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'A cavity is not a vagina': Trans woman refused healthcare in France
'A cavity is not a vagina': Trans Woman refused healthcare in France
The French doctor admitted he didn't have the training or knowledge to treat trans patients - as experts say there's no need for a trans woman to visit a gynaecologist at all.
www.euronews.com
The French doctor admitted he didn't have the training or knowledge to treat trans patients - as experts say there's no need for a trans woman to visit a gynaecologist at all.
"I only treat real women" - that's what French gynaecologist Victor Acharian told a 26-year-old transgender woman he refused to treat in his clinic in the south-west of the country recently.
The transgender woman, accompanied by her boyfriend, went to a gynaecological appointment when, after minutes of waiting, the secretary told her that the doctor had refused to see her.
"I told her that I'm not competent, but I can guide you. I can refer you to services that can take better care of you. But after I said that, things went south," gynaecologist Victor Acharian told Euronews.
"I thought I was being honest when I said it wasn't my speciality. I don't know how to treat them and I don't mind being called ignorant," he added.
"You're transphobic!" the young woman reportedly shouted as she left the consulting room. According to the gynaecologist, the patient began to insult his secretary, reacting violently to the refusal.
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‘A cavity is not a classic vagina’
Although gynaecology is still associated with specialised care for women, it's not that simple anymore.Doctors claim that a lack of knowledge makes it difficult for them to treat transgender people, while 50% of transgender people cancel or delay their medical appointments to avoid discrimination, according to the latest report published by Doctors of the World in collaboration with the Spanish Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals.
"Just because it's a cavity doesn't mean it's a classic vagina," Acharian explains, admitting his lack of knowledge about transgender patients. The doctor claims that this person was the first transgender woman he had seen in his thirty years of practice.
The challenge for medicine is to find new ways of dealing with changing social norms, as transgender people are still under-represented in medical curricula - but the story is changing.
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‘More and more’ trans people
All this at a time when the number of transition requests is on the rise.For 2020 in France, around 3,300 people were recognised by the health insurance scheme as having a long-term condition for "gender dysphoria", ten times more than in 2013, according to a report submitted in January 2022 to France’s Ministry of Health.
"There is no recommendation for a transgender woman to have regular gynaecological check-ups, unless she has a surgical problem related to the operation, because she doesn't have a uterus or a cervix," she added.
However, Ravn said that transgender women can have issues related to their surgery that require some kind of gynaecological assessment, so it's important to have specialists with knowledge in this area.
All the reports suggest that health professionals will one day have to treat transgender people.
Without proper training, these professionals "run the risk of adopting inappropriate attitudes that are not necessarily transphobic in intent - but have the same negative effects".
Commentary:
Only today can our world be so incredibly stupid that we have to play pretend with mentally ill people, or risk harm.
If I were a physician confronted with this, I would have referred her to the Doctor(s) that performed the atrocious surgeries.
Gynecologists specialize in women's reproductive systems. Only real women have them.