An afternoon at the Vrije Universiteit Gender Clinic

From my experience, there’s a large stigma in the transsexual community attached to admiting that thigs aren’t easy for you. The idea seems to be that adapting to the gender-role of your target gender should be really simple, and if it isn’t then that means that you aren’t really that gender and aren’t really transsexual. It’s all very messed up, especially when combined with the fact that many transsexuals have grossly exagerated views of what gender-roles should be like.

There’s also something of a pressure to lie to psychiatrists in order to present yourself as a very clear-cut case when in fact there may be many shades of grey involved, as otherwise you risk being turned down for hormones, surgery, etc.

(all of this from my own personal experiences as a pre/non-operative male to something-or-other transsexual, in England)

Thanks for these posts from the Netherlands! I really enjoy hearing about your class and experience there. Sounds more interesting than me taking yet another children’s lit class this month. Ha ha. Hugs, N.

Like Nadia said, I’m just loving these “Live from Amsterdam” posts. It’s always great to hear about life in NYC, but this opportunity to see/hear/learn about sex in Amsterdam is providing, so far, fodder for facsinating posts for those of us not as lucky to be there. Best of luck “outing” other sex workers, or getting the other attendees to not treat you like you have a terminal illness or something. They should learn a lot from you.

Seems to me like the hardest part is the socialization aspect.

This post has reminded me that I have been neglecting my support board for SOs of transsexuals, and I feel kind of guilty about that. But you know, sometimes I just can’t handle such a constant inundation of other people’s pain… if that makes sense.

It’s a complicated thing! One of my friends (who was born a hemophrodite and whose parents decided to make he/she a he) was in the process of gender reassingment. He had to cross dress for a year (part of the rules in the States, he said) before they would perform the surgery. It was heartbreaking to hear him struggle with the whole thing; from peoples judgement and threats and him crying to me, “It’s not fair! I HAVE all those parts! They’re just sewn up! It’s not like they aren’t THERE!” Oddly enough, in the end he decided to not go through with it. Will he change his mind again? I don’t know. But I felt for him. It was so difficult.

Congrats to the Netherlands for having the wisdom to pay for such things.

“Cross-dressing for a year” is part of RLT, which stands for Real Life Test. And it usually is more than a year - although that varies from person to person. This is all part of the Benjamin Standards of Care, which are the accepted practices for patients undergoing transition - not just in the US, but anywhere. And RLT is much, much more than cross-dressing. Putting on women’s clothing does not make a man into a woman; it makes him a man in women’s clothing. RLT is about living as the gender with which the person identifies for an extended period of time - socialization is the most complex part, as I said earlier. All of this is to ensure that transition really is appropriate for the person. It is very, very necessary.

As an aside, my ex-husband is undergoing transition, MtF.

“It is very, very necessary.”

Depending on just how it’s applied, it can also range between pointlessness at best, and cruelty at worst. For instance, requiring a period of RLT before even starting hormone therapy strikes me as particularly counter-productive. With all the good will in the world, the vast majority of pre-hormone MtF transsexuals are going to look like men dressed in women’s clothing and will get treated as such by other people. Because of this, this time is entirely different to any time post-transition, and so doesn’t really test a whole lot of anything other than the person’s ability to jump through hoops.

I also have heard of people who are introverts and loners by nature, who have been forced to go out and socialise much more than they otherwise would do normally. They’ve then had trouble meeting the requiremements imposed on them not because of anything to do with gender, but because they just aren’t comfortable with that amount of socialisation.

Or there’s the argument that in many areas of western society, gender-roles are moving closer together, to the extent that the only real differences are what clothes you wear, what public toilets you use, and what letter you have on your passport. I’ve also heard about people forced into a gross parody of a woman’s gender-role in order to pass RLT, which would have anyone interested in women’s rights frothing at the mouth.

It is necessary, but it’s also far too often blindly administered without any real thought, and it can be truly harmful.

And going back to the original point, I suspect this is part of why a very limited view was put forward to Dacia et al at the gender clinic. It’s just too complicated otherwise, because everybody seems to have different ideas of what the process should be, why it should be like that, what individual elements are the most important, and so on.

RLT takes place after the person has been on hormone therapy for quite some time - anywhere from a few months to a few years. Again, it varies greatly from person to person.

I don’t have time to write more right now. I will come back later and comment further. I’m pretty initimately acquainted with all this stuff, having done significant research after my husband announced his desire to transition.

The support site I run can be found at sotsforum.net - although it hasn’t been updated in a while, as I’ve been crazy busy.

That’s how things ought to be done, but they aren’t always. The Benjamin Standards state that hormone therpay should not begun until there has been either at least three months of RLT or a substantial period of psychotherapy. Unfortunately, there are psychiatrists out there who feel that the RLT is preferable, and won’t prescribe based on psychotherapy alone.

I’m also well acquainted with this, having researched it a lot before seeking medical assistance for my own gender identity disorder about 5 or 6 years ago. I suppose it’s possible that things have changed in that time, and I sincerely hope that they have, but I doubt it.