All Clinicians Are Bastards
June 5th, 2023
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Ironically I've been thinking about this because I
seem to have found an actually good clinician,
someone with a phd in nursing and a fair bit of
experience dealing with traumatized trans people.

She's great. I even recommended someone else go to
her as a primary care provider and she,
thankfully, has not disappointed me yet in terms
of things like

not pressing people past their boundaries on
topics of trauma

and

respecting "no" as an answer when someone doesn't
feel comfortable talking to someone they've just
met about a topic unrelated to the care they're
seeking

My point is that these are incredibly low bars
that should never not be met and yet

and yet

And I think a lot about the fact that, at least
here in the US, clinicians are an awful mix of two
separate roles:

bio/mind mechanic to help you figure out problems you're
having

and

health-cop there to enforce a combination of
societal norms and insurance company rules

and when I say "health-cop" I'm not really joking
because clinicians have some pretty terrifying
power over you if you're already marginalized in
some way

for a lot of people a label of "pill-seeking" can
just cut you off from getting care basically ever
again

a therapist can put a diagnosis like borderline or
schizophrenia on your chart that will haunt you
for the rest of your life, even potentially
leading to "involuntary hold" which is just
incarceration by another name and with even less
recourse

And that's why I tend to say things like the C in
ACAB includes clinicians

As long as they have this kind of outsized power
you can't trust them anymore than cops