Some parents were angry at that explanation.
“That doesn’t explain much of what they’ve done,” said a mother of a transgender teen in Dallas, who requested that only her first name, Holly, be used to protect her family’s privacy. Holly’s son had been receiving counseling and testosterone treatments from the clinic since 2018, she said, and she hopes he will continue to be seen by his existing caregivers at the Children’s Medical Center.
“He has been seen. We’ll see if it stays that way,” she said. “I’m afraid it won’t happen.”
Andy Hackett, a 19-year-old college student who attended Genecis three years ago, said the clinic’s knowledgeable caregivers not only gave him testosterone treatments and emotional support, but also helped reassure his parents, who were concerned about the drugs. .
Limiting medical support to transadolescents won’t make their needs go away, he said. “The mindset almost feels like if you take the resources away, kids are no longer queer,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any more trans children.”
The shutdown of Genecis heralded a wave of changes in transgender care for adolescents in Texas. Last week, in response to the attorney general’s determination that hormone therapies for transgender adolescents could constitute child abuse, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, a private, not-for-profit facility, stopped providing the treatments.
And in recent weeks, the UT board has also tried to remove transgender health from the curriculum of its medical faculty.
In February, university leaders asked the instructors of a two-week elective course on transgender health to remove all mentions of the words “transgender” or “gender dysphoria” from the syllabus and course description, according to emails reviewed by The Times. The class title has been changed from “Adolescent and Young Adult Transgender Care” nasty “Multidisciplinary care for diverse young people.”
Then last week, following the governor’s order to investigate transgender medical care for adolescents as child abuse, the university decided to stop offering the medical school elective altogether, according to two class members. The course was reinstated on Monday, after inquiries from The Times, and returned to its original title.