I started to go for regular eye examinations when I was about 45–just around the same time I started my gender affirmation process (what most people—and I—in those days were called my “gender transition”). When I had to cut a conversation with an co-worker short because I had to go to an ophthalmologist appointment, he wondered, “Oh, are the hormones affecting your vision?
That colleague could be forgiven for such an assumption even if, as an “educated” person, he should have known better than to conflate coincidence with causation.
Then again, I’ve seen and heard of health care professionals who make similar erroneous assumptions. For example, a friend of mine is, shall we say, Rubens-esque. She laments that when she goes for help with any sort of medical condition, no matter how unrelated (the flu! a broken arm!) nurses and even doctors have assumed that her weight was the cause. Then again, other women have told me their doctors insisted that their mental as well as physical health issues would disappear if they had a baby.
While such cluelessness or dismissiveness is inexcusable when it comes from trained health care professionals, it (or at least milder forms of it) are somewhat understandable from lay people like my former co-worker. I’ve experienced a it during the past few days. Neighbors and friends noticed a bandage on my left knee. “You hurt yourself bike riding.” Not a question : a declaration or an amateur diagnosis.
Now, I can understand why they, especially if they don’t know any other regular cyclists, might think my injury might be a result of riding. But its cause is more banal: I tripped over a divider after I exited the Botanical Garden. I can’t even spin a good story out of it,
Well, at least they’re not assuming my admittedly minor injury happened because of my gender “transition.” Or because I haven’t had a baby.