Transgender Health & Opinion
Transgender presents a unique set of issues when it comes to health, a set of issues that are rarely commonplace among practitioners within the various health care systems, and sometimes issues, or a combination of issues present as unique to individual transgender or gender questioning people. For this reason, it is crucial that transgender and gender questioning people receive an appropriately high standard of health care.
Unfortunately however, this isn't always the case as the occasional complex issues faced by transgender and gender questioning people have been neglected by a long-established system based on a gender binary that is continually and consistently being disproven. Transgender and gender questioning individuals
often face barriers in establishing adequate health care. From the application or not of Standards of Care through to post-surgery wellbeing, the issues faced by transgender and gender questioning people often evolve on the back of the experiences and opinions expressed by transgender and gender questioning people themselves.
This section contains a number of articles about transgender health, including the opinions of transgender and gender questioning people based on their experiences, and in time this section will also include other resources such as book reviews, videos, links to other health related services and more. The articles below are just a few of the articles currently on the Transgender Health and Opinion page of this website.
BANNED FOR MANY YEARS IN NORTH AMERICA
Article appeared in Polare 67, April 2006
Millions of women around the world over the past 35 years have had silicone breast implants for differing reasons. Yet in North America they have been banned because if they rupture, the silicone becomes embedded in tissue and it is virtually impossible to remove ...
EFFECTS UPON THE BODY THAT WE CAN SOMETIMES OVERLOOK
Article appeared in Polare 8, August 1995
The effects of different drugs on different individuals tend to have other effects upon the body that we can sometimes overlook and that also affect our sexual function and tolerance or intolerance to pain ...
AND THE UNNECESSARY GATEKEEPING IMPOSED BY THE SEXUAL REASSIGNMENT ACT 1988 (S.A.)
Article appeared in Polare 20, August 1997
Leigh relishes every moment of her new live, however, despite her overwhelming feelings of contentment and vastly improved quality of life following sex reassignment surgery, she has a number of constructive criticisms of South Australia's Sexual Reassignment Act ...
ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH GATEKEEPERS
Article appeared in Polare 10, December 1995
Ruth Farmer explains that rejection by her local gender dysphoria team because they told her she was too old and did not pass the psychological test for womanhood caused her much unnecessary expense and heartbreak. She could better have used the money for electrolysis ...
... IS NOW HOPEFULLY LARGELY IN THE PAST
Article appeared in Polare 82, January 2010
Many older transgenders had to battle with a very structured system. It seems however that they may be beginning to listen to what we have to say rather than prescribing a solution based on misconceptions drawn from the available, but often misguided, expert literature ...
RAPID AND SUCCESSFUL ASSIMILATION INTO SOCIETY AS FEMALES
Article appeared in Polare 82, January 2010
This article discusses the treatment of transsexual boy-to-girl children. When allowed to, such children, almost always, rapidly and successfully assimilate themselves into society as females. This alone is enough to differentiate them from women who transition when adult ..
A PRICE WORTH PAYING FOR GENDER IDENTITY DISORDER?
Article appeared in Polare 80, July 2009
This paper written by Sam Winter is about transpeople and transphobia and the role of Western psychiatry in relation to both, transphobia that often leads to discrimination and in turn to stress, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression and worse for the transgender person ...
AN UNNECESSARY LUXURY EASILY SACRIFICED
Article appeared in Polare 5, November 1994
Doctors have for years been turning trays into drug dependants with life-long addictions that render us much less psychologically and physically able to enjoy sex. They seem to think that the enjoyment of sex, is a luxury easily sacrificed to make us more "acceptable" ...
WHO'S LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?
Article appeared in Polare 67, April 2006
Some psychiatrists want to cure transgender people by giving them medical treatment that allows them to have bodies consistent with how they perceive they should be, others try to make trans people understand why they should stay the gender we were assigned at birth ...
PAP SMEARS FOR PRE-OP. F.T.M. TRANSGENDERS
Article appeared in Polare 68, July 2006
Cervical screening is an important and often neglected area of men's health. If you are a pre-operative transgender man and have a cervix, it is advisable you still have a regular Pap smear. The National Guidelines recommend a Pap smear once every two years ...
HOW TO MAKE BABIES IN A TRANSGENDER RELATIONSHIP
Article appeared in Polare 84, July 2010
As society and governments slowly change their attitudes toward same sex and transgender relationships, Registered Nurse Maggie Smith takes a look at how to make babies in a transgender relationship including sperm-banking/semen-cryopreservation and egg-banking/oocyte-cryopreservation ...
