Summary of events
My name is Chloe.
I am a woman. The name on my medicare card is Chloe. The name on my passport is Chloe.
My sex marker on my passport is an F. My gender marker with Medicare is female. I am transgender.
I am a patient with PTSD. On the 22nd of April I encountered a trigger for that PTSD, which bought up a lot of painful memories and emotions related to my childhood.
I was also dealing with a lot of issues relating to being harassed for sex by ‘chasers’ – cisgender men with a fetish for trans women who haven’t had/don’t want to undergo gender confirming surgery. I have had issues in the past with sexual assault and that, in combination with a particular body part that causes me a lot of dysphoria being objectified, on top of general stress and poor mood bought about by the coronavirus, meant that I was in already in a dark place mentally. The combination of all of these factors led to me driving to the Story Bridge with the intention of not coming back.
Fortunately I did not. I knew there was a fence and I figured I could climb it, but I was not aware of the spikes attached to the top of the fence. These spikes proved to be enough of a deterrent that my girlfriend Danielle was able to reach me and contact police, who found me and detained me under an EEA. They escorted me to the paramedics, who took me to the PA. This is where the problems began. The paramedic asked for a list of medications, which I provided, including my HRT. This led her to start asking invasive questions about whether or not I was ‘fully transitioned’. This is an incredibly meaningless yet also incredibly offensive question, and something she clearly didn’t require an answer to for her paperwork given that she immediately dropped it when I became visibly uncomfortable and just kept asking what she meant.
The statement “fully transitioned” is meaningless. It doesn’t mean anything. There’s no correct way to transition. There’s no checklist of necessary steps. Yet cis people will ask trans people that question, and without fail, will be using those words because they know directly asking someone about their genitals is invasive, insensitive, and incredibly rude. Yet they do it anyway. I’d just attempted suicide. She didn’t know why. She knew enough about trans people to know we are often uncomfortable with our primary and secondary sex characteristics. And she asked anyway. Right after picking me up from a suicide attempt, that for all she knew, could have directly been related to me struggling with the difficulties of being trans.
On arrival in the hospital, I was processed and taken to the disaster (covid) ward because I’d told the paramedic I’d had a sore throat, cough, and runny nose, and told I would be swabbed. After an amount of time in the ward, I was approached by a doctor. He’d obviously read my file. He told me so. He would have known why I was in there. He didn’t ask me about that. He didn’t ask me about corona symptoms. He just told me that he’d read my file and that it said I was a “genetic male”. When I told him that I’m a woman he told me he could use XY, completely dismissing my objections.
I told him, I’m a woman. Trans women are women. I am a product of my genetics and my genetics are female. This is Trans 101. This is stuff he should know. We are a protected class. He is a doctor. He is a person who has studied humans and their development. He is a person working for Queensland Health, and organisation that claims to be inclusive of trans and other diverse individuals. He is a public facing representative of the organisation. He’s been trained in bedside manner; he knows the importance of respect and dignity. He knows that hospitals need to be a place where patients feel secure and safe. And surely I am not the first trans person he’s encountered. Surely I am not the first time he’s encountered the concept of being trans.
This is his job. This is his responsibility. At best he’s entirely clueless and lazy. At worst he’s a discriminatory bigot who refuses to apply current scientific and medical knowledge. The consensus in the fields of Neurology, Genetics and Psychology is that trans people are the gender they say they are. Trans women are women. I am a woman. I am female. I am legally recognised as a female. And yet; here he is, insisting on referring to me as some definition of male. Did he listen to me when I said I was not? No. Did he respect the gender I have on file with Medicare? No. Was he at all concerned that the patient under his care was visibly, and audibly, distressed with the way he insisted on referring to them? No. He tried to fob me off with a “well I’ll try and learn the correct terms”. An obvious lie; given his following actions. I replied that the correct term is woman and if he had to refer to how I was born then he should use “assigned male at birth”. This is the accepted terminology, both in the wider community and the health services that look after them.
So there I was.
A member of an extremely at risk population, with a suicide attempt rate of 41%, and extremely high rates of depression and other associated ailments compared to the general population. A member of a population who struggles every day against discrimination and bigotry. A member of a population who struggles every day with being seen as who they medically and physically are. I was a person who had just recently made an attempt on her own life. And I was there reeling from the fact that a member of the medical profession, in a place that was supposed to be safe, pointedly refused to see me for who I am. He couldn’t even take the compassionate approach and keep it to himself while referring to me in the way I asked for. He had to let me know that he would refuse to refer to me as a woman. Intentional or otherwise, this is blatant transphobia and should be completely unacceptable.
I was upset. I was angry. I had just tried to jump off a bridge and was already exhausted, and now I had this to deal with. I was there, for I don’t know how long, feeling like absolute garbage. And then, from across the ward, I heard the very same doctor who told me he wanted to learn the correct words talking about me on the phone. Very loudly. Did he call me a woman? No. “We have Chloe, he is a genetic male”. That broke me. I was distraught, and in complete and utter disbelief. I wasn’t having it. I remember getting out of bed and yelling “fucking what”. I remember walking over telling him that no, actually, I was not going to let him call me a man. I forget exactly what was said. I remember standing silently absolutely shocked and distraught there while they accused me of standing over people and being aggressive. I remember calling the doctor an asshole. I remember a nurse telling me that it was the correct medical term and therefore it was correct to call me a man actually. I remember telling her no, I remember telling her that the medical term is transgender woman, and in absolute shock I asked “did you even do a medical degree”. She replied “no, I’m a nurse”, realised what she’d said, and quite clearly got extremely frustrated. I stood there, absolutely stunned.
I vaguely recollected that the entire time people around me had told me security was coming. I did not want to be in that room. I realised that me being in that hospital was significantly worse for my mental health than just walking out and calling my girlfriend. I’d just tried to kill myself. My girlfriend isn’t a psychologist but at least she wouldn’t be aggressively transphobic. I told them I was leaving.
I started walking forwards, towards the door I had come in from.
I remember being grabbed from behind, turned around and dragged back to my bed. I remember 4 men holding me down, one of which was pinning the side of my knee by putting all his weight through his elbow. I remember being absolutely terrified. The timeline gets messy for me here. I was so shocked and scared and alone and feeling so violated I dissociated from reality. I remember an older male nurse discussing what he was going to do to me, using he several times. I remember the doctor who caused all this telling me that he was going to swab me. I know what the swab is like. I knew it would be incredibly uncomfortable even if it wasn’t being done by a flagrant transphobe while I was distraught. I told him not him. At some point my hands were put above my head.
I remember the male nurse telling me he was going to swab me. I did not want him touching me. I told him no too. He told me he was doing it anyway and I got incredibly upset. He put a needle in my leg. I remember the man holding my left leg referring to me as ‘he’ which made me even more upset and further lose touch with reality. Things get hazy because of the drugs they put me on. At some point I freaked out even more and I got put in cuffs. My hands were put over and behind my head, in a way that was causing a lot of pain in my shoulders. There was also a bar in the bed, which is what my arms were pushed against. When my arms were behind my back, they were being bent over that bar. It left a very big bruise right around my left forearm. The cuffs themselves were also hurting my wrists, especially with how they were behind my head. I remember yelling that I was in pain. I remember the security man on my left arm that the yelling was non compliance and meant that I presented as a threat. He told me I was doing it to myself. Me asking for the cuffs to be taken off and my arms to be lowered because I was in pain was met with statements that I was making demands and lead to them pushing harder.
I remember being told that if I didn’t stop screaming I would be further sedated, the man on my left arm pushing harder, then being told “right the jab it is”. I remember at times they did bring my arms down, and I felt shooting pains go up my right arm as they moved it. I remember the man on my left arm kept calling me man and telling me I was doing this to myself and I just needed to comply. I told him I was not a man several times and every time I did I remember him taunting me and teasing me with “Okay then fellow human being I am presently talking to” . I remember the nurses standing at the end of my bed laughing. I remember a lot of laughing, but I couldn’t hear what was said over my own crying. I remember that same man on my left arm taunting me with “you have a good set of lungs with you, you should be a singer”, which I remember got a laugh from the people around. I remember nurses telling me I just need to stop crying [out in pain] and it’d stop and that I was doing it to myself.
I mostly just remember being stretched over the bed, my arms behind my head, being bent over a pole, and feeling very vulnerable, and very very scared.
I passed out. The last thing I remember was a nurse asking me what I wanted. I wanted to go home.
I wanted the torture to end. When I woke up, a nurse saw me, and told me that I’d had a CT. She took a drip out of my arm. My phone and keys had been taken off me and I asked for those back. I was still incredibly groggy.
Looking at my phone it had been a full day since I’d last looked. The nurse said something to me about my pituitary gland and that wasn’t why I’d been giving the scan. I got taken to the mental health ward where I was asked a few questions by a doc, my phone was taken back off me by someone else, and then my girlfriend bought in and
we were both asked to fill in a form that looked like it was for children about what would happen to me if they let me go right then. And that was it. They let me go. There was no follow up about what happened. Nobody told me why I had a CT or why there was a drip in my arm. I should have pushed, not that I should have had to, but given that nobody told me what was going on I should have tried to find out what happened to me. But I woke up exhausted and still groggy form whatever they’d put into my body.
Today is the 5th of May. I went to the Storey Bridge on the 22nd of April. When I got home I had a big bruise on my left arm, a numb patch on my right hand, and a big numb patch on my right shoulder. I had several marks. Most of which has healed, bar the numb patches. I have regained feeling in my right hand, but it still feels partially numb, like I’m feeling it shallow below the surface. It’s also sore to the touch. I haven’t had any improvement with the numb patch on my shoulder. Mentally I’ve been left traumatised. I’m scared to leave the house, or even my room. I get incredibly uneasy if I see a security guard whilst out in public. Cuddling with my girlfriend gives me flashbacks and makes me incredibly anxious. If she holds my hand or touches my wrist or does anything that could possibly be perceived by my brain as potential restraint, I have to swallow the urge to flee. Sometimes I can’t even physically touch her.
I close my eyes and I can see those men standing over me. I can feel them holding me down. I am scared to even continue living as me. I feel torn between the absolutely unwinnable fight against dysphoria and the need to feel safe. I feel like I need to go back to living as something that was absolutely untenable just so I can feel safe. I feel like I need to go off the HRT that’s saving my life so I can have testosterone back so I can feel strong and like I can defend myself. I wouldn’t survive going back. I’d be straight back on the bridge that started this whole thing in the first place. And this time it would be for trans reasons.
And what’s going to happen next time I need to visit a doctor or go to hospital?
Next time?