Institutional Capitulation
I woke up, grabbed my phone, and opened Bluesky, as I often do. I'm not very good at ignoring the horrors despite fleeing the country to get away from them.
I see the headline: "Vanderbilt Will Stop Providing Gender-Affirming Surgeries to Trans Adults" and my stomach drops; I start to dissociate.
I had two surgeries there. My wife had two surgeries there. Countless friends have had surgery there. Now that's just gone?
Vanderbilt University Medical Center was where I experienced some of the best healthcare I've ever had – their VIVID Health program for Queer folks helped me find an excellent primary care physician and psychiatrist. When I did a full-time mental health program there, the staff were excellent and clearly cared about our well-being. Accidental misgenderings happened, of course, but there was never a sense of not belonging.
It's why I'm so disappointed to see this decision, especially with such a cop-out excuse as "operational limitations." The actual healthcare professionals on the ground doing day-to-day work do care about their patients, and I guarantee the surgeons who've been doing this work for ages (Dr. Kassis, you're an angel) want to continue, and will likely do so at other hospitals.
Unfortunately, this is almost certainly the beginning of a trend where public and university hospitals drop transgender surgery (I am not a fan of the term "gender-affirming") and drive these procedures to private clinics that are more expensive, covered by fewer insurers, and significantly less accessible for people on government-provided healthcare.
I wish they were at least honest that they were capitulating to fascists.