Posts
For years, the Department of Veterans Affairs thumbed its nose at a rule banning “gender alterations,” turning itself into a one-stop shop for vets looking to play dress-up as the opposite sex.
Internal documents spill the beans: the VA—yes, the same outfit fitting war heroes with prosthetic limbs—was handing out prosthetic peckers dubbed “3-in-1 (pee/pack/play),” fake boobs, chest binders, wigs, and even dilators for artificial vajayjays.
Federal regulations say “gender alterations” are off-limits for VA medical services. But the VA played word games, claiming that only meant the slice-and-dice surgeries. “Since 2011, VA has provided all medically necessary transition-related care for transgender and gender diverse Veterans except surgeries,” one document brags. Leave it to bureaucrats to dodge a rule by splitting hairs finer than a frog’s butt.
Then the Biden crew took it up a notch, stretching “medically necessary” like a cheap rubber band. Back in 2020, a doctor said hair removal was just cosmetic—no dice. Fast forward to Biden’s watch, and they’re teaching VA staff how to farm out laser jobs to zap hair off a trans veteran’s “face/neck, back, chest, abdomen, or genitalia,” billing it under a sneaky “unlisted procedure code for skin, mucous membrane, and subcutaneous tissue.”
It gets weirder. The VA even roped in “parking attendants or valets, maintenance staff, [and] housekeepers” for a PowerPoint pep talk, making them “Articulate the key elements of VHA’s Directive on Providing Health Care for Transgender and Intersex Veterans” and coaching them to ask vets, “Hey, what name, gender, and pronoun do you vibe with?”—all so they could bunk them in hospital rooms with whoever matched their fantasy gender.
Cue the Trump administration on Monday, riding in with an executive order titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. They’re slamming the brakes on “medical treatments for gender dysphoria,” except for vets already mid-transition at the VA. Before that, Biden’s squad went hog-wild expanding the trans buffet—hormones, voice lessons, egg-and-sperm storage, you name it.
Biden-era papers even teased changing the rules to green-light surgeries, but whined it’d take years. One gem, “Gender-Affirming Care at VA: Resources for Providers,” admits, “While VA cannot provide gender-affirming surgeries at this time,” they’d still slap a gender dysphoria label on veterans, juice ‘em up with hormones, train their vocal cords, yank their body hair, and pen love letters to outside surgeons begging for the chop.
VA staff got crash courses on “diagnosing gender dysphoria” and “assessment of readiness and consent for hormone therapy,” with tricks to book a “transgender and gender diverse national e-consult” linking local docs to trans “expert hub teams” in Minneapolis and Tucson. One catch: the e-consult screen flashes a warning that “for individuals still active in the military (e.g., Guard, Reserves, Active Duty) transgender identity can be grounds for discharge and their VA medical records are accessible by the military.”
The VA—whose motto, straight from Abe Lincoln, is “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan”—even rolled out a “Gender-Affirming Program with Speech (GAPS).” That’s “4-8 individual sessions with a speech-language pathologist” to help dudes sound like dames, “achieving your authentic and affirming voice,” plus tips to keep their laughs, coughs, and sneezes from blowing their cover. Tax dollars hard at work.
They even cranked out form letters to nudge outside docs into doing genital jobs, like this cookie-cutter pitch: “I support (honorific) XXXX’s decision to undergo genital surgery, and I am available for coordination of care.” Just fill in the blank and sign. Another version gushes, “We are of the opinion that [veteran] meets all of the criteria for a vaginoplasty, as set forth in the WPATH Standards of Care, Version 7.” Oh, and veterans could tweak the “birth sex” field on their records too, because “despite the medical implications…this is the Veteran’s right.” Sure, why not?
Monday, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins dropped the hammer, saying all this nonsense is toast. “I mean no disrespect to anyone, but VA should not be focused on helping Veterans attempt to change their sex,” he said. “The vast majority of Veterans and Americans agree, and that is why this is the right decision.” Cash saved from ditching these “specific medical treatments for gender dysphoria” will now prop up real heroes—think paralyzed vets and amputees—helping them claw back some independence.
“All eligible Veterans — including trans-identified Veterans — will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law,” the department swore. “But if Veterans want to attempt to change their sex, they can do so on their own dime.” Bathrooms and rooms? Back to birth sex rules. The VA also torched Veterans Health Administration Directive 1341(4), which propped up this circus.
Here’s the kicker: the VA “has not kept consistent and reliable records” on how many vets got these treatments, how much it cost, or how many staffers were roped in. Best guess? Less than 0.1% of the 9.1 million vets in VA care are trans-identified. Small potatoes, big headache.
Tweet
Federal regulations say “gender alterations” are off-limits for VA medical services. But the VA played word games, claiming that only meant the slice-and-dice surgeries. “Since 2011, VA has provided all medically necessary transition-related care for transgender and gender diverse Veterans except surgeries,” one document brags. Leave it to bureaucrats to dodge a rule by splitting hairs finer than a frog’s butt.
Then the Biden crew took it up a notch, stretching “medically necessary” like a cheap rubber band. Back in 2020, a doctor said hair removal was just cosmetic—no dice. Fast forward to Biden’s watch, and they’re teaching VA staff how to farm out laser jobs to zap hair off a trans veteran’s “face/neck, back, chest, abdomen, or genitalia,” billing it under a sneaky “unlisted procedure code for skin, mucous membrane, and subcutaneous tissue.”
Slick move, huh?
It gets weirder. The VA even roped in “parking attendants or valets, maintenance staff, [and] housekeepers” for a PowerPoint pep talk, making them “Articulate the key elements of VHA’s Directive on Providing Health Care for Transgender and Intersex Veterans” and coaching them to ask vets, “Hey, what name, gender, and pronoun do you vibe with?”—all so they could bunk them in hospital rooms with whoever matched their fantasy gender.
Cue the Trump administration on Monday, riding in with an executive order titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. They’re slamming the brakes on “medical treatments for gender dysphoria,” except for vets already mid-transition at the VA. Before that, Biden’s squad went hog-wild expanding the trans buffet—hormones, voice lessons, egg-and-sperm storage, you name it.
Biden-era papers even teased changing the rules to green-light surgeries, but whined it’d take years. One gem, “Gender-Affirming Care at VA: Resources for Providers,” admits, “While VA cannot provide gender-affirming surgeries at this time,” they’d still slap a gender dysphoria label on veterans, juice ‘em up with hormones, train their vocal cords, yank their body hair, and pen love letters to outside surgeons begging for the chop.
An April 2024 slide from an “LGBTQ+ Veterans Care Coordinator” adds they’d cover “medically necessary post-operative and long-term care following gender-affirming surgery”—think revision cuts or snipping nuts if the hormone cocktail went sideways.
VA staff got crash courses on “diagnosing gender dysphoria” and “assessment of readiness and consent for hormone therapy,” with tricks to book a “transgender and gender diverse national e-consult” linking local docs to trans “expert hub teams” in Minneapolis and Tucson. One catch: the e-consult screen flashes a warning that “for individuals still active in the military (e.g., Guard, Reserves, Active Duty) transgender identity can be grounds for discharge and their VA medical records are accessible by the military.”
Whoops.
The VA—whose motto, straight from Abe Lincoln, is “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan”—even rolled out a “Gender-Affirming Program with Speech (GAPS).” That’s “4-8 individual sessions with a speech-language pathologist” to help dudes sound like dames, “achieving your authentic and affirming voice,” plus tips to keep their laughs, coughs, and sneezes from blowing their cover. Tax dollars hard at work.
They even cranked out form letters to nudge outside docs into doing genital jobs, like this cookie-cutter pitch: “I support (honorific) XXXX’s decision to undergo genital surgery, and I am available for coordination of care.” Just fill in the blank and sign. Another version gushes, “We are of the opinion that [veteran] meets all of the criteria for a vaginoplasty, as set forth in the WPATH Standards of Care, Version 7.” Oh, and veterans could tweak the “birth sex” field on their records too, because “despite the medical implications…this is the Veteran’s right.” Sure, why not?
Monday, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins dropped the hammer, saying all this nonsense is toast. “I mean no disrespect to anyone, but VA should not be focused on helping Veterans attempt to change their sex,” he said. “The vast majority of Veterans and Americans agree, and that is why this is the right decision.” Cash saved from ditching these “specific medical treatments for gender dysphoria” will now prop up real heroes—think paralyzed vets and amputees—helping them claw back some independence.
If you would like to support my work, you can Buy Me A Coffee or subscribe. Thank you.
“All eligible Veterans — including trans-identified Veterans — will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law,” the department swore. “But if Veterans want to attempt to change their sex, they can do so on their own dime.” Bathrooms and rooms? Back to birth sex rules. The VA also torched Veterans Health Administration Directive 1341(4), which propped up this circus.
Here’s the kicker: the VA “has not kept consistent and reliable records” on how many vets got these treatments, how much it cost, or how many staffers were roped in. Best guess? Less than 0.1% of the 9.1 million vets in VA care are trans-identified. Small potatoes, big headache.
No comments:
Post a Comment