Tw Misgendering Mention - Tumblr Posts

yeh honestly in my experience going to a gyno sucks so much, like,,, i went to a gyno because i was starting to go thru symptoms of male puberty at age 23 and while yes i am a trans guy i even at the time of typing this now have not gone on any form of HRT, on top of this, without going into too much detail my genitalia was changing shape, i went to a gyno because i thought i was probably intersex, however it was stacked against me since i had to be referred to a gyno by a GP who clearly had no idea what an intersex person was properly and thought it was just people being born with a dick and a pussy every single time with no other ways of being intersex, the gyno i went to see failed to mention that she was told by my GP that this visit was "to ease my mind and reassure me that i wasn't intersex" until the end of the appointment, she repeatedly referred to my biology not even as female but saying that "i was biologically a woman", even sometimes just calling me a woman and then when i reminded her that im not she justified her misgendering me by saying "but you are biologically a woman" even in moments of conversation when it was clear she wasn't referring to my biology she ignored all my concerns i had about my genitalia literally changing shape and told me that "it was normal for the entrance to collapse" she also despite constantly saying i wasn't intersex was visibly disgusted by my biology when she was inspecting it and also ridiculed me for being incontinent and having to remove my (clean) adult diaper for the examination, she and my GP had decided that this visit was about me being "reassured that i wasn't intersex" and not about actually trying to find out what was going on with my body, because of this my gender therapist no longer believes me when i say that i am intersex even though it is becoming more and more obvious as i see my symptoms of male puberty crop up stronger and stronger without any form of hormone replacement therapy, it's worth noting also that while i have no proof that this examination was what made my gender therapist decide to stop helping me, the conversation we had where i told her how the visit to the gyno went was the last one we had if i remember correctly before she started ghosting me

also side note; my gyno literally tried to make me afraid of getting further examined by her using the medical equipment by showing me a speculum (not sure if im spelling that right since ive never seen the word written down, just going off auto correct here) and telling me how it would be really painful especially if i was getting smaller down there, saying to her assistant "the plastic one hurts more show her that one" so yeah i agree that going to the gyno can 100% be traumatising

i just got back from my first ever gynecological exam and somehow, despite the doctor being really nice and way more knowledgeable about trans bodies than i was expecting, it still ended up being incredibly upsetting and honestly probably mildly traumatizing. i’m sure it’s no secret to anyone following me that going to the gynecologist is a uniquely shitty experience for a lot of trans guys and i knew that but i really was not prepared for that.

first of all, everything you read says that the pelvic exam and pap smear shouldn’t hurt even if they’re super uncomfortable, but let me tell you, that shit fucking hurt. like, i have a pretty high pain tolerance and usually even when something does hurt i don’t show it very much, but that was maybe the most painful thing i’ve ever had a doctor do to me and it showed. to be fair, i’ve never had good luck with things like that — i couldn’t even use tampons back when i had a period because the one time i did, taking it out was really painful — and i’m on t now so i’m sure that makes things even harder and i was prepared for it to hurt, but i really wasn’t ready for just bad it was. it’s been an hour since the exam finished and there’s still some pain so, yeah, so much for “it’s just uncomfortable, not painful”.

(and a side note: when it did hurt, the doctor told me to relax my muscles because the tension makes it hurt more. what they didn’t seem to realize is that if your brain and body are collectively rejecting the presence of something inside you, making those muscles relax is a fucking herculean task and i for one was not in any way capable of it so it just…kept getting more painful.)

i also was never informed ahead of time of what a pelvic exam actually entails; i had assumed it was a more general external checkup, and that the pap smear was the only really invasive part. as it turns out, i was very wrong, and “pelvic exam” actually means the doctor sticks their finger up you to feel around. she asked me if i was comfortable getting the exam because it was so obvious that the pap smear didn’t go well, but i had no clue what i was saying yes to and it was a total surprise for me when there was something inside me again. and she knew it was my first time, so she had no reason to assume i knew that the exam would be like. by the time i realized i absolutely should not have said yes to it, i was too late and it was already happening. it really feels like common sense that if you’re going to be giving someone what basically amounts to a professional fingering, you should probably make it clear that that’s what’s about to happen, but i guess that doctor would disagree.

and of course, the whole time i was also being misgendered. the doctor used the right name for me, but the other staff didn’t and everything about it was so excessively gendered (i’m pretty sure the appointment i had was literally called a “women’s wellness visit” on the same sheet that had trans man and nonbinary as gender options). not to mention, when i told them i’m getting top surgery and have the exact date set, the nurse made a comment to like“well aren’t you one of the lucky ones,” which really felt like it had “i think trans guys have a super easy time getting surgeries that cis women have to fight for” energy.

and the irony of all this definitely isn’t lost on me — i just did a project this past semester about how trans guys are fucked over by reproductive healthcare practices so a lot of us just never go, and now i got some firsthand experience in exactly why so many of us just say “no fucking way”.

i just want to put this out there for anyone who hasn’t done it before because i think this would have been a lot less awful for me if someone had just told me “yeah, it might hurt way more than you think, and also that thing they call a pelvic exam is actually an internal exam.” i thought i was prepared and i totally wasn’t, so hopefully this will reach someone else who will be better off knowing all of this.