Flashback

I sit in the sex therapist´s office and a cunning smirk flashes on her face as she says: ”the weather looks unstable today”. It doesn´t. She´s using that word to try and trigger a reaction, because the sex educator asked me for a list of things that trigger me before she kicked me out and, dumbfounded, I obliged and gave her one. I look at the steady, gray cloud mat and reply that it looks pretty even keeled to me. The sex therapist looks disappointed and writes something down in her notes. It wasn´t the first time she had segued into something odd during the discussion to be able to slip in one of the words on the list I had given to the sex educator. This is best care practice at the trans clinic: to test whether or not trauma patients respond to triggers. My psychotherapist compared it to applying pressure to a broken bone to see if it breaks again. Ethically abysmal. Disgusting. End of flashback.

Of course, the lack of a triggered reaction doesn´t even matter, because it was simply used as a proof that I have a dissociative identity disorder and, as such, do not respond to triggers consistently. If I had gotten triggered, that would have been equally bad, because duh, ”untreated trauma”. I do find it fascinating that both the sex educator and the sex therapist presented themselves as experts about trauma without any credentials about the subject whatsoever. When I asked about it, they based their ”expertise” on having had a lot of traumatized patients. These two things are not the same. When it comes to the topic of dissociative identity disorder, it´s not a diagnosis currently used in Finland, and if I really did have it, it would be a basis for permanent disability pension because it is the most severe form of structural dissociation and as far as I know, it´s not really curable although it is manageable in life long therapy. But of course, despite being led by the same senior physician as the trans clinic, the employability evaluations clinic denies the possibility of such a serious condition because their job is to get me off pension and into the unemployed statistics as this is a nifty way to tinker with the treatment efficacy statistics.

I feel so exhausted. It would have been better that I had never sought help after the torture-rape I endured in high school. My personal Hell wasn´t started by the rape as much as by the psychiatric system. It fucking sucks to get raped, but humanity probably has evolutionary adaptations to healing from it, and victims could heal if they were given enough time, support, and respect do allow the natural neurological re-routing to take place after life-altering trauma. But society doesn´t look at it like this. It sees a drop in productivity. It sees behavioral and mood issues and a human being that has ceased to function in the way it is supposed to function. It sees a tainted whore whose life has been ruined and doesn´t stop to question whose perspective this is. It denies the crime ever took place because of course it would have been punished, right? It knows how laughably inefficient the law enforcement and the justice system is in handling sexual violence and interpersonal violence, and yet claims that the majority of rapes going unpunished is the result of victims doing something wrong.

Both the sex educator and the sex therapist criticized me for not having been able to get justice for myself after the torture-rape. I sometimes wonder if they derived some kind of sadistic pleasure from doing so. They… Have to know, right? They have to understand what shock is? They have to understand that I was held in the apartment against my will, right? They have to understand that the nonprofit lawyer who gave me advice about how to proceed was required to give me a realistic expectation about my chances to get justice, right? As horrible as it is, they probably didn´t. They probably thought that sex crimes are handled like in police procedurals, and if I had only been a sensible person, I would have been wrapped in a blanket and gently interrogated by a tender, empathetic female officer with kids and a complicated romantic life and who would have ridden to victory and gotten me justice. Their job was to prevent me from transitioning, and they did it at the cost of my my mental health and my dignity. They probably also cost me the ability to become a parent in the process.

I have withdrawn, in writing, my consent to having the employability clinic read my old health care records on the basis that it was never consent in the first place. I was crying and asking the doctor, multiple times, if I have to. She responded that I am there voluntarily, but they need to read the documents to know what´s wrong with me. I asked my autism assistance person, who said I don´t have to give consent. I was under so much pressure that I had a tic: I jumped up from the chair and banged my wrist against my forehead twice. This was written in the statement as ”hit himself in the face”. Incorrect; it was an involuntary reaction and a psychiatrist worth her salt would have said that the paperwork can wait until I am in a good enough headspace to give consent. But the doctors don´t give a shit about consent. It´s awful, but they really don´t. I filed a formal complaint, but it was handled by the head of the trans clinic, and in the response all responsibility was put on my poor mental health. The way I see it is that I have nothing good to expect from my time at the employability clinic, and my best bet is to ask to be sent back to the outpatient clinic. They don´t have any interest to help me achieve my career goals, but they do have the power to make everything about my life exponentially worse.

As far as I understand, my next task would be to go to an occupational therapist and bind a book under surveillance. I have already done this once, in 2021, as well as prepared a portion of tuna pasta and eaten it under the surveillance of an occupational therapist. I am unsure what these kinds of tests are supposed to measure. I would be delighted to go to an occupational therapist if the tasks were related to child care, but the employability clinic doc has been very clear that they are only focused on things that have to do with occupation and employability and nothing else. So it´s a complete waste of time for me to go there, as well as a massive drain of my mental resources which I will need every ounce of trying to figure out how to procreate. On some days I wonder if one of the men from beyond the steel wool sea is correct and my autism diagnosis is just a huge bag of rocks I have to haul with me wherever I go. It did cost me my ability to donate gametes. It will probably cost me my ability to procreate. I feel filthy, and used, and stupid, like a broken robot.

Why is there so much injustice in this world? Why am I not allowed to create a new world in a new person and raise it to be a good and happy one? Why does this world only accept me when I submit to its whims? Why can´t I decide about my own body? Why is it a problem that I´m disinterested in sex? Why are the crimes committed against me used against me as proof that I deserved them? If this was the 1940s I would have been lobotomized a long time ago. They don´t do that anymore. But they can assign diagnoses to you, and they can assign meds to you, and they can strip you off supports and therapies until you crumble under the weight of your own trauma, and the end result is the same.