People should be able to get the medical care they need to live well and pleasantly. Alas, one type of health care — gender- affirming treatment for transgender people—has become a warm- button issue. As one of Maine’s projected 7, 100 trans people, I want to put the issue into a personal and national view.
It’s difficult to overstate how significant gender-affirming attention has been to me. I would n’t be here today without it. Before switching, I was terrible. I had been depressed since I was a child, and my anxiety, or sense of discomfort and separation from my body, was gradually rising as a year went on. I came to the realization that I needed to make a change despite numerous attempts to refute or deny it. Fortunately, I was capable to do so with the help of sex- affirming health care. For the first time, things improved rather than deteriorated, and trust started to emerge. I was eventually able to feel at ease inside. I still encounter challenges and struggles because my life did n’t magically turn into a rainbow and rose simply because I took an estrogen prescribed, but as a result of my shift, I have discovered pleasure that I never could have imagined was possible.
State legislature across the nation are attempting to deny transgender people with this happiness and inner peace. Despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of medical associations oppose these restrictions, states are trying to prosecute families for providing to their kids and physicians for providing to their clients. In these state, lawmakers and activists are trying to claim transgender individuals our right to exist freely and openly. Under false pretenses of child abuse, they are attempting to demolish our kids and take our children away from loving properties. They are calling us “demons” and “filth”. They are also, in some cases, openly calling for our removal. These officials are hideously utilizing their constituents ‘ dread of what they do not comprehend for political gain. They are inflicting fear on some of their most vulnerable citizens by doing so.
These claims ‘ elected officials are also attempting to make this hostile environment abound outside of their own borders. The Texas Attorney General has contacted hospitals in both Washington status and Georgia for information on transgender people within the previous year. 19 attorneys general wrote a letter last month opposing a federal law that would protect those who had abortions from harm.
This social animosity also reverberates throughout the social atmosphere. Nationwide, military militias, including personal- described Holy fascists, have been disrupting Pride celebrations and another group events. In June 2023 alone, there were 145 documented instances of radical love, ranging from qualified abuse, to vandalism, to assaults and death. Universities across the country, but particularly in states targeting LGBTQ+ children, have seen dramatic rises in anti- LGBTQ+ hate crimes.
All of this makes me unshakeably worried for both my country’s potential and those of my friends who are trying to make healthcare illegal. But what can we do here in Maine, but far removed from these claims?
From a policy perspective, Maine may protect its health providers from gender-affirming care investigations outside the state. But the answer has to be sociable, not merely political. We do n’t just need politicians. We need you.
We require that you be aware that trans people are not to be afraid of. We are never spirits, we’re people: friends, coworkers, and neighbors. We are n’t some new fad, either. Transgender and genderfluid people are just two examples of gender nonconformity throughout human history and the universe. Just how people and communities respond to us, whether through love and acceptance or concern and rejection, has changed.
When we embrace the great diversity of human knowledge, our world is at its strongest. Those who seek to separate us through anxiety, persecution, and hatred only do so for the sake of their narrow-minded political gain. We must not let them rule our lives.
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