The Medical University of South Carolina initially said it wouldn’t be affected by a law banning use of state funds for treatment “furthering the gender transition” of children under 16. Months later, it cut off that care to all trans minors.

The Medical University of South Carolina initially said it wouldn’t be affected by a law banning use of state funds for treatment “furthering the gender transition” of children under 16. Months later, it cut off that care to all trans minors.

One Saturday morning in September 2022, Terrence Steyer, the dean of the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, placed an urgent call to a student. Just a year prior, the medical student, Thomas Agostini, had won first place at a university-sponsored event for his graduate research on transgender pediatric patients. He also had been featured in a video on MUSC’s website highlighting resources that support the LGBTQ+ community.

Now, Agostini and his once-lauded study had set off a political firestorm. Conservative activists seized on one line in particular in the study’s summary — a parenthetical noting the youngest transgender patient to visit MUSC’s pediatric endocrinology clinic was 4 years old — and inaccurately claimed that children that young were prescribed hormones as part of a gender transition. Elon Musk amplified the false claim, tweeting, “Is it really true that four-year-olds are receiving hormone treatment?” That led federal and state lawmakers to frantically ask top MUSC leaders whether the public hospital was in fact helping young children medically transition. The hospital was not; its pediatric transgender patients did not receive hormone therapy before puberty, nor does it offer surgical options to minors.

  • Tywèle [she|her]
    4•1 year ago

    Nobody is forcing trans people to go through medical transition. But medical transition is what helps them relieve their mental anguish.

    Being transgender is not a mental illness.

    • @nugmeister64
      -4•1 year ago

      if destroying the physical and chemical makeup of one’s body is necessary to make them feel “right” in it, then it’s definitely not a non-issue either, the fact that someone feels that way in the first place goes against their genetic and chemical makeup, as well as their physical formations resulting from that makeup, which gives you the undeniable truth of what you “actually” are, rather than any thoughts or emotions one might have.

      • ObliviousEnlightenment
        4•1 year ago

        The emotions are entirely and completely immovable, the body is not; this treatment is the best of a shit situation. And even if we could transplant our brains into different bodies entirely, you’d just start calling us Frankensteins Monster

        • @nugmeister64
          1•1 year ago

          I strongly disagree. Our minds are the most malleable part of ourselves and should be the focus of any fixes the medical field innovates toward. The fact that you feel they are so immovable is proof that the medical field is failing to truly fix what plagues so many people with those feelings. If the proper treatment target had been identified from the beginning, you wouldn’t be suffering in the first place.

          • @zazo
            1•1 year ago

            Why do you think people actively choose to adapt their bodies to better fit the idea of themselves if they could just “change their minds”? And do you really think most haven’t tried that first?

            This to me feels very much like shaming a depressed person for taking antidepressants by telling them “the medical field has failed you by giving you pills, have you considered just being happy?”

            • @nugmeister64
              1•1 year ago

              I’m very much not shaming anyone, I’m trying to tell you that the “treatment” you’re receiving is actively detrimental to your body and only exists because the medical field doesn’t care enough about you or is too scared to give you a real fix. I understand that you might find any sort of criticism as an attack against you, and I apologize for it, but the truth is that you should be demanding more from the system that’s using you without you realizing it.

              • @zazo
                1•1 year ago

                I do appreciate your concern but what do you think is the “real fix”?

        • @nugmeister64
          0•1 year ago

          This is an attempt to normalize an issue people are suffering from. This is something that should be addressed and fixed, rather than left for the victim to deal with as if it’s something acceptable to be forced to suffer in the era we live in, with the medical innovations we (should) have.