By Winona Rajamohan
Members of the LGBTQ community jumped into action on Sunday,
Oct. 21, when The New York Times released a leaked memo from the Trump administration, implying that the transgender community would be defined
out of existence.
“The Monday after hearing the news, there was just a point where I couldn’t work anymore,” activist and community co-director of Microsoft’s LGBT Employee Resource Group, Sera Fernando said.
The memo proposed that gender would be narrowly defined as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, The New York Times reported.
The decision would put the health protections of the transgender community at risk as it could eliminate federal protections for all gender identities under the Affordable Care Act.
According to The Commonwealth Fund, in 2016, the federal government extended anti-discriminatory rules under the act thus prohibiting healthcare providers and insurance companies that receive federal funding from discriminating against transgender people.
According to the director of the California LGBTQ Health and Human Services Network Amanda Wallner, the proposals in the leaked memo would provide leverage for healthcare providers to continue denying transgender patients, many who as of right now already have to fight these denials by going through an independent medical review process.
“We’re brought up in the ways of a heteronormative society, and doctors, just like most people, can inherit certain ideas of transphobia or homophobia,” The LGBTQ Youth Space drop-in center coordinator, Stanley Gaeta said.
California’s Department of Managed Healthcare released a Director’s Letter in 2013 that would allow transgender people to access the department’s Independent Medical Review process if a health plan denied service or treatment, removing the classification of transition-related care as a coverage exclusively ineligible for the review.
“It’s really scary, transgender folk in California and throughout the county were rightfully very nervous on what the memo might mean,” Wallner said. “But we have very strong state protection that would stand regardless of what the federal
government said.”
Fernando, who graduated from San Jose State University in 2008 with a degree in radio, television and film, organized Silicon Valley Pride’s first Trans and Friends Rally on Aug. 25 as well as the #WontBeErased rally in response to the
memo on Oct. 23.
“I’ve always wanted to be an activist and I’ve always wanted to share my story, as someone who identifies as intersectional,”
Fernando said. “Not only am I trans, I’m also queer, very queer, I identify as pansexual, Filipina, I don’t necessarily have any religious affiliation, I consider myself very middle class.”
Intersectionality is defined as a way of looking at one’s identity and its relationship with power, reflecting intersections of race, sex, economic class, gender identity, ability and more, according to The Washington Post.
As an employee at Microsoft, Fernando receives health benefits under the company’s transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage plan.
“For folks to be able to fit in with society, how they choose to present themselves is a very personal journey,” Fernando said. “For me Microsoft paid for it, privileged right? But for people who don’t work in tech, those work in the arts, for the government or work for themselves, access to this healthcare, they have to spend so much just to live as their authentic self and to me that’s not fair.”
Prior to the memo, the House of Representatives passed the American Healthcare Act on May 4, a plan that would undermine the Medi-Cal expansion and Covered California, which expands healthcare to more than 6 million Californians.
According the California LGBTQ Health and Human Services Network, the proposal threatens to stop the progress in improving LGBTQ health disparities achieved with the Affordable Care Act, which allowed the LGBTQ community to have coverage for cancer screenings, HIV and STI testing, substance use treatment and other preventive care.
Besides economic barriers, The Commonwealth Fund reports that only
40 percent of trans people report disclosing their gender identity to their medical providers. Out of that number, half of them reported on their providers having a lack of training on transgender healthcare needs.
“From the voices that I’ve heard, a lot of the time transgender folk are educating their healthcare providers,” Gaeta said.
“In healthcare environments that’s one of the main things that are interesting to see because you go to them to seek services about health, seeking professionals.”
The California LGBTQ Health and Human Services Network, though it provides a guarantee for healthcare in the state to protect the transgender community from discrimination, finds challenges in the ability for transgender folk to find doctors, therapists or surgeons who are familiar with their needs.
“It’s a big problem to tackle, there are a number of medical schools that are now adding courses on LGBTQ health and some of them have that as a requirement for graduation,” Wallner said. “But it takes a long time to realize that change in
the workforce.”
Santa Clara County announced in March that it will be opening up its first transgender health clinic inside the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center located in downtown San Jose.
The clinic is expected to open this fall with no set date as of yet as the county is still hiring and training people to work at the facility, San Jose Inside reported.
The facility is a step forward for the city of San Jose who Fernando said still has a lot of room for opportunity to increase accessibility for transgender folk.
“I have to go as far as San Francisco to get my blood work done, to see my doctor for anything that’s wrong with me in terms of gender health,”
Fernando said.
Fernando has dedicated herself to being a resource for the transgender community to reach out to when they want to share their stories and get more people to become stronger allies to the transgender and nonbinary communities.
“Any trans person’s first form of activism is just living and being out there and being public,” Fernando said.
