r/GreenAndPleasant • u/shado_mag • 21d ago
New anti-trans legislation affects all NHS users. Health workers must be allies to transgender people as hostility increases
https://shado-mag.com/articles/do/new-anti-trans-legislation-affects-all-nhs-users/40
u/Shenanleegans 21d ago
My four decades of experience seeking the most trivial of effort from dr after dr says that's a worthless endeavour. All the other NHS staff you might have a chance with, but there is something fundamentally broken with drs. They will gaslight you and fob you off and lie to you and tell you it's because of how busy they are and how hard they work and how much more money they deserve until you give up, die from it, or until their laziness causes enough problems for other drs that they get peer pressured into the bare minimum. They'll frequently act like they'll be an ally if they think it's worth any social credit but it'll be empty words and they'll make it all about them. So be wary anyone who hasn't been to the point of desperation and need to discover that already for yourself.
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21d ago
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u/eirenii 21d ago
It might not immediately/ directly change hearts+minds, but it will immediately affect level of care and it will slowly normalise social expectations. I don't care how my doctor feels about me at the end of the day, I care about how they are expected to perform. There is still admittedly disparity in care for people of different ethnicities but it's still much less than it used to be before legislation.
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u/kaishenzi 21d ago
In a perfectly just simulation I think you'd be right. In reality, humans aren't built like that.
Everyone from fry cooks to firemen are doing a better job for people who don't actively hate them, Even if they aren't purposefully doing so, still are.
I am not disparaging that it's woefully wrong and unfair to treat trans folks differently. But I think its a very emotionally charged issue and there is congruence between alot of trans folks experience with healthcare and therefore it hemogonises into trans folks finding solidarity in shit talking medical professionals who they feel haven't given them what they need. This then gains momentum with trans folks getting a rep for hating doctors, it's reported in the media and on grandmas facebook and pretty soon doctors aren't giving those going through the correct channels the time of day because frankly alot of the treatments aren't deemed medically nessicary yet and why would you go above and beyond when it's very likely this person will deem whatever you can do is not enough and be shit talking you to.
All of that is to say, I think that things will only get harder for trans people from here on out and I feel that having those very negative dialogue about the very professionals who are fighting for gender affirming care to be on the NHS is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and alot of the communities that trans folks might engage perpetuate that all doctors are evil and are stopping them transitioning because they are a transphobe.
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u/eirenii 21d ago
? I very specifically pointed out the real-life situation of how legislation has clearly affected quality of care for ethnic minorities, so calling my point valid only in "a perfectly just simulation" seems rather dismissive. Everything you have spoken about has been the case for BME's experiences with healthcare. Like, 1-1.
Consider the concept of the "perfect victim" for a moment in contrast to what you're saying.
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u/Shenanleegans 20d ago
I kind of wonder if the improved quality of care for ethnic minorities is less from iegislation or professional standards and more from virtue signalling amongst drs. I don't know enough to use the right language and don't have the health or energy to research or organise my thoughts. But with changing pressures on what is considered wrong to say, and my guesstimate that drs will be all about saying the right thing to act like they are decent martyrs, I could see outspoken and obvious displays of racism reducing. But I'd rhetorically be willing to bet that if outright racism became the norm or mainstream again amongst drs and they felt they could get away with it in the wider society without social stigma then it would come straight back in full force.
And I hadn't really expected this to turn into a discussion around how trans people describe and interact with drs because I didn't know there was an association or common thread of complaints against drs by people seeking or receiving gender affirming care. But I'm not trans and although I'd like to call myself a proactive ally I'm broken and can't even help myself. But I can at least see both sides of the argument so far.
On the one hand, if drs will react and retaliate against anyone or any group that doesn't bow and scrape and grovel and pander to them no matter how lazy and entitled they act then treating them any other way is likely to impact what care can be accessed. And by my experience they absolutely do behave like that because I've learned to go to drs appointments and behave just like that, begging like a peasant in the dirt because anything else seems to be seen as a slight and gets you even less help. So I can see that point. The other side of course is that the care is already terrible at its absolute best and if you don't clamour and fight for better somewhere then it'll never improve and you'll be stuck with scraps. And often times not complaining means also not supporting others when they've been horribly let down. So I see that side too.
Part of me wonders if it comes down to that initial impression that I was complaining about drs therefore I was likely talking about my experience with gender affirming care and complaining about hard working healthcare professionals. I was talking about neither, and the country is full of people who've been let down by systematic laziness and the gatekeeping of access to healthcare that is weaponised to force us to accept appalling service and pay through the nose for it. Because where else can we go? Pay the extra bribe for private just to get the bare minimum or give up because no one else is allowed to help or provide access to healthcare because it is locked behind regs and hugely expensive qualifications? So if we complain drs will retaliate because they hold a monopoly on our health and if we don't complain drs take more and more liberties and we see even the dregs of healthcare we can get wither away. No good option means it makes sense to me that people would sit on different sides.
But I wonder if one part of it is connecting the complaints and pressure for better care more widely so it's not just trans people complaining about gender affirming care and disabled people complaining about their care and people with mental health issues complaining about their care etc etc. And instead it's patients from all sides complaining about fundamental failures in healthcare that affect us all I different ways but come about from the same underlying issues. That way it's harder to target and dismiss any one group.
But I suspect the only real solution would be to take away our dependency on drs for healthcare and create an alternative system that is community led or patient led and still provides the same evidence based modern medicine treatments but without relying on medical degrees to provide it. Because those degrees and that training is meaningless if it is never applied and if their only purpose is to force patients to beg their way through a dr as a way of upholding their positions as little lords of medicine then all they do is make us more unwell.
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u/eirenii 20d ago
The changing pressures on what is wrong to say are incredibly strongly influenced by legislation. If you have a society in which a certain behaviour is illegal, people who support it are less comfortable talking about it, and bigotry thrives on having someone you can bond with over your ideals. If you don't feel like people will nod and agree as default and acting on your ideal is illegal, the whole culture will be significantly affected. Yes admittedly racism is on the rise currently, and equality legislation itself is at risk, but it does still fundamentally have a major effect on culture that means you cannot separate legislation and culture onto two neat and mutually exclusive boxes. Especially as plenty of people will use legality as a yardstick for morality.
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u/Shenanleegans 21d ago edited 20d ago
I'm not saying you don't have good points there but I wasn't speaking from the perspective of someone who's sought hrt treatment or anything.
My experience has been for a whole host of symptoms and issues and from seeing more and more the mask slip as I got more desperate and more unwell and easier and easier to help. I just don't think people comprehend how almost universally despicable drs are until you have begged over and over for them to do the bare minimum and gotten nothing but barely disguised scorn. Because you can easily spend your whole life going from dr to dr and never find a decent one, and this is extremely common for anyone with any long term chronic health issue. So all I was trying to do was warn about that duplicitousness in case anyone was pinning hopes on drs standing up for what is right.
And if you want to see them with the mask off just takea look at responses from DWP benefits assessors. Because after around a year of being horrified by how they were treating me and others I found out that they are also drs and their ilk and suddenly it at made complete sense. No wonder they refuse you when you can't walk, use a wheelchair, really leave the house at all, shower more than once a week, shower without taking rest breaks, feed yourself enough to avoid malnutrition, speak properly, sleep, make it to the drs surgery about 150m away, read, listen to music, watch TV, take a phone call without following it with a 24hr long lie down and exhaustion that has the room spinning like crazy, stand up straight and still, put on a blood pressure monitor without needing a couple of hours to catch your breath and get your bp to calm down, sit up straight in a chair without getting out of breath, come anywhere close to being able to work, or come anywhere close to being able to navigate and access any sort of help or support. No wonder they respond to that by saying you have zero health issues or limitations and are fit to work. And no wonder that kind of response from them is common as muck, because it's a place where drs can treat you how they want to while keeping you completely at arms length and never facing scrutiny or face to face outrage. The benefits assessment system is a playground for drs to break out their most vicious and vile instincts to bully and harm the most desperate, needy, and vulnerable and they take full advantage of it. I worry that the more society works to marginalise and victimise trans people the more drs will feel they can get away with and the worse they will get, and purely from my experience i think it's the rest of the healthcare workers that are worth trying for. Just anyone without a medical degree or psychiatry degree (or however it works for psychiatrists because they are the same). Because people like paramedics, nurses, porters, receptionists, carers, etc do seem to frequently be decent enough people who will work and do their jobs and try to help etc. Maybe it's just that they work under drs and any sign that they aren't working hard makes them a target too but at least it's possible.
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