Texas governor, Greg Abbott, issued a statement to the Texas House of Representatives on February 22, 2022 calling for medical licensed professionals, teachers, and the public, to report any use of gender affirmation care that a child may be on. These reports would be investigated and if it is found that a child is on any kind of gender affirmation care, i.e. puberty suppressants, hormones, etc., then this would be deemed as child abuse. The Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, also issued a statement that details some of the procedures that would be deemed as child abuse and why. I wanted to take a moment to outline some of the statements made in these letters, primarily the one from Paxton, and discuss what is wrong with these claims. I also wanted to address my personal feelings on this matter as recently I have been a bit quiet regarding my state of mind with these, what I see as attacks, on the transgender community.
“Forming the basis for your request, you contend that the “sex change” procedures and treatments you ask about are typically performed to transition individuals with gender dysphoria to their desired gender. See Request Letter at 1. The novel trend of providing these elective sex changes to minors often has the effect of permanently sterilizing those minor children. While you refer to these procedures as “sex changes,” it is important to note that it remains medically impossible to truly change the sex of an individual because this is determined biologically at conception. No doctor can replace a fully functioning male sex organ with a fully female sex organ (or vice versa). In reality, these “sex change” procedures seek to destroy a fully functioning sex organ in order to cosmetically create the illusion of a sex change.”-Attorney General Paxton
I want to start off by saying that people under the age of 18 are not getting sex changes. The standard of care for sex reassignment surgery or as I prefer, gender affirmation surgery, does not allow minors to undergo these surgeries. There is also no evidence to support the idea that people under the age of 18 are getting these surgeries, as many conservatives like to claim. Paxton is either confusing puberty suppressants with a sex change or he is purposely being deceitful here. However, even if he was confusing it with puberty suppressants, they also do not have permanently sterilizing effects. Hormone suppressants have been proven to be safe for short term use, and have been used on cisgender children for decades to prevent precocious puberty. I also want to make a comment about his last statement regarding “sex changes” not really changing one’s sex. This is something that seems to be thrown around by those who are trying to claim that gender ideology is taking over and running rampant, and that people are trying to deny and erase biological sex. This idea that somehow transgender people are trying to claim that these surgeries make us magically turn into the opposite sex and we can start either having children, periods, etc. is just silly. We are not trying to erase biological sex but gender affirmation medical procedures do do more than “create an illusion”. One main benefit is peace of mind, and a reduction of suicidality which Paxton claims there is no evidence of below.
“The medical evidence does not demonstrate that children and adolescents benefit from engaging in these irreversible sterilization procedures. The prevalence of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents has never been estimated, and there is no scientific consensus that these sterilizing procedures and treatments even serve to benefit minor children dealing with gender dysphoria. There is no evidence that long-term mental health outcomes are improved or that rates of suicide are reduced by hormonal or surgical intervention.”-Attorney General Paxton
According to a recent study by the Journal of Adolescent Health, there has been a correlation between suicidality rates going down among those who had access to gender affirmation hormone therapy. This also included having people who were supportive, such as parents. According to Paxton and Abbott, however, parental support is now going to be classified as child abuse. Despite the majority of the medical community being in agreement regarding gender affirmation hormone therapy, Paxton and Abbott would like these doctors, therapists, and now of course the public to report any findings of children undergoing any GAHT, which mostly just includes puberty suppressants, as discussed above.
This is personally very upsetting to me, because though I did not begin my transition until the age of 22, I wish I had the understanding and the resources to have changed my life prior to that, at least in some minor way. Something that is often not talked about are the vast benefits of GAHT, the life saving benefits that we are often saying over and over again. Maybe we don’t discuss these life saving benefits enough, and perhaps that is why these people can continue doing what they’re doing. GAHT helped me reduce the anxiety that I had for the longest time as a teenager. I was afraid to ride as a passenger in a car, I had panic attacks when I would look up at tall buildings, I couldn’t stand social gatherings, and lastly I would prevent myself from being in a place where there would be large open areas. This anxiety was debilitating to me, and I thought for the longest time that I would never get over it. I feared that my life would be revolved around that fear.
It wasn’t until GAHT that I started to feel more and more comfortable, and not only comfortable but relaxed. The worries that I had were finally able to fade away. The body that I hated started to slowly shape and form into something that I didn’t mind looking at every day, the fear I had of the outside world became tolerable and even enjoyable. GAHT helped me lose a lot of excess weight that I had gained because the only way I dealt with that anxiety was by eating and remaining in my room all day. It made me feel healthier, happier, and I started to love myself. This is what we mean by life saving. No governmental body should have this type of authority over one’s own autonomy. I didn’t get to experience this type of joy in my life until I was 22, and before that most of my memories are just off in the distance somewhere without any emotional connection to them. Limiting access to something that is not life threatening that will have a life changing affect on someone is immoral, especially when it means having to live with the alternative. I am so disappointed that there are these types of people in the world, and even more so disappointed that I have to share these experiences so that people will maybe finally listen when we say we need support from our allies.
What makes me even more angry is that there are plenty of parents out there who are just like mine, supportive and loving of their trans children, yet this love is being used against them as a political ploy. Parents who have done nothing but try to understand, educate, and defend their children are being the targets of political figures who would go so far as to throw everyone else under the bus to get what they want, unaffected by who is hurt in the process.
GHASTLY proposed policy change in Texas!!!