The Cleveland Clinic joins Texas Children’s Hospital in agreeing to fully funding a “Detransition Clinic“ as a settlement from a federal investigation. Just a few weeks ago, Texas Children’s Hospital made headlines for agreeing to terminating 5 doctors who provided gender affirming care, providing free “detransition care“ for 5 years, and paying a $10 million settlement to avoid ongoing litigation with the federal government. Last week, the Department of Justice announced the second settlement of it’s kind.

“The Cleveland Clinic Foundation (“Cleveland Clinic”) has entered into agreements with the Department and the Ohio Attorney General that include a decades-long commitment to not perform or offer sex-rejecting procedures—which includes the administration of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones—for minors.”

There is so much to unpack with their press release itself, including the rebranding of “sex-rejecting procedures“ for which they call gender affirming care a euphemism. But The Cleveland Clinic agreed to a 20 year ban on gender affirming care for minors. Meaning no matter what happens next politically, even if the ban that already exists in Ohio is lifted, their clinic will not provide gender affirming care. Texas Children’s Hospital agreed to this ban permanently

.

The Irony in Their Plan

While that is a big shift and the first of it’s kind we’ve seen, I also can’t help but realize the irony in these agreements. If there is “a decades-long commitment to not perform or offer sex-rejecting procedures,” does that mean no child will have access to this care? Because things like puberty blockers and HRT are not exclusively prescribed for transgender patients. They are also for intersex patients, for young people who begin puberty prematurely, and several other reasons. Would it be considered “sex-rejecting“ to make any medical intervention to how patient’s body is naturally developing? How far does this reach?

Furthermore, detransition care IS gender affirming care. That’s why they are trying to rebrand gender affirming to “sex-rejecting.“ But if we actually want to provide detransition care, which every doctor who provides gender affirming care should be able to do, why are we firing doctors who specialized in that care? They are the experts in endocrinology and the effects of HRT. They are the people with the experience and knowledge to make these decisions. Not the lawyers and politicians who haven’t studied human biology past their undergrad GenEd requirements.

The rates of detransition are so astronomically low, these “detransition clinics“ are beyond a waste of resources and money. But this isn’t about logic. This is about fear mongering. This is about power. This is about making transition seem scary and risky and bad. This is about making access to gender affirming care dangerous and difficult. This is about making detransition a more viable option than transition. This is about making our erasure louder than our survival. This is about making the fear of us louder than the celebration of us. This is about making their politics louder than our legacies. This is the next phase of the genocide trans people have been experiencing in this country.

People have been transitioning in a myriad of ways for much longer than we’ve been debating this in politics. We will continue to transition and survive and thrive no matter what these politicians have to say. They hide their hate and their vitriol behind “protecting women and children,” and then do absolutely nothing that actually benefits either of those groups. When the people in power are known for harming women and children, we should be very critical of what they think will “protect women and children.“ But if they get you angry enough at trans people, you won’t think too hard about all of the harm they have done and continue to do.

THAT’s the point of all of this. And I need people to stop falling for it.

Content Roundup

To beat the algorithm, The Maybe List ends each newsletter with round up of long-form content from the last week across Substack, YouTube, and Patreon.

Dear Baby Maybe: The Teacher I Never Reported

LGBT ABCs: Bisexual

GENDER & Other Lies You’ve Been Living:

Makeup For Lost Time: What Happened to Rainbow Capitalism?

First Watch: Dallas Buyers Club

Delaney Hall was one of the first ICE detention centers to open under Trump’s second term. Now the state of New Jersey is suing The GEO Group that operates the facility after detainees began a hunger and labor strike. Learning about this situation as we approach Juneteenth, I am reminded that slavery was never abolished, just reformed.

The 13th amendment of the United States Constitution abolished slavery, right? But too many people don’t realize there’s an exception to the rule. Literally. The word “except“ is in the text.

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

That means as long as someone is convicted of a crime, their punishment can include slave labor. And that’s how we get the Prison Industrial Complex. A country that was built on slavery to uphold capitalism turns to … slavery .. to uphold capitalism.

Criminalization is profitable in this country. The more people are convicted of crimes, the more slave labor we get. That’s already a huge problem, one that has been targeting Black and Brown communities for decades. But when we have facilities like Delaney Hall full of detainees that have not been convicted, the problem multiplies. They’re no longer playing by the supposed rules that were already written in their favor. Profit and capital gain make the decisions as the working class deals with the consequences.

The reason politicians are so focused on making sure the average American hates immigrants is because the sooner we dehumanize them, the more they can torture them. This is true for all criminalization in this country. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that the abuse and neglect that runs rampant in the Prison Industrial Complex is deserved. We’ve been taught to believe that these people are “bad,” and then we don’t care about how they are treated. They deserve what they have coming to them. That slippery slope of a thought pattern is even quicker when paired with racism and bigotry. Once we think of somebody as less deserving, we think they deserve to be treated as less. We’ve seen this for decades with Black people in this country. We’ve seen it with all types of Brown communities. Now we’re even seeing it with trans communities. When we associate an identity with crime or wrongdoing, we are less likely to care about what happens to those people.

I keep using the word “we” here because I was raised in this society and I had to unlearn a lot of what I’m talking about. And I hope you have too. Or I hope this helps you along that journey.

What we’re seeing at Delaney Hall is not new. It’s not uncommon.

It’s not okay either.

A Note To The Reader…

This is the first edition of [this version of] The Maybe List.

I’m tired of algorithms and “viral” and the weird world of social media. I’m still out there, I need to be for my career, but I want MORE. I want something different. What I’m longing for most of all is community. It’s nuance. It’s Discourse. It’s This.

I’ve sent out newsletters sporadically over the last decade, usually when I have something to promote or invite you to. But I’m going to try doing this more frequently with some thoughts and commentary on the world. They might be current events or things I’ve been thinking about recently. My dream would be to share resources and help motivate people to get involved in movements they care about. But I’m going to start small and see what this might grow into.

Thank you for being here and Believing in Maybe!

Content Roundup

To beat the algorithm, The Maybe List includes a content round up of BelieveInMaybe long-form content from the last week across Substack, YouTube, and Patreon.