A French gynaecologist has come under fire from groups who claim to tackle homophobia after refusing to examine a male-to-female transgender person claiming that he only knew how to take care of women and had no experience treating men.
The alleged ‘anti-hate’ group SOS Homophobie called attention to doctor Victor Acharian, a gynaecologist in the city of Pau, and specifically to an exchange of words on the doctor’s Google review page.
“I have no competence to deal with men, even if they have shaved their beards and come to tell my secretary that they have become women,” Dr Acharian wrote after receiving a negative review from the transgender person involved, the newspaper Le Figaro reports.
On X, the social media platform formally known as Twitter, SOS Homophobie wrote, “We denounce the transphobic and discriminatory remarks of gynaecologist Victor Acharian in Pau. Transphobia is a reality with serious consequences, particularly in access to health. It affects the entire territory.”
The broadcaster Sud Ouest reports that several associations denounced the doctor and some raised the prospect of filing formal complaints against him. Dr Acharian, meanwhile, claimed that his secretary had been assaulted following the denouncement by SOS Homophobie, which took place last week.
The broadcaster reported on Wednesday, September 13th, that Dr Acharian had made a brief apology for his Google review message, which has since been deleted, saying, “I apologized and regretted offending the sensibilities of some people.”
GBNA Santé group, the group that owns the clinic where Dr Acharian has his practice, claimed they had no direct input on his medical decisions saying, “All patients deserve to be cared for with tolerance and kindness. The physician used unfortunate words to explain, in a clumsy and hurtful manner, that he was not competent to treat the person.”
The case comes after French feminists and lesbians have also been accused of “transphobia” in recent years for standing up for women’s rights and women-only spaces.
French associations STOP homophobia, Mousse, and Famille LGBT+ went as far as filing criminal complaints against high-profile feminists Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern earlier this year after the pair released a manifesto calling for women;’s bathrooms to be women-only spaces. The pair wrote,
BLOCK QUOTE Why should trans women’s fear of being mocked in men’s bathrooms take precedence over women’s fear of being raped? … Of course, not all trans people are predators, but we are forced to be wary because transgenderism can be instrumentalized by any man to access women’s spaces.
In 2021, a group of lesbian feminist activists penned a letter claiming that they had even been sexually harassed by transgender male-to-female activists who accused them of “transphobia” for not being sexually attracted to them despite them having male genitals.
“In the spaces they lead, we have to undergo workshops called ‘deconstruction of genital preferences’, brainwashing to overcome our aversion to coitus and fellatio,” the activists wrote.
France is not the only country that has seen gynaecologists accused of transphobia for not examining transgender male-to-female patients. In 2019, a Canadian transgender named Jessica Yaniv complained that a gynaecologist refused to see Yaniv or any transgender individuals and accused the doctor of discrimination.
Yaniv, who made headlines in Canada and the world after taking Vancouver estheticians to court for not waxing Yaniv’s genitals, a claim that was later thrown out, claimed to have been “shocked and hurt” by the doctor’s statements.
