The new federal rule formalizes previous threats to hospitals to pull Medicaid funding, and represents a significant legal stretch by this administration. Most trans youth care would be impacted.
This kind of thing is why I really resent protest votes / lack of voting because "both parties are the same". Just say you don't give af about vulnerable minorities then, damn. This was soul-crushing to read.
To be fair, I’m prepared to end a 20 year voting and volunteering streak if we nominate Newsom and he doesn’t make up to trans people significantly. Hard for trans people to vote dem under a bus 🤷♀️
I no longer have any qualms about not voting. I've been voting for 41 years and I've never missed an election but I'm not going to vote for Dems who don't explicitly support us in their positioning and votes-of-record (abstentions and "present" instead of explicitly voting FOR us doesn't cut it any more). Why should I distinguish between GOPMAGAs and the Dems that vote with and or enable them? With our necks on the line that's all that matters.
Newsom, Suozzi, Cuellar, Moulton, Vincente Gonzalez, JD Ford, Don Davis, and every other Dem willing to sell us out for $ and power, can all go to hell.
sacrificing any human rights for political gain is unacceptable, and the list of dems doing that is growing (all republicans do it, but we need at least one choice on the ballot who is electable representation). We need to primary the fascism complicit dems, and thats way harder if we all promise to vote blue no matter who.
There are vast differences between "not voting", "not voting for Dems who don't explicitly support us in their positioning and votes-of-record (abstentions and "present" instead of explicitly voting FOR us" and "voting FOR candidates that do actually support us. Full stop."
The key is determining exactly who those candidates are. Note that I did not specify party. I stopped voting along a party line a few decades ago just for that reason. I would like to find an actual party that fully embodies my political beliefs and ethical values, but this world doesn't hold that.
Please try to find the candidates in your area that you CAN vote FOR. Because not voting just perpetuates what we have now, which is killing us.
Well, yeah. If the Dems run an explicitly anti-trans candidate, that's obviously one thing, and I'm right there with you. Since they haven't done that yet though, I'm talking about something different.
I really hope Newsom isn’t the nominee, but he’d still be better than most republicans on trans issues. Elections are a choice not an endorsement. I’ll be voting for Newsom if it is him or JD Vance
I hear you. I didn’t mean to sound abrasive. Sorry if I did. I just used to get angry and frustrated at nonvoters until this year. Like many of us, I’ve never felt more powerless or under attack by the gov in my life (and was naive enough to think I never would).
Our votes (while they still count) are the most power many of us will ever have, so I’ve changed my views on nonvoters and if things go badly enough may end up being one myself. Nobody should be guaranteed anybody’s vote
As far as being explicitly anti-trans, Newsom has vetoed bills for us and aligned with people like ck. That’s close enough to explicit for me. That said, I do hope he corrects in our favor if he is nominated
100%. The liberals who scream purity tests is partially why we even had trump back in 2016. Quite honestly- we have to move away from that mentality of both parties are bad. You know I guess? We have a corrupt system bought out by billionaires. What’s new? Like we kinda have to play the cards we are dealt, I say. Democrats are not out here banning healthcare, the contrary is and happening right in front of our eyes.
What's the difference between voting for an anti-Trans Dem vs an anti-Trans Repug?
I can't and won't, just like I've never voted for a Dem Holocaust denier, a Dem segregationist, or Dem anti-abortion fanatic and I never will. This isn't ideological purity it's self preservation.
I don't think they (nor I) were talking about an explicitly anti-trans Dem. The concept we are discussing is Dems who have some unsavory views (which they literally all do), but are still far better candidates for trans (and other minority) rights than their Republican counterparts.
The democratic party could have allied with the socioeconomic left at any time and swept, and they have always, *always* refused and swung right for business interests and reactionaries and the preservation of imperialism. That party may not have targeted us **as aggressively**, but they were never on our side. They do not fight for us. They will not save us. We have to fight apart from them.
I bit my tongue and voted for genocidal Kamala and I will never forgive myself. The democratic party does not want meaningful progress, and they sure as hell don't actually care about minorities in this or any country. Obama and Biden's deportation levels were higher than Trump's ever were, but they weren't doing it brazenly where white people could see so nobody reported on it.
So why don't or electeds actually do something with all their power, with all their platform? Because ultimately, they are ok with all of this. Our lives are not that big of a deal to them, compared to who they really serve.
This is a very hard pill for people to swallow but the sooner the better. Abandon the democratic party and start organizing in your communities if you haven't already.
Yeah, no. You're throwing the baby out with the bath water here.
I get that it's easy to feel cynical or fall into doomspirals over stuff like terrible foreign policy and lukewarm support for marginalised groups. But that doesn't mean you should just give up.
Local organising, mutual aid etc is great! But it's going to do jack against actual politicians in power, **as we are seeing in this very article**. You should be doing both. Screaming "genocidal Kamala" and refusing to vote Dem is exactly why we're in this mess.
You think all Republican voters agree with everything the party does? They don't. I think a large amount of them are actually more radical than the bulk of the party right now. But they win, and will keep winning, because they don't have this all or nothing attitude. They've been slowing pushing the party further and further right over the past decade.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you need to grow up. The Democrats will literally never be perfect. At the end of the day, the US is an extremely capitalist country, and Dems are getting tons of kick-backs for upholding this system. But if I'm going to suffer either way, I'd rather be homeless or impoverished than in an actual, you know, concentration camp.
I appreciate your comment, and respect your appeal to self preservation. I hope that some day you can see that the democratic party is an integral reason why Trump is in power and emboldened to do what he is doing.
And I am not doomspiraling or cynical or giving up at all. I see building a meaningful alternative as necessary, even if it is extremely difficult, because the democratic party is always, always, where progress goes to die.
I really believe the single best policy for trans people nationwide would be universal healthcare. I don't know a single trans person whose transition has not been shaped by financial gatekeeping.
And I know most transgender children trapped into socialist healthcare are boys dealing with breasts and periods until they are young adults at least, and girls dealing with beards and deep voices.
The single payer needs to be the patient, never the government. If there is to be government funded charity, that should go to the patient, not the provider.
As you rightly point out, whether the money is distributed to the patients or directly to the providers would not solve the fact that healthcare is a scarce commodity. When commodities are scarce, there must be some method to their distribution, and in capitalism that method is the free market. Consequently, the wealthy and comfortable are able to access their care in a timely manner, while the rest of us don't get to access it at all. The impoverished trans woman in a red state dreams of something as pitiful as a waitlist; for her, the wait is until death.
In countries with socialized healthcare, the method of distribution is the same one used on the playground: wait your turn, regardless of whether you're rich or poor.
I would contend that the latter system is clearly more ethical than the former, but I won't get bogged down by the false dichotomy that opponents of universal healthcare always make. For I see a better solution, one that addresses both the supply and the demand sides of the equation.
For universal healthcare to work, it must be able to deliver quality care in a timely fashion. Therefore, we should invest heavily in building new medical schools and making medical education free for those who will spend at least a significant portion of their careers serving the public system. Additionally, steps must be taken to make the medical profession less burdensome on its workers, which of course can only happen when the availability of medical workers and resources is increased. That will only happen through massive government action.
Make doctors and nurses comfortable, not rich, and make medicine cheap via socialized over-production.
To maximize the efficient use of resources, private medical care ought to cease to exist entirely, but that can only happen if the public system is fat and happy.
We have the resources to accomplish such a task, but lack the political will. Nonetheless, I believe our country is capable of great things when we act as a whole society.
I respect your personal choice to boycott voting all together, but even a choice to not vote is a choice in the elections. You de facto give your vote, even in abstention, to whatever cult of personality is dominant, and in this case, that's MAGA. So if you choose to do nothing now, you get nothing for it. No progress, no movement, nothing. And that means now and in the future.
I disagree with your idea in its entirety, but it is your choice, and if that's what you want, be prepared to live with the same morass we have right now.
This is basically exactly wrong. Settling for nothing is electing the same side that refused to play hard ball against the monsters on the other side. Remember when Pelosi tore up his state of the union speech but signed the military spending bill with him? If the democrats gave a shit they’d refuse to sign that bill until the republicans put the cuffs back on the office of the president.
You ought to direct your frustration towards the party that thought it could fight fascism with, first, a senile old man, and then a bad, unpopular candidate forced down the throat of an electorate with no primary process.
Of course, but I think that in context, it's not so easy to morally condemn those who withheld their vote for lack of a better option, especially considering how fundamentally un-democratic our election system is.
At risk of earning your ire, I will volunteer that I voted for neither major candidate in the last election. Of course, I have the luxury of living in what is arguably the most reliably blue state in the country, so the electoral votes went to Kamala anyway. My actual effect on the election was not "virtually" zero, or "statistically" zero; it was literally and absolutely zero, nil.
Not everyone lives in such reliable states, but practically speaking, most of us do. There are just not that many swing states. So the idea that any individual voter deserves resentment doesn't hold water.
Furthermore, although for you and me this issue may be of a singular importance, for most cis voters there are a variety of competing concerns. Kamala's positioning on Gaza was particularly damaging in this regard, as many voters who would never in their lives vote for Trump ended up withholding their vote from the Democratic nominee because they could not stomach condoning a genocide. The Democratic Party's failure to adequately deal with the problem of Joe Biden's senility also contributed mightily to Kamala's defeat, as the whole situation severely damaged voters' trust in the party.
Do I think Donald Trump deserved to win? Absolutely not. But I do believe that the Democratic Party perhaps deserved to lose. Regardless, blaming the voters will never work as a strategy. As much as I wish people had voted differently last year, the fact remains that the party that promised it would protect us absolutely squandered any advantages it might have, ignored us, then blamed us for their loss. That's a betrayal in its own right, one which cannot be forgiven by the repugnance of the opposition alone.
Yep. It’s in NYT breaking news. I reached out to a few reporters I know. Silence. Speech last night took precedence. I don’t know that many people care who aren’t trans/nonbinary.
Until we unite and get our friends and allies to unite with us and march/protest and get visible, we won’t make a change.
It will be interesting to see what medical/health organizations and institutions comment or respond. I’m not optimistic for a strong response. Past performance has not demonstrated much. Sigh.
It may feel like people who aren't trans/nonbinary don't care, but there is a small army of us out here who are allies, parents, guardians, teachers, etc who DO CARE. We are active in many areas, but we need to be coalesced into one crew acting together for the main goal of preserving care. I am looking for that space, but I cannot create it myself. Any direction towards that would be awesome!
I am literally reading this as I sit in a medical appointment for a trans youth. I feel sick. 6 months of puberty blockers in place today, but what happens next? This is a crime and cruel beyond measure.
This is absolutely sickening. Shame on RFK Jr, shame on DJT, and shame on all who believed the astroturfed lie that Kamala was an equally bad option in 2024.
Revealing once again that these attacks are about the political value of hate for the right and not state’s rights, parent’s rights, safety, bathroom, sports, healthcare costs, or literally anything else they say. It is simply hate and their wicked supporters love it despite all this regime’s failures otherwise
Fuck this. Fuck trump, fuck this country, fuck everything. This is discriminatory cruelty, and we all saw it coming. They have no idea the harm they are causing trans youth and their families. I'm so over this.
They exactly do know the harm they're causing and they're happy about it.
That's the real problem. We need to get over this idea that they're just blindly tromping around, clueless of the real effects of policies and rulings like this. They abso-fucking-lutely know the harm they're causing.
This article discusses the need for the world's countries to offer asylum to trans Americans facing the genocide of trans youth and all trans people. It is grim but essential reading.
The Case for Transgender Asylum From Trump’s America by Brynn Tannehill
Hi Erin, can you please elaborate on this paragraph?
"The ban would leave only a narrow window for transgender youth to access care from providers not affected by the rule. The only entities that could continue offering treatment would be private doctors or clinics that do not accept Medicaid at all. While there has been some discussion about establishing such clinics to fill the gap, those efforts have largely failed to materialize. As a result, most transgender youth would be left without any realistic alternative provider for their care."
Do you have examples where this already happened? Do you know in terms of common barriers people have run into while attempting to establish clinics not reliant on federal funding.
I'm asking because there are clinics in the Seattle area not operated by major health systems who might not be receiving medicare/medicaid funding and already providing GAC. I'm also exploring starting up a GAC clinic that includes youth services.
Also in the Seattle area and wondering the same. My kid's provider accepts Medicaid from existing patients but not new patients. Perhaps they were anticipating this?
Fuck this, I am so sorry to all the youth. I’m listening to the press conference now and rfk says basically they are going after companies that make binders and “advertise to youth” wtf!
"we believe that providing the SRPs for children is not healthcare and hence are not subsumed under the term of “the practice of medicine."
This, from the folks who previously argued that using a child's preferred pronouns can be considered "practicing medicine" without a license.* Not that I expect internal consistency from the current Supreme Court let alone this administration.
Republicans enjoy watching transgender children commit suicide. They make jokes about it, just like they do after Trump and DOGE eliminated most HIV prevention and treatment funding. They're looking forward to killing queers and watching us die, Democrats are not going to stop them. Whether we die of HIV, self harm, unmitigated stress and cortisol poisoning, or raped to death in prison or fed to ICEstapo troops and gators in Dixieland concentration camps, it doesn't matter.
The GOPMAGAs want us dead.
Democrats are not going to save us.
We need to concentrate all our planning on these two premises. That's where hope and survival both lie.
1. We can go into hiding. Underground. That's assuming we can stick it out to the next democratic (small d) administration but I honestly have no idea when that will happen. I very much doubt we will see elections in our lifetimes. Say hello to Big Brother, the Sons of Jacob, Nehemiah Scudder, the Trump Dynasty, or the anschluss of the US into a single party fascist state with elections confined to the GOP primary and only party members can vote (similar to the Soviet style balloting process and the current CCP).
Ask Anne Frank how easy it is to pull this off. Oh...we can't.
2. We can temporarily go into detransition (those who are able, I am not) and survive without healthcare, access to government services, staying off the grid as much as possible. What's the difference between detransition and death? For many of us there is no meaningful distinction in terms of daily life.
3. Emigrate, but WHERE? Every country on Earth is becoming more transphobic as transnational and transactional rightwing politics become the norm. The whole planet has moved farther to the extreme right than it has in almost a century, certainly since 1939. And emigration is fraught with costs and trade-offs. Don't attempt it unless you have $20K cash, the ability to get a digital nomad visa, and a transferable income of $35K+. That rules out 96% of Trans Americans.
This kind of thing is why I really resent protest votes / lack of voting because "both parties are the same". Just say you don't give af about vulnerable minorities then, damn. This was soul-crushing to read.
To be fair, I’m prepared to end a 20 year voting and volunteering streak if we nominate Newsom and he doesn’t make up to trans people significantly. Hard for trans people to vote dem under a bus 🤷♀️
I no longer have any qualms about not voting. I've been voting for 41 years and I've never missed an election but I'm not going to vote for Dems who don't explicitly support us in their positioning and votes-of-record (abstentions and "present" instead of explicitly voting FOR us doesn't cut it any more). Why should I distinguish between GOPMAGAs and the Dems that vote with and or enable them? With our necks on the line that's all that matters.
Newsom, Suozzi, Cuellar, Moulton, Vincente Gonzalez, JD Ford, Don Davis, and every other Dem willing to sell us out for $ and power, can all go to hell.
Big difference between actually anti-trans Dems, and Dems who are just medicore all around but won't actively sabotage our rights.
sacrificing any human rights for political gain is unacceptable, and the list of dems doing that is growing (all republicans do it, but we need at least one choice on the ballot who is electable representation). We need to primary the fascism complicit dems, and thats way harder if we all promise to vote blue no matter who.
Never give up the fight! As I breathe, I hope!
There are vast differences between "not voting", "not voting for Dems who don't explicitly support us in their positioning and votes-of-record (abstentions and "present" instead of explicitly voting FOR us" and "voting FOR candidates that do actually support us. Full stop."
The key is determining exactly who those candidates are. Note that I did not specify party. I stopped voting along a party line a few decades ago just for that reason. I would like to find an actual party that fully embodies my political beliefs and ethical values, but this world doesn't hold that.
Please try to find the candidates in your area that you CAN vote FOR. Because not voting just perpetuates what we have now, which is killing us.
Well, yeah. If the Dems run an explicitly anti-trans candidate, that's obviously one thing, and I'm right there with you. Since they haven't done that yet though, I'm talking about something different.
I really hope Newsom isn’t the nominee, but he’d still be better than most republicans on trans issues. Elections are a choice not an endorsement. I’ll be voting for Newsom if it is him or JD Vance
Trans people should protest Newsom at every opportunity throughout the entire primary process.
I hear you. I didn’t mean to sound abrasive. Sorry if I did. I just used to get angry and frustrated at nonvoters until this year. Like many of us, I’ve never felt more powerless or under attack by the gov in my life (and was naive enough to think I never would).
Our votes (while they still count) are the most power many of us will ever have, so I’ve changed my views on nonvoters and if things go badly enough may end up being one myself. Nobody should be guaranteed anybody’s vote
As far as being explicitly anti-trans, Newsom has vetoed bills for us and aligned with people like ck. That’s close enough to explicit for me. That said, I do hope he corrects in our favor if he is nominated
100%. The liberals who scream purity tests is partially why we even had trump back in 2016. Quite honestly- we have to move away from that mentality of both parties are bad. You know I guess? We have a corrupt system bought out by billionaires. What’s new? Like we kinda have to play the cards we are dealt, I say. Democrats are not out here banning healthcare, the contrary is and happening right in front of our eyes.
What's the difference between voting for an anti-Trans Dem vs an anti-Trans Repug?
I can't and won't, just like I've never voted for a Dem Holocaust denier, a Dem segregationist, or Dem anti-abortion fanatic and I never will. This isn't ideological purity it's self preservation.
I don't think they (nor I) were talking about an explicitly anti-trans Dem. The concept we are discussing is Dems who have some unsavory views (which they literally all do), but are still far better candidates for trans (and other minority) rights than their Republican counterparts.
The democratic party could have allied with the socioeconomic left at any time and swept, and they have always, *always* refused and swung right for business interests and reactionaries and the preservation of imperialism. That party may not have targeted us **as aggressively**, but they were never on our side. They do not fight for us. They will not save us. We have to fight apart from them.
I bit my tongue and voted for genocidal Kamala and I will never forgive myself. The democratic party does not want meaningful progress, and they sure as hell don't actually care about minorities in this or any country. Obama and Biden's deportation levels were higher than Trump's ever were, but they weren't doing it brazenly where white people could see so nobody reported on it.
So why don't or electeds actually do something with all their power, with all their platform? Because ultimately, they are ok with all of this. Our lives are not that big of a deal to them, compared to who they really serve.
This is a very hard pill for people to swallow but the sooner the better. Abandon the democratic party and start organizing in your communities if you haven't already.
Yeah, no. You're throwing the baby out with the bath water here.
I get that it's easy to feel cynical or fall into doomspirals over stuff like terrible foreign policy and lukewarm support for marginalised groups. But that doesn't mean you should just give up.
Local organising, mutual aid etc is great! But it's going to do jack against actual politicians in power, **as we are seeing in this very article**. You should be doing both. Screaming "genocidal Kamala" and refusing to vote Dem is exactly why we're in this mess.
You think all Republican voters agree with everything the party does? They don't. I think a large amount of them are actually more radical than the bulk of the party right now. But they win, and will keep winning, because they don't have this all or nothing attitude. They've been slowing pushing the party further and further right over the past decade.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you need to grow up. The Democrats will literally never be perfect. At the end of the day, the US is an extremely capitalist country, and Dems are getting tons of kick-backs for upholding this system. But if I'm going to suffer either way, I'd rather be homeless or impoverished than in an actual, you know, concentration camp.
I appreciate your comment, and respect your appeal to self preservation. I hope that some day you can see that the democratic party is an integral reason why Trump is in power and emboldened to do what he is doing.
And I am not doomspiraling or cynical or giving up at all. I see building a meaningful alternative as necessary, even if it is extremely difficult, because the democratic party is always, always, where progress goes to die.
FIX the Democratic Party. Primary the MAGA Dems.
"The democratic party could have allied with the socioeconomic left at any time and swept"
Into the condition of every transgender person waiting years or decades for "free" care. No thanks.
I really believe the single best policy for trans people nationwide would be universal healthcare. I don't know a single trans person whose transition has not been shaped by financial gatekeeping.
And I know most transgender children trapped into socialist healthcare are boys dealing with breasts and periods until they are young adults at least, and girls dealing with beards and deep voices.
The single payer needs to be the patient, never the government. If there is to be government funded charity, that should go to the patient, not the provider.
As you rightly point out, whether the money is distributed to the patients or directly to the providers would not solve the fact that healthcare is a scarce commodity. When commodities are scarce, there must be some method to their distribution, and in capitalism that method is the free market. Consequently, the wealthy and comfortable are able to access their care in a timely manner, while the rest of us don't get to access it at all. The impoverished trans woman in a red state dreams of something as pitiful as a waitlist; for her, the wait is until death.
In countries with socialized healthcare, the method of distribution is the same one used on the playground: wait your turn, regardless of whether you're rich or poor.
I would contend that the latter system is clearly more ethical than the former, but I won't get bogged down by the false dichotomy that opponents of universal healthcare always make. For I see a better solution, one that addresses both the supply and the demand sides of the equation.
For universal healthcare to work, it must be able to deliver quality care in a timely fashion. Therefore, we should invest heavily in building new medical schools and making medical education free for those who will spend at least a significant portion of their careers serving the public system. Additionally, steps must be taken to make the medical profession less burdensome on its workers, which of course can only happen when the availability of medical workers and resources is increased. That will only happen through massive government action.
Make doctors and nurses comfortable, not rich, and make medicine cheap via socialized over-production.
To maximize the efficient use of resources, private medical care ought to cease to exist entirely, but that can only happen if the public system is fat and happy.
We have the resources to accomplish such a task, but lack the political will. Nonetheless, I believe our country is capable of great things when we act as a whole society.
If you settle for nothing now, you’ll settle for nothing later.
Can you please elaborate on your comment more?
yes, might i recommend a review of the collected works of Rage Against The Machine?
I respect your personal choice to boycott voting all together, but even a choice to not vote is a choice in the elections. You de facto give your vote, even in abstention, to whatever cult of personality is dominant, and in this case, that's MAGA. So if you choose to do nothing now, you get nothing for it. No progress, no movement, nothing. And that means now and in the future.
I disagree with your idea in its entirety, but it is your choice, and if that's what you want, be prepared to live with the same morass we have right now.
This is basically exactly wrong. Settling for nothing is electing the same side that refused to play hard ball against the monsters on the other side. Remember when Pelosi tore up his state of the union speech but signed the military spending bill with him? If the democrats gave a shit they’d refuse to sign that bill until the republicans put the cuffs back on the office of the president.
You ought to direct your frustration towards the party that thought it could fight fascism with, first, a senile old man, and then a bad, unpopular candidate forced down the throat of an electorate with no primary process.
I can hold multiple feelings at once.
Of course, but I think that in context, it's not so easy to morally condemn those who withheld their vote for lack of a better option, especially considering how fundamentally un-democratic our election system is.
At risk of earning your ire, I will volunteer that I voted for neither major candidate in the last election. Of course, I have the luxury of living in what is arguably the most reliably blue state in the country, so the electoral votes went to Kamala anyway. My actual effect on the election was not "virtually" zero, or "statistically" zero; it was literally and absolutely zero, nil.
Not everyone lives in such reliable states, but practically speaking, most of us do. There are just not that many swing states. So the idea that any individual voter deserves resentment doesn't hold water.
Furthermore, although for you and me this issue may be of a singular importance, for most cis voters there are a variety of competing concerns. Kamala's positioning on Gaza was particularly damaging in this regard, as many voters who would never in their lives vote for Trump ended up withholding their vote from the Democratic nominee because they could not stomach condoning a genocide. The Democratic Party's failure to adequately deal with the problem of Joe Biden's senility also contributed mightily to Kamala's defeat, as the whole situation severely damaged voters' trust in the party.
Do I think Donald Trump deserved to win? Absolutely not. But I do believe that the Democratic Party perhaps deserved to lose. Regardless, blaming the voters will never work as a strategy. As much as I wish people had voted differently last year, the fact remains that the party that promised it would protect us absolutely squandered any advantages it might have, ignored us, then blamed us for their loss. That's a betrayal in its own right, one which cannot be forgiven by the repugnance of the opposition alone.
Yep. It’s in NYT breaking news. I reached out to a few reporters I know. Silence. Speech last night took precedence. I don’t know that many people care who aren’t trans/nonbinary.
Until we unite and get our friends and allies to unite with us and march/protest and get visible, we won’t make a change.
It will be interesting to see what medical/health organizations and institutions comment or respond. I’m not optimistic for a strong response. Past performance has not demonstrated much. Sigh.
It may feel like people who aren't trans/nonbinary don't care, but there is a small army of us out here who are allies, parents, guardians, teachers, etc who DO CARE. We are active in many areas, but we need to be coalesced into one crew acting together for the main goal of preserving care. I am looking for that space, but I cannot create it myself. Any direction towards that would be awesome!
I am literally reading this as I sit in a medical appointment for a trans youth. I feel sick. 6 months of puberty blockers in place today, but what happens next? This is a crime and cruel beyond measure.
This is absolutely sickening. Shame on RFK Jr, shame on DJT, and shame on all who believed the astroturfed lie that Kamala was an equally bad option in 2024.
Revealing once again that these attacks are about the political value of hate for the right and not state’s rights, parent’s rights, safety, bathroom, sports, healthcare costs, or literally anything else they say. It is simply hate and their wicked supporters love it despite all this regime’s failures otherwise
Anybody who pretended RFK would actually improve healthcare should be ashamed
Fuck this. Fuck trump, fuck this country, fuck everything. This is discriminatory cruelty, and we all saw it coming. They have no idea the harm they are causing trans youth and their families. I'm so over this.
They exactly do know the harm they're causing and they're happy about it.
That's the real problem. We need to get over this idea that they're just blindly tromping around, clueless of the real effects of policies and rulings like this. They abso-fucking-lutely know the harm they're causing.
It’s true. They want us to die. They don’t care if there’s blood on their hands. They are unshameable
because this is what they want.
As if we needed more proof that the right is planning a genocide-by-suicide of trans kids.
Kids to begin with,v then the rest of us, and it won't be much of a wait.
💯
Jesus Christ these psychopaths don’t care about the constitution at all they are authoritarian through and through
This article discusses the need for the world's countries to offer asylum to trans Americans facing the genocide of trans youth and all trans people. It is grim but essential reading.
The Case for Transgender Asylum From Trump’s America by Brynn Tannehill
https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/09/08/the-case-for-transgender-asylum-from-trumps-america/
I love Brynn Tannehill.
Thanks for the link!
Hi Erin, can you please elaborate on this paragraph?
"The ban would leave only a narrow window for transgender youth to access care from providers not affected by the rule. The only entities that could continue offering treatment would be private doctors or clinics that do not accept Medicaid at all. While there has been some discussion about establishing such clinics to fill the gap, those efforts have largely failed to materialize. As a result, most transgender youth would be left without any realistic alternative provider for their care."
Do you have examples where this already happened? Do you know in terms of common barriers people have run into while attempting to establish clinics not reliant on federal funding.
I'm asking because there are clinics in the Seattle area not operated by major health systems who might not be receiving medicare/medicaid funding and already providing GAC. I'm also exploring starting up a GAC clinic that includes youth services.
Thank you!
Also in the Seattle area and wondering the same. My kid's provider accepts Medicaid from existing patients but not new patients. Perhaps they were anticipating this?
Fuck this, I am so sorry to all the youth. I’m listening to the press conference now and rfk says basically they are going after companies that make binders and “advertise to youth” wtf!
Going after companies that make binders and “advertise to youth” is not medical but social transition etc
"we believe that providing the SRPs for children is not healthcare and hence are not subsumed under the term of “the practice of medicine."
This, from the folks who previously argued that using a child's preferred pronouns can be considered "practicing medicine" without a license.* Not that I expect internal consistency from the current Supreme Court let alone this administration.
* https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling
Republicans enjoy watching transgender children commit suicide. They make jokes about it, just like they do after Trump and DOGE eliminated most HIV prevention and treatment funding. They're looking forward to killing queers and watching us die, Democrats are not going to stop them. Whether we die of HIV, self harm, unmitigated stress and cortisol poisoning, or raped to death in prison or fed to ICEstapo troops and gators in Dixieland concentration camps, it doesn't matter.
The GOPMAGAs want us dead.
Democrats are not going to save us.
We need to concentrate all our planning on these two premises. That's where hope and survival both lie.
1. We can go into hiding. Underground. That's assuming we can stick it out to the next democratic (small d) administration but I honestly have no idea when that will happen. I very much doubt we will see elections in our lifetimes. Say hello to Big Brother, the Sons of Jacob, Nehemiah Scudder, the Trump Dynasty, or the anschluss of the US into a single party fascist state with elections confined to the GOP primary and only party members can vote (similar to the Soviet style balloting process and the current CCP).
Ask Anne Frank how easy it is to pull this off. Oh...we can't.
2. We can temporarily go into detransition (those who are able, I am not) and survive without healthcare, access to government services, staying off the grid as much as possible. What's the difference between detransition and death? For many of us there is no meaningful distinction in terms of daily life.
3. Emigrate, but WHERE? Every country on Earth is becoming more transphobic as transnational and transactional rightwing politics become the norm. The whole planet has moved farther to the extreme right than it has in almost a century, certainly since 1939. And emigration is fraught with costs and trade-offs. Don't attempt it unless you have $20K cash, the ability to get a digital nomad visa, and a transferable income of $35K+. That rules out 96% of Trans Americans.
I don't see other options.
Just f***in' breaking my heart here. I'm crying RN.
what are states rights again??