I would want to ask him why, exactly, and how far this logic extends. Does it apply to any other kind of elective plastic surgeries and medication? Why or why not?
From one of his previous articles:
I think it’s important to explore this category error because it’s the root of the NHS’ systemic transphobia. If a cis woman wants breast augmentation to correct uneven or underdeveloped breasts she can present to her GP with “significant psychological distress” and be referred to a plastic surgeon, but only a specialist in a Gender Identity Clinic can diagnose “gender dysphoria.” So a cis woman who wants breast augmentation can be referred to a surgeon by her GP but a trans woman who wants the same procedure from the same surgeon has to go to a segregated clinic to be diagnosed with this extra thing, “dysphoria,” first.
He is of course contradicting himself. Since 2014 it's become ever more impossible to get elective surgeries after a scandal in 2013 about a woman who got boobs for feeling too upset to leave the house over being flat chested (in 2009, story only broke in 2013):
This is the only publicly known example of a woman receiving breast implants on the NHS purely over distress from cup size (and she painted a picture of having had extreme bullying throughout adolescence which caused her to go nuts... although I'm pretty sure she was lying to get a boob job). There's no other example I can find anywhere.
The overwhelming majority of breast augmentations on the NHS are reconstructive following cancer-related mastectomy, and part of that is because it's a harm reduction technique (i.e. women may demand more expensive surgeries or refuse treatment if they're told they'll have their breast removed and not receive a reconstruction, which would then exacerbate mortality and healthcare costs from women dying of breast cancer when they could just give them
reconstructive boob jobs). We don't have a full breakdown of exactly how many non-cancer related breast surgeries occur on the NHS but there's a variety of FOIs and informational leaflets lurking around that paint a picture:
Some trusts will make accommodations for patients with complete absence of breasts - in the words of one trust:
Absence of the breast: A rare condition wherein the normal growth of the breast or nipple never takes places. They are congenitally absent. There is no sign whatsoever of the breast tissue, areola or nipple. There is nothing there. NB Absence of the breast, also called amastia, is frequently not an isolated problem. Unilateral amastia (amastia just on one side) is often associated with absence of the pectoral muscles (the muscles of the front of the chest). Bilateral amastia (with absence of both breasts) is associated in 40% of cases with multiple congenital anomalies involving other parts of the body as well.
which is obviously an exceptional congenital condition which isn't relevant here (because men have breast tissue too). There may be consideration for significant asymmetry like
Poland's Syndrome, which again, is not something Ollie has.
Some trusts have wording for clinical exceptionality. We just don't know how many clinical exceptions get granted but the threshold would be something like "I wake up every day and want to kill myself because I have a flat chest. I frequently self harm because of my flat chest. My feelings of being flat chested mean I do not leave the house, and I'm so preoccupied with my flat chest that I am unable to hold down a job. I isolate myself from everyone because of my flat chest. No form of psychiatric intervention has helped me - all forms of talk therapy have failed, and I have been prescribed maximum doses of a variety of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills, anti-psychotics and atypical medications for treatment-resistant depression. Electroconvulsive therapy has been unable to help me. Literally every single treatment the NHS offers for mental distress has failed to turn me into even a semi-functional human being and the only thing that would help is a breast augmentation".
Even then, we can see multiple trusts still will not make allowances for a breast augmentation in that scenario and have explicit wording to that end - they would reject any individual funding request on that basis and tell the patient to go private and pay for a breast augmentation. This is partially because there's no guarantee that a breast augmentation would actually help in that scenario, because the patient is so mental about being flat chested that they might immediately fixate on something else (since being that concerned about bust size is mentally abnormal). But again, that doesn't apply to Ollie. He's not in receipt of any Personal Independence Payment. He's able to leave the house and socialise. He's able to hold down a job. He's able to have intimate relationships. He voluntarily appears on camera both on YouTube and film/TV, and he wears skimpy outfits that showcase his chest. Clearly he does not experience clinically significant levels of distress around his boobs. Ollie would probably claim that he has some vague suicidal thoughts about it but those claimed suicidal thoughts aren't prominent enough to warrant clinical exceptionality because he's able to function despite them. According to the 2014
Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, 20.6% of adults experience suicidal ideation at some point in their lives. For example, I considered suicide while watching Dracula's Ex Girlfriend, and I'm sure a lot of people in this thread may have considered harming themselves after seeing Ollie's latex outfits.
It's still at odds with Ollie's argument that people have a "right to sex" and should get fully funded NHS treatments for gender transition no questions asked - because as we've established, there's not a single woman in this country who would get a breast augmentation "no questions asked" on the NHS.
He took Christmas Eve off and felt awful. Did you realize MOST people take TWO days off a WEEK? Who knew, right?
"my partner...she".
I think we can safely assume Ollie didn't have a boyfriend, last reference to one was the end of September and he said in one of his videos he does invent a hypothetical boyfriend as a rhetorical device. Although I did find this picture of him and Elsa while double checking, which is horrible.
