<p>Yes, exactly.</p>
<p>I feel very strongly that the surgery should be covered, but I have concerns as a logistical matter during college, where the process could have a significant impact on the stude t’s ability to complete college successfully. I guess I think college should be about getting your degree in an extremely timely manner because costs can increase, grades can be lower, and future prospects harmed. I would think it better to do this at a time when setbacks wouldn’t necessarily rack tens of thousands of dollars onto the young person’s life tab.</p>
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<p>In a country that lacks universal health care and where many millions of individuals cannot afford insurance, our first goal should be to reign in costs. Fifty thousand dollars is an awful lot of someone else’s money just to make one person happier. Since less than half of Brown students receive financial aid for their $57,000 COA, it seems to me that this policy is only giving a free ride to many of those that could well foot the bill for such a procedure on their own dime. And those students who are too poor to afford their own alternate health insurance get to pick up the tab through increased premiums, because health insurance is required if you wish to attend.</p>
<p>“They can’t make “reassigned” sex organs function as sex organs; they can make them function as elaborate sex toys.”</p>
<p>I don’t agree with this, at least when it comes to MTF transitions. This doesn’t make sense unless you think infertile women’s sex organs don’t function as sex organs, either. Postsurgery MTFs can have full female sexual function.</p>
<p>Everybody wants universal low cost health coverage for everyone, but when it comes to paying for it, who pays? Everyone on this board is looking for the best education possible for the best price. When it comes to out of pocket costs, many people are just not willing to open their own wallets for education or health costs. It’s very easy to want many things, when someone else is paying for them. And BTW, I have nothing against SRS at all. SRS is a choice best made at the right time, place and cost, between a doctor and the patient.</p>
<p>How many college kids are actually on the college’s health plan vs their family’s? </p>
<p>And I was under the impression what or how coverage for various things applies can depend on states, no?</p>
<p>What is the generally accepted standard in terms of how old someone must be to have the permanent surgery procedures? </p>
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<p>I think this goes far beyond happiness as in “oh, look, a pony, I’m so much happier now.” It’s overall health, just as $50,000 worth of chemotherapy would be.</p>
<p>S’s school is fundraising for a current student who is in need of a lung transplant. I have no idea what insurance she is on (school or private) or how much insurance covers – do we think lung transplants are worthy of insurance coverage?</p>
<p>Haven’t read the whole thread, but good heavens … our student health plan doesn’t cover much more than catastrophic illnesses. I can’t imagine how much the plan that would cover something like this would cost.</p>
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<p>Gender reassignment surgery is apparently so rare that the cost of covering that in a large group insurance plan is likely to be minimal. See post #33 (though even that is likely to be an overestimate, since people who get gender reassignment surgery may have it before or after college attendance years).</p>
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<p>I think that is what separates transgender surgery from a nose job or breast reduction. Those seeking transgender surgery are not seeking merely to change their appearance, they are seeking to change their identity from one gender to the other.</p>
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In my experience at other universities, most graduate students and almost all international students are on the college’s plan, but only few domestic undergraduates.</p>
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<p>To feel as strongly about the appearance of your nose as your gender identity would seem to indicate pathology. Then the reasons behind feeling that way are what needs to be treated, not the nose.</p>
<p>I have to disagree about the nose job v. gender reassignment. I’ve seen a fair number of transsexual people who look to me exactly like the gender they favor, without any surgery (I had to be told they were a chromosomal male/female). On the other hand, there is no hiding/altering/minimizing an extremely large or hooked nose on a woman. You cannot hide it with makeup or cover it up with high fashion or a Pendleton shirt. It is always…there. Right in front of you.</p>
<p>juillet’s earlier comments were great! This definitely is not something that people can go into on a whim!
If you continue to watch the documentaries on Jazz (there are 3 parts that are not from Barbara Walters), you can learn more about the ramifications of not dealing with this difference at an early age. And even FTM reassignments do not just give the person a glorified sex toy (or however it has been described on here). That’s a sad way of looking at this whole process!
It’s such a wonderful thing that Jazz’s parents and sibs are so supportive, and she’s brave for being so open with who she is! It is a difficult road, and describing it as similar to not liking your nose (or whatever) totally misses the point.
:(</p>
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<p>I agree. There isn’t even any way to start explaining it because to make the comparison is so far off the mark.</p>
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One female-to-male transgendered student at Bryn Mawr published an essay about his reason for attending a women’s college in the student newspaper a few years ago. I can’t find the article right now, but it boiled down to him feeling safer at a women’s college. Straight men represented danger to him. (He’d been assaulted several times.) He also remarked that students at a women’s college seem to be more cognizant of gender and identity issues than young adults at large.</p>
<p>I was initially skeptical of the presence of trans-men at my women’s college as well. But if it doesn’t hurt anybody, doesn’t threaten the character of the institution and helps a few vulnerable individuals, why not?</p>
<p>Bay, you are so right. H and I were in a club in New Orleans, picture la Cage Aux Folles. H knew the performers were trans. I had to tell him that the waitress, whom he had been admiring, was one too. The shock on his face! She was very beautiful and did not look anything like a man.</p>
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<p>Please try explaining the difference, for my benefit. Thank you.</p>
<p>b@r!um, by that logic, women’s colleges should also accept gay men. </p>
<p>As I said, sure, a person who transitions while in college should be able to stay there. But a person who has transitioned BEFORE college? I don’t think so. If you are a man, and want people to treat you like a man, go to a coed school or a men’s college.</p>
<p>Actually, I think that things are not so simple when it comes to gender, there isn’t just an on/off switch, and things are a lot more fluid than some people want to admit.</p>
<p>At risk of being attacked, I think that some of the trans people I have known have an image in their head of what it means to be a woman that has more in common with drag queens than actual women who have uteruses and periods and yeast infections.</p>
<p>I, personally, am happy to accept a great variety of people and a great variety of gender identities and sexual identities and am not terribly hung up on definitions.</p>
<p>Oh consolation, not what I’ve heard at all. Men do not want to transition to become drag queens. I’m not sure it’s fair.</p>