The petunias greens stupid make.

Now, I know people who have Gender issues. Some of whom want surgery, some of whom who do not. Some of whom are attracted to the sex they were born in, some of whom are not. And most of the time they have the same issues in most situations as the rest of us. They have to get on and make money, they care for their families, and they would like to have love (sex is easier to get when you are young and beautiful, but love is hard, when you are old and ugly — which is inevitable sex is harder to get and love remains difficult).

In my town we have a service that provides a pathway either to private surgery or the public waiting list for gender reassignment, that involves extensive psychotherapy and living within the gender you consider you are before surgery. I am told it gets good results — but I have never seen the data. The one thing I know is that without the talking therapy, the surgery generally does not resolve the issues. For gender is more than genitals.

The Greens want surgery to be funded. This infuriates me on many levels. The first is these people are lumped into some kind of group for political points. And the second relates to something that the petunias in the Greens will not recognize: the amount of money we have for services is limited. and the same people want to ban ECT, which saves lives.

Georgina Beyer gave trans* people all around the world hope that it was possible to fight discrimination and for them to be recognised for who they are, rather than their gender identity.

It makes me very sad to then hear the Minister of Health say he believes funding surgeries is a “nutty idea”, and that other politicians also dismissed the issue.

The public discussion generated by his comments has been very painful for many people. I am hearing that even some of our older battlers are really struggling. This makes me really worry for them and our youth.

This is a very real issue that is causing harm. There are a number of areas that need an increased health budget and this is one of them – I will be writing to the Minister about this.

*The addition of an asterisk to the word trans is to indicate that the term functions as an umbrella term for an extremely varied range of identities, including culturally specific ones. I use it to include identities such as: whakawahine, tangata ira tane, FtM, MtF, transsexual, fa’afafine, transgender, transmen, transwomen, akava’ine, leiti, genderqueer and gender-neutral people.

The second level is the perversion of the language. We are being told to put an asterisk in a word. We are being told to not only use the words that have meaning within a culture such as whakawhaine and Fa’afafine. but neologisms. We are not using the international criteria — they do exist — which means that we are not able to apply the research as to which interventions actually work to people who are distressed and suffering. Instead the Greens believe, again, that their theology trumps evidence, feelings trump science, and the bitter experience of both clinicians and patients, developed over many years, is to be ignored.

Secondly, I am looking at my employer, who has tried to keep services going. For cancer treatment. For hips, knees, ear surgery… the everyday stuff. And have deferred maintenance to keep services going. Have bent the budget, until it broke and the auditors told them that cuts need to be made. When we have limitations on access to cancer services, when we cannot get needed and lifesaving procedures done… other things have to wait. Which is what the minister said — as a medic, he has been in the situation of telling people that their cardiac surgery booking as been cancelled because rationing.

In the ideal world, we would not have gender issues, for we would all be perfect, and perfectly happy. But this world is not ideal: the problem is real, and so is the suffering.

But so is the need to ration services. And using a group who suffer to play wedge politics in a health system that is underfunded is unconscionable.

Hat tip David Farrar.