Dee Allum: Power in the trans healthcare system
Power
〰️
Power 〰️
Image: Matt Stronge
The Edinburgh Fringe is back for 2026, and with it, our annual feature series! This year, we’re taking on POWER: Who’s got it? Where is it? Where should it be? How do you get it? Our comedians are the only ones with the answers.
By Dee Allum
There are lots of people in the healthcare system who have the power to deny transgender people necessary and vital care.
It is not a thought that that screams comedy show and it doesn’t feel like something that should be appearing in the hallowed pages of LMAOnaise. You can maybe imagine it scrawled onto a hospital corridor in blood, or the Guardian (much the same energy as the hospital corridor), but LMAOnaise?
The last year of my life has been dominated by doctors’ visits, consultations, assessments, and emails. More emails than I thought it was possible to be sent about one set of genitals. I’ve been trying to get closer to bottom surgery, and it’s been an incredibly difficult process. In some sense I think that it should be at least a bit hard – I’m not advocating for gender reassignment surgery to be available on every street corner to anyone with dyed hair – but even after years of wading through every other nook of the healthcare system, I was not prepared.
I’ve been out as transgender for just over five years now, which is more time than it took to fight the First World War. I’ve been on hormones for four of those years and have lived pretty convincingly as a woman since then (despite what some Instagram comments would tell you).
This doesn’t seem to matter in the eyes of the healthcare gods, who have had me run a number of assault courses to prove my worthiness for their hallowed hands. I’ve needed to show I am mentally stable enough to consent to the surgery, and mentally unstable enough that the pain of the surgery is necessary for my overall wellbeing. Not to mention financially stable enough to afford a full downstairs refurb.
As soon as a rung is climbed, you have to start the process again, explaining to a fresh underling who you are, what you want and what you need. Each of them has the power, if they wish, to delay the process by weeks or months either through their own inaction or deliberate ill will.
It’s actually been incredibly cathartic to put some of this into a show. I love comedy, and it’s been a tonic during what has otherwise been a really challenging time, so I’m very excited that this is all coming together.
Comedy is at its best when it means something. It’s a bit of a trope to now expect comedy shows to fix audience members’ lives as well as make them laugh for an hour, but if comedy is an art, shouldn’t all art ask questions of some kind? Specifically to those in power? I’ve got plenty!
Dee Allum: Raumdeuter is running at the Pleasance Courtyard, Upstairs, from Aug 5-30th (not 18th) at 16:10. Tickets here
Read more about Edinburgh Fringe 2026:
