Anti-trans organizations have said that their position against gender affirming care center on “protecting kids.” Now, a Florida judge has allowed them to proceed with their next target: trans adults.
Several weeks ago, a federal judge in Florida halted a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, declaring it likely unconstitutional. Yet, transgender adults were also heavily impacted by the law: 80% of gender-affirming care providers for trans adults in the state were forced to stop. Consequently, many found themselves forced to flee the state, temporarily or permanently, in order to access care. Those forced to stay clung to the hope that the provisions targeting them might also be overruled. However, those hopes suffered a setback when the 11th Circuit Court determined that discriminating against transgender individuals in healthcare would be allowed, at least in the short term. Relying on this verdict, the Florida Judge Monday declined to block the sections affecting trans adult care. Now, the precedent has been set for adult care bans, a stark contradiction to some anti-trans activists’ assurances that their sole aim was to “protect children.”
Earlier this year, Florida passed SB254. The bill did not only prohibit gender-affirming care for transgender youth, but also casted stringent requirements for care on trans adults. Specifically, the laws bars nurse practitioners from administering care and mandates that providers distribute inaccurate medical forms, laden with misleading narratives, suggesting treatments are experimental. This was a substantial change, as the vast amount of trans adult care is provided by nurse practitioners. A representative from a clinic in the state, SPEKTRUM Health, estimated that 80% of such care would be affected. Further, the new informed consent form dictates a pre-requisite of “social support” before a trans individual embarks on care, despite many trans adults losing social support from their families after they transition. Though the initial discussion centered on the effect of the bill on trans youth, trans adults across the state suddenly saw their prescriptions dropped by their providers as a result.
There’s literally no difference between a trans person getting medical care like hormone therapy and any adult getting any other type of treatment. If you take pills for your limp dick, get breast implants, or use hormone therapy for things like controlling heavy menstrual bleeding or even as a form of cancer treatment, your rights are at risk. It’s merely a matter of who is in the White House and who controls the legislative bodies. These dickhead republicans are entirely shortsighted in that respect. Not that it matters, their base will eat it up as a victory. They literally led these idiots off a cliff during Covid and they cheered Trumps name as they took their last fibrosis riddled breath.
What if I told you… that’s a feature, not a bug?
It’s far too much to type and way too philosophical for anyone to give a shit about, but, tldr: the US (and arguably the world) is on a freight train speeding at absolute destruction. No one in power is pushing the stop button. (In the US) one party is (sometimes) pushing a slowdown button but the other party is always slamming any button they can find that doesn’t say stop on it. They know where it leads, and this is what they want. Everyone “knows” the current institutions and systems are failing, but the only politically relevant (so, in the US, not the actual left) force with power is the far right wingers who desire destruction and their only resistance is the left and right wing liberals in the middle going “noooo the institutions!” but no one actually cares about the institutions, besides other liberals. They lack any ability though, due to their political ideology, to actually fight for the beloved institutions. They can only rely on the powerful far right to “come to their senses” and stop pushing the death button. Unfortunately for them, the far right will not stop without someone stopping them- forcefully. And since the far right and liberals effectively eliminated the far left and even the center left for the most part… there’s no one to counter that far right fascistic death drive.
But you don’t even need that accurate assessment of things to understand the situation. Just know they want to abolish public education, medicine, doctors, anything related to “science” broadly, any non-Christian religions, non-white people, LGBTQ+ people and anything tangentially related to gay stuff (imagined or real), etc. pretty much infinitely.
These people are the proto-Nazis of our time. Not everything will align perfectly, but it doesn’t have to. They want to burn medical information, they want to destroy what they see as “perverted secular society” burn it all away and cleanse the land for some great rebirth of a Christian Nationalist theocracy where white men are elevated above everyone and your white male status plus property owning status is all that matters. I know this all sounds cliche and overstated at this point… but they keep proving it true every chance they get.
The worst part is that ultimately they’re the only side making progress towards their goal because their goal is aligned with the way things are going and must go. But the difference is we can arrive at that destructive moment, whenever it is, and come out the other side in some Christian theocracy nightmare world or something much better than we can currently imagine possible. As it stands right now, that nightmare vision seems to be the only viable conclusion. Which is rather depressing…
I couldn’t agree more. But for what it’s worth I think there are people who are angry and motivated and willing to take it to the bastards. Every era also has its folk heroes. Is it enough? Maybe not. Maybe the added element of cooking ourselves has tipped the scales into an unrecoverable tailspin, but at least there will always be people who will never stop trying to pull us out of the dive. Even as the challenger broke up as it re entered the atmosphere based on the position of certain controls they could tell that the pilot never stopped trying to recover the aircraft even as it broke up around him.
I’m about to crack what is probably the halfway point of my life, adjusted for delicious plastic intake and the inevitable 6 cancers I’ll develop of course, but I won’t stop fighting to try and make the world slightly less shit and slightly more hospitable for the youth who will follow behind me once I eventually eat shit.
The thing is, there are people who do the right thing solely because they can and you can’t convince them to do otherwise. It’s a choice and any person can make it. And so long as those people exist, there’s always going to be someone willing to at least try to stomp this bullshit out.
They’re also quick to spread climate change denialism, because they are under the mistaken belief that only the people who they hate will suffer, and that their God-given privilege will keep them safe/in power.
They’re going to take us all down to a deeper level of hell once they realize they, too, are on a sinking ship.