


People use the term “sex assigned at birth” to indicate that sex and gender assignments based on physical characteristics (e.g., genitals and chromosomes) can vary and are not always reflections of identity.

If a person’s gender assigned at birth is different from their current gender identity, they are transgender. Transgender is also a term that describes a person’s relationship between gender assignment at birth and their current gender. For example, a person assigned female at birth who identifies as a woman is a cisgender woman. If a person’s gender assigned at birth corresponds to their current gender, they are cisgender. LGBTQ+ is an acronym that stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and/or questioning,” and encompasses other sexual and gender identities that fall outside cisgender and heterosexual identification.Ĭisgender is a word that describes alignment between a person’s gender assigned at birth and their current gender identity. Additionally, supportive adults in school environments can increase transgender youth’s feelings of safety and reduce their school dropout rates. Transgender youth who are supported by their parents report greater life satisfaction and fewer depressive symptoms than those who report low levels of support. In older adolescents, gender-affirming care can also include medical interventions such as puberty blockers and supportive hormone therapies that may take place after careful consideration by families, professionals, and-most importantly-the youth themselves.Ī growing body of research demonstrates that when transgender children and youth are supported in their identities, their mental health outcomes are similar to those of their cisgender peers. Gender-affirming care is an umbrella term for developmentally appropriate supports that have been shown to reduce anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation in young transgender and gender-diverse people.įor young children, such care includes non-medical social processes such as changes in names and pronouns and the affirmation of gender expression-related choices like clothing and hairstyles. We conclude by contrasting discriminatory laws with the key elements found in supportive policies.Ĭontext and Importance of Gender-affirming Care Then, we describe how policies that deny access to affirming care for transgender young people-or criminalize adults who support them-harm these children and their families. This brief first describes gender-affirming care and why it is critical for transgender children and youth’s well-being. Policies that prevent youth from accessing needed care and condone discrimination based on young people’s gender identities not only limit youth access to support and resources, but actively create environments known to cause poor mental and physical health outcomes. These policies have potentially dire consequences for youth’s mental and physical health, as well as criminal legal implications for the medical providers and parents who support trans youth.

Although research has consistently demonstrated the benefits of gender-affirming care, policies that create barriers to care or access to activities are on the rise. Now more than ever, young people are expressing gender identities that differ from the genders they were assigned at birth, and gender-affirming care is critical to their mental, physical, and social well-being.
