New Standards of Care

WPATH Announces New Standards of Care for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People

This article came out today, and I couldn’t be more excited.

First of all, WPATH is the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

Second, the standards of care are very important to transgender people who want to transition. Transitioning can mean any combination of hormonal treatment, voice therapy, or one or several surgeries – or none of these things. Transitioning usually (I say usually because I don’t know everyone’s personal experiences) has the end goal of living full-time as the trans* person’s true gender rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.

The Harry Benjamin Standards of Care were the ones most often used, at least before these new ones (titled “Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People”) were announced. The HBSoC are called “The Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorder”, and while a good idea in theory, often made it too difficult for one to transition. They required a minimum amount of psychotherapy before any surgery or hormones, and a year of living as the target gender (along with psychotherapy) before getting a hysterectomy or the testicles removed. Unfortunately, I’ve heard that the therapy often asked the trans* person to “prove” their trans-ness before the therapist would (or could, I’m not sure) do anything to help. The article gives me hope that this will no longer be the case:

“There is no one way of being transgender and it doesn’t have to mirror the idea of a change of their sex,” Bockting explained.

This same quotation also implies that these standards of care will not discriminate against non-binary genders. The article goes on to confirm that:

Another major change, Bockting explained, is that the standards “allow for a broader spectrum of identities – they are no longer so binary.” …

“These standards allow for a gender queer person to have breasts removed without ever taking hormones,” he said.

This is extremely important.

The HBSoC do not recognize non-binary genders, only binary ones – trans women and trans men. I have heard cases of non-binary people pretending to be binary so that they could transition, only to be forced to transition entirely to the “opposite” gender and experience just as many, if not more, problems. But now, a trans* person no longer is required to take hormones to have surgery, which means that if I wanted, I could begin transitioning to a body more in line with my gender identity without having to take testosterone.

Taking T (a common abbreviation used for testosterone) would not help me feel more comfortable in my body at all, it would just give me different things to feel uncomfortable about. But if I wanted top surgery (surgery to get my breasts removed), then that would have been a requirement. Not any more. And since this was a major item in the con column for me every considering transitioning, it might now be possible for me to get my “female” genitalia removed without being forced to transition to male. But that’s a thought for the future, not for right now, when I’m a poor college student. But it’s hopeful. And that’s really what matters right now.