Venezuela’s transgender community fears hormone shortages

BBC ^ | 4 July 2019 | Guillermo Olmo

[csvset]

André Bellorín has fought a long battle for the body that matches his identity.

He has been through two operations, a bitter conflict with his mother and an expensive course of hormone treatment in his hometown, Caracas, Venezuela.

But now he fears he may lose all the progress he has made.

"My beard has stopped growing on some parts of my face and my hips are broadening again," he says.

André's body is changing because he is failing to take the hormones he needs. Once the treatment has begun, it needs to continue for life to prevent reversion.

However, these hormones have become impossible to find in Venezuela, where a political crisis has long caused shortages of medicines and other essential goods.

[RegulatorCountry]

This is exactly the sort of Venezuelan who would have voted in the socialist dictatorship and we’re supposed to feel something when she’s deprived of the hormones that permit her masquerade?

What is wrong with people? It’s as if their brains have been scrambled. At least “he” isn’t starving from the looks of that picture. If a hormonally induced beard going patchy is all “he” has to worry about at the moment I suspect we’re looking at a privileged party member with access to food.

[lurk]

The body fights to right itself to its original design. Stop taking hormones and the body bounces back to its intended design.

[tbw2]

Misplaced compassion enables cruelty. Paying thousands of dollars to ship this person hormones to enable their mental illness wastes money that could FEED several hundred starving people.

[vpintheak]

Exactly.