#i have theories btw... that the GIC system was one of the worst things to happen to trans rights demands in the UK

[variousqueerthings]

I’m really hurting over this documentary series produced between 1979-1999 about Julia Grant. 

The psychiatrist who had all the power in his hands to help or deny her clearly never cared about trans people, and it’s practically the same system now as it was then -- the patronising language, the pathologisation, the fucked up powertrip, the limitations of what a person can be that is created off the back of the same kind of language as when the GIC was first formed in 1966. Trans healthcare in the UK was a fucking mess then and is a fucking mess now

Also she argues for informed consent within the documentary and she is so right! She was right in 1980 and that was forty fucking years ago!

I know she did ok after some time, but the amount of respect I have for her allowing the conversations with that psychiatrist to be aired, with the amount that he dehumanised her (and we know he likely dehumanised other trans people who came to him for help)

have to watch a lot of 70s-80s trans rights in the UK documentaries and movies right now and they are stressful -- I will have to recover by reading some of the trans philosophies published during the same time, because watching these it can be easy to forget that trans people weren’t just constantly interacting with cis-expectations for what humanity was allowed to be, but were (are) developing whole new fantastic languages and ideas for living

and the things I’m watching right now are very middleclass to upper-class**, all trans women, all white, all able-bodied, for the most part thin, and they’re still having to fit themselves smaller and smaller, having to apologise, having to prove “normalcy”

(** the interesting there of course is that middleclass trans people will very quickly become poor)

[watches a kate bornstein interview to calm down]

EDIT: OOOOOOOOOOOOH MY FUCKING GOODNESS I GOOGLED WHO THE FUCK HER PSYCHIATRIST WAS AND IT WAS JOHN RANDELL WHO FUCKING!!!! STARTED THE GIC SYSTEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!

THIS MAN IS SINGLE-HANDEDLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE NOT GETTING CARE AND HE WAS ONE OF THE MAIN VOICES AT THE CORBETT V CORBETT CASE THAT RUINED THE RIGHTS FOR TRANS PEOPLE TO CHANGE THEIR GENDER ON THEIR BIRTH CERTIFICATES!

ASK ME AGAIN IF THIS SYSTEM WAS BROKEN FROM THE WORD GO!

(on the list of people we as a community should be wishing for a long time in Hell, this guy is up there)

#julia grant #trans history #trans documentary #it does hurt to have to make something that basically said *i am a human being* #but it was nice to see the support she was getting at the women's shop and from her mother and at the hairdresser's #im doing this for a thing about the NHS reasons so unfortunately #it's about interacting (or not interacting as the case was) with the NHS #i have theories btw... that the GIC system was one of the worst things to happen to trans rights demands in the UK #because of the way binary transness was being enforced in a very unhealthy way #and the constant forced scarcity #making people claw and climb over one another rather than ask WHY those limited spaces existed in the first place #the thing happening in several countries about *proving you were heterosexual* and sterilization #the legitimacy of transness being put in the hands of the (cis white rich conservative) medical community #fuck this guy fuck this guy fuck this guy #i hope he died alone