TN: GOP Fearmongering Continues Amid Terroristic Threats

Via Sam Stockard at the Tennessee Lookout, a mainstream nonprofit news website serving Tennessee.

What Happened: 62 members of the House Republican Caucus in Tennessee, led by State Representative Jason Zachary, signed a letter calling for Tennesee’s Vanderbilt Hospital to stop performing affirming surgeries on transgender minors.

The article describes top surgery as a “double mastectomy” rather than chest masculinization, which fails to distinguish its purpose and results from procedures done on people with breast cancer. It also describes puberty blockers as hormone therapy.

This story leaves out the context of right-wing anti-trans groups targeting hospitals including Vanderbilt, in a campaign which has resulted in death threats and bomb scares at other hospitals which, like Vanderbilt, provide lawful, evidence medical care for transgender youth. (By contrast, an earlier article about criticism of Vanderbilt in the Tennesseean did mention those facts.)