NHS Pride Cancelled
Up Yours Homos
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Apparently the government has secretly shut down the NHS Pride program. On the surface I can see why this might seem like a minor thing to your average straight normie - it’s ‘just a badge’ after all. Who cares? But to the LGBT community (and trans community specifically) this really does represent yet another sign that we aren’t cared about.
I wrote a few days ago about the discourse surrounding single sex hospital wards, and trans people’s exclusion from them, and the NHS Pride program shutting down is just another in a long line of indignities. The government seems to be on a pretty well calculated campaign right now of violent little punches toward the LGBT community. Some hurt a lot, and some hurt just a little bit - but a death by a thousand cuts is still a death.
Trans people are stuck in an abusive relationship with the NHS. We both rely on it, and at the same time are grossly mistreated by it. Access to existentially life altering services, like access to hormone replacement therapy and adequate aftercare are constantly dangled in front of us as we’re made to jump through hoops for it - always with the looming, dreadful fear that it could easily be taken away. I don’t think the majority of cis people truly comprehend just how damaging to the psyche it is to know that access to drugs like HRT, which literally alter your appearance and improve your quality of life as you move through the world, can so easily be taken away. For a trans person, the phenomenological implications of a national health service gradually turning its back on us is a type of body horror I can only compare to something like Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
How many trans people do you see in positions of power in the NHS? Ever been treated by a trans doctor? It isn’t likely. A trans nurse, maybe - but I’ve personally never knowingly experienced it. I was a support worker for 5 years for adults with learning disabilities in Brighton, and I was rare enough. The badge, at the very least, communicated allyship with the LGBT community. It said to a patient: “I know things are tough right now, but rest assured - I’m not personally going to give you a hard time”. And just in time for Pride month, too.
It’s not even about the badge, really. In a lot of ways, I resent the need for it. An ideal scenario would be an NHS where a trans person’s dignity was taken for granted. But without it? Right now? Well, it doesn’t put my mind at ease. As a trans woman who has been ‘out’ and under NHS care for just over a decade now - I want to make sure you’re under no allusions that I am ‘doing fine’. I have been on the highest dosage of antidepressants as long as I’ve been on HRT and literally every single day I contemplate taking my own life. I’m not telling you this to garner sympathy, in fact - I’m so used to it, it’s become an intrinsic part of my psyche (as bleak as that sounds). The reason I’m telling you this, is because trans people need help. We need assistance from the NHS. We need support, including mentally - if not just to cope with a system that actively makes its contempt for us crystal clear.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the money being saved from the NHS Pride badge was going towards some new type of trans ID badge for patients like me to wear. I get the feeling some Tories in cabinet might be in support of that.
Come and see my new show “Doll” at the Bill Murray / Angel Comedy Club on March 11! Tickets HERE