Please, please don't listen to these people. They have no clue. And thank you for being sympathetic.

Telling a trans person to "see a therapist" has a lot of goddamn baggage attached to it for a whole lot of reasons. And I wouldn't be surprised if both the asker and the author are not fully aware of what that suggestion implies.

Oh, go fuck yourself. I've read your posts on this page and you dismiss people with more relevant experiences in what depression and/or being a transwoman is like in favor of your only-slightly-related experiences with 'dealing with' people with mental mental illnesses.

Sarcastic though you may be, you are right in…

I think any excuse you have for talking out of your ass like you do is flawed. But hey, what do I know?

Might just be a bad lifetime. LW3 gets very little-to-no sympathy from me, since she sounds exactly like a friend I had who made the stress from my transition about herself.

LW3 - The trivial stuff you are interested in talking about might be easy to nod-along to when your friend is in a good place. After all, we all have different and sometimes non-overlapping interests. As a friend, it's normal to put up with that.

Have you ever had a day where hearing about other people's trivialities…

Sounds like the therapy could be elective, not the required bit of gatekeeping. Just sayin.

I don't always agree with you, but thank you for this - it's the advice I'd hope to see given.

Ah, I'm not in a joking mood today, sadly.

And no, I live in the middle of nowhere.

Unlike many people, I was actually paying attention to Obama in 2008 and onward, since I was worried about having someone so corporate-friendly elected. I find it sadly ironic that both Democrats and Republicans spend their time arguing over fiction, but that's something both the President and the Republicans have…

I don't blame you, if I ever meet a health-care provider that isn't shitty, I'd be loather to part with them, too.

Yeah, no sweat - thanks for taking an interest and being willing to challenge the column-writer's frankly shitty advice.

I'd point out that how much the therapy has helped is something, as somebody who's had loads of therapy, I find to be questionable. It's possible the transwoman in question was doing better and thus sought therapy, not that the therapy she sought made her life better.

It's the former, not the latter. Which is, in-and-of itself, problematic. Your friends' sound like they have either gotten lucky or sought therapy for support in addition to required therapy.

You are remembering wrong. There is some requirement for therapy, but it's more 'make sure you conform to our medical narrative' than 'help you through a difficult time' therapy. Thankfully, not all endocrinologists subscribe to that practice - some are finally embracing informed consent.

IIRC, this is been pretty obvious since July, at least.

No, this is more like the time you flipped a two-headed coin and predicted it would land on heads...

One is bad, the other is worse. Feel free to snap.

It certainly is a huge distraction from actual debates about having a functional health-care system, yes.

I'd love that. Seriously.

IIRC, single-payer was his bargaining chip so he could get what he was actually shooting for, which is the ACA.