An except from the article linked in my post above. I hope this young woman does find her way to a lawyer some day soon...
Grace: I told her the gist of it: I started my physical transition at age 23, was very depressed, didn’t see any other way forward, got hormones, got surgery — and then I realized I was going nowhere and my fantasy of becoming a happy man was impossible. I told her that I unequivocally regretted my surgery and hormones. I told her that the surgery had brought me pain, regret, and grief. I told her I wished I had known there were other ways to deal with gender dysphoria.
“It sounds like you needed someone to offer you something besides hormones and surgery. And I’m sorry that we didn’t provide that.” A beat. “But I don’t see that as my role.”
Carey: Ooof. It’s not her role to provide something besides hormones and surgery. I would’ve lost my shit. How did you not lose your shit?
Grace: Ha. Well. It was very infuriating. Whose role is it, then? What the hell?
I was there on a mission, though, in Friendly Detransitioner Ambassador mode. So I tried to play it cool so she wouldn’t get defensive. I asked her, who is going to let people know about alternatives, if not doctors or therapists? If that’s something we need to figure out on our own, who does she think is going to be telling us about that? She didn’t really answer that.
As the conversation continued, she became closed off. Her body leaned away from me and she looked very uncomfortable. I think she wasn’t expecting me to be so angry and hurt.
I asked her if she followed WPATH Standards of Care.
“Of course.”
I brought up that in WPATH, they say you should be screened for “anxiety, depression, self-harm, a history of abuse and neglect, compulsivity, substance abuse, sexual concerns, personality disorders, eating disorders, psychotic disorders, and autistic spectrum disorders.” I mentioned that if I had been screened and treated for, for example, eating disorders, depression, and possibly compulsivity, that would have helped me a lot to lessen my gender distress.
She replied ”the Standards of Care is a guideline that was never meant to be hard and fast.”
When I asked her if she thought there was any way to tell in advance if someone could benefit from transition, she said that there probably wasn’t, and they just had to try it and see. She said she wanted to err on the side of putting up too few “hoops” to jump through than too many. To her, if someone said they were trans, she believed them, and that was all she needed. “And you come to me and tell me you’re not trans, and I believe you now, too,” she added.
On the subject of diagnosing people with gender dysphoria/being trans, she said that she “decided early on that it [Gender Dysphoria] wasn’t a diagnosis she could make. Like I can’t determine whether someone doesn’t identify with the body that they were given.”
That stunned me. I asked her, so, who diagnosed me with gender dysphoria? She admitted that she did, in fact, write me the diagnosis. I have the paperwork.
So that was strange. It seemed really bizarre that she would say verbatim that she couldn’t diagnose gender dysphoria but that she did it anyway. I wondered to myself: what would a lawyer think of this? I mean, I certainly misdiagnosed myself as someone who would benefit from transition. I won’t deny that. But she’s the doctor. Are patients expected to be able to diagnose themselves accurately for, say, schizophrenia or breast cancer, and receive treatment with no questions asked?