New sex change regulations set to take effect

The council moved recently to strictly control sexchange operations and require that transgender people consult a psychiatrist, live as a woman for a year and receive hormone therapy before being such an operation is allowed.

For Areeya the new rules are an inconvenience. "I have already spent my whole life as a woman - since I was a little boy - and why [do] I have to live as a woman for another year to undergo sex change surgery?" she said.

(...) "The council want to make sure that they [transgender people] really want to be a woman and spend the rest of their lives as a woman, forever, not for a second," council president Dr Somsak Lohlekha said.

"Sex reassignment surgery would affect the physical body [of the person undergoing the operation], as well as people's mental health and society around them."

The council's new rules will be enforced from November - next week. They will require transgender people to consult psychiatrist to assess people's mental state before they are allowed to get hormone therapy from endocrinologists. After that they have to live as a woman for a year before they can undergo a sex change.

Somsak said at least two psychiatrists must give guarantees for transgender people who want to undergo a sexchange.

Foreigners seeking to have such operations here must get approval from a psychiatrist in their country of origin as well as a psychiatrist in Thailand before undergoing surgery.