Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

by Sarah McBride

Through our work, Andy and I were keenly aware of the discrimination and mistreatment that transgender people often face in medical settings. In one survey, 70 percent of transgender people reported experiencing some form of discrimination in a health-care setting, including health-care professionals refusing to touch patients. Not every health professional knew we were trans, but some figured it out, and others needed to be told. We were also cognizant of Johns Hopkins’s deeply troubled history with trans people. Once a leader on gender-affirming treatment, in the 1970s and ’80s the psychiatric department had come under the control of a right-wing extremist, Dr. Paul McHugh, who, while having no expertise in gender or sexuality research, harbored strong negative feelings toward LGBTQ, and particularly trans, identities. He would not only close down Hopkins’s work on transition-related care, he would also go out of his way to advocate against the rights and dignity of trans people, calling us “caricatures” and “mad.”