Even here in the zenith of the Season of Goodwill I’m fretting about Gender Affirming Care. So, I apologize for being a bit of a Grinch, but I wonder why opponents are so fired up about it.
There has been the recently published report on Gender Dysphoria, and President Trump calling care “chemical and surgical mutilation.” Then Robert F Kennedy, secretary of Health and Human Services calling gender affirming care “malpractice” and even questioning the legitimacy of transgender identify (as well as espousing what some think are somewhat unhinged ideas that the herbicide atrazine can “chemically castrate and forcibly feminize” our kids – because it does in frogs).
There are threats to withhold Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals and clinics providing gender affirming treatment, executive orders to withhold funds from states that don’t adopt the administration’s policies opposing transgender care and sports participation, as well as eliminating $477 million in related research grants.
It all makes me think the Trump and Kennedy have got a bit of a bee in their bonnet about the whole transgender issue – as well as many others. And that intrigues me.
Closer to home, we seem to see the same.
Kelly Merrill, adjunct professor in the Communications Studies department at Randolph-Macon College, who came to talk to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fredericksburg about being the mother of a transgender child, told of how she went to a meeting of the Hanover County School Board to support transgender rights and told us how it seemed she was the only one supporting but “there were about 100 people opposing, and I was heckled.” *
Fear of the Unknown?
So why is this whole gender fluidity seen as such a threat? It has been part of humanity documented as long ago as 1200 BC in Egypt and throughout the world since, including in America among native Americans, and in the non-indigenous population since the colonial era. Even the conservative medical profession adopted Gender Affirming Care as far back as 1960.
It has always been that some people have a strong conviction that they were born the wrong sex. They have a strong urge to dress and behave like the sex their sex chromosomes don’t jibe with.
The American Psychological Association notes such people undergo gender dysphoria and are subject to “depression, anxiety, substance use, malignancy, sexually transmitted disease (STD), and victimization of violence” It is also dangerous in that in extreme cases it causes suicide (reported by a Danish study to be 3.5 times more common).
True the whole gender fluidity – people choosing what sex they want to present as – has become much more acceptable and prevalent. And among the young is perhaps a bit of a fashion. And peer imitation. But I’m not sure why it’s seen as so threatening.
Why do politicians feel a need to weigh in and not leave sorting it out to the person, their family and their doctor? In the same way we do with depression, anxiety, autism (all of which are also mental health issues that are more prevalent in our young folk recently).
Surmountable Problems and Prejudice
Yes, there are logistical issues like what bathroom to use (though I really find it hard to believe that boys wanting to become girls are going to be voyeurs in the girl’s bathroom). And the sports team problem of should people whose bodies have grown under the influence of male levels of testosterone be allowed to play on female sports teams?
And, even among people who are tolerant of the idea that someone should be free to present as whatever sex they choose, there is controversy about use of hormones and surgery in people young enough to possibly not know what their choice will be when mentally mature.
But the vitriol of the people who oppose Gender Affirming Care seems out of proportion to these logistical problems.
Often is seems a religious based opposition – the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholics are two who have declared their opposition, claiming it is a threat to human dignity. My opinion is that, like abortion and medical aid in dying, people’s religious beliefs should not dictate policies about what are other people’s very personal issues.
Where’s that personal freedom that the kind of people who oppose this are so often on about?
It is also claimed part of the opposition is fear of the unknown – and no question there is a lot of misinformation and lack of knowledge and understanding about the whole transgender issue.
Asking AI why people are opposed it includes the slightly cynical idea that some politicians see it as an issue to get people to support them. And that it may be a good distraction from more hot-button political issues they don’t want people focused on.
Happy Holidays
I apologize for belaboring serious stuff smack in the middle of the “Season of Goodwill” – but I shall leave the tinsel and goodwill to those better at expressing it.
Nonetheless, I wish everyone a “Happy Holidays” and may the New Year be happy and prosperous.
* Merrill noted the Hanover County School Board is appointed rather than elected and is made up of members “who hold views way too conservative to ever get elected.” She is pushing for reform where all school boards are elected, notappointed.
