If I have to be honest, I've kind of resented dealing with trans discourse from the very beginning, even as I keep returning to it. This probably stems from my own life in ~2003 where the nuance was lost between Zucker being both terrible and the only option at the time.
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The trans people I was in contact at the time were almost entirely over 16, so they had other, much more affirming options for transition treatment in Toronto, and Zucker's approach did genuine and serious harm to a lot of younger kids.
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Unfortunately, at the time, the affirming clinics were being conservative and refusing HRT to anyone under 16, so the group aged between about 12 and 15, which I fell into, had essentially one option, which was sadly Zucker.
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Zucker's clinic was exceedingly gatekeepery even for the groups that were ultimately eligible for blockers or HRT, and rested on a lot of very arbitrary criteria, especially that had more to do with parental state than the actual patient seeking care.
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But at the end of the day, despite all the wasted hours of useless talk therapy and the invasive assessments, there were blockers at the end of it, which - I don't know what would have happened if I had had to go through more puberty than I did.
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Ultimately this was lost in the messaging from the older trans people around me at the time. There was no need for them to know that Zucker was the only option, so I at their advice began with other clinics (that refused HRT based on age) and only turned to Zucker when desperate.
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Because of that, I lost critical time and my face, body, and voice were deformed forever, and I can't say that I don't feel a bit of resentment over that, even if under the circumstances their advice was entirely reasonable (if ultimately wrong).
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I'm still glad that Zucker's not practicing anymore. But I'm also glad that he stopped practicing and got jettisoned out -after- the winds had changed and clinics started being much more affirming of trans youth - medically, where it matters most in the long run.
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Zucker's not good, but where it comes to those trans people actually going through puberty, between Zucker and Tavistock (the decision, not the clinic, though likely the clinic too), Zucker is preferable.
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So I hope that came out with enough nuance so that it's not read as Zucker apologia. Just - things were trickier when the options were so much more limited, and I wonder whether there were others who were hurt in this manner, by what appears to have been a failure of context.
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Yeah the problem is when people use this narrative -- "But Zucker did provide transition care to many people in the end!" -- gets used as a defense of him to say he was unfairly targeted and maligned
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I think a lot of his actual patients have some pretty complicated feelings about his role in our lives (at least the older ones, the younger ones subject to his reparative therapy probably have much more straightforward and negative feelings).
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Replying to @life_minutiae @arthur_affect
At the end of the day it's probably unhealthy for your childhood/adolescent traumas to turn into a global culture war.
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