Member-only story
Today, I needed to go to a follow up appointment to the doctor’s office.
You regulars know, I am a transgender veteran and take advantage of the Veteran’s Administration health care system. I know over the years, I have heard from many trans vets with differing ideas on how they were received in the system.
During the earliest days in the system (approximately ten years ago) I felt as if I was the teacher in the system and that most all of my providers knew nothing about trans people at all. Fortunately, over the years my perceived ideas of how I was treated started to change. So much so, the Cincinnati metro VA hospital as a whole began to solicit ideas on how they could improve their service to the LGBTQ community, especially the trans population they serve. It worked, because I saw a big improvement in even the most backward satellite clinic I had ever been to. Which happened to be the closest to me.
In the past, it is the clinic where a receptionist basically out and out refused not to call me sir. It was so bad, I was almost to the point of filing an official complaint if she was still there when I went back, which she wasn’t. I haven’t seen her since and everyone else has been nice to me. To be clear, there are several ways of respect I expect to be shown. One of which is to use no gender markers what so ever when it comes to referring to me…
