Ace journalist looking for UK asexuals and their experiences with medical professionals

[AceJourno]

Hello! I'm fairly new to AVEN, but I'd like to find some UK-based people who identify as asexual who can help me out.

I'm trying to pitch a story to a major UK news organisation about the medical experiences of asexuals. This is particularly prompted by a BBC programme called Young and Sterile: My Choice, which covered sterilisation, but not from an ace point of view.

I'd love to know if anyone has had particularly good or bad experiences of asexuality with their doctors. E.g. suggested hormone treatment, sterilisation, anything else!

Thank you!

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

I remember with great annoyance an assessment of me by a GP . He left it unaccompanied on his desk while I waited for him, and one of the sentences said I was a 'strange girl' and another said I 'probably had some sexual issues'. I hated the way the medical profession write you off if they don't understand what you are. And I was a nurse for 30 years.

 

In my case, the doctor thought there was some mental illness at work on me, noted his opinion, and it clouded my life for decades without me becoming aware of the extent to which he'd 'assessed' me until I applied to become a foster carer and it all came out in the wash. by that time the relevant doctor had climbed to the top of his area of expertise, written a paper on how stigmatised wrongly diagnosed patients can be, then died of a brain tumour two years before I could confront him. You couldn't make it up!

 

I had to go through the Information commissioner to access all my medical notes and write an insert with the help of an independent clinical psychologist to say that an up to date assessment had been made refuting the first. I can't tell you how angry the whole episode made me, and how I now keep myself as healthy as possible in order to avoid doctors.