Montreal doc suspended for referring to transitioning woman as female

The Quebec College of Physicians has suspended a doctor for three months because he referred to a biological woman as a female.

The provincial administrative and disciplinary body criticized Dr. Raymond Brière, a Montreal physician who has been practicing medicine for 40 years, for allegedly wielding “an inappropriate and disrespectful attitude” towards a patient whom he called a biological woman. 

As first reported by La Presse, the patient met with the doctor in May 2022 to discuss ingesting hormones to appear more masculine. The woman secretly recorded the conversation. 

The ruling stated that the patient expressed a decision to “move on to the next stage in their transformation, which is hormone intake.” The woman had decided to change her gender a year before but had only changed her pronouns.

Brière was reluctant to comply with his patient’s demands, not wanting to rush into hormone therapy and because he had “little experience with trans people.”

The doctor warned the patient about the potential adverse reaction of the body to hormone treatments, noting that male hormones can increase aggression. Brière’s advice was dismissed by the transitioning woman.

Brière said he had “never prescribed hormones to a person who wants to ‘turn into a man,’” and suggested the patient might benefit from talking to another doctor who had more experience in this subject matter.

The patient asked whether using a testosterone gel “to encourage a slow, gradual transformation of the body” would be an option. Brière responded by noting that females can utilize a pump to apply testosterone gels.

His patient insisted that this procedure wouldn’t apply since she now considered herself to be male. 

“You were a woman, dear lady,” Brière responded, apparently greatly offending the patient who did not recognize her biological sex.

“If a chromosomal analysis is carried out, it will be shown that their chromosomes carry XX genes, not XY,” Brière continued, saying that the patient’s male identity only existed “in your brain.”