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five - Trans temporalities: imagining a future in the time of anticipation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2022

Ruth Pearce
Ruth Pearce
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Summary

We live in a time of anticipation.

We anticipate misgendering, perplexed looks, ignorance, transphobia. Even when what we anticipate does not occur (yet), we act as if it has, and it becomes an inevitability.

I think it has something to do with waiting lists. My whole life seems to be about waiting lists nowadays (even if I am not on one yet – I am waiting to be on one). We are kept in a constant state of anticipation: waiting for a letter or phonecall from the GIC, a prescription, a surgery date …

We are used to waiting, orientated towards the future like iron filings lining themselves up towards a magnet. We are focussed on the future whether that's the future where we have already had access to healthcare treatment, or the future where the (seemingly inevitable) acts of transphobia have already taken place. Because we are always waiting for this future the present seems compressed somehow, like our lives are in limbo.

But looking to the future can also be positive. Creating change requires us to live in a state of anticipation. It seeks to build a politics of hopefulness rather than of dread, preparedness rather than an anxiousness … the way we think about the future has an impact on the present. (Jess Bradley and Francis Myerscough, 2015)

Living in the time of anticipation

Back in 2015 I began the process of seeking a referral for laser hair removal through the NHS. It was the first time I had sought access to gender identity services since being discharged from Charing Cross gender clinic in early 2009.

I had previously considered my engagement with gender identity services to be long over. According to the traditional pathway narrative, my transition had taken place and ended. I had experienced counselling, negotiated various referrals and waiting lists, undertaken RLE and had been prescribed hormones. This journey culminated in surgery during the summer of 2008, after which I received a handful of final follow-up appointments.

Facial hair removal was absent from this NHS pathway; as was typical for the time, this intervention was not publicly funded in my area.

Type
Chapter
Information
Understanding Trans Health
Discourse, Power and Possibility
 , pp. 119 - 156
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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