What’s Happening to Trans Care Should Matter to Everyone
Being there is powerful for our children
Hello everyone!
I hope your summers have been going well, with lots of laughter and love pinging between you and your family. No matter what’s happening out there in the world, in our little private worlds, love and happiness still exists, and we need to make sure that we’re recognizing those moments, and make sure they’re still happening, no matter how we’re feeling. We ALL need them!
An ask: If you like this newsletter, please share it with others!
We’re starting to head back to school, and with that comes new worries for us with our children. Maybe they haven’t been to school yet as their transitioned selves. Maybe your district has changed policies since you were last there. Maybe policy stands, but the culture of acceptance is shriveling.
No matter what, school can be a worrying place, just by its nature. You’re sending your kid there with a whole bunch of other kids who may be great but may be horrible, under the eyes of authority who isn’t you, who doesn’t really know any of these kids, in an institution with a rulebook they get to implement. It could easily written as the start of a horror film! (It’s truly ironic that it’s in school that kids usually first encounter Lord of the Flies.)
But what you have to remember is that you are there with your child in some intangible ways – your voice is in their head, your arms are around their shoulders, your love lifts them up and gives them a little superstrength to keep themselves going, even when they may feel scared or just want to dive back in bed and pull the covers over their head. And hopefully that voice of yours is telling them – even when you’re not there – that they got this, and that you’re there, a real person connected to that voice, ready to listen to them whenever they need you.
I say listen and not talk, because sometimes, my kids just want me to listen. They don’t always want me to give them strategies and tactics to address the issue. They don’t always want me to leap into action and call the office and get things fixed. There are times when they just want me to listen to them. Sometimes, that’s really hard. To keep my jaw closed and all the ideas in my mind inside. But that’s a big part of their growing up – to not dump all their problems on my lap and have me fix them. They start to realize that not everything is “fixable” and living with imperfection is part of life. (surprise!) That talking to the principal may lead to new and different issues, ones that may be less palatable to them than the one they’re currently dealing with.
I’ll ask questions to help them hone their thoughts and feelings, to try to point them in directions they may not have thought of. But I stop short of offering the solution - unless they ask for it. They know they can always say, Hey Mom, this time, I want you to help fix it, and my meddling instincts leap to attention! I don’t always jump in and fix it - sometimes, it’s better for them to solve it themselves, but we’ll work that out together, and sometimes, they have very good reasons for not wanting to tackle it themselves. Sometimes. (Sometimes, it just feels uncomfortable and they’d rather kick it to me.)
I try to let them have agency in how issues are dealt with, because I believe that does two things: one, it gives them a sense of control over their life, which is a good thing to feel for everyone, and two, it builds trust between us that they can talk to me about all sorts of things, and I respect their perspective and how to handle things.
Now, of course, I don’t keep quiet all the time. There are definitely times when I override their desire for me to “keep out of it” – because their safety is at stake, because it’s a policy issue and the school needs to know about it, because I just can’t freaking help myself and I need to control something. (Surely not?!) But hard as it is, I do try to give them as much room as they want to figure things out for themselves, with me by their side to help guide.
One of our own TQers wrote an op-ed about being the parent of trans child for USA Today. Read and share widely! Go Sara and THANK YOU! It’s not easy to be out and public about this topic, so on behalf of all the parents of trans kids, thank you.
This piece in Bloomberg is very interesting, about how Trump’s attacks on trans care reveal how easily any healthcare practice the administration decides they don’t like can (and will, I believe) be attacked. For gender-affirming care, the administration is attacking from a multitude of approaches: there are the court cases trying to strike down care, the FTC approach to “root out fraud”, the attempts to remove federal funding from hospitals who offer this care.
They’re not trying one thing and then giving up. They’re doing the old pincer attack, enveloping care from multiple sides, knowing that eventually, institutions will give up because it’s not possible to fight forever and continue on as a healthcare organization. Eventually, they’ll cave, because it’s taking up too much time, money, resources to continue. (and hopefully, other practices will step in to pick up on care)
The point is that this strategy isn’t limited to gender-affirming care. What else could they decide they don’t like? A non-random list from the article:
We should also ask what comes next. Will it be withholding access to PrEP, the medication that can prevent HIV? ADHD treatments? Antidepressants? Medication abortion? HPV vaccines? Childhood vaccines in general?
So, yeah. What this administration is doing to gender-affirming care is targeted and cruel to trans people, but it’s also building a roadmap for a strategy that they can use on other aspects of healthcare. This is important because suddenly, this will impact a much larger population than simply trans people. For us, it’s a way to tell the story of “why trans care matters” in a way that translates to people outside of this population, and make it matter to THEM.
That’s how marketing (or propaganda) works – connect what you’re saying to the person listening. Most people do not care about anyone outside of themselves/their bubble. Unfortunate but true. So pleading our case will most often fall on deaf ears – it isn’t relevant to their world. ADHD medication? Vaccines? Abortion pills? These may be much more relevant, and if people can start to see the connections between what’s happening now with gender-affirming care to what may (will) happen with other healthcare, there’s a chance more people will fight now.
(Of course, what often happens to me is that people look at me like I’m crazy and spouting conspiracy theories and then they go back to talking about their water bottle colorways for fall and how eating out is so expensive these days. Which it is, but … it’s like nothing gets through to people until it is erupting through their door, like the Big Bad Wolf in the house of straw. But maybe you’ll have better luck. 😊)