#Fenway Community Health Center

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Leor Sapir, Joseph Figliolia

Published: Nov 8, 2023

Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, the largest provider of transgender medicine in New England and one of the leading institutions of its kind in the United States, was named a defendant in a lawsuit filed last month. The plaintiff, a gay man who goes by the alias Shape Shifter, argues that by approving him for hormones and surgeries, Fenway Health subjected him to “gay conversion” practices, in violation of his civil rights. Carlan v. Fenway Community Health Center is the first lawsuit in the United States to argue that “gender-affirming care” can be a form of anti-gay discrimination.

The case underscores an important clinical reality: gender dysphoria has multiple developmental pathways, and many who experience it will turn out to be gay. Even the Endocrine Society concedes that many of the youth who outgrow their dysphoria by adolescence later identify as gay or bisexual. Decades of research confirm as much. Gender clinicians in the U.K. used to have a “dark joke . . . that there would be no gay people left at the rate [the Gender Identity Development Service] was going,” former BBC journalist Hannah Barnes reported. Rather than help young gay people to accept their bodies and their sexuality, what if “gender-affirming” clinicians are putting them on a pathway to irreversible harm?

Due partly to Shape’s lifelong difficulty in accepting himself as gay, his lawyers are not taking the usual approach to detransition litigation. Rather than state a straightforward claim of medical malpractice or fraud, they allege that Fenway Health has violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in health care. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that “discrimination because of . . . sex” includes discrimination based on homosexuality. Citing this and other precedents, Shape’s lawyers argue that federal law affords distinct protections to gay men and lesbians—upon which clinics that operate with a transgender bias are trampling.

Shape grew up in a Muslim country in Eastern Europe that he describes in an interview as “very traditional” and “homophobic.” His parents disapproved of his effeminate demeanor and interests as a child. They wouldn’t let him play with dolls, and his mother, he says, made him do stretches so that he would grow taller and appear more masculine.

At 11, Shape had his first of several sexual encounters with older men. “I was definitely groomed,” he recounts. Shape proceeded to develop a pattern of risky sexual behavior, according to his legal complaint. He told his medical team at Fenway Health about his childhood sexual experiences, calling them “consensual.” The Fenway providers never challenged him on this interpretation, he alleges. They never suggested that he might have experienced sexual trauma or, say, explored how these events might have shaped his feelings of dissociation. (The irony is that Fenway Health describes its model of care as “trauma-informed.”)

As with the social environment they inhabited, Shape’s parents were “deeply homophobic,” he says. When Shape came out to his parents as gay at 15, they took him to a therapist, hoping that he would be “fixed.” But when he graduated high school at that same age, he moved to Bulgaria for college, and in 2007, at 17, he came to the United States for a summer program at the University of North Carolina. He later moved to Massachusetts to pursue an MBA at Clark University and immigrated to the U.S.

Though he had known about cross-dressers and transsexuals as a child (he had taken interest in Dana International, the famous Israeli transsexual who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1998), it was only at Clark that he was introduced to the idea that some people are transgender. Other students began asking him about his pronouns and telling him about “gender identity.” After getting to know a “non-binary” person and a transgender woman, Shape started to make sense of his life retrospectively. As a boy going through puberty, he had developed larger-than-average breasts and was curvier than the other boys. It was hard for him to be accepted in the gay community, he told me, because gay men tend to value masculinity. His discomfort with social expectations about how men are supposed to look and behave, his sexual attraction to other men, his ongoing psychological and emotional distress: these were all signs, he learned from online forums, that he must have been “born in the wrong body.”

Shape quickly developed self-hatred and a strong desire to escape his body. When he started cross-dressing and presenting socially as a woman, things changed. It had been hard for him to win acceptance as an effeminate gay man, but he encountered far less hostility presenting as a woman. A subtle but important shift in his thinking took place.

“People wouldn’t take me seriously when I was a man who presented socially as a woman,” he says. “I had to actually be a woman.” Shape became immersed in online transgender culture, which told him that sex is a social construct, and that hormones and surgeries can actually turn him into a woman. As a result, Shape developed highly unrealistic expectations about what hormones and surgeries could do for him. An example noted in his legal filing: he stopped using condoms because he wanted to get pregnant.

Julie Thompson, a physician assistant and Medical Director of the Trans Health Program at Fenway Health, made no effort to perform differential diagnosis on Shape, his legal filing alleges. Shape told Thompson about his childhood sexual encounters, his troubled history of risky sexual activity, and his struggles with social and familial rejection on account of his homosexuality. Allegedly, she wrote these difficulties off as byproducts of society not accepting him as a “trans woman”—an approach known as “transgender minority stress.” Shape’s ongoing mental-health problems, it was determined, were due to “internalized transphobia.”

As Shape’s filing puts it, the Fenway clinic operated with a strong “transgender bias.” Every problem or counter-indication that came up was explained away as part of the stress that transgender people experience in an unwelcoming society. The clinicians at Fenway Health apparently assumed that sexual orientation and gender identity are two distinct and independent phenomena.

Shape was put on estrogen at age 23. According to his filing, he was not given “any explanation of the numerous potential adverse side effects of estrogen or its potentially unknown effects.” As Shape kept taking estrogen, he became even more emotional, depressed, and unstable. Notably, he did not dislike his male genitals—a fact that should have attracted more scrutiny from his clinicians—but seemed more distressed over his high sex drive and desire for intercourse with men. Though he says he frequently told his providers that he hoped “sex reassignment surgery” would reduce his sex drive, this statement did not cause them to reconsider whether estrogen was appropriate.

As the Fenway team allegedly saw it, Shape’s deterioration was evidence that he hadn’t gone far enough in his transition. They recommended that he attend First Event, a Boston-based conference held annually since 1980, where transgender people can meet one another, share ideas, interact with vendors, and find medical providers who will agree to perform procedures on them. Marci Bowers, the genital surgeon who is president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, has attended the conference in the past. According to Shape, the point of going to First Event was to find a surgeon who would operate on him.

He did just that, and in 2014, at 24, Shape underwent facial feminization surgery and breast implantation. Less than a year later, a surgeon surgically castrated him and conducted what’s euphemistically called “bottom surgery.” It didn’t work. As a result, Shape had to undergo several additional surgeries, the last one borrowing tissue from his colon. Still, the problems persisted.

It took Shape a few years to realize that he had made a terrible mistake. The problem he had been trying to solve all his life was not “internalized transphobia” but failure to accept himself as an effeminate gay man. His legal filing states that he had what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders called, at the time he made contact with the clinic, “ego-dystonic homosexuality.” Because they failed to detect this and other mental-health problems, the Fenway team, argue Shape’s lawyers, “outrageously, knowingly, recklessly, and callously” led him to believe that he was really a heterosexual woman whose problems could be solved by de-sexing himself as male.

Shape was promised “gender euphoria.” Instead, he told me that he now sees himself as “mutilated.” His treatments have left him with “osteoporosis and scoliosis” as well as “mental fog,” according to his legal filing. Shape is now “faced with the impossible choice of improving his cognitive state and suffering the psychological and physical effect of phantom penis, or taking estrogen and suffering mental fog and fatigue, but no phantom penis and low libido.” He has also endured fistulas as a complication of his genital surgery and “suffers from sexual dysfunction and is unable to enjoy sexual relations.” He experiences dangerous inflammation. And not getting the mental health therapy he needed very likely caused Shape’s mental health to deteriorate throughout the several years that he was a patient at Fenway Health.

Shape now wants to have his breast implants removed. But insurance does not cover the procedure because it is not technically “gender affirming.” And since he cannot afford the hefty price tag, Shape has no choice but to live with the implants.

Understandably, criticism of gender medicine has focused largely on its use in minors. Its use in adults, however, is not without controversy. In the past, when clinicians spoke of adult transgender medicine, they were referring mainly to adult men who sought to change their bodies in their forties. Many had already spent years in marriage and were fathers of children.

That is no longer the case. Though data are limited, the main patient demographic in adult transgender clinics today appear to be 18-24-year-olds. In Finland, for example, adult referrals rose approximately 750 percent between 2010 and 2018, with 70 percent of referrals being 18-22-year-olds.

Humans reach full cognitive maturity around age 25, which means that there is often little to distinguish a 20-year-old from a 17-year-old in terms of impulse control, emotional self-regulation, and the ability to set long-term goals and prioritize them over present desires. Citing “irrefutable evidence” that being under 25 means having “diminished capacity to comprehend the risk and consequences of [one’s] actions,” the progressive decarceration and racial-justice advocacy group The Sentencing Project argues that the idea that people are adults once they reach age 18 “is flawed.”

Shortly after its founding in 1971, Fenway Community Health Center was repurposed to support the unique needs of gay and lesbian residents of Boston. According to Katie Batza, a historian of the clinic, the hippies and antiwar activists who founded Fenway Health “quickly solidified its reputation as an important gay medical institution.” During the 1980s, the clinic helped tackle the AIDS epidemic. That it now maltreats gay men like Shape by converting them into trans women reflects a tectonic shift within the institution’s culture.

American medicine has always found itself balancing two competing tendencies: the paternalism of care by experts on one hand, and the relativism of nonjudgmental customer service on the other. What has happened over the course of Fenway Health’s five decades of existence is a gradual loss of that equilibrium. Fenway has long defined its mission in terms of responsiveness to the stated needs and desires of community members: the volunteers who ran the clinic and offered its services free of charge, Batza writes, “focused on providing care and building community among Fenway residents, caring less if a volunteer met outside standards of professional qualification, which were often set by the state or medical profession, that the clinic critiqued.”

In the 1990s, the clinic set up a dedicated transgender unit. At first, “things moved slowly,” recounts Marcy Gelman, a nurse practitioner who served as Fenway Health’s first dedicated provider for transgender patients, in a document published by the institute about the history of its program. She is now its associate director of clinical research. “Patients didn’t get hormones right away. We wanted to get to know them, and required them to see a therapist for several months . . . we wanted to be careful.” This process felt too restrictive for some patients, and “a few got really angry.” Fenway Health says its “commitment to ensure patient safety . . . led to some conflicts with patients and community members.”

In the 2000s, Fenway Health adopted a new model of care for its transgender-identified patients, which it called the “informed consent model.” This came in response to patients complaining about “needless gatekeeping” and concerns that the clinic’s “customer service training specific to transgender patients lagged behind the development of its clinical care.” Using funding from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation, Fenway Health made a number of new hires and expanded its program. It drew inspiration from another community health clinic, the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, which was smaller than Fenway but served four times as many patients. “One key to [the Mazzoni Center’s] success,” the Fenway document explains, “was the elimination of any requirement for counseling before hormones were provided.” Ruben Hopwood, a physician who joined the Fenway team in 2005, developed this model for Fenway; soon thereafter, the institution’s three-month counseling requirement gave way to “a single hormone readiness assessment visit.”

In 2012, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health published the seventh version of its Standards of Care. In the chapter on hormone therapy, WPATH recommended eligibility criteria for estrogen or testosterone, including “persistent, and well-documented gender dysphoria” and having ongoing “medical or mental health concerns . . . reasonably well-controlled.” However, WPATH also noted a newly emerging “informed consent model” and cited Fenway Health as one of three clinics that developed and practiced it.

The difference between the models, WPATH explained, was that SOC-7 put “greater emphasis on the important role that mental health professionals can play in alleviating gender dysphoria and facilitating changes in gender role and psychosocial adjustment. This may include a comprehensive mental health assessment and psychotherapy, when indicated.” By contrast, Fenway Health’s model emphasizes “obtaining informed consent as the threshold for the initiation of hormone therapy in a multidisciplinary, harm-reduction environment. Less emphasis is placed on the provision of mental-health care until the patient requests it, unless significant mental health concerns are identified that would need to be addressed before hormone prescription.” Despite the obvious differences, WPATH insisted the two models were “consistent” with each other.

Currently, Fenway Health offers hormones on the informed-consent model. “Criteria for accessing hormone therapy,” it states, “are informed by the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) guidelines.” In other words, Fenway Health defers to WPATH, which adopted its recommendations from Fenway Health.

Shape and his lawyers deny that Fenway’s informed consent process is “a safe and effective replacement for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment provided by an appropriately trained and licensed healthcare professional.” Fenway’s model, they argue, “relies heavily on patients’ self-diagnosis, which may be a result of confusion or a misunderstanding of medically defined terms.” It does not take into account a patient’s expectations from medical treatment, which, as in Shape’s case, can be highly unrealistic. It “does not inform patients about the risk of iatrogenic effects of affirmation.” Nor does it take into account a patient’s “medical decision-making capacity,” which may be impaired in the presence of “significant emotional distress” and “undue influence from persons in position of authority and trust.”

A key charge in Shape’s lawsuit is that Fenway Health is driven by “market expansion goals and political demands of transgender activists.” Approval for hormones and surgery, the clinic’s staff wrote in 2015, should be a “routine part of primary care service delivery, not a psychological or psychiatric condition in need of treatment.” A leading advocate for the no-gatekeeping model, which rests on the assumption that mismatch between one’s actual and perceived sex is a normal human variation and not a pathological condition, argues that adults and adolescents should be free to turn their bodies into “gendered art pieces.”

From Shape’s story, we can infer that Fenway Health, which could not be reached for comment, has yielded to a barely constrained medical consumerism. In 1997, the institute had eight transgender customers. By 2015, it had over 1,700. “The rapid and sustained growth of Fenway Health’s transgender health care, research, education, training, and advocacy,” the institute’s doctors proudly declare, “might be succinctly summarized by the mantra from the movie Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come.”

==

If you haven't met Shape Shifter, see the following interviews:

Literally "trans the gay away."

[she-is-ovarit]

Detransitioner news

I have been thinking about detransitioners lately and wanted to compile articles I have been seeing. This will be a longer post and reblogged for part II as I hope to copy and paste brief portions of the articles under each headline.

Law firm for detransitioners opens in Dallas

In all of the controversy around gender transition, there is one group that is persistently marginalized by both the right and left. They are known as detransitioners — people who decide that they want to return to their birth gender, often after receiving years of interventional care, including surgery, to treat their gender dysphoria. Now, the nation’s first law firm focused solely on representing these patients — many of whom feel abused by a medical system that encouraged their treatment — has opened its doors in Dallas. It could forever change how hospitals and doctors approach what’s known as gender-affirming care.

Archive link

Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, the largest provider of transgender medicine in New England and one of the leading institutions of its kind in the United States, was named a defendant in a lawsuit filed last month. The plaintiff, a gay man who goes by the alias Shape Shifter, argues that by approving him for hormones and surgeries, Fenway Health subjected him to “gay conversion” practices, in violation of his civil rights. Carlan v. Fenway Community Health Center is the first lawsuit in the United States to argue that “gender-affirming care” can be a form of anti-gay discrimination. The case underscores an important clinical reality: gender dysphoria has multiple developmental pathways, and many who experience it will turn out to be gay. Even the Endocrine Society concedes that many of the youth who outgrow their dysphoria by adolescence later identify as gay or bisexual. Decades of research confirm as much. Gender clinicians in the U.K. used to have a “dark joke . . . that there would be no gay people left at the rate [the Gender Identity Development Service] was going,” former BBC journalist Hannah Barnes reported. Rather than help young gay people to accept their bodies and their sexuality, what if “gender-affirming” clinicians are putting them on a pathway to irreversible harm?

Due partly to Shape’s lifelong difficulty in accepting himself as gay, his lawyers are not taking the usual approach to detransition litigation. Rather than state a straightforward claim of medical malpractice or fraud, they allege that Fenway Health has violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in health care. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that “discrimination because of . . . sex” includes discrimination based on homosexuality. Citing this and other precedents, Shape’s lawyers argue that federal law affords distinct protections to gay men and lesbians—upon which clinics that operate with a transgender bias are trampling. Shape grew up in a Muslim country in Eastern Europe that he describes in an interview as “very traditional” and “homophobic.” His parents disapproved of his effeminate demeanor and interests as a child. They wouldn’t let him play with dolls, and his mother, he says, made him do stretches so that he would grow taller and appear more masculine. At 11, Shape had his first of several sexual encounters with older men. “I was definitely groomed,” he recounts. Shape proceeded to develop a pattern of risky sexual behavior, according to his legal complaint. He told his medical team at Fenway Health about his childhood sexual experiences, calling them “consensual.” The Fenway providers never challenged him on this interpretation, he alleges. They never suggested that he might have experienced sexual trauma or, say, explored how these events might have shaped his feelings of dissociation. (The irony is that Fenway Health describes its model of care as “trauma-informed.”)

Archive link

Ontario detransitioner who had breasts and womb removed sues doctors

An Ontario detransitioning woman who had her breasts and womb removed to change her gender to male is suing medical and health practitioners for failing to consider other treatments during her mental health crisis before ushering her on an irreversible journey she regrets. Michelle Zacchigna, 34, of Orillia, Ont., north of Toronto, names eight health professionals, including doctors, psychologists, a psychotherapist and a counsellor in a lawsuit filed in Ottawa. None of the defendants, who work or worked at various clinics and institutions in southern Ontario, responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit prior to deadline. Four of the defendants have filed notices of intent to defend against the suit in Ontario Superior Court, but no statements of defense have been filed. None of the claims have been tested in court. Zacchigna said she faces an uphill battle in her lawsuit. “I’ve been under the impression that all medical malpractice suits are challenging. Doctors win the majority of cases in Canada,” she told National Post. “It’s very much a David vs. Goliath undertaking.” In her statement of claim filed in court in November, Zacchigna says she had difficulty forming relationships with classmates in elementary school and was often bullied. By the time she was 11, she engaged in self-harming behaviour, including cutting her arm with a knife. This continued into early adulthood. When she was 20, she tried to kill herself and she was referred by her family doctor for psychotherapy, where she was treated for social anxiety and clinical depression. She remained unhappy and depressed, and her mental health decline led to her dropping out of university, according to her claim. About a year into therapy, she engaged with an online community around gender nonconformity. “Michelle came to believe that her biological sex of female did not match her true gender identity of male,” her claim says. “She further came to believe that this mismatch between her biological sex and gender identity was causing her feelings of depression, self-harming behaviour and unease in her body, a mental health condition commonly known as gender dysphoria,” her claim states. This was the first time Zacchigna felt she was born in the wrong body, and she had not previously identified as male, her claim says. “However, as a result of what she read on the internet, she became convinced that she was a transgender man, and that once she embraced this new identity, her depression would subside.” Zacchigna started attending a support group in Toronto for people considering gender transition. A counsellor there told her of opportunities to proceed through a medical transition, her claim says. Zacchigna was invited to apply for medical intervention in 2010. The counsellor wrote a recommendation letter outlining a medical history that didn’t fully match her real past, the claim says. The counsellor didn’t recommend any alternatives, or seek confirmation of Zacchigna’s own diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Her regular therapist also wrote a recommendation for transition treatment, saying Zacchigna was an “ideal candidate for hormone therapy,” even though the therapist had no previous transgender clients, according to the claim.

Part II incoming.

[roxy206]

The theme of my week has been intense feelings of rage at transphobic people. So, what we’re going to do instead is focus on some things we can do to help support transgender people

Donate to The Trevor Project. The Trevor Project offers 24/7 crisis counseling, advocates for LGBTQ+ youth mental health, participates in research, provides an online community for LGBTQ+ people aged 13-24, & provides educational workshops

Volunteer with The Trevor Project as a crisis support counselor

Donate to the Human Rights Campaign. HRC works to end discrimination against LGBTQ+ people & to work toward equality

Donate to Fenway Health. Donations to Fenway Help go toward the following for the LGBTQ+ community: medication; one on one mental health counseling sessions; a youth peer listening line; rapid HIV tests; mental health group counseling; medication delivery to homebound patients; safer sex kits

If you’re in Texas, Transgender Education Network of Texas is looking for volunteers to wait in line at the polls with transgender people who need a support system

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you can donate goods to the Trans Wellness Center

[automaticvr]

Frank Haskell, 93, co-founder of Barbara’s Friends to support children with cancer, passed away on Wednesday, July 19. For the past 28 years, Haskell worked tirelessly to help local children win their battles with cancer and life-threatening blood disorders. Through his efforts, Barbara’s Friends raised $25 million to support more than 10,000 children at Golisano Children’s Hospital. “Without Frank Haskell, the achievements we’ve made to advance pediatric cancer care in Southwest Florida would not be possible,” said Dr. Emad Salman, VP and Chief Physician Executive – Children’s Services. “Frank was committed from the moment I met him to making a difference. He has saved the lives of thousands of children, forever impacting their families and our community. His passion and tenacity and humor will be missed. Frank was a true champion and friend to all children.” Haskell retired in 1987 and relocated to Southwest Florida after a successful career at Burroughs Corporation in Boston, where he was the youngest vice president in company history, and Moore Business Systems in Dallas. He was invited to join the development board for the Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida in 1991.Haskell founded the cancer fund with his late wife Betty in 1995, naming the fund in memory of their daughter Barbara, who died at age 36 after a battle with cancer. Before Barbara died, she asked her parents to do more to help children fighting cancer, so they didn’t have to suffer. The original goal was to raise about $100,000 with the fund in her name. “Today, to have this wonderful facility is the greatest thrill of my life,” Frank Haskell once said from the Cypress Cove apartment where he lived since 2011 overlooking Golisano Children’s Hospital. “Losing a child of your own before you go is a devastating thing to have happened. This has kept her life ongoing. I think of her every single day.” The Barbara’s Friends Medical Library was established at HealthPark Medical Center in 1998. Barbara’s Friends Pediatric Hematology Oncology Center on the fifth floor of HealthPark opened in 1999 to serve children until Golisano Children’s Hospital was built in 2017. The Barbara’s Friends permanent endowment was established in 2002. Through a strong personal relationship, Haskell and former Boston Red Sox president John Harrington also founded the golf tournament in 1994 that has raised $15 million to date for programs at Golisano Children’s Hospital. Haskell’s ties to the Red Sox started in 1993 when he was hired by the team to operate the scoreboard at the Red Sox former spring training home at City of Palms Park. He was honored by the Red Sox at Fenway Park on his 80th birthday. In recognition of his service to the community, Haskell was named The News-Press Luminary in 2015. In 2016, Lee Health Foundation established The Frank Haskell Humanitarian Award in his honor to recognize outstanding leadership in the advancement of quality health care for the citizens of Southwest Florida. Haskell helped establish Barbara’s Friends scholarships in 2020 that are awarded annually to high school students who are childhood cancer or blood disorder survivors. So far, seven students have received scholarships. Barbara’s Friends funding also helped create Palmer the Turtle stuffed animals, coloring books and medical books, designed to entertain, comfort and educate cancer patients and their families. In March, the Haskell family donated the Haskell Total Immersion Room in Frank’s honor at the Naples pediatric hematology oncology clinic, the only one in the country, offering children receiving chemotherapy and infusions a totally immersive virtual reality escape during treatment. In Haskell’s honor, Barbara’s Friends will continue to advocate for children with cancer in Southwest Florida, by raising funds to support exceptional care at Golisano Children’s Hospital. For information, visit BarbarasFriends.org.

[nithishag]

Boston University

Located in Boston, Massachusetts, Boston University is a private research university and a global education giant. Founded in 1839, Boston University has held its name by delivering top-notch education and setting standards that are pretty unmatchable. BU has consistently ranked in the top section of the list of Best Universities in the world. The university’s Study Abroad program is also widely recognized as among the nation’s best. Furthermore, BU’s School of Medicine resides in the US’s foremost healthcare research institutions.

The University is home to more than 35,000 students and more than 10,000 faculty and staff. Students are spread across 17 schools & colleges — Arvind & Chandan Nandlal Kilachand Honors College, College of Arts & Science, College of Communication, College of Engineering, College of Fine Arts, College of General Studies, College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Computing & Data Science, Frederick S. Pardee of Global Studies, Graduate Medical Science, Graduate School of Arts & Science, Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, Metropolitan College & Extended Education, Questrom School of Business, School of Hospitality Administration, School of Law, School of Medicine, School of Public Health, School of Social Work and School of Theology. All schools and colleges combined, Boston University offers more than 300 programs.

Boston University is a major research institution. The key research areas include — Data Science, Engineering Biology, Global Health, Infectious Diseases, Neuroscience, Photonics, and Urban Health. The university is home to 21 libraries that house more than 5.5 million volumes (print + electronic) and 2.6 million ebooks. In FY 2021, the total research expenditure of Boston University was $526.6 Million. Boston University is one of the very few universities which support undergraduate research. The university’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) provides funding for faculty-mentored research in humanities, natural sciences, medicine, education, and arts.

BU’s three city campuses are always the center of attraction. The primary campus of Boston University is situated on the banks of the Charles River in Boston’s Fenway-Kenmore and Allston neighborhoods. Boston University is also home to many Nobel prize winners. It has also produced many Marshall Scholars, Pulitzer Prize winners, Academy Award winners, and numerous Emmy Award winners.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Andrew Ford was questioned and fetishized when he came out as bisexual. The gay community insisted he wasn’t being honest with himself; women at clubs started to excitedly fantasize about hooking up with two guys at the same time.

All the while, the soccer standout stayed true to himself. Ford came out his freshman year at Malone University, a small Christian liberal arts college in Canton, Ohio — home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His friends and teammates were accepting, which was an incredible relief. But his journey into the LGBTQ community was a little more rocky.

“I got a lot of pressure from the gay community,” Ford told me recently on the phone. “I felt like I was misunderstood, and didn’t know who I was.”

Ford is one of an increasing number of openly bisexual college-aged athletes whom we’ve profiled recently on Outsports. Despite some surveys showing more Americans identify as bisexual than either gay or lesbian, there is a dearth of bi visibility in pop culture and sports.

As bi sportswriter Jeff Rueter challenged me: “name a bisexual man, and don’t say Frank Ocean.”

These kick-ass kids are going to change that.

Biphobia is real

Let’s start here: Biphobia is real. It manifests itself in gestures as seemingly fleeting as dismissive jokes, and actions as harrowing as outright physical violence. Bisexual people typically suffer significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety, domestic violence, sexual assault, and poverty than lesbians, gay men, or straight cisgender people, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

A black-and-white society, most of us grow up with the notion people are either straight or gay. Those attitudes have historically prevailed in the LGBTQ community, too.

Alex Keuroghlian, the Director of the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute, says bisexual people can be looked at skeptically.

“Within LGBTQIA+ communities, there has historically been a stigma toward bisexual people, and the false notion that they’re really gay and lesbian people who haven’t accepted that about themselves,” he said.

Megan Duthart, a rower at Washington State University who identifies as both bi and queer, has experienced the stigma first-hand. She says she thinks bisexual people are often excluded in the LGBTQ community.

“I’ve struggled a little bit with being identified as an ‘other’ in the community with the term ‘bisexuality,’” she said.

Why are bi people targeted for erasure?

More people are identifying as bisexual. Over three percent of U.S. adults say they’re bi, according to the 2018 General Social Survey. That’s three times the number as 2008.

And yet, bi people are still targeted for erasure. One of the ways it happens is through language. When people see same-sex couples, for example, they may be inclined to label them as “gay” or “lesbian,” without considering that one or both of the people could identity as bi.

While Americans’ attitudes about sexuality are evolving, many still adhere to more binary definitions of sexual orientation. A recent YouGov poll found 41 percent of American adults don’t think sexuality is a spectrum (conversely, 37 percent think it is).

As Ford puts it, bisexuality is stereotypically viewed as “the stepping stone stage.” That ties into one of the more insidious aspects of bi-erasure: the belief that it’s just a phase. It’s a line Ford recalls hearing many times, from both men and women.

“(Gay men) said, ‘I came out as bisexual first. It’s just a phase, you won’t be there long,’” Ford said. “I was also scared how women would think about it. They wanted to change me. Some of them wanted to use it as a thrill they were seeking.”

When professional hockey player Zach Sullivan came out as bi, his father told him it meant he was still making up his mind.

“I remember what my dad said when I told him,” Sullivan said. “‘Well, you aren’t all the way there. You haven’t really decided.’ I was like, ‘no, I know I’m attracted to both genders. I’m not halfway towards coming out as gay.’”

The bi burden

Every LGBTQ person can relate to the fear and anxiety of coming out. But for most of us, once we do it, it’s over.

That’s not the case for bi people.

“We have to keep coming out to our significant others, whether it’s a man or a woman,” Ford said. “If you’re gay and you start dating a gay, you’re not going to be like, ‘I have to tell you something: I’m gay.’ They’re going to be like, ‘no shit.’”

And once bi people do come out, they could get charged with being greedy — the sexual equivalent of having their cake and eating it, too. The insult angers Sullivan.

“The majority of people in the LGBT+ community have struggled with their sexuality, and when they finally become comfortable enough to come out in the open with their sexuality, I don’t think the first thing to say to someone who’s come out as bisexual is they’re greedy,” Sullivan said. “I took over 10 years to get to where I am.”

Duthart finds the concept of bisexuality can be difficult to explain. She largely identifies as queer.

“I’ve had coaches question whether I’m rebelling or going through a phase,” she said. “Then when I explain the whole queer aspect, they’re like, ‘Oh, OK. That seems more justified.’ I don’t want to have to justify those things, but I sort of have to.”

Changing attitudes

Jack Storrs came out as bisexual last year as a college football captain. His teammates at Pomona-Pitzer rallied around him, and wore Pride decals on their helmets.

But even some who were supportive suggested he was on his way to identifying as gay. Storrs said he couldn’t hide his feelings for men anymore, and came out because he wanted to explore.

Maybe he was gay, maybe he wasn’t. The questions didn't bother him. He was a relieved to have the dialogue.

“It was killing me on the inside,” Storrs said. “It got to the point where I was like, ‘screw it.’ This is who I am, and this was meant to be.”

Nowadays, Storrs says he’s more towards the “gay end of the spectrum,” and expects the fluidity to continue.

He’s cool with that, and numbers show his peers are, too. Generation Z is among the most progressive and diverse in U.S. history. A 2018 study from Ipsos Mori shows only 66 percent of young people today identify exclusively as heterosexual.

Young people have a better understanding of how sexuality can evolve, says Keuroghlian.

“There’s been less of a reflex to box people in, and categorize people in ways that could be static,” he said. “A key part of all of this is not projecting behavior or projecting attraction. People tell us — they self-identify that’s who they are. And we have to honor that.”

Visibility challenges misperceptions

But to get back to Rueter’s question: can you name a famous out bisexual person besides Frank Ocean?

It’s challenging, and the lack of bi visibility may be one of the biggest contributors towards bi-erasure. But that is changing. Each person who comes out as bisexual has the ability to change perceptions within their own communities — and many young athletes are.

Bri Tollie, a bisexual college basketball player at Southern Methodist University, wrote in her coming-out story she refuses to conform.

“It is important to be visible because everyone is unique,” she wrote. “Our uniqueness means no one should not have to give up a part of themselves to conform. It is called self-respect.”

Growing up, Storrs tried to shut off his attraction to guys. He told himself it wasn’t a big deal, but the angst became all-encompassing.

Storrs is done hiding any part of himself. He did that for far too long, and is now out for all to see.

“I am bisexual, and my point is, I don’t really give a shit what anybody else thinks,” Storrs said. “This is who I am, and I don’t have to figure it out, but the reason I’m coming out is to figure it out, or at least get to a point where I’m comfortable.”

With their stories, these young bi athletes are making it more comfortable for bi people every single day.

[fuckyeahalisonbechdel]

... The slide show she's bringing to Boston for a benefit for the Fenway Community Health Center. "It's kind of like Family Night," she told me. "Mom? Dad? The kids?" I asked. "No! OUR family," she replied. "The community family."

Gay Community News (1991)

[daartistznt]

We still have space for this weekend’s Self Care with Love 2 Part Workshop in-person! ZNT Arts is partnering with Fenway Health and Fenway Community Center @fenwayhealth @fenwaycommunitycenter to bring you Self Care with Love for the Fall. For those that identify as young women, ages 13-17 in Boston. Complete the RSVP form here. https://forms.gle/XBQwxumrMwtGhYTh6 You may also visit zntarts.com/workshops for more information or email zahirahnurtruth@me.com Dinner/Breakfast will be served please add your dietary needs on the registration form. Each young woman receives a Personalized Self Care Art Kit to practice their new skills. Learn about: Art as Process: Tools for Coping with the world around us during the pandemic 4 Keys of Self Care Mental Well-being Identity Dates: Friday September 24 6:30-8p & Saturday September 25 from 11a-12:30p Location: Fenway Community Center 1282 Bolyston Street Boston, MA 02115 Jersey Steet Entrance #socialwork #youthprograms #artasprocress #youthmentalhealth #teenselfcare #teenwellness #teenmentalhealth #bostonyouth #zntarts https://www.instagram.com/p/CUDsuxdPs1J/?utm_medium=tumblr

[popcornnroses]

BOSTON SPRINGS A FETHIVAL 2017: Wicked Queer, Day 5

BOSTON SPRINGS A FETHIVAL 2017: Wicked Queer, Day 5 @WickedQueer #eCinemaBoston #BostonSpringsAFethival

“Boston Springs A Fethival” season is in high gear as it trucks through to the end of April, and the oldest LGBTQ film festival in America is underway – it’s  the 2017 edition of Wicked Queer – Boston LGBTQ Film Festival!

During the weekday schedules, there are fewer options for the fest, which is best, since people have to work before they attend in many cases.

Today only one film is on tap: Wom…

[bagly-inc-blog]

Trans Youth Summit 2019

When? Saturday, February 9, 2019 9:30AM-4:00PM

Where? Simmons University Conference Center (300 Fenway, Boston, MA).

What is the Summit? BAGLY's Trans Youth Summit is a one-day event created by and for transgender youth 24 and under to build community, combat oppression, and provide education and resources to those who need them.BAGLY convenes a youth planning committee every year to organize the Trans Youth Summit to provide a much-needed opportunity and space for transgender youth to build community, get connected to essential resources, and participate in workshops to explore identity and increase knowledge on important topics such as legal rights and transgender-inclusive health. The Trans Youth Summit is a FREE event for people 24 years old and under who identify under the transgender/nonbinary/gender expansive umbrella. This year, we will be celebrating the Summit’s 10th anniversary and convening over 250 people! In addition to the youth segment, the Summit offers separate tracks for parents/guardians/caregivers of transgender youth in order to provide support, information, resources, and networking. 

**Registration for youth and guardians is open now!**

[gordonwilliamsweb]

As Covid Vaccinations Slow, Parts of the US Remain Far Behind 70% Goal

July Fourth was not the celebration President Joe Biden had hoped for, as far as protecting more Americans with a coronavirus vaccine. The nation fell just short of the White House’s goal to give at least a first dose to 70% of adults by Independence Day. By that day, 67% of adult Americans had gotten either the first shot of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If children ages 12-17, who are now eligible for the Pfizer product, are included, the national percentage of those who have gotten at least one shot is 64%.

Drilling down from national rates, the picture varies widely at the regional level, and from state to state. For example, Massachusetts and most states in the Northeast reached or exceeded 70% (for adults, age 18 and older) in June. Tennessee and most Southern states have vaccination rates between 50% and 60%, and administration rates are slowing down.

Local variations in demand for the vaccines and in-state strategies for marketing and distributing the shots help explain the range.

In Massachusetts, for example, residents overwhelmed phone lines and appointment websites as soon as vaccines became available. The state began opening mass vaccination sites in January to meet demand. At Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, the home field of the New England Patriots, Jumbotron screens flashed updates and speakers blasted instructions to people arriving for a shot. When demand peaked in March, as many as 8,000 residents a day snaked through lines to a waiting syringe. Registered nurse Francesca Trombino delivered jab after jab at Fenway Park and then at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston for five months.

“I still hold a lot of interactions very dear to my heart,” she said, reflecting on those months in late June. “I had so many people cry, just out of pure shock, just being able to feel free.”

Heading into the long Fourth of July weekend, more than 82% of Massachusetts adults had received at least one shot. That number doesn’t surprise many public health experts because residents generally have embraced vaccination recommendations in the past, and Massachusetts regularly registers some of the highest rates for pediatric and influenza inoculations in the country. In Tennessee, where only 52% of adults are at least partially vaccinated against covid, nurses sit waiting. In some of the state’s rural counties, only 30% of residents have been vaccinated.

“Our first couple weeks we had people booked, then after that we had people start no-showing,” said Kirstie Allen, who coordinates covid vaccinations at the federally subsidized clinic in Linden, Tennessee. “We had a waiting list, the people on the waiting list didn’t want to come. It’s gradually just gotten worse.”

Allen is down to offering the vaccine just one day a week, and she aims to sign up at least 10 patients to avoid wasting doses in the multi-use Moderna vial.

Allen has witnessed plenty of vague skepticism in her town of 1,200 people. And she can sympathize. Despite administering the shots, the mother and licensed practical nurse has not yet been vaccinated and said she’s waiting for more research results to be released, and to see how everyone does over time.

“I’m one of those people who are unsure at the moment about getting it,” she said, adding she wouldn’t get her kids vaccinated yet either.

This wait-and-see attitude is especially common among white, rural conservatives in the South, according to many surveys in recent months. After an initial surge of interest, demand for vaccinations waned, and states like Tennessee held mass vaccination events only in the most densely populated cities.

Having Reached the 70% Goal, Massachusetts Adopts Targeted Strategy

In Massachusetts, with fewer than 20% of adults still unvaccinated, the state is closing its high-volume vaccine clinics and focusing on specific demographic groups and communities with low vaccination rates.

“As these [big] sites come to their mission complete, we need to keep pushing harder into the neighborhoods,” said Rodrigo Martinez, “into those locations that really need it.”

Martinez is with CIC Health, a company that moved from managing mass vaccination sites to running small outdoor clinics at supermarkets where shoppers who got a shot received a $25 gift card. That hyperlocal approach is part of a growing effort in Massachusetts to bring vaccines to residents, especially those in low-income and minority communities where the virus spread quickly and vaccination rates remain low.

Massachusetts has targeted 20 such cities including Brockton, south of Boston. It’s a diverse city of essential workers, a group that has been hit hard during the pandemic. First-dose vaccination rates are especially low for Latinos, at 39%, and Blacks, 41% (for all ages, not just adults).

The hyperlocal approach was on display in Brockton on a Sunday in late June, when the city, with assistance from the state, hosted a mobile vaccine clinic at a popular park. A big, yellow touring bus, retrofitted to hold vaccination stations, idled near tents offering free food, music, legal advice for immigrants and health insurance enrollment assistance.

This particular neighborhood in Brockton features residents who speak Portuguese, Spanish, English and Haitian Creole.

“Bienvenue! Welcome!” shouted Isabel Lopez, a state-funded vaccine ambassador, as she moved from one cluster of families to another, urging them to go grab a free hamburger, hot dog — and a vaccine.

“We are here, bringing the communities together, to make this a fun day and also a creative way to get people vaccinated,” Lopez said.

Near the soccer field, Lopez scored a big win. She persuaded five hesitant members of one household to go to the bus and at least talk with a nurse there. A half-hour later, all five had received their first shots. Lenin Gomez said afterward that he had had doubts about the vaccine but was persuaded when the nurse stressed the need to protect the children living in Gomez’s home.

“If I’m not fully protected, who will take care of the little ones?” Gomez said. “That’s what opened my mind to getting vaccinated.”

When Gomez gets his second dose in a few weeks, he can enter himself in a statewide lottery that will give away five $1 million prizes for anyone who’s vaccinated. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said he hopes these jackpots will entice hesitant residents to roll up their sleeves.

Hefty Financial Incentives Are Less Common in the South

In the states that need most to boost vaccination rates, there’s little interest in creative financial incentives. Tennessee has no plans. In Alabama, the NAACP funded a recent drawing for $1,000 prizes aimed at millennials and Gen Zers.

Overall, the daily vaccination rate across the South has slowed, worrying health officials who are watching the explosive growth and spread of the delta variant in several parts of the U.S. But some Southern residents continue to come around to the idea. In Lobelville, Tennessee, 57-year-old Laurel Grant was initially hesitant to get the shot because of possible side effects.

“But everybody I know has done real good, just maybe a little fever or a little tiredness,” she said.

So Grant got her own shot in June, at a local pharmacy. It helped that the Pilot Flying J truck stop where she works offered a $75 bonus to employees who got fully vaccinated.

“There’s a few down there at work who are like, ‘I’m not going to get it,'” Grant said, “I’m like, ‘Yes, you are. You gotta go, like it or not.'”

Converts like Grant are being seen as the best kind of evangelist for this next phase of vaccinating latecomers. Tennessee’s health department has started taping video testimonials to release online. But the marketing efforts are beginning to annoy some Republican state lawmakers convinced the state is trying too hard. They’re especially concerned about kids.

A recent hearing in the Tennessee state legislature included threats of disbanding Tennessee’s health department. State Rep. Iris Rudder, along with other GOP lawmakers, brandished printouts of social media ads produced by state health officials. They featured smiling kids with adhesive bandages on their shoulders.

“It’s not your business to target children. It’s your business to inform the parent that their child is eligible for the vaccination,” she told health department officials at the hearing in June. “So I would encourage you, before our next meeting, to get things like this off your website.”

This criticism was mostly directed at the state’s health commissioner, Dr. Lisa Piercey, who responded at the hearing by saying the state is not “whispering to kids” or trying to get them vaccinated behind the backs of their parents. She said she’s not going to back off when it comes to vaccination outreach.

Piercey also said she doesn’t think the risk level in Tennessee is as dire as the low vaccination rates suggest. Tennessee had a huge surge of covid cases during the winter. That means at least 850,000 people — based on positive test results — are walking around with some level of natural immunity. Piercey said those residents are partially compensating for low vaccination rates.

“Yes, I want everybody who wants a vaccine to get it,” she said. “But what I really want at the end of the day is for this pandemic to go away. I want to minimize cases and eliminate hospitalizations and deaths, and we’re pretty close to getting there.”

The outlook is less rosy in neighboring Arkansas. The state escaped the worst of the winter outbreaks. Now it is trying to stop flare-ups of illness caused by the more contagious delta variant. Gov. Asa Hutchinson told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that if nothing else will inspire Southerners to get vaccinated, “reality will.”

This story is part of a partnership that includes WBUR, Nashville Public Radio, NPR and KHN.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

As Covid Vaccinations Slow, Parts of the US Remain Far Behind 70% Goal published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[thefightfortranshealthcare]

Academic Perspectives on Transgender Healthcare Rights

Transgender healthcare is vital to the health and well-being of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals.  Gender-affirming healthcare mitigates the effects of gender dysphoria, which has shown to be detrimental to the mental health of transgender people.  An organization that has been a trailblazer in transgender healthcare rights is the Transgender Health Program in Boston, Massachusetts, specifically as part of Fenway Health (Reisner, 2015).  The program started to meet the clinical needs of transgender people and works to advocate for and promote “social justice and health equity for transgender people” (Reisner, 2015).  Fenway Health was established “as a grassroots clinic in 1971” in Boston “as part of a grassroots effort in the heyday of political activism” (Reisner, 2015).  In the 1980s, “Fenway’s response to the AIDS epidemic included the development of the first community-based HIV research program in New England”, which led to the creation of the Fenway Health Institute, which serves as an inclusive community health center (Reisner, 2015).  Along the way, the institute and its programs have made changes to progress the individual rights of trans people; “in 2007, Fenway implemented a modified informed consent model for” gender-affirming therapy (Reisner, 2015).  These modifications helped further the availability “of accessible, holistic, gender-affirming, and multidisciplinary model of transgender care” (Reisner, 2015).  Along with healthcare services, the Fenway Institute has continued to progress research, education, training, and advocacy for the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming peoples (Reisner, 2015).  Continuing to make progress in these avenues will continue to improve transgender lives and mental health.

On the other hand, there are plenty of individuals who do not support transgender rights, particlularly in terms of healthcare.  There are several organizations and politicians who are working in opposition to transgender healthcare rights.  A survey conducted in 2015, it was revealed that, of the pool of responses, the results varied quite a bit.  The majority of voters opposed “allowing Medicare to pay for a transgender person’s hormone therapy” and gender-affirming biological surgery (Miller, 2016).  This exemplifies that there could be underlying political biases against gender-affirming individuals within the largest medical organizations such as Medicare.  Furthermore, for hormone therapy, only 14.41% of respondents were supportive, while about 59.41% opposed; on the grounds of surgery, even fewer respondents were supportive, with only 12.25% in support and 63.04% of informants opposed (Miller, 2016).  This data shows the explicit and dangerous biases against transgender individuals as the majority of respondents believe that trans people should pay for their healthcare out-of-pocket.  As a result, those who do not have the funds would not be able to afford the healthcare services they need.  This is significant because the lives and livelihoods of transgender and gender non-conforming peoples depend the availability of these services; without them, transgender people are more likely to harm themselves or attempt suicide.  With that, it is important to continue having conversations about the significance of transgender healthcare; if people continue to stay silent, progress cannot be made.  As a society, it is imperative that progress in support of transgender healthcare rights continues because transgender rights are human rights.

Miller, P. R., Flores, A. R., Haider-Markel, D. P., Lewis, D. C., Tadlock, B. L., & Taylor, J. K. (2016). Transgender politics as body politics: Effects of disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism on transgender rights attitudes. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 5(1), 4-24. Retrieved May 20, 2020, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21565503.2016.1260482?casa_token=6LwtL2dXpXgAAAAA%3AyAnZsFt0sEmGWW8XuqEJlc_anaufc1OuXERF8aicL-4J0fim2qJEZihva5JFB16jmODO3a5VDl4Hpw

Reisner, S. L., Bradford, J., Hopwood, R., Gonzalez, A., Makadon, H., Todisco, D., . . . Mayer, K. (2015). Comprehensive Transgender Healthcare: The Gender Affirming Clinical and Public Health Model of Fenway Health. J. Urban Health, 92(3), 584-592. Retrieved May 20, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456472/

[orbemnews]

In Covid Vaccine Data, L.G.B.T.Q. People Fear Invisibility Still, even if some people are hesitant to divulge such data, research shows that clinicians overestimate how many patients would refuse to self-report. A 2017 study revealed that about 80 percent of clinicians believed patients would be hesitant to provide this data, but only 10 percent of patients reported they would refuse to do so. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also said that it should be optional for patients to report their gender identity. Having a chance to self-report, advocates say, is the key. “It’s important for people to be able to identify themselves, just like any other demographic,” said Chris Grasso, associate vice president for informatics and data services at the Fenway Institute. “We want to normalize the collection of data — just like we ask people questions around their age, race or ethnicity.” Progress, but still a ways to go L.G.B.T.Q. advocates have raised alarm bells throughout the pandemic, writing letters to health organizations and the new administration, asking that agencies report on coronavirus testing, care outcomes and vaccine uptake in their communities. A few states and jurisdictions have started to make strides: Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., collect and report some of this data in their Covid-19 surveillance systems. And in September, California’s governor signed into law a bill requiring health care providers to collect the data for all communicable diseases. But as recently as March, the California Department of Public Health had not made its sexual orientation and gender identity statistics public. And other officials, echoing concerns of those who want to keep their sexuality private, have expressed hesitancy over collecting this information. For example, Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, who is gay, said in an April 2020 discussion with other elected officials that “there’s a lot of people in Colorado who don’t want that info out there.” In spite of the paucity of data, the C.D.C. notes that L.G.B.T.Q. people may be more likely to suffer severe Covid-19 outcomes than heterosexual people, in part because of a higher prevalence of pre-existing conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, asthma, cancer, obesity and smoking. Source link Orbem News #Covid #data #Fear #Invisibility #LGBTQ #People #Vaccine

[walkingtravesties]

As Arkansas has recently became the first state to ban gender affirming healthcare for minors, I believe that it is important to remember that transgender people are people too.

Read Matthew 22:39 or Mark 12:31. Romans 15:7. Ephesians 4:2-3. John 7:24 says, “do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgement.”

If you are interested in educating yourself with a few tidbits regarding exactly what this means, feel free to read below! My inbox is always open for discussion regarding this topic, or if you just need someone to talk to.

It is important to understand that Children going through gender affirming transitions DO NOT RECEIVE HORMONE THERAPY! Children and teens are usually given FULLY REVERSIBLE puberty blockers until they are old enough (over 18) to make the decision to pursue hormone therapy or surgeries. The biggest assistance for a transgender child is to let them wear and utilize appropriate clothing, hairstyles, and pronouns that suit their preferred gender.

Your goal as a parent (or friend) of a transgender child should be the same goal as with ANY child - to make them feel as loved, and accepted, as humanly possible. To lift them up and help them become wholesome individuals!

Denying a child the chance to pursue transition before puberty can cause problems! If a child is forced to go through what they view as the “wrong” puberty, this can keep them in a dysphoric pain through the (already annoying) years of puberty and adolescence; Ultimately causing a future transition to be much harder - if they choose to publicly or privately transition at all.

Transgender children are more likely to experience anxiety and depression, as well as hold a greater risk of developing a substance abuse problem and/or homelessness either in their teens or adult lives. Research finds that Transgender youth are at a greater risk of suicide (in comparison to their non-transgender peers) as a result of bullying, rejection, and just victimization in general.

All of this? Is assuming that a transgender child even makes it to Adulthood. As terrible as that sounds? A survey from 2019 consulted with approximately 27,000 transgender individuals -

“The rate of previous suicide attempts among transgender people in the United States is extremely high, with 41 percent reporting that they have had that experience,” - Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, Director of the National LGBT Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute, and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program.

Support from family and friends can be a life changing, and life SAVING thing! I believe that it is important to remember to love our neighbors, peers, coworkers and family - because you never know someone’s story until you ASK!

Did you know that Transgender Americans are twice as likely to live in Poverty compared to the overall national poverty rate of 14%? (http://Williamsinstitute.law.UCLA.edu/.../LGBT-Housing...)

With the ongoing pandemic, the Transgender community has also compounded challenges during the economic crisis - approximately 19% of transgender people and 26% of transgender people of color became unemployed due to COVID-19 compared to 12% of the general US Population. (http://Williamsinstitute.law.UCLA.edu/.../LGBT-Housing...)

There are so many places - ESPECIALLY in the Bible Belt, where transgender individuals are not even looked at as HUMAN. How sad is that??

Transgender children and adults experience some life events that I will never experience. That YOU will never experience. I believe that we can love one another, once we take the time to educate ourselves and listen to one another.

TLDR; I want you to remember two things if you made it this far!

1. Bills that’s criminalize transgender healthcare are going to keep coming. They will keep coming until they are not making headlines anymore, and another large scale crisis or topic diverts the American attention away from the LGBT community. At that point? When people have stopped speaking up? Stopped getting angry at the inhumane treatment of our fellow HUMANS? That’s when those bills will pass. That’s when more of our friends and family may not be able to live in their homes safely, without fear of adversity, attack, or general cruelty.

2. BE KIND!! Love your peers. Love your gay coworker, your transgender neighbor, your non-binary coffee shop barista - you don’t have to agree with their lifestyle. But you have to be kind, and treat everyone with the human decency that you get every day! Not everyone is blessed with that. You have to acknowledge the changes and efforts they have made to get where they are - even if you don’t personally understand what they have bene through or continue to go through!

Remember that we all breathe, we all love, and we are all Humans.

[daartistznt]

#zntarts is so excited to be a part of this event with @fenwayhealth I had the opportunity to create several illustrations #coloringpages for their community members and #cancersuvivors “About the illustrations, I was deeply inspired by the Fenway Community Health Center as it’s my neighborhood too, and the work that they do with so many community members from all backgrounds. They genuinely support folx with a great sense of compassion. The Annual Audre Lorde Brunch... is special! They have been illustrated in a way that you can add your own additional embellishments and motifs to make these coloring pages truly your own. Enjoy with love” More info @fenwayhealth Many thanks to @ashleyrosepoet for the connections and love! #repost @ashleyrosepoet This year we are dropping off care packages for cancer survivors with the works, sending prayers of healing led by @handsofgaiareiki , while creatively raising consciousness with the art of @daartistznt and @lanemakerstv2020 . Congrats to all the award winners like Ms.Gloria Murray who have led from the front 💖. Join us for the 22nd Audre Lorde Cancer Awareness Brunch hosted by Fenway Health Oct 25th. Thank you to everyone who is helping to make this possible. #FindACure #AudreLorde #FenwayHealth #BreastCancerAwareness #artist #illustrator #educator #blackownedbusiness #womensupportingwomen #blacklivesmatter #cancerawareness (at Fenway Health) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGUtIO6HruI/?igshid=14gdtphkamt29