August 7, 2009
I must commend Eleanor Bader on her excellent article entitled “Trans Health Care Is A Life and Death Matter.” It was refreshing to see someone tackle this subject.
In regards to prevalence of transsexualism based on actual numbers of gender reassignment surgeries performed, though, I would encourage the author, researchers, and readership to look to the research of Lynn Conway, summarized here, and with a published report presented at WPATH.
These articles show through simple mathematics that the prevalence rate of MTF transsexuals is much closer to 1 in 2500 rather than the oft quoted 1 in 10,000.
I also challenge personally the assumption that the prevalence rate of transsexualism among XX bodied individuals is lower than that of XY bodied individuals. To be honest, surgeries for men in this community including mastectomy and genital restructuring are barbaric at best and are not at all comparable to the much better female surgeries such as vaginoplasty, breast augmentation, etc (which themselves could be so much better). This combined with other factors make our transmasculine community seem smaller than the transfeminine community, which I personally believe is a falsehood.
Anyway, I hope that readers and researchers will carefully consider Lynn Conway’s work as it sheds new light on prevalences that we need to take to heart.
Posted by: Katy Stewart