Here’s a nice piece about economics and class, specifically in the US, when it comes to trans people and transition. It’s written by a woman whose sister is transitioning to female.
She ends the piece:
In a perfect world, an individual’s trans*ition would be marked by celebration, dedicated to their instinctive disconnection from their bodies and/or the societal binaries that surround us, and without cost (or, at least, fully-funded). But this isn’t a perfect world.
Ours is a species dominated by cost. And so far, I don’t see any feasible way around it. So, what does that mean? It means either biting the bullet and paying through the nose for procedures that would (hopefully) mean harmony of mind and body, or going without.
What is more difficult is that many trans people cannot get to the point they want without significant medical intervention, and if they always register as trans, will deal with untold amounts of discrimination. It’s frustrating, but true.
Moreso, even if someone can find a way to scrape up the money to have genital surgery and the like, that may mean they are sacrificing something else – going back to school, having kids, buying a home, or whatever other things most people would do with upwards of $20k. Which means that trans people, as a class, are bound to be poorer than their peers — much like women often are.