On January 28th, Donald Trump issued an executive order titled Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation. It states that all medical facilities that provide gender affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery, must stop providing these services by March 29th or risk having their federal funding revoked.
In response to this order, on February 3rd, Seattle Children’s Hospital canceled all upcoming gender affirming surgeries without giving patients any information regarding when, or if, these surgeries would be rescheduled. This order was blocked by a federal judge on March 4th, but Seattle Children’s has not reinstated their surgery program.
As an opinion writer, I try to write thought out, well researched, and professional editorial pieces. I always attempt to present my opinions in a convincing manner, usually one that is less personal and more factual.
This article was going to be more of the same, a critique of Seattle Children’s Hospital for halting gender affirming surgery, a premature submission to Trump’s executive order.
I was going to dissect why gender affirming care, including surgery, is lifesaving for trans youth with detailed evidence, and how what Seattle Children’s is doing is actually illegal, violating antidiscrimination laws.
I started writing and I just couldn’t do it, couldn’t manage to intellectualize the suffering that I and fellow transgender youth are going through. So, I started writing this, something personal and unlike anything I have ever written.
I hope you’ll continue reading, maybe it will give you an insight into what trans people are feeling right now.
Being trans is a constant struggle. Every day when I wake up, I feel an immense weight on my chest. It’s almost suffocating.
It’s the weight of not being seen as you truly are. It’s the weight of knowing that you will never live the life that those around you get to experience so effortlessly.
It’s the weight of having to scrutinize every little thing that you do, in attempts to pass. It’s the weight of hearing about people just like you on the news, who have been ruthlessly murdered.
Of knowing that you could be next.
But now there is a new weight that is added to my chest every morning. It’s the weight of checking my phone, wondering if another piece of legislation against trans people has been proposed or passed.
When I fall asleep, I don’t know if in the morning I’ll have the rights that I took for granted the night before.
In states across the country, gender affirming care for minors has been banned. Trump wants this to be true everywhere.
When cis people see news like this, they’re able to simply ignore it’s impacts and scroll onward. They aren’t forced to consider what it means for your future.
When trans people see it, it’s much more. There is a great, collective pain that must be contained in a small moment before we are required to move on, to go about life as if nothing is wrong.
In all of this pain and all of this suffering, the only refuge I could always take was in the fact that I live in Seattle. I never imagined that in one of the most liberal cities in the US, they would take away our ability to receive care.
I was wrong.
Seattle Children’s, one of the main pediatric hospitals in Seattle, willingly took away gender affirming surgery. They had time to fight this, but they choose instead to submit to it.
It felt like a slap in the face.
When you’re trans, especially if you are binary trans (male to female or female to male), gender affirming care is your only hope at living a normal life.
Without it, the future looks bleak. You don’t feel like yourself. You see someone else when you look in the mirror. You worry about your safety. It feels like you can’t truly start living life until you receive the care that you need.
Personally, getting top surgery is one of the only things that I can look forward to as I grow older. When I think about going into my late adolescence looking as I do now, I want to throw up. It isn’t who I am and to think that I would have to stay this way is devastating.
Getting up every day in the wrong body feels impossible, but the only hope that we have is the possibility of getting surgery to make what we feel on the inside be reflected on the outside.
Being trans can have a detrimental impact on your mental health, it takes such a toll on you every day, which is why our community has double the suicidal ideation and attempt rate of the average population.
The main way that this risk can be reduced is with treatment.
Every year that passes where trans youth can’t get the care that we need, we will die.
That is the fact of the matter.
Trans youth were already struggling, especially under this new administration, and having an institution you thought you could count on, like Seattle Children’s, pull the rug out from under you only worsens it.
I would love to end this on a happy note, but I just don’t feel that’s realistic.
All I can say is, as trans people, we need to stick together and try to find the small pockets of joy that still exist. We need to keep on living, to keep surviving. We have struggled through this before and we can do it again.
This does not have to be the end.
