Officials at Vanderbilt University Medical Center announced Friday that they are pausing gender-affirming surgeries for minors in order to review their practices.
The news, delivered in a letter sent to a lawmaker who has demanded an end to the surgeries, was publicly released Friday afternoon. It comes amid mounting political pressure from Tennessee’s Republican leaders — many of whom are running for reelection — who called for an investigation into the private nonprofit hospital after videos surfaced on social media last month of a doctor touting that gender-affirming procedures are “huge money makers.” Another video showed a staffer saying anyone with a religious objection should quit.
None of the politicians could point to a specific law that the hospital had violated, and no agency to date has committed to an investigation. Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s office said they had passed their concerns to the Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, but his office has not commented on whether he is looking into the Nashville-based hospital.
“We are pausing gender affirmation surgeries on patients under age 18 while we complete this review, which may take several months,” wrote C. Wright Pinson, VUMC’s deputy CEO and chief health system officer.
The GOP-dominated Legislature is scheduled to reconvene in January, and many lawmakers have vowed to introduce legislation further limit gender-affirming treatments. If successful, it’s unclear if VUMC would be allowed to resume gender-affirming surgeries for minors, regardless of their internal review.
“We should not allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children,” Lee tweeted late Friday. “With the partnership of the General Assembly, this practice should end in Tennessee.”
According to Pinson, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recently changed its recommendations for transgender treatment, which helped prompt the need for a review.
On average, VUMC has provided five gender affirming surgeries to minors every year since its transgender clinic opened in 2018. All were over the age of 16 and had parental consent, and none received genital procedures.
“The revenues from this limited number of surgeries represent an immaterial percentage of VUMC’s net operating revenue,” Pinson wrote.
Emails provided to The Associated Press through a public records request show hundreds of Tennesseans reached out to the governor’s office in support of shutting down VUMC’s transgender youth health clinic, with some asking him to call a special legislative session to address the issue. Others asked if he could suspend the licenses of the doctors who work at the clinic.
A few criticized Lee for not taking harsher steps earlier when he signed legislation banning doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment to prepubescent minors.
Only a handful defended the clinic’s services, with some saying the transgender health care they received had been life-saving.
More than half of trans and non-binary people are misgendered in death by officials, new research suggests.
Research, published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, found that between 2011 and 2021, more than half of transgender and non-binary people who died during this time period were misgendered on their death certificates.
Kimberly Repp, chief epidemiologist for Washington County and one of the study’s authors, noted that this could impact the allocation of resources like social services and public health programs, which can change depending on a region’s vital statistics.
She said: “What we learned will likely alarm anyone who identifies as transgender or non-binary – or anyone who cares about the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people.”
“When a population is not counted, it is erased.”
The HRC, which trans violent deaths of trans people, has often warned that many trans people are misgendered in death, and therefore go uncounted.
The research was conducted by public health officials from Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas, and focussed on the Portland, Oregon, metro area, and looked at the recorded deaths of 51 trans and non-binary people.
It revealed systemic gaps in coroners’ ability to accommodate trans and non-binary people.
The majority of medical examiner case management software does not include a field for gender identity, and there is no national requirement for death investigators to be trained about how to verify a deceased person’s gender identity.
Next-of-kin also have unilateral power to declare a deceased person’s gender and have it changed on a death certificate, which can lead to what the study calls “nonconsensual detransitioning” – when the next-of-kin rejects the deceased’s trans identity.
Kimberly DiLeo, chief investigator with the Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office, said that while it has been “proactive in training our staff to record gender identity… without adequate tools to collect this data and changes at a national level, we are limited in what we can do”.
in 2019 the American Medical Association made attempts to tackle increasing violence among transgender people by establishing a more consistent way to collect data on trans identity.
Despite this, the report noted that no agency regularly collects information about gender identity at death.
“I didn’t know if there was a place and a space for me to do this sort of work that I’ve really come to love and enjoy, while also getting to be myself while I do it,” she said on the same day that she officially filed for a name change with the Iowa courts.
She is not the first reporter to make that announcement. ESPN journalist M.A. Voepel announced in a tweet in August that he is transitioning and would use male pronouns.
Get the Morning Rundown
Get a head start on the morning’s top stories.SIGN UPTHIS SITE IS PROTECTED BY RECAPTCHA PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS OF SERVICE
In an interview with a friend who is a former reporter for the station, Reichardt said she had thoughts about being transgender in high school. But she noted that her Minnesota hometown is rural and she “didn’t even have the language to describe what I was feeling.”
She said that at work she felt like “I was someone I didn’t really feel like” when she dressed in slacks and button-up shirts.
“A while after I started being on air, I kind of just reached a personal breaking point where I thought, ‘Why don’t I like the person that I am seeing every time I am going out in the field? Why don’t I connect with that person? Why don’t I want to be that person?’”
Reichardt said she gradually came into her identity as a transgender woman over the course of several years and began a medical transition process in September 2021.
“To gradually come into a role where I am feeling more and more at home in my body than I really ever did before has been amazing to get to experience and share with people,” she said.
A conservative judge in Texas has issued a ruling against a federal guidance ensuring workplace non-discrimination protections for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming employees.
In an October 1 ruling, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, declared that, in June 2021, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued guidance that incorrectly interpreted the June 2020 Supreme Court ruling Bostock v. Clayton County.
The 2020 Supreme Court decision found that discrimination against gay and transgender employees is a form of sex discrimination forbidden by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
One year later, the EEOC issued a guidance stating that the ruling required workplaces with more than 15 employees to allow all transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming workers to use the pronouns, dress codes, facilities, and healthcare practices matching their gender identities.
In response, the state of Texas sued the EEOC, and Judge Kacsmaryk just ruled in the state’s favor. He ruled that although the 2020 Supreme Court decision declared that employers can’t discriminate against workers for their sexuality or gender identity, it doesn’t protect an employee’s “correlated conduct.”
As such, Kacsmaryk declared the EEOC’s guidance unlawful and said that Texas doesn’t have to follow it. However, the matter is far from settled.
That’s because 20 Republican-led states have also sued the EEOC over the guidance, alleging that the federal agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not following the required process for making new rules and also the Constitution’s 10th Amendment by trampling on states’ authority over privacy expectations in workplaces.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling isn’t entirely surprising considering that he once served as the deputy general counsel for the First Liberty Institute (FLI), a legal organization that generally represents conservative Christians, attacks the separation of church and state, and opposes LGBTQ rights.
“Five justices of the Supreme Court found an unwritten ‘fundamental right’ to same-sex marriage hiding in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — a secret knowledge so cleverly concealed in the nineteenth-century amendment that it took almost 150 years to find,” he wrote.
Thirty-one-year-old Clayton Hubbird has been charged with first-degree reckless homicide and use of a dangerous weapon for killing Regina “Mya” Allen.
August 29 video footage from a BP gas station showed that Allen and Hubbird briefly talked inside the station before she stepped into the passenger’s seat of his black Chevy Tahoe SUV, police told FOX6. When the two arrived at Allen’s apartment complex, a witness told police that he saw them arguing in the vehicle before hearing a gunshot.
Allen reportedly stumbled out of the vehicle and exclaimed, “I’m shot!” before dialing 911 for emergency services. When police arrived, she told an officer that she had met the man who shot her at a gas station. She later died from her injuries, barely a month before her 36th birthday.
On August 30, police found the SUV parked in Wauwatosa, a city about seven miles east of Milwaukee. Investigators found ammunition and firearm magazines in Hubbird’s bedroom.
Police issued a warrant for Hubbird’s arrest on September 6.
Hubbird appeared in court on October 2, and cash bond was set at $250,000, according to FOX6.
Friends remembered Allen as full of laughter.
“I remember seeing her, and I was jut like, amazed by her, her beauty and the way that she carried herself,” said Ananna Sellers, a member of a Wisconsin Black trans leaders coalition called The Black Rose Initiative. “I really did have a soft spot in my heart for Mya.”
Sellers added, “Whenever something happens to a girl like us, it’s always got something to do with [being trans] to some capacity.”
Thirty-one trans people have been murdered so far this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). A majority of the individuals murdered have been Black trans women. The number is likely an undercount seeing as some trans people are misgendered by their families, police, or media after death while others are never identified at all.
Yesterday Erika Hilton (she/her) in São Paulo and Duda Salabert (she/her) in Minas Gerais won their elections to the Brazilian Congress, making them the first trans people ever elected to Congress in the country’s history. Despite ongoing anti-LGBTQ hate perpetuated by the Bolsonaro administration, a record number of out LGBTQ people ran for Congress this year in Brazil – over 300 – including a record number of trans people. With yesterday’s results, LGBTQ representation in Brazil will double from 9 to 18 elected officials, 16 of whom are women.
Alhelí Partida, Director of Global Programs at LGBTQ Victory Institute, released the following statement about the election:
“Brazil’s LGBTQ community – and trans community in particular – has never had equitable representation in government. But with a record number of LGBTQ candidates running this year, it is clear that LGBTQ leaders are stepping up to make change from within the halls of power. Erika and Duda showed true courage in their campaigns for Congress, running during a time of increased homophobia and transphobia at the hands of President Bolsonaro and his followers. Their success is not just a sharp rebuke to these bigots, but a beacon of hope to Brazil’s vibrant LGBTQ community.
“While we hope their success is a sign of better days, Brazil remains an incredibly tough place to engage as an out leader – where homophobia, transphobia, death threats and worse are common. In 2018, we lost one of our own, Rio de Janeiro Councilwoman Marielle Franco, assassinated by anti-LGBTQ and anti-women attackers. While her loss continues to be devastating, she has become an icon and the fuel needed to inspire more courageous LGBTQ Brazilians to raise their voices.”
In preparation for the 2022 election cycle in Brazil, LGBTQ Victory Institute and #VoteLGBT held two trainings to support LGBTQ candidates. In total, there were 63 participants, 28 of whom ran for office this year – including three trans women who ran for Congress. #VoteLGBT, Victory Institute, Equal Rights in Action Fund and Google also released “The State of Brazilian LGBT+ Politics: Between Power and Obliteration” this year, the first analysis of LGBTQ politics and political power in Brazil.
___________________
LGBTQ Victory Institute
LGBTQ Victory Institute’s Global Programs work to increase the political participation of LGBTQ people to advance equality across the globe. This work includes training LGBTQ leaders and aspiring candidates, implementing voter education and civic engagement initiatives, and conducting research on the climate of LGBTQ political participation.
When transgender activist Erin Reed first started transitioning, she found it difficult to locate gender-affirming health centers that provide informed consent around hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and its effects. So, as an adult, she conducted extensive research in trans-inclusive web forums and created a Google Map listing 786 trans-supportive clinics, LGBTQ community centers, and other services across the nation.
A transphobic website called “The Gender Mapping Project” (or “The Gender Mapper”) seemingly reposted Reed’s map — typos and all — in order to help anti-trans activists “name and shame doctors” that support trans clients. The website’s stated goal is to abolish the “gender industry.”
“We are dedicated to delivering the truth about what is happening to children and youth by documenting the hard numbers on how many gender clinics, how many surgical clinics, and recording evidence where necessary. We wish to hold those who are harming to account and we demand justice for the victims,” the website states.
The website — which repeats right-wing falsehoods about “experimental surgeries,” chemical castration, and using gender-affirming care to “abuse” children — was founded by Alix Aharon, a member of the Women’s Liberation Front, a group that opposes trans legal and civil rights.
When Reed became aware of the website allegedly using her map, she tweeted, “I am enraged. I made my informed consent HRT map specifically for people dealing with poverty or lack of access to be able to obtain hormones after a move, or obtain without going for a year of therapy they can’t afford. And this d**k is using it for hate.”
Reed filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim and asked Google to remove the map. But the Gender Mapping Project continues to use it, Reed told The Daily Dot.
Aharon’s website map may have already helped anti-trans groups target gender-affirming care providers. Reed and other trans activists worry that others will use the map to intimidate, harass, or commit violence against care providers and their clients. This possibility seems entirely possible considering that death and bombing threats have targeted at least two gender-affirming hospitals so far.
Aharon’s website, Republican politicians, Fox News, as well as other activists and media figures have claimed that gender-affirming care is a form of “child abuse” even though every major U.S. medical association says such care improves the lives of trans people.
“Given the threats made against clinics and attacks on LGBTQ community centers, this poses an immediate risk to every place listed in this map,” trans advocate Alejandra Caraballo wrote on Twitter. “Anti-abortion activists use similar lists to coordinate bombings of clinics and murders of providers.”
In response to such criticism, Aharon disingenuously told Salon, “My map is subject to interpretation. I don’t express an opinion on the actual map, if someone thinks that child gender clinics are a wonderful thing then my map is simply a resource for treatment.”
She told The Daily Dot that she doesn’t “really have other political views” and doesn’t see how her map can be transphobic seeing as pro-trans advocates have posted similar maps.
While her website rails against gender-affirming care for children, its map contains listings for places offering “’adult advocacy, support & ancillary services’ including support groups, chest binders, and STD testing,” The Daily Dot noted.
The Gender Mapping Project’s Twitter and Facebook accounts have both been suspended. However, the site maintains a monetized YouTube account, meaning that Google and Aharon can both profit from it. Google told the aforementioned publication that it is investigating the YouTube channel and Google Map.
Google also said that anyone can create maps and also report ones that may violate the company’s policies. Meanwhile, Twitter users are sharing the map online, tagging high-profile anti-trans activists who could help direct violence toward gender-affirming caregivers, the aforementioned publication reported.
One Twitter user criticized Google’s inaction against Aharon, writing, “Seriously @google @googlemaps you are putting people in danger by not taking this down. Do something about it. #NoHate.”
When Jennifer Eller first began transitioning in 2011, she was an English teacher in Kenmoor Middle School in Maryland. That year, the students began calling her a pedophile. A human resources worker said that her therapist’s note about her transition was “garbage” before insisting that Eller present as male at the school. Another administrator told her not to wear skirts because it’d make others feel uncomfortable.
Eller transferred to Friendly High School, thinking things would get better. They got worse.
Students and parents repeatedly called her a tr***y and a pedophile and misgendered her. Students regularly called Eller “mister,” a “he/she,” an “it,” and “a guy in a dress.” They asked about her genitals. One threatened to rape her and make her “their girlfriend.” She reported the rape threat, but the school principal said he couldn’t do anything about it.
The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.
One parent who accused Eller of “lying to everyone” about her gender came to school to yell at her. The parent had to be removed by school security.
Eller said she filed formal harassment and discrimination complaints with school officials. In response, school officials retaliated against her, she said. The school removed Eller from teaching an advanced English course, accusing her of being too friendly with students. Later, administrators and staff baselessly accused her of shouting at students and making them fear for their safety, Eller said.
She eventually resigned from teaching in 2017, citing a need to protect her own mental and physical health. She later filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EOCC). The EEOC determined that Eller’s claims had merit. She then filed a lawsuit against the Prince George’s County Public School district in 2018, stating that officials had done nothing to stop or address the transphobic abuse.
The school district recently settled with Eller for an undisclosed amount. The district also put into place policies and administrative procedures for handling future transphobia. These changes were part of the settlement agreement, The Washington Post reported.
The changes also include school staff resources that explain trans identity and related terms, pronoun use, policies about bathroom and locker room facilities, dress codes, athletic participation, and other related issues.
“If these policies had been in place when I started my process,” Eller told the Post, “I would have known what my protections were and what I can expect from folks. And that’s not to say everybody’s perfect or that everyone would follow it. But I think that it would have been different. I think it would have been a healthier environment for me.”
Eller currently works as part of the U.S. Navy’s Child & Youth Programs where she is treated with respect, her lawyers said. However, working there, she only earns a fraction of what she made as a teacher.
During the four months of the monkeypox outbreak, health care providers, researchers and an anxious public have scrambled to determine how the virus transmits, how to prevent it and how the infection plays out in the body.
Little attention has been paid to what comes after the infection clears.
Following recovery from this skin lesion–causing virus, people often find themselves waiting anxiously over the course of months to see whether monkeypox will leave them with permanent scarring. And in interviews with more than a dozen people who have had the virus and as many health care providers and researchers, NBC News learned that in some people, the lingering scars are not only physical but psychological. Troublingly, it’s also possible the virus could cause permanent damage to sensitive internal tissues and give rise to persistent pain or other onerous long-term symptoms.
“Just because you’re cleared and no longer contagious, it doesn’t mean you’re totally back to normal,” said Matt Ford, 30, a bicoastal actor who contracted the virus at the beginning of the summer and hopes that his scarring, including pockmarks on his face, will continue to dissipate. “It did a number on my body, especially in more sensitive areas.”
Unfortunately, people looking to doctors or health agencies for answers about what to expect post-pox are typically met with an information vacuum. This is the result of the notorious dearth of research conducted prior to the outbreak about a virus that until this spring largely only circulated in western and central Africa.
“I just want there to be more concrete information, but maybe that’s asking too much,” said Brad, 33, a New York City area resident who preferred to use only his first name to protect his medical privacy.
In an emailed statement, the New York City health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, acknowledged this lack of health guidance, saying, “It’s still early in the outbreak and the kinds of long-term studies needed to understand these issues better have not been completed yet. We continue to learn from what people who’ve experienced infection and recovery are reporting.”
Since the unprecedented global outbreak was first detected by health authorities in mid-May, 65,415 cases have been diagnosed worldwide, 24,846 of them in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. While the weekly case count both nationally and worldwide has declined in recent weeks, raising hopes that the outbreak might be brought under control, concerns remain that at least a fraction of those who have had the virus might suffer long-term impacts of the infection.
For gay men, who comprise the overwhelming share of global monkeypox cases and among whom the competitiveness to look good is famously Olympian, worry over sustaining noticeable scarring in the wake of the infection can be particularly taxing.
“Especially for people who already have body dysmorphia or are hypersensitive to how others see them, there is this hypervigilance” of such cosmetic effects, said Preston Wholly, managing clinical director of behavioral health services at the LGBTQ-focused nonprofit health care provider Harlem United in New York City.
The marks are also signals of an infection that because it largely transmits through sex between men, can be highly stigmatized.
“I think it’s important to be aware of the effect of stigma regarding the route of monkeypox transmission, at-risk groups and disfiguring skin lesions — all of which could contribute to psychological distress,” said Dr. James Badenoch, a physician at the Queen Mary University of Medicine in London and the co-lead author of a paper published Sept. 8 in eClinicalMedicine on neurological and psychiatric conditions linked to monkeypox.
Harun Tulunay, 35, was hospitalized with a particularly severe case of the virus in July. In addition to experiencing extreme proctitis, or inflammation of the rectal tissues, and an inability to swallow, he developed an atypically large purple-black lesion that covered his entire left nostril. The lesion has since healed but has left behind pockmarked scar tissue.
“I am very obsessed with the little scar on my nose and am using lots of creams, scared it won’t go away,” said Tulunay, who, like a substantial proportion of people who contract monkeypox, has HIV.
Harun Tulunay.Courtesy Harun Tulunay
Dr. Howa Yeung, an assistant professor of dermatology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, said that while guidance on care for monkeypox lesions may be lacking, what is known about treating smallpox, which like monkeypox belongs to the orthopoxvirus family, can serve as a guide.
Yeung recommended the use of what are known as hydrocolloid dressings on lesions, which help keep them moist and promote healing while minimizing scarring. For thicker scars, silicone gel or patches may help improve their appearance, he said—especially if such treatment is started shortly after the scabs fall off. Later on, lasers and microneedling may further improve their appearance, although such interventions can be expensive.
The dermatologist noted that people with darker skin tones are likely at higher risk of monkeypox lesions leaving lasting dark marks, which he estimated could take three to 12 months to fade.
“Some scars will be permanent,” Yeung said.
He advised the use of skin-lightening agents, which a dermatologist can prescribe, as well as a high SPF sunscreen to keep the sun from further darkening the pigment.
Gerald Febles, 25, reported grappling with such marks, which, although they have been improving, still greatly bother him. Hoping they will recede over the coming months, he’s tried various scar-treatment creams, which don’t come cheap.
Gerald Febles points to a scar left from his monkeypox outbreak.Benjamin Ryan / NBC News
“I was very confident in my own skin before,” said Febles, who is an employee relations manager for the urgent care company MedRite. He said he now has “a lot more insecurity about my body in general. I’ve even gone to bars and some people have asked, ‘Oh, what’s that on your neck?’ So it’s something I’m reminded of whether or not it’s on my own terms.”
Febles was keen to assert that he sees no reason to be ashamed of having had monkeypox. But recalling that the infection caused him excruciating pain, he nevertheless characterized such questions from people as “a trauma trigger.”
The potential for lasting damage
Proctitis, experienced by 1 in 4 people with the virus in a Spanish study and 16% of U.S. cases about which the CDC has data, is one of the most devastating potential monkeypox symptoms. It can cause excruciating pain, in particular when defecating. What’s more, such symptoms might portend longer-term consequences of the infection.
During a July 14 Infectious Diseases Society of America call with reporters, Dr. Mary Foote, a medical epidemiologist at New York City’s health department, raised an early alarm that monkeypox lesions might cause permanent internal damage in some people. This, she said, could include the formation of scar tissue or strictures in the anorectal or urethral tissues, which could affect bodily functioning.
“It’s quite concerning,” Foote said of these potential outcomes, which she recently told NBC News might prompt the need for surgery or other interventions.
Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University, reported seeing urethral damage or overall pain in the penis, including difficulty retracting the foreskin, due to scarring from monkeypox.
Dr. Boghuma Titanji.Courtesy Dr. Boghuma Titanji
“When we see these cases with urologic involvement, we consult urologists,” Titanji said, noting that “early urinary catheterization and other interventions may prevent complications down the line.”
Brian Rice, 43, reported suffering from a host of bothersome health problems, including the flu, since recovering from monkeypox in mid-August. Having endured penile pain, swelling and discharge during the infection, the attorney has since experienced pain in his pelvic area and the frequent need to urinate. These symptoms eventually resolved themselves, Rice said, following pelvic floor myofascial release treatments. But he’s also experienced a persistent rash in his pubic area that is only recently starting to clear up.
“Nobody knows whether these other symptoms I’m experiencing are related in any way to monkeypox,” said Rice, who is HIV positive and lives in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. “It could be stress and anxiety; it could just be triggering other things.”
Dr. Peter Shalit, who runs an LGBTQ-focused primary-care medical practice in Seattle, reported that one of his patients had a mild case of monkeypox in July, with only skin lesions. Then, in August, the man relapsed and suffered from worse disease symptoms, including proctitis. Three weeks after recovering the second time, his rectal symptoms returned once more, causing him severe pain. Shalit treated both the second and third waves with the antiviral TPOXX, which appeared effective at battling symptoms.
The eClinicalMedicine paper published this month reported that in rare cases people with monkeypox develop neurologic symptoms, including encephalitis, confusion or seizures.
“Encephalitis can cause long-term problems with disability, mood and memory problems,” said Dr. Jonathan Rogers, a psychiatrist at University College London and a co-lead author of the paper. He stressed, however, that he and his coauthors don’t have the necessary follow-up data to determine any extended effects of this condition among people who have recovered from monkeypox.
The CDC reported Sept. 13 the cases of two previously healthy men in their 30s who after contracting monkeypox developed encephalomyelitis, or inflammation of the brain and spinal cord. The men have recovered from the infection, but a month after the start of their neurologic symptoms, they each still require an assistive device to walk.
A difficult transition
Arriving during the Covid crisis denouement, the monkeypox outbreak has triggered pandemic-related anxieties that had only recently begun to abate, by sending people with the virus right back into isolation for the few weeks the infection takes to resolve. And as they grapple with recovering from such a stigmatized virus, many of those who spoke with NBC News said it has taken time for them to regain their confidence and calm within the outside world — be that interacting with colleagues, seeing friends and family, or getting back into dating and sexual intimacy.
These people report having a particularly difficult time disentangling the misery of monkeypox from the joys of sex.
“I just feel like I lost my mojo,” said Harun Tulunay, who, similar to Febles, finds men constantly striking up conversations with him about monkeypox, especially given how much media coverage his case received.
“They don’t seem much interested in dating me after,” he said, ruefully.
In the meantime, Tulunay, who is a training and volunteer coordinator at the HIV nonprofit Positively UK, is trying to get his semen tested to determine if he might still harbor the virus. Monkeypox has indeed been found in seminal fluid, and the World Health Organization has recommended that men wear condoms for 12 weeks following recovery from monkeypox out of concern, pending further research, that the virus might remain in semen and be transmissible for that long.
John Farrey, 32, said what he missed most while isolating with monkeypox was going out dancing with friends. So he thought he’d be jazzed to jump right back onto the dance floor once he recovered.
But, the Brooklyn tech worker said, “I felt very terrified of my own skin” during the immediate aftermath of his infection. Being around other people, he said, “still felt unsafe.”
“It really took me a long time to be comfortable having close contact again,” Farrey said.
For Brad, the New Yorker, having monkeypox was “totally traumatic,” sending him off-kilter emotionally. He’s been struggling to regain his equilibrium since then. A scar on his penis has made him self conscious and has caused him to worry that sexual partners will ask intrusive questions about it.
“Then it’s ‘bye-bye mood,’” Brad quipped of such a scenario.
“I’m still kind of afraid of sex, because my last sexual experience resulted in this, and it still carries so much weight,” he said of contracting monkeypox. “Sometimes it turns into this source of shame that I’ve never experienced before about sex.”
Then there’s the question of when the body is once again ready for the rigors of intercourse. Proctitis, said Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Duke University Global Health Institute, “is going have a very big impact on subsequent sexual functioning” for those who engage in receptive anal sex.
“I think the question is: ‘When have you sufficiently healed?’” Breyer said—which, he acknowledged, “is not a question that people have good answers for.”
The importance of support
Given the traumatic ripple effects that monkeypox can unleash, experts highlight the need to provide people who contract the virus with support that doesn’t end when the scabs clear up.
“The anguish experienced by many patients cannot be underestimated. It can be a truly horrible time,” Dr. Hans Kluge, regional director of WHO Europe, said at an Aug. 30 news conference about monkeypox. He called for buttressing “both the physical and mental health of patients during the entire course of the disease, and after. It remains of critical importance.”
Harlem United’s Preston Wholly said he works with his clients who have contracted the virus to cut through the harmful stigma tied to contracting monkeypox.
“We really want to process that it wasn’t their fault and work through the guilt and shame and kind of normalize it,” he said.
Jeffrey Galaise, 41, who said he has persistent nightmares about the infection —“I imagine myself having pox and pain,” he said — is among the many people who have contracted the virus and then established their own support networks. He founded a Zoom-based monkeypox support group for people with the virus he met mainly through social media. This outlet, he said, has been invaluable as he tries to move on.
“I need to get back to my normal life,” said Galaise, who works for a New York City governmental agency. “It has certainly been a transition. I certainly think I’m getting there.”
Brad, who has also found a supportive community of others who have had monkeypox through social media, said he yearns to have the lingering physical and emotional effects of monkeypox behind him.
“I would like there to be a day when I don’t worry about this anymore,” he said. “I just want to be done with it.”
Pope Francis reportedly encouraged an LGBTQ+ Catholic group to build a church “that excludes no one.”
According to L’Avvenire, the pope met with Italian LGBTQ+ Catholic group The Tent of Jonathon in a Wednesday (21 September) conference to discuss the organisation’s plan to build a hospitable church that would cater to LGBTQ+ people.
The group, which was founded in 2018, works with various religious organisations to provide “sanctuaries of welcome and support for LGBT people and for every person affected by discrimination.”
In an effort to convince Pope Francis, organisation members gave him a collection of letters from the parents of LGBTQ+ children who have faced “isolation and suspicious within the Christian community.”
Having urged religious parents to “never condemn your children” in a 26 January address, adding that parents should “not hide behind an attitude of condemnation,” the conferences appeared to convince him as he told the organisation to continue with the church’s construction.
Despite upholding traditional church teachings that claim homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered,” the pontiff has been surprisingly forthcoming about introducing LGBTQ+ members into Catholic proceedings.
In 2013, he famously said: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”
But there is still a long way to go for LGBTQ+ acceptance in the Vatican. During the same address, he condemned what was cryptically described as lobbying by the LGBTQ+ community.
“The problem is not having this orientation,” he claimed. “We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem.”
Pope Francis has also repeatedly shut down any hope of same-sex marriage in the Catholic Church, most recently in 2021 when he said he “doesn’t have the power to change sacraments.”
“I have spoken clearly about this, no? Marriage is a sacrament. Marriage is a sacrament. The church doesn’t have the power to change sacraments. It’s as our Lord established.”
Excommunications for LGBTQ+ positive paraphenalia is still incredibly common in local Catholic communities. In June, a middle school was kicked out of the Catholic fold after officials refused to remove Pride and Black Lives Matter flags from school grounds.
In a statement, Massachusetts bishop Robert J. McManus, who chose to excommunicate the Nativity School of Worcester, said: “I publicly stated in an open letter…that ‘these symbols (flags) embody specific agendas or ideologies (that) contradict Catholic social and moral teaching
“It is my contention that the ‘Gay Pride’ flag represents support of gay marriage and actively living a LGBTQ+ lifestyle.”
In response, school president Thomas McKenney said that the flags “represent the inclusion and respect of all people” and that they simply state “that all are welcome at Nativity and this value of inclusion is rooted in Catholic teaching.”
