Crossdressing & LTC Facilities

You are a crossdresser and you have reached that stage in life where you need a Long Term Care facility what are your options?

So I am researching a presentation for a Department of Corrections facility on best practices for incarcerated trans people and one of the articles that I found also addresses LTCs (you have to admit prison is a “LTC” facility).

Social and Medical Transgender Case Advocacy
International Journal of Transgenderism
By Catherine White Holman & Joshua M. Goldberg
October 17, 2008

Long-Term Residential Care
Long-term residential care, sometimes described as continuing care, refers to long-term medically supervised housing for people unable to live independently, or with loved ones. As in hospitals and hospices, trans-specific protocols should be implemented to ensure respectful and sensitive personal care, particularly in bathing, physical examination, or any other procedure involving the chest or genitals of transgender patients. Privacy and confidentiality are also key concerns for many people in long-term care, as information can spread very quickly throughout a facility. As the majority of long-term care residents are elderly, advocacy relating to long-term care includes advocacy specific to transgender seniors (discussed in more detail in the section on work with specific populations).

Crossdressing or other gender-variant behaviour is seen by some residential care providers as “acting out” and is often actively discouraged. In our experience there is particular confusion within long-term care about crossdressing being an “inappropriate” expression of sexuality, as crossdressing is stereotypically considered a type of sexual fetish. We have found it useful to educate staff about the diversity of reasons people crossdress, and also to encourage frank discussion of the sexual needs of long-term care residents. Advocacy may include the filing of formal complaints if transgender residents are being punished for crossgender expression.

Transgender people in residential care often experience severe isolation, complicated by barriers to accessing peer support. Community social workers may be able to assist by coordinating transportation planning and caregiver assistance to make it possible to access transspecific community peer support groups and events, or to facilitate inpatient visits. Other clinicians in long-term care facilities can also proactively educate colleagues to help ensure that transgender visitors who are providing peer support to a resident are treated respectfully by all staff.

Connecticut law states (I am not a lawyer and these are my own interpretation of the laws)…

PA11-55 An Act Concerning Discrimination
(21) "Gender identity or expression" means a person's gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's physiology or assigned sex at birth, which gender-related identity can be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held, part of a person's core identity or not being asserted for an improper purpose.

Okay first thing to note: there is nothing about transitioning, full time, or anything else that limits the scope of the law. In other words the law applies to those who have transitioned, those who crossdress, those who are drag queens or kings, those who are gender queer, those who are non-binary, and it even applies to straight people.

So what happens if you want to crossdress in a LTC facility?

It seems clear to me that they have to let you crossdress.

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I am also on the State Department on Aging: Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP) committee on inclusion and I want to make sure that all trans people are included in any policies or training that the committee develops.