You can visit the GenderCare website here. You will learn that Gendercare is a ‘network of individual healthcare practitioners’ who ‘share a general commitment to providing friendly, accessible private services, tailored to individual needs and timescales, in a variety of comfortable London settings.’
Tailored timescales
It is the tailored timescales that appear to be the biggest draw for those who seek the services of GenderCare. Many are disturbed by the long NHS waiting lists and drawn by the knowledge that, in the words of one young patient, “obviously Gendercare is renowned for getting people on hormones very quickly.”
While the speed of service is of greatest importance, the lure of Stuart Lorimer, the father figure of the organisation, is not to be underestimated. Lorimer is an incredibly charismatic man in the eyes of those who seek his services. I spent an afternoon watching YouTube videos about first appointments with GenderCare and not a bad word was said about him. He is described by those who flock to his surgery as:
“amazing…
so nice, he understood me…
he’s actually very validating…
the fucking nicest guy I’ve ever met, it’s like talking to a mate…
as soon as you meet him you feel warm…
He was super lovely, I had a nice time…
He’s a really nice bearded man. He’s really cute.”
Lorimer, a flamboyant gay bloke who is ‘particularly interested in engagement with the wider binary and non-binary trans community’ (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean) knows how to flatter the young women who sing his praises on YouTube. After all, he too nestles beneath the ever-expanding LGBTQIA+ umbrella. He gets them. And they love him. This patient has even got a tattoo of Lorimer’s face, as featured on his super-cool business card, on their neck:
Lorimer’s pronouns are in his bio. He listens to his patients and they feel he validates their feelings and desires. “He called me Mr,” they say. “He didn’t misgender me’ or ‘He said my voice was really masculine’.
Two thirds of Lorimer’s patients are transmen. These (modified) pictures are taken from their YouTube videos:
Founding a dream
With his past experience working at the Charing Cross Clinic, Lorimer founded Gendercare in 2010. He estimates he has seen more than 4000 patients over a period of fifteen years. The business is highly successful. He sees the main issue facing him at the moment as ‘coping with increasing numbers while maintaining quality.’
GenderCare only deals with adults- although the young women in the videos I watched all looked astonishingly young. Lorimer admits to having had at least one patient as young as seventeen, tweeting in 2017: ‘My youngest patient is 17, my oldest 96’.
He seems to believe he brings humour and bonhomie to the transition process, as can be seen by these tweets from 2016/17.
It’s not possibly to view what Lorimer is currently tweeting, as his tweets are now protected.
While his milkshake may indeed ‘bring all the boys to the yard’ the GenderCare website’s handy guide to choosing your clinician makes it clear that Lorimer’s primary interest does not lie in discussing his patients’ feelings in depth but in diagnosis, prescribing hormones and referring for surgery.
Time for Tumblr
In 2016 Lorimer arrived on Tumblr, an area of the net frequented primarily by teenagers. ‘Tumblr, like lycra is probably not for anyone over 30 –yet here I am’ announced Lorimer chirpily, posting his trendy business cards while making it clear that he didn’t represent his ‘NHS employers or my GenderCare colleagues’. Oh and adding that he may post pictures of cute animals.
‘Don’t worry, young person about your first trip to get T. You will meet a cuddly gender doc wearing a pink suit.’ observes SunMum wryly in her article for 4thWaveNow, ‘GenderCare: London private clinic with a winning business model’
“After all, this is all a game, a joke. Fun. Isn’t it? Well I for one don’t think it is. My son, you see, became seriously depressed in his second year at university and developed sudden onset gender dysphoria… Urged on by a counsellor, I, in my naivety, paid out for an assessment at GenderCare… I was astounded when my son came back telling me that he would be starting hormones in a few weeks.”
GenderCare Tumblr has not posted since September 2016.
Hashtag #gendercare
Instagram posts with the hashtag #gendercare contain pictures like this one, a prescription for testosterone prescribed by Lorimer, accompanied by cheers of ‘well done bro’ and ‘yay congrats’.
Another patient tags a #gendercare picture with ‘Dr Lorimer and I, Bro-ing out ?? He give me the go ahead for testosterone.’
Recently a young woman used the hashtag to pose with two packets of ‘testogel’.
‘Happy one month on T to me’ posts another.
‘Finally got my private prescription for testosterone gel!!… can’t wait!’ another announces, #gendercare accompanied by a letter with Lorimer’s letterhead.
“Dr Lorimer is fantastic! Absolutely loved him, made me feel so comfortable.”
‘I see Lorimer at ChX sometimes and he’s the best :)’
Another photo of a prescription is accompanied by the words “I filed this prescription today. So surreal. Its finally happening. ?’ #gendercare
‘After a few days of no sleep, filled with excitement we went to London on Tuesday to meet Dr Lorimer at Gender Care!’ posts another, with a photo of a couple standing by Big Ben.
‘Guess what… ??? know it’s unreal!! ??’‘ accompanies a picture of an unopened GenderCare letter.
“Exciting! Congratulations bro!”
Have you noticed what I’ve noticed? Do these people sound like adults embarking on serious, life altering processes? No, of course they don’t. From a sociological perspective I would say they use the language and emoticons most commonly used by excited teenage girls, and there’s probably a very good reason for that.
“It’s not an adventure if you know what is going to happen” posts one young client after a ‘gofundme’ paid for an appointment with GenderCare.
This isn’t a fucking gap year in Thailand.
YouTube
I type ‘gendercare lorimer first appointment’ into YouTube. Scores of videos come up. Consultations are expensive. Many of the young women using GenderCare have donation options linked to their vlogs. Others have parents who pay for the appointments; some hold down an extra job.
Don’t take my word for this. You too can while away several never-to-be-regained hours of your short life by watching these diverse yet strangely homogeneous young women talk about their experiences with GenderCare. They have put their experiences on YouTube; they want their transition videos to be seen. Views are important. Some of them slip in footage of tube station signs and mainline railway stations, as the trip to London to visit GenderCare is documented for their YouTube channels. Often they apologise to their followers for not posting enough. References are made to how bad the lighting in the video is, how awful they look today; self harm and mental health services are mentioned, as are helpful and unhelpful parents (note that even the most unhelpful ones seem to provide transportation to appointments). It’s all part of ‘my transition journey’.
Here are some of the things they say:
“I had my first GenderCare appointment last Friday with Dr. Lorimer, it went amazing and I’m starting testosterone soon and I ALSO HAVE A DATE FOR SURGERY”
After a first GenderCare appointment: “It went really well… there were two people (outside) that were FTM trans so I was oh ok, I’m in the right place. He asked “when did you know this was yourself?”… “I saw a video of a person transitioning and I was like yeah that’s me, that’s the moment I knew I was trans… when I was a kid I never felt dysphoric.. I can like dresses and a lot of people say that makes me less trans… I can dress up as a woman for silly skits…” If my blood tests are ok he says he’ll make sure I can get testosterone within a month, or maybe a month and a bit.”
After a first GenderCare appointment: “He (Lorimer) said ‘don’t worry, I want to try to get you on testosterone without having to get more bloods done’.. at the end he said he was formally diagnosing me with gender dysphoria which means I’m officially trans which is pretty cool… at 10pm he emailed me saying all I needed to do was call my doctor (to get a test result) and he could give me the go ahead for testosterone. It doesn’t even feel real. I’m gonna have started testosterone by Christmas and that’s a really scary thought.”
After a first GenderCare appointment: “He (Lorimer) knows what he’s talking about.. he was so nice, he understood me, he got it. He said there’s people out there who’d advise him to advise me I shouldn’t be filling myself up with hormones… he asked what I’d say to him if he said that.. I quite like the person I’ve turned out to be now but… I don’t like the fact that my fat stores on my bum and my hips… my voice is like a 12 year old boy’s… I’m not comfortable in my body… I’m not seen the way I should be seen in my head.” He said ‘based on these questions I’d say you definitely fit the category of gender dysphoria’… he can see me getting testosterone by the end of January.” (the video was posted in December)
After a first GenderCare appointment: “I’d been waiting two years through the NHS and I was done with waiting… he does passport letters for free… he (Lorimer) asked where I would like to go with my transition, what are you looking forward to with testosterone?.. he’s actually very validating, he said you have quite a masculine voice… it’s nice to hear. I said I didn’t want a receding hairline he said yeah thats what most people say they don’t want. He laughed because he has a receding hairline, so I felt a bit awkward saying that. He said I was more than ready for testosterone.”
After a first GenderCare appointment: “This is the biggest mission to manliness I’ve had so far. Both my mum and dad came with me which is awkward because they’re divorced… they like each other now because they both don’t want me to be trans. My mum seems to ruin every exciting thing about my transition. I’m sure you’ve heard this before if this isn’t the first gendercare video you’re watching but Dr Lorimer is the fucking nicest guy I’ve ever met… it’s like talking to a mate, he didn’t misgender me. He asked if I had a cold, I said no I’ve just been crying. He sorta laughed that off. He asked about mental health services I’ve actually been referred to CAMHS (for self-harming) but I ended up not going to that. (I said) ’I’m not doing it any more mum, I’m fine.’ My mum’s one of those people who wants to believe it’s true so badly that she’ll just believe me… At the end of the appointment I have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria!… He said he would have been happy to prescribe me testosterone within the next few weeks if it wasn’t for my parents.
After a first GenderCare appointment: ‘We had a chat about my history, how I’ve been presenting, pronouns I’ve used in the past, pronouns I use now… reaffirming that I am trans.. even though I didn’t know it in my head… he’s a really nice guy… and came to the conclusion that yes I should be on testosterone… I should be on testosterone in about a month.”
“I chose to go with Dr Dundas (at GenderCare) because he has the shortest waiting list.. got an email a week later saying tell me what you want and I’ll see what I can do.
After a first GenderCare appointment: “It went really well and smoothly. We didn’t have to go really deeply into any topics that were uncomfortable… One result was missing from my blood test results so I have to get that sorted out… and I still need to find a GP practise that is ok with ‘shared care’ but hopefully… I should be able to start testosterone maybe right at the end of September or in October.. . I’m really not good with months or the order they come in. ” (video was posted end of August)
After a first GenderCare appointment: “NHS was no longer an option for me… so I paid to go and see Dr Seal to assess me and diagnose me with gender dysphoria… if you’re like me and you didn’t know you were trans at the age of six don’t worry, he’s not there to judge you. I was so nervous, I had butterflies, I felt sick… but super-excited… after it I felt so happy, he diagnosed me with gender dysphoria, he said I could start T and I had to wait 2 weeks to start it. I was over the moon. I felt my life was finally going to start…”
After a first GenderCare appointment: “If you’re like me and want to pay in cash there’s a cashpoint two minutes walk from the clinic… Dr Lorimer is one of those people as soon as you meet him you feel warm… he asks what you want from GenderCare and why you’re there… then you get more into childhood, your family, coming out… if you want to freeze your eggs, that one took me aback a little bit… it felt like an hour wasn’t enough but we finished on time… he has a really cool cute little business card. He diagnosed me with gender dysphoria; it didn’t cross my mind I’d come out with a diagnosis. To me it’s not a mental health problem. Last thing was to look at my bloods and check if he feels I’m ready for hormones… he had a quick little skim read and said he’ll send Dr Seal an email. He concluded he’d be happy to provide me hormones but I’d have to wait a few weeks. Overall really, really exciting! It’s so cool.”
“My first appointment was in August 2016… a last minute cancellation… I was having panic attacks… I wasn’t in a good place that day… obviously GenderCare is renowned for getting people on hormones very quickly… I was like, I’m gonna get hormones! At the time I was 19. It doesn’t look like a clinic, it’s very bright. His office is not like an office at all, there’s an old rug in there. He’s a really nice bearded man. He’s really cute. A few weeks later I got this 6 page letter and a passport letter and my T letter saying ‘there are no contradictions to his beginning testosterone, I’d be grateful if you could start him on the following…’ The difference between NHS and private is the waiting time. I’d recommend anyone to go private if they can.
“I’m non binary. I had an appointment with Dr Lorimer.. he was lovely.. asked quite a few gatekeeping questions.. you kind of lay on this whole thing, like, yeah when I was a kid I was a tomboy; I didn’t like girl things, never wore dresses.. it’s kind of ridiculous that you have to but it just feels a lot easier if you go with the narrative. He was super lovely, I had a really nice time. My second appointment was with Dr Lenihan, I found her very intimidating, she doesn’t seem very up on non-binary. I did lay on the narrative again, a bit more than is necessarily true for me. She didn’t seem comfortable with me going for top surgery. She said if I had top surgery everyone would think I was a man. At the moment people either think I’m a guy or think I’m a woman but I hope to one day live in a society that’s a little bit more open minded than that. (laughs) In the end I left very upset. I didn’t think she was going to approve me. My course leader and former employer emailed her to say I was non binary. (Then) very quickly she was very efficient in getting that approval sent off to the surgeon of my choice. Wow, I’m having top surgery soon!… Lorimer said I was a standard case of ‘Yup, top surgery.” so that was quite straight forward. Lorimer charged £200 and Lenihan £250. Those prices have recently gone up.”
“Most people get prescribed T after two appointments, which I’m now on. Whoo! Lorimer asked questions about social transition, Dr Seal asked more medical things’ like ‘did you have a normal birth?’ Both doctors are really there to nudge you in the right position. They want to get you to where you want. I’m sure, like myself, there are a lot of trans guys out there who first identified as lesbian and were quite uncomfortable with it and later on progressed to realising they had a much more masculine identity and that ‘lesbian’ didn’t really fit. He (Lorimer) didn’t ask too many questions about that which I was pleased about… Dr Seal took my height, weight and blood pressure and that’s it. That’s the physical examination. It’s very basic stuff. He talks really fucking quick. I had to ask him several times ‘what was that? What did you say?’ and get him to repeat the question… he’s a busy guy. It is pricey, but positives with GenderCare; the reason the fees have gone up with Lorimer is you can now get a bridging prescription. (Ask for this) because if there’s a 6 month wait between you seeing him and seeing Dr Seal, that’s six months you could be on testosterone!”
What did I learn?
What did I learn from my day of watching these videos? Well, as customers they invariably seem to be dealt with remarkably quickly by GenderCare, receiving prescriptions for testosterone following first and second appointments.
We are living in a world where diagnosing a suicidal, depressed or self-harming young woman with gender dysphoria seems to be synonymous with offering her irreversible drugs and double mastectomy.
I can still find nothing to suggest that previous generations of young women have believed themselves to be men. There have been women who ‘lived like men’ and women who ‘dressed like men’, certainly, but women who actually believed themselves to be men, or believed that they could actually become men? There is no precedent for that.
Suddenly a generation of young women (and men, but this article is focused on the women) have been told that this is a reasonable thing to believe. Furthermore they have been told that this is a reasonable thing to attempt, and that with the right money and support it is something they can achieve.
Letters, containing ‘passport letters’ and testosterone prescriptions, marked with the GenderCare stamp, are waved at the camera with the enthusiasm of Hogwarts students anticipating a new life in a magical world of fantasy and wonder. Concerns for careful medical care do not appear to be of high concern among patients. Expectation of desired results is high. Immediate gratification is expected. One GenderCare client speaks angrily of being expected to attend further appointments at a cost of an extra £300 before receiving more testosterone, but seems less concerned by the medical cause of the delay (which included returning periods) than being expected to ‘’pull all this money out of my ass’, concluding ‘you can’t just take something away from me that is my reason to live.’
The terrible predicament faced by those of us who choose to acknowledge this crisis in mental health among young women is that if we question it, if we refuse to speak the lie and say they are actually men, then we are accused of pushing them towards suicide. We are told that if we speak out, it will be our fault if someone is triggered by hearing our words. We will be blamed. That we are literally erasing people. The Samaritans tell us that one in five people has suicidal thoughts at some point in their lives, yet in no other demographic is the threat of suicide seen as an acceptable reason for silencing people who disagree with you.
In the meantime, doctors, clinicians, therapists and a few high profile individuals are making fortunes out of perpetuating the myth. This industry needs to be analysed and examined and it needs to happen now. We need to question this treatment of young people, however uncomfortable it makes us. We need to listen to the ever-louder voices of desisters and detransitioners.
Lorimer himself seems to have adopted a lower profile these days, but the girls keep flocking to the GenderCare yard. Have the affirmative clinics become trapped in their own webs? Are they stuck in this lucrative cycle of giving young women what they ask for because it’s too late to back away from all that affirmation and consider that just possibly they have been a little free with the prescriptions?
Or is it just entirely convenient to keep feeding the cycle of dysphoria that keeps them comfortable?
This is a good article and shows that there is alternative provision to the long waiting lists that the nhs forces people to endure.
I must thank you for your long term commitment driving cis females to be men.
You are a beacon in the dark guiding these cis girls to be trans men
Thank you
?
Shut the fuck up. Go do something worthwhile with your life and stop ganging up on “young women” WHO ARE MEN. I WAS BORN A MALE IJ THE WRONG BODY YOU ABSOLUTE DUNCE.
If you are so gender critical you’d fucking get that you’re pissing of actual men and women who fucking hate you. You’re a disgusting human being.
This is such an insidious trend. Women and young girls deserve so much better than this. People are not born wrong. Their brains aren’t born into the wrong bodies. The idea is absurd and unscientific.
I truly hope all these young women live really fulfilling lives because compromising one’s health in this way is a huge cost if the long term outcome isn’t fulfilling. T is not great for female bodies, in these doses for the long term projection. Why are there no health care professionals looking out for the future health and well being of all of these young people in distress.
This is truly medical malpractice on a grand scale. No amount of “Kyle’s” yelling at people to shut up, will change that.
All the “Kyle’s” out there should go live their now happy and fulfilled lives in their authentically self created identities, bought and paid for like designer clothing. I truly wish that was hyperbole. The self made trappings of gender identity can’t and won’t stand the test of time. Nothing youthful does. One day, each of these women will be invisible, just like every middle aged woman becomes.
Kyle, why are transpeople so enraged? It’s the first thing I noticed when I started reading about transgender issues: this vast overwhelming rage. Wild explosive fury as part of everyday discourse.
But gender critics are not threatening you, Kyle. (Violence against transpeople is carried out by angry men, and they more often attack women.)
Society is changing at breakneck speed to give you what you want. The NHS provides the drugs and operations, or you can get them faster from private doctors. Employees are ordered to use the pronouns you choose, and anyone questioning these unprecedented changes may be accused of committing a hate crime.
So why the constant boiling-over rage?
Janet, when overseeing discussions about this topic I’ve noted that gender critical women tend to know exactly what to say and how to word it in a way that has plausible deniability if called on it, but is worded in such a way to elicit the desired response from their opposition- very sly, reminiscent of the way women used to act to assert a small amount of dominance in less progressive years. A worrying approach that allows them to pose as angelic saviours and place all blame on their counterparts. It is, I believe, a large part of gender critical culture as I have witnessed this attitude with multitudes of women my age who happen to also be on this power kick.
It would seem that Janet, like so many other women of this age, has resorted to internet pettiness to fill the gaps in her day now her children have left home. My advice Janet; more gardening, less lecturing young kids online about issues they have a right to feel angry about
Or perhaps we are simply articulate and thoughtful? Because we worry for the speed at which these things are happening. Because we know people, individuals, who have shared their stories both publicly and privatly, online and in our personal lives who have gone down this path due to social influences and regretted it. They were offered services like these as a quick fix, so of course they chose that over talking their problems and issues out. Believe it or not, we are personally invested in this issue, whether because we were sold the lie of surgery and hormones as a quick fix or someone we love was. Its works for some people yes, but I hate seeing people going down the same road and seeing all the signs that it will fail them. I have known too many people that it has failed, there’s a pattern, and we need to find solutions beyond giving them hormones and upheaving their lives. They desrve better than that.
What a supercilious comment. “More gardening, less lecturing”? Do you assume everyone who questions children being pushed into permanent, life-altering changes is a bored housewife with too much time trying to “assert dominance”? There’s a lot of misogyny to unpack in there.
If speaking factually is what you consider “asserting dominance”, you must be a difficult person to be around.
Bit of a moron, aren’t you Yve?
Didn’t notice the hypocrisy of you lecturing a woman to go and do some gardening, for supposedly lecturing young kids (as opposed to old kids?) not to do irreversible harm to themselves.
and if you want anybody to take any notice of you (and you clearly do) you;re going to have to learn to think and to learn to write – I mean ‘plausible deniability’, ‘very sly’ : could you set this out in ways that people can begin to get at what you mean? No? Iimagine you can’t even begin to
Lily, this is heart-breaking. I dread to think of these young people’s futures (boys as well as girls) as they’re gently encouraged, in a nice friendly way, into more and more damage to their bodies and their mental health. Not to mention the ignoring of their real problems, which need thoughtful care. God, what an epidemic of real ill-health conditions this is going to cause in a few years’ time.
Interesting that this article doesn’t mention anyone who is unhappy with their treatment and has detransitioned – it seems to me like everyone who has accessed the service is happy with starting hormones and the only person with an issue is you, someone who has not accessed the service, has no idea what being trans is like and does not know anything about the people you’ve referenced in the article who are making YouTube videos because they’re excited about this stage of their life.
Young people who have just received the go-ahead for the hormones or surgery that they believe will ‘fix everything’ are, of course, delighted. There are plenty of stories from people who were unhappy with their transition a few years down the line. These are fairly simple to find online, but maybe I need to write an article with links to those stories.
I feel sad for you that you cannot conceive of it being legitimate for adults to be excited, or having the enthusiasm of new Hogwarts students. I can only conclude that you have never experienced something so joyous, exciting or true to your sense of self as an adult.
I started seeing Dr Lorimer at 30. I was bubbling over when I got my diagnosis and started my treatment path.
I hope that Dr. Lorimer gets good legal advice over the hit material over him on the Internet.
Though personally I’d like Julie Bindel to be sued, the important part is that someone must get sued. And then we’ll have it on court paper that mainstream trans medicine is proper, Just like we have it on paper now that expression of anti-trans beliefs at the workplace is not protected, thanks to that gang of losers, “Christian” Concern.
This article made me very sad to read. As a young trans person, the torrent of people who belittle you and insist that you’re problems are not real is inescapable. I’d first like to point out that trans people in history are very real. It’s clear you didn’t research any queer history before coming up with the conclusion that this is modernity gone mad. Your refusal to gender any of the people, who you have quoted, as they desire to be gendered is not a sign of an insightful and hard-hitting critic, as you seem to paint yourself. These words come from prejudice and a refusal to understand anybody who sees the world differently to you. If only you knew how easy it would be to change the language you use towards a person, and how affirming that is. It’s only words to you, so why are you so adamant?
Nowhere do I say your problems aren’t real. I’m sorry the article makes you sad. The idea that young women hate the idea of being female so much that they are willing to modify their bodies in an attempt to pass as male makes me sad. The idea that there are doctors out there who are happy to financially exploit this confusion makes me both sad and angry. I wish you nothing but the best.
I found this thread really interesting so although it is old I thought I’d chip in. I think the difficulty with your comment is that (I assume) you come from a background of no personal gender dysphoria. I have no doubts that from your perspective, those who you perceive as young women transitioning into men is entirely absurd. This makes sense because you don’t know the experience of what it feels like to have gender dysphoria. And it’s true, there are doctors out there who are more than willing to financially exploit the confusion of young trans identifying individuals. A particularly dangerous example of this you might be interested in would be the increasingly popular gendergp, hailed for their manageable prices, short wait times and lack of “dilly dallying” before prescribing (yes I actually read that online! Describing psychiatric evaluation as dilly dallying!). But when you look under the surface you can see how gender gp is structured to milk the cash cow. Over the course of a year, their clients will end up paying them over £1000, and that’s a continuing cost, not just for the first year. This is because they have a subscription system in place, it’s all very unprofessional. In fact one of their diagnostic doctors expresses her “love for nail polish” in her list of medical achievements. I digress, dr Stuart lorimer is well trained in his field, the difficulty with these trans people is that it’s very easy to lie. And by lying enough to yourself you can convince yourself that you’re telling the truth. Dr lorimer follows a path set out by WPATH and the NHS (who he also works for notably) and he’s just there to affirm. Because the hard truth of the world is that everyone’s different, and just as there are infinite alleles in the human gene pool, there are an infinite number of mental disorders, gender identity disorder being one of them. And I think many of the people who identify as trans today are confused, but by no means do I think it’s all of them. I also think it’s unfair to put the blame on lorimer, you have to believe what your client is saying. There’s no brain scan to find out someone is trans or not. I wholeheartedly believed that if we were able to remove the stigma around being trans and treat people with open arms rather than endless criticism, those people who realise they’re making a mistake wouldn’t feel so guilty for backing out before it’s too late. The reason I think this is because someone who’s having doubts isn’t going to just drop their intentions if they risk losing their place on an extensive wait list or failing a relentless medical assessment. If they’ve told their parents and gone to the trouble of arguing with them for months about their identity they’re going to keep going and be too embarrassed to stop. But that’s just my idea. I am going to see dr lorimer myself, I have no intentions of accessing hormones or getting top surgery, I would like to have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria so that I can change my gender legally. I have experienced it since around age 5 and it is relentless, it is horrible. But my dysphoria isn’t about the hatred of womanhood, I have an innate desire to be a man. Womanhood is conceptually fine to me, but it’s just wrong. I know I will never be a male, my biology is innate, and I’m not going on hormones or getting surgery because I know it would never be enough for me. The legal system is malleable, whether you like it that way or not, but the way I see it, if I go on holiday with my female passport looking the way I do now, I will and always do get pulled over. I’m done with that. I’m done with getting weird looks too. So I’m getting the diagnosis to do it legally. I can’t expect you to understand and I never will. Thank you for writing this despite the fact that I find your blog entry a little ruthless, and I see an underlying tone of anger on your end, I actually found it a really interesting and eye opening read. I’m a big believer for do whatever you want if someone’s trans I don’t care, but I agree, there must be more caution around the subject. Sorry this is such a mess, I tried to be thorough but it ended up a bit long. Good article tho
Thank you for your thoughts on this. I wish you well and hope everything works out for you.
Hi,
Just wanted to say that referring to people who are transitioning to male as ‘women’ is quite offensive. I was looking for Gendercare reviews and whilst I appreciate the research done here, the tone of this post comes across as transphobic and is very upsetting. If you want to negatively review a service, it is possible to do so without being offensive to those who choose to utilise it.
Thank you so much for providing all these testimonials about gendercare, and letting me know price estimates etc! I was getting very stressed trying to wade through the medical system, but you’ve laid it out so clearly that I feel much more confident in accessing treatment through gendercare. I can’t wait to start on hormones & get surgery, and I couldn’t have done it without you 🙂
Thank you so much for this, it’s wonderful to know that there is alternate provision for trans men like me when the NHS waiting lists hopelessly fail us. Dr Stuart Lorimer sounds wonderful, and all of those testimonies really help assuage my doubts. I’m going to book an appointment as soon as I turn 18, and hopefully I’ll be on T forthwith! Thank you for all your help.