Pressing Pause on the Global Transgender Youth Pandemic
by Jean C Lloyd, Public Discourse:
A pandemic exposes many truths. Radical surgeries on healthy bodies with the hopes of improving body dysphoria are in fact elective and are neither essential nor life-saving.
When COVID-19 began to crash over the United States, leaders responded by placing their states and communities on pause, suspending everything possible, including non-essential surgeries and medical care. During this time, my friend’s mastectomy for aggressive breast cancer was deemed essential, but the liposuction she wanted to have done to source her reconstruction was considered cosmetic. The extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic required making a distinction. Though inconvenient, it was clear: one surgery could wait.
The Pandemic Brings Painful Clarity
I think of my friend’s situation whenever, amid news of the pandemic and its effects, disruptions in transgender medicine are highlighted. One article featured a twenty-three-year-old who identifies as a man, who worries about having to postpone the mastectomy that “will make me feel better and feel like I’m in the right body for once.” The title boldly declared that such surgeries are life-saving and that delays can be “dangerous and even life-threatening,” citing a study that has been critiqued in detail here at Public Discourse. Another recent article discussed supply disruptions that affect transgender individuals’ access to hormones and other medications on which they are now dependent.
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