Anybody with SRS scheduled in Thailand?

Heya everybody,

I was contacted by a start-up called Junomedical. They work on providing independent, high-quality medical services based on the needs of patients. One of their innovations is an algorithm to help evaluate the quality of hospitals and physicians. From what I know so far, they seem to use a patient-centred approach, meaning that the patient is the customer rather than a number in a huge, state- or insurance-run health care system.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about … I’ll do a post about their services in relation to gender dysphoria later. This is just a quick post to ask whether anybody from the US is scheduled to have SRS … well, I let them do the talking:

The Junomedical team is looking for somebody from the US planning to get sex reassignment surgery in Thailand at the beginning of March and would be open to share this journey with others for a documentary television series.

We have been assured by the programme and the production company that they are very sensitive in their approach. The journalist has been recognized for her nonjudgmental approach, and she has explored everything from our universal quest for love and fulfillment, to important social issues like religious freedom and gender identity. The program transcends stereotypes, reveals surprising nuances and opens people’s minds.

Please just send a quick email to Shaz (shaz.i@junomedical.com) if you're interested and we'd be happy to share more details.

So, if you know anybody who might be able and willing to participate, let them know. The short time frame might be an issue, of course – feel free to share the request to increase visibilty.

Take care and have a good week!

A quick update: Impact of sexual orientation, autism

Heya everybody,

I’m happy I found some time to do some updates! Finally ☺

I have added about ten or so new studies, but still have to upload them. I’ll do that soon, hopefully. ☺

A few studies that I found particularly interesting, warrant mentioning here:

One is Impact of Sexual Orientation Identity on Medical Morbidities in Male-to-Female Transgender Patients by Gaither, Awad, et al. (in LGBT Health, 2017). They used a large group of 330 male-to-female transsexual patients to measure sexual orientation (attraction to men, to women or bisexuality) and tried to find a correlation to other medical issues, including psychopathological problems. Their conclusion is that The majority of medical morbidities are not associated with sexual orientation identity. I believe this to be another nail in the coffin of Michael J. Bailey’s autogynephilia hypothesis. Differences were found with regards to depression (female-attracted male-to-female transsexuals suffer more from it) and HIV (male-attracted patients have a higher occurrence rate. Oh, and another interesting result: The share of the three sexual orientation categories was pretty much equal at about one third each.

Two other studies researched the link between transssexualism and autism spectrum disorders. One study (Evaluation of Asperger Syndrome in Youth Presenting to a Gender Dysphoria Clinic by Shumer, Reisner, et al. in LGBT Health, 2016) found a 23 % prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in a sample of 39 gender-dysphoric youth. The other study (Gender Variance Among Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Retrospective Chart Review by Janssen, Huang and Duncan in Transgender Health, 2016) looked at the issue the other way around, by trying to find gender-dysphoric childrens and adolescents in a large sample of autism-spectrum-disorder diagnosed patients. They found a much higher prevalence of about 5 % for gender dysphoria (in both natal males and natal females) in autism-spectrum-diagnosed patients than the 0.7 % in the control group. I believe this supports the hypothesis by Simon Baron-Cohen that autism is linked to unusual levels of sex hormones during early brain development.

Have a good Sunday evening! Peace and Light ✨