Your Line of Questioning Is Transphobic
Okay so this story is making me genuinely angry and I need to talk about it.
Yesterday Dr. Rachel Levine sat through what can only be described as a complete ambush during her Senate confirmation hearing. And look, I get that confirmation hearings are supposed to be tough. They’re supposed to vet candidates. That’s literally the point. But what Senator Rand Paul did wasn’t vetting—it was just cruelty dressed up in a lab coat.
For context (in case you somehow missed it), Dr. Levine is President Biden’s pick for assistant secretary of health. If confirmed she’d be the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the Senate. Which is historic. Like genuinely, actually historic.
But instead of asking her about, I don’t know, her actual qualifications? Her decades of experience in public health? Her work as Pennsylvania’s health secretary during a literal pandemic? Paul decided to spend his time comparing gender-affirming healthcare to “genital mutilation.”
I just… I can’t.
And here’s what really gets me. Paul is a doctor. Was a doctor. An ophthalmologist, but still. He knows—or should know—that every major medical organization in this country supports gender-affirming care. The American Medical Association. The American Academy of Pediatrics. The American Psychological Association. These aren’t fringe groups, they’re THE medical establishment.
But facts don’t really matter when you’re playing to a base, do they?
Dr. Levine, for her part, handled it with way more grace than I would have (honestly I would’ve lost it). She kept repeating that “transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed” and offered to discuss it with Paul in more detail.
His response? “Let it go into the record that the witness refused to answer the question.”
She didn’t refuse to answer. She refused to be baited. There’s a difference.
Senator Patty Murray, the committee chair, called Paul’s questioning “harmful misrepresentations” which… yeah. Understatement of the year maybe?
The thing that keeps bothering me is that this wasn’t just an attack on Dr. Levine personally (though it absolutely was that too). It was an attack on every trans person watching. Every trans kid whose parents were maybe watching CSPAN in the background. The message was clear: you don’t belong here. Your existence is up for debate.
One in four transgender adults already report avoiding medical care because they’re afraid of discrimination. Moments like this are exactly why.
Dr. Levine has dealt with this before btw. When she was leading Pennsylvania’s COVID response, state lawmakers posted mocking images of her on social media. Far-right outlets misgendered her and used her deadname. She just… kept doing her job. Kept showing up. Which is more than I can say for most people.
I don’t really have a neat ending for this. It just sucks. It sucks that qualified people have to sit through this. It sucks that it’s 2021 and we’re still having to explain that trans people deserve basic dignity. It sucks that I’m writing about a confirmation hearing and not, like, actual policy.
Dr. Levine will probably be confirmed anyway—she has the votes. But she shouldn’t have had to endure that to get there.
Anyway. If you need me I’ll be in my feelings about this for the rest of the day.
