No test exists, but that does not make it unreal
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
If there's no test, no scan, no blood result, then there's nothing to diagnose and nothing to take seriously. A doctor who can't point to an objective measure is just taking someone's word for it, and that isn't medicine.
I am an expert, and what I'm telling you is that the evidence is what someone tells you about their own internal sense of self. That is not a weakness in the field. Psychiatry, neurology, pain medicine, cardiology: all of them rely on what people report about their own experience, and we do not dismiss those specialties for it. The absence of a blood test for gender identity does not make gender identity unreal any more than the absence of a blood test for grief makes grief unreal. What I find, every time I push back on this, is that the demand for a "proper" test is not a scientific concern. It is a way of keeping the door shut.
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