"Penis is not always male"

Post Reply New Topic

What f*****g BS. What is this supposed to be, some sort of half-assed, cardboard cutout version of consolation for trans women who don't have access to SRS? To me, my penis is always male, which is part of why I wish to finally be rid of the thing.

I just hope that, instead of receiving consolations that to me are not really consolations, I can finally receive SRS; I can be enabled toward that.

And before any f*****s come in and say, "Oh sorry you got gatekept! You should have just been allowed to make the mistake of SRS!" as I've known at least one f****r on this forum to say. I was not gatekept, f*****s! It was the insurance policy!

Here are the psyche letters:

Letter 1, from my psychologist:




Letter 2, from my psychiatrist:




And the true reason I wasn't covered for SRS, from my company's insurance policy's Evidence of Coverage (look at the arrows):

What a load of s**t. The exclusion just seems so arbitrarily forced and tacked-on.

Sorry that you have to deal with this from insurance.

True. I didn't get to see that until my first appeal was denied. Prior to that, everybody told me a different document, the Summary Plan Description (SPD), was authoritative, and it was silent on that. On the phone, reps would tell me about the exclusion, but because my endocrinologist office visits and lab work were covered even though the endocrinologist's office always billed Gender Identity Disorder (302.85) and the SPD was silent, the lawyers I was working with and I thought the reps must have been reading from the wrong plan or something.

Nevertheless, the very odd way that the exclusion is only put under "Reconstructive Surgery" might be why all those GID (302.85) claims from my endocrinologist's office kept getting paid, as doing lab work and being prescribed hormones does not fall under the heading of "Reconstructive Surgery."

As I'm no longer employed, I got a health plan starting in March with the same insurer through the Marketplace, and made sure to select the plan that has all the docs I see in-network, and I looked at the Evidence of Coverage there. It appears SRS is excluded in the exact same manner as my old company's health plan, under "Reconstructive Surgery." I have not yet found any other specific mention relating to GID or transgender health care despite digging through the covered services and exclusions. It may be that here, too, I can get my endocrinologist office visits and lab work covered under GID (302.85), and also get my hormones from the pharmacy.

And to correct any more assumptions I might see from other trans people on this forum, as I've seen trans people make such assumptions in the past, I confirmed in 3 ways that GID (302.85) was the code used by my endocrinologist's office to bill my insurance: From the endocrinologist himself, from the billing department, and from a copy of a claim sent by my endocrinologist's office to my insurance company.

That is awful that you went through this. I hope you can get SRS somehow.

I'm not shocked. Finding insurance that covers SRS is like finding a unicorn.

Well, there's always Thailand. I hear it's cheaper even after you count airfare, hotel, food, and the occasional excursion.

I share your distress at the current state of political and cultural re-writing on the subject. People are very concerned with the welfare of trans people, especially kids. But then they go out of their way to create a linguistic world where transexual people cannot have the words to describe what they feel. People have forgotten that there is a difference between sex and gender. People get downright nasty if you try to point out that gender and physical sex are different and that at they can both be legitimate means of defining "woman" and "man." Without these distinctions, there are no words for kids who really do feel like their body is "wrong." It also creates a great excuse for insurance companies to deny people SRS. After all, if having a certain set of genitalia isn't essential to a specific sex, there is no reason for transexual people to get it. I don't think people who confuse sex and gender have really thought out the ramifications of their stance. There is also no way for people like me, who claim the identity of woman because I have the physical characteristics of a female and not because I relate to the gender of feminine. It feels like a witch hunt to me, and reminds me of fundamentalism, except its coming from the left instead of the right this time.

I wish you luck on your journey and that you find a way to be happy in this life. (And that you get to use the bathroom without it being a big-ass issue. I really relate to that because I have some bathroom anxiety issues of my own.)

Wait so OP is a natural trans?

What is a natural trans?