Information about Finland that is either buried in research or found abroad
```"In the study, more than half of respondents said they hesitated to seek healthcare, and 72 percent had experienced some form of discrimination in healthcare during their lives. The cases included situations where healthcare staff misgendered people, treated clients harshly, with hostility or inappropriately, or excluded gender minorities from healthcare due to lack of knowledge. — The situation is bad, and it feels like things are constantly moving backwards, even though we are living in the 2000s. I thought that if even one person read my thesis and woke up to the issue, that would already be a victory," she says.
Turun Sanomat article on a 2025 master’s thesis about gender minorities’ experiences in healthcare
The official treatment recommendations are not named very clearly or accessibly, and even many people specialized in trans issues do not know where to find them. Apparently one should have started by reading American anti-trans political documents, since several of them link to the recommendations here, and somehow these bureaucratic Ministry of Social Affairs and Health documents have found their way into Australian political debate when the topic is restrictions on trans healthcare. The recommendations themselves do not include sources, but the “Valmistelumuistio” and “Liite 2” files contain the most questionable sources, for example Marchiano.
It is difficult to explain the arbitrariness of the treatment process in general terms. The transpolitiikka Instagram account has collected so many experiences that it is difficult to dismiss them as exceptional cases. The studies below, conducted in other academic fields, also do not suggest that these experiences are exceptional.
- "Don't Forget Your Homework" I am writing this because I happened to end up helping investigate that story and saw how quickly people in Finland and abroad rushed to explain away the problems with such passion and ruthlessness that it was clearly something that mattered deeply to people. The reputation management of the Tampere youth gender clinic interests the same journalist who attacked Zohran Mamdani in a heavily criticized New York Times article. But U.S. issues have nothing to do with Finland, and vice versa. ```
- “Describe to me how you masturbate” – the situation of trans youth in the healthcare system is bleak
- “We need to talk about the doctor” Trans people have been trying to talk about Kaltiala since at least 2019. ```
Academic work, often in PDF form:
- “I FEEL LIKE I HAVE TO BE BROKEN BEFORE I CAN GET WHAT I NEED” Medicalization, slow violence, and survival in blog posts about transgender healthcare ```
- (Dis)advantaged positions in accessing gender-affirming healthcare in Finland: an intersectional qualitative study of foreign-origin transgender people
- Uncertain waiting and missing information: Information needs and information practices related to the Finnish gender reassignment process
- “I had to teach my own doctor what this was about”: Information sharing barriers and information evaluation of Finnish transgender people
- “YOU HAVE TO BE ON YOUR TOES”: Experiences of people with gender dysphoria in healthcare encounters
- Barriers and delays in accessing gender reassignment care and their consequences as experienced by those seeking care ```