+
upworthy
More

Trans people react to the opening of a new clinic for trans kids and teens.

Life-saving and life-changing health care.

A new clinic geared toward St. Louis transgender teens hopes to be a sort of one-stop shop for supporting trans youth.

After opening the first week of August, St. Louis' Transgender Center of Excellence is already booked through mid-September. It's one location complete with mental health, hormones, and other essential services, and it's getting rave reviews from patients already.

"Having support and acceptance is extremely important for this patient population," Dr. Christopher Lewis, physician and founder of the clinic, told WGN News. "Transgender patients already deal with harassment and discrimination within the medical community and that is a barrier to them accessing care."


A supportive medical environment is a big win for trans kids — take it from others, like myself, who wish those resources existed when we were growing up.

On Twitter, I reached out to my trans followers to find out what this type of clinic would have meant to them when they were younger. A few common themes emerged.

For many, it would have meant help and support for themselves and their parents.

Others remarked on how a supportive environment would have encouraged them to stop hiding, sidestepping some traumatic early-life experiences.

It would have provided a sense of identity for those who felt alone and isolated, who never saw accurate reflections of themselves in the media.

Then, the emails started rolling in. "If I'd had the words, if I'd known the concepts, if I had a supportive and professional environment to turn to. I would have been able to live without a dysphoria that came close to killing me, repeatedly," writes Alvhild Sand, a trans woman from Norway, about what a difference a resource like this would have made for her.

"It would have been fantastic if such a place had existed," writes Gwyn Ciesla, another trans woman, who grew up in a "highly Catholic town in the 1980s" where she was "not exposed to LGBTQ ideas or openly LGBTQ people."

"The only tools available were in the context of education, religion, and mental health, and were ineffective because they were incomplete," Ciesla explains. "If I had known then what I know now, and a clinic like this had been available, it would have been life-changing."

"Given what I did and didn't know at the time, I might not have been able to get to the point where I could take advantage of the clinic's services," Ciesla admits, expressing hope that "the presence of the clinic might have at least increased the information available to me and helped me to understand and begin to accept myself years earlier."

"I only survived my youth by a narrow margin, and I think this clinic might have widened that margin a lot. I hope this clinic can do that for youth now and in the future."

The new clinic in St. Louis joins a handful of other trans-specific children's medical programs across the country.

One of the most notable is the gender development services at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. The sad fact is that even though the Affordable Care Act effectively banned discriminating against people on the basis of their gender identity, many trans people continue to face either discrimination or confusion from their health care providers.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality's 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 33% of trans people who saw a health care provider in the previous year had at least one negative experience, were denied care, or had to actually teach their provider about trans patients. In other words, there's a lot of work to be done, and taking steps to ensure trans people have competent, knowledgeable medical care is a work in progress.

The new clinic in St. Louis is a big step in the right direction, providing care and benefits for years to come.

Family

Mom calls out teacher who gave her son a 'zero' grade for not providing class with supplies

Her viral video sparked a debate as to whether or not providing school supplies should be mandatory for parents.

@shanittanicole/TikTok

A zero grade for not providing school supplies?

The debate as to whether or not parents should supply classroom supplies is not new. But as prices continue to rise, parents are growing more baffled as to how they can be expected by teachers to provide all the various glue sticks, colored pencils, rulers and other various items the incoming students might need.

What’s even more perplexing, however, is penalizing the children of parents who won’t (or can’t) provide them.

This was the case for Shanitta Nicole, who discovered her son received a zero grade in his new school for not bringing school supplies for the entire classroom.
Keep ReadingShow less
via Pexels

Millennials are now old enough to seriously reflect on life.

It seems like only yesterday a millennial was a college kid that baby boomers chided for being entitled and Gen Xers thought were way too sincere and needed to learn how to take a joke. Today, the oldest millennials, those born around 1980, have hit their 40s and have lived long enough to have some serious regrets.

They also have enough experience to take some pride in decisions that, in hindsight, were the right moves.

The good news is that at 40 there is still plenty of time to learn from our successes and failures to set ourselves up for a great second half of life. These lessons are also valuable to the Gen Zers coming up who can avoid the pitfalls of the older generation.

A Reddit user who has since deleted their profile asked millennials nearing 40 “what were your biggest mistakes at this point in life?” and they received more than 2,200 responses. The biggest regrets these millennials have are being flippant about their health and not saving enough money when they were younger.

Keep ReadingShow less


Time travel back to 1905.

Back in 1905, a book called "The Apples of New York" was published by the New York State Department of Agriculture. It featured hundreds of apple varieties of all shapes, colors, and sizes, including Thomas Jefferson's personal favorite, the Esopus Spitzenburg.






Keep ReadingShow less
via Wikimedia Commons and Jerry Woody/Wikimedia Commons

Two Victoria gentleman and a shilling from 1894.

If you had a time machine and woke up in Victorian-era London (1837-1901), you would have difficulty breathing because of the air quality. You'd also walk around plugging your nose because of the poor sanitation and probably be very confused when purchasing anything because of the monetary system.

J. Draper, a London historian and tour guide, explained why money was so different in the Victorian era in a popular YouTube video with nearly 300,000 views. “Let me try and explain how pounds, shillings and pence worked,” J Draper opens her video.

Keep ReadingShow less

Man hears stepdaughter call him "Dad" for the first time.

Being a parent is often a thankless job, and being a stepparent is usually even more thankless. But most parents show up and do their best to make sure their kids have what they need and feel loved. So when our kids do or say something to show appreciation, it melts our hearts—but nothing melts it faster than a stepchild calling their bonus parent "Mom" or "Dad" for the first time.

A creator named Shane posted a clip from a longer video showing his reaction to hearing his stepdaughter call him "Dad" for the first time. The full video is about three years old, but when it was reposted as a clip recently, it pulled on everyone's heartstrings.

Shane and his wife, Liana, run the social media pages Shane and Liana where they post silly videos pranking each other. But this video wasn't a prank. His stepdaughter, London, wanted to surprise him after wanting to call him "Dad" for a long time.

Keep ReadingShow less

Dog refuses to walk with Mom, but her legs work with Grandma.

What gives dogs the right to have such big and hilarious personalities? It seems like these dogs have found a way to make their humans laugh while also annoying them until they're ready to come apart. It's truly a skill that only dogs and toddlers seem to possess in great quantities.

Zoe is a pit bull with a bombastic side-eye that makes it clear that she only tolerates her mother, Raven, but adores her grandmother, Yonika. There is no confusion about who her favorite person is, and Zoe's grandmother only seems to encourage the behavior. The two of them are the best of friends, and Mom...well, she's the third wheel.

Sure, Zoe likes her mom a little—she does feed her, after all—but the verdict is still being determined if love can be claimed. Raven can't even convince the sassy pittie to go on a walk with her.

Keep ReadingShow less