Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education
Fund, and Pauline Park, co-chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights
and Advocacy discuss transgender health care at a forum on Aug. 19. (Photo courtesy
of Pauline Park)
Diverse activists and allies lobby Albany for LGBT causes, including GENDA and Marriage Equality. But that’s not the real power of Equality & Justice Day.
An emotional West Village vigil marks the national Day of Silence and a slain teenager.
Aesthetic Realists wrest $4,000 in state funds for a program that allegedly teaches art to Brooklyn senior citizens. But the group has a history of “converting” gays to heterosexuals.
War, the economy and health care matter more to a majority of LGB voters.
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By Mike Lavers
Friday, August 27, 2004
Chloe Dzubilo, 43, of Manhattan, was diagnosed with HIV in 1987. Six years later
she began her transition from a man into a woman.
The Connecticut native, who has suffered a number of serious illnesses and
injuries requiring hospitalization over the last several years including the
debilitating bone-degeneration disease avascular necrosis, said she and many
other transgender people face difficulty accessing even the most basic of medical
care.
“Basically when you’re transgender there’s a lot of pathologizing,” Dzubilo
said as she described the way she said many of her doctors reacted when they
learned she is a transgendered woman. “People put you in a category or
think you are nuts.”
Dzubilo was one of nearly 30 people who attended a town hall meeting on Thursday,
Aug. 19, at the Center on West 13th Street.
Titled “Transgender Access to Health Care Forum,” representatives
from local transgender advocacy organizations, including the New York Association
for Gender Rights Advocacy and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education
Fund moderated the hour-and-a-half long discussion. People talked about their
experiences in the health care system and the difficulties they face when seeking
treatments such as hormonal therapy.
Carrie Davis, gender identity and project coordinator at the Center, said
the insensitivity many health care providers show towards their
transgendered patients is a big problem many people in the community routinely
encounter. She also said she feels many transgender people are forced into
a position where they have to serve as their own spokesperson.
“Transgender people are often called upon to be their own doctors or
advocates in the health care system,” Davis stated.
Indeed, one person who said she spent many years in the foster care system
recalled that as a child and teenager she was forced to play a “little
diplomatic song and dance” with doctors in order to receive the medical
care she needed.
“There should be a policy [and one] is not there,” she commented
as she described her experiences with health care providers. “A lot of
kids are suffering.”
Another problem the transgendered face, according to Davis, is they are often
forced to not identify themselves as transgender in order to receive hormones,
undergo sex reassignment surgery or even get basic health care.
“Transgender health care is restricted in the system and the only way
you can get access to some of these things is to not be transgender,” she
commented. “Transgender health care shouldn’t be about beating
the system and erasing identities.”
Other problems transgender people deal with when accessing health care, according
to NYAGRA Co-Chair Pauline Park, include a lack of doctors, nurses and other
caregivers who are trained to properly treat them. Also, she said there is
a significant shortage of information available to medical students about transgender
health.
Indeed, according to Dzubilo, who has been treated by several New York hospitals,
she has struggled to find doctors and health care providers able to adequately
treat transgender patients. “People really choose to be ignorant,” she
said.
Others attending the meeting also complained that most medical facilities
do not have the proper facilities necessary to accommodate transgendered patients
including gender-neutral restrooms. One person even said he was nearly “assaulted” by
security guards after using the “wrong” bathroom while he was in
the emergency room.
Armed with such stories, Park and other panelists – who included Michael
Silverman, head of TLDEF — said there is a need for health care providers
to develop a specific policy to adequately treat transgender patients from
the moment they seek care to the time they are discharged. This protocol, he
stated, should include everything from room assignments to using the proper
pronouns to address patients.
“In general, health-care providers need to become more sensitive to
transgender patients,” Silverman commented.
For people such as Dzubilo, who said she and other transgendered people are
not taken very seriously when they speak up about the lack of adequate care
available to them, the time is right for the health care system to listen to
them and provide the care they need.
“We’re not crazy,” she said. “We’re enraged
and we are not going to take it anymore.”
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