18 June 2019
Today, we visited the Protestant Theological University (PThU) in Amsterdam. The university focuses on the formation of the pastors into the church, but they also focus on academic studies as well. The university’s mission is spiritual formation and academic training. Our speakers were Professor Helen Zorgdroger, Professor Marieke van den Berg and Carl Buijs. We were presented with different perspectives of the issues that trans* people face. Professor Zorgdroger spoke to us about the spiritual perspective of trans* people. There has been an increase inn visibility of trans* people in society and in churches. Professor Zorgdroger conducts interdisciplinary research that benefits academia, religious communities as well as social organizations. An interesting thing that we discussed was how images of God change while the person is transition. Often, before transitioning, a trans* person will have an image of God as creator or an almighty divine power. After transitioning, their view of God shifts to viewing Him as compassionate, loving and not judgmental.
Professor Marieke van den Berg spoke to us about the representation of transgender people in the media. There are six different transgender scripts that we talked about. The transgender scripts are the successful trans, the pioneer, the pawn, the fringe figure, the victim and the fraud. Each one of the scripts are the most common ways that transgender people are portrayed in the media. The successful trans script consists of emphasis on the body of someone who is transitioning. The fraud script can be seen in current sports. Some transgender athletes are sometimes portrayed as a fraud for their reasoning on transitioning. Many people believe that some athletes with transition just to get an advantage over other competing athletes. One statement that Professor Marieke van danBerg said that I felt was important was that when researching minority groups, you have to stop talking about the vans start talking to the people within the minority group.
Our last speaker was Carl Buijs. Carl spoke to us about transgender history in the Netherlands as well as current options that trans* people have when considering to transition. Two gender clinics are available in the Netherlands. The VUMC gender clinic consists of a psychologist, psychiatrist, endocrinologist, gynecologist, urologist, plastic surgeon and speech therapist. Almost all of the treatment and procedures are covered by the patients health insurance or the gender clinic themselves. Usually, a transgender person will go through phases during transition, the first phase is the diagnostic phase which is approximately six months long. The next phase is hormones. The hormone phase last about one year. The last phase is the gender reassignment surgery. The only upsetting part is that both clinics have a dramatically long waiting list. The waiting list for just to start the diagnostic phase is two years. Consequently, this waiting makes the transgender person feel stuck in a body that they don’t belong in. Carl is also part of two organizations. The organizations are the Patient Organization Transvisie and Youz. The Patient Organization Transvisie provides psychosocial care, information and support groups. Youz focuses on the trans youth. The organization provides psychological and social work, individual therapy, family therapy, support groups and even a youth camp.
Overall, hearing from these experts who know the history and present of trans* people and who are actively providing advocacy for them is amazing. I, personally, learned a lot about the trans community in the Netherlands. Hearing different perspectives also help broaden my knowledge about trans* people in general. I feel as if hearing the spiritual perspective, media perspective and what the health care system is like for them was very informative. We had a great time at PThU learning about the trans* community in the Netherlands!
- Joee Zucker
Public Health Abroad! 