Segment of an email sent by julie graham to Ky/CrashChaosCats, dated August 29 2013.
Text reads:
Subject: Re:
From: 2282[CENSORED]
Date: 8/29/13, 22:53
To: [CENSORED] Last-name [CENSORED]
[CENSORED]
I know this is intensely personal and don’t want to in any way be insensitive and yet I do want to ask some things that may be? Please let me know if I am offensive or insensitive in any way. I also don’t want you to feel in any way exploited. I greatly appreciate this.
To make this clear: I am not trying to get clients or build a practice or make money off of anything here. I work for the San Francisco Department of Public Health and we are in the midst of designing easier access to surgery for poor and disenfranchised people. I am also talking with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health about regret and detransition. In the next two months, I am training a lot of people-child and adolescent providers just to know what is out there and to recognize GNC kids and support them and their families and also adult mental health and medical providers in preparation for the surgery program. I will also have the ability to post information to a public website regarding Transgender Health in San Francisco.
I worry there are providers here in the city who will give letters and not do real evaluations. So I am planning on including information about peer pressure, misogyny and self image issues related to girls and young adults (in the youth trainings) and that simply being gender non conforming or even gender dysphoric is not the reason to transition. That people need support. I think we have knee jerk responses, reactivities and clinicians don’t want to be perceived as gatekeepers and barriers when what we we need to be are people who hold the realities of the choices people are about to make. At 18, unless someone is delusional or unable to consent, there is no legitimate
reason to deny access to the surgeries and hormones that they want. I know that at 18 I would have made the wrong decisions. I have a limited amount of influence the redesign of the gender assessments and that they fit what it is we know about regret, the wrong reasons for transitioning, etc. All of my comments/questions below come from this place.