The Medical University of South Carolina initially said it wouldn’t be affected by a law banning use of state funds for treatment “furthering the gender transition” of children under 16. Months later, it cut off that care to all trans minors.
One Saturday morning in September 2022, Terrence Steyer, the dean of the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, placed an urgent call to a student. Just a year prior, the medical student, Thomas Agostini, had won first place at a university-sponsored event for his graduate research on transgender pediatric patients. He also had been featured in a video on MUSC’s website highlighting resources that support the LGBTQ+ community.
Now, Agostini and his once-lauded study had set off a political firestorm. Conservative activists seized on one line in particular in the study’s summary — a parenthetical noting the youngest transgender patient to visit MUSC’s pediatric endocrinology clinic was 4 years old — and inaccurately claimed that children that young were prescribed hormones as part of a gender transition. Elon Musk amplified the false claim, tweeting, “Is it really true that four-year-olds are receiving hormone treatment?” That led federal and state lawmakers to frantically ask top MUSC leaders whether the public hospital was in fact helping young children medically transition. The hospital was not; its pediatric transgender patients did not receive hormone therapy before puberty, nor does it offer surgical options to minors.
I don’t even find it justifiable to not “like” transition. For many trans people, transitioning is less of a choice and more of a required action. I personally didn’t choose to be trans and didn’t have the luxury of staying in the closet. I thought I could delay coming out, but I couldn’t. Many trans people would become suicidally depressed if forced to detransition or prevented from transitioning. Some trans people could live the rest of their lives as cis, but a ton can’t. Not liking transition is like not liking giving an antidote to someone that got poisoned. You can wish that people never get poisoned in the first place, but can’t hate the antidote itself.
It’s a fantasy to believe that we have total conscious control of our actions and desires. Anyone who’s become attracted to someone they don’t want to be attracted to should know this. “Why must I fall for such a shitty person?”