NHS Open Consultation on Gender Identity Services

[Usui101]

The NHS has opened a consultation on Gender Identity Services, this is your opportunity to directly impact future policy in this area regardless of which side of the fence you sit. If you are interested in taking part and helping to shape policy by sharing your views please do participate at:

www.engage.england.nhs.uk/survey/gender-identity-services-for-adults/

Thanks - have responded. You don't have to fill in every section - you can just respond where you think it's relevant.

Thanks for the link

Thank you. Have also responded.

I note that there is no way of separating out women's responses from those of trans women, since the only option given is 'female including trans women'.

'Sparkle' weekend!
But I have filled it.
Thanks

Disappointed that there are not more responses to this vital piece of public consultation on NHS policy to potentially reduce age of sex change surgery to 17 in the UK especially considering the number of trans threads on these boards

I think I saw it referred to elsewhere on MN today by some regular posters. Hopefully the word is being spread. Thanks again.

People may have responded to the survey, then not posted on this thread.

To be honest I'm struggling with it a little both because I don't quite understand it and second because it uses language and presupposes a mindset that I simply fail to share. To the latter end, I feel more inclined to challenge its premises than to respond to them and by responding I feel compromised - almost as if I am being complicit in agreeing with its premises and mindset.

Yetanother Could you respond by saying exactly this in one of the comment boxes?

I'll do this tonight, thanks Usui.

Yetanother Could you respond by saying exactly this in one of the comment boxes

I could ... but then I worry that they will simply bin my response.

Reading through the consultation document it worried me that the main stakeholders (aside from HCPs) that this was aimed at were trans people. OK, well and good, but what about people with sex/body/gender dysphoria / dysmorphia who don't identify as trans or wish to transition? It was all about the supply of drug and surgical therapies and when / how this should be done and by who. It was not about adequate care for those who wanted other treatments. Yet, I'm not convinced that there is a real evidence-base for the limited treatments they are advocating. A lot seems to be hog-tied by equality principles and their interpretation of these seems to be that anyone who is gender questioning must be trans by definition. I'm further concerned by their fairly blase use of the term 'binary', as if this was real. This (to me) threatens women's equality by suggesting that gender is a fixed binary - but I know I won't get anywhere pointing this out because the only protected characteristic they really care about is trans.

I see where you're coming from Spartacus.

I think Question 15 (the open ended one) is the one we should focus on - maybe we could describe the experiences of posters such as the one formally known as Elsa who have children who experience dysphoria and for whom anything they are advocating would be counter-productive. Otherwise, I'm at a loss to know how to respond to really loaded questions like 'who should provide prescriptions for hormone therapies' when the answers presuppose that this is the solution and where the options seem to be 'a dedicated clinic' (which has likely drunk the cool-aid) or GPs - who may not really understand the issues or who may feel arm-twisted to prescribe even if they have reservations by the aforesaid equality principles.

I posed a scenario recently for a group of people who would likely come in contact with young people identifying as trans or experiencing dysphoria and who might be in a position to provide non-clinical based support for these people. The scenario involved a young man (14) who had just come out the closet as gay and who was seeking most support on the internet and who was gradually changing his dress and habits and one day announced he was changing his name / pronoun preference and a week later asked you for help in accessing drug therapies. The almost universal reaction (apart from silence and one person bravely saying 'er maybe they should seek counselling) was 'of course they should have access to therapies ASAP or they will kill themselves'. I asked about knowledge about the therapies, their physical and psychological impacts and side-effects and no one knew anything. I didn't push anything else. I simply said - 'well before you find yourself in contact with such a YP I suggest you do some research and thinking - and not using tumblr or reddit'. Not entirely relevant here except that such non-clinical support people are also likely to be filling out the survey and very few will have done the research / switched their brains on. The bias and presuppositions of the survey really do concern me.

Where possible I went for the "neutral" option on the multi choice question e.g. don't know/not sure. Where that was not an option, I wrote in the boxes that my preference was not available and gave a lengthy explanation in the text boxes to explain why. I also asked that NHS support be made available to parents/guardians of young people who are gender critical as there is no available support for families torn apart by this ideology.