Segment of an email sent by julie graham to Devorah Zahav, dated September 6 2013, where graham claims that there are “too many FtM’s in the Bay Area” and how informed consent is fueled by activism.
Text reads:
There are way too many FTM’s in the Bay Area. It’s statistically improbable. YouTube makes me incredibly uncomfortable, anxious even. There is a lot of misinformation about transition and most of the you tubes are done in the first few months of transition and I think that is makes transition look like something it is not. I believe some people try to solve a cultural problem with a medical solution. They don’t know that is what they are doing. They just don’t feel okay as who they are and we have this society that wants to medicate discomfort away and numb political expression. Again, no one think this that is what they are doing, practitioners or patients. But
stepping back, it sure looks that way.
There is a huge push for the informed consent models. Because we have such activism in the Bay Area, I think in the rush to not appear transphobic, providers are moving too quickly. I think Informed Consent as a model is multi-problematic for a range of reasons that I am trying to write up now.
There are people who are transsexual who have been waiting all their lives to transition and I don’t believe that those folks should be slowed down in any way shape or form. I have seen and supervised the care of hundreds of transsexual people for therapy. Mostly, we have not done evaluations as they are not required in SF for hormones. Further, few people could afford surgery. Now we will have a sea change. We will do evaluations.
I listen. I know for a fact people that people feel pressured to transition further and further. To take the next step. Whether that is to call oneself trans, to hang out with trans men, to choose a male name, or go to groups, to take hormones, to have chest surgery, etc. It feels very different to talk with masculine spectrum people compared to transgender women. That makes me uncomfortable as well.