A thing I have noticed. 2 decades ago, there was decent pharmaceutical knowledge in the trans community. We knew what GnRH agonists were and how they work. We knew that for trans girls, if you couldn’t get them, then a cocktail of spironolactone and finasteride would do a pretty good job as a replacement. We knew that cyproterone acetate worked even better than spiro, but was hepatotoxic, so be careful.
I feel like that’s all been … lost?
I suspect that until this sentence, most currently transitioning people won’t even know that GnRH agonist is the proper term for what is frequently and misleadingly called a “puberty blocker”.
How did we let all this knowledge get lost? We, as a community, used to know how to outflank attempts to stop us accessing medication.
Now the British government just go, “we’re banning prescription of puberty blockers” and everyone throws their hands up and goes, “oh well, no alternative but unopposed testosterone I guess”.
We were better than this. Why did that go away?
@goatsarah in Ireland it's very hard to get a prescription for any HRT, public has a 10 year waitlist and will tell your GP they're at risk of losing their license if they prescribe HRT (this is a lie), so most of us were relying on UK-based GenderGP, which is now imploding. The website "HRT Cafe" and this dosing chart https://transfemscience.org/articles/e2-equivalent-doses/ have been a godsend for a newly hatched trans girl I know. I just count myself lucky that I've gotten what I needed from testosterone and my body's stock hormones are good enough for me going forward.