Transgender and nonbinary people have long faced barriers to health care, but today’s efforts to eliminate access to this medically necessary care are unprecedented. Skeptics claim gender-affirming care for trans people is experimental and dangerous—but that is false. Gender-affirming care for trans people is based on 40 years of clinical research, with best practices regulated by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). WPATH requires “extensive exploration of psychological, family, and social issues” before considering physical interventions for young people, which means that no reputable provider is performing surgeries on or providing “experimental” medication to minors. 

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Sunnivie Brydum is the managing editor at YES! An award-winning investigative journalist with a background covering LGBTQ equality, Sunnivie previously led digital coverage at The Advocate, Free Speech TV, and Out Front Colorado. Their writing has appeared in Vox, Religion Dispatches, them., and elsewhere. She has a degree in magazine journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and is a co-founder of Historias No Contadas, an annual symposium in Medellín, Colombia, that amplifies the stories of LGBTQ people in Latin America. They are based in Seattle, speak English and Spanish, and are a member of NLGJA, SPJ, and ONA.

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Jacob Anderson-Minshall is a transgender journalist, editor, and co-author of the memoir Queerly Beloved: A Love Story Across Genders.

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