You Ever Have A Question About Something Sensitive, Because Its REALLY Important Context, And You Just

some people have a specific word they just think is evil, no matter the context, like the word pronouns

im tired of people having these little nuances like i was talking about the word hate and i said “i hate nazis” and my friend was like hmm hates a strong word. for nazis ? no the fuck it is not. i could use stronger words too. i could curbstomp their sorry asses. i hate nazis and you all better hate nazis too

the reason its getting banned is because the law makers dont even meet any kids whove gotten it, the only thing they learn about transgender people is from transphobes, and documentaries about detransitioners

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.

tw: abuse. this one tweet was so fucking bad i had to put it in a place i can acctually show people

(response on a video of a mother hiting her child who was sillying around with the kickback of a cake spade being pulled back) this is a hallmark case of abuse. he isnt stopping the tantrums, hes learning the kids that they cant speak up against anything [by hurting them when they act sad], this is such a fucking toxic way to learn your kids not to do something. dont be surprised when they never tell you about anything, dont be surprised when your kids ends up sneaking out to be in clubs (and other pearl clutching places) because they cant properly communicate to you that they are stressed.

i know it seems like a lot over "just a glass of water", but to a child it will feel like anything they do will end in them getting punished, and that they are hated by their parents, and the parents would rather never talking to them

(tweet: https://x.com/4Mischief/status/1909599611389346179 sorry if the link doesnt work)

this one is to this guy: i hope every single time you try to talk about anything stressfull to anyone, you too will get water thrown at you, and be deemed as if you are having a tantrum.

i think everyone should punch jkr in her face

Hey y'all.

And have a very pleasant evening.

Sincerely, your allo ally. 💜

i wonder how long they'll push it

the terf arguement completely ignores intent, and instead arrests on gender. like first they'll start arresting mtf people, then ftm, then they will start arresting people who dont look feminine, then start arresting lesbians because they are in the bathroom with the ones they are attracted to, then gay people with the same logic -cut here to real quick say: UNITED WE STANT DIVEDED WE FALL- then women all together because they might be lesbian/trans [we cant know whats in their brains!!!], and then all immigrants because theyre "obviously evil tax payer stealers", and then black people all together because "they dont normally live here", and then people who arent high class because "the POORS dont know latin and dont know the words of god"

-second interruption to real quick say: UNITED WE STANDD DIVIDED WE FALL-

Now youve conquered everyone, the only last people standing are cis straight high-class white males, what now?

just realized the shreks are forming a heart in the middle

Now more than ever we need to make Tumblr unmarketable, do NOT invite the government into this space.

there is no difference between 400 billion and 401 billion, yet giving that billion out to employees will WILDLY improve their quality of life

i watched that "who is luigi mangione?" so-called documentary, and i just straight up couldnt make it through it, because even though they couldve matched ten deaths from UHC for every word of luigi, they didnt, instead focusing about how he didnt really like capitalism, and taking the most extreme quotes-of-his

when they finnaly brought up the ceo, they just said "he was an innovative guy"

5 minutes of his injury, 10 seconds of how they denied his pain medicine, 10 minutes of his friends going "i cant believe hes done this", 10 minutes of glazing brain thwompson, 20 minutes of "this guy was a brutal murderer who hated capitalism and loved communism"

to have a button that says "deny life" and one that says "lose five cents", and clicking the deny life button is to kill

where is luigi now i wonder? probably held in a "temporary" containment cell, not even letting him speak to a judge. hes propably dead to be honest.

Several documentaries publically treating Luigi Mangione as guilty before his trial even started got released over the past 2 months.

Here's the billion dollar companies behind them.

its always funny when people say "lgbtqia+ is based on sexuality" because like dude the only ones that even include sexuality (and are commonly used) is just LG and B, like three of them. And even then, asexuality IS about sex in-normativity, being about not having sex. Just like how the world was straight sex themed back in the day and people were homophobes, the world is about sex themed and people are acephobes, or even transphobes (because oh that isnt based on sexuality). Like lgbtqia+ is just a group of groups whove been hated due to something they cant control, and isnt hurting anyone.

the more I get back in my habit from 2018-ish of searching "asexual" on blogs before I make a habit of interacting with them frequently, the more I realize that a lot of people started to reblog way less aphobia circa 2018, but without literally any sign of their opinions on asexual people changing, or making any effort to include them.

and that's how we get the current tumblr climate. people doing a disservice to important stuff like sex positivity or kink at pride, by just regurgitating shit like "well sex is what makes us queer, you fucking prude." instead of, you know, actually talking about why sex positivity is important for a wide range of sexualities, or why kink at pride has a long historical context. or even bringing up the fact that policing/mocking people's relationship with sex just for being different than yours is just inherently bad in and of itself. the aphobia is still ingrained in this site, just subtler now.

if theres a group thats all one gender we should just call the group by that gender. that would be funny, i think