By August, Felicity Giles knew it was time. Her happiness was long overdue. The 36-year-old trucker changed her name, adopted the middle name Saoirse—“freedom” in Gaelic—and started looking into medically transitioning. “It was mainly an attempt to break from who I was and who I grew up as,” she told me. At the start of 2021, she spent weeks calling Planned Parenthoods in Fort Worth, Texas, where she and her spouse live, seeking a consultation for hormone replacement therapy. But the pandemic, and high demand, meant waiting more than a month to get a consultation, let alone begin HRT. Even when appointments opened up, she said, “I called them every day and never got through.”
Scrolling through Twitter one night, Felicity read about Plume, a new subscription telehealth service that makes it easier for trans people to access hormones and lab work or procure doctors’ letters needed for surgeries and name changes. A day after forking over a $99-per-month fee, Felicity was talking to a Plume clinician. After a few questions, they chatted about HRT. Within hours, Plume connected her with a local physician who prescribed her estrogen and dutasteride, a testosterone blocker. Felicity picked up her first dose that night.
Plume is one of about a dozen telehealth services catering to trans clients that have cropped up in the last two years. It’s a niche market aimed at eliminating barriers that keep trans people from accessing health care. According to a 2015 study, a third of trans people report that health care providers have harassed them or denied treatment on the basis of gender identity.
This story is from the July/August 2021 edition of Mother Jones.
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This story is from the July/August 2021 edition of Mother Jones.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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