Gender-Affirming Care Faces New Threats

Speaker 1 [00:00:08] Hey Translash Fam, this is The Mess, Imara’s guide to our political hellscape, and that’s me, Imara. I wanted to start out just by saying how much we appreciate you supporting us and giving us that little coin each month. It goes a long way, we’re so appreciative, and that why we call you TransLash Fam. Today on The Mess I’m going to tackle, well, actually we start out with some good news today, and that is the resumption of gender-affirming care at the Pentagon, but there’s a caveat. Next, we’ll be Secretary of Health. Robert Kennedy Jr.’s plans to track autism and possibly develop an autism registry. And finally, an announcement from the DOJ that they will investigate doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors. But do we think that it’s going to stop with minors? Before we get into all of that, though, just a heads up that this was recorded the day before you’re hearing it. So of course in the wild world of politics that means that A year will have passed between the time that we recorded it and it hit your ears. So things will have changed. And now you know why. If they do, they could stay the same, but I’m not counting on it. Okay, let’s get messy. So first of today is good news. And I promise you, it’s good news, it’s that the courts are kind of working, at least on certain aspects of things when it comes to trans people. Specifically, gender affirming care has resumed for trans members of the military, which is essential for them in terms of being able to be whole and healthy and to show up as soldiers and in their jobs. And then secondly, the fact that the ban on trans people serving in the military, that is the desire of the Trump administration to toss everyone who is trans out, that remains in effect, that injunction of implementing that ban remains in affect. Now, the Trump Administration, as is on brand, is appealing the order, which says that they have to allow trans people to serve in the Military until it runs its way through the courts. And of course, the term administration, has just decided to go straight to the Supreme Court and ask for them to allow trans people to be tossed out of the military. Here is a clip from ABC News.

Speaker 2 [00:02:30] The Trump administration asking the Supreme Court to lift the block on the president’s ban on openly transgender service members in the military. The administration making this new emergency request today after a federal appeals court kept a district court’s nationwide injunction in place. Now, the president solicitor general argues that the block infringes on the President’s authority, but the federal judge in Seattle who blocked the ban, a George W. Bush appointee, says the administration has failed to explain why transgender troops should be banned.

Speaker 1 [00:03:01] The interesting thing about this is the way in which the sort of ham-handedness and openly discriminatory way that the Trump administration has gone about targeting trans people is actually costing them in the courts. And this was, as you heard, a George W. Bush appointee. We’re not talking about someone who, you know, is appointed by someone who they would say is a leaving Liberals. Whatever that is. This is someone who is a conservative person, right? That’s who George W. Bush nominated. His nominees were the most conservative nominees up until Donald Trump. So we’re talking about a person who appointed judges that were almost as conservative as Donald Trump, and they are saying that the way in which this is being done is not justifiable. Is potentially so harmful that they have to stop it from happening even as it makes its way through the courts. I also think that this shows, and it’s a really important reminder, that standing up in this moment can have an impact, right? You know, we’ve seen certain people and places and institutions be rolled or decide that they aren’t going to stand up, that they’re aren’t gonna push back. But those who are are finding traction. And it’s good reminder that in this movement, that for everyone who wants to preserve democracy, and of course, in this case, preserve the health, life and wellbeing of trans people, that standing up is a really important answer right now. But regardless of that, this is still, as the old army slogan goes, a be all you can be mess. So next up is something that is potentially concerning. Recently, RFK, the person who by their own admission has a brain worm and several other ongoing chronic conditions, who is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, said that he was going to create an autism registry, and that is to take medical records and other bits of data and create kind of. A name and identifying information registry of all autistic people in order to help study autism and for us to know how large and extensive the diagnosis of autism is. Now, of course, that led to a huge uproar, including from the Autism Science Foundation and others who immediately understand what happens when you develop list of people, because when you developed list of People, that means that they’re easy to target and they’re easy to target in a variety of ways. And this is especially concerning because RFK has said that he thinks that for certain types of conditions that people have, that they should be organized into outdoor agricultural work camps. Meaning that if you put these pieces together, we’re gonna develop a list of people. And according to him, as you know, autism isn’t necessarily the disease that we think it is and a person who advocates that for a certain. Diagnoses and conditions, you can put people in agricultural work camps, of course that would be concerning. Now, the good news is that a couple of days after RFK said all of this, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to walk it back. And what they said was that it’s not gonna be a registry, it’s gonna be data collection. But then when they were pressed by the Washington Post about what that means, they said, well, no further details are gonna be disclosed at this moment. So we don’t know whether or not it’s gonna be a data collection or a registry, but we do know that this is of deep concern and it comes from a place that totally ignores all of the existing science and knowledge, not a surprise, around autism. And you can just hear it for yourself. Here is Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy in his own words, describing what he thinks is the truth about autism.

Speaker 3 [00:07:07] This is a preventable disease. We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics. They can provide a vulnerability. You need an environmental toxin.

Speaker 1 [00:07:19] That clip was from ABC. So according to him, autism is a quote, preventable disease, close quote. I mean, you know, if you misdiagnose the problem, you’re gonna misdiagose the solution. The reality is that we do need to know more about autism, but in reality, so many people have said that a great contributing factor to the increase in autism numbers is the fact that we actually diagnose autism. That we actually have tools to identify it early on in people. In ways that didn’t happen before. So a part of this is just us getting better at recognizing what’s happening with other human beings, which now has been transformed into something else. I also wanna say that we also know that the development of registries is really concerning. Of course, there’s a huge overlap in public conversation, especially in the right wing, about the connection between being trans and autistic. You know, they’re saying that bike transness is a derivation of autism and people don’t really know who they are, what’s going on. So that’s one of the rationales for, you know, not taking trans people seriously. And so there is a connection between an autism registry and a potential trans registry, and the tools would be very simple. You know, you go through medical records and medical diagnoses and, you know, people who had been diagnosed as having gender dysphoria, for example. So the implications of this are huge, and we have to keep our eye on it. I mean, it’s good that they said that they were going to possibly backtrack, but without telling the public exactly what a data collection versus a registry means, it leaves open the door. And for a great many reasons, people don’t trust this administration when it comes to a responsible handling of data. In fact, data has been used to target and undermine people in some really dramatic. And frightening ways. And so, we collectively as a society need to be mindful of this and see where it goes. And it’s just an unhealthy mess. Last up is, you know, the Trump administration just pulling out all the stops to continue targeting trans people. And if the things that they are doing aren’t worrying people who aren’t trans at this point, I don’t know what to say, Gilead waits. And a latest move by the Trump Administration really underscores this. And that is that Attorney General of the United States, one of the most senior members of the cabinet, has announced and directed the Department of Justice to investigate doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors. I mean, I would be shocked if it’s only about minors or if it is going to stay at minors, we know that there’s a migration of bills about gender- affirming care from minors to adults, but they say minors and this means that the local district attorneys across the country in every region of the country will be encouraged to investigate doctors that provide gender-affirming care. Now, of course, this has a chilling effect. Of course, it has an impact on patients and their willingness to show up if these investigations proceed. We know what happened to doctors that provided abortion when similar laws came down. And the fact that the United States government is willing to direct people who normally are focused on corruption, on illegal mob activity on terrorism. To say, investigate these doctors that are providing this type of care to kids, I think is deeply, deeply concerning. Moreover, she’s encouraged them to consider the fact that providing puberty blockers, for example, could be a misrepresentation of the use of that drug and therefore possibly fraudulent. It’s a roundabout logic, but hey, whatever works for them, I guess. And the overall point is to further undermine the healthcare system, undermining the healthcare system that supports trans people and the continued targeting of a community. And again, they’re not gonna stop in one place. I mean, there’s so many types of care that they could decide that the government doesn’t support any longer and will then go after those doctors that provide it. I have to say that one of the laws that they’re using in this, is astounding and it’s the female genital mutilation law, which was meant to stop FGM in the United States and elsewhere, and they’re using that to say that providing healthcare to trans people in this case, trans kids, is somehow illegal. I mean, it’s just all a frightening misuse of the laws and their intent. This of course is going to be litigated, it’s going to fought, but this administration has shown no breaks. When it comes to targeting trans people, and this is just kind of the latest iteration. And it’s just a miscarriage of justice mess. So again, thank you for being a TransLash Fam subscriber and for sticking with me through all of the mess today and before and to come. We’re gonna get through this together. If you like this show, which I imagine you do because you’re paying for it, it would mean so much if you left a review on Apple Podcasts and then also encourage your friends, like my birthday’s coming up, make it a birthday thing for people who are May babies. And if you do submit a review, and if the people that you encourage to sign up submit a revue, then you’ll hear it on the show. I’ll be back in your feed in a couple of weeks to sort through all of the mess that comes up between them. We should, I mean, we could call it something else, but then we’d have to give it an E rating. But until then, take care of yourselves. I’m your host, Imara Jones. The show is produced by Aubrey Callaway. Xander Adams is our senior sound engineer and contributing producer. This episode was engineered by Lucy Little. Ollur Ashkline oversees production as the director of podcasts at TransLash Media. The show gets to your ears with the help of our social media team, including Morgan Asprey and Hilary Esquina. Of course, this show is made possible by TransLash fam subscribers like you. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you soon.