Here’s a personal story. It’s a long one and it’s purely anecdotal. But I think it’s fitting.

I’m in the process of diagnosing my autism, and I mean it’s pretty much done. I’m autistic, there is no doubt about it at this point, but now I just need what we could call a stamp of approval for it to be officially recognized by my government. So I had to see a psychiatrist to do this. Currently, in my country it’s kind of hard to do so because they are all completely booked so I basically jumped on the first one that was available.

I sent him an email explaining to him my situation, telling him that I’m a trans woman, about my pronouns, he was aware of absolutely everything, and he told me that it was all good with him. Previous experiences in my life had taught me to be wary of psychiatrists, but I tried to go in with an open mind. I brought all of the tests that I had done with therapists who were specialized in the domain of autism and everything with me so that we could go over all of this. According to those people that I was seeing, it should have been just a formality, or at the very least he could’ve wanted me to do some tests quickly just to double check but that was it.

So I finally went to see him. And the first thing he did was misgender me. He called me sir, called me he and then he noticed that I flinched at this. Made a point of addressing it. And I told him that yeah it was a bit weird because you know I told him in advance and people didn’t misgender me nowadays so it was weird. He half-apologized for his “mistake”, before telling me that it was my fault. Because according to him, my passing wasn’t good enough. He told me that I didn’t look feminine enough and that reality was harsh and that sometimes we just had to accept that things are not the way we want them to be. That he wasn’t going to pretend just to please me.

And mind you, my passing is good. Not to brag or anything but I am never misgendered. I always had a very feminine face, a very feminine body. I always had long hair, so I was already passing before I was out. And now it’s even better. I have guys walking up to me and flirting with me for 10 minutes straight and never questioning if I’m a man or a woman. The point is my passing isn’t an issue, and even if it was, fuck him. That’s not something he should judge. You are a psychiatrist, not a stylist. Shut the fuck up and stay in your lane.

I tried to divert from all of this. I wanted to cry but I still tried and remained focused about what I was here for. So I handed him all of the papers that I had from my therapist who was specialized in autism, all the tests we did and told him here are everything I have, all of my pre-diagnostics, how should we proceed? He barely took a look at them before telling me that he categorically refused to help me with the diagnosis, saying that it was just a trend.

I tried to explain to him that I needed this because I was trying to build a file that would recognize me legally as a disabled worker because, well, I am, and it would help me greatly in my day-to-day life especially at work, because I would be granted accommodations for my hypersensitivities and the like. He told me he refused to help me with this and told me that we had to work on other things like for example that I had a habit of self-diagnosis. I had self-diagnosed my autism for example and I was kind of stunned at this because… I didn’t.

I had a long track record of doctors suspecting that I was maybe autistic but never really going all the way for a diagnosis. I finally decided to take action and see some people who immediately confirmed that yes, I very likely was. I was getting frustrated but I was thinking that he was the professional and maybe he was right, maybe something was wrong with me, but then he continued and said that I also self-diagnosed my trans identity.

I was fucking stunned at this. To the point where I just couldn’t say anything, so I let him continue and he continued talking about it, about my trans identity, how it was clear I had some identity issues and so on. And the way he talked about it, I started to feel dread. He was talking about me being trans like it was some psychosis.

This was the first time I saw this motherfucker, we had never met before, and he somehow deduced all of this in like 30 minutes. Like, the dude talked with such confidence, like he had it all figured out already. And this was the first time anybody told me something like that. It’s not like there was a pattern with my therapist or even the doctors that I saw who gave me hormones or anything. No, he was the first one to do this.

The second I walked in, he immediately got set on trying to cure the fact that I was trans. He became fixated on it and ignored everything else I was telling him. He always brought it back to this.

And mind you, this is not the protocol at all for my country when it comes to trans people. That’s not how you do things. But at the same time, from what I understand, once you got your medical license here, well, there is no need to take a refresher course. And this dude got it like 20, 30 years ago. And he never had to brush up on his knowledge. The dude was basically trying to diagnose me with “transsexual syndrome” or something like that.

Figuring out that I was trans is one of the best things that ever happened to me. My life has never been this hard and yet I’ve never been this happy. And he wanted to take it all away from me. He saw it as some problem to be fixed.

The last interaction I had with him was when I gave him my medical card. He proceeded to bill me much more than I anticipated, so that was fun but that was only after he commented on the card, which had a very old photo of me where I looked much more masculine (really short hair) but also my deadname which he proceeded to read aloud and comment on how he liked it, asking me how I came up with “Plume”, and how different it was than [DEADNAME].

Needless to say, I never saw him again.

I did talk about it a lot with my therapist, she was shocked at what I was telling her. My doctor who put me on hormones told me something along the lines of, “what an asshole”. I was shaken by the experience. Still kind of am. If I had been a minor and didn’t really have a say in any of this, I am convinced, without a doubt, that the dude would have put me through some sort of like conversion therapy.

Talking about this to some other trans people, I learned that, at least in my country, this is a shockingly common occurrence…

I just want to be me…