- Transition-related health care for transgender people, including youth, is supported by every major medical association and leading health authority. Efforts to ban and criminalize this care are not based in medical nor scientific expertise, and frequently employ intentional misinformation about what health care for trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people may encompass.
- Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE) notes that: “For adolescents, any medical transition care such as hormone therapy or puberty blockers are only prescribed based on an individual young person’s needs. Any surgical care for teenagers under 18 is rare and individualized.” Research shows access to puberty blockers during adolescence is associated with a significant decrease in suicidal ideation. Doctors have used these medications safely for decades for cisgender children who experience precocious puberty.
- Opponents of transgender rights, including anti-equality politicians and right-wing media figures, often use inflammatory mischaracterizations of transgender health care to baselessly raise fear and dehumanize transgender people. It is increasingly common to see these figures intentionally employing false, incendiary terms such as: “mutilation,” “castration,” and “sterilization.” A February 2025 Poynter Fact Check notes that these are “claims that clash with leading medical research and practice.”
- Additional false terms and conspiracy theories include baselessly asserting that being transgender is an ideology (“transgenderism,” “gender ideology”) or contagious (“Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” or “ROGD”) which has never been proven to be happening or accurate, or the result of indoctrination (“transing,” “groomer”- made up terms that weaponize and undermine understanding of actual child abuse).
- The media should not report or repeat these intentionally false framings of transgender health care and transgender people. If inflammatory rhetoric is being employed by newsmakers, journalists should explain that the use of these terms is not accurate, has no scientific basis, are used to dehumanize LGBTQ people by opponents of LGBTQ equality, and are examples of intentional misinformation about evidence-based health care that is supported by every major medical association (30+ statements here).
- When spokespeople make misleading claims about transgender health care, journalists should challenge them to provide evidence to back up their claims, or not report them at all. Include fact checks in reporting, and interview trans and nonbinary people and include them in coverage regarding trans healthcare.
- Explaining the impact of malicious mischaracterizations of transgender healthcare, the 2024 GLAAD Social Media Safety Index notes that: “The sensationalized word choice in these tropes is designed to elicit a strong reaction from parents and guardians of young kids — and also potentially inspires violence against healthcare providers who are characterized as perpetrating this perceived harm.”
- GLAAD’s ALERT Desk has tracked nearly 200 anti-LGBTQ incidents (196) since June 2022 which specifically target health care providers and their patients. These include 85 protests, 29 hateful propaganda campaigns, and six bomb threats.
- After one such attack, Dr. Izzy Lowell told GLAAD: “Our office was burnt to the ground by arsonists in late 2023, followed by the Texas attorney general’s unlawful attempt to access our patient data. We refused to comply, and will not ever disclose HIPAA-protected data. We at QueerMed will never stop providing affirming medical care for transgender and nonbinary people, despite physical attacks and unfounded government threats.”
Read more here – GLAAD’s Fact Sheet: Evidence-based Health Care for Transgender People and Youth