Oh no no no no no-
Sit down! Grab a drink! and Buckle up! for yet another episode of “Lu Wilson struggles to get medication”, the neverending saga, currently a four-parter.
Which one will it be this time?
I have been taking hormones (and blockers) for a long time now. It’s not an exaggeration to say that they saved my life. I would not be here today without them.
And life has been (mostly) excellent since I started taking hormones. It really was that simple. It wasn’t easy, but it was simple.
It’s simple! Just take hormones.
Sadly, it was very very very difficult to start taking hormones, mainly for factors that I have already covered at great length. In short, transphobe gatekeepers wanted to prevent me from doing it, because they’re massive massive cunts.
In comes GenderGP. They’re a for-profit company (foreshadowing) that provides hormone prescriptions for trans people.
It worked great! After a consultation, and some blood tests, and some fertility stuff (yuck), and quitting my job, and changing my name to appease my doctor, I started on a tiny dose.
Three months later, nothing happened, and my bloods were still the same, so I switched to more powerful medicine. This repeated a few times until I ended up on the dose that I’m on now. And it’s going great.
During all of this time, I always felt properly looked after, and cared for. They answered any questions I gave them. The smaller ones were answered by support staff. The bigger ones were answered by doctors.
All good. Everyone lived happily ever after. The end.
Hahahahahahahaha-
GenderGP is a for-profit company (callback) and has recently enshittified their entire system, with zero warning. You can no longer contact staff or doctors. You can no longer send emails. You can no longer make specific requests. You can no longer request your repeat prescription.
Oh no no, wait, you can still do all these things! But they cost extra money on top of the recurring subscription that you already have to pay.
It’s in their interest to make their own service worse, because then you’ll pay more to use their extra services. They’re trying to up-sell you constantly. It is shit by design.
It now takes weeks, or months, to get a response back. It used to take 3 to 5 days.
This is simply not good enough for people who are relying on GenderGP for life-changing medicine.
Online communities are now full of people in complete panic because they’ve run out of medication. Their medical transition is reverting in front of their eyes.
I think this amounts to torture. It’s a form of real-life body horror.
There are many other ways that the new system has become worse, but I won’t get into that here.
There’s a growing number of ex-employees suggesting that GenderGP has recently done mass layoffs. And guess what, they’re replacing those people with motherfucking AI. I’m sure we’ll learn more over the coming weeks, but that would certainly explain a lot.
I put through my repeat prescription request weeks ago. Previously, I’d hear back in two to three days. Currently, I’ve had radio silence, and based on the accounts I’ve seen shared online, the situation doesn’t look good. There’s a good chance that I’ll run out of medication.
I have paid more money to have a 15 minute call with GenderGP on Monday. Let’s see how it goes. Either way, the writing is on the wall.
What do I do in the long-term? Do I try to fast-track through to a much more restrictive and exploitative private provider? Do I start sending daily emails to my GP, Andy Dufresne style? Do I buy hormones off the black-market, and do do-it-yourself? At this rate, I’ll be medicine-less.
Even with all of these changes, with all this enshittification, GenderGP is still (by far) the best option out there. It doesn’t take decades like the NHS. And it doesn’t do creepy intrusive psychoanalysis bullshit like other private providers, which also gatekeep strongly against non-typical transition.
GenderGP can get away with all this enshittification because the other options are non-starters for most of us. The NHS should be doing its job. Instead, its deep-rooted transphobia causes it to be a living nightmare for trans people.
All of these providers know that trans people don’t have any sway or sympathy from the press. They know that they can make us suffer like this, and it will be invisible.
One of the reasons I try so hard to build an audience, and a platform, is to share stories like this. I hope that at least one person reading will go out and try to do something about it. But at this point, I’m not feeling optimistic.
Unhappy day of trans visibility everybody.
GenderGP, please revert all the changes. They are not ready for a full rollout. And make a public commitment to never use AI in the administering of medicine.
I tried to reach out to GenderGP for comment, but they tried to charge me 20 quid, so I didn’t bother.
Back to the wikiblogarden.