In late December, RFK and Dr. Oz (seriously? Dr. Oz?) announced a series of new rules that will effectively end gender-affirming care (GAC) for minors by ending Medicaid funding for GAC for minors and by ending Medicaid and Medicare funding for all services at hospitals where GAC for minors is provided. RFK—who said that red meat was more important than vegetables—said that GAC for minors is “not medicine, it’s malpractice.” Mind-boggling.
The news is horrifying, but it doesn't necessarily mean everything is over. These bills won’t go into effect immediately, and they are already being successfully challenged in the courts. I've seen some people under 19 lose access to GAC, but it's not over til it’s over. They couldn’t do it when trying to stop Medicaid from covering GAC then, surely they’ll keep running into problems.
I’ve been out for 11ish/12 years, and sometimes I just can’t believe how the popular conversation on trans issues has devolved. In 2014, it was like no one knew what a trans person was. Now, it seems like everyone has decided to have an opinion.
I’ve been going through my old journal entries from high school, curious to see what I was feeling. Maybe I’d realize that I just was looking to the past with rose-colored glasses.
I was a teenager taking testosterone, with a lot of friends who were also on hormones, some even had surgeries. We were in Texas. (Dan Crenshaw—who actually introduced the bill stopping Medicaid from reimbursing GAC for minors—actually represents the outskirts of the city we were all from.) As you might imagine, it was not an idyll.
But when I go back, I feel an optimism, a hope, that is maybe only possible because of the way that things were then. My journals are filled with recordings of esoteric debates on what it means to be transgender, why we were trans, what we should all be reading, watching, how we should love each other. We were dreaming.
Now, I watch alleged “trailblazer” Sarah McBride—first openly trans senator—go on failed journalist Ezra Klein’s podcast to talk about how trans people should really concede ground to transphobes in order to… I don’t even know? Win? I guess?
I get scared for people who are—like I was—trans teenagers. I want to shake them by the shoulders and go: “Don’t feel like you have to concede your personhood, your agency, your dreams.” In dark times, keep asking yourself: “What are your dreams?” Keep asking the people around you.
In my dreams, everyone gets their hormones for free, everyone has found true love and it feels uncomplicated, everyone has a place to live and a job and time to relax and laugh and go to the movies.
Sometimes, I look around, and we’re already at the movies. Even in this darkness.
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