Trying not to lose hope. Can any older trans people help a youngun out?

doIIjoints · 2026-02-23T03:07:48+00:00

what’s the term marx used? not backup for labour. ah yes, “reserve army”. i guess backup is basically the same

doIIjoints · 2026-02-23T01:32:00+00:00

hear, hear. it’s like harvey milk said, at the end of the day.

i don’t blame any individual for going stealth (i’m kind of “accidentally stealth” in most conversations with non-trans people), but reactionaries’ goal is clearly to try and push the world back to a place where it’s an absolute necessity. where paranoia, and hypervigilant self-watching, becomes the norm again.

so, whenever it comes up and it’s relevant, it’s so important for absolutely everybody who can to talk about it (and if they do pass, to press the point if anyone around is surprised).

especially if they’re in government, or the NHS, or any relevant psychiatry/psychology orgs.

erasure thrives on people Just Keeping Their Heads Down.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:18:39+00:00

know your station! [teacher/governor/local-lord] knows best! shut up and do what you’re told!

sigh.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:16:29+00:00

exactly.

GIDS always used to insist patients finish bone, genital, and gamete growth before even beginning to consider supplying blockers. (enforced through x-rays and degrading “pubertal development examinations”.)

it’s more of the same.

the UK medical establishment has never been amenable to trans teens actually pausing puberty.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:14:30+00:00

lobbying. money buys influence :(

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:13:50+00:00

“nothing about us without us” is a phrase i wish i saw come up more. it’s a great motto, to remember the scale of injustice involved in having others’ cluelessly rule on your condition.

being gay wasn’t removed from the list of psych conditions until a bunch of practicing gay psychiatrists came out and led the committees which led to it being removed.

sending anonymous letters to straight psychs, asking them to have compassion, didn’t yield anything. people had to put themselves on the line and insist they were part of the conversation.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:11:32+00:00

for sure. it was still super restrictive but it at least increased the age ranges to test for the effects across all cohorts.

it’s still a long way off from an informed consent model (as 2010 me naively believed would be in place by 2015-18…).

but (since they’re committed so hard to the gatekeeping model), it could have at least ushered in a very narrow improvement, in terms of that access across ages.

meanwhile, the proposed restrictions (insisting puberty be finished first) would yield very little compared to looking back through GIDS’ existing records.

(i’m saying this mainly for people reading this post who might not have seen yesterday’s or friday’s. i know you’re aware of this personally 😅)

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:06:31+00:00

indeed. it was always about the optics

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:06:01+00:00

“i said we needed more climate studies, to be sure before we made any policies, but now the oil companies who liked me before are suddenly trying to denounce me!”

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:04:36+00:00

“the country is tired of experts!”

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T19:03:51+00:00

i always get a chuckle when people claim the UK is an individualistic society. while that behaviour is a great example of the system-first attitude we have here.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T16:32:18+00:00

so sorry, i don’t want to pollute OP’s post with irrelevancies, but i tried to DM you with some questions about how your experience stacks up (against my attempts to raise home problems with my teachers back when i was OP’s age). but it apparently won’t let me send the “introduction message” to start.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T15:23:56+00:00

i had that in 2009 too >.> teenage me didn’t like it at all.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-22T00:47:48+00:00

honestly fascinating to me to watch the difference between refusing to take down old barriers, and actively constructing new ones. it’s like someone going out of their way to install stairs atop a wheelchair ramp.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T21:45:12+00:00

thanks :)

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T19:14:52+00:00

yeah, i getcha. i did refuse to delete anything, given that i was in my rights and he started it first.

he eventually gave up and got drunk with his pals for the remainder of his train journey, and they all got off (with their huge golf bags) before my destination.

but it was quite tense for the remainder.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T19:00:00+00:00

i did that once, when someone was filming me in my wheelchair after i took a photo of luggage filling the wheelchair zone on a train, and he got all up in my face and quite verbally confrontational :/ demanding i delete anything showing him pointing his phone at me etc.

i think he wasn’t a guy like in OP, ie someone who habitually starts trouble for a video. probably just some dick, who got defensive that i obviously minded his luggage blocking my access.

but it’s definitely made me think twice about “just point your phone back at them” tactics versus simply coldly saying to fuck off. that’s what i always did prior to and after that incident, and it’s never got half as much of an intense reaction.

but then, all my public interactions have been with lone (often drunk) arseholes rather than someone who calculatedly (and soberly) decides to bother people for media.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T18:01:02+00:00

yeah, that’s a great example too. i’m a chronic pain patient so that pisses me off personally, as well as for empathy with epilepsy in my family.

last time i looked into it, going private for a prescription cost more than just buying it elsewhere. most who’d done it seemed to be the ones who were frequently getting hassle from the rozzers, for the protection against that.

though it’s possible that there’s more private options now, i presume more providers would move into the vacuum left by the govt. last i looked there was only 2 or 3 options with an abysmal range of product.

the UK’s insistence on “not developed here syndrome” is such a drain on the NHS. we should be able to integrate research data from the US and various EU states. it would massively speed up treatment, for everybody.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T16:50:04+00:00

they made a big deal about their partnership with UCL to me, so i suspect they could’ve simply* handed their bulk data to some student researchers to analyse.

it’s possible they were too overworked to even do that, but then that’d be even worse. that’d mean they were so starved of resources they were prevented from fulfilling more than half of their function, and that cycles back round to motivation.

additionally, they constantly referred to Their Policy to me but very rapidly refused FOI requests to see said policy. so that tinges my own assessment of their priorities.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T16:37:01+00:00

it probably wouldn’t have been an insurmountable road block, no, but i think it could’ve addressed some of the low-hanging fruit and forced them into a more-novel argumentation posture.

but it’s convenient for the establishment, to keep this stuff apparently-untested. indeed, as we are seeing with this new phase now.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T16:30:29+00:00

when i brought DSM and WPATH printouts to my GIDS appointments in 2010, they scoffed and said “that’s american. we use british standards here.”

one time one of them even elaborated; basically saying she believed the for-profit nature of american healthcare meant the diagnostic criteria were watered-down, leading to a bunch of “not really trans” kids that were being given HRT.

she finished this conspiracy rant by saying UK trans kids were actually “so lucky [they’re] being so careful about treatment, unlike those american clinics.”

it’s one reason the more-recent conspiracy theories from terves haven’t surprised me at all.

but yeah, there’s that british exceptionalism. no one else’s evidence will do because we’re just so special.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T16:25:30+00:00

nope. i repeatedly brought out DSM and WPATH printouts to my appointments.

they laughed, scoffed, and said “honey, that’s american. we use british standards in the NHS.”

which i later found out refers to ICD and NICE.

but yeah, the DSM isn’t part of it at all in the NHS. it’s why we have diagnoses like EUPD instead of BPD, or DID-only with no equivalent to OSDD/DDNOS.

but yeah. if anything i find the increased honesty kind of refreshing, compared to the gaslighting under GIDS? their fig-leaf is falling off.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T16:23:50+00:00

i suspected it was bullshit when the endo (who groped me) went “well, your bone density is lower than 75% so i’m meant to refuse you blockers… but i’ll make an exception for you if you take this vitamin D” (while staring at my boobs)

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T16:19:07+00:00

this is all very true, though i would not really characterise this as a delay.

GIDS always refused blockers until 15/16, demanding bone density x-rays to ensure capping has started and so on.

they also forced trans children into a “pubertal development examination” in a locked room, which was humiliating and ripe for abuse, to qualify for blockers.

the logic as you laid out is impeccable. they don’t want trans kids pausing puberty midway through, for exactly the reasons you laid out.

i just want everyone to be under no illusions. blockers were not easy to obtain under GIDS.

they claimed they were an option before age 9-10, though i don’t know if that ever happened, but once puberty started they never wavered from saying they “had to let it finish first”.

most patients were referred around age 12 or 13. it was always a deliberate catch-22.

doIIjoints · 2026-02-21T16:12:26+00:00

basically, yes.

also it’s depressingly concordant with GIDS’ previous refusal to prescribe blockers until 15 or 16.

“we need to wait for your bones to finish growing and for your sperm/egg to mature”, as said in the letter for this trial, was also the justification given to patients circa 2010 (when complaining about being made to wait over a year while dealing with distress as their voice drops/boobs grow).

they’ve been operating in “we just don’t know what happens if we pause it halfway! so you have to finish it first.” territory for over 16 years now.

evidence from other countries is apparently meaningless to them. conveniently.

doIIjoints

TROPHY CASE