Historian and trans studies scholar Jules Gill-Peterson is leveraging decades of medical archives to challenge the Supreme Court’s perception of transgender healthcare as “experimental” ahead of the landmark United States v. Skrmetti ruling expected later this month. As an expert witness and co-author of an amicus brief, the Baltimore-based academic provides empirical evidence that medical transition is not a modern phenomenon, but a long-standing practice that predates the current wave of legislative bans targeting minors across two dozen states.
Beyond the Myth of “Experimental” Medicine
Gill-Peterson’s 2018 book, Histories of the Transgender Child, served as a prophetic warning against the legislative onslaught currently sweeping the United States. While opponents of gender-affirming care—including Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey—claim that treatments like puberty blockers and hormones are “novel” or “untested,” Gill-Peterson’s research proves otherwise. Her work documents youth seeking medical sex alterations as early as the start of the 20th century, dismantling the “Tipping Point” narrative that frames transness as a recent social contagion.
“While most academics aim to make small discursive interventions, Jules Gill-Peterson has paradigm-shifted the field of trans studies multiple times,” says Charlie Markbreiter, an academic and organizer. He notes that her scholarship effectively “destroyed the myth that trans kids were ‘just invented,’” providing a grounded historical framework for modern movement struggles.
Material Needs Over “Trans Joy”
In a departure from mainstream liberal rhetoric, Gill-Peterson rejects euphemisms like “gender-affirming care,” viewing them as abstractions that obscure the material reality of trans lives. Speaking from Thailand while recovering from a vaginoplasty, she advocates for plain language: hormones and surgery. For Gill-Peterson, these are not tools of “validation” but essential medical requirements.
“We don’t need any more disgusting ‘trans joy,’” Gill-Peterson asserts. “We don’t need any more ‘gender euphoria.’ Let’s just get rid of all that and spend our time delivering real things that matter to people, things like hormones and sex changes and surgeries.” Her decision to seek care in Bangkok reflects a historical lineage of “medical tourism” established by figures like Christine Jorgensen and Janet Mock, driven by the failures of the American healthcare system.
The Skyrocketing Cost of Medical Transition
One of the most startling findings in Gill-Peterson’s forthcoming book, Transgender Liberalism, is the dramatic inflation of transition costs. In the 1960s, the total cost for psychiatric evaluation and surgery at a gender clinic averaged $3,500—roughly $35,000 today. By the 1990s, those prices had doubled, and for trans men, the cost of phalloplasty has reached upwards of $200,000.
The data suggests a paradoxical crisis: despite increased visibility, it is empirically harder to access medical transition today than it was 60 years ago. Gill-Peterson argues that the “real panic” isn’t moral, but economic. The American system has not made transition too easy; it has made it prohibitively expensive and bureaucratically inaccessible, particularly as lawmakers move to block Medicaid coverage for the quarter-million trans people who rely on it.
Confronting SCOTUS with Empirical Truths
As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on Tennessee’s ban on care for minors, Gill-Peterson positions herself as an “empiricist” to counter the “textual originalism” favored by the court’s conservative majority. Her amicus brief details the “longevity, reality, and banality” of medical transition in the U.S., aiming to debunk the legal framework that views these treatments as dangerous innovations.
“I’m not a lawyer… But I am an empiricist,” she explains, noting that the Skrmetti case frames healthcare in an “ahistorical, even anti-historical” manner. Regardless of the judicial outcome, Gill-Peterson emphasizes that the struggle for trans rights cannot be decided by a single ruling. She advocates for a “bread-and-butter approach” centered on economic security, workplace organizing, and mutual aid networks to ensure the survival of trans communities in a hostile legislative climate.
“When the battle’s playing out on a hundred fronts at once, we have to remember that there’s no single court ruling… that’ll decide how this struggle will go,” Gill-Peterson concludes. “There has to be a constant sense that we’re building momentum for those of us seeking wonderful things. Things like unrestricted medical transition, sex changes, surgery—and iced coffee in Thailand!”
This piece was published in partnership with Them.
