6 common myths about the LGBTQ2 community — and why they’re false – National | 24CA News

The declare: Gender-affirming care is irreversible or ‘mutilating’

Several U.S. state legislatures and anti-trans activists have sought to restrict or ban gender-affirming take care of minors, generally describing the surgical procedures as “mutilating.”

But gender-affirming care isn’t just surgical, and might contain many different steps and procedures earlier than reaching that stage. Those can embody small adjustments like utilizing a special identify or pronoun and altering their fashion of gown, and in addition hormone therapies and puberty-blocking medicines like Lupron.

Adrienne Smith, a Vancouver-based social justice lawyer who works with Trans Care BC — a part of the B.C. Provincial Health Authority — notes Lupron has been used safely by cisgender women for many years within the occasion of early menstruation, amongst different makes use of.

“There’s no one size fits all model for how to transition,” Smith stated. “Not everybody transitions medically … and some people may never undergo any kind of medical transition at all.”

Allowing a transgender particular person to undergo with some type of transition, whether or not or not it’s social or medical, has been confirmed to scale back the danger of suicide and self-harm. That contains kids, who Smith says might have one thing so simple as an acknowledgement from their household that they determine as a special gender.

“The consequences of waiting can be dire,” they stated. “Puberty is difficult for everybody, but for trans folks — where it’s going to make your body develop in a way that doesn’t align with who you know you are — that can cause incredible psychiatric distress, which can be fatal.”

The declare: Gender-affirming care may be performed in secret or with out parental consent

For trans kids, Smith says, “Obviously the health-care provider has a conversation with the young person and the family to make sure that (puberty blockers are) going to be appropriate for them.”

“If, for whatever reason, the young person decides this isn’t appropriate for them, we stop it,” they added, and the method is “absolutely” reversible.

The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) has requirements of care however there may be not a regular for protection and conditions throughout Canada.

Provinces and territories do, nonetheless, require sufferers seek the advice of with their main health-care supplier, which may be adopted by subsequent assessments by specialists earlier than a remedy plan is agreed to and began. The variety of required consultations varies by jurisdiction.

People who search gender-affirming medical care also can face prolonged wait occasions only for an evaluation. For some procedures, sufferers are compelled to attend for greater than a yr and even two — making the declare of secretive or forceful surgical procedures all of the extra irritating to advocates like Smith.

“This is not optional or cosmetic,” they stated. “It’s life-saving surgical procedures that people very desperately need.”

The declare: Letting trans folks use gender-specific loos poses a security danger

Another widespread argument by proponents of restrictions on transgender folks is the false perception they are going to use their gender identification to achieve entry to gender-specific washrooms or change rooms to commit sexual assault.

The declare has fueled so-called “bathroom bills” requiring folks to make use of services aligned with the gender assigned to them at start. When North Carolina handed such a invoice in 2016 in response to a Charlotte City Council nondiscrimination ordinance, the state’s Republican governor Pat McCrory stated the native measure would put folks — particularly girls — “in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of a bad policy.” The rest room portion of the invoice was repealed a yr later.

In truth, there isn’t a proof that permitting transgender folks to make use of services that align with their gender identification results in security dangers for others. On the opposite, transgender individuals are way more more likely to expertise sexual assault than cisgender folks, in accordance to a number of research.

“It’s trans women and trans feminine folks who are most vulnerable in bathrooms because they’re likely to be assaulted by the people who are in those bathrooms,” Smith stated.

“Trans people are particularly concerned about stopping sex assault because it happens to us at disproportionate rates.”

Other states together with Arkansas, Idaho and Iowa have handed comparable laws this yr alone that separates loos based mostly on organic intercourse, somewhat than gender identification.

Smith stated such laws “is going to force trans women into men’s toilet spaces, and that presents a danger for them.”