The politics of hate

If you’re wondering why trans people have no use for the Just Asking Questions approach toward their medical care taken by so many online contrarians, well here you go:

Amid a nationwide conservative effort to chip away at transgender rights, Arkansas lawmakers have passed one of the most restrictivepieces of anti-trans legislation yet, denying transgender youth access to essential gender-affirming care. Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU, called the bill “the single most extreme anti-trans law to ever pass through a state legislature.” The legislation now only requires the signature of Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican.

The measure, named the Arkansas Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, would ban doctors from providing gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormones, to trans people under the age of 18, or else risk losing their license. The legislation is rooted in a host of misinformation about gender-affirming care,with proponents of the bill arguing forits necessity under the guise of protecting kids. One of the bill’s Republican sponsors described gender-affirming treatments as “at best experimental and at worst a serious threat to a child’s welfare.”

But LGBTQ advocates and major medical organizations agree that denying trans youth access to this type of crucial and comprehensive care poses a much more serious threat to their health. “Affirming health care can literally be life or death for anyone, but particularly for trans youth,” Raquel Willis, a Black trans activist and writer, told CNN. “People think that’s an exaggeration. It’s not. People think you can just discipline identity out of someone, and that is not true and in many ways is torture.” Following the bill’s passage, Dr. Lee Beers, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, decried the “dangerous” effort to “politicize medical care.” She continued: “This is discrimination by legislation and transgender children and all children deserve better,” adding that such measures put “politicians rather than pediatricians in charge of a child’s medical care.”

Brainwash and teach you hate.