53 results for "gender specialist"
Transitioning at 62 is absolutely possible, and people do it successfully all the time. I've been told about someone transitioning in Australia in under four…
Testosterone causes red blood cells to become larger, denser, and more numerous, which is exactly what happens in any body running on testosterone. For trans…
Even without hormones, the steps you can take right now, your clothes, your hair, your name, your pronouns, and the way you present yourself to the world, can…
The long-term effects of testosterone are well understood. It drops your voice, grows facial and body hair, develops and broadens your muscles and skeleton,…
I'm Dr Helen Webberley. I'm a doctor, a mum, and a gender specialist, and for the last decade and more I've spent most of my waking hours learning everything I…
Non-binary people are entitled to the same quality of gender-affirming healthcare as anyone else, and international guidelines including the WPATH Standards of…
What is a woman anyway? It's the question everyone suddenly thinks they're philosophers about. So let's try it their way. Is it chromosomes, makeup, dresses?…
You're doing a fantastic job. Just believing and supporting your child means the absolute world to them. Parental acceptance is one of the most powerful…
Misgendering means using the wrong pronouns or gender for someone, and deadnaming means using the name they were given at birth after they have asked you to…
World Laughter Day. Share with me your stories about trans people, about trans healthcare, about trans beautiful lives, and how they made you laugh with joy.…
The best way to find the right surgeon for gender-affirming surgery is to ask people who have already had the procedure. Peer networks, online communities, and…
If you are looking for a neat biological checkbox, you have missed the point, and the century. The truth is simple: trans women are women, trans men are men,…
Legally transitioning means changing your legal documents so they reflect who you are, and the most significant of those is your birth certificate. In the UK,…
Trans rights are the defining civil rights struggle of our generation, as race equality was in the 1960s and gay rights were in the decades that followed. I…
I'm Dr Helen Webberley, a doctor, a mum, and a gender specialist. Over the last ten years I've learned everything I can about gender identity and what it means…
The biggest message I'd give anyone navigating transition or any kind of identity work is this: plan carefully, hold the plan lightly, and don't be hard on…
Counselling is genuinely helpful for trans people and for people who support them, but only when it is affirmative and supportive. Good counselling helps you…
Without a Gender Recognition Certificate, a death certificate in England and Wales will generally record the gender on the birth certificate rather than a…
Listen to yourself. Listen to how you feel, what lands right when someone uses a particular name or pronoun, what feels good in the mirror, what clothes feel…
When workplace materials use dehumanising language about trans people, the right move is to act now rather than wait. Document the specific language, raise it…
The only debate worth having about trans people is how to help them live their lives more easily. Every other framing, whether trans people exist, whether they…
Coming into a gender identity takes a long time. There is years of soul-searching, self-questioning, research, and quiet planning before any visible step,…
Trans patients in NHS hospitals are protected under the Equality Act 2010 through the characteristic of gender reassignment, and that includes the right to…
Puberty blockers are banned on private prescription for trans young people in the UK, and NHS access has become effectively impossible. Many families I hear…
Maya spent the whole summer rehearsing a two-minute conversation with her headteacher, then burst out laughing halfway through because her hands would not stop…
Margaret was a grandfather of sixty-three, sitting in a kitchen at two in the morning with the screen brightness turned down, when she finally pressed the…
Eli's mother started taking photographs differently the day she realised the clock was running, and what changed everything was a Tuesday, some toast, and a…
Diane had known since the eighties, buried it through addiction and a rebuilt life, and then told her wife the truth over dinner on a Tuesday, and everything…
Bea went silent the night her eight-year-old said she was a girl, and spent the morning afraid she had broken everything, until she sat back down on the bed.
A trans woman learns to navigate the daily calculation of which door to push open, and discovers that the law and lived reality rarely feel the same.
Rachel rehearsed the worst for months before she told the firm she had worked at for twenty-two years, and then a junior colleague simply offered to make her a…
Rosa spent her eighties being called the wrong name by carers who did not know her story, until her daughter taped a photo and a note to the door so every…
Otto raised three children as their mother before coming out as a trans man in his sixties, and now his grown children are learning what it means to have a dad.
Theo paused his testosterone, carried his son through nine months of forms that kept calling him mother, and held the baby who would only ever know him as Dad.
Yara was seventeen when her home went cold, and what followed was not a loss but a discovery: that family can be chosen, and sometimes the people who choose…
Two parents who loved their child equally but not yet in the same direction: one ready, one frightened, and a marriage strained to its limit before they found…
Freya, aged seven, quietly knew who she was. Her class teacher listened, changed the register, and a withdrawn child came alight.
A trans woman travels alone for the first time on a new passport and discovers that the planning was the point all along.
Carol grieved the husband she thought she had married, felt guilty for grieving at all, and spent a year working out whether she was still in love with Ruth.
Maggie buried it for fifty years and a marriage, and only after her wife died did she let herself, at seventy-one, finally become the woman she had always been.
A trans woman and her partner map a route to parenthood through frozen sperm, clinic appointments, and paperwork, learning that trans families are made with as…
Tariq was forty-one when a scan revealed an intersex condition his family had known about since his birth, and the question that followed changed everything he…
She hadn't slept the night before, convinced that walking into a restaurant would give her away. Then the waitress asked what she could get the ladies, and a…
A young wheelchair user and their carer find that gender services and disability services each act as if the other does not exist, until one small act of…
A trans person orders a coffee, hears one word from a stranger, and finds the world has quietly rearranged itself around who they really are.
Jay came home from university to tell their parents they were non-binary, sat through the most awkward dinner of their life, and waited six months for a…
Robyn was fourteen and terrified of her own voice breaking while she sat on a waiting list years long, and her mother Nadia refused to let her wait alone.
Chidi moved between two communities that did not quite hold him, until he stopped looking for a place to belong and started building one.
Helen reflects on the messages she receives and the profound joy they bring to her work as a gender specialist.
When a gender specialist writes to a GP proposing shared care, it represents a practical and professional arrangement that deserves acceptance and engagement.
Dr Michelle Forcier, a leading gender specialist, discusses the developmental stages at which children understand and express their gender identity.
I've spent 10 years learning everything about gender identity. Now I'm inviting you to join me, so we all end up on the right side of history.
I'm a doctor, a mum, and a gender specialist. I've spent the last 10 years learning everything I can about gender identity, and I'm here to help.