The Transgender Conundrum

Podcast

Transgendered and LGBTs are bullied and victimized at alarmingly high rates. How, then, to protect children and adolescents from physical harm?

Is being transgender an identity, like being gay? Is it a disorder? If it’s entirely an identity, then there is no insurance coverage basis for surgical or hormonal interventions. If it is disorder or disease, there are those who will try to “cure” people whose best interests are served by being accepted and celebrated.

Moreover, the level of transphobia in the US is staggering; transgendered people are murdered at extraordinarily high rates. How, then, to protect these people from physical harm or from efforts to “cure” them without telling them that their most essential belief about themselves is an illness?

Here to discuss the transgender conundrum is Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree, which will be published in the fall of 2012. Mr Solomon is also author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. A doctoral candidate, Mr Solomon is a lecturer in psychiatry at Cornell and Special Advisor on LGBT affairs to the Yale Department of Psychiatry.

Click here for a description of Far From the Tree [pdf].

The Transgender Conundrum

Newsletter

Access practical, evidence-based guidance to support better care for our youngest patients. Join our email list for the latest clinical updates.

Recent Videos
Contemporary Pediatrics: RX Review: Updates and Unmet Need in RSV thumbnail
Contemporary Pediatrics: RX Review: Updates and Unmet Need in RSV thumbnail
Contemporary Pediatrics: RX Review: Updates and Unmet Need in RSV thumbnail
Staphylococcus aureus risk in infants and neonatologist considerations with Aaron Milstone, MD
How fragrance plays a role in atopic dermatitis treatments, with John Browning, MD
Octavio Ramilo, MD, reacts to the FDA approval of clesrovimab for RSV prevention | Image Credit: St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
© 2025 MJH Life Sciences

All rights reserved.