Offering gender-affirming care is like offering anorexia patients liposuction
Ben Leo said:
“Would you refer, I don't know, anorexia patients have liposuction if it made them feel better?”
The analogy is rhetorically powerful because it frames gender-affirming care as giving a distressed person exactly what their distorted thinking demands, which sounds like the opposite of good medicine. Many viewers will find it intuitive.
The analogy sounds medical, but it runs in the wrong direction. Liposuction does not treat anorexia because removing fat does not address the underlying condition and the evidence shows it causes harm, not relief. Gender-affirming care exists precisely because the evidence runs the other way: multiple longitudinal studies show that people with gender dysphoria who access hormones and surgery experience significant reductions in depression, anxiety, and suicidal distress. The comparison only works if you assume that gender dysphoria is a distorted belief about the body rather than a persistent, clinically documented condition, and that assumption is not what the research supports. When that analogy is used to close the door on care, it is trans people living with untreated dysphoria who bear the cost.
What I said at the time:
“I think that's the most stupid question I've ever been asked. Why do you think anyone would offer somebody who has is suffering with anorexia nervosa? Well. Liposuction.”
Trans adults and young people whose access to care is opposed on the basis of an analogy that sounds medical but is not supported by the clinical literature.