Fertility was not at the front of d’Arcy Kenobi’s mind when he started transitioning.<\/p>\n
He was single and, at the time, had no desire to start a family.<\/p>\n
But his outlook changed when he fell in love.<\/p>\n
“Once I met my partner I realised this is actually someone I want to spend the rest of my life with and potentially want to start a family with,” Mr Kenobi said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr Kenobi started looking into fertility treatment after he met his partner.\u00a0 (ABC Sunshine Coast: Charlie Shelley)<\/p>\n
The Sunshine Coast resident began looking into freezing his eggs.<\/p>\n
“It’s incredibly difficult to adopt a kid, the foster system is horrendous,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So I thought that [freezing my eggs] would actually make things easier in terms of the potential of having a family with my partner, but that was not the case.”<\/p>\n
Costs were prohibitive, but Mr Kenobi’s situation was further complicated by the fact the fertility treatment providers he spoke to were hesitant to treat him \u2014 even places that specialised in rainbow families.<\/p>\n
“They were just like, ‘Look, I think you should consult mental health support or the gender clinic first so that you’re clear on what you want because clearly you’re having second thoughts about transitioning’ \u2014 which wasn’t the case,” Mr Kenobi said.<\/p>\n
“It was, I want to take a break in my transition to harvest my eggs and store them in a facility for whenever I’m ready.<\/p>\n
“And then I want to jump straight back onto [testosterone] and continue to live my life.<\/p>\n
“I was pretty clear on what I wanted.”Doctors ‘dismissive’<\/p>\n
Mr Kenobi is not the only person who has struggled to have their voice heard by medical professionals.<\/p>\n
Oskar Reedy grew up in a small, rural town in Western Australia, about 300 kilometres east of Perth.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mx Reedy says they were unable to have open conversations with their GP.\u00a0 (ABC Sunshine Coast: Charlie Shelley)<\/p>\n
After realising they were non-binary in their mid-teens, they wanted to explore the possibility of taking small amounts of testosterone to induce mild masculinising effects in a practice known as microdosing.<\/p>\n
But the 19-year-old said they did not feel safe speaking to their local GP.<\/p>\n
“He had very conservative values and views of medicine,” they said.<\/p>\n
“He would kind of be dismissive to people who \u2026 seemed to be queer.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t feel like I could talk about what I wanted to do with my body. I didn’t feel like I could talk about even just my own medical issues that weren’t to do with my gender.”Healthcare hurdles<\/p>\n
Sav Zwickl is a researcher at the Trans Health Research Group \u2014 an offshoot of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Medicine.<\/p>\n
They said transgender people faced numerous barriers to accessing health care, including discrimination.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dr Zwickl says trans people sometimes have difficulty accessing basic medical treatments. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
“[It] can range from being misgendered to a complete denial of care, where a doctor is actually unwilling to treat that person \u2014 even for something really, really basic \u2014 because they are trans,” Dr Zwickl said.<\/p>\n
A 2023 study Dr Zwickl co-authored found more than 50 per cent of transgender Australians had negative experiences when attempting to access medical care.<\/p>\n
Dr Zwickl said it could be particularly challenging for trans people living in regional and rural areas.<\/p>\n
“Even if there is a local doctor in their local town, that person might not know much about trans people, they might have been discriminatory against them in the past.<\/p>\n
“So people are sharing these stories of having to travel two, three, up to even six hours to see a healthcare professional that they feel safe with.”<\/p>\n
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) is the peak body representing GPs in Australia.<\/p>\n
RACGP rural chair and associate professor, Michael Clements, said providing gender-supportive care was a core part of training and that it was the responsibility of all doctors to make their patients feel supported.<\/p>\n
“We have very clear legislation, very clear ethical, moral and legal guidelines in place that means that every trans patient and every other patient \u2026 do get treated in a respectful way,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dr Clements says every patient must be treated in a respectful way.\u00a0 (Supplied: RACGP)<\/p>\n
Breaking down barriers<\/p>\n
Dr Zwickl said medical professionals received very little training on transgender health and that more education was needed.<\/p>\n
“There are people across the country that are doing a lot of advocacy to try to get more trans health into university curricula, so that’s for doctors but also for allied health professionals,” they said.<\/p>\n
They said upskilling the existing workforce around transgender health was also a priority.<\/p>\n
Dr Clements said patients wanting to start a conversation about gender-affirming care with their GPs should test the responses from their doctors.<\/p>\n
“If it’s not the response that gives you the support you need \u2026 consider either looking for some of those online [health] services or using the online support groups to find out where [people] have received good, supportive care,” he said.<\/p>\n
Life-changing support<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his experience seeking fertility treatment, Mr Kenobi said he thought the healthcare workers he spoke to did not fully understand his needs as a trans man.<\/p>\n
He supported calls for more education and wanted to see more LGBTQIA+ people employed in the healthcare sector.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mx Reedy says living on the Sunshine Coast has been a positive experience. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Charlie Shelley)<\/p>\n
Mx Reedy moved to the Sunshine Coast six months ago, partially out of a desire for better health care.<\/p>\n
They said being able to access support services like Headspace had been life-changing.<\/p>\n
“Knowing that I have a place and a medical professional who is there to help me, I honestly feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven or something,” they said.<\/p>\n
“It just does not feel real.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fertility was not at the front of d’Arcy Kenobi’s mind when he started transitioning. He was single and,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500,128935,46786,150172,11942,121705,150171],"class_list":["post-254093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-healthcare-access","tag-lgbtqia","tag-royal-australian-college-of-general-practitioners","tag-sunshine-coast","tag-trans-health","tag-trans-health-research-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}