GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

i just read of the msn homepage that cuba is now offering free sex changes to citizens on the island.maybe someone can provide a link to it.

Here is the link: MSNBC - Cuba Approves Free Sex Changes!

28 in 11 million? Yeah... Sounds like a pretty severe low-balling, to me. Outstrips even the DSM-IV's estimate.

Also, I wonder who will be performing these surgeries? Are they going to send someone out to apprentice for a few years with an experienced SRS surgeon, or this gonna be some green n00b fumbling a scalpel all over the place and muttering, "Hm, how about this over here..."?

According to the reports they have surgeons mentoring in Belgium.
That being so the first surgeries may very well be FTM.

In any case US citizens are not allowed to travel to Cuba for medical treatment.

People can sail there without any problem or they can go through Mexico. The Cuban authorities will not stamp your passport thereby avoiding problems with U.S. re-entry.

Cuban surgeons have been all over the world training other surgeons, not to mention that (like in most LatAm countries) there has been an underground surgery market already.

If you got enough money, you can get a good SRS in those countries, even if (on paper) they are illegal. The trick is that you indeed need A LOT of money, the kind of money you couldn't save working legal jobs all your life, if you start poor over there.

By keeping the surgery illegal all they do is inflate the price of good surgery for the rich, and force the poor TS folks to go for some back alley butcher in desperation.

For gods sake, stop using the word free. It's far from free.

While your at it. Would someone please tell the media, To stop using the term "Sex Change". That is very "Tabloidish"

But it sells $$$$$$$

Nothing in life is free Sunshine.

But everybody over the age of 10 knows that.

well they had a ''free car wash'' the other day...some church group and yes i bet they want a donation after the wash...these people are as bad as the cubans...i would guess if you qualify and are a cuban citizen it would be part of your health care package.but again...the comrades have to work for it.

Sometimes, it does seem that clergy can be blood-sucking leeches, especially television evangelists.

It's not a wonderful term, but it's not as harmful as SRS for "Sex Reassignment Surgery" which deflects attention from the fact that sex is assigned with strokes of a pen, and not cuts of a scalpel.

That's like saying a house is bought with strokes of a pen. True the paperwork is required to make it official, but until money changes hands, the document is meaningless. The same is true with sex reassignment surgery. SRS changes anatomical sex and is required to change legal (assigned) sex. Anything beyond that is a semantical word game.

P.S. Actually the excesses of the real estate insanity of recent somewhat invalidates the "money needs to change hands" but since most of those shady deals resulted in foreclosure, I'd say the basic tenet still holds true.