6 common myths about the LGBTQ2 community — and why they’re false – National | Globalnews.ca

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

Several U.S. state legislatures and anti-trans activists have sought to limit or ban gender-affirming care for minors, sometimes describing the surgeries as “mutilating.”

But gender-affirming care is not just surgical, and can involve many other steps and procedures before reaching that stage. Those can include small changes like using a different name or pronoun and changing their style of dress, and also hormone therapies and puberty-blocking medications like Lupron.

Adrienne Smith, a Vancouver-based social justice lawyer who works with Trans Care BC — part of the B.C. Provincial Health Authority — notes Lupron has been used safely by cisgender girls for decades in the event of early menstruation, among other uses.

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

Allowing a transgender person to go through with some form of transition, whether it be social or medical, has been proven to reduce the risk of suicide and self-harm. That includes children, who Smith says may need something as simple as an acknowledgement from their family that they identify as a different gender.

“The consequences of waiting can be dire,” they said. “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 claim: Gender-affirming care can be done in secret or without parental consent

For trans children, 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 process is “absolutely” reversible.

The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) has standards of care but there is not a standard for coverage and prerequisites across Canada.

Provinces and territories do, however, require patients consult with their primary health-care provider, which can be followed by subsequent assessments by specialists before a treatment plan is agreed to and started. The number of required consultations varies by jurisdiction.

People who seek gender-affirming medical care can also face lengthy wait times just for an assessment. For some procedures, patients are forced to wait for more than a year or even two — making the claim of secretive or forceful surgeries all the more frustrating to advocates like Smith.

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

The claim: Letting trans people use gender-specific bathrooms poses a safety risk

Another common argument by proponents of restrictions on transgender people is the false belief they will use their gender identity to gain entry to gender-specific washrooms or change rooms to commit sexual assault.

The claim has fueled so-called “bathroom bills” requiring people to use facilities aligned with the gender assigned to them at birth. When North Carolina passed such a bill in 2016 in reaction to a Charlotte City Council nondiscrimination ordinance, the state’s Republican governor Pat McCrory said the local measure would put people — specifically women — “in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of a bad policy.” The bathroom portion of the bill was repealed a year later.

In fact, there is no evidence that allowing transgender people to use facilities that align with their gender identity leads to safety risks for others. On the contrary, transgender people are far more likely to experience sexual assault than cisgender people, according to multiple studies.

“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 said.

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

Other states including Arkansas, Idaho and Iowa have passed similar legislation this year alone that separates bathrooms based on biological sex, rather than gender identity.

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