Someone who wants gender re-assignment surgery should be at least 20 year old, he said. The patient should also be assessed by at least one psychiatrist; he should have to pass a test period where he tries out being a woman, such as by wearing women's clothes, for six months to a year.
Some countries overseas, he says, require men to try out the idea for up to two years before surgery can go ahead.
If surgeons persist in flouting the rules, they will have their medical licence suspended. The regulations will come into effect this year.
Public Health Minister Chaiya Sasomsap says the revelation that surgeons are offering the castration service to under-age teens has made him reconsider his view on whether doctors should be protected from the risk of criminal court action.
Previously, when the Medical Council argued that patients should be able to sue doctors for malpractice in the civil courts only, he was sympathetic. Now he believes there are some cases in which criminal action might also be justified.
He urges parents with under-age children who have undergone the procedure to sue in the civil and criminal courts, on a charge that the doctor caused harm to their child's body.
The 2004 Miss Tiffany's winner, Poy Treechada, the idol of many kathoey nationwide, says she was worried to hear that under-age kathoey were undergoing the castration procedure without their parents' consent, or proper medical supervision.
She herself waited until she was 18, and had finished school. She cautioned teens against aping fashions, and said they should think twice before having such a drastic procedure done.
Postscript: Do kathoey have activists to represent them? Why so quiet? To put it another way, why does the duty to alert the public and demand action from the Medical Council have to fall to gay activists rather than kathoey themselves?
The public, it seems, cannot rely on the Medical Council or government health inspection agencies to protect them. Health Minister Chaiya Sasomsap admits that if the gay activists had not gone public with their concerns, the scandal may have gone unnoticed.
Kathoeys do have activists and represententatives; however, I think you would find this issue is one of their less rational ones. They would probably see more regulation as a threat.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, many young impressionable types are not given many positive gay role models except for (?) the kathoey entertainer types, and this influences many of them in what I view as an unhealthy way. Most of them could probably have a happier, better-adjusted gay life if this were presented as an option with more public support. The physical changes are not trivial or comfortable, and should not be acquired on a whim or as a fad or on the advice of one's teenage groupies.