This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Antheia: Surely this depends on what country you're in? And, for that matter, the morals of the surgeon (and/or the likeliness of them getting sued by patients unhappy with the results)?
Ellen Hayes: Lawsuits don't happen; you got what you paid for, you paid in cash beforehand, and you sign a very large waiver document before you go into the hospital.
Sir Psycho Sexy: Hence a possible deconstruction of the trope. Someone goes to Thailand, where the SRS requirements are a lot less strict than in most Western countries, and gets the surgery. Months pass, and they feel regret that they went through with it. The bad part is that they're going to have to learn to live in their new gender, even if they don't like it, because, in the US at least, they won't let you transition back- unless you have an intersex condition.
Ellen Hayes: "I wanna do-over" has happened plenty of times while following the strict US standards to the letter as well; I knew at least one personally, and I don't get out much. Considering the average reaction of Americans to man-in-a-dress, including being arrested for being in the wrong bathroom - and which bathroom is the right one? - and the startling cumulative effect of a year or so on female hormones, AND the lack of permanent effect of female hormones (a new lifelong drug habit), the only reason I can see for that three month waiting period is to see just how much shit the person can take. If they don't kill themselves or quit (or get murdered), then they get to go through the rest. Including the second puberty induced by those hormones - remember your own puberty? Remember how insane you were?
The Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, in my opinion, are merely a way to get rid of the "weaklings" who are susceptible to suicide, have a low emotional pain tolerance, or are unlucky enough to get killed for being "homoz".
And, as a bizarre converse, NO repeat NO psychological testing or justification is required for hysterectomy and mastectomy (female-to-male) or electrolysis (beard removal) or breast implants or a whole host of cosmetic surgery procedures you don't want to know about.
- Sort of [Truth in Television]. Webcomic author & minor internet celebrity Jennifer Diane Reitz (birth name unknown), of Unicorn Jelly fame, was apparently able to receive SRS despite having numerous mental problems which should be blatantly obvious to anybody with even a cursory knowlege of "her".
- Not so fast. First, ungendering someone with scare quotes is not cool. Second, the environment that SRS and the whole transition mechanism existed in during the early 1980s was GROSSLY misogynistic. Any trans woman who did not look or act like her therapist's ideal of a sexually available and submissive heterosexual woman would be denied hormones and surgery based on that. If you were a lesbian, if you were a geek, if you had big hands? No mones and no surgery for you. JDR is not a particularly sympathetic person, but what she went through to transition was NOT "Easy Sex Change."
No. Just... No, John.
La Maupin: The vast majority of instances of surgical regret occur when the surgery is botched or has unsatisfactory results (sometimes resulting in a permanent colostomy or in paralysis from the waist down), or in instances of malpractice on the part of the practitioner (there was an instance in London in the late 1990s where the surgeon performed an unauthorized clitoridectomy as part of the SRS, and when confronted with it responded, "what would a nice girl like you need with that anyway?"). Over 98% of SRS patients report a successful surgery and see their lives greatly improved by the change. The percentage of SRS patients who express surgical regret because they didn't "really" want to go through with the surgery is statistically insignificant.
Quillain: I edited the Psych example to include this partial aversion:
- This is actually a pretty decent aversion. The psychopath actually killed the psychologist that the female personality had been seeing in order to get the surgery done. This troper doesn't remember what happens next but I think the psychopath then tries to kill the surgeon, but this may have been due to his lack of understanding of the system himself
If anyone with a better memory than me or Radioactive Zombie can clear up the psychologist/SRS doctor debate, that would be good.
Lost Librarian: Current first point links to livejournal- but it's a dead link. Does live journal unsuspend accounts? in any case, I'm deleting it short term. Oops didnt look at it very well. Link is still dead but there are other links and things in response- it needs a cleanup though. Is there an etiquette involved, here? Are people allowed to clean up other people's posts so they make sense?
ninjacrat: Yes, please do. This isn't a forum, they aren't 'posts', and they certainly don't belong to anybody. This is a wiki, and everyone is expected — no, encouraged — to edit it.
