.. Oy. Health Care Access Problems.

Reposted from Questioning Transphobia. I know, I know. I should write my own commentary. Oh well. This says pretty much everything I'd say.



So yesterday, the Bush administration yesterday granted sweeping new protections to health workers who refuse to provide care that violates their personal beliefs. Jill at Feministe has pointed out that while this undoubtedly chiefly aimed at women’s reproductive freedoms, this is actually not about abortion–which depressingly already has this exception–but easy access to contraception.

One point I want to make about that, which I’ve stolen from Lee Edelman’s No Future, is that America is being organised around the figure of The Child. Not actual children, let alone the adults those children grow into, but a rhetorical child who must be protected at all costs–from the corrupting influence of gay marriages, porn on the internet etc and who must always be allowed to exist.

The rights of the Child, who is figured as a full person and not as a body of cells or ffs an egg and a sperm, supercedes the rights of adult women to have control over their bodies. Never mind that people (and I want to make the point that it’s not just women, eg some trans men use birth control too. Seriously, pay attention cis feminists and stop making the normative assumption that reproductive health equals het cis woman) use the pill primarily for other health reasons–to regulate their periods, to moderate PMS and PMDD etc etc. And needless to say, The Child does not grow up to be queer, or trans, or sexually active outside the sanctity of marriage. And The Child is clearly normatively white.

But whilst it is clearly aimed at heterosexual cis women, it will have a massive impact on other groups–especially trans men and women.

From the Washington Post:

“The far-reaching regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable.”

Ok, let that sink in a bit. Care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable. Now, where is that going to leave trans people? Sex workers? People they think are drug users (a highly racialized image after all)? People with disabilities?

Like queerness, being trans has been framed by many on the Religious Right as a moral issue. To be trans is to be, by definition, immoral. By situating health care as a “conscience” issue, this law allows transphobic health care workers–not just doctors, but pharmacists, emergency medics etc etc–full license to indulge their bigotry and to not treat us. So, even if you can get through the knife lined obstacle course that is the gatekeeper process and get through to a hormone prescription, the bloody pharmacist might not even give them to you.

We all know health care for trans people is already shitty, let alone giving health care providers carte blanche to treat us worse. Remember Tyra Hunter, who died because firefighters decided not to perform emergency resuscitation on her when they discovered she was trans, and then a doctor at Washington General decided not to treat her. Because she was trans, because she was a woman of color, because she was not a person, she was an “it.” And, because some people consider that our existence is immoral and must be squashed out.

This is a nightmare of a ruling that potentially allows any person in the health-care business to rule that treating trans people goes against their conscience, and when something serious is occuring, you don’t have the time to shop around for someone who will treat you.

And the intersection between transness and race here will be even more deadly. Medicine has a long history of being used against people of color in the US, and this gives health care people legal protections to further that. As Kristin “the mean one on Feministe” just said to me, making the horrid implications of this explicitly clear:

“I didn’t quite make the connection as to why doctors would want to refuse anyone treatment in the context of a miscarriage at first. It just clicked. Why would they want to do that other than to refuse treatment to people they judge to be the “cause” of the miscarriage? You know, people like, say, possible drug users. Or people otherwise marked as “unworthy” of care. Say, homeless people, immigrants… Fuck. I mean, why else would anyone demand that kind of “right”? Fuck fuck fuck… I think this is going to be even more evil in practice than it looks on the surface. If that kind of “protection” becomes a fucking protocol, oh my god… If this becomes widespread… Organized against a specific group, that’s genocidal.”

Updates from Youtube!

My wonderful friend over at jadedjabber pointed out I should embed my youtube videos. So here goes! A brief introduction from early october, then an update from a few days after that about my visit with my dad.

"Don't Call it a Culture War"

I'm doing the bad blogger again and posting someone else's writing. However, this is an excellent article from The American Prospect by Anne Friedman about LGBT rights. I think it's spot on, and I'm glad that I'm hearing this rhetoric other places than just within my circle of friends. It seems like a lot of the rhetoric being thrown around, especially after Prop 8, focuses on the idea that the country will "come around" and adjust. Friedman brilliantly points out that calling LGBT issues part of a "culture war" implies that there is no absolute right or wrong.

As Friedman says, "Civil-rights era activists knew history was on their side. But their goal was not to make every white American comfortable with the idea of sharing public spaces and power with people of color. It was to guarantee people of color those rights, regardless of where the culture stood. That's the thing about rights. You have to claim them."

Check it out!

Change

I have been remiss in my blogging, and it's not just because I've abandoned my blog for youtube. I actually have been really bad about posting my youtube videos. Partially because I make them on my camera, then save them to my computer, then wait till I'm somewhere with internet to upload them. I actually have three videos sitting on my camera that I haven't even put on my computer, let alone posted on youtube. Oops.

I just got back on Monday from the first LVC retreat. It doesn't seem like I've been doing LVC for two and half months already, but I have. Retreat was.. not really very restful. The building we were in was stressful for me. It was loud and felt claustrophobic. My idea of retreat isn't being forced to interact with 35 people I don't really know. We also had two days of anti-racism training, which was good. I was challenged, but I also knew a lot of the material we covered because of some of my courses from college.

I'm off tomorrow morning on a 7am flight (ugh) for DC to participate in an RIC training. It should be interesting. It's going to be a compressed training, which is stressful in its own way. I'm also not really sure how many youth are going to be there. I think it'll be more Methodist youth, but that's ok. I'll be able to talk to the person who has my job with the Methodists, which will be good for me to more clearly define how to build a Lutheran youth network.

I've also been looking at the website change.gov recently. It's a website focused on the shift from the Bush administration to Obama's administration. It's really a pretty excellent website. You can apply for jobs, share your vision of the future, and really engage with the next administration. In addition, I am ecstatic because there's been an actual policy change shift already in the Obama administration. Here's the non-discrimination policy for the Obama-Biden Transition Project:

The Obama-Biden Transition Project does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by law.

That's right, they slipped in gender identity. How awesome is that?

youtube!

As one of my friends has aptly put it, I've gone over to the dark side. I've finally started posting youtube video blog ("vlog") entries. Mainly this is because I want to have a record of my transition, voice, body, etc. I figured starting it pre-T and surgery would be a good idea.
So far I've only posted two, so not that many at all.

I must say, it's kind of weird. For one thing, I don't really know what my voice sounds like, so hearing it back is just kind of strange. Along the same lines, it's interesting to watch a video of myself. I do look at myself in the mirror, but it's usually extremely cursory, just checking to make sure my hair isn't extremely crazy, and that I don't have giant mud streaks or something on my face. I don't really look at myself for long periods of time, and in particular I tend to just look at my face and not the rest of my body.

Either way. If you want to check out the videos, you can find them on youtube, my user name is boydyke12. I'm hoping to update at least once a week, though right now since I'm excited about it all they might be more frequent.

transphobia strikes again!

And transphobia strikes again! Here's excerpts of news article from Vacaville, California.

A teacher’s gender reassignment surgery has caught the attention of some parents who want to know why the school district didn’t notify them ahead of time about the change.

A music teacher at Foxboro Elementary School, who was formerly a woman, returned to school as a man at the beginning of the school year.

Some parents told Travis Unified School District that they feel like their rights to know were violated.

“All the information came straight from our kids and didn’t come from the school board or the teachers … this has all been second-hand information,” parent Melissa Oiland said...

"I understand what parents are saying, but we have a right as an employer, we have a legal obligation as an employer to protect our employees,” Superintendent Kate Wren Gavlak said.

Gavlak said the district consulted with lawyers and determined that legally, it could not disclose any information about the teacher’s gender change.”We will not be discussing personal matters with either the students, or the parents or the community at large … because we cannot,” Gavlak said...

Parent Angela Weinzinger, who has three children at the school, said she has since transferred her children out of the class.

“I wasn’t given the opportunity to make a choice on what I wanted to do with the situation,” Weinzinger said.So far, 23 students from 15 different families have transferred their children out of the music class and into a physical education class.

read the full article here

This makes me upset on many levels. One, that parents feel their rights were violated because the school refused to violate the rights of the teacher and expose his medical and surgical history. If a teacher had had any other kind of surgery, would parents be reacting this way? Two, the assumption that this is a big enough deal that the school should've had to inform parents, that this man should have to reveal this information to anyone he interacts with. Three, that this teacher is being treated as if students in his class are going to catch "the trans" from him, like he's a sexual predator, as if their children are in danger simply being around him.

There are huge heaping servings of gender entitlement at work here. Yes, most parents probably aren't ready to have this conversation with their kids. I recognize that. But is the appropriate reaction really this?

wow McCain.. just.. wow..

Ok, so for those of you who watched the debates last night, you've already seen this lovely clip of McCain mocking concerns about women's health. I'm at work, so I'm really sorry I can't write further about this. I just.. I can't believe that McCain was that dismissive of concerns about women's health.. like as an issue it doesn't really exist.