Name: Sylvie Malamet
Social Justice Group: Trans Rights: Gender Affirming Care (B)
Date of Fieldwork: February 3, 2025
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Bethany Sousa
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:
Alex, my citizen action project partner, and I interviewed Bethany Sousa, a reproductive and gender affirming health care advocate, who works with planned parenthood. When the meeting first started, we gave Bethany a heads up that some of the questions may be hard to answer, either from a legal standpoint, or because they may be unknown at the time based on the state of the government and country. We also told her that we knew that planned parenthood is being federally funded, so they could get shut down at any moment, and she clarified for us that they don’t actually get funded from the government, but that the insurance policies would change, and people who use Medicaid, which is a form of coverage for low income people, wouldn’t be able to go there anymore.
When we started by asking our first question, it was about the overall goal of planned parenthood, and Bethany told us a bit about the mission for the national office, where she works. She told us that their whole thing is about advocacy and standing up for what’s right. Then she told us about the mission for the whole planned parenthood, and it was pretty straightforward; providing quality healthcare for all patents. We then asked her why she chose to work at planned parenthood, and she told us that she had worked on the federal level at a different organization before she went over, and that she wanted to make an impact and change. She told us that she had always been very passionate about equality, and especially with rights over your own body. Planned parenthood hadn’t even started working on LGBTQ+ treatments until quite recently and they’ve expanded a lot already. We then asked her many more questions about how the government is affecting their work and what her hopes and fears are for the future. She said she had a lot of fears with what Trump is trying to do, and that she thinks the government will try and target gender affirming care first, even before abortion rights, given the current circumstances and what he has already done.
Something that really stood out to me was what Bethany said, when we asked her about her hope for the future. She says, “I you know, I do have some hope that even before Trump is out of office, for whatever reason, whether it’s four years or less, I do have some hope that there will be some culture change. I think I think that we need culture shift on, you know, transgender rights and I’m a little bit hopeful that we will see some in the next few years because there are a lot of advocates that care about working on this issue and that that the problem is so clear now… So I think that gives me a little hope too.” I think that should give everyone a little hope.
