At the time of writing, I am waiting for an appointment at the nearest gender clinic, where I seek a referral for laser hair removal. I do not know how long I will be waiting; only that I have been added to the gender clinic’s waiting list. I have been waiting for some months, following a referral from my new GP, who turned out to be exceptionally helpful. Given my unusual relationship with the new care pathway, I still do not know how easily I will obtain funding for hair removal from NHS England or a referral for this from the gender clinic. This future is bound up in uncertainty.
Some of the concerns I held in advance of seeking a referral for hair removal – concerns shaped by the overlapping pasts and presents of others as well as myself – are reflected in my current circumstances. I am waiting, and this wait is taking place because of the inflexibility that resulted in my referral to the gender clinic, rather than directly to a laser clinic. My experience as a trans patient is inherently bound up in the temporal and emotional disjuncture of waiting time, oriented towards a future that I am sure will come, but I am not sure when. Even as a devout believer in the importance of public health, I would be tempted by the prospect of paying for hair removal privately, if I could but afford it. Like the participants in this project, I anticipate, but do not know when the time of anticipation will end. This is not (yet) a linear path equivalent to hormone time (Horak, 2014), a futurity fixed through appointment and prescription: instead my experience of seeking hair removal can be understood within the frame of transitional time (Carter, 2013), moving backwards, sideways and tangentially even as I progress. Halberstam (2005) and Carter (2013) regard the movement-oriented fluidity of queer time and transitional time respectively as potentially liberating. However, this liberation comes only with agency: but agency is limited within the time of anticipation. For this reason, the more predictable temporality of hormone time (Horak, 2014) feels – to me – greatly preferable in this instance.
Other concerns I held in advance of my referral for hair removal are not reflected in my current circumstances. While my GP was broadly ignorant of trans health issues and the current treatment pathway, she was kind, considerate, and supportive. My mistrust ahead of meeting her arose not from any bad experiences at the practice where I am now registered, but from an anticipatory mistrust rooted in both my own negative experiences with my former GP, and in wider community discourse. I know
175 rational, strategic response that enables me to manage my future and reduce uncertainty.
Nevertheless, I look forward to the time I will no longer have to shave my face every day. The technological possibility of hair removal and the delivery of this service through the means of public health imbue me with a sense of possibility. This is not the all-encompassing hopeful futurity of many who anticipate transition, but it is a future that redefines my emotional experience of the present, offering ‘not an end but an opening or horizon’ (Muñoz, 2007: 364), thereby rendering my embodied transness more bearable and the wait less frustrating.
The purpose of this vignette is not to collapse the many stories present within this chapter into one easy narrative. After all, there are some key elements missing from my own story in this instance, such as the discourse of difficulty and the shadow of suicide. Moreover, there is not one trans health system or form of trans patient experience in the UK, but instead a repertoire of potential experiences shaped by geographical location, health professionals, medical institutions, community narratives and individual subjectivity. I have therefore sought to use my own account to instead demonstrate the everyday operation of trans temporalities in the context of the time of anticipation.
The time of anticipation is a queer time, heralded through disjuncture, liminality and futurity. This temporal frame sits at the nexus between agency and dis/empowerment, offering trans patients a range of discursive means to understand and manage their interactions with medical systems and health professionals. ‘Time’ in this sense is not an object but a context, mediated communally through the queer interaction of multiple pasts, presents and possible futures. Halberstam (2005) and Carter (2013) celebrate the disruptions of queer temporalities, but most participants in this project seek instead to find some kind of stability and predictability through which an escape from the time of anticipation might be imagined. In my own example, as in the examples of project participants throughout this chapter, possible futures come to define the present and past alike, with projected futures offering a means by which we can better cope with the demands of the present.
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