Earlier this week I went to see my therapist like I usually do and today I told her that I’d like to start HRT sooner rather than later, I know that people sometimes wait months if not years before starting but I’m not okay with waiting that long. Unfortunately she said that she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea and that I should wait longer to be sure. I told her I wasn’t waiting and that if she didn’t write the note for me I’m going the DIY route, and she told me that that would be a very bad idea since she believes I would regret it due to my unwillingness to “fully girlmode” (which just means she thinks me wearing makeup and having long hair alone isn’t enough) and the fact that I enjoy many manly things like bodybuilding. I for some reason mentioned that I could stop after I got the permanent changes I wanted and she responded that if I’m already considering detransitioning it’s not a good idea. What the fuck? How the fuck is stopping HRT later detransitioning? That made me so pissed off that I told her to fuck off and I just left early.
I took the advice of someone and decided to go to planned parenthood and just like that I have officially begun my journey. Kinda wish I’d done this sooner, I could’ve been 3 months along by now if I hadn’t tried to go through my therapist like a dumbass. Shame though, I did like her, she seemed nice for a long time but I don’t think I can continue to see her anymore if she thinks after all I’ve told her that I’m in any way at risk of “de-transitioning”.
Moral of the story kids, do DIY. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than wait for permission. Also be really careful how you choose your therapists, they might seem to understand you but they can screw you over in the last second.
There is a really old narrative that the only valid trans women are people who as young children refused boyhood and only wanted to play with girl-coded toys and so on. Even though we know that’s not true now, the narrative remains strong and it’s how the mainstream media portrays trans women still, etc.
So it’s not surprising the therapist might be really worried her patient might be making a mistake if they don’t match the narrative she has come to accept as the paradigm of a valid trans woman. She just isn’t familiar with the fact that lots of trans women, probably most in fact, have “normal” boyhoods and are able to socially adapt to living as a boy. A lot of times the problems don’t start until puberty, for example. Even David Reimer, the cis boy that was forced to grow up as a girl, didn’t have any awareness about gender problems until ages 9 - 11, and didn’t actually insist and start living as a boy until 15. That’s with a cis person that we know was born a boy.
A lot of these bizarre hesitations and extreme expectations, like a child at 3 - 4 years old being able to articulate and fight for their gender identity, just come from the discomfort cis people feel about trans people - when people are more worried that a cis person might accidentally transition than they are about preventing further changes to a trans person’s body, it shows a clear bias and preference for cis people over trans on no other basis than their being cis and trans. Wrong puberty is wrong puberty, and if a cis person accidentally gets gender affirming care that causes them to undergo the wrong changes - well, that’s exactly the default that will happen to trans people without the intervention of gender affirming care! The therapist should be worried about their patient not getting on HRT soon enough, about the harms that might be caused by delaying life-saving treatments.