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It's chilling watching the latest political powers openly declare that trans people are not who they are inside and must never be allowed to become what they ar

It's chilling watching the latest political powers openly declare that trans people are not who they are inside and must never be allowed to become what they are inside, while eliminating legal recognition and protection and criminalizing life-saving transition healthcare. I find myself retreating into dissociation because to feel the horrors is more than I can bear.

wahern 1y ago
The glass-is-half-full take is that no states have prohibited gender affirming care for adults. All the present bans in the U.S. only proscribe treatments for minors. But one would be forgiven for not knowing this because it's not how it's reported. Point being, even the most conservative states haven't (yet) sought to limit treatment for trans adults.[1] Which is not nothing considering how many were so quick to ban abortion. Also, it's not just the U.S.; plenty of "liberal" Western European countries have reversed course on care for minors. Even the Netherlands, the origin of the WPATH protocol, has pulled back on the reigns for minors, though they haven't yet instituted any prohibitions. IMO, the trans advocacy rhetoric that equivocated hurdles to gender affirming care for minors as murder backfired. The fact there seems little motivation to limit treatment for adults suggests substantial openness to the issue among even conservative populations. And there are many in the LGTBQ community, include trans community, who share similar sentiments, at least regarding the rhetoric. [1] Not sure about legislation dictating certain aspects, like waiting periods, but those were widespread as a practical matter in even the most liberal states.
- NewJazz 1y ago
  Yeah but the whole point so far has been to pass laws under the guise of "protecting children" because that was easy to justify politically. Now that SCOTUS has green-lit denying healthcare on the basis of assigned gender at birth, the gates are wide open.
  - titanomachy 1y ago
    “Denying healthcare on the basis of assigned gender at birth” seems like a deliberately loaded way to state this. Isn’t it more accurate to say it’s a blanket denial of a certain type of treatment to all minors?
    - nyanpasu64 1y ago
      I'm pretty sure they're still allowing puberty blockers for premature puberty, inducing puberty in cis teens, and surgically and medically forcing intersex people into a binary sex without consent.
    - wahern 1y ago
      Much of the majority and most of the dissenting opinions in the recent SCOTUS case are exactly about that--is it sex discrimination?: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf All the opinions are worth a read. The best arguments for both sides are there. Though, I thought all the best arguments on both sides kind of sucked; it's just a very difficult issue. Transgender questions lay to waste 100 years of sex and gender discourse on both the right and left.
      - titanomachy 1y ago
        Thanks for sharing. SCOTUS basically said the same thing I was trying to point out in my comment: it’s not discriminating based on sex, but rather on age and “medical purpose”. I agree with your assessment, and I am suspicious of anyone (on either side) who claims that there is an obvious “correct” answer to this issue.
        KittenInABox 1y ago
        I think where it's ambiguous, it should be left to the parents to decide. Parents can already decline life-saving treatment on their child in the US due to their moral beliefs. Why not let parents also decide if they want to let a 16 yo have hormone treatments. It surely can't be more serious than declining blood transfusion.
  - wahern 1y ago
    > Now that SCOTUS has green-lit denying healthcare on the basis of assigned gender at birth, the gates are wide open. Yes, we're at a juncture. But my point is I don't think bans for adult care are inevitable, nor that strict prohibitions for minors need be permanent. If trans advocates and their supports took a breather and figured out how to reframe things, the backslide (such as it is) could be arrested and even reversed. But that will require, at a minimum, taking back the microphone from the most radical "advocates". And probably to depoliticize it. The issue has become highly politically polarized, but that's a relatively recent thing. I was gobsmacked by the generally tame and sympathetic conservative response to Caitlyn Jenner among conservatives 10 years ago. The turn was avoidable and, arguably, reversible.
- TJSomething 1y ago
  Florida and Missouri have been working on it, to some success. Florida's laws have decreased access by requiring in-person appointments with doctors instead of telehealth or nurse practitioners, which has eliminated access for 80% of transgender adults [1]. Missouri has banned Medicaid funding for transgender care for adults. [2] At the national level, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act as passed by the House cuts all federal funding for transgender care for adults via Medicaid [3], though that's still pending what the Senate does. [1] https://apnews.com/article/florida-transgender-health-care-adults-e7ae55eec634923e6593a4c0685969b2 https://apnews.com/article/florida-transgender-health-care-a... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/missouri-governor-signs-bill-banning-gender-affirming-care-for-minors-and-some-adults https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/missouri-governor-signs-... [3] https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jun/02/medicaid-bill-trans-gender-affirming-care-Trump/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jun/02/medicaid-bill...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  It's clear that earlier intervention with gender affirming care leads to better outcomes. There are fewer suicides when people start getting care earlier. This means puberty blockers early, and HRT in late teenage years. Are we just ignoring that?
  - Redoubts 1y ago
    There’s no evidence for any of those statements
    - ghushn3 1y ago
      Here's a study that shows evidence that puberty blockers reduce lifelong suicidal ideation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7073269/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7073269/ Here's a study showing evidence that gender dysphoria treatment in children improves well-being and mental health: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25201798/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25201798/ There's loads more.
      - ghostpepper 1y ago
        If I'm reading that first study correctly, "Ideation" and "Ideation with plan" are lower but "Ideation with plan and attempt" is higher and "Attempt resulting in inpatient care" is almost twice as high. Neither the discussion nor the conclusion mention this, so maybe I'm misinterpreting something?
        michtzik 1y ago
        The study also doesn't include the successful suicides.
        viamiraia 1y ago
        The results for attempts are underpowered and they acknowledge this (note the p-values too), but not for ideation. From the discussion: > We did not detect a difference in the odds of lifetime or past-year suicide attempts or attempts resulting in hospitalization. It is possible that we were underpowered to detect these differences given that suicide attempt items were less frequently endorsed than suicidal ideation items (Table 3). Given this study’s retrospective self-report survey design, we were unable to capture information regarding completed suicides, which may have also reduced the number of suicide attempts we were able to account for. Given that suicidal ideation alone is a known predictor of future suicide attempts and deaths from suicide, the current results warrant particular concern.
- panic 1y ago
  The problem with adult-only transition is that it dooms trans people (at least, those who go on HRT) to go through two puberties, which has visible physical effects that then have to be undone or worked around (breast growth, facial hair, deeper voice, etc.). The ideal for most people is that you'd just go through one.
  - calico96 1y ago
    Those of us transitioning with hormones willingly go through puberty twice. Damn the social consequences, it's who we are. If transitioning were available as a minor it would greatly reduce suffering.
  - jart 1y ago
    Yeah but if you're a trans woman for instance, there are benefits to going through some male puberty. You understand men better. You understand yourself better, to know that's not what you want. Also you never go through a puberty in exactly the same way as a cis woman. A lot of the effects are reversible, especially if you start at 18, since I don't think maleness fully develops until at least age 25. Treating people under 18 is a politically losing issue. When policies around it changed, that tipped the scales from the public ignoring trans women or seeing them as victims, towards many members of the public seeing them as monsters who are out to get their children. It's illegal in 27 states and the White House calls it child mutilation. Can you imagine what a burden it must be to live in a world where many ignorant individuals hold such a perception of you, due to no fault of your own, but rather physical characteristics about yourself you can't change?
    - viamiraia 1y ago
      As a trans woman who has talked with many other trans women, the majority, including me would prefer not having gone through male puberty at all. The benefits do not outweigh the gender dysphoria. We would love to go through puberty the exact same way as a cis woman, but it's not like we don't realize HRT and current methods have room for improvement. The effects are only partially reversible, and only after tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in surgeries, hair removal, voice training, other treatments. I understand it's a politically losing issue now, but I believe it's due to misinformation, outrage porn, and unfair application of rigor, from mostly the anti-trans side but even allies and trans folk themselves sometimes. To that end I hope this does not feel like an attack - let me know if you have any questions that you think my perspective would help.
- nyanpasu64 1y ago
  I think that trans people, being the ones with firsthand experience of dysphoria and misgendering, and being a disadvantaged minority (https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclusive-growth/charts/transgender-people-twice-as-likely-to-be-unemployed https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclu...) threatened by right-wing rhetoric, should be the ones to speak for what is right for them ("nothing about us without us"), individually and as a group.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > The glass-is-half-full take is that no states have prohibited gender affirming care for adults. Given that a number have prohibited it from being paid for by the state Medicaid program for adults when it previously was, that is, maybe, a glass quarter full take. (There is also the issue that wrong-gender puberty is a particularly significant suicide risk factor for trans youth, so restricting gender affirming care for youth is a particularly strong assault on trans lives.) And even then, its not strictly true, as while most states with restrictions that have passed have only restricted care to minors, Nebraska did so for persons under the age of 19, which includes some adults. > Point being, even the most conservative states haven't (yet) sought to limit treatment for trans adults. They have not only sought to do so, they have actually done so (as mentioned above). They have not yet implemented broad prohibitions (except Nebraska's for adults under 19), but "limit" and "broad prohibition" are not the same thing, and mere limitations can have the same practical effect as broad prohibitions, as many states demonstrated by making it nearly a practical impossibility to provide (and therefore access) abortion services, even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe; conservative states are following the same playbook with gender-affirming care. > Not sure about legislation dictating certain aspects, like waiting periods, but those were widespread as a practical matter in even the most liberal states. No, legally-imposed waiting periods for adult (or even youth) gender affirming care were not present (and still are not present) in the most liberal states. That's a very strange thing to invent to minimize the restrictions being imposed by conservative states. If you are equating the fact that it can take time, for some services beyond HRT, to save up money and/or jump through whatever hoops are established by your insurance, and find and schedule time with the required provider(s) with legislatively imposed waiting periods and other access restrictions, that's incredibly dishonest (for one thing, the legislative restrictions don't overlap the other ones, they add on top, and, by making it more difficult for providers to operate and thereby reducing the number of providers, make the other issues worse as well.)
- Grimblewald 1y ago
  the "there's a hole in the glass" take is that this is just where they start, it's easier to argue it shouldn't be possible for children to get adequate care (for some reason) than for adults.
aucisson_masque 1y ago
From the point of view of a conservative and non us citizen, you have a good life there compared to the rest of the world. Technically, most countries don’t allow people to be openly gay. In some countries, being gay even privately means you get beaten to death or your head chopped off. Needless to say that transgender people are not even taken into consideration. If I was gay or transgender, god knows I would rather be in the USA or maybe north Europe than any other country and especially not Africa, Arabia, South America.
- xiande04 1y ago
  Ah, the old "it could be worse" fallacy. So to recap, you're saying, "don't worry about what's going on in the US right now, because you still have it better than most of the world" Just because something could be worse does not mean that 1. It's nothing to be concerned about 2. That we shouldn't take steps to improve the situation. Things can always be worse, so this "logic" is always applicable. It's a vacuous argument. Even if you lived in the country with the worst homo/transphobia in the world, you could tell the person, "well, at least your alive." Moreover, there's nothing constructive about this line of thinking. If people actually lived by this logic, we would live in a static world, because "it could be worse."
  - nyanpasu64 1y ago
    On top of that, legislatures, courts, and right-wing agitators are pushing to repeatedly worsen living conditions for trans people.
- int_19h 1y ago
  It should be noted that the two don't necessarily go hand in hand the way you'd expect. E.g. in Iran, homosexuality is a crime that can be punishable by death depending on circumstances, but sex reassignment surgery is legal (and, indeed, can be de facto mandated in cases of anything perceived as gender dysphoria).
  - aucisson_masque 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dsadfjasdf 1y ago
there's no science on souls. which is what you are basically talking about

wahern 1y ago

The glass-is-half-full take is that no states have prohibited gender affirming care for adults. All the present bans in the U.S. only proscribe treatments for minors. But one would be forgiven for not knowing this because it's not how it's reported. Point being, even the most conservative states haven't (yet) sought to limit treatment for trans adults.[1] Which is not nothing considering how many were so quick to ban abortion. Also, it's not just the U.S.; plenty of "liberal" Western European countries have reversed course on care for minors. Even the Netherlands, the origin of the WPATH protocol, has pulled back on the reigns for minors, though they haven't yet instituted any prohibitions. IMO, the trans advocacy rhetoric that equivocated hurdles to gender affirming care for minors as murder backfired. The fact there seems little motivation to limit treatment for adults suggests substantial openness to the issue among even conservative populations. And there are many in the LGTBQ community, include trans community, who share similar sentiments, at least regarding the rhetoric. [1] Not sure about legislation dictating certain aspects, like waiting periods, but those were widespread as a practical matter in even the most liberal states.

NewJazz 1y ago
Yeah but the whole point so far has been to pass laws under the guise of "protecting children" because that was easy to justify politically. Now that SCOTUS has green-lit denying healthcare on the basis of assigned gender at birth, the gates are wide open.
- titanomachy 1y ago
  “Denying healthcare on the basis of assigned gender at birth” seems like a deliberately loaded way to state this. Isn’t it more accurate to say it’s a blanket denial of a certain type of treatment to all minors?
  - nyanpasu64 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure they're still allowing puberty blockers for premature puberty, inducing puberty in cis teens, and surgically and medically forcing intersex people into a binary sex without consent.
  - wahern 1y ago
    Much of the majority and most of the dissenting opinions in the recent SCOTUS case are exactly about that--is it sex discrimination?: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf All the opinions are worth a read. The best arguments for both sides are there. Though, I thought all the best arguments on both sides kind of sucked; it's just a very difficult issue. Transgender questions lay to waste 100 years of sex and gender discourse on both the right and left.
    - titanomachy 1y ago
      Thanks for sharing. SCOTUS basically said the same thing I was trying to point out in my comment: it’s not discriminating based on sex, but rather on age and “medical purpose”. I agree with your assessment, and I am suspicious of anyone (on either side) who claims that there is an obvious “correct” answer to this issue.
      - KittenInABox 1y ago
        I think where it's ambiguous, it should be left to the parents to decide. Parents can already decline life-saving treatment on their child in the US due to their moral beliefs. Why not let parents also decide if they want to let a 16 yo have hormone treatments. It surely can't be more serious than declining blood transfusion.
- wahern 1y ago
  > Now that SCOTUS has green-lit denying healthcare on the basis of assigned gender at birth, the gates are wide open. Yes, we're at a juncture. But my point is I don't think bans for adult care are inevitable, nor that strict prohibitions for minors need be permanent. If trans advocates and their supports took a breather and figured out how to reframe things, the backslide (such as it is) could be arrested and even reversed. But that will require, at a minimum, taking back the microphone from the most radical "advocates". And probably to depoliticize it. The issue has become highly politically polarized, but that's a relatively recent thing. I was gobsmacked by the generally tame and sympathetic conservative response to Caitlyn Jenner among conservatives 10 years ago. The turn was avoidable and, arguably, reversible.
TJSomething 1y ago
Florida and Missouri have been working on it, to some success. Florida's laws have decreased access by requiring in-person appointments with doctors instead of telehealth or nurse practitioners, which has eliminated access for 80% of transgender adults [1]. Missouri has banned Medicaid funding for transgender care for adults. [2] At the national level, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act as passed by the House cuts all federal funding for transgender care for adults via Medicaid [3], though that's still pending what the Senate does. [1] https://apnews.com/article/florida-transgender-health-care-adults-e7ae55eec634923e6593a4c0685969b2 https://apnews.com/article/florida-transgender-health-care-a... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/missouri-governor-signs-bill-banning-gender-affirming-care-for-minors-and-some-adults https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/missouri-governor-signs-... [3] https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jun/02/medicaid-bill-trans-gender-affirming-care-Trump/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jun/02/medicaid-bill...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
It's clear that earlier intervention with gender affirming care leads to better outcomes. There are fewer suicides when people start getting care earlier. This means puberty blockers early, and HRT in late teenage years. Are we just ignoring that?
- Redoubts 1y ago
  There’s no evidence for any of those statements
  - ghushn3 1y ago
    Here's a study that shows evidence that puberty blockers reduce lifelong suicidal ideation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7073269/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7073269/ Here's a study showing evidence that gender dysphoria treatment in children improves well-being and mental health: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25201798/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25201798/ There's loads more.
    - ghostpepper 1y ago
      If I'm reading that first study correctly, "Ideation" and "Ideation with plan" are lower but "Ideation with plan and attempt" is higher and "Attempt resulting in inpatient care" is almost twice as high. Neither the discussion nor the conclusion mention this, so maybe I'm misinterpreting something?
      - michtzik 1y ago
        The study also doesn't include the successful suicides.
      - viamiraia 1y ago
        The results for attempts are underpowered and they acknowledge this (note the p-values too), but not for ideation. From the discussion: > We did not detect a difference in the odds of lifetime or past-year suicide attempts or attempts resulting in hospitalization. It is possible that we were underpowered to detect these differences given that suicide attempt items were less frequently endorsed than suicidal ideation items (Table 3). Given this study’s retrospective self-report survey design, we were unable to capture information regarding completed suicides, which may have also reduced the number of suicide attempts we were able to account for. Given that suicidal ideation alone is a known predictor of future suicide attempts and deaths from suicide, the current results warrant particular concern.
panic 1y ago
The problem with adult-only transition is that it dooms trans people (at least, those who go on HRT) to go through two puberties, which has visible physical effects that then have to be undone or worked around (breast growth, facial hair, deeper voice, etc.). The ideal for most people is that you'd just go through one.
- calico96 1y ago
  Those of us transitioning with hormones willingly go through puberty twice. Damn the social consequences, it's who we are. If transitioning were available as a minor it would greatly reduce suffering.
- jart 1y ago
  Yeah but if you're a trans woman for instance, there are benefits to going through some male puberty. You understand men better. You understand yourself better, to know that's not what you want. Also you never go through a puberty in exactly the same way as a cis woman. A lot of the effects are reversible, especially if you start at 18, since I don't think maleness fully develops until at least age 25. Treating people under 18 is a politically losing issue. When policies around it changed, that tipped the scales from the public ignoring trans women or seeing them as victims, towards many members of the public seeing them as monsters who are out to get their children. It's illegal in 27 states and the White House calls it child mutilation. Can you imagine what a burden it must be to live in a world where many ignorant individuals hold such a perception of you, due to no fault of your own, but rather physical characteristics about yourself you can't change?
  - viamiraia 1y ago
    As a trans woman who has talked with many other trans women, the majority, including me would prefer not having gone through male puberty at all. The benefits do not outweigh the gender dysphoria. We would love to go through puberty the exact same way as a cis woman, but it's not like we don't realize HRT and current methods have room for improvement. The effects are only partially reversible, and only after tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in surgeries, hair removal, voice training, other treatments. I understand it's a politically losing issue now, but I believe it's due to misinformation, outrage porn, and unfair application of rigor, from mostly the anti-trans side but even allies and trans folk themselves sometimes. To that end I hope this does not feel like an attack - let me know if you have any questions that you think my perspective would help.
nyanpasu64 1y ago
I think that trans people, being the ones with firsthand experience of dysphoria and misgendering, and being a disadvantaged minority (https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclusive-growth/charts/transgender-people-twice-as-likely-to-be-unemployed https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclu...) threatened by right-wing rhetoric, should be the ones to speak for what is right for them ("nothing about us without us"), individually and as a group.
dragonwriter 1y ago
> The glass-is-half-full take is that no states have prohibited gender affirming care for adults. Given that a number have prohibited it from being paid for by the state Medicaid program for adults when it previously was, that is, maybe, a glass quarter full take. (There is also the issue that wrong-gender puberty is a particularly significant suicide risk factor for trans youth, so restricting gender affirming care for youth is a particularly strong assault on trans lives.) And even then, its not strictly true, as while most states with restrictions that have passed have only restricted care to minors, Nebraska did so for persons under the age of 19, which includes some adults. > Point being, even the most conservative states haven't (yet) sought to limit treatment for trans adults. They have not only sought to do so, they have actually done so (as mentioned above). They have not yet implemented broad prohibitions (except Nebraska's for adults under 19), but "limit" and "broad prohibition" are not the same thing, and mere limitations can have the same practical effect as broad prohibitions, as many states demonstrated by making it nearly a practical impossibility to provide (and therefore access) abortion services, even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe; conservative states are following the same playbook with gender-affirming care. > Not sure about legislation dictating certain aspects, like waiting periods, but those were widespread as a practical matter in even the most liberal states. No, legally-imposed waiting periods for adult (or even youth) gender affirming care were not present (and still are not present) in the most liberal states. That's a very strange thing to invent to minimize the restrictions being imposed by conservative states. If you are equating the fact that it can take time, for some services beyond HRT, to save up money and/or jump through whatever hoops are established by your insurance, and find and schedule time with the required provider(s) with legislatively imposed waiting periods and other access restrictions, that's incredibly dishonest (for one thing, the legislative restrictions don't overlap the other ones, they add on top, and, by making it more difficult for providers to operate and thereby reducing the number of providers, make the other issues worse as well.)
Grimblewald 1y ago
the "there's a hole in the glass" take is that this is just where they start, it's easier to argue it shouldn't be possible for children to get adequate care (for some reason) than for adults.

aucisson_masque 1y ago

From the point of view of a conservative and non us citizen, you have a good life there compared to the rest of the world. Technically, most countries don’t allow people to be openly gay. In some countries, being gay even privately means you get beaten to death or your head chopped off. Needless to say that transgender people are not even taken into consideration. If I was gay or transgender, god knows I would rather be in the USA or maybe north Europe than any other country and especially not Africa, Arabia, South America.

xiande04 1y ago
Ah, the old "it could be worse" fallacy. So to recap, you're saying, "don't worry about what's going on in the US right now, because you still have it better than most of the world" Just because something could be worse does not mean that 1. It's nothing to be concerned about 2. That we shouldn't take steps to improve the situation. Things can always be worse, so this "logic" is always applicable. It's a vacuous argument. Even if you lived in the country with the worst homo/transphobia in the world, you could tell the person, "well, at least your alive." Moreover, there's nothing constructive about this line of thinking. If people actually lived by this logic, we would live in a static world, because "it could be worse."
- nyanpasu64 1y ago
  On top of that, legislatures, courts, and right-wing agitators are pushing to repeatedly worsen living conditions for trans people.
int_19h 1y ago
It should be noted that the two don't necessarily go hand in hand the way you'd expect. E.g. in Iran, homosexuality is a crime that can be punishable by death depending on circumstances, but sex reassignment surgery is legal (and, indeed, can be de facto mandated in cases of anything perceived as gender dysphoria).
- aucisson_masque 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

dsadfjasdf 1y ago

there's no science on souls. which is what you are basically talking about