At Cal Poly, hormone therapy for transgender students is now a basic human right
Cal Poly now offers gender-affirming care to its students, meaning transgender and non-gender binary students can receive hormone replacement therapy and other basic medical services with no additional co-pays or referrals.
A university announcement sent Monday says Campus Health and Wellbeing offers an option “for transgender and gender-diverse students who seek to align their physical body with their gender identity.”
Services will combine hormone replacement therapy — including female-to-male hormone therapy and male-to-female hormone therapy — and additional medical services like lab testing with counseling and health education support.
The enhanced services are filling a need identified in an assessment recently published by San Luis Obispo County, and are evidence that Cal Poly administrators are working to create a more positive experience for diverse students.
A 2019 needs assessment led by Cal Poly psychology professor Jay Bettergarcia, says 65% of transgender and nonbinary people surveyed said they didn’t know how to find an LGBTQ+ competent provider, and 85% admitted to having thoughts of suicide.
“Being an inclusive campus means that we need to take steps in our provision of health care to meet our students where they are,” said Keith Humphrey, vice president for Student Affairs. “Adding gender-affirming care is one step in assuring all of our students feel welcomed and valued when they seek that basic human right of health care.”
The Cal Poly Campus Health and Wellbeing website says its goal in providing gender-affirming care “is to ensure trans and gender non-conforming students receive the highest quality care in a supportive, respectful place.”
In addition to a list of services offered, the site provides information on name and gender change and other resources.
The costs for gender-affirming care will range between $8 and $30 monthly, on par with other campus health services, according to a news release. That seems to be on the low end for hormone therapy, which can cost around $1,500 a year, at least according to one trans woman’s first-hand account published in Teen Vogue.
Is hormone therapy available at California State University campuses?
The added coverage at Cal Poly appears to reflect the university’s public-facing work to change the campus culture toward supporting diverse students, as opposed to a response to direction from the California State University system.
It also comes six months after the campus-based Mustang News published an accountability story on the topic with the headline, “UCs provide hormone replacement therapy for students — why doesn’t Cal Poly?”
A spokesperson from the CSU Office of the Chancellor told The Tribune there is no mandate from CSU to provide gender-affirming care services on campus health centers. Instead, the decision is made by individual campuses.
Chico State also lists gender-affirming care on its health center website, but several other CSU campuses do not mention those services.
What does transgender mean?
Some of the terms used in this story may be new to you. Here are definitions that might help, provided by the 2019 SLO County LGBTQ+ Needs Assessment report by QCARES.
Gender: A social construct used to classify a person as a man, woman, nonbinary, or some other identity or identities. Fundamentally different from the sex one is assigned at birth; a set of social, psychological, and emotional traits, often influenced by societal expectations.
Gender expression: How a person expresses their gender in terms of dress, mannerisms and/or behaviors that society characterizes as masculine, feminine, androgynous, gender neutral, or something else.
Genderqueer: A person whose gender identity and/or gender expression falls outside of the dominant societal norm for their assigned sex, is beyond genders, or some combination of these traits.
LGBTQ+: An umbrella term collectively referring to those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and all others who identify as a sexual or gender minority. The plus sign is used to explicitly include all sexual and gender minority identities not represented in the letter portion of the acronym.
Transgender: Used most often as an umbrella term, transgender is commonly defined as someone whose gender identity or expression does not fit assigned birth sex and gender.
