Governments Controlling Transitioning
In Mid-April 2021, Arkansas passed a law that denied gender-affirming help to transgender youth including prohibiting hormone therapy and puberty blockers. This also applied to transitioning teenagers who had already started their treatment.
The bill, titled Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE), bans doctors from providing any "gender transition procedures" to transgender people under 18. The transitioning can be broadly defined as any medical or surgical service that alters a person's biological sex, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex reassignment surgery. The bill also prohibits doctors from referring patients to other providers for such treatment.
Unfair treatment towards the LGBTQIA+ community is nothing new in the American state. Discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity was only banned in Arkansas after the Supreme Court banned it nationwide, in 2020. An American state striving towards the banning of transgender people’s right to healthcare is nothing new. Including Arkansas, at least 117 bills were introduced in 33 states to restrict the rights of transgender people, in 2021 alone.
“Transition,” for youth, is not some risky medical decision entailing hormones and surgery. Candidly speaking, it isn’t a medical decision at all. Most transgender children only need appropriate outfits and haircuts, and teens will also take fully reversible puberty blockers until they’re old enough to decide on surgery.
The banning of gender-affirming care can increase body dysphoria which affects a child’s mental health leading to some serious consequences, even suicide. The Arkansas Governor vetoed the decision, while also giving “rational” reasons, clearly indicating that he was siding with the transphobes. Every step forward towards better living standards of transgender youth ends up taking three steps back for the community.
No matter how far the LGBTQIA+ community comes, there will be always legislative measures that might deny us basic rights. The United States of America legalized same-sex marriage, not until 2015, which if you see, is quite recent. This is an explicit attempt to erase transgender youth and we need to understand that neither we nor the legislative powers should have the power to decide who gets the medical treatment they require. Transgender youth are in the minority because they are in the fear of getting killed, given that 44 transgender persons were murdered, solely in 2020. This majorly consisted of transgender women and people of colour.
Cisgender heterosexuals should stand in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community and use their privileges to defy queer-phobia. Rights for schooling, housing, healthcare, employment, and adoption should not be decided based on one’s sexual orientation or gender identity. There is no “rational” or “religious” explanation for us to not be the way we are born. Bigotry can go a long way, but it cannot erase the struggle we have faced to be able to breathe in 2021.