Transgender Health Starts with Our Children
Success is the real story
Last Sunday I watched a report on 60 Minutes that seemed to discuss the issues raised by the states that are legally restricting gender dysphoria treatment in children under 18 years of age with emphasis on the ban of treatment for transgender youth in Arkansas.
The report seemed to be attempting a fair presentation until it took, what I thought was a right turn. They focused on interviews of children who regretted transitioning and who de-transitioned. Without question, that does tragically occur but 60 Minutes spent no time interviewing the children for which the treatment did work.
I felt that was irresponsible, particularly now with so many states being swayed to restrict or ban the treatment in their ignorance. That is tragic.
I am transgender. I know the pain that suppressing my gender over a lifetime creates. I understand why transgender youth as well as adults consider suicide as a remedy. Frankly that is a greater tragedy that 60 Minutes should have focused on. I would love to have seen interviews with the transgender youth who have tried suicide and the parents of the dead transgender children who can’t speak from the grave.
That is the real story.
I find it disturbing that these various state legislatures have focused on the few failures of medical and psychiatric professionals rather than their successes to guide their legislative agendas.
That is the real malpractice.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services the number of ambulatory and inpatient surgeries performed in the US every year is 21,777,800*. According to the law firm Galfand Berger LLP of Philadelphia quoting from the American Medical Association as many as 225,000 people die a year from medical malpractice. Those statistics include:
· 12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgery
· 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals
· 20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals
· 80,000 deaths from infections
· 106,000 deaths from non-error, adverse effects of medication**
Actual surgery only occurs in 25% of transgender individuals. Simply taking aspirin causes thousands of deaths a year. My point is that the human body is extremely complex. Human error does and will continue to occur in medicine regardless of the professional standard of care.
Children are protected by the mature decisions of their parents and the professional guidance of doctors that treat them. Failure will tragically sometimes occur but success is the dominant reality. Procedures to protect the children must be in place but preventing proper care is not the solution.
The successful treatment of gender dysphoria is in its early stages but has made significant progress after centuries of ignorance, persecution and even executions. All that was followed by decades of failed medical practices that included electro therapy and conversion therapy.
Many of the states, that are pushing this retro medical legislation, are the same ones that resisted masks and vaccinations in a year in which over 500,000 Americans died.
Medical advancement is a dirty process but to advance we need to continually improve the diagnosis and treatment of the patient. States that legislatively freeze medical advancement is not only a failing the citizens of their state, it is also criminally abdicating the care of our children.
Emma Holiday
*https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb223-Ambulatory-Inpatient-Surgeries-2014.jsp
Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.
My writing has three specific goals:
1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.
2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.
3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.
Thank you for reading my work.
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