[nyanpasu64]

It's chilling watching the latest political powers openly declare that trans people are not who they are inside and must never be allowed to become what they are inside, while eliminating legal recognition and protection and criminalizing life-saving transition healthcare. I find myself retreating into dissociation because to feel the horrors is more than I can bear.

[wahern]

The glass-is-half-full take is that no states have prohibited gender affirming care for adults. All the present bans in the U.S. only proscribe treatments for minors. But one would be forgiven for not knowing this because it's not how it's reported.

Point being, even the most conservative states haven't (yet) sought to limit treatment for trans adults.[1] Which is not nothing considering how many were so quick to ban abortion.

Also, it's not just the U.S.; plenty of "liberal" Western European countries have reversed course on care for minors. Even the Netherlands, the origin of the WPATH protocol, has pulled back on the reigns for minors, though they haven't yet instituted any prohibitions.

IMO, the trans advocacy rhetoric that equivocated hurdles to gender affirming care for minors as murder backfired. The fact there seems little motivation to limit treatment for adults suggests substantial openness to the issue among even conservative populations. And there are many in the LGTBQ community, include trans community, who share similar sentiments, at least regarding the rhetoric.

[1] Not sure about legislation dictating certain aspects, like waiting periods, but those were widespread as a practical matter in even the most liberal states.

[panic]

The problem with adult-only transition is that it dooms trans people (at least, those who go on HRT) to go through two puberties, which has visible physical effects that then have to be undone or worked around (breast growth, facial hair, deeper voice, etc.). The ideal for most people is that you'd just go through one.

[amanaplanacanal]

It's clear that earlier intervention with gender affirming care leads to better outcomes. There are fewer suicides when people start getting care earlier. This means puberty blockers early, and HRT in late teenage years. Are we just ignoring that?

[NewJazz]

Yeah but the whole point so far has been to pass laws under the guise of "protecting children" because that was easy to justify politically. Now that SCOTUS has green-lit denying healthcare on the basis of assigned gender at birth, the gates are wide open.

[TJSomething]

Florida and Missouri have been working on it, to some success. Florida's laws have decreased access by requiring in-person appointments with doctors instead of telehealth or nurse practitioners, which has eliminated access for 80% of transgender adults [1]. Missouri has banned Medicaid funding for transgender care for adults. [2]

At the national level, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act as passed by the House cuts all federal funding for transgender care for adults via Medicaid [3], though that's still pending what the Senate does.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/florida-transgender-health-care-a...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/missouri-governor-signs-...

[3] https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jun/02/medicaid-bill...

[Grimblewald]

the "there's a hole in the glass" take is that this is just where they start, it's easier to argue it shouldn't be possible for children to get adequate care (for some reason) than for adults.

[nyanpasu64]

I think that trans people, being the ones with firsthand experience of dysphoria and misgendering, and being a disadvantaged minority (https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclu...) threatened by right-wing rhetoric, should be the ones to speak for what is right for them ("nothing about us without us"), individually and as a group.

[dragonwriter]

> The glass-is-half-full take is that no states have prohibited gender affirming care for adults.

Given that a number have prohibited it from being paid for by the state Medicaid program for adults when it previously was, that is, maybe, a glass quarter full take. (There is also the issue that wrong-gender puberty is a particularly significant suicide risk factor for trans youth, so restricting gender affirming care for youth is a particularly strong assault on trans lives.)

And even then, its not strictly true, as while most states with restrictions that have passed have only restricted care to minors, Nebraska did so for persons under the age of 19, which includes some adults.

> Point being, even the most conservative states haven't (yet) sought to limit treatment for trans adults.

They have not only sought to do so, they have actually done so (as mentioned above). They have not yet implemented broad prohibitions (except Nebraska's for adults under 19), but "limit" and "broad prohibition" are not the same thing, and mere limitations can have the same practical effect as broad prohibitions, as many states demonstrated by making it nearly a practical impossibility to provide (and therefore access) abortion services, even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe; conservative states are following the same playbook with gender-affirming care.

> Not sure about legislation dictating certain aspects, like waiting periods, but those were widespread as a practical matter in even the most liberal states.

No, legally-imposed waiting periods for adult (or even youth) gender affirming care were not present (and still are not present) in the most liberal states. That's a very strange thing to invent to minimize the restrictions being imposed by conservative states.

If you are equating the fact that it can take time, for some services beyond HRT, to save up money and/or jump through whatever hoops are established by your insurance, and find and schedule time with the required provider(s) with legislatively imposed waiting periods and other access restrictions, that's incredibly dishonest (for one thing, the legislative restrictions don't overlap the other ones, they add on top, and, by making it more difficult for providers to operate and thereby reducing the number of providers, make the other issues worse as well.)

[aucisson_masque]

From the point of view of a conservative and non us citizen, you have a good life there compared to the rest of the world.

Technically, most countries don’t allow people to be openly gay. In some countries, being gay even privately means you get beaten to death or your head chopped off.

Needless to say that transgender people are not even taken into consideration.

If I was gay or transgender, god knows I would rather be in the USA or maybe north Europe than any other country and especially not Africa, Arabia, South America.

[xiande04]

Ah, the old "it could be worse" fallacy.

So to recap, you're saying, "don't worry about what's going on in the US right now, because you still have it better than most of the world"

Just because something could be worse does not mean that 1. It's nothing to be concerned about 2. That we shouldn't take steps to improve the situation.

Things can always be worse, so this "logic" is always applicable. It's a vacuous argument. Even if you lived in the country with the worst homo/transphobia in the world, you could tell the person, "well, at least your alive."

Moreover, there's nothing constructive about this line of thinking. If people actually lived by this logic, we would live in a static world, because "it could be worse."

[int_19h]

It should be noted that the two don't necessarily go hand in hand the way you'd expect. E.g. in Iran, homosexuality is a crime that can be punishable by death depending on circumstances, but sex reassignment surgery is legal (and, indeed, can be de facto mandated in cases of anything perceived as gender dysphoria).

[dsadfjasdf]

there's no science on souls. which is what you are basically talking about