About TransHub
A grassroots transgender harm reduction project
TransHub is a documentation and action organization promoting medical and social harm reduction in the trans community.
It a grass-root, volunteer-run initiative, promoting therapeutic education and harm reduction, in the framework of medical transitions.
Our aim is to inform the trans community of their healthcare alternatives, following the therapeutic education idea that people need to reappropriate the means of their healthcare.
We believe that precise and well-sourced knowledge on all possible treatments is key to seize back the means of our medical transition, and to reduce harm.
We consider that, in the framework of healthcare and medical transition (mainly hormonal treatments), the harm done is twofold:
-
First, the public healthcare providers tend to avoid any deviation from the standards of the Socialstyrelsen (now a more restricted guideline than the one of the WPATH on which it is based). Most practitioners blindly follow them, refusing to hear the claims and suggestions of their patients who are sometimes better informed, and equipped with newer, more relevant research. The recent limitations imposed on trans youth healthcare poses the serious ethical problem of denying treatments to many in order to “protect” a few. This leads to standard prescriptions that are too often inadequate if not adverse for the patient’s physical and mental health: using blockers when monotherapy is usually sufficient, and when doing so, using the wrong (most risky) blockers, underdosing transfeminine patients in estrogens at the cost of their mental health, or leaving young transmasculine people on puberty blockers for too long without adding testosterone…
-
As a consequence of this too often inefficient if not dangerous healthcare, and along with the ever expanding waiting list to access any trans healthcare, the budget cuts on healthcare, and the too-often excessively pathologizing, psychiatrizing and invasive gate-keeping, trans people seeking HRT sometimes choose self-medication - or DIY - that is the self-administration of gender-affirming hormone therapy without approval or oversight from medical professionals. Those self-administered hormones are usually products bought online on gray-market. We do not see DIY HRT as a problem in itself (other than its cost) - and if we don’t promote it either - we simply must take into account that people do it, and that it should be the responsibility of public healthcare to reduce the risks associated with this practice. Since the public healthcare chose to disregard this issue, it is our responsibility - as trans peers, some of us using DIY HRT - to share the relevant information to reduce harm.
TransHub’s action to respond to this situation is to propose trustworthy knowledge and resource on all available treatments so that people can be able to judge by themselves the prescription given by their practitioner and try to open a space of discussion in order to be heard on what they would like to be prescribed.
In the future, TransHub will strive to extend its action in harm reduction, and to extend the notion of harm reduction itself, by operating a solidarity fund - the SAFT: Social Action Fund for Transpeople. Read more on the SAFT and its future projects in the dedicated section.
WHAT WE DO
- Provide safe information and resources to give back to trans folks the means of their health care. We believe that, in the absence of well-informed and safe medical practitioners, the trans community needs to seize the means of their transition, which – for the medical transition aspects - means being well informed of all possible treatments, their risks and benefits, and be able to choose accordingly.
We are of course conscious that if you seek to have a prescription from the public health system (Anova, etc…), the ultimate decision on what to prescribe remains on the side of the medical practitioner. This is why we’ll try as much as possible to provide scientific literature and other trustworthy documents that you can bring with you to medical appointments in order to try and be heard by your practitioner.
This information comes in two ways: we try to cover as many aspects as possible on our Documentation pages. We try to be quite exhaustive and detailed, to cover as many aspects as possible of potentially relevant information.
If the info you need were to be missing, use the contact form and ask to speak to a peer support coordinator, and we’ll do our best to provide information based on our experience. Keep in mind, however, that we are not medical professionals. Also keep in mind that this is a volunteer run initiative and you cannot expect an immediate answer.