New environment

Helene called me last night and her presentation on gender (which includes the topic of detransition) will be at the Sorbonne in Paris. Since I have been writing on this topic for a number of years, she wanted my input as she has never seen such a confusing environment as now. I told her I see much the same and she offered me examples of people being rushed through the system without enough reflection sometimes pushed by their own parents into hormones because additional therapy encouraging further reflection and exploration would be more expensive.

This is the price paid for opening the doors wide and some gender variant people will walk through who might perhaps be best served by not doing so. The collateral damage will be for those who absolutely need to transition due to extreme dysphoria and might be stopped due to backlash from transphobes currently trying to put a stop to expert clinicians properly doing their job by painting everyone with the same brush. The Montreal General Hospital program is one of those which takes great care and I was approved to advance before pulling the plug myself in my late forties for fear I might carry through.

Do I want things the way they were in my time? Of course not only that at least there were many more hoops to jump through and so you had to be more certain. Hopefully we will reach a baseline position at some point that helps as many people as possible make  the right call.