In 2009 I was sterilized against my will.
And it didn’t happen the way I expected. I wasn’t strapped to a bed or dragged screaming into an operating room. If that had been the case, at least I would have had an easier time understanding what happened to me.
Instead it was the slow mounting of circumstances. I was told that without proof of sterilization, I couldn’t change the gender marker on my passport. I learned that without that change I couldn’t find a job. I couldn’t go to a bank, hospital or dentist without being publically humiliated as I was forced to explain the discrepancy on my passport. I couldn’t get through passport control to leave my country. I couldn’t safely go to a bar at night. And since I didn’t get sterilized, doctors doubted my ‘commitment’ to being transgender and refused access to further transition related care.
Eventually I gave in. I needed to get on with my life. I was done screaming, crying, fighting. I made my appointment, packed up my own bag for a 3 day stay at the hospital and checked myself in for my own sterilization. The one I really did not want.
When I made my appointment, when I checked myself in, when I went through preparation for surgery, I must have signed over half a dozen consent forms. It seemed that at every turn there was a new form for me to sign saying that I did in fact want this. That I was giving my full informed consent to the procedure. I’ve had other surgeries that did not involve this pile of paper work and looking back, I’m sure all that extra attention to consent was there precisely because I was being forced into this position. I was being sterilized against my will, but I had to put on a performance of consent so the agents within the system could never be held accountable. I do not know if the nurse who handed me my 5th consent form and prepped my for my surgery knew that I really wanted to run out of that hospital. I don’t know if she knew that I felt broken, defeated, hopeless. Sometimes I feel guilty about allowing her to be an unknowing participant in my violation.
I hated the consent forms more than anything.
I had the surgery and I went on, as I did before, to campaign against sterilization as a requirement for legal gender recognition. And in 2014 sterilization ceased to be a requirement for legal gender recognition in the Netherlands, where I live. I celebrated that day. I am really happy that the next generation of transgender people will not have to go through the same thing.
But I never forgot what had happened to me or considered it a finished chapter. I never forgot that consent can be a performance, enforced to cover up a great coercion. I never forgot that the participants in a consent violation, doctors and nurses in my case, may not even be aware of their role because they did not witness the coercion taking place. They did not see how my options were limited until I got to this point. Consent can be a choice made because all the other roads you would choose are blocked. Consent can be the mask violation wears. And I am very skeptical when I see consent hailed as the highest standard for ethical conduct. So there is a ‘yes’, maybe even an eager, informed ‘yes’. But what’s the rest of the story? Where there are those with power and those without it, consent is not a good measure for whether abuse occurs.
I am sure others are at this very moment signing consent forms or saying ‘yes’ to things they really do not want.
why do they make people do this?
Because they believe we can’t be good parents.
Because they want us to suffer to prove the validity of our identity.
Because they believe who we are is wrong and they hope to eradicate us.
Thanks for replying. What fake reasons do they give for it? Or do they just straight up and blatantly argue that trans people shouldn’t have children?
Fake reasons doctors give:
- These hormones will give you cancer if you keep your testes / ovaries (even though there is zero proof that the risk of cancer is higher than in cis people who produce their own hormones)
- If you were really trans, you’d want to get rid of this part of your body.
- This is necessary for the other surgery you want. (often blatantly untrue!)
Truthful reasons doctors give:
- Hormone therapy for trans women is much more intense and unhealthy if their body is still making testosterone too. (but they often tell that without going into the option of freezing sperm)
- Hormone therapy for trans men is slightly healthier and slightly more effective after sterilisation.
- You won’t get your passport changed if you don’t go through with this surgery. (really, doctors don’t even have to lie, this right here is cruel and dangerous enough to make many trans people go through with the surgery.)
Truthful things doctors don’t tell you:
- Once you get sterilized, you’ll be dependent on medical hormones to survive. Natural retransition won’t be an option and if at any time the hormone supplies run low (which actually happens, because pharmaceutical companies don’t prioritize that stuff) you’ll run immediate health risks.
- The (minor) long term health risks that I’ve told you about don’t mean you have to get sterilized now. You could have children within the next decade and then get that sterilization to have a healthier old age.
Fake reasons politicians use to uphold the law:
- Pregnant fathers and sperm-providing mothers will upset our entire legal system and will be super confusing for children! Trans existence is too scary for our vulnerable youth and lawyers.
I never forgot that consent can be a performance, enforced to cover up a great coercion…. Consent can be a choice made because all the other roads you would choose are blocked. Consent can be the mask violation wears.
Worth noting: the lie about “keeping this body part will give you cancer” is also a very, very common excuse for pushing surgeries on intersex people, from birth onward. (And other medical methods of trying to control how their bodies develop.)
For the same underlying reason: to protect the heteronormative gender binary. You can’t just let people just walk around breaking the darn thing like that.
They think we’re all wrong, and a lot of the medical protocols for trans people, and even more for intersex people, are focused on trying to eradicate what we are in any way they possibly can.
TRUE!!!
QueerAnarchism 