I think People think a person just wakes up and decides to be transgender…
The newspaper headline reads, “Gender identity clinic
services under strain as referral rates soar” like it is our fault we identify
as transgender.
Such headlines sell papers and get airtime I guess but there is
another side to headlines like that, as the funding for all NHS care becomes
squeezed and people are denied care and treatment for various conditions. It is
easy to target a venerable sector of the population isn’t it? (In the UK
approximately 650,000 people that’s about 1% of the population, are estimated
to experience some degree of gender non-conformity)
With some new GIC patients waiting up to four years for
appointments figures show referral increases of up to several hundred per cent.
The increase in referrals to gender identity services runs parallel with
society hopefully becoming more accepting of transgenderism.
The number of Britons seeking gender identity treatment
has shot up dramatically in recent years, leaving vulnerable people waiting
years for a specialist appointment. They unfortunately become trapped in a
situation that can be devastating to them and their families. Most GP’s will
not know or understand what this situation feels like to the transgender
person, just waiting having their whole life on hold. Waiting for the first of
many appointments with months between each appointment and medical evaluations
and assessments made before any hormone treatment is granted only then can the
transgender person start their slow transition from male to female or female to
male. There is the additional period of living in role that has to be completed
on top of the wait to see the Consultants in the GIC’s.
It is not a short journey you embark upon when you
identify as being in the wrong body, it is not a whim or a phase this rise in
the numbers of people seeking to transition it is just human development. As we all develop a greater understanding of
who we are and how we feel, and how we should be viewed in the world by
everyone else, plus the development of
western society to move away from the binary thought of male/female, to having
a third gender where we accept that a person is able to change from one gender
to another in order to continue to live.
Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act
reveal increases in the number of referrals to all of the UK’s 14 gender
identity clinics (GICs) in recent years, with a number of clinics experiencing
increases of several hundred percent.
At Charing Cross in London, the oldest and largest adult
clinic, the number of referrals has almost quadrupled in 10 years, from 498 in
2006-07 to 1,892 in 2015-16.
A clinic in Nottingham reported a 28-fold increase in
referrals in eight years, from 30 in 2008 to 850 in 2015. It expected this to
increase to more than 1,000 referrals during 2016.
The Laurels clinic in Exeter has seen a 20-fold increase
in referrals in a decade, from 31 in 2005-06 to 636 in 2015-16.
Referrals to Sheffield’s clinic went up from eight in
1998 to 301 in 2015.
At a GIC in Leeds, referrals tripled from 131 in 2009-10
to 414 in 2015-16. The increase put such a strain on the service that last
October it estimated that new patients would have to wait four years for their
first appointment.
While the clinic in Daventry, Northamptonshire, which I
attend, has had a five-fold increase in the past year alone, up from 88
referrals in 2014-15 to 466 in 2015-16. The latest figures released by the
trust shows that most people attending their first appointment with the clinic
this month had their referral accepted over 40 weeks earlier.
My only hope is that the government doesn’t put the
squeeze on the funding that covers the gender clinics as suicide rates in the
Transgender community is already way to high and cutting the funding for
clinics, medication and surgery will leave people feeling all is lost and
suicide an answer to their sufferings, which we know it isn’t.
Leaving the EU and triggering article 50 may have an
impact on the lives of transgender people living in the UK, It’s down to the UK
government to raise the bar on Equality and set an example for the rest of
Europe to look up to and to follow.