Name: Sylvie Malamet
Social Justice Group: Trans Rights: Gender Affirming Care (B)
Date of Fieldwork: February 6, 2025
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):LREI High School GSA
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 met with the LREI high school GSA. On our walk over, we were practicing what we were going to say, but when we got there the unexpected happened. Alex and I were already in the library, where we told them we were going to meet, when a few members of the GSA started to arrive. We got up and walked over to them and said hi and they had completely forgotten about the interview. But that wasn’t even the worst part; when we sat down with them, we asked if other members were going to join, and they didn’t realize that we wanted the whole GSA. After everything got settled, they went and found three more members who we could talk to. And then we started the interview.
We had a very small amount of questions because our goal was to get more stories than information. Our first question was about each trans person’s experience with being trans in the high school, and in high school in general. Two people answered, and they both talked about how the community at the high school is really supportive and that when both of them came out, they only had to email one teacher, and the message got out about them switching pronouns.
Then we narrowed it down to specifically talking about gender affirming care, and there was only one person who has actually gone through any care. We asked about their experience with it, and they said that it wasn’t really a big deal when it happened, because they had been waiting for so long, that when their first appointment came along, it was only a few minutes long. Then we asked them if there was a reason that the rest of them didn’t get any care, and most of them said that they and their parents decided that it would be best to wait longer. Our last question was pretty brief, asking them about their opinions on the gender affirming care bans in NY hospitals and if it changed their opinions of NY itself. Pretty much everyone just said that they were angry and scared and even a bit disappointed in NY.
They were all very nice, and overall, it was a great meeting.
