Trans youth in the US were seeking treatment decades before today’s political battles over access to health care.
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Jules Gill-Peterson, Trans historian based at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Histories of the Transgender Child joined Let's Go There on Audacy's Channel Q to share more.
“Trans kids, like trans people all ages, have been around long before there was any kind of medical kind of transition or medical diagnosis possible," Gill-Peterson said.
"In my research, I looked as far back as there was any kind of medical care associated with what we now think of as changing or transitioning gender or sex. That really goes back as far as the very beginning of the 20th century. That far back, we see young people making their way to clinics for various different reasons. But really, about as far back as 100 years ago there’s clear evidence of young people we would think of as trans.”
Gill-Peterson continued: “Part of the challenge of looking at medical history is that very few trans people have ever been able to successfully get access to medicine because it’s been organized against our interest.”
“Doctors and scientists have long been interested in studying trans people, or people who are born intersex, in order to learn more about human gender and sexuality, but not in order to take care of us.”
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