A person's well being can be removed from the budget

The province of Alberta disappointed me, yet again. As usual, it's sickening conservatism is at the root of this disgust. Usually its a combination of the red neck assholes and conservative government, but this time its solely the latter.

The 2009-10 budget was approved today, which unsurprisingly approved some cutbacks. Gender reassignment surgeries (GRS) are no longer covered, which will save about $700 000 a year–PENNIES in the big picture! They approved other things like a $550 million increase to other areas of health services. The GRS cut makes no sense.

From the view of humanity, you cannot put a price on someone's complete physical, mental, and social well being. If something as fundamental as gender and all its intricacies is no longer fully recognized and financially covered as a health issue, its going to wreak havoc on the lives of transgendered people. Trans people already experience maginalization and transphobia, the least the government could do is attempt to lessen it.

This also brings up the issue of gender identity disorder as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4, used by mental health professionals. You can read exactly how transgenderism is medicalized in the DSM-IV here. The DSM is definitely flawed, for it deemed homosexuality an illness until 1973. This is also the exact reason why I am no longer a psychology major and have switched to sociology.

My heart goes out to a close friend of mine who is trans. I wish her the very best in these hard times. Times made hard by an ignorant government.