An Urgent Plea for Medical Ethics in Trans Healthcare
Blending fashion choices with medical problems is a recipe for disaster
When did medicine become a playground for sociopolitical agendas? It's astounding how the very foundation of medical practice—evidence, diagnosis, and precise treatment—is being upended in the name of "inclusivity."
Disabilities are not a popularity contest, nor are they an arena for flaunting how woke or inclusive you are. This is about life and death—literal life and death—for those wrestling with transsexualism, a crippling medical condition characterised by extreme dissonance with one's biological sex. We're not talking about people who simply "feel" like the opposite "gender" or who casually proclaim, "I'm transgender." We're talking about individuals whose lives are dominated by the incessant anguish of seeing the wrong sex in the mirror — people for whom medical intervention is not a lifestyle choice, but a life-saving necessity.
Diluting Medical Urgency into Cosmetic Choices
Take the rallying cry of self-identification. While many argue that this is about "agency," it's a travesty for medical ethics. What self-ID effectively does is trivialise a complex and harrowing condition by reducing it to a matter of personal choice. By doing so, it erases the urgent need for medical intervention experienced by people with transsexualism.
The Dangers of Relativism in Medical Treatment
This isn't about being exclusionary; it's about preserving the efficacy and specificity of medical treatments. By allowing anyone to self-ID into a medical category, we're not just risking misdiagnosis; we're facilitating it. In an era of skyrocketing healthcare costs, this isn't just irresponsible—it's reckless. Imagine a world where self-diagnosis and internet-based symptom-checkers dictate who gets insulin or chemotherapy. Sounds insane? That's because it is.
The High Cost of Blurring Boundaries
The consequences of this lax attitude are severe. The conflation of common gender nonconformity with the profound suffering of transsexualism is causing immeasurable harm. We're seeing individuals pushed into treatments they might not need, and conversely, those in genuine distress are having their urgent needs downplayed or misunderstood.
Something is clearly wrong when a post discussing the nuances of transsexual healthcare from a firsthand perspective is abruptly removed from r/psychology without explanation. The post had substantial engagement and the conversation was civil. Why silence a critical discussion that's clearly of interest? Are we sacrificing intellectual rigour for convenient narratives? A forum for psychology should be a space for challenging conversations, not a vacuum where only 'acceptable' ideas are allowed.
It’s not 'Gatekeeping'; It's Safeguarding
The term 'gatekeeping' has been demonised as if it's some oppressive mechanism. It's not. It's the hallmark of any credible healthcare system. It's what prevents misdiagnoses, it's what ensures resources are allocated correctly, and it's what stops us from slipping down the perilous slope of subjectivity where anyone's self-perception dictates medical reality.
This isn't a game. Misdiagnosis isn't merely an inconvenience—it can have fatal implications. For every individual wrongly ushered into medical transition without genuine transsexualism, there's a potential for irreversible harm: surgical complications, mental health crises, and the haunting reality of realising that one's body has been altered based on a transient feeling or a societal fad. Meanwhile, actual transsexuals may find their access to necessary medical treatments delayed or denied due to overcrowded systems and muddled definitions.
Would you lobby against diagnostic criteria for cancer, mental illness, or any other medical condition? No, you wouldn't. Because you understand that false positives can lead to unwarranted treatments, which can wreak havoc—physically and psychologically.
Medical Ethics Aren't a "God Complex"
To those who say that advocating for medical rigour is tantamount to having a "god complex," consider this: the complex is not in wanting diagnostic clarity but in advocating for a system that allows anyone to play Russian Roulette with medical treatments. The real god complex lies in thinking that your sense of identity alone should dictate medical protocols.
A Call to Rescind the Recklessness
To the wider public, understand this: the current system isn't just flawed—it's dangerously broken. This isn't about denying anyone their 'truth', but rather about ensuring that medical practices around transsexual healthcare are rooted in evidence, not swayed by fleeting sociopolitical winds. Medicine exists to treat a problem, not chase a 'gender euphoria' high that won’t last.
And to my fellow transsexuals: we need to rally. The gloves need to be all the way off. It's time we stand up and demand recognition—not as pawns of a social-political ideology, but as individuals with a specific, medical condition. Only then can we hope to escape an ideological compactor that threatens us mercilessly from all sides.
Inclusion at What Cost?
Too much of what passes for 'trans activism' today is nothing but a self-serving sideshow, populated by 'allies' who do more harm than good and 'activists' more concerned with their own visibility than with the real-life struggles of transsexuals. This must end. This so-called activism, marinated in the misguided ideology of self-ID and "inclusivity," needs to be called out for what it is: an existential threat to those who genuinely suffer from a medically diagnosable condition.
The bottom line is this: we can't afford the romanticised, popular culture version of "trans" to overshadow, appropriate, or erase the dire realities of transsexualism. Lives are at stake, and it's high time we act like it. It's not about society's ever-shifting understanding of gender and identity; it's about accurately diagnosing and treating those for whom a failure to do so could be fatal.
So go ahead, call me divisive. Accuse me of gatekeeping. Because if upholding medical integrity and protecting lives is divisive, then divide we must.
Tired Transsexual is the pen name of an Anglo-American male-to-female transsexual who lives in the U.K. Her Twitter account is @tiredtransmed