Artifact 5 - I Emailed My Doctor 133 Times: The Crisis In the British Healthcare System - Abigail Thorn, Philosophy Tube

To put it bluntly, the healthcare system is horrifyingly inadequate when it comes to treating trans people, especially in the UK (but here in the US as well, for sure!). Abigail Thorn’s deeply personal story of struggling through an institution simply trying to be treated with respect and receive the care she has a right to displays very bluntly that there is considerable work to be done in securing basic rights for trans people’s bodily autonomy. As Gendered Lives describes it on page 68, one of transfeminism’s primary goals is to fight for freedom in bodily autonomy without discrimination from medical institutions, and as such I find Thorn’s work to be a resounding work of modern transfeminism via its advocacy for a better healthcare systems for trans patients. While she focuses primarily on the UK, I know from my own experiences in the US that being trans in the healthcare system comes with unique battles in every single encounter. I find it imperative that we fight for better systems (such as informed consent) with sufficient speed and sensitivity to our struggles and pain points, and view the medical injustices we face as the primary goal of my own transfeminist belief.