Did I Self-Diagnose As Transgender? 

They were around. I’ve met some really old trans people. The thing was, they stayed quiet. The whole idea was to switch genders and go on with your life. No big fanfare. No fancy pronouns on your social media. No pride flags everywhere. If everyone knows you’re “trans” then everyone knows you’re not a real woman. And the whole idea was to be perceived as, and treated like, a real woman. (Or a real man. Women switched, too.) But then it got trendy. And all the young folk have to keep up with all the trendy crap their friends are doing. So now everyone is a genderfluid nonbinary cupcakegender with the pronouns “puppy/puppyself”. The only benefit I can see from all this is that it sort of (halfway) opened up a dialogue about what transgenderism actually is. So people like me who spent most of our lives being confused by our sexuality can have these eureka moments where we smack ourselves on the forehead and say “Ohhhhhh. Now I get it!” Maybe in another half a decade or so society will pull its head out of its collective arse and start having a conversation about how to address and process these feelings in a way that is healthy for individuals who have them. But right now that’s virtually impossible because all the trend-chasers would never dream of giving up all the power that comes with their coveted special snowflake status. I think that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

Google Magnus Hirschfeld.

Try reading up on the Tavistock gender clinic. A good practitioner is going to ask a lot of questions, give a person years of therapy to sort through the “why” behind their feelings (at the very least so that individual can feel confident when they make extreme medical decisions) and help heal any other problems that might be concurrent. The problem is that there are places where that system breaks down. Tavistock is a very well-documented example. It started out as a nice enough gender clinic. There’s a book about it, and I’m sure someone feeling nitpicky could read it and find flaws in the design before any real trouble started, but for the most part, Tavistock started off okay. Then ROGD happened. The number of patients coming to the clinic grew and grew. The clinic didn’t begin to have the infrastructure to deal with that many patients, so clinicians found themselves pressured to take on more patients than they could handle. And some of this didn’t seem so bad. The clinic was just supposed to be one more stepping stone on the path to transition. “See the therapist. The therapist signs a sheet of paper. You take the paper to the endocrinologist. The endocrinologist evaluates you for puberty blockers.” The clinicians were initially told that there were no negative side effects to the use of puberty blockers, so really there shouldn’t be any harm in green lighting patients to see the endocrinologist. So, when clinicians at Tavistock tried to slow down the process and meet with patients multiple times and talk to them about why they wanted to transition, they started receiving a lot of pressure from management (“why are you slowing this down? We have a waitlist.”), the family (“why are you slowing this down, I just want to get the blockers already”) and even support groups like Mermaids (who admittedly pressured the administration and not the individual therapists). Over time, Tavistock became like a wheel that spun faster and faster as it gained momentum. Every day more patients, less time. More pressure. And puberty blockers were supposed to be harmless, so just sign the paper already. And you might say, “Well, that was Tavistock, and the NHS healthcare system isn’t the same as private healthcare in the US.” But I think clinics in the US are struggling with similar problems. They’re getting inundated with new patients. The waitlists are ridiculous. Maybe some clinicians are being greedy, but it’s just as possible that some of them are overworked and overwhelmed and “it’s just one step on a very long road anyway. They’ll have plenty of time to change their minds as they go along.” Just sign the paper. And then there are individual anecdotes from both transgender and detrans individuals stating they gained access to blockers/hormones/surgeries very quickly. And anecdotes don’t necessarily prove anything, but when they line up very neatly with what was documented at Tavistock, one really has to wonder how many clinics throughout the US are performing dangerously subpar because they simply cannot carry the load that’s suddenly been thrust onto them.

@oakleavesandonions771 Thanks for the tip. I read up on it. Seems it's a gender clinic that's been around for 33 years and doesn't only deal with transgender. They've been struggling under the pressure of the demand increasing as social acceptance increases. The pressure isn't just to provide for thousands of patients per year, but to do so in a timely fashion, as you say. However, the waiting list is still three years long, and the psychological evaluation is up to ten sessions with over a month between each one, and that's even before any form of hormone treatments or puberty blockers are prescribed. Here are some of the details I found: One family therapist who recently left the service says taking puberty blockers has given some young people “thinking space” - and they have then decided to come off them. Another current Gids clinician says it’s the gender-affirming hormones that should be of greater concern. “I am still slightly dismayed that the focus is on hormone blockers when, as a clinician, I am much more anxious about young people accessing gender-affirming hormones, which are partially irreversible and change people’s bodies for the rest of their lives.” [...] The service’s data suggests only 16% of the people discharged from Gids in 2019-20 were referred to the endocrinology clinics that assess their suitability for hormone blockers. Of that 16%, 96% were prescribed blockers and 55% went on to be approved for gender-affirming hormones while at Gids - young people must have taken blockers for about a year, and also be around the age of 16, before they can be assessed for these. Before either of these things can happen, two gender specialists decide whether a young person can give informed consent to be referred in the first place - the service recommends four to six meetings but current staff say they actually have about 10. The endocrinology team then assesses and takes further consent for any physical intervention - most of the people staff see for their first appointment are aged 15 or over. [...] All the transgender young people the Guardian spoke to emphasised how damaging they were finding the public discourse. “The political climate is really disheartening,” says Jay, 24, from Warwickshire, “and the media presents this image of trans people being a threat to your everyday lives, whilst I’m scared about going to a pub with my colleagues because I don’t feel safe in either toilet any more. I would love to be out and proud every day, but at the moment that’s just not possible.” [...] Wren says that whatever service succeeds Gids it will have to deal with the same issues, and will doubtless face the same intense media and political scrutiny that she came under before she left two years ago. “People are in a frenzy about youth developing in certain directions, the legitimacy of changing your body, the rigidity of sex divisions, the way young people don’t fall into discrete groups when it comes to sexuality,” she says. “This is something we have to, as a society, begin to contend with, although the numbers of young people presenting in this way are still very small.” The impact on staff of this scrutiny means many are reluctant to speak about their work. “Having worked in child protection for ever,” Grant says, “I’ve never had a right of reply and the stories are not mine to tell, so I’ve found ways of managing that. “I’ve been prouder of saying that I work at Gids, possibly as an act of resistance, because it really matters that we are here for these kids”. --- It's also very much worth noting that both the UK and the US have seen a stark rise in right-wing, politically conservative views, especially surrounding the subjects of transgender (increased transphobia and transphobic propaganda), abortion (increased pro-life propaganda), mental health and welfare programmes (increased stigma). With a lot of media and politicians skewing in such conservative directions, it's unsurprising that gender-affirming clinics and clinicians are under heavy scrutiny. Meanwhile, people stuck in endless waiting lists are committing suicide because, even with fully supportive family and friends, they'd rather be dead than sexually develop or continue to live with the strong dysphoria they feel.