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Transition does not equal medication

Rachel Saunders
3 min readAug 27, 2024

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Photo by Ivan J. Long: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-pink-and-blue-candies-in-bowl-1375811/

To be trans is not to be medicated or require medication to validate your identity. That should not be a controversial statement, yet as globally trans people are denied affirming healthcare there is a large gap opening up between those who see medicalised bodies as the only worthy trans bodies and trans people’s wish to exist as themselves in the world. There is a complex overlap between the need to medically affirm your body and the recognition that being trans is not a mental illness, and the confusion arising out of this reflect in the language society uses to frame trans identities. Even within the trans community many trans people latch on to a medicalised identity to validate themselves without fully understanding what that means for them; often this is done out of fear they will not receive affirming healthcare, those it is equally about finding a secure sense of self as the world rages around you.

This is a fraught topic precisely because there are as many opinions on it as there as trans people in the world. Affirming healthcare is as legitimate for trans people as it is cis, with magnitudes more cis people getting gender affirming healthcare than trans people. Every operation and medication uses on trans bodies had long history on cis bodies, yet no-one is decrying cis people for getting the same surgeries and medication. This is the knot that gender critical refuse to…

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Rachel Saunders
Rachel Saunders

Written by Rachel Saunders

Writer, researcher, and generally curious

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