“No-one will ever love you”

There’s been a lot of discussion about conversion therapy, the often-illegal and usually deeply damaging attempts to force people to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.

That’s horrific, of course. But you don’t have to give people electro-shock therapy or send them off to prayer camp to try and talk them out of being who they are. From parents to healthcare providers, many trans and non-binary people encounter a great deal of resistance. In the case of GPs, that resistance can mean denying them access to the gender clinic system: as far as I’m aware Scotland is the only bit of the UK where you don’t need to persuade your GP to refer you to the gender clinic; I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about Northern Irish GPs in particular refusing to refer patients.

The trans-friendly practice GenderGP asked some of its blog readers what experiences they’d had with medical professionals. The responses included being told the following:

“Come back next year to see if you change your mind.”

“You have to be attracted to men if you’re really trans.”

“Pack it in, you’re too big for that sort of nonsense.”

“If you continue on this path you’ll lose your job, your family, your friends, you’ll be neither male nor female & no-one will ever love you.”

“Why can’t you just live as a tomboy for now?”

“It’s just a perversion and you should be closer to God and your parents.”


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