Sunday, June 25, 2023

Angela Kade Goepferd on the “Manufactured Controversy” Targeting Gender-Affirming Care

Since 2009 I’ve shared at this time of year a series of “Queer Appreciation” posts.

Each series is comprised of a number of informed and insightful writings to mark Gay Pride . . . or, as I’ve preferred to call it since 2011, Queer Appreciation.

I always try to include in each series a diverse range of writers and topics; and, in general, the writings I share are positive, proactive and celebratory.

I start this year’s Queer Appreciation series with the sharing of an article first published a few days ago by the Star Tribune. Written by Reid Forgrave, this article addresses the current controversies in our society around transgender individuals and gender-affirming care. Forgrave does this by focusing on Dr. Angela Kade Goepferd and her work as medical director of the Children’s Minnesota Gender Health program.

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In the very first car of [today’s] Twin Cities Pride Parade will sit one of the state’s biggest supporters of transgender teens and children.

Instead of shrinking from the politics of a moment when trans people feel under attack, parade organizers wanted to put their full symbolic support behind them. That’s why they chose Dr. Angela Kade Goepferd, medical director of the Children’s Minnesota Gender Health program, as grand marshal of one of America’s largest Pride parades. Goepferd has been working to help transgender youth for more than a decade.

“Dr. Goepferd never wavers, and puts their patients and the protection of those patients above themselves,” said Andi Otto, executive director of Twin Cities Pride. “It was a no-brainer to me because of everything they are trying to accomplish in a world that’s trying to push back twice as hard.”

Goepferd, who identifies as queer and nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, believes next weekend’s Pride Festival will have a more urgent tone than in years past.

“The trans community has been particularly targeted this year – and unfortunately, within that, it’s really been focused on trans kids,” Goepferd said. “It will be really visually powerful and affirming to see someone who cares for trans kids at the front of the parade. This year more than ever, that’s really, really important.”

The symbolism will be amplified by dozens of their colleagues from Children’s Minnesota departments walking behind them.

Goepferd, 45, has testified several times at the State Capitol about gender-affirming medical care. The University of Minnesota Medical School graduate has been skewered in conservative media for the medical care they provide to trans and gender-diverse kids. At the same time, Goepferd has been lionized in progressive media for giving voice to a vulnerable population.

Twin Cities Pride is always a big, vibrant event; this year, 120 groups will join the parade. Since the first parade here in 1972, a few years after New York City’s Stonewall [uprising] sparked the ongoing fight for LGBTQ rights, it’s grown into one of the 10 largest in the nation.

But as the event continues its growth – 620 vendors in and around Loring Park, up from 450 last year – a cloud will hang over this year’s celebration.

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, declared a “state of emergency” this month for LGBTQ Americans after more than 75 “anti-LGBTQ+ bills” were signed into law this year, more than double the year before. This year, 19 states passed laws restricting gender-related health care for children and teens, following three others that had such laws earlier.

Political debates have run the gamut, from regulating drag shows to arguing what’s appropriate for school libraries to determining whether transgender girls and women – people assigned male at birth who identify as female – ought to be allowed to compete on girls’ and women’s sports teams.

Even basic language can invite conflict; what one side calls a “transgender man,” the other side calls a “biological female.” When doctors like Goepferd speak about science behind “gender-affirming care,” opponents signal skepticism or opposition by dismissing it as “gender ideology.”

Otto wanted this year’s Pride to focus on trans youth, especially as the mental health crisis among American youth is amplified among the trans population.

“We’re trying to be loud and proud when so many people are telling you to be quiet and hide,” Otto said.

Northfield City Council Member Davin Sokup, one of nearly 100 trans or nonbinary elected officials nationwide, said this parade will be especially powerful after Minnesota passed laws making the state a trans refuge.

His favorite part is always when members of PFLAG – parents, family and allies of LGBTQ people – walk by. A quiet descends. The audience claps.

“A lot of people don't have family members willing to do that, or have lost family members due to coming out,” Sokup said.

On a recent afternoon, Goepferd sat inside their office at Children’s Minnesota, wearing their signature bow tie and a “PROTECT TRANS KIDS” button. A parent to three elementary-age children, Goepferd considers the political focus on transgender people and gender-affirming care a manufactured controversy.

Goepferd has been a pediatrician at Children’s Minnesota since 2007. Over time, they became known for specializing in LGBTQ care. Goepferd helped start the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition, then, with an endocrinologist and psychologist, launched the gender health program in 2019.

For years, Goepferd’s job hardly attracted notice. Their contemporaries seemed to be gaining momentum on research and access to care. Suddenly, over the past year or two, this medical subspecialty became the center of the cultural storm, and entire states shut it down.

“You got this patient population that’s extremely vulnerable but was finally seeing a little bit of light through the doorway,” Goepferd said. “And now the door has just been slammed shut.”

Feeling cast as a villain has been disorienting, Goepferd said.

“Ninety percent of what I do is sit in rooms with families and have very long conversations,” Goepferd said. “This is about helping affirm who a child is and get them the support and resources they need. Some of the time, that will involve medications. Not all the time — not even most of the time. And because we are a pediatric and adolescent care center, surgery is not a part of care for kids. . . . It’s not even something most transgender adults access.”

Pressed on gender-affirming surgery among minors, Goepferd offered some context. Bottom surgeries – genital surgeries on transgender people – are exceedingly rare among adolescents, they said. They referenced a New York Times story about how top surgeries – removing or augmenting breast tissue to create a more masculine or feminine appearance – have been on the rise among transgender teens.

But it irked Goepferd that while gender-affirming surgeries have become the tip of the spear in the culture wars, there’s virtually no controversy on top surgeries among cisgender teens. A 2020 study by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons showed about 8,000 cosmetic breast augmentation or reduction surgeries on cisgender people ages 13 to 19.

“Gender-affirming surgery is just not a part of the care we’re routinely providing,” Goepferd said. “It’s been blown way out of context relative to what we really do with families, which is help them navigate questions, help them navigate schools, help them figure out how they have difficult conversations with their neighbors, their family members, their teachers. That’s what we’re doing.”

“I’m in the room with parents who come to me with very different perspectives,” Goepferd continued. “A lot of parents think this is a social contagion, or they don’t believe their child, or they’re unsure. What I say to parents is, ‘Let’s figure this out together.’ If the belief is simply that transgender people don’t exist and don’t have a right to exist, then I’m not going to get very far. But if the fear is harm is being done to kids, or there’s some agenda at play, I can talk through that pretty easily.”




NEXT: The Bigger Box of Crayons We All Deserve



Related Off-site Links and Updates
Dr. Angela Kade Goepferd Pioneers Gender-Affirming Care for Kids – Nicole Ki (MPR News, June 1, 2023).
The Good Doctor: Angela Kade Goepferd, MD – Susan Swavely (Lavender, January 12, 2023).
The GOP’s War on Trans Kids Relies on Myths about a “Progressive” Europe – Alex Koren (The Stranger, April 6, 2023).
Young Children Do Not Receive Medical Gender Transition Treatment – Kate Yandell (FactCheck.org, May 22, 2023).
The Big Myth About the Supposed “Anti-Trans” Backlash – Sarah Posner (MSNBC.com, June 23, 2023).
It’s Not Just Corporate Pride Boycotts – Right-Wingers Are Escalating Their Anti-LGBTQ Campaign – Kali Holloway (The Nation, June 23, 2023).
Court Ruling Gets Right What Corporate News Often Gets Wrong About Gender-Affirming Care – Alex Koren (Common Dreams, June 24, 2023).
How Pro-Trans Rights Lawmakers Can Fight the Right Wing’s Weaponization of Courts – Jessie Ulibarri and Leigh Finke (Common Dreams, June 26, 2023).
Gender-Affirming Surgeries for Trans People Have Tripled in Three Years. Experts Explain “Significant” Increase – David Artavia (Yahoo! News, August 23, 2023). Transphobia Is Hazardous to Your Health – Sheila Mulrooney Eldred (Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine, August 27, 2019).
The Gender Spectrum – Carrie Kilman (LearningForJustice.org, Summer 2013).


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The Wild Reed’s 2022 Queer Appreciation series:
Cassandra Snow on Reclaiming the Word “Queer”
Tian Richards’ Message to Queer Youth: “Every Part of Your Identity Is a Superpower”
Gabbi Pierce on the “Evolution of Gender”
Afdhere Jama’s “Love Song to the Queer Somali”
“Creative Outsider, Determined Innovator”: Remembering Berto Pasuka
“Queer Love Is My Divine Companion”
Dyllón Burnside: “For Me, the Term Queer Just Opens Up Space”
Tarot: A Compass For Journeying Toward the Truth of Who We Are and Who We Can Be


The Wild Reed’s 2021 Queer Appreciation series:
“A Book About Revolutionary People That Feels Revolutionary Itself”
Remembering Dusty Springfield’s “Daring” 1979 Gay-Affirming Song
Zaylore Stout on the Meaning of Emancipation in 2021
Maebe A. Girl: A “Decidedly Progressive Candidate” for Congress
The Art of Tania Rivilis
Lil Nas X, the Latest Face of Pop’s Gay Sexual Revolution
Kuan Yin: “A Mirror of the Queer Experience”


The Wild Reed’s 2020 Queer Appreciation series:
Zaylore Stout on Pride 2020: “What Do We Have to Be Proud Of?”
Francis DeBernardo on the U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Title VII: “A Reason for All Catholics to Celebrate”
Mia Birdsong on the “Queering of Friendship”
The Distinguished Rhone Fraser: Cultural Critic, Bibliophile, and Dramatist
“To Walk the World Without Masks”
What We Are Hoping and Fighting For


The Wild Reed’s 2019 Queer Appreciation series:
Quote of the Day – May 31, 2019
James Baldwin’s Potent Interweavings of Race, Homoeroticism, and the Spiritual
John Gehring on Why Catholics Should Participate in LGBTQ Pride Parades
A Dance of Queer Love
The Queer Liberation March: Bringing Back the Spirit of Stonewall
Barbara Smith on Why She Left the Mainstream LGBTQI Movement
Remembering the Stonewall Uprising on Its 50th Anniversary
In a Historic First, Country Music’s Latest Star Is a Queer Black Man
Historian Martin Duberman on the Rightward Shift of the Gay Movement
Queer Black Panther


The Wild Reed’s 2018 Queer Appreciation series:
Michelangelo Signorile on the Rebellious Purpose of Queer Pride
Liberating Paris: Exploring the Meaning of Liberation in Paris Is Burning
Stephanie Beatriz on the Truth of Being Bi
Queer Native Americans, Colonialism, and the Fourth of July


The Wild Reed’s 2017 Queer Appreciation series:
Our Lives as LGBTQI People: “Garments Grown in Love”
On the First Anniversary of the Pulse Gay Nightclub Massacre, Orlando Martyrs Commemorated in Artist Tony O'Connell’s “Triptych for the 49”
Tony Enos on Understanding the Two Spirit Community
Making the Connections


The Wild Reed’s 2016 Queer Appreciation post of solace, inspiration and hope:
“I Will Dance”


The Wild Reed’s 2015 Queer Appreciation series:
Vittorio Lingiardi on the Limits of the Hetero/Homo Dichotomy
Reclaiming and Re-Queering Pride
Standing with Jennicet Gutiérrez, “the Mother of Our Newest Stonewall Movement”
Questions for Archbishop Kurtz re. the U.S. Bishops' Response to the Supreme Court's Marriage Equality Ruling
Clyde Hall: “All Gay People, in One Form or Another, Have Something to Give to This World, Something Rich and Very Wonderful”
The (Same-Love) Dance Goes On


The Wild Reed’s 2014 Queer Appreciation series:
Michael Bayly’s “The Kiss” Wins the People's Choice Award at This Year's Twin Cities Pride Art Exhibition
Same-Sex Desires: “Immanent and Essential Traits Transcending Time and Culture”
Lisa Leff on Five Things to Know About Transgender People
Steven W. Thrasher on the Bland and Misleading “Gay Inc” Treatment of the Struggle to Overturn Prop 8
Test: A Film that “Illuminates Why Queer Cinema Still Matters”
Sister Teresa Forcades on Queer Theology
Omar Akersim: Muslim and Gay
Catholics Make Their Voices Heard on LGBTQ Issues


The Wild Reed’s 2013 Queer Appreciation series:
Doing Papa Proud
Jesse Bering: “It’s Time to Throw 'Sexual Preference' into the Vernacular Trash”
Dan Savage on How Leather Guys, Dykes on Bikes, Go-Go Boys, and Drag Queens Have Helped the LGBT Movement
On Brokeback Mountain: Remembering Queer Lives and Loves Never Fully Realized
Manly Love


The Wild Reed’s 2012 Queer Appreciation series:
The Theology of Gay Pride
Bi God, Somebody Listen
North America: Perhaps Once the “Queerest Continent on the Planet”
Gay Men and Modern Dance
A Spirit of Defiance


The Wild Reed’s 2011 Gay Pride/Queer Appreciation series:
Gay Pride: A Celebration of True Humility
Dusty Springfield: Queer Icon
Gay Pioneer Malcolm Boyd on Survival – and Victory – with Grace
Senator Scott Dibble’s Message of Hope and Optimism
Parvez Sharma on Islam and Homosexuality


The Wild Reed’s 2010 Gay Pride series:
Standing Strong
Growing Strong
Jesus and Homosexuality
It Is Not Good To Be Alone
The Bisexual: “Living Consciously in the Place Where the Twain Meet”
Spirituality and the Gay Experience
Recovering the Queer Artistic Heritage


The Wild Reed’s 2009 Gay Pride series:
A Mother’s Request to President Obama: Full Equality for My Gay Son
Marriage Equality in Massachusetts: Five Years On
It Shouldn’t Matter. Except It Does
Gay Pride as a Christian Event
Not Just Another Political Special Interest Group
Can You Hear Me, Yet, My Friend?


See also:
Trans 101
Lisa Leff on Five Things to Know About Transgender People
Judith Butler on the Reactionary Movement and Fascist Trend Opposed to Diverse Ideas About Gender
Gabbi Pierce on the “Evolution of Gender”
“This Is Indeed Part of My Queer Agenda . . .”
Maebe A. Girl: A “Decidedly Progressive Candidate” for Congress
Catholics Recognize and Celebrate the Truth of Transgender People: “Their Quest for Authenticity Is a Quest for Holiness”
Francis DeBernardo: Quote of the Day – September 21, 2016
Terry Weldon: Quote of the Day – August 20, 2015
Worldwide Gay Pride – 2017 | 2016 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007
A Catholic Presence at Gay Pride – 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007
Gay Pride: A Catholic Perspective
Police, Pride, and Philando Castile

Image: Dr. Angela Kade Goepferd, the medical director of Children’s Minnesota Gender Health program, will be the grand marshal of this year’s Twin Cities Pride Parade in Minneapolis. (Photo: Melissa Hesse / Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine)


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