Years before my first testosterone injection I sought therapy. Not because I was in some gender battle in my head, but simply because I was having relationship problems. I had an immediate connection with my therapist and left each session feeling the positive impact of therapy. As the years passed, I knew I wanted to surgically alter my body, as 15 million Americans do each year. However, unlike the majority of them, I had to seek a therapist’s stamp of approval.
My therapist wasn’t qualified to write letters for gender-confirming surgeries. So, I was shuffled off to another therapist. A therapist that provided me with nothing more than a piece of paper that gave me permission to my own body. I left the sessions feeling used and othered. The diagnosis of gender identity dysphoria lay heavy on my shoulders. But I had to keep going because she was the gatekeeper in my journey.
The current standards of care for transgender people require trans people to obtain a letter from a qualified therapist allowing them to request hormones and surgery. But why? We’ve all seen botched plastic surgeries that required no letters. We’ve watched as celebrities have went from recognizable faces to distorted Picasso’s. Why must someone like me be labeled and run through a maze to fetch a letter before I am allowed to alter parts of my body that aren’t typically visible to the general public?
It’s because my surgery threatens a well-established and well-respected system – the gender binary. The transgender individual seeks a surgery that threatens a social order while the majority of the 15 million cosmetic surgery patients will reinforce an unattainable but socially acceptable standard of beauty. How is one more dangerous to the individual than the other?
The transgender standards of care aren’t meant to protect the transgender individual, they are in place to protect social norms. A recent study in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry indicates that often times the distress associated with being transgender isn’t related to issues with identity but rather the rejection and abuse one experiences as a transgender person. Because of this study the World Health Organization (WHO) is considering moving away from viewing transgender individuals as mentally ill. This is important, as the stigma and shame that comes with such labels only further burdens the individual, when the burden needs to shift to society’s strict gender standards. I argue that WHO should go one step further and get rid of the required therapist letters. Give us our bodies back.
If you can unpack your own distress over gender and shift your attention away from a ‘mentally ill’ transgender population, maybe you’ll see the problem isn’t us but rather a broken and unequal system. The gender binary unfairly forces us all, not just transgender people, into a one-size-fits-all gender box. When is the last time you’ve actually worn something that truly is one-size-fits-all? It’s a damn lie. As a transgender person, I’ve been forced through a series of therapy sessions and labeled mentally ill, all to make everyone else comfortable. All of this to show that nothing is wrong with our gender system, but rather something is wrong with the individual. That society’s standards of gender are solid and unshakable and that the system is good. Remind you of anything? Ever read 1984? Hey, big brother – I’m not mentally ill. My trans and nonbinary friends are not mentally ill. We simply refuse to be placed in ill-fitting gender boxes.