Why Gender Affirming Healthcare is Necessary

Why Gender Affirming Healthcare is Necessary

Trans Symbol and Flag

If you woke up one morning and were suddenly trapped in a dog’s body, through fault nor choice of your own, and you couldn’t do anything about it, you’d probably want to switch back to your own skin right? Now imagine you’ve been raised and treated like a dog your whole life: your family thinks you’re their pet, they take you out on walks and give you treats. But what if you knew that whole time that you were a person trapped in a dog’s body? It would feel kind of weird to be treated like a dog, even though you look like one and were told your whole life that’s what you are. That’s what life is like for trans people. They are told their gender is the same as their sex, and that it’s impossible to change what you were born with, but all they want to do is be themselves. They’re tired of being a person trapped in a dog’s body; they want to become the person they always knew they were. When laws get proposed suggesting placing bans on the procedures necessary to make trans people become their true selves, the suicide rate gets driven higher and higher. Legislation banning access to gender affirming healthcare is cruel and unfair because the suicide rate of transgender adults is already disproportionately high.

 


Sex vs. Gender

For context, though I’m sure you are all aware, sex and gender are two different things. Sex refers to the biological differences between male and female of the same species, like sex organs and stuff. Gender, however, is an exclusively human experience. It’s the relationship a person has with their sex. The World Health Organization defines gender identity as “a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.” So “transgender” is just an umbrella term for any person whose gender identity does not match up with their biological sex, as well as nonbinary people and people born intersex. Gender affirming healthcare as defined by CNN Health is "medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one the person was designated at birth – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which one wants to be known." It is determined on a case-by-case basis whether a person genuinely needs gender affirming care or not, it is taken very seriously and is not handed out to every person that asks for it. There are lots of hoops that trans people have to jump through to get the care they need and deserve.

 

Why so high?

The abnormally high suicide rate of transgender individuals is because of the lack of acceptance they feel from their communities and their governing bodies. If you’re considering suicide, you’re probably doing so because you feel alone, abandoned, and forgotten. In this case, trans people feel abandoned by their government. Systemic stigmatization is when a government intentionally or unintentionally limits opportunities for a stigmatized group, such as trans people. An article by George Cunningham says that laws restricting or banning access to gender affirming healthcare “send a consistent message that the stigmatized group is different, the other, and less than. Over time, these repeated messages can result in a form of minority stress, whereby distal or external stressors negatively impact the lives of transgender people. These stressors ultimately manifest in health disparities, whereby transgender individuals are at higher risk for adverse physical and psychological health, relative to their cisgender counterparts.” Trans people have a unique experience battling these unfair laws because their lives are at risk here. The more bans that get proposed, the higher the suicide rate is going to skyrocket. Gender affirming care is medically necessary, and it is unjust to deny someone the care they need. Doing so puts a lot of stress on a person, which may eventually drive them to self-harm or suicide.

 

You might be thinking…

 

If you’re saying to yourself, “Yeah, but what if trans people are predisposed to suicidal tendencies because of other mental health issues? How do you know it’s because they aren’t getting gender affirming care?” I ask you: if you had a mental illness that wasn’t necessarily life threatening like clinical depression, but was definitely uncomfortable or not ideal to live with, like social anxiety for example, you’d probably want to find ways to manage that problem, right? It impacts your day-to-day life, it makes you self-conscious, and it causes a bunch of other problems like feeling low self-worth or not being able to do certain things because they trigger anxiety attacks. Living with gender dysphoria is very similar in concept. That’s why gender affirming care is so important. It allows trans people to become who they were meant to be and to live free from the burdens of their dysphoria. Even if trans people already have other mental illnesses predisposing them to suicidal tendencies, it’s still important to get them the care they need to help manage at least some of their issues, and that alone will help lower the suicide rate a whole lot.

 

Giving trans people the opportunity to feel accepted and valued by their communities and their government will reduce the stress that leads to suicidal ideation. Putting laws in place to protect people seeking gender affirming care is necessary to eradicate discrimination trans people face in the current healthcare system.

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