Our guest Jessica, who was elected to her local school board in 2020, has strong feelings about gender-affirming care for kids—and not just because she had to travel over 300 miles to find the care her trans-masculine child needed.

Her research, which dates back to the mid-90s, shows that gender-affirming care improves the mental health of the estimated 300,000 transgender and nonbinary teenagers, who otherwise would have greater risk for depression, substance abuse, and suicide.

She offers some emotional and political reasons why her ideological opposites argue against this care, how she finds compassion for those with (mostly) good intentions, and the optimistic patterns that help her believe this debate won’t be “a miasma of discomfort and anger and fear" forever.

Suggested reading:

* Supporting Transgender Autistic Youth and Adults: A Guide for Professionals and Families by Finn V. Gratton, LMFT, LPCC

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