November 2, 2007
twiddling of thumbs
For a couple of years now, every time I use my credit cards I look at them and think, "Oh, I really should do something about that", but … prone to laziness and why put off today what I can put off tomorrow also? So I went into the bank a couple of weeks ago and presented my two pieces of plastic and said, "There's something wrong with my cards".
She looked at them, paused, a silent hmmm of thinking and comprehension and said, "Oh, yes … are these your cards?" and after the usual cursory identity check still really couldn't work out what was going on, so I had to say, "Is there somewhere private we can discuss this?" I always feel like I should be Tilda Swinton as some stratospherically expensive fin de siècle demi-monde when I say that.
I suppose it never seemed that important somehow, to remove the 'Mr' from my cards. No one really looks that closely anyway, and if it ever became a point of conversation - it never did - I presumed I could always claim joint accounts or something … or something. I also thought it could possibly be a somewhat lengthy process requiring all sorts of identification, papers that currently and for three years have resided unobtainable in a storage facility somewhere in Melbourne. It was a lack-of-current-hassle versus potential-large-hassle if I went into the bank attempting to amend it. Easier to do nothing, no?
When I got my passport, they rang and in the kindest possible manner offered me a dash "–" instead of an 'M". I have to have some sort of 'irreversible' surgery to attain the magic 'F". I told them no thanks (to the dash, I mean) and airports have always been my home away from home.
The bank, once our private conversation concluded was quite happy to give me the appellation of my choosing, and new cards within a week or so. About as worthy of mentioning as any other bureaucratic proof-reading.
Then I got to go to the doctor.
It's worth comparing the ease with which I change genders at a bank compared to within the medical system in Australia.
It's been two weeks since I wrote the first part to this, I wasn't sure how to conceptualise the aggravation I find generally in the Australian medical system and more specifically in South Australia. There are a lot of nice people I've come across in the world of transsexual medicalisation, but … I sometimes make an analogy that if a technician at NASA was responsible for a space probe going astray, they wouldn't get to keep their job because, "Oh, they're a nice person".
Two weeks on, after that visit to the doctor, I have to call them, and receive a slightly abrupt and quizzical response. Why am I calling? Where am I? Well, I'm in a car, actually. I'm calling because you were supposed to write a letter of reference to the Gender Dysphoria Clinic or whatever-the-fuck stupid name it has so I can possibly waste a couple more years of my life trying to prove I'm worthy of the magic get-out-of-jail-free card that is the psychiatrists letter permitting me to have surgery. Whether or not I even want to have surgery as I'll explain later.
Until a year ago, I was on weekly injections that for the most part made the whole thing only a minor irritation. I could get several repeat prescriptions at once and so not have to worry about hormones for several months at a time. Good for when I was an airport itinerant. For some unknown to me reason, the injections ceased to be imported and I went onto a variety of pills that were not so gentle on my body or emotions until I came to Adelaide and found myself forced into the tranny system.
It's maybe worth a small diversion into history. I first approached a Gender Dysphoria Clinic in Auckland when I was in my late teens and pretty desperate. After an initial couple of assessments I was informed I was way too complicated to be admitted to the programme and subsequently was shuffled through a host of psychiatrists each worse than the one before. Boring.
Lucky I had a very nice and also competent GP who knew exactly what was going on and had no problem entering the slightly grey medico-legal area of prescribing me hormones, which also meant I didn't have to endure the gatekeepers of the Clinic.
Some time later, when I was about to start VCA, I went through more-or-less the same thing. I saw someone from the Clinic in Melbourne, who pronounced me in no way feminine nor transsexual. Lucky again I had a very nice and also competent GP to whom there was no doubt as to what I am, and who saw no moral issue in making sure I was taken care of.
So arriving in Adelaide, I had three months of not being able to find a GP here who was in any way helpful, and finally stumbled on the one I had the phone conversation with yesterday. I don't know really how to elaborate on this without plummeting into a self-piteous diarrhea of blog post. Lets just say they like to do it by the book here. The book being Harry Benjamin Standards of Care.
Without getting too involved, it means that if I want to ensure a continuing supply of hormones, I have to submit myself to the Centre here. Submit in the sense of a couple of years with a psychiatrist who I may or may not get on with probing Freud's internal theatre. Interestingly, a psychiatrist in the US recently testified that "a person born anatomically one gender who wants to be the other does not suffer from a disorder but rather has a "biologic condition."" I don't need a psychiatrist when I sprain my ankle, so why do I need one because I might be transsexual? Oh, that'd be Harry Benjamin's Standards of Care.
(As an aside, whether I am or am not transsexual is something I'm not really sure of, I use the term for sake of convenience and brevity rather than accuracy. I don't feel any sense of identification with other trannies, and rather see it as that I happen to be female with a body that is ambiguous enough to be somewhat male and in order for me to be happy with it need to pass through the same town that trannies live in, but I don't live there. I like to be complicated.)
I'm feeling rather exhausted from all this lately, apprehensive, that because of what I am I forfeit control over my life to people who run a programme I have utterly no faith in, who can decide whether I will continue to receive hormones despite their protestations it would be barbaric for them in my case to stop prescribing, and that in its entirety it contributes nothing towards what I want.
So, feeling angry and upset and probably going to regret posting this, but anyway going off to burn some churches if anyone wants to come along. I'll bring the matches.
November 3, 2007 12:17 AM
Beautiful, beautiful beautiful, you are indeed a woman. "gender is the repeated stylisation of the body.........................""doing"" with or for another even if the other is only imaginary".
Fuckin doctor fags! im up for church burning, always!!! i am so sad that they make it so difficult for someone to be who they are, you dont want or need your just you, an amazing inspiring woman who i love and am always so inspired by. P.s the people that give a shit to you feel the same.
See ya at class love you ssssssssssss........