A sign of things to come?
A man who underwent gender reassignment surgery is suing the NHS, claiming it was “the biggest mistake of my life”. The man, who is in his thirties, claims that doctors did not properly counsel him before the operation five years ago, which has left him infertile, incontinent and feeling like a “sexual eunuch”.
Campaigners say the case is the first involving alleged medical negligence in NHS transgender care. The man tweeted yesterday: “The minute I woke up from surgery, I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life.” The man, who calls himself TullipR, says that he is gay and his sexuality should have been discussed before the irreversible surgery. “I have been castrated. That is the correct term,” he said on his Twitter feed, which has 19,000 followers. “I cannot believe they [the NHS] were allowed to do this to me. I was not even asked if I wanted to freeze my sperm, or have kids in the future.”
TullipR says that he began transitioning at 25. He took female hormone drugs bought privately, and later prescribed by his GP and an adult NHS gender clinic, to suppress his male characteristics. However, when a NHS psychiatrist asked him if he wanted gender reassignment surgery, he delayed because he had doubts. But worried that if he refused he would be denied treatment, he finally agreed.
The patient has since detransitioned to live as a man again.
Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of Transgender Trend, a group advising parents on transgender children and young adults, told the Daily Mail yesterday: “It is hoped this will force a rethink by the NHS about this kind of barbaric surgery on patients who are told by medics it will help them.”
This man began transitioning when he was 25: when he was an adult. What about all those teenagers or younger - mostly girls - who are in no position to give informed consent to their medical mutilation at the hands of these gender doctors? That's the real scandal.
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