Editor’s warning: The following article contains disturbing and disgusting content.
As the transgender movement pushes the transformation of society, very few fields have been left untouched. The medical field, however, has faced the greatest number of challenges. Trans activists are demanding accommodation far beyond “transition” – or “gender affirmation surgery,” as they prefer it. Language is as important to trans activists as treatments. Verbal recognition of their chosen identities is the social affirmation they crave, which is why we’ve seen the media, politicians, academics, and celebrities obediently fall into line and people’s “preferred pronouns” pop up on social media like mushrooms after rain.
As such, Brooklyn-based freelance writer James Factora, who goes by the pronouns “they/them” (and thus presumably identifies as “non-binary”) and has contributed to publications such as VICE and Teen Vogue, has written “A Guide to Primary Care for Transgender Patients” for a publication called The Paper Gown. The Paper Gown is produced by ZocDoc, which is an online doctor appointment scheduling service.
Trans patients, Factora writes, are likely to face discrimination and thus need to “establish relationships with trans-affirming doctors” who can go beyond simply prescribing hormones and ushering the patient along on the path to transition.
As you might have guessed, “trans-affirming doctors” are doctors who know “the vocabulary to properly discuss their gender identity.” As the trans culture wars increasingly play out on the battlefield of language, how one speaks is of the essence. Factora, unsurprisingly, recommends Planned Parenthood, which has become America’s second-largest supplier of hormones to people struggling with their gender identity.
There have been many issues in the past several years where someone’s sex makes a real difference to the care they are provided, as there are distinct differences between male and female bodies – including a tragic incident in which a baby died because a pregnant woman presenting as male was misdiagnosed as an obese man. But Factora notes that while someone’s “assigned sex at birth” can be “relevant to…primary care needs,” approaching this issue is a difficult one.
