Niet goed! Geld terug? (Money back guarantee)
Some shops are -so- convinced of the quality of their products that they advertise with "Money back guarantee". If the product provided doesn’t meet your expectations, your money will be reimbursed. In transgender care things seem to work the other way around: in transgender care it is the care provider who determines what care is needed:
- It is the psychologist who gets to decide whether "we are transgender enough" to be eligible for care
- It is the psychologist who decides how many sessions we need before we get a referral letter for hormones or operations
- If we don’t want mental care, not the Standards or Care (which state that mental care isn’t mandatory) are followed, but the psychologist’s judgement determines which care will be provided.
Psychologists are trying to protect us against ourselves, but nobody protects us from overzealous psychologists who decide on treatments. We are fully dependent on the referral from the psychologist to get hormones or operations. Many psychologists abuse this situation by requiring more sessions than we feel are necessary. The only one who benefits from these extra sessions is the psychologist: every consultation is faithfully paid for by the health insurance company. Meanwhile our situation is deteriorating: the dysphoria (anxiety, depressions, and discontent about the shape of our body) increases during the conversations with the psychologist. And that feels even worse if we would never have asked for these sessions with a psychologist if we had had a real possibility to make a choice...
To bring this way of working to the limelight, we have started the action "Niet goed! Geld terug?" (money back guarantee). We ask the psychologists to calculate their hourly wages. We indicate to them how many sessions were totally useless in our opinion. And we ask the psychologists to multiply their hourly wages by the number of pointless conversations to calculate an amount of money to transfer to a charity.
On this page, you can see two example letters. We would like to ask you to choose the letter you find most suitable and to amend it to match your personal situation (e.g. your own address, the name of your psychologist, address of the clinic where your treatment takes place, the number of meetings, etc.) and your own opinion. You can also fill in different account numbers than Transvisie’s. Here is a complete listing:
| Organization | Account number |
| Transvisie | NL43 RABO 0121 6921 83 |
| Vereniging Genderdiversiteit | NL17 INGB 0004 4101 10 |
| Transgender Netwerk Nederland | NL79 RABO 0121 8819 46 |
Or any other charity of your choice (or even your own account number).
If you need help writing the letter, please contact us, we will gladly assist you.
Important: mark both the envelope and the letter as "personal and confidential". That will guarantee the letter reaches your psychologist and doesn’t remain in a secretary’s office.
Jan Janssen <-- Your name/address
Stationsweg 1
1234 AB Amsterdam
Amsterdam, May 1st, 2017 <-- today’s date
VUmc <--- Name of the organization, e.g. VUmc, UMCG, De Vaart, Psycho Informagroep, etc.
To Mrs. P. Pietersen, personal and confidential <--- Name of the psychologist
The Boelelaan 1118 <--- Address of the psychologist, in this case the address of the VUmc policlinic
1081 HZ Amsterdam
Subject: Action Niet goed! Geld terug? (Money back guarantee)
Dear Mrs. Pietersen,
we had our last meeting on April 1st, 2017. During this meeting, you indicated that this was the last mandatory session between us. I would like to tell you that these conversations with you have been a terrible experience for me. I have the feeling our meetings haven’t made me feel better, they have only deteriorated my feelings: due to these mandatory sessions, I felt worse and worse about my own body every month. If these conversations hadn’t been mandatory, I could have had the care I did need (hormones, operation(s)) sooner than now that you forced them upon me. It doesn’t feel right to me that you have (at least financially) benefited from these conversations, while they only made me feel more miserable.
That is why I gladly participate in the action "Niet goed! Geld terug?" of the website www.StopGatekeeping.nl. In my opinion 10 out of the 13 conversations we have had together didn’t bring any added value. Two conversations did have a bit of added value. And there was one meeting that has truly helped me. For this reason, I would like to request you to transfer 10x your net hourly wages (your net monthly income divided by the number of hours you have worked in that month) to Transvisie’s bank account NL43 RABO 0121 6921 83, mentioning "Niet goed! Geld terug!" in the payment description.
Thanks in advance for your sympathetic co-operation.
Best regards,
Jan Janssen
Jan Janssen <-- Your name/address
Stationsweg 1
1234 AB Amsterdam
Amsterdam, May 1st, 2017 <-- today’s date
VUmc <--- Name of the organization, e.g. VUmc, UMCG, De Vaart, Psycho Informagroep, etc.
To Mrs. P. Pietersen, personal and confidential <--- Name of the psychologist
The Boelelaan 1118 <--- Address of the psychologist, in this case the address of the VUmc policlinic
1081 HZ Amsterdam
Subject: Action Niet goed! Geld terug? (Money back guarantee)
Dear Mrs. Pietersen,
in this letter I would like to convey to you how I have experienced the ….(number of sessions) meetings I have had with you.
The purpose of these mandatory sessions was to assess whether I would be eligible to start my transition. The mandatory nature of these conversations is already an indication that this is not an objective assessment, because a fixed number of sessions had to take place, irrespective of whether it is possible to form a conclusion earlier.
It took you … (number of meetings) consultations to come to the conclusion that I can start my transition, something I already knew before we even began these sessions. After all, it was because of my decision to request for a transition that I was referred to you.
Seen from this perspective, I would like to indicate that I experienced …. (number of meetings) of our meetings as useless; they only made me feel more miserable than I already did. It gave me the feeling I was not being taken seriously. You might be able to understand this now that you too have given me the green light for my transition, thereby recognizing my feelings and conclusions.
To make these useless meetings a little more useful afterwards, I would like to propose you to take part in the action “Niet Goed! Geld Terug?”, that was launched around May 17th (IDAHOT = International Day Against Homophobia And Transphobia) by the website www.StopGatekeeping.nl. This would involve that you transfer the compensation you received for the … (number of sessions) meetings we had together to a charity.
I propose you transfer the money to Transvisie (NL43 RABO 0121 6921 83), a patient organization that does good work for the Rights of Transgender People in Dutch healthcare. In the payment description, please mention “Niet Goed! Geld Terug!”.
Thanks in advance for your sympathetic co-operation.
Best regards,
Jan Janssen
