Navigating healthcare: Top tips from trans people, for trans people
trans means you move through much of the world in a way cis people will never understand.From dealing with necessary yet traditionally gendered procedures, such as cervical smears and prostate checks, to gender-affirming procedures, that goes double when it comes to healthcare.
As Joanne Lockwood, the founder and CEO of SEE Change Happen and a diversity and inclusion specialist, tells Metro.co.uk: ‘Trans healthcare is, in most cases, a complex and daunting process and sometimes finding the right provider or getting the care you need can be a challenge.’We thought Pride would be a particularly good time to get some advice by trans people for trans people on how to navigate the complexities of healthcare.
Your body isn’t wrong – society’s perception of what your body means is the thing that’s wrongRuben, a 27-year-old trans man, knows first-hand that waiting lists for gender clinics can be very, very long. ‘With private trans healthcare at an exorbitant cost,’ he adds, ‘I know that getting that referral and waiting for appointments, or hormones, or surgery is frustrating, to say the least. ‘I know there are moments where the dysphoria is so bad that you want to claw your way out of the skin that you’re in, just to be free of it. ‘I know there are days when you present as your gender, and you’re so confident that this time they’ll have to get your pronouns right, and instead strangers hand you the wrong ones, and you have to smile and act like it’s fine when it feels like a gut punch. ‘I’ve been there.
Some days, I’m still there.‘I don’t know how, but somewhere along in my own waiting, I found a poem by Ollie Schminkey that helped me reframe the way I think about my body.
