When to be cautious about diagnoses, and media reporting of same.

It's difficult to know how to even begin with this...


There were three stories on the RSS feed this morning, all on the same story. The story is that Australia's only sex-change clinic has been shut down, amid allegations that they have performed the surgery on people who were not actually ready for it.

‘I will never be able to have sex again. Ever’ (Lots of personal anecdotes)
Sex-change clinic 'got it wrong' (Just the facts, ma'am... maybe)
Rachel and Kimberly: a born-again love story (Personal anecdotes in the other direction: in favour of the clinic and the procedure)

In the paper itself, this was spread over several pages, starting on the first... above the fold. This is a major story, and most of it is about the allegations towards the clinic: namely, that it was too quick to assume that any gender identity abnormality was because of transsexualism. Several examples are given of people who hated their sexual identity, but not because they wanted to become the other. They say that when they expressed doubts, in one case on the trolley into surgery, they were told that everyone feels doubts, and pushed to continue.

In The Age's favour, it included the pull-box in the third link. A large pull-box, mostly a portrait of two transwomen, saying how hard what they did was, how it had destroyed their lives and their relationships, but that it was still the right thing to do... for them. How it saved their lives.

But still, the accusations are that people who were not ready for transition, who were not even appropriate for transition, whose problems with their sexual identity were psychological problems with abuse and trauma, not transsexualism, were misdiagnosed, and that the clinic to which they were sent, the only clinic available, the center of expertise for gender identity issues, was a little too quick with the diagnosis of transsexualism.

Also, having a look at someone I know who is TS, she links to that egregious fuckknuckle Andrew fucking Bolt. (Warning: Bolt's xenophobic arseholery is only surpassed by that of his readership.)


I just, I don't know. I saw this, and thought of sly_girl and kynn.