Transgender EuroStudy â Legal Survey and Focus ... - ILGA Europe

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Transgender EuroStudy: Legal Survey and Focus on the Transgender Experience of Health Care treatment, and medical treatments should be available to trans people unless there is some exceptional reason for not providing it. That is effectively what the Court of Appeal stated in 2006 in the case of R v North West Lancashire Health Authority. 64 As one might imagine after reading this report, even in the UK where the case was decided, the method of funding continues to turn this decision upside down so that trans people are only afforded treatment in exceptional circumstances rather than vice versa. The principle of contemporary health care has always been to meet need on an equal basis, which includes creating parity by having some wealthier patients paying towards their costs and others getting it for free, rather than on a certain characteristic for example originally the colour of your skin or your gender, and now, your ethnicity, faith, age or sexual orientation. In theory, very recently, 65 with the implementation at national level of the Council Equal Treatment in Goods, and Services Directive 2004/113/EC of 13 December 2004, trans people who are intending to undergo, are undergoing or who have undergone gender reassignment 66 have to be offered equal treatment in the provision of health care as a service. Maybe this will promote change. However, the need for comparators in establishing the discriminatory treatment might have the effect of hiding gender reassignment treatments even further; with doctors and administrators saying the work they do cannot be compared with any other services, no matter how badly they do it. This is clearly not what is intended by the Directive. This problem will not disappear and indeed needs to be addressed given the exponential growth in the trans population that our data strongly suggests. The Growth in the Trans Population The data from the survey for this report also provides strong evidence that the trans population is growing year-on-year. The majority of respondents reported that they had transitioned less than 5 years ago. The data from our survey was plotted on a graph which demonstrates the exponential growth in the trans population for each time period we specified in the survey. The Chart below shows a summary of the time for Europeans, now living full time in their preferred gender, reported to have elapsed since they began their transition; these results are also depicted (see figure 1). Figures are given for the whole group and for Female-to-Male (FTM) and Maleto-Female (MTF) categories separately. It can be seen that the number of people transitioning is now increasing rapidly throughout Europe. Chart 1: Time Since Transition Reported November 2007 64 R v North West Lancashire Health Authority; Ex parte A, D, G (2000) WLR 997. 65 December 21, 2007. Time Total FTM MTF All 985 377 608 > 5 years 601 258 343 66 Which has been as loosely interpreted as meaning that the trans person merely visits their family doctor in order to think about it. < 5 years > 10 years > 20 years 211 124 49 72 34 13 139 90 36
65 April 2008 Figure 1: Plot of Transition Times Relative to Present Day A smooth curve can be plotted on these results intersecting the abscissa at some unknown time 20 + x years in the past; a possible curve is shown by a black line superimposed on the figure. 601 211 124 49 -20 + X -20 -10 -5 0 It is quite clear to those working in the field that the trans population is growing as change has come about, and more and more people feel empowered to claim their trans identity at whatever cost. These changes have largely been led by the media, and specific points in media history have driven trans people to recognise themselves and claim their identity. It is a history from the first appearance of Christine Jorgenson’s story in the New York Daily News in 1952, and the appearance of Jan Morris (a former Times reporter who had been with the team to first climb Everest) on BBC television in 1974 at the time of the publication of her memoir: Conundrum (Morris 1974), through the bleak years of the 1980s when trans people became terrified of the media hounding them to report ‘sex motivated’ stories, to the 1990s when the film ‘The Decision’, the first film study of (female to male) trans men including a 12 year old (daughter) son on a quest to seek the best treatment in Europe, was also shown on BBC television before being released throughout Europe. Those who work in support services have seen marked rises in enquiries at each of these times. 67 Maybe it is a consequence of this that the growth in those trans people seeking support and medical services, appears to be on an exponential scale. But as we now see more and more media images of trans people on almost a nightly basis in some countries, for example Italy has several trans people fronting regular television shows, it may well be that the growth continues in this exponential way. Whether there are really more trans people or whether there are more trans people ‘coming out’ is an important question. Is gender really being challenged Or is it simply that more and more people 67 Whittle, S., 1999 (unpublished research data).
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Transgender EuroStudy: Legal Survey
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Contents Acknowledgements Foreword
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Acknowledgements This was very much
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Executive Summary The Legal Survey
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Transgender EuroStudy: Legal Survey
Page 12 and 13:
Introduction In this report we refe
Page 14 and 15: Transgender EuroStudy: Legal Survey
Page 16 and 17: Transgender and Transsexual Legal C
Page 22 and 23: Public Funding for:[1] Psychotherap
Page 24 and 25: Results of the Legal Survey In this
Page 28 and 29: Health Policy in the EU: the Impact
Page 36 and 37: Data Analysis
Page 40 and 41: A Profile - the Online Survey of Tr
Page 50 and 51: Trans People Accessing Healthcare
Page 68: Transgender EuroStudy: Legal Survey
Page 71 and 72: 71 April 2008 FTM: Female-to-male,
Page 73 and 74: 73 April 2008 References Antoniadou
Page 75 and 76: 75 April 2008 Shanta, R., M. P. H.
Page 77 and 78: 77 April 2008 I identify as In what
Page 79 and 80: 79 April 2008 Do you have any savin
Page 81 and 82: 81 April 2008 Section 2 Healthcare
Page 83: 83 April 2008 Was this from any of
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Transgender EuroStudy â Legal Survey and Focus ... - ILGA Europe