Tomorrow's Hearing Against Unive For Discrimination

Tomorrow, November the 25th, I'll be part of a hearing against my health insurance company, Unive [1], at the College voor de Rechten van de Mens (Human Rights Institute) [2] in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It'll be the last attempt I'll be making at any kind of justice in the Netherlands after finding that the psychological and physical torture by the Amsterdam VUmc gender team are deemed to be perfectly fine, according to the medical disciplinary commission. As this is a public hearing, anyone is welcome to attend it. The hearing will start at 13.00 hours.

This particular case involves the discrimination of Unive against me through its refusal to fully cover the hair-removal therapy I'm forced to undergo after my transition from a male to a female role due to my intersex condition, and the need to remove facial hair as a logical implication of this. As Dutch law has nothing explicitly pertaining intersex individuals, the relevant part which would necessitate full coverage would be found in the specified conditions, which among others involves facial hair-removal and its full coverage for male to female transsexuals.

Unive's position is a bit unclear. They seem to hold multiple positions, including that a) they won't cover it because I'm not transgender, and b) it's not proven that I'm intersex (referring to the Dutch hospitals' conclusions). SKGZ previously concluded in 2012 already that there is no specific clause on intersex individuals in Dutch law when it comes to healthcare coverage, and thus a comparable situation should be sought. My lawyer in this case, Yme Drost, has also concluded at this concerns discrimination by Unive.

Personally I'd be very interested in seeing how Unive wishes to weasel itself out of the above comparison I made between a transgender and intersex transition whereby facial hair-removal is a necessity to fit into the new role. For me at stake are recognition of this discrimination by Unive as well as over 6,000 Euro of unpaid costs which should have been covered. Unfortunately it'll take this institute about half a year to finalize their conclusion and they can not force Unive to accept their ruling. It would however make it very hard for Unive to ignore justice in this case.


Maya


[1] http://www.unive.nl/
[2] http://www.mensenrechten.nl/