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Transfem
A community for transfeminine people and experiences.
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Some helpful links:
- The Gender Dysphoria Bible // In depth explanation of the different types of gender dysphoria.
- Trans Voice Help // A community here on blahaj.zone for voice training.
- LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory // A directory of LGBTQ+ accepting Healthcare providers.
- Trans Resistance Network // A US-based mutual aid organization to help trans people facing state violence and legal discrimination.
- TLDEF's Trans Health Project // Advice about insurance claims for gender affirming healthcare and procedures.
- TransLifeLine's ID change Library // A comprehensive guide to changing your name on any US legal document.
Support Hotlines:
- The Trevor Project // Web chat, phone call, and text message LGBTQ+ support hotline.
- TransLifeLine // A US/Canada LGBTQ+ phone support hotline service. The US line has Spanish support.
- LGBT Youthline.ca // A Canadian LGBT hotline support service with phone call and web chat support. (4pm - 9:30pm EST)
- 988lifeline // A US only Crisis hotline with phone call, text and web chat support. Dedicated staff for LGBTQIA+ youth 24/7 on phone service, 3pm to 2am EST for text and web chat.
What are some examples of the biological implications and risk factors? As far as I can tell the only one I can think of (and the only one my doctors told me to disclose) is that I have a prostate, but risks of prostate cancer are very low when estrogen dominant.
Either way, assigned sex is often arbitrary and a can be a poor indicator of the medical situation, e.g. 20% of intersex individuals are trans and may or may not have typical anatomy of their assigned sex. So communicating you're a trans woman gets misunderstood as "I'm male", which is not the correct conclusion.
I should also state I obviously disclose my trans status to doctors who are providing care like HRT, or who need to know for other reasons (e.g. a gyno who would perform a prostate exam through the vaginal canal).
But my question is for contexts where it's not appropriate or necessary to disclose trans status, such as walk-in clinics or ER visits.
I assume you are cis from your comment, but you should know it's not just the prejudice and mistreatment that motivates not disclosing trans status (whether overt bigotry, or other forms of discrimination like "trans broken arm syndrome"). When you tell someone you are trans, it immediately undoes your gender in their eyes. It can feel dehumanizing, and it also comes with a lot of bad assumptions (e.g. that biologically I'm not different from other men, but also that I must be like a man in other ways, too).
For that reason I find it's actually better to just disclose necessary information without framing it as being transgender - I disclosed that I was born without a uterus, and I disclosed the hormones I take and in what amounts, etc. which is what they need to know.
EDIT: I should mention, I've responded to a similar comment in the past, I'll throw that inline here for convenience:
click here to expand my prior response
EDIT2: another way trans status might impact health is for directing them for certain kinds of care that impact the community, such as testing for HIV, connecting with drug abuse resources, etc. - but that's rather generic and less of the kind of "biological implications" you mentioned, but it's an angle I hadn't thought of before (if we were thinking about policy choices this would be something to consider, but in terms of what I as a trans woman should do, it feels less relevant).
Nursing student here - probably a solid half of the disease processes we study have "male/female sex" listed as a risk factor. A good chunk of lab values have different ranges for male vs female.
That said, I have no idea if those are intrinsic to the sex, or to the hormone levels, so HRT might completely negate or flip those differences.
I'd run this by your HRT doc. They'd have the best understanding on what your transition is or isn't doing on a physiological level and which other docs would be able to provide better care if they know you're trans.
Generally it's best not to hide things from your doc, but if revealing that info is being treated as "I'm male" then that's not doing you any favors, since your physiology is not that of a male. And again pointing to the HRT doc, they'd be able to help you articulate that distinction to other docs.
You've actually hit on a major reason why disclosing isn't as simple as you think it is.
Sure, a good chunk of values have different ranges for male vs female, but the normal ranges for cis folk and trans folk are not the same.
Hormones are the obvious example, but there are large parts of the body that respond to the endocrine profile that we have after hormone replacement. Heart attack symptoms, body fat percentages, resting heart rate, blood oxygen levels, iron levels etc, are all shaped by our hormone profile, not the hormone profiles of cis folk.
It entirely depends on the specific medical issue, but in general, it's the latter more often than the former.
It's not always that simple. On top of the fact that it's not realistic to see the HRT doc every time you have an unrelated medical issue, the other aspect is, as you're probably aware, sometimes, the patient knows more about their health care needs than the treating doctor, because we need to become experts in a way that a GP does not. If your doctor isn't a specialist in trans care, they're just as likely to give you conservative, incorrect information that was drafted in a time when trans health care even less understood than it is now.
As you're a nursing student, I want to give you some advice. When you are dealing with a patient that isn't "new" to their situation, whether it's trans health care, or long term illness etc, you need to allow for the fact that the patient likely has a lot of lived expertise in dealing with their situation, and broad, general advice is rarely going to be useful to them.
Knowing biology, I'm sure it's complicated and any generalization will be false. For example, there might be genetic conditions that derive from having two X chromosomes that we could argue are intrinsic to the sex (or more accurately, intrinsic to that karyotype), but for the most part my understanding is that differences relevant to lab ranges are mostly mediated by hormones, so I use female ranges.
Either way, my PCP seemed to indicate I shouldn't disclose trans status but that the one exception was that I eventually need to find someone for prostate exams once I hit that age (if I hit that age, I guess). The endo that prescribes my HRT has never mentioned whether I should disclose or when to.
I should say, even when my medical chart was shared across hospital systems and my gender dysphoria was listed in my chart, the ER doctors didn't seem to do uptake or change the way they treated me, even when I walked through my HRT and explained I couldn't be pregnant. They still thought I was a cis woman and asked if I could be pregnant - I think people mostly just operate based on what they see, and it's a shock when you say you are trans. It creates an extreme chilling effect sometimes, people stop meeting your eyes, or even interacting (sometimes interacting through a third party instead, like a cis family member). I've even talked to a neurologist through the details of my vaginoplasty and he didn't seem to do uptake that I was trans. Unless I say the words, they just won't put the dots together. (Meanwhile a trans woman at Sephora's will clock me from across the store.)