A doctor will help someone who is just trying to exist but not someone who is actively trying to ruin other people’s lives!! Explain that one leftists!
This is so backwards it’s making my head spin
We haven’t even gotten past discrimination against minorities and women in medicine, how tf could we get past trans discrimination already
It would be great if we were as powerful as our enemies made us out to be
This hits me particularly hard, so here is a personal story of mine…
Light CW for medical malpractice.When I started HRT, I saw a doctor in a clinic that was supposedly “good” with trans health care and generally was known to treat a lot of trans people where I live. The doctor I was assigned to was an old white guy (yes, it mattered). He did prescribe me HRT as I wanted, but refused to adjust the dosage beyond anything that he usually prescribed. He prescribed me what he prescribed for everybody else for many years. Which may have been fine for lots of people, but it was a disaster for me.
Due to a particular metabolic quirk I seem to possess, my body can’t absorb hormones as well as others. Routine blood tests showed that my hormone levels were critically low with the dosage the doctor prescribed me. Neither the test results, nor my own pleading did anything to change his mind. He always dismissed it as “trans people always want more” and refused to adjust the dosage. Meanwhile the side effects were so severe that other health care professionals were worried for my well-being. [If you want to know what happened to me, look up what having a combination of critically low levels or testosterone and estrogen do. I was a text book example of most of those symptoms.]
I probably don’t need it to say it around here, but nonetheless: Telling a trans person that they only want a higher dosage because “trans people always want more” is transphobic prejudice, particularly when somebody refuses to acknowledge the individual’s problems and even the facts on hand, such as blood tests that done by his own clinic.
It took me 1,5 years before I finally found another doctor who was willing to actually deal with my case.
So, no. A transphobic doctor will not give good care to a trans patient, not even if they are have a reputation for treating trans people and are providing trans specific health care, like HRT.
oh my God I’m sorry that happened to you :( HRT management is so fucking simple, I’m honestly shocked at how many doctors just wing it based on their own conceptions instead of doing the very easy very standardized processes most everyone follows.
had kind of the opposite situation happen to me, my primary care prescribing my hormones was an older dude with trans folk on his staff, everything seemed like it checked out, all I really needed was prescribing the same regimen I’d been taking with some occasional hormone panels.
for a while it was “too early” to get hormone panels, though he was taking blood draws for liver/kidney panels every time I saw him (oftentimes without even making clear that’s what he was doing) 6 months later I was not feeling great and asked if we could do a hormone panel to rule out some things, he explained that he felt like “the online trans community” focuses too much on the numbers and his plan was to increase dosage until it showed up on my liver/kidney panels. I wasn’t really sure but giving me enough estrogen for my liver/kidneys to start filtering it out of my blood seemed wrong and so I insisted on one anyway.
a week later he sent me an email basically saying “so because you were complaining about it so much last time, I went ahead and did it anyway and LOOK it’s fine!” Attached were lab results that were not at all fine - it was waaaaay high out of range and it wasn’t even a trough reading! (somewhere around 2000 pg/mL IIRC) I was confused at how this happened, given I didn’t even think we changed my dose?
So then I looked through my records and it turned out he’s been silently increasing the vial concentration without changing the amount drawn - pretty much the ideal way to increase my dose 8x without me noticing. I shoulda paid attention to the listed concentration on the vials I was getting, but we didn’t discuss a dose increase at all so I didn’t really have any reason to suspect a change.
So I bring all this to him alongside the physical symptoms I’d been feeling and ask for an explanation. Once again he started into the “you’re just too focused on the number” stuff. He also said my physical symptoms sounded like anxiety and that he could prescribe an anti-anxiety med. Immediately stopped seeing him and just did DIY for a while instead.
That is horrible and I am sorry you had to go through this. That level of negligence is certainly on par with the doctor I had to deal with, though hiding the increase from you is certainly borderline malicious (if not outright so). I am glad that you got away from him, because that was definitely the only way to go. . Internet hugs if wanted.
The statement that “all trans people want more” is also crazy to me cause it makes me wonder how he’d react to a case like my sister who in fact wants less (in a way). My sister used to be prescribed it via pill, but her doctor swapped her to the patch (saying it had lower stroke risk), but she seems to be really sensitive to the patch. This is causing her hormone levels to be way to high and I guess giving her symptoms similar to being on her period 24/7. She wants to go back onto the pill but the doctor wont answer the phone or her emails.
I empathize with your sister and I will keep my fingers crossed that she finds support, though my own experience taught me that she may not get it from a doctor who disregards her wishes so blatantly. I hope finding somebody else is an option for her.
i think the fact that he thought that all trans people want a higher dose suggests he was also fucking over all his other patients providing them with the bare minimum dose and being a huge cunt about it to all of them.
Unfortunately very likely yeah…
Dear god you spent a year and a half with basically zero sex hormone??? That is horrifying I hope you managed to avoid any long term negative outcomes once you got a better doc? My biggest, biggest hugs to you
Thank you. It was for about a year. Something I definitely do not recommend.
After that time I finally wised up and sought outside advise. Afterwards I scraped some donated medication together and basically did DIY for half a year. My test results were still way too low, but - at least - closer to the recommended minimum.
Criminal negligence imo, I’d report him to anyone that will listen.
This makes my blood boil. I am glad you found someone better. I had lots of problems with my provider as well and eventually just went DIY which ironically is also MUCH cheaper where I am than the official prescription.
its amazing how totally wrong they are too. a trans doctor would absolutely treat a homophobe. if anything a homophobe would refuse to be treated by a trans doctor.
Projection is their signature move, it gets a combo multiplier when they also play double standards
imagine being such a massive homophobe, that ur trans physician can clock you. what did u do? call’em slurs? wear a “god hates f*gs” shirt? even if trans physicians discriminated against homophobes (and they should not (in almost all cases?)) then all they would have to do is not say bigoted shit during the appointment.
Imagining an analogous situation for race, I would consider a doctor of color absolutely within their right to tell a patient to leave the premises until they change out of their “god hates ${n_word}s” shirt.
I think it’s really weird to see a therian say “it must be nice not living in reality”. Hasn’t the cultural lionism of objective physicality hurt the Otherkin community enough? We’re constantly criticised for not agreeing with others’ perceptions.
Huh? In this screenshot @Milo_H4 has posted a transphobic prejudice, to which @patternscreamr2 responded with an opposing anecdote. I don’t see how this is relating to the Otherkin community at all or if that’s just a trigger phrase for you. I just really don’t think it would be desirable to allow anyone to claim fuck all about anything
@patternscreamr2 is a therian. That’s what theta delta in the username means.
What otherkin (including therians) and trans people have in common - and I speak from experience as both - is that the world doesn’t perceive us the way we want to be perceived without a lot of work. Bigots are constantly claiming that our body has some essential, objective nature that we can’t change. They say their perceptions are reality.
The antidote to transphobia and kinphobia alike is the fact that our perceptions are socially constructed. We have the power to change them. Consensus reality is just a bunch of sensory data we’ve decided to interpret a particular way due to culturally bound semiotics. “Objectively”, humans are fish and sexual dimorphism is a mutation. We’re all just mutant fish if you’re seeking objectivity in science. But science isn’t objective, it’s subjective. Beliefs are independent variables, and uncontrolled, they change the outcomes of our experiments. Pretending that observer bias doesn’t exist is intellectually dishonest. We’re creatures of perspective, we can’t do science without a subjective point of view to interpret it. Look at the Ugly Duckling theorem, which argues that objective categorisation is mathematically impossible. Science is based on our nonscientific beliefs, and that’s okay.
What we need to do is choose kind and just beliefs, and examine what the science says when we interpret it using those. @patternscreamr2 is not a human. Chuds say they are, according to objective reality, and they’re wrong. Pattern Screamer is an animal, and we believe that because it’s the kind thing to believe. There is no objective answer, there’s just kindness and cruelty. Choose kindness.
Bigots are constantly claiming that our body has some essential, objective nature that we can’t change
That’s not bigotry though, that’s just science and objective reality. Calling it bigotry is no different than conservatives calling science “woke.”
It’s possible to literally alter your sex. Every human being is conceived with the full genetic potential to grow every single male or female primary or secondary sex characteristic or organ. How you develop is based on what hormones you’re exposed to in different phases of development. When a trans person goes on HRT, they are merely activating their latent genetic potential. They’re simply accessing previously dormant portions of their genetics.
But animals? Sorry. You do not have the genetic capability to grow into an animal. Yes, you can say that humans are descendants from other animals, but we’re still humans. You don’t have the genetic potential to turn into the fish that we evolved from. Calling us “mutant fish” is reductive and completely useless in describing actual human beings.
You’re doing sophistry. You’re stretching the definition of words so far that they don’t remotely resemble how those words are actually used in the real world. You’re effectively inventing your own language and then using it to justify points. It’s just circular logic and reasoning. Yes, we are sensory creatures. But that doesn’t mean objective reality - the shared experience that doesn’t go away when we stop believing in it - doesn’t exist.
You’re using the phrase “unscientific,” while literally denying the existence of objective reality. You are, by definition, engaging in unscientific behavior. Science is nothing but probing objective reality.
Show me a hormone pill or shot that you can take that will activate your body’s latent potential to take on the characteristics of another animal, and I’ll believe you have a point. Until then, it’s comical to claim that trans people and otherkin are remotely comparable. One is grounded in reality and seeks to harness human biology to produce development that everyone already has the genetic potential to activate. The other? There’s nothing remotely comparable.
The other key difference is that there is actually a logical justification for how someone can literally end up with a brain of one sex and a body of another. It’s entirely reasonable that if there’s a part of the brain that imparts gender identity, that when you’re in utero, you simply ended up growing the version that normally occurs with the opposite sex. People are born intersex. The brain is sexually dimorphic. A neurological intersex condition is entirely reasonable. And studies have backed this up. There is simply nothing comparable for human/animals. There is absolutely no way for a human being to grow the brain of a fox in utero.
The two situations are utterly incomparable. What exactly is the proposed developmental pathway that would cause a human being to be born with the brain of a cat?
You’re awfully concerned with biology. Genes this, pills that, brains the other. I think minds are more interesting than bodies. I like psychology, sociology, anthropology. Therian identities have always existed in various cultures. We have records of them going back thousands of years. Some cultures even promote identity schemas which I would be inclined to describe as “therian”, for the political benefits they bring. You should learn more about that kind of technology. The mind is really quite adaptable. Cultural constructs have a tremendous power to influence its development. We raise humans and dogs together, exposing developing minds to so much information about “dog” as a social category of being. It’s no wonder so many therians are dogs.
You’d really be less invalidating to others if you used questions, rather than accusations, when you come across a new queer identity you don’t understand.
I think what you’re describing isn’t science being subjective (imo it is the most objective thing humans have made - if done right), it’s that a full definition of something just isn’t possible because the world isn’t black and white. The subjective thing is where science intersects with philosophy. For example:
- science: how humans have evolved over time
- philosophy: what defines being human
In that sense, it scientifically very much is possible and plausible for something to be scientifically more and less human on a scale in comparison to what philosophy says a human is.
The exact same way how gender isn’t M or F, a living being doesn’t have to be exclusively Human or non-human.
According to science the body temperature of humans is petty consistent. We could use philosophy to declare this as the defining trait of what is human. This way we can now already compare how human everything is on a scale!Just by looking at a thermometer!
We can make objective measurements of temperatures, but do you think these measurements would hold any objective meaning over how human something is⸮ Of course not. Our definition of humans was entirely subjective and flawed on top. There is no way to objectively define humans, it would all be based on your subjective perception.
And since we don’t have objective definitions for such things, it would be pretty rude to tell the shadows on the wall what they are or aren’t casted by, especially when they tell you otherwise. Even if you’re not trying to stuff everything into a neat little box.
That’s a fair viewpoint. But when I say science is subjective, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m saying it’s an opportunity. We have so much to learn about the science of subjectivity. My hobby is developing new technology that works by manipulating subjectivity. Subjective technology. Rewriting perception through belief. You know, magic.
Magic is a really important field of technology for trans people and otherkin, because the subjectivities we’re forced to endure are so dysphoric. By creating tools to change our perceptions of ourselves, and our perception of others, we can create perceptual justice in the areas where biological technology isn’t there yet.
The Freedom of Form Foundation is doing really fascinating work to create prostheses for therians… But I’m not willing to wait for cyborg tails and genetically engineered fur. That’s thinking too small, too conservatively. Too realistically. Abandon the philosophy of realism, and we can do more. I’m a goddess in the astral plane, and My glamours, illusions, and rhetoric are expressing My species to those around Me. And I’ve been helping My community with this stuff, too.
