First Year of transition - Ground Zero!

Week 01

Visit your GP

Ask for a referral to one of the specialist Gender Identity Clinics (GICs) such as Charing Cross Hospital (see Resources List in this manual). Your GP will expect you to explain why you want this appointment.

If your GP refuses to refer you, contact you local Family Practitioner Committee to get details of other GPs in you area, and change your GP.

Counselling

While you wait for appointments consider seeking some private counselling to address some of the issues that you wish to discuss. GICs rarely have the funding to provide counselling, or psychotherapy.

Meeting others

Also consider meeting some other Ftms - and learn everything you can from them.

Week 03

Check your GP has actually written the referral letter - if not - cry! It always gets them moving - alternatively threaten to take your mother in to see them.

Month 6

Receive appointment letter

… for the GIC. If you haven’t got one by now, see your GP again.

Name

Think about the name that you are going to choose for yourself. Pick something sensible: Scully is not sensible, you are too old to have been named by your parents after a recent television character.

Remember your age and try and fit in with what would have been appropriate at the time of your birth.

(If you are considering changing your surname, please read our guidance on surnames in the FAQ page on choosing a name).

Month 9

Attend 1st Appointment at the GIC.

This will normally be a 1 hour appointment, wherein you will be assessed as to whether you have any psychiatric illness which is making you wish to seek gender reassignment. This is rarely the case, but there are a few psychiatric disorders that make people think they want to change sex.

As a very general rule of thumb, if you get up at a reasonable time in the morning, you keep your clothes reasonably clean, you go to work or college regularly and you don’t think that Princess Diana (or Ulrika Jonsson or Gazza or any other similar person) is giving you special messages through your television you will not have one of these rare psychiatric disorders.

If you really do intend to go through gender reassignment, attend the clinic looking like you are serious in wanting it - if Ftm do not go wearing a dress - try and reassure the doctor that you know your own mind, and all that that entails. Wear appropriate gender clothing - for example, as if you were going for a job interview, as a man, for the local DIY Superstore, i.e. smart trousers, a shirt, maybe a tie, polished shoes, a sports or leather jacket. Don’t be over the top, a 3-piece suit, unless it is your normal wear and you are already working as a man, is a little too up front.

Try not to be too nervous - they are meant to be there to help you, but help them by reassuring them, in your dress and manner, that you are aware of what you are doing, that you realise what is possible and what is not, and that you realise the difficulties ahead of you. The clinic will normally then give you a second appointment 3 months later.

Get a Job

Make sure that you have a job, or are at college by the time you attend the next appointment.