We don't have the spoons for a detailed post. We've written other posts recently giving updates on some of our struggles, but we needed to get the thoughts out of our head before sleep tonight 🥺😔

We're realistically facing a situation very soon where we'll officially be told that we're not going to get any gender-affirming surgeries from NHS England whatsoever, making the last nearly 5 years of trying to progress through this dehumanising, anxiety-inducing, decorating, belittling, gatekeeping, outdated process completely worthless  

We already had to accept we could never get FFS.

We tried twice to convince them to give us VFS, but they said no, and gave us no actual further voice training help.

We knew that trying to get PPT vaginoplasty would be a longshot, but we never expected:

• to have PPT basically badmouthed during a consultation;
• to hear basic PIV or scrotal flap techniques described as the "gold standard" (!!!) for genital reconfiguration surgery (GRS);
• to be told that the only surgeon who'd see us is one we'd never, ever trust or want anywhere near us, especially after having specifically requested another surgeon (the only one we'd trust in the UK for GRS); and
• that we'd need to go back begging to our gender clinic -- which no longer responds to our emails at all -- to try to convince them to submit a funding request for a basic standalone bilateral orchidectomy and scrotectomy... which would have been required anyway as part of PIV or vulvoplasty!!!

We've reached the point where we don't think we can get any joy from seeing other trans+ folks' joy and euphoria from making progress in their own transitions, particularly surgeries, as we can't help but feel so painfully sad crushingly jealous and upset that we cannot get even the most basic care after waiting even longer 😔

And nope: we've zero chance of being able to ever even fund the cheapest of surgeries privately.

Apologies for the sad dump. We needed to write it all out to have any chance at getting to sleep soon  

#EOEGS #NHS #NHSEngland #FuckTheNHS #FuckEngland #FuckTheUK #GenderAffirmingSurgery #GenderAffirmingHealthcare #gatekeeping #trans #transgender #NonBinary #TransFem #GRS #GenderDysphoria #transition #PPT #PIV #FFS #VFS #orchidectomy #FML #queer #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+ #LackOfTransJoy

If you're a British citizen and/or UK resident, please consider reviewing and signing the below petition 🩷

UK Government and Parliament - Do not ban children from using virtual private networks

We call upon the UK Government to reject any calls or lobbying that propose to restrict or ban the use of virtual private networks ("VPNs") for children, because of the impact this would have on other VPN users.

More details

An amendment agreed by the House of Lords proposes an addition to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill: "Action to prohibit the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom". The method and implementation would likely rely on 3rd-party facial scans or ID checks, which we believe are invasive. Thus, such a law would cause massive collateral damage for the millions of current users who rely on VPNs for privacy and security.

Regardless of your citizenship or residency, boosts, quote boosts, and shares will be very much appreciated 🫶

#BoostsWelcome #PleaseBoost #fediverse #UK #UKPol # UKPolitics #FuckTheUK #VPN #VPNBan #censorship #petition #UKGovernment

We are so very, very tired of everything going wrong 🥺😔

We've had issues ongoing for years, but everything just keeps getting worse and it feels like every week brings a whole new opportunity for things to go wrong.

Here are just a few of the highlights of the last year and a bit:

• Mental health worsened, entering full AuDHD burnout, with increasing anxiety and mood instability.
• We got made redundant from a job we were clinging on to.
  • It also took us about 6 months to finally get any benefits, so we ate through our entire redundancy payment, final salary payment, and some savings.
• Wife broke her ankle very badly, requiring an awful stay in hospital.
  • When she got out, 17 days later, we became her primary carer.
  • We had already been increasingly looking after her, as her health issues had worsened over years, but this dialled it up to 11.
  • We entered carer burnout, on top of the AuDHD one.
  • Even after her ankle fully healed and she'd done months of physicaly therapy, our wife's health and mobility declined due to issues unrelated to the ankle, which has further increased her reliance on us for care, and the NHS is going at a snail's pace.
  • She's pretty much in constant pain, struggling massively, and there's very little we can do to help, despite her being so grateful to us 😔
• We started ADHD meds, and eventually started to feel like we were getting somewhere with a combo of meds, only for them to email us today with a suggested backwards change they want to make that will fuck us over royally, and gave us a mild panic attack.
  • We had to contact them immediately to request an urgent call to discuss, but we now feel like the rug's been pulled out from under us.
• We tried to get actual mental health support through the NHS as far back as May, but due to incompetence, poor administration, and an unwillingness to meet basic accommodations, it's still not happened and is unlikely to happen.
• Our already fractured relationship with our assigned gender clinic broke down to the point where they no longer respond to us.
  • They wouldn't even let us know what an appointment they'd scheduled was about.
  • They wouldn't even respond to the relevant NHS PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) when we asked for their help.
• We finally got offered some voice training assistance through the NHS, but they completely wasted our time and broke us more.
  • Over 3 separate hour-long assessments, including one with their lead speech and language therapist, they decided that they couldn't help us voice train, that the problems we were having were all in our head, and tried to fob us off to a psychologist to overcome our perceived issues!!!
  • When we asked them to support an Individual Funding Request (IFR) for Voice Feminisation Surgery (VFS), they not only refused, but the reasons given were a mixture of misrepresentations and outright untruths.
  • Despite saying that they couldn't help us, their refusal to support an IFR advised that we could always come back to them in 6 months to try again 😑
• We finally progressed enough through the NHS "care pathway" to discuss options for genital reconfiguration surgery (GRS), but -- as we've written in detail here, it went very, very poorly.
  • Had to do 2 very difficult emails to try to work out next steps, if any, to go with our backup option, but it's looking increasing like we're not going to be even able to get that from the NHS, and we cannot afford to get it done privately.
• Trans+ rights and access to healthcare are continuing to be rolled back and further limited, piece by piece, with no hope of that changing in the near future... or even at all.
• Oh, and the senior partner at our NHS GP surgery -- whom we very much trust and who actually cares -- is semi-retiring this year, and they were kind of our last lifeline in the NHS for wading through most of the shit 🙃

NGL: if we didn't have responsibilities and obligations to wife, cattens, and friends, as well as certain others in the community, we'd be seriously planning a homebrew version of Dignitas-level stuff right now.

It no longer feels like we're just treading water.

It feels like we're caught in rapids, desperately clinging to any rocks we can along the way, trying not to drown as the water increasingly fills our lungs.

But it doesn't matter how exhausted we are, how much it hurts, or how much everything sucks: we don't have the freedom to let go.

So instead we're doing everything within our limited power, resources, and capabilities to keep on swimming, staying conscious as we drown, and learn somehow to breath underwater.

If you've read this far, apologies for all of this. We could have said nothing, but we needed to be honest about how bad everything is.

And if per chance some of you are more-technically-savvy, and know what we mean by TOR and Dread, and could perhaps privately offer to share some info over Signal or Matrix regarding backup "supplies" for the ADHD stuff, we'd be much obliged. (We've got the GAHT stuff covered at least, as well as certain other meds. Just struggling with the ADHD stuff, particularly guanfacine / Intuniv.)

#MentalHealth #anxiety #depression #MoodDysregulation #MoodInstability #neurodivergent #neurodivergence #neurospicy #neurospiciness #AuDHD #AuDHDBurnout #burnout #CarerBurnout #NHS #NHSEngland #trans #transgender #NonBinary #enby #TransRightsAreHumanRights #TransRights #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+ #FuckTheUK #HereBeDragons

Hey folks

Been trying and failing to write this post for a few days now.

Mood, health, energy, time, chores, obligations, and responsibilities kept getting in the way.

So, we're gonna summarise everything as much as we can, and try and limit our emotional response to it.

Important context

• We have been trying to get meaningful gender-affirming healthcare through the NHS since April 2021.
• We had tried to get clear information on surgery options, particularly genital reconfiguration surgery (GRS) options, for years, but never got clear options: only vague wording.
• We were almost certain sure that no form of penile-preserving vaginoplasty would be available, so we narrowed our choices to peritoneal pull-through (PPT) vaginoplasty or a bilateral orchidectomy.
  • We didn't and don't want penile inversion vaginoplasty (PIV) or vulvoplasty (aka zero-depth vaginoplasty).
• We finally passed all hurdles through an NHS pilot scheme (East Of England Gender Service; EOEGS) in late 2024.
  • This is under the Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health (NCTH).
• Our surgery referral was only sent over to a private hospital by the NHS Gender Dysphoria National Referral Support Service (GDNRSS) in late 2025.
• We had an initial assessment meeting with that private hospital this week.

Information from meeting

• The NHS will not fund PPT vaginoplasty unless there's medically no other option (i.e., last resort).
  • Basically only if you've got "inadequate donor site skin" for other methods.
• Despite offering PPT privately, the hospital considers PIV the "gold standard", and was heavily biased against PPT, advising that PPT:
  • "is not self-lubricating";
  • has "more granulation tissue" and "more complications associated with it";
  • typically has a "worse surgical outcome";
  • "turns into skin" in the long run;
  • is more likely to "stenose" and "scar".
• No form of penile-preserving vaginoplasty is available (as we thought).
• The NHS will not fund the hospital to do standalone bilateral orchidectomies for any referrals sent to them via GDNRSS.
• The specific (and only surgeon) we had asked to be referred to did not pick up our referral.
  • Worse, a surgeon we absolutely do not want to go anywhere near picked up our case!!!
• We discovered that NHS gender clinics sit in on their Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) meetings to discuss patients' surgery requests!!!

Outcomes for us

After considering options and offers, we resignedly sent an email to the private hospital, requesting that they refer us back to GDNRSS, advising that:

• The GRS options were explained to us, but we did not find them suitable.
• The surgeon who offered to take our case was not suitable.
• We wish to discuss next steps with the GDNRSS.

Sadly, an individual funding request (IFR) will almost-certainly be required, but the gender clinic has previously refused to submit any IFRs for us, so we're kinda very likely to be screwed here.

For anybody not aware, IFRs get submitted to your local integrated care board / system (ICB/ICS) in England. They'll only agree to fund something if:

• There are "exceptional clinical circumstances" to support the request.
• The IFR clearly demonstrates "clinical exceptionality".

Although technically an NHS GP can submit an IFR, unless it comes from the NHS gender clinic with a detailed explanation of why they can't / won't fund the surgery and why it's necessary, the local ICB funding team will just reject the request.

This is sadly a major issue for us, as we've raised multiple complaints against our gender clinic for their awful service (or rather lack thereof) and they've stopped responding to any of our emails now, so there's little to no chance of them even agreeing to submit an IFR for us, let alone doing one with a decent chance of being accepted.

We don't know what the current price is for a bilateral orchidectomy, but it was up to about £6k a year or two back, so it's probably more like £7K to £8K now 

In other words, nothing we could afford privately any time in the next decade.

So... yeah 🙃

If you wondered why our posts have been a little bit more bleak the last few days, this is among the reasons 😅 (There are sadly many other things contributing too.)

It's our own fault really for even trying to go through the NHS route and thinking that maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't continually fuck us around.

Anyway, that's the toot.

#NHS #NHSEngland #EOEGS #NCTH #trans #transgender #NonBinary #enby #FemEnby #GRS #GAS #vaginoplasty #orchidectomy #GenderAffirmingHealthcare #IFR #ICB #ICS #FuckTheNHS #FuckTheUK #DesegregateTransHealthcare #TransRights #TransRightsAreHumanRights #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+

*Ahem*

#FuckIsrael #FuckRussia #FuckTheUSA #FuckTheUK #StopFuckingKillingPeople #StopKillingThePlanet #WeAreNotTheTerrorists

DM: "That ends the NHS's turn. Okay. Evie, you're next."

Evie: "Right. Well, first, I would like to rage...."

DM: "But... you're not a barbarian...?"

Evie: "No, I just mean scream into the void in pure rage and frustration at the NHS."

DM: "Okay... erm... roll for... performance...?"

Evie: "Natural 20, but -2. 18."

DM: "Okay. Go ahead."

Evie: inhales deeply "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"

DM: "You feel the growing irritation and akwardness of the NHS, leading to the call being terminated. But you take... 10 points of psychic damage in recoil and are now prone. It also automatically ends your turn."

#NHS #NHSEngland #NCTH #EOEGS #GenderAffirmHealthcare #FuckTheUK

RE: https://cultofshiv.wtf/@EmandEmz/115725921420314056

Giving this another boost to try to help them out 🫶🩷

#trans #transgender #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+ #queer #fundraiser #fundraising #GoFundMe #crowdfund #crowdfunding #MutualAid #MutualAidRequest #FuckTheUK

Hey folks 🩷

We don't exactly share others' fundraisers often, so it probably says a lot that we're sharing this one for some UK folks we know 🥺

https://www.gofundme.com/f/rrzag2-save-a-family-from-homelessness

Not gonna sugarcoat: they are very much struggling financially and at real risk of becoming homeless 😔

They will greatly appreciate any help that folks can offer, whether it's in the form of a donation or signal boosting their fundraiser on fedi and elsewhere  

Thank you so much 🫶  

#trans #transgender #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+ #queer #fundraiser #fundraising #GoFundMe #crowdfund #crowdfunding #MutualAid #MutualAidRequest #FuckTheUK