I am writing in response to the guest column “We need to rethink ‘gender care’ for children” [Gazette, Nov. 14] by Karen Bercovici. This is an old and tired argument about trans people, couched in “protecting children,” that I thought we had gotten well beyond in Northampton. Trans and gender non-binary people are not an “illusion,” “social contagion” or a new product of “harmful ideology.” Perhaps the author should read some history such a Leslie Feinberg’s book “Transgender Warriors,” or Susan Stryker’s “Transgender History” or do some research on Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, or his advocacy group the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee which was founded in 1897. Hirschfeld was an activist and advocate for queer and gender non-conforming people who recognized gender queer people as a natural variation and provided gender-affirming care, including hormones and surgery, until his institute was destroyed and we lost this archives about our lives. I was 30 years old before I first heard the word transgender and 31 before I saw a picture of a trans man for the first time. I don’t want this for our children. Right now, children in Northampton are allowed to explore their gender identities and be recognized for who they are resulting in a beautiful array of genders that in other parts of the country are suppressed, sometime violently. Stop with the old stereotype that positions trans people as a “dangerous deception” or out of touch with “reality.” We are a reality, we are here, we have always been here.

Mitch Boucher

Florence