At 4ZZZ, we acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we broadcast. We pay our respects to the elders past, present, and emerging of the Turrbal and Jagera people. We acknowledge that their sovereignty over this land was never ceded, and we stand in solidarity with them.

Transmission on 4ZZZ, amplifying the trans and gender diverse community of Meanjin, Brisbane and beyond.

Hello, this is Transmission. My name is Elliot, my pronouns are he/him, and I have with me—

Ellen, and my pronouns are they/them.

Yeah, hello, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Uh, we are going to be chatting about sexual health. today. Pretty fun.

Yeah, I think we have lots of different things to chat about, one of them being definitely sexual health. There is the Australian Trans and Gender Diverse Sexual Health Survey that was released this month that I'm keen to chat about. Yeah, there's a Medicare thing that has opened to submissions at the moment with the Medical Services Advisory Committee has an application pending. So a few different health bits to chat about, which is fun.

Yeah, I feel like this is a bit of a theme for whenever I'm on a show, always fixating on health. But you know, it's fun.

It's a good topic for trans folk.

Yeah. Before that, we're going to chuck some news on for your ears. So some trans-focused news and enjoy.

The Week in Community News and Events, September 21st, brought to you by Gender Health Australia. In local news, iconic LGBTQIA+ nightclub The Beat sold to developers. Brisbane's iconic LGBTQ+ nightclub The Beat has been sold to Sydney developers Bentino for $13 million, raising questions about the future of the 40-year-old Fortitude Valley institution. Despite the sale, the venue isn't closing anytime soon, with a lease and no demolition clause keeping it open until 2035. The club, founded in 1983 and long considered a cornerstone of queer nightlife, sits on a high-density zoned site that agents say has major development potential. The sale reflects ongoing redevelopment pressures across the Valley, marking a significant moment for Brisbane's LGBTQ+ community as one of its most enduring cultural venues enters a new chapter. Queensland petition urges action for safer schools for LGBTQIA+ students and staff. A new petition is called on the Queensland Government to strengthen protections for LGBTQIA+ students and staff in schools, warning that current laws still allow discrimination in religious education settings. Advocates say the need for reform is urgent. 46% of LGBTIQ+ workers report discrimination at work, and inclusive environments make staff 4 times less likely to leave. In schools, 60% of LGBTQIA+ young people feel unsafe or uncomfortable. 28% experience verbal harassment, and 10% have attempted suicide in the past year, compared with 3.8% of young people generally. Community organisations are urging Queenslanders to sign the petition to help ensure every student and staff member is protected, respected, and able to learn and work safely. To sign the petition, the link will be in our Transmission show notes, as well as reshared on the Transmission Instagram page @trans, T-R-A-N-S-M-I-S-S-I-O-N. In national news, Oxford Street raids spark safety concerns for LGBTQIA+ community. Community advocates in Sydney say it's not safe to go out after New South Wales police conducted another heavy-handed raid on Oxford Street venues, including Palms and Universal, during peak nightlife hours. Witnesses reported officers entering with torches, demanding IDs, and questioning patrons, with some describing the operation as intimidating and and unnecessary. Venue owners and LGBTQIA+ community members argue the repeated raids are damaging trust, targeting queer spaces, and creating a climate of fear in an area historically known as a safe zone for LGBTQIA+ people. The incident has reignited calls for police to reassess their approach to queer nightlife and engage with the community in ways that prioritize safety without harassment. New South Wales trans health worker wins $35,000 After employer requested deadname. A transgender health worker in New South Wales has been awarded $35,000 in compensation after their employer repeatedly requested their deadname during mandatory onboarding checks, despite already having their correct legal identity on file. The New South Wales Civil and Administration Tribunal found the request was discriminatory, caused significant distress, and breached the state's anti-discrimination laws. The worker described feeling humiliated and unsafe, while the tribunal ruled that employers have a clear responsibility to respect a person's affirmed identity and avoid unnecessary or harmful disclosure of past names. The case is being hailed as an important reminder that deadnaming is not just disrespectful, it can be unlawful, and workplaces must ensure trans staff are treated with dignity and care. In events, Leo's Top Surgery Takeover fundraiser is happening at Echo and Bounce in Woolloongabba on Saturday, October 3rd, running from 3 till 11 PM at the Echo and Bounce courtyard to the basement. There will be a sexy car wash, sausage sizzle, bake sale, jelly and lube wrestling arena, performers, dancing, DJs, and raffle prizes with donations from over 20 local artists and businesses. Join us for a night of queer joy and friendship. If you can't attend, please consider donating by looking up Leo's top surgery fundraiser on the GoFundMe website or clicking on the link in our show notes. Mardi Gras Berg Inc presents Drag Bingo at the Walloon Hotel on Saturday, September 26th from 7 PM for a joyful, family-friendly night the whole community can enjoy. You can look forward to fun games hosted by lovely queens delicious food and drink, spectacular performances, and exciting prizes. With every ticket purchase, you are supporting Restart Southeast Queensland's vital work supporting domestic violence survivors and helping keep Mardi Gras Bourg Festival free for all. Remember, we are more fabulous together. My name is Rae. I use they/them pronouns. And that's all in this week's community news and events.

4ZZZ 102.1 FM. You are here with me, Ellen, and Elliot, and we wanted to talk a little bit about this Medicare submission that is out at the moment.

Yeah.

So the Medical Services Advisory Committee is an independent sort of governmental body that makes recommendations to the federal government about Medicare. So they themselves don't get to make decisions, but they have an application in at the moment for gender-affirming surgeries to be covered by Medicare. So if this application was successful, it means that new Medicare item numbers would be created for gender-affirming surgeries. And this would mean that some Medicare rebates would be available. So it's not that it would be bulk billed or that wouldn't still be out-of-pocket costs, obviously. But, you know, we would love any sort of rebate at all. For sure.

I mean, like, you know, going through surgery is a whole process in and of itself. Like, even without, you know, you're going private, you got to go through, you got to get a referral to see the, um, the plastic surgeon. You've got to go from there to get a referral to see a psychiatrist to get approved. Then, you know, then you're spending $15K.

Yeah, any sort of Medicare coverage would definitely allow for a real increase in the accessibility of surgical gender affirmation. So it's application number 1754. It's named Surgical Procedures for Gender Affirmation in Adults with Gender Incongruence. How do you feel about that wording?

That's— it's a lot of words. I kind of like a lot of words. I mean, yeah, I think it's, um, I think it's aptly named, you know, like it makes sense.

It's a catch-all.

It's pretty clear.

So there's 2 rounds of consultation that have already happened. So the first was last year and it demonstrated the increased quality of life that gender-affirming surgery can have. There was over 2,700 respondents who took part in this. And then there was a second round of consultation earlier this year, which was with care providers, clinicians, and other stakeholders like state and territory governments like Queensland Health to better understand the care pathways and different implementation enablers and barriers.

Yeah. Yeah.

So this 3rd submission is open now and it's just a survey. So you don't have to write a whole big essay submission thing like you do for some consultations. It's just clicky, clicky survey and it builds on some of those previous consultations and kind of gets into the nitty gritty of the specifics of what the Medical Services Advisory Committee is going to request of the federal government. So they've already sort of decided that there's a clinical need for gender-affirming surgery, but they need to gather sort of further evidence to make specific advice.

Mm-hmm.

So again, just noting that they can only advise government and ultimately the federal Minister for Health is responsible for choosing whether or not they implement— Yeah.

Yeah.

This advice, but really easy to fill out the survey. I've done it. I've looked at the survey questions. I've completed the survey myself. It asks about the roles of multidisciplinary teams for gender-affirming care, which specialist consultations should be needed for gender-affirming surgeries, which gender-affirming surgeries are most commonly needed by different types of trans people, including non-binary people.

Which is awesome.

Which is, yeah. And whether you support public funding for this, etc., etc. Yeah, it's not that long, but exactly what you were saying before, then you've got to see a psychiatrist, then you've got to do this.

Yeah.

What do you think needs to happen in that pathway? Who should make up this multidisciplinary team? multidisciplinary care team? Should there be an endocrinologist who does hormone stuff? Should there be—

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, yada yada.

Which is a— it's an important question to ask because, you know, I think realistically for myself, like, I've had top surgery, I've gone through that process, and I do think it is important that, you know, there is a multidisciplinary team there to, you know, ensure that the care is correct for you, to make sure that you understand fully and completely what it— that might look like and what, you know, the vast array of outcomes are, right?

You know, totally.

Because some people go into it thinking that they're going to have the, you know, the perfect, absolutely gorgeous, incredible result at the end. And they get disappointed because it's like average, you know.

Yeah.

And, or, you know, maybe they just don't fully have an understanding of that. And then post-surgery, the experiences of dealing with nursing staff and maybe any psychosocial supports that could be after that. Like, super important to take all of that into account.

Yeah.

And there's so many different kinds of surgery.

Yeah.

That exist.

I'm explicitly thinking about my own because that's my own experience. But there are so many different things that you can do. Yeah.

Yeah.

And we also don't have that many surgeons in Australia who do gender-affirming surgeries, particularly for genital surgeries. And if there was a Medicare line item number, I think more plastic surgeons would be motivated to undertake this as well.

Absolutely. I think you're totally, totally on board with that.

So the survey's open until the 9th of October, which means you have pretty much 3 weeks. Yeah, you got some time Friday and then 2 more weeks after that. Yeah, we can link it in the show notes.

Yeah, for sure.

And I'm not sure about can we put it on the I will. We will endeavor to do so.

Yes.

Otherwise, you can find it if you went to like the Trans Research Australia, their social medias have it up.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of links to it, a lot of, a lot of different orgs and community pages and stuff that are talking about it. Because, you know, it's important.

Yeah, absolutely. This is something that our community has been asking for for a really long time. So if we've got a shot at making that happen, absolutely, we should all get behind it.

Totally. Yeah. How many genders are there? I don't know. I just got here.

I wanted to tell you about a couple of trans events that are coming up in the short term here in Meanjin, Brisbane. So there is International Non-Binary Day, Sunday the 4th of October. So this is a little event that some community organizes every year. It's just something that's put on by volunteers, so it's very chill time. Always welcome to get involved. They have markets and performances. There'll be like workshops and a little chill crafternoon zone.

Nice.

There'll be some queerioki, a little fashion parade. Very wholesome vibes. So tickets are free and there are donation tickets available online. So please do book because it can get full. And that is going to be in Ashgrove at the Bowls Club there.

Cute.

So that's at the Bowls Club on Ashgrove from 2 PM till 10 PM on International Non-Binary Day, Sunday, 4th of October. And then we've got Melt Festival coming up.

Pick one.

And there are obviously lots of amazing events happening across Yuggera and Turrbal Country for Melt. And I would encourage our listeners to have a little look-sees, but I thought I would tell you about a couple of trans-specific events. So there's a trans scratch night, which is a little bit like an open mic. Um, So it will be open to writers, performers, bold new voices, and it's designed for trans audiences and allies in partnership with Backbone Youth Arts. So that's going to be at the Brisbane Powerhouse on October 29th. And there is also a Trans Theatre Symposium. So any theatre kids listening to this that are trans identified, late October, October 29th and Uh, Saturday, 31st October. There are some different workshops and panel discussions and networking events, and it's an open call to emerging creatives, uh, for targeted development sessions. Heaps of cool stuff. So Trans Theatre Symposium. I've never heard of anything like this on in Brisbane before. So that's really exciting. That's also at Brisbane Powerhouse. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You can register for these on the MELT website. And then very excitingly, Transmission is going to have a live broadcast outdoor event thing called The Antidote. It's a night of joy, resistance, storytelling, and connection. And it's going to be a live seated event celebrating trans joy across Meanjin and Toowoomba, Ipswich. So that's going to be at Studio 188 on the 5th of November. So I'm sure you will hear more about that event in the lead-up. Yeah, but I'm just flagging that now so everyone can write it down with their little pens and pencils and it's in your diary.

It'll be there ready. Yeah, I, I— there are so many, so many different events and stuff happening with Melt. Uh, we can't go through all of them, obviously, but You should definitely check it all out. It's, it's gonna be a fun time. I'm, I'm really hyped. I love the variety that we get and the representation that we get in big festivals like this. You know, it's really needed, especially in this time where things can be a little bit hard. Things can feel a little bit scary, and maybe you feel a little bit like there's not enough, you know.

We have to have fun together too.

Yeah, we gotta have fun.

Playing is very important.

You gotta have fun. You gotta be able to be like, nah, fight against the, the being a little bit scared with some fun, fun, cute times with friends.

Absolutely.

And soon-to-be friends. You know, you don't have to have friends to go, but you can make friends.

Yep.

That's a great time. Yeah.

So I wanted to chat about the Australian Trans and Gender Diverse Sexual Health Survey that was released this month by the Kirby Institute.

Yeah, yeah.

So they did a survey in 2018 and they've repeated it last year in 2025. So between those 2, there was 6,000 participants spanning every Australian state and territory, which makes it one of the largest trans and gender diverse surveys in Australia on any topic, which is super cool.

That is very exciting. I like that.

So it coincides with trans and gender diverse people being listed as priority populations in our national HIV and STI strategies for the first time.

Mm.

And there's some other policy work being done as well. We've had the National Health Plan for LGBTQ health. And there is a plan about sexual and reproductive health data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. So there's a few policy pictures, a few policy things bringing us into the picture now, which is great.

Yeah.

So I wanted to share a couple of notable things from the survey.

Can I just cut in?

Yeah.

Make sure that we're being clear because we're going to be talking about a lot of sexual health stuff. Um, are we going to be having some— we'll probably be talking about some things, you know, using, you know, the real language for people's sexual health and, and, you know, sex generally.

Sure.

Yes. I wasn't going to get into anything explicit until a bit later on in the convo. So definitely will flag when we might be talking about things that people might not want to listen to.

Okay, great.

But going to start off with things that are very PG.

Amazing.

So 24% of respondents identified as trans women, 21% as trans men, and 43.5% as all other things under the sun. For the purposes of like aggregate data, they have sort of couched everybody else as being some kind of non-binary. They haven't split non-binary people by sex assigned at birth for obvious reasons that, yeah, it's kind of antithesis to what we're trying to do here. But there was like over 1,500 different things that people put in as their gender, noting that if you put a space in trans and gender, you know, they would— they'd be counted as 2 different things.

Yeah.

So 3.4% of people responding identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and about 2.3% as having innate variations of sex characteristics, also referred to as being intersex. And the median sort of age was 27, with a mean age of 29. People born in Australia were probably overrepresented in this study at 86.3%. Whereas, uh, obviously a lot of transgender diverse people in Australia are not born here. And also most participants were living in a major city. So remote people living remote areas was only 0.6% with regional representation at 17.6%. So some limitations there. Um, interestingly, almost double the number of trans men identify as having a non-binary identity as compared to trans women. Um, obviously a lot of people might identify as both being a trans man and being non-binary.

Absolutely.

These things don't have to be mutually exclusive, uh, but no one identified as being both a man and a woman. There was lots of cool detail on types of sex being had, which is super cool and relevant for targeted sexual health education and information around safety and prevention of infections, but it is much too saucy for radio to go into that. Um, about 75% of respondents were monogamous and 25% were open or non-monogamous. For gender affirmation stats, so over 97% of all trans and non-binary people had engaged in social transition or affirmation.

Okay.

So for people listening who are not familiar with what that means, that might mean changing your name or changing your pronouns. It might mean dressing differently, getting a different haircut, asking people to refer to you differently, telling people about your identity. For medical affirmation, uh, this drops but is still higher than I was expecting. So it's 90.6% for trans men, 93.2% for trans women. and 55.4% for non-binary people. So I think a lot of listeners might be surprised to learn that over half of non-binary people have accessed medical affirmation. So this could be hormone replacement therapy, or it could be surgical intervention as well. Legal gender affirmation was much lower. So 72.1% for trans men, 67.7% for trans women. 37.2% for non-binary people.

I think that's super interesting. Like, in my experience knowing, knowing a lot of trans people— shocking, I know— um, I think it's mostly just a bureaucracy thing. Like, a lot of people find that it's really difficult.

Um, it's a lot of paperwork.

A lot of paperwork.

It's a lot of bureaucracy.

Yeah.

Uh, and we know that can be difficult for people with neurodivergence. But also, I think people also worry in terms of like passport stuff, traveling overseas, particularly if you're non-binary. It might seem really fun and cool to locally change your gender to be X, and that might feel really affirming. But then when you go to travel internationally with that, that can actually be a problem.

Yeah, 100% true.

So trans women were the most likely to have accessed medical gender-affirming care, but trans men were the most likely to have legally affirmed their gender.

Hmm.

Uh, so now I did want to talk a little bit about experiences of intimate partner violence. This will probably only take a minute or two, but if you don't want to hear about intimate partner violence and sexual violence at the moment, maybe just, uh, tune on out and take care of yourself while listening. It won't surprise us or many people to learn that about 60% of all trans and non-binary people reported ever experiencing intimate partner violence. So 50% of trans men report having ever experienced sexual violence compared with just under 40% of trans women and 50% of non-binary people. Over half of them did seek professional help for it, but less than half of those who sought help thought it was effective.

Hmm.

Which shows a real massive need in effective and safe care for trans and non-binary people receiving sexual violence support.

Absolutely.

And very interestingly, cis women were the biggest reported perpetrators of intimate partner violence against trans and gender diverse people.

That is really interesting.

Whereas I expected it to be cis men.

Yeah, absolutely. That, that straight up was my expectation before seeing that data. Yeah, it is shocking.

Yeah. And we could have a whole conversation about that.

Totally.

Let's not. I don't think we walked into this show quite prepared for that.

No, no.

So there's lots of interesting things in this report, and we'll come back to some of the sexual health stuff in a second. But they make a lot of interesting recommendations as well. Basically that, you know, we need better sexual health education. We need more targeted approaches to support the sexual health and wellbeing of trans and gender diverse people. We need to address violence as a key determinant of sexual health and overall wellbeing, um, and testing and prevention for HIV and STIs also really needs to be improved. And now I wanted to talk a little bit about sexual health stuff.

Mmm.

So this could be a little bit saucy. Not really. I think it's very radio appropriate. Um, but if you don't want to hear about sex and sexual health, uh, you might want to tune out for the next sort of 5 to 10 minutes, I'd say.

Yeah, sure.

So about 90% of respondents reported ever having sex, with 70% saying that they had had sex recently. Um, so all of these respondents are trans and gender diverse people, if that wasn't clear. But then shockingly, and this was my most shocking point for this whole survey really was that only 52.6% reported ever having a HIV test, and only 65% reported ever having an STI test.

That is bonkers.

Yeah, and it's less than a quarter that have had an HIV test recently, and less than 35% that have had an STI test recently.

Whoa.

If 70% are having— had sex recently, that's a little bit of a problemo. So almost half of trans people in Australia not knowing their HIV status. Yeah, it's— it is a real issue. Uh, trans and gender diverse people are overrepresented in new HIV diagnoses across Australia, um, particularly, yeah, trans women and trans men.

Yeah.

HIV, it is mostly transmitted through anal sex or through sharing injecting equipment. It's pretty easy if you're not inside of a prison to get injecting equipment. So it's often in community more about having backdoor intercourse. And you can order a free test online.

Yeah.

There are a few different sites that do that. There's a lot of places where you can get a free comprehensive sexual health screen online if you have Medicare. There are places here locally where you can go and get a comprehensive screening totally for free, even without Medicare. So yeah, the rates of testing had declined from the 2018 survey despite rates of recent sex going up.

Mm.

So I would really love to encourage all of my trans buddies who are listening to this to get tested if you haven't.

Yeah, it's so easy. And like, uh, like I've been tested relatively recently and it's like so much easier than I thought it would be, you know, particularly because like I'm now making the decision to, you know, sleep with people with penises. Excuse the language if that's a problem for you. Um, and so like I was like, oh, I should probably be a little bit more careful about what I'm doing. And it's so easy. It's so simple. It's not like super invasive or anything.

It's It's not a thing that you have to do with your GP if you don't feel comfortable doing that. There's lots of sites where you can self-collect, so you don't necessarily have to show your genitals to anybody. It's something you can do, yeah, pretty self-sufficiently.

Yeah.

Um, so trans men were topping the charts compared to trans women and non-binary people on diagnoses for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis. Congratulations.

Yay.

And trans women more likely to be reporting HIV diagnoses. So just on that HIV front, I also wanted to talk a little bit about PrEP.

Yeah.

So for people who don't know, PrEP stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis. It's a medication that you can take before sex to protect you from acquiring HIV. And then you've also got post-exposure prophylaxis, which is like a morning-after Plan B version.

Yeah.

So a lot of people take PrEP every single day and then you are always covered, but some people find that they might not want to take a medication every single day. So you can take PrEP on demand if you are a person who is assigned male at birth. Yeah, who is not on feminizing hormones.

So there's differences if you're on hormones and you're Assigned sex at birth?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're like assigned male at birth and you are non-binary or a trans woman who's not on any hormones, you can still take PrEP on demand where you take it 2 hours before sex and then 2 days afterwards. And this works for cis men as well. But for anyone who's assigned female at birth, there's not a lot of evidence. We know that to be covered for like front hole or vaginal sex, you do need to take PrEP daily. And, um, for, yeah, for backdoor sex, we just don't have the data basically.

And it's not shocking. There's not really enough people for one. And it's, you know, we're an underrepresented group in research regardless.

Yeah. And sometimes, uh, GPs may not be totally across these nuances, right? You can find a lot of information on the ASHM website, which is the Australasian Sexual Health Medicine They have a whole guide about how to prescribe PrEP for trans and gender diverse people.

That's great.

So yeah, just keep that in mind in your friendship circles and for yourself. If you have trans friends who are taking PrEP, just make sure that they're either doing it daily or under the guidance of whatever their GP or sexual health physician has recommended to them. Yeah, but regardless of what sort of prevention strategies you do or don't choose to use, Getting a test is really important because a lot of these things are very curable, and what's not curable is still very treatable. But the important thing is that we know about them.

Yeah, 100%. Do you, do you have like a recommendation for the frequency of testing or like—

It depends like how busy you are, how many people you're seeing, right? I'm not a medical professional and I'm not giving medical advice. But I know that like the general sort of guidelines in Australia would say sort of 3 to 6 months.

Gotcha.

Depending on like how many people you see, whether you consider yourself to be busy or not, and what makes you feel good and safe. But yeah, 3 to 6 months is generally a good sort of goal.

Yeah, cool. Great. Well, that's, that's such great information to have. I really appreciate that because I know that there's a lot of confusion around particularly HIV and, you know, uh, PrEP and, and PEP and all that. Like, it's, it's a big world and a lot of people are kind of averse to thinking about it or talking about it. So yeah, thank you so much.

No worries. And yeah, there's lots of information here about reproductive health as well. So I think like 9 out of 10 trans and gender diverse people said that reproductive health was important, um, but only 4 out of 10 have received any helpful advice on reproductive health. And there are some pretty shocking stories in here about, yeah, how people's reproductive issues have been missed as a result of their trans and gender diverse status, or things misattributed to being from their hormone use when they were actually another reproductive issue.

Yeah.

So yeah, there's heaps of content in this report. If anyone's interesting—

interested—

if anyone's interesting and interested, you can go to TGD So that is tgdsexualhealth.com, and you can read the whole report there. They talk about stats of sex work as well, different attitudes and perspectives, and different sorts of sexualities that we report in our relationships. For me, I'm a curious person and I love saucy stuff, so I was very interested in the different sexual behaviors. that we have, which we're not going to go to on air. But yeah, you can absolutely check that out if you are interested.

Yeah, yeah, amazing. Yeah, I just want to just sort of check, flick back slightly into what you were saying about reproductive health. Something that I personally experienced was when seeking extra reproductive health protection, uh, was just, um, the experience of being told that, oh, I don't really Oh, you don't really need that. You know, like I went and got myself an IUD and they were like, oh, I mean, you know, you're not—

There's not really an understanding of just how much, quote unquote, protection being on testosterone provides you from becoming pregnant. Right. But we know that being on testosterone is not a form of contraception. It might really reduce your risk of becoming pregnant, but everybody's different. Some people will still be ovulating and menstruating even on testosterone.

Yeah.

Um, and some people will and do fall pregnant whilst on testosterone.

Yeah.

Um, so yes, measuring different hormone profiles that you personally have can help sort of estimate that risk for you. Uh, definitely talk to your doctor about that if you're interested.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, people might not always be aware that they will need to use other forms of contraception as well.

Yeah, I mostly just wanted to note like the The differences in understanding. And if you're seeing somebody who's not particularly well-versed in trans healthcare, they may not really fully comprehend it, even if they have a really good understanding of sexual health generally or reproductive health generally. Your case may be different and it's worth investigating that and going deeper into that.

Totally. And that can be hard when you look like a dude and you have a beard.

Yeah.

It's like, yeah.

Yeah.

Um, but important.

Yeah. Amazing. Well, yeah, thank you. Yeah. So today's show, we've been talking a little bit about medical stuff, really. We talked a little bit about the Medicare survey that's currently happening.

The Medical Services Advisory Committee has a survey out at the moment, and it is about surgical procedures. for gender affirming care for adults. And yeah, very keen for people to fill that out, put their opinion in, and then they— that body will make their final recommendations to the federal health minister and hopefully get Medicare item numbers covered for gender affirming surgery in Australia.

Yeah. Get some rebates happening for your surgeries. That would be amazing to make sure You jump on that, chuck in, chuck in your little info on the survey. It's very simple, just a checkbox thing for the most part. You can type in little bits if you want to, but not necessary at all. And that'll, that'll help us hopefully get something, something moving.

That's the dream.

That's the dream. And after we spoke about that, we also spoke a little bit about the Australian Trans and Gender Diverse Sexual Health Survey. released by the Kirby Institute and some, yeah, some fun little stats and figures about, you know, gender-affirming care and STI rates and all that biz. You have been such a dream. You're— I love, I love having you on. Did we— I don't know. I actually didn't say my name is Elliot. My pronouns are he/him. And you are?

Ellen, and my pronouns are they/them.

Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, you always have such a way with words. You're so insightful. Um, I do, do love making use of that.

It's my pleasure to be back on Transmission.

What a dream. Um, yeah, uh, I don't have a lot of extra sort of, um, I don't know, like extra words for what we've already talked about. Like you've covered basically everything.

Yeah, we don't have to rehash everything.

No, no.

If people are interested and they missed it, then they want to read about the report, it's at tgdsexualhealth.com.

What a great show. What a great show. If you do want to check it out, we should be uploading the podcast, I think, at the start of next week, roughly. But you can also check out the rest of our shows on Spotify. We've got them there.

Yeah.

Otherwise, if you want to check out the whole show, songs and all, before then, we're on the website, 4zzz.org.au. Thank you so much for listening in. We love you. Have a great week.

Bye.

Have a great day.

Thanks for listening to Transmission. Catch us every Monday live on 4ZZZ from 10 AM, or listen to our podcast on the Community Radio Plus app.