During debate on HB68, a gender affirming care ban for trans youth as well as athletics for students through college, Ohio Republicans lamented on trans suffering. They passed the bill anyway.
To any families affected by this: Pittsburgh is within fairly driveable distance for all of Ohio and we are a sanctuary city for gender-affirming care (which means, we will NOT cooperate with any attempt by out-of-state law enforcement). Pittsburgh Children's Hospital (where I work) is an excellent facility, rated among the top 10 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report and we have an outstanding gender care clinic. I pledge to personally assist any family coming from Ohio (or from anywhere else for that matter) unable to receive necessary gender-affirming care in their home jurisdiction.
We are as a matter of fact! It's a point of emphasis for us here at UPMC. Soon we'll have a dedicated gender-affirming surgery center (we're in the process) and (on the pediatric side) we're always recruiting trained clinicians!
Vanessa this is wonderful to read. I live in Aotearoa New Zealand and am watching all this happening in your and as our newly elected conservative coalition does its best to take us down the same path. Which is so very sad in a land which was a fairly safe place for trans people. However responses like that of Pittsburgh and your hospital give me hope.
The latest defeat in Ohio is immensely sad and frustrating. At this point, I think we should just assume that any and all GOP-leaning states (even those such as Ohio that used to be politically centrist) inevitably will pass legislation such as this. In fact most have already. The only “safe” states left will be the politically Democratic states that are blue on Erin’s maps, thus leaving the country sharply divided in two from the perspective of trans people. These blue states should remain safe for another year or two - unless and until the fearsome prospect of national anti-trans legislation gets passed, which conservative zealots surely want to do.
These people are immune to the suffering of others, especially if those others are not rich. Witness what’s happening outside of this country. most of them are narcissistic sociopaths. That’s a major qualification for the position.
Pediatrician here. My capacity to be surprised by these awful bills is exhausted. But of course I have non supportive parents who would rather emotionally abuse, manipulate, and ultimately be estranged from their own children instead of simply seeing their loved ones for who they are.
These legislators remind me of Himmler who believed personal suffering over the work of SS proved the moral superiority of the work.
These Ohio senators are showing themselves to be the incarnation of evil. Or better yet they are the Walrus in Alice in Wonderland who led the young oysters the beach and shed tears over their fate as he devoured them all.
They're lying about their sadness. They know what they're doing is wrong and is hurting innocent people. Don't listen to they're words, look at they're actions. Treat the GOP as a threat until proven otherwise. Don't let your guard down, vote them all out.
Thank you, Erin, for sharing the call to action. I urge all Ohioans - any anyone who has friends & family in Ohio - to tell Gov. DeWine to veto the bill. His nickname is “Spineless DeWine” because he has zero courage to stand up to the extremists in his own party, so I doubt it will make a difference, and yet he needs to know how much damage this harmful, hateful bill will do.
How sick do you have to be in order to be this obsessed with the genitalia of the blue haired 13 year old who lives three blocks away? These people are soulless, hypocritical garbage. Every one of the folks who voted for this should have every ounce of dirt from their large closets emptied out in public. I mean if they want to police everybody's pants theirs is fair game.
Erin - just a heads up from an Ohioan. I have tried to email the address you gave from a .com and a gmail address, and I am getting block messages (I know. >:-((( . )
There is a phone number on the "Contact Us" site that did at least get to a working voicemail: (614) 644-4357. There is also a comment form here https://governor.ohio.gov/contact
If people can't get through on the other contact info, I'd encourage people to hit these. I don't trust this governor any farther than I can throw him, but it's worth a shot. As someone else pointed out, he is spineless.
All of these Senators are bought and paid for by right wing "think" tanks. All they care about is that the money keeps rolling in. The GOP is a domestic terrorism organization. They should be treated as such.
Is there a reason we are not talking more about neuro-biology as supporting transgender existence? Namely, BSTc volume as demonstrated by MRI? All I hear about is the right weaponizing biology and yet there is biological evidence for trans folks which supports them saying exactly who they are.
They don’t care about people unless it puts money in their pocket and hate is too profitable apparently
Republicans are all terrible and I hope they lose horribly in their next elections. Of course thanks to gerrymandering, voter suppression, the electoral college etc they have to lose really horribly to not get so much power in this broken political system
Upon reading some of Project 2025, which is really a mandate to establish a new global order, this campaign seeks to take industry back from China. But first, the American public must be controlled and that's why education is being attacked and standard of living will continue to drop so people will accept dirty manufacturing jobs, go to war, and so on. Oil (Bush), Gas Mining, Chemical and Military Industrial Complex seeks to rise in power. Trump says he will seal our borders and drill, drill, drill. Project 2025 is all about the interests of these industries, and seeks to gut controls and technology firms. Musk is all about energy too, as is Putin et al. Musk must have bought Twitter to "X" it off the map. TikTok and Facebook are probably the next targets. Collectively, they will remake themselves in the image of the robber baron industrialists. I think a new model of "extreme capitalism" will be created to promote aggressive growth which fascism and other models lack. And, it won't be humane; it will be dog eat dog. They also realise they need mothers to make babies to build a complacent workforce (outlaw abortion because they don't care where the new workforce gets "manufactured". They just need people who can be manipulated. Supporting hate against LGBTQ+ is just one leg of the stool. We, along with women, are the human sacrifice offered as fresh meat for the male savages who live amongst us (United Nations say 90% bias against women globally). The energy PACs are conduit to the political muscle to get the job done. So, they backfill support for their ends by firing up a broad coalition of unlikely bedfellows in the Christian Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and military, because they need to give their bought lawmaker urgency from constituents eager to push for whatever they fire them up about. Politicians are just the intermediaries who take the heat, while the real devils manipulate via the industrial boardrooms. Epicentre: Texas. To focus our democratic political capital against Texas industries needs therefore to be a key objective, which is possible. It's also possible to get some religions to take a moral high ground and concede to some demands in exchange for support. The real devils are strategic and plan over a long time horizon which must be counter matched; but those on our side are only thinking short range which typically will be a loss in the end. Facts do not matter to our enemy in the disinformation age, except when they support objectives. That's why the court system is so critical, because facts do matter in that venue. Now isn't the time for angst; we need cool headed determination to organise and carry out long term plans. We need to pull the covers off every single conservative organization listed in Project 2025, and find their weaknesses and then create strategy. We also need some deep pockets and shadow leadership.
To any families affected by this: Pittsburgh is within fairly driveable distance for all of Ohio and we are a sanctuary city for gender-affirming care (which means, we will NOT cooperate with any attempt by out-of-state law enforcement). Pittsburgh Children's Hospital (where I work) is an excellent facility, rated among the top 10 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report and we have an outstanding gender care clinic. I pledge to personally assist any family coming from Ohio (or from anywhere else for that matter) unable to receive necessary gender-affirming care in their home jurisdiction.
I hope Pittsburgh is building capacity.
We are as a matter of fact! It's a point of emphasis for us here at UPMC. Soon we'll have a dedicated gender-affirming surgery center (we're in the process) and (on the pediatric side) we're always recruiting trained clinicians!
Awesome!
I am sure that gender pioneers in healthcare like Dr. Shiela Kirk would be very proud of your dedication to our community.
Vanessa this is wonderful to read. I live in Aotearoa New Zealand and am watching all this happening in your and as our newly elected conservative coalition does its best to take us down the same path. Which is so very sad in a land which was a fairly safe place for trans people. However responses like that of Pittsburgh and your hospital give me hope.
"What is harder to understand. however, is how human beings faced with that pain could cast a vote to cause more of it."
It's because they have no empathy and compassion for anyone other than themselves.
Make no mistake. The cruelty is the point.
The latest defeat in Ohio is immensely sad and frustrating. At this point, I think we should just assume that any and all GOP-leaning states (even those such as Ohio that used to be politically centrist) inevitably will pass legislation such as this. In fact most have already. The only “safe” states left will be the politically Democratic states that are blue on Erin’s maps, thus leaving the country sharply divided in two from the perspective of trans people. These blue states should remain safe for another year or two - unless and until the fearsome prospect of national anti-trans legislation gets passed, which conservative zealots surely want to do.
These people are immune to the suffering of others, especially if those others are not rich. Witness what’s happening outside of this country. most of them are narcissistic sociopaths. That’s a major qualification for the position.
Pediatrician here. My capacity to be surprised by these awful bills is exhausted. But of course I have non supportive parents who would rather emotionally abuse, manipulate, and ultimately be estranged from their own children instead of simply seeing their loved ones for who they are.
These legislators remind me of Himmler who believed personal suffering over the work of SS proved the moral superiority of the work.
These Ohio senators are showing themselves to be the incarnation of evil. Or better yet they are the Walrus in Alice in Wonderland who led the young oysters the beach and shed tears over their fate as he devoured them all.
We need to wipe the floor with their candidates next year it’s the only way they will start listening
They're lying about their sadness. They know what they're doing is wrong and is hurting innocent people. Don't listen to they're words, look at they're actions. Treat the GOP as a threat until proven otherwise. Don't let your guard down, vote them all out.
Thank you, Erin, for sharing the call to action. I urge all Ohioans - any anyone who has friends & family in Ohio - to tell Gov. DeWine to veto the bill. His nickname is “Spineless DeWine” because he has zero courage to stand up to the extremists in his own party, so I doubt it will make a difference, and yet he needs to know how much damage this harmful, hateful bill will do.
How sick do you have to be in order to be this obsessed with the genitalia of the blue haired 13 year old who lives three blocks away? These people are soulless, hypocritical garbage. Every one of the folks who voted for this should have every ounce of dirt from their large closets emptied out in public. I mean if they want to police everybody's pants theirs is fair game.
Erin - just a heads up from an Ohioan. I have tried to email the address you gave from a .com and a gmail address, and I am getting block messages (I know. >:-((( . )
There is a phone number on the "Contact Us" site that did at least get to a working voicemail: (614) 644-4357. There is also a comment form here https://governor.ohio.gov/contact
If people can't get through on the other contact info, I'd encourage people to hit these. I don't trust this governor any farther than I can throw him, but it's worth a shot. As someone else pointed out, he is spineless.
Love to you all.
I'll link to the form, I was just following KYC's CTA post!
All of these Senators are bought and paid for by right wing "think" tanks. All they care about is that the money keeps rolling in. The GOP is a domestic terrorism organization. They should be treated as such.
Crocodiles crying...
Is there a reason we are not talking more about neuro-biology as supporting transgender existence? Namely, BSTc volume as demonstrated by MRI? All I hear about is the right weaponizing biology and yet there is biological evidence for trans folks which supports them saying exactly who they are.
They don’t care about people unless it puts money in their pocket and hate is too profitable apparently
Republicans are all terrible and I hope they lose horribly in their next elections. Of course thanks to gerrymandering, voter suppression, the electoral college etc they have to lose really horribly to not get so much power in this broken political system
Ohio, yet another state I wouldn’t feel safe in
Upon reading some of Project 2025, which is really a mandate to establish a new global order, this campaign seeks to take industry back from China. But first, the American public must be controlled and that's why education is being attacked and standard of living will continue to drop so people will accept dirty manufacturing jobs, go to war, and so on. Oil (Bush), Gas Mining, Chemical and Military Industrial Complex seeks to rise in power. Trump says he will seal our borders and drill, drill, drill. Project 2025 is all about the interests of these industries, and seeks to gut controls and technology firms. Musk is all about energy too, as is Putin et al. Musk must have bought Twitter to "X" it off the map. TikTok and Facebook are probably the next targets. Collectively, they will remake themselves in the image of the robber baron industrialists. I think a new model of "extreme capitalism" will be created to promote aggressive growth which fascism and other models lack. And, it won't be humane; it will be dog eat dog. They also realise they need mothers to make babies to build a complacent workforce (outlaw abortion because they don't care where the new workforce gets "manufactured". They just need people who can be manipulated. Supporting hate against LGBTQ+ is just one leg of the stool. We, along with women, are the human sacrifice offered as fresh meat for the male savages who live amongst us (United Nations say 90% bias against women globally). The energy PACs are conduit to the political muscle to get the job done. So, they backfill support for their ends by firing up a broad coalition of unlikely bedfellows in the Christian Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and military, because they need to give their bought lawmaker urgency from constituents eager to push for whatever they fire them up about. Politicians are just the intermediaries who take the heat, while the real devils manipulate via the industrial boardrooms. Epicentre: Texas. To focus our democratic political capital against Texas industries needs therefore to be a key objective, which is possible. It's also possible to get some religions to take a moral high ground and concede to some demands in exchange for support. The real devils are strategic and plan over a long time horizon which must be counter matched; but those on our side are only thinking short range which typically will be a loss in the end. Facts do not matter to our enemy in the disinformation age, except when they support objectives. That's why the court system is so critical, because facts do matter in that venue. Now isn't the time for angst; we need cool headed determination to organise and carry out long term plans. We need to pull the covers off every single conservative organization listed in Project 2025, and find their weaknesses and then create strategy. We also need some deep pockets and shadow leadership.