Happy Monday.
A little over an hour's drive from me (90+ minutes on the bus) sits COESIDA-CAPASITS, Oaxaca’s full-service sexual health clinic, and this week I finally made the trip for a first appointment. I came home with PrEP, DoxyPEP, and free Hep B and HPV vaccines — but what's stayed with me is how unremarkable the queer competence felt, so much so that I barely thought about it. My being trans was just another fact about me.
The moment I introduced myself as transmasc, they logged my sex as male, no argument, though every ID I carry still reads female. They asked whether I had a preferred name — this is a clinic that calls patients by number, not name, for privacy, and they asked anyway.
It’s weird being a Canadian in a country that takes a very different approach to public healthcare. Once I walked out of a doctor’s office without paying and the receptionist unfortunate enough to be there at the same time as me had to chase after me and remind me I had to pay someone.
Today I walked out proud to be part of a public health system built for LGBTQ+ people, and I don't take that feeling for granted — especially not reading how much of the news below is about stripping it from others. (I also walked out late; onboarding took most of my day, which is why this newsletter is reaching you now and as is.)
I'm still reporting my piece for Playboy on the worn-out myth that testosterone breeds aggression, and the Provider Needs survey is still open too: a few minutes shapes the Professional-tier resources I'm building, and it comes with a heavily discounted trial.
And finally, if you're in Oaxaca, tomorrow I'm at the Oaxaca Lending Library for an open discussion on gender, performativity, and the "born this way" narrative — come say hi!
Now, the news.
The Justice Department's push to investigate transgender medicine cleared a major hurdle this week: a divided Ninth Circuit let the DOJ resume its probe of the telehealth provider QueerDoc and sent the case back to the district court that had quashed it, reopening the door to subpoenas for patient records. In response to these attacks, New Jersey Gov. Sherrill signed a shield law protecting reproductive and gender-affirming care, and the providers who deliver it, from out-of-state investigations.
A new HHS report attacking gender-affirming care is riddled with false claims and was co-written by an Ohio hate group the Human Rights Campaign condemned as a sham. Trump, for his part, falsely told the public that hospitals are performing "reverse surgery" on trans patients, apparently at his order. Across the US, intersex children are losing access to hormone therapy they also depend on, collateral damage as hospitals halt care to dodge federal defunding and judicial retaliation.
At the state level, Ohio's BMV abruptly added new hurdles to changing the sex marker on licenses and IDs. In Kansas, Democratic appointee Adam Proffitt has personally reserved the power to investigate trans people in public restrooms. And in Missouri, Republicans are trying to repeal abortion rights by leaning on anti-trans disinformation. In Texas, the state has quietly begun forcibly detransitioning trans prisoners by cutting off their hormones.
In party news, a trans activist confronted a Democratic attorney general over shuttered clinics, warning that they're "dropping like flies." And the Log Cabin Republicans formally stripped transgender rights from the group's mission, pulling the ladder up behind their own members in what they cast as a return to "moral clarity."
International
In Senegal, authorities sent 71 people to trial after mass arrests under a harsh new anti-LGBTQ+ law, part of a criminalization wave with grave consequences for HIV prevention and care access.
Boycott the New York Times — Trans News Network lays out the case for pulling your subscription over the paper's trans coverage, and why that kind of pressure is leverage worth using right now.
And don’t forget to support queer trans media in its place!
Advocacy While Incarcerated: The Indomitable Spirit of Varia Merritt — Assigned Media — The founder of Be the Change, an LGBTQ+ community inside a Tennessee prison, on building purpose that confinement can't touch.
Is Trans Loneliness Causing an Epidemic of AI Use in Our Community? — Assigned Media — What the turn toward AI chatbots for emotional support reveals about isolation and unmet mental-health needs.
What Are Testosterone Vocal Fold Injections — And How Do They Work? — them. — A clear explainer on an emerging voice-masculinization option for transmasculine people, and how it actually works.
Why MISTR, a Major PrEP Telehealth Platform, Now Offers ED Treatments — them. — The PrEP and STI telehealth platform expands into erectile-dysfunction care, a bet on a broader queer sexual-health market.
The Trump Administration's LGBTQ Brain Drain: What You Need to Know — Uncloseted Media — Six federal workers on being forced out, and what the government loses when it purges its queer expertise.
Gay Hookup Culture and the Internet: A History from 1994 Until Now — Uncloseted Media — Three decades of how the internet reshaped gay hookup and dating culture, sexual-health throughlines and all.
Conversion Therapy Is Evolving. Here's How the Religious Right Is Reaching Modern Youth. — LGBTQ Nation — Inside the rebranded tactics the religious right now uses to reach a new generation of LGBTQ+ youth.
Attacks on LGBTQ+ Health Are a Threat to All — The Lancet — A Lancet editorial argues the global rollback of LGBTQ+ rights is a threat to everyone, since movements that seize control of queer people's bodies and privacy come for all of us.
Paid subscribers get…
access to the searchable research database
original reporting on the queer trans health
library of downloadable guides, workbooks, and tools
interviews with LGBTQ+ researchers, practitioners, and change-makers
Not yet a paid member? Upgrade to check out the LGBTQ+ health research published last week in our new searchable research database!
WPATH's biggest gathering is happening in Mexico this year, and I intend to be in the room reporting it back to you. They had 8 times as many applicants as scholarships, so this one's on us — chip in to get me in the room with the people setting the standards of care.
See you next week!
BJ Ferguson
Founder, Well Beings News
PS. If you were sent this email by a friend, sign up here!