rolling completely changed his tone and approach to me when I had the audacity to wear pants and a blouse to our appointment instead of a dress. Still wearing heels, and makeup, and elaborate jewelry. But I wear pants and suddenly he's reconsidering if I have gender dysphoria and if maybe something else is going on, and so my access to HRT was delayed because he wanted more appointments. He delayed signing supporting documents for changing my government IDs because "I hadn't transitioned enough yet". I lied to this man 24/7 during the entire process btw, because trans women have been swapping info about lying to doctors across the globe and for decades, and this shit STILL happened.
Whenever a medical professional now finds out I'm a trans woman, the conversation immediately veers into asking about risky sexual behaviour and drug use, followed by mental illnesses. I do NOT get asked these questions or approached with that tone if they think I'm a respectable cis white lady.
We can't actually trust cis doctors to treat us with respect or grace, and so we can't be honest with them.
The only people I have EVER met who haven't been lying to our doctors from the start have been NB people, who have universally burned bridges with those doctors because they didn't lie and so didn't get HRT, and ended up wholly unable to access HRT until COVID kickstarted tele health and they could talk to and lie to new doctors. I have never met or heard of a trans man or woman who were honest with our HRT/gender paperwork doctors. We all lie, CONSTANTLY.
