Prescribing hormones can ease plight of transgender people

General Practitioners could help ease the plight of those awaiting sex change surgery by simply prescribing hormones to transgendered people who qualified for the treatment.

This according to Cape Town co-ordinator for Gender Dynamix, Busisiwe Deyi.

She said those fortunate enough have the gender re-alignment surgery could wait for up to 25 years for their full transition.

“That means that you have to experience you gender discomfort for at least two decades,” said Deyi.

She said transgendered people were often discriminated against by government agencies because although they identified as members of the opposite sex, their physical appearance meant that they were often lumped as either male or female.

“If you're trans-woman and you've started developing breasts, and you've had one surgery which is usually the simplest, [being] the removal of the testes in order for your body not to produce testosterone, that means that you will stay in that transitional period for a good 20 years before you can have a full-body re-assignment.

“That means that if you get stopped by the police, and you get searched it might raise suspicions if they feel a lump on your front side whereas you present [yourself] as a woman,” said Deyi.

She said there was also a problem when it came to the detention of transgendered people.

“Jails are very gendered do they put you in a female prison, or a male prison. Those are the real world problems experienced by transgendered people because transition is a very long period,” said Deyi.

For this reason, she said many people still did not understand how this effected transgendered people.

“What does it means for you to have breasts and a penis, or what does it mean to have had top surgery (removal of the breasts) but still have a vagina,” said Deyi.

She said many more state hospitals could provide some of the same services as those at Groote Schuur and Steve Biko Academic in Pretoria.

“Both of them cannot handle the amount of people who need the services that they provide. Some of the services, like prescribing hormones, can be done by general practitioners but because they're not aware of the fact that they can provide this, it turns on specialised doctors like endocrinologists to prescribe hormones which is absolutely stupid,” said Deyi.

She said what government could do was make sure that it provided the basics for transgendered people awaiting surgery, and that meant prescribing them with hormone treatment.

Related sex change web links

• See the full report here
• Life stories of South Africans seeking gender reassignment
• 95 people in South Africa have changed gender since 1994