Reality

Sometimes reality is hard to face but sometimes you don’t have a choice.

The title says it all, “I’d Rather Have a Living Son Than a Dead Daughter”

WNYC the PBS station in where else New York City went to a gender clinic in North Caroline to interview people there including a mother of a trans child.

Earlier this year, North Carolina passed HB2, the so-called "bathroom bill." The law bans anyone from using a public restroom that doesn't match up with his/her biological sex. HB2 put the state in the middle of a national fight about gender. But North Carolina is also home to one of the few gender clinics for kids in the South, at Duke University's Children's Hospital.

This week, we spend a day in that gender clinic, the only one in North Carolina. We wanted to know how a clinic like this one operates in this political climate. And we wanted to find out how these patients are coping.

Dr. Deanna Adkins, a pediatric endocrinologist, started the clinic a year ago. Over the course of our day, we met three of her very different patients. Drew Adams is a 15-year-old trans man who came with his mom, Erica, all the way from Jacksonville, Florida. On the drive up, Drew wore a T-shirt with "This is What Trans Looks Like" printed on it. He told us he decided to change out of it before he stopped for a bathroom break in North Carolina; he used the men's room. When Dr. Adkins told Drew that not only would he get a prescription for testosterone, but that he could give himself his first shot that very day, Drew stood up and cheered.

They also shadowed a doctor at the clinic and they interviewed another trans person.

You can hear the show here….

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Today I am off to West Point on a LGBT senior bus tour and we are also stopping off at the Culinary Institute of America. Pictures to come...