Notices by skye 🏳️‍⚧️ he/him (skye@toot.cat), page 2

because this whole system of gatekeeping is one of the biggest factors pressuring trans people into being a very specific TYPE of trans, because if we cannot prove that we are this exact kind of trans and that our experience is precisely this one, then transition steps are categorically withheld, even those we want and need.

there is societal pressure for this too, of course, but this is much easier to navigate than being pushed into this kind of pattern, ESPECIALLY in a context of THERAPY.

and the thing that makes me so furious is that the gatekeepers, the therapists, the doctors, the psychiatrists, the people doing the assessments, they have no fucking clue that they are doing this. they swear tooth and nail that they don't influence anyone. not exerting any kind of pressure.

and they refuse to see that their role AS GATEKEEPERS is the very thing that creates this dynamic and this pressure.

it's a test that you have to pass. you have to prove that you're really trans.

and so, yeah, a lot of people internalise this. sometimes the pressure is more direct. if you don't pursue X treatment then Y treatment will not be accessible to you at all.

sometimes it's just lowkey, if you're not sure if you want X treatment, please convince me that you are trans anyway in 29 seconds before I decide that you're not

so the whole idea of informed consent treatment, and informed consent name/gender changes, is to allow people to make these choices MORE FREELY. it REDUCES pressure and allows people to take however much time they want to make decisions, without having to justify it, without having to fight for the other things that they need

so when people demand to put a lot of scrutiny on people wanting to do transition steps, demand to make absolutely sure that this is exactly the right thing by having them go through assessments and evaluations and waiting times and trial periods and so on and so forth, to make sure that they don't make serious mistakes

they are so fucking clueless that they don't realise that this system of pressure and approval is a HUGE factor for people making these types of mistakes in the first place

like there is no study on this because a system without gatekeeping and pressure does not exist.

but literally every single story of transition-related regret I read is either
a) person got what they asked for but are still dysphoric
or b) person was put unter pressure to pursue treatments they didn't want

and more often than not in the b) type stories the people whose task is gatekeeping are also the ones doing the pressuring. I actually think in every single story like this that I've seen (where it wasn't social pressure) it was a therapist/counselor that did it, or their offices (like "if you don't get X treatment you cannot get further counseling")

I'm not even going to start arguing with rates of regret of drastic life changing and often disabling procedures like knee surgeries, spinal surgeries, or gastric bands compared to the extremely low rates seen in transition related surgeries.

this argument becomes redundant once you realise that this, what, 1% regret rate? consists to the largest part out of botched surgeries as well as the effects of the system designed to "protect trans people from themselves"

it's a self reinforcing system. more gatekeeping => more pressure => more bad choices => more regret stories => more gatekeeping