To Dr Z.

Hi Dr Z.

This a difficult post but I want the few readers of my own blog to read your own, realise it takes all sorts, and that professionalism and knowledge is neither dependent on biological sex nor gender stereotypes.

Your empathy with your patients makes me wish you are a haematology/oncology consultant treating our 4-year old daughter, Kezia, for her Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. In fact, our consultant, John, is amazing. The Royal Manchester Children's Hospital is also amazing.

In spite of my own faith in the National Health Service, or rather the RMCH and the treatment Kezia is receiving there, your own “faith” (as an insider) surprises me when I hear so much negative about the NHS from the UK health blogs I read - Dr Crippen, Dr Rant and Tom Reynolds. The first two GPs, the latter an emergency technician for the London Ambulance Service. Drs Crippen, Rant and Tom qualified long ago ... and they are strong critics, and rightly so, of MTAS, the Darzi Debacle etc etc

So it is refreshing (and depressing!) to read a blog by a “trainee” doctor. And it is even more refreshing to read a blog by a transexual doctor.

Yours

Angus

To the rest of my readers:

When I was much younger (in my twenties), I was (as regular readers may have read) somewhat ambiguous about my sexuality. Sex was with both men and women. I even considered sex-change but Janice Raymond's The Transexual Empire, a feminist treatise on male-to-female sex-change, changed my mind. (Female-to-male sex-change hardly figured in her otherwise well-spoken book.}

In the late '80s Manchester had already developed a “gay village” around Chorlton Street. The clubs and pubs were mostly male but there were a few lesbian nights frequented by the "political feminist" (of various degrees) lesbian community where males of any sexual persuasion were excluded (no criticism here - it was necessary).

But far beyond the “gay village”,with its flash up-market (male) clubs and pubs, up in Oldham Street, was Dickens where working-class lesbians (uninterested in politics and feminism) and MtF transexuals hung out. You had to ring a doorbell to get in. It was not classy, in fact it was downright seedy - a pool table. a tiny dance floor, threadbare carpets, sofas and chairs that had seen much better days, a bar serving grot beer ...

It became my favourite club ... a sort of Working Men's Club populated by lesbians, transexuals and the odd gay man. It was friendly despite the odd fight between jealous lesbians.

There were no FtM transexuals ... or at least I never came across any.