A poem for TDoR

I wrote this poem early this year, as I was reflecting and processing on the rushed and incredibly inappropriate public consultation process the Government engaged in about transgender childrens' right to access healthcare.

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. Yesterday, the Government announced a ban on new prescriptions of puberty blockers specifically for transgender children until 2031 at least, condemning a generation of trans tamariki.

Today, I'm posting this poem to recognise the grief and wrath of our communities. Today, we're meeting with lawyers.

You can read PATHA's statement at patha.nz/news

We all get the meeting invite with 48 hours notice. It reads:

“Dear Jennifer Shields

The Ministry of Health would like to invite Qtopia and Rainbow Support Collective to a consultation session on safeguarding prescribing of puberty blockers in gender-affirming care. As you may be aware, the government has recently announced that it has directed the Ministry of Health to consider safeguarding options, including the potential to regulate the prescribing of these medicines.

We are inviting you to join a meeting with other groups that work with Rainbow communities. At the meeting we will provide some context for this work and seek to understand how any regulation might affect you and the communities that you represent. There will be opportunities for you to ask questions and share your views in the meeting, and you are also welcome to share any further thoughts in writing following the session.

This meeting will be followed by an invitation to two community-focused consultation sessions that you can share more widely with your networks. Information on those sessions will be shared shortly.

It would be appreciated if you would confirm who from your organisation will attend so we can follow up with an invitation.

Ngā mihi,

Puberty blocker consultation team on behalf of Dr Joe Bourne”

They are not prepared for us. I don't think they know they've invited 25 fucked off queers to a meeting about taking away our rights. They have slides. They don't make it a slide in. The public servants following orders don't stand a chance. What were they thinking, inviting all our organisations one hui?

If you were charitable, you might think they wanted this resistance. If you were on that teams call - saw their shocked faces as they realised they were not in control - you would think again.

We are relentless. No one fights harder than a parent for their child, except maybe queers and transsexuals determined to give their rangatahi a better life than the one we had.

The machine may press on, but it's people carrying out these orders. They are as human as we are. They experience guilt. They experience doubt. We will make then feel it. We will not make it easy for them.

We ask them why they, personally, are doing this. They say they've been told to by the government.

We ask them why they are not examining the use of these medications in cisgender children. The Chief Medical Officer, Joe Bourne, tells us that actually, in cis kids, puberty blockers are used when puberty begins inappropriately early, and that they are needed to prevent negative long term health outcomes.

He has fucked up. He has made a fatal mistake. Five people on the call rush to speak over each other, until one of us speaks clearest, points out that that's the same fucking thing, asks him to reflect on his own answer and tell us how it's any fucking different to how they are used for trans children, demands that he give us a good reason why this is not bald faced discrimination.

He cannot answer.

In every meeting we have, we press harder. We ask them what they will do, personally, when the government tells them to take away transgender children's right to healthcare when their own evidence does not show a need to do so. We ask them, personally, whether they will put their foot down when the time comes. What matters more, their paycheck or their humanity?

In every meeting, we wear them down further. They stop responding to our emails. We know they are talking to the doctors, because the doctors are talking to us. The doctors are also human. They know that this is wrong. They are furious.

The Ministry of Health have no allies in us. Not until they recognise their own humanity. Not until they recognise ours.