Celestial Bodies - Flipbook - Page 37
TRANS DOCTORING 101
The following is a list of requests compiled from my
interviews that highlight ways in which medical
professionals can emulate the safety of alternative
body modification spaces and relationships.
@L Be curious. Get to know a bit about your patient.
How did they get here? What does transness
mean to them? What does this procedure mean?
kL Be human. Let the patient know a bit about
yourself and your background. Reveal the
person beyond the medical professional.
L Be compassionate. Try to figure out
what can be done to make the
patient feel most at ease pre-,
during, and post-procedure.
¿L Be collaborative. You may be the expert on the
body, but the patient is the expert on their
body. Rely on them as a resource and cocreate an artful anatomic discovery or change.
êL Be open. There will be times when your assumptions are incorrect.
Willingness to adjust your perspective and apologize when your
assumptions are hurtful is important to creating a safe environment.
)L Be warm. Surgery is scary and so is feeling like a specimen/medical
object. Recognize your patients as complex, self-sovereign wholes,
so that you can do your best work medically and spiritually.
“The biggest thing that makes me comfortable with people or places is when people admit
that they don't fucking know shit... And I think the medicalized model doesn’t really
account for that. Like, yeah, monitor my blood levels and my cholesterol and my stroke risk.
You know how to do that. I want that from you. If I tell you, “I'm going to stop taking my T
blocker and up my estrogen”, you say, “Okay, we'll monitor that.” That's all I want out of you.
Because you don't know. You don't know what my body feels like when I'm taking this T
nd you don't even
now that my body is going to act the same way as the next person, so it's all an
approximation. So I like the doctors who admit, “We don't fucking know. But we can watch
this and take care of any issues that arise.” [Jed]
blocker, you don't know what my body feels like when I up the estrogen. A
k
