Trivial - my laser hair removal experience

[CohensD]

I'm a really hairy woman. Thick, dark, coarse body hair (legs, stomach, etc) which would be more common on the opposite sex than on my own. But this is just one way in which females can differ from the average for other females.

A couple of years ago (after years of wrestling with either painful waxing or trying to not mind not fitting the mold), I got some laser hair removal, because there were some areas I just couldn't learn to love this hair on. It cost me over a grand (on some quite limited areas).
In the waiting room, I met a transwoman who was getting the whole lot done on the NHS.

Obviously, this is very trivial. But it really fucked me off. Just wanted to share, and this seems an obvious place 😁

At least you are a woman.

Yes, that's infuriating. I thought they weren't funding this anymore?

https://ncth.nhs.uk/hair-removal-patient

I don't know @ArabellaScott . This was about 3/4 years ago?

Indeed @BlueKaftan . And I don't fit some of the stereotypes for my sex. I'd quite like to look closer to my internalised image of who I'd like to be. Why won't the NHS fund me to realise this ambition? (Obviously I don't want it to really - I'd like NHS funding to go to treating/preventing illness).

That would be galling. I forked out for laser hair removal due to ongoing painful and unsightly ingrown hairs. I never even considered requesting it on the NHS. (It helped massively)

According to the lnk above the NHS are still potentially funding hair removal for trans people.

Slightly off topic but have you tried Phillips Lumea? It worked for me.

It wasn't available when i had my underarms done, but i have now got one and done my legs (the cost was too much for me to do my legs at the salon, so they had to wait about 10 years under trousers and long skirts)

Completely agree, I have felt guilty because my son has recently been diagnosed with an incurable, degenerative illness and requires lifelong NHS care now our health insurers won't cover him.
I wish I did not need their help but I do.

Dangerous game here. Should we rank treatment types that should be funded and not others? Quick path to a broken NHS.

Personally, I trust the clinicians at the NHS fund stuff that needs it.

And given it takes a trans person five+ years now a days to even get to see someone for help, then I dont begrudge a course of laser therapy that it probably took a decade to secure.

This is how the NHS already works... they don't just fund every single possible treatment in every situation. That truly would be a quick path to a bankrupt and broken service.

And given it takes a trans person five+ years now a days to even get to see someone for help, then I dont begrudge a course of laser therapy that it probably took a decade to secure.

It's almost as if some posters don't consult waiting list information for a variety of other health conditions.

https://www.uhsussex.nhs.uk/news/faster-diagnosis-process-for-women-with-endometriosis/ (Typically, 7-10 years for the diagnosis and it can be longer for treatment.)

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/rtt-waiting-times/

I recall that they won't fund hair removal for detransitioners.

The NHS is broken. It has taken me 10 years to get the diagnosis for my son after spending thousands on private clinicians.
It took 3 years to get him seen as an NHS patient for his condition.
He now has no feeling in his feet and loss of manual dexterity which would not have progressed so quickly with timely treatment.
He's one of the lucky ones.

Sounds like you need to re-read the OP. The issue is that it's the exact same treatment type! Only some animals being more equal than others - and as usual, the male ones. As pp state, no funding for detransitioners either.

That is disgraceful. Many years ago I had to pay £100s for electrolysis and my daughter recently £1000s for laser treatment. We both have PCOS!

I hear you. I have lipoedema, a fat disorder. Women with lipoedema statistically have horrendous mental health issues because of the lack of control over their bodies, how revolting their bodies seem to them, because of how everyone treats them due to their bodies. We get NO HELP to change the results of a physical disease. Why? Because we are mostly middle aged women, not penis havers.

To top it off, women with lipoedema who have fat removal report much better mental health long term after, whilst men who "transition" physically to resemble women more do not.

When I was passing out with a rush of hormones when my period kicked off (they get more intense in peri apparently) I was told by a female GP that not much was known about female hormones and could not help.

I’m having a really irritating and shit day. the cause being narcissist, self-centred, awful people. THIS post has just really been the icing on the crappy cake. I don’t even care if they no longer fund it. It should never ever have happened. And these individuals and the decision makers in the NHS who allow this bullshit should be forced to give every penny spent on their fantasy bollocks straight into the funds of kids who have cancers or degenerative diseases. Give them a hard look in the mirror. Alternatively, if the NHS wants to fund it still, they can also pay for all of the problems we face as women - like the OP says. But I guess we as actual women, females, whatever the fuck we get called now don’t deserve decent treatment. A man being sad he has male hair patterns deserves funding above a woman who struggles with abnormal hair…

Should we rank treatment types that should be funded and not others? Quick path to a broken NHS.
well, yes. That is EXACTLY how medical treatment subsidies work. They are assessed against others and deemed funded or not. Have you never had to use the nhs or are you just dim? Funding everything is the single speediest possible path to a broken nhs, except perhaps if they reidentified as a terrorist organisation and exhorted its staff en masse to bomb parliament. That might possibly be a faster route to failure.

Isn't it discrimination using the protected characteristic of sex, if someone born male can get a specific treatment on the NHS but someone born female (including detransitioners) cannot get exactly the same treatment?

It might also be covered under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, because someone who is undergoing or intending to undergo gender reassignment is being treated differently than a person who isn't? Although detransitioning complicates it. And so does the issue of who is compared to whom for the purposes of establishing whether discrimination has taken place: I've seen the argument, for example, that the legal comparison group for TW is non-trans males.

With any luck, a lawyer will be along in a minute to explain this.

10 years for a male to wait for free gender affirming beauty treatments that many women pay for for much of their adult lives. That's before we think about maternity discrimination, gender pay gap etc etc. already holding these women back financially. And I would argue the patriarchy is far crueller to women who don't conform to gender stereotypes than it is transwomen. It's just that the patriarchy raises us to internalise the shame and difficulty.

I don't know whether it's that males so believe in their own patriarchal standards that they don't realise women aren't naturally hairless, or whether they only notice the pain, time and cost involved when it affects their fellow males.

I have spent the same op. It is pure sexism. Plenty of women are hairy. Plenty of women have small breasts. Males should not be able to get free treatment for hair removal or breast enlargement while women have to pay.

Thank you all (almost all) for understanding the point here, and feeling the frustration with me...