Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"I'm finding lots to talk about with my GL and trans* friends, in terms of having to educate one's medical professionals, which they rightly point out as a form of oppression, or if it isn't oppression then it is a damn lot of work I'd really rather not have to do; the impacts of CP are syndromic and not necessarily correlated with affectedness, although some of the research reads that way." -- Sara Stewart, 2014-05-23 (comment on a global-access Facebook post, so all Facebook users will be able to see it by clicking that links ... but non-FB-users will only see the top-level post that this comment is attached to, not the comment itself)

Context: about 3‰^[1] of the population is estimated to be transgender^[2], and similarly about 3‰ of the population has cerebral palsy. Patients in both groups find they often have to educate their doctors about how to treat their conditions, instead of the other way around. (It helps a lot to have a doctor who is open to being educated by her or his patient, but even then, the person without medical training winds up advising the medical professional, which feels kinda backward -- and doing all the research first.)

[1] I think ‰ is a reasonably well-known, if little-seen-in-English symbol, but just in case anyone finds it unfamiliar (I'm not the best judge of what is or isn't widely known), 3‰ = "three per mil" or "three permille" = 3 per 1000 = 0.3%.

[2] Using a statisticaly-convenient definition of "transgender" that translates to "bothered enough by it to seek medical assistance with transition and therefore be easily countable". Which, since we're talking about interactions with doctors, is a more appropriate definition here than it usually is.