Principle 17

The Netherlands have been a frontrunner for LGBTI rights for a long time. Have been, unfortunately. ILGA-Europe’s Annual Review of the Human Rights Situation of LGBTI People shows a worrysome trend: In the Netherlands, these fundamental rights are stagnating and even decreasing! In 12 years our country dropped from 4th to 14th place.

When politicians today refer to gender-affirming care as new, “untested” or “experimental,” they ignore the long history of transgender medicine in the United States. It’s been nearly 60 years since the first transgender medical clinic opened in the U.S.. Dr. Milton Edgerton had cut his teeth caring for transgender people at Johns Hopkins University in the 1960s.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention voices its concern over the growing number of laws introduced in the United States that target transgender individuals and the transgender community. The Lemkin Institute believes that the so-called “gender critical movement” that is behind these laws is a fascist movement furthering a specifically genocidal ideology that seeks the complete eradication of trans identity from the world.

"So, here we are again. Another demonstration for our right to good health and good health care. This time explicitly aimed at the Nijmegen clinic. We have enough reasons for that. One of the most important in my opinion is that Nijmegen is not as different from the rest of the clinics as they wish or pretend. Does not advocate for radical change as much as I hoped after their initial conference some two years ago. And when I hear the head of the clinic, she is still pretty much stuck in archaic opinions. A good thing, and they may be the first in this in the Netherlands, they are rolling out a gender sensitive patient registration system with room for non-binary options. Still sub-optimal, but a nice leap."

Today, Sunday 18 September, the collective Principle 17 presents the report “Trans* Healthcare Differently” (Dutch: Trans* Zorg Anders), an alternative vision of trans healthcare in the Netherlands. Chair vreer verkerke hands over the first copy to a prominent representative of the trans community at the Trans Healthcare Now demonstration in Nijmegen.

In a letter that the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport sent to the House of Representatives on 9 May, he writes that hard work is being done with the Quartermaster Trans Healthcare ('Kwartiermaker Transgenderzorg') to make it possible for general practitioners who want to but are not yet officially allowed, because they have not had further training, to soon be able to help trans patients. This year and next year, a hundred GPs who have previously indicated that they want to follow a webinar, are expected to be updated in this area. After that webinar they can get started.

500 people demonstrated in Amsterdam on 26 June for change in transgender health care: “Get rid of waiting lists and diagnoses, towards self-determination and decentralisation”.

Last Saturday, 26 June 2021, the Trans Care Now! demonstration against the abuses in transgender health care and for a structurally different system of transition health care based on self-determination and decentralisation took place. About 500 people came, who walked from the George Gershwin Square past the Amsterdam UMC to the Stadion Square.

“The situation we are in nowadays with trans health care is not new. Nor is the fact that the health care system is quite insensitive to demands from the trans community for depathologisation. This depathologisation means that we refuse to be seen as having a disorder or be mentally ill for being trans. Until two years ago however, all medical classifications still judged us to be sort of incapable to judge for ourselves."

At the end of May this year, the Quartermaster Transgender Health Care published their Future Vision. The purpose of this is both to put pressure on and to stimulate existing care and its expansion (which it succeeds in doing!). After Principle 17 had sent a letter last year with a comment on their research on the trans population in the Netherlands, and Trans United Europe had a conversation with them that wasn't to be found anywhere in the Future Vision, we decided to write a peppery letter together with them and the Trans Health Clinic of Adrie van Diemen, with both our fundamental criticisms and suggestions for the future. This morning we had a conversation with the Quartermaster, which was fairly constructive. We will now publish our comments on this Future Vision.