The m word
After a bit of exploration it looks to me as if the serious news outlets are cautious about calling gender magic “medical treatment.” NPR may be an outlier in calling it that.
The Boston Globe came the closest in the selection I was offered:
Under federal pressure, Fenway Health ends gender-affirming medical care for trans patients under 19
But of course “affirming” that a patient is the gender/sex she/he is not is not medical care. The Globe should stand with NPR in the corner.
But it’s good to see that not all news outlets make that mistake, at least not every single time.
I see the same thing you do in the press. They like the phrase “ending medical care for trans patients,” and not the phrase “ending gender-affirming medical care for patients” (let alone “ending gender transition services for patients”).
It makes NPR almost unlistenable, because half the time I’m shouting “LIAR!” at the radio. Nobody is now, nor has anybody ever, proposed to end medical care for people who identify as trans. If they break their arm, it gets set like anybody else’s arm, if they have heart problems they see a cardiologist like anybody else.
It’s of a type with “preventing trans children from playing sports.” Nobody is, nor has anybody ever, prevented children who identify as trans from playing sports – people are only saying they should play those sports with others of their actual sex.
Fenway Health is a darling for some, but it gets absolutely ratioed in the comments, including by its own patients. It used to provide health care for gay and lesbian people back in the day. It was critical in developing response and treatment to AIDS. It grew massively as the biggest center for lesbian and gay health in the country. And now… it’s become a place where kids who would likely grow up gay get chemically castrated. It’s great that the HHS shut this down. It can still provide actual medical care (even to transgender people), just not transition quackery.
I stopped listening to NPR several years ago because I just got too sick of the smarmy sleepy soothing folksy way they’d decided to talk to us. It wasn’t even the trans thing, it was the creepy warmth.
@ Ophelia Benson #2
And I stopped following “Freethought” Blogs for much the same reason.
Heh. But at least it was written. NPR=radio and the creepy sanctimonious voices drove me nuts. House style was a weird nursery school slowed-down folksy drawl that made me want to puke.