As if college tuition wasn’t expensive enough. Now if you want to send your child to an Ivy League university you might be footing the bill for this?
Daily Pennsylvanian reports:
In the next academic year, the Penn Student Insurance Plan will begin offering a new benefit for transgender students — it will cover the cost of the gender confirmation process, also known as gender reassignment or transition.
The benefit covers triadic treatment, the term used for the three-step process of gender confirmation. Triadic treatment consists of psychotherapy, estrogen or testosterone hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgery, which involves the changing of genitals.
The benefit covers the costs of surgery for up to $50,000. According to a research report by the organization Transgender At Work, the cost of male-to-female surgery can average around $20,000.
The initiative was introduced by the previous Lambda Alliance board, chaired by College senior and Daily Pennsylvanian columnist Dennie Zastrow.
“A problem with LGBT advocacy at Penn in the past had been that we overlooked the needs of transgender students,” Zastrow said.
The problem is that transgender students and homosexuals have been overlooked on our college campuses? You can’t be serious.
What about covering all sorts and manner of vanity surgeries? Shouldn’t they be covered as well with that logic? Why cover a surgery because a man sees himself as a woman and not a woman who imagines herself as a buxom woman? Or hair plugs for men?
Where does the madness stop? Oh wait. It doesn’t.
Parents be very wary of where you send your kids to college.
April 21, 2010 at 7:42 am
Here's the real question- do they cover obstetrical care?
April 21, 2010 at 9:33 am
This is absolutely ridiculous. These students' tuition money is supposed to be funding their educations–not John/Jane's vanity surgery. I'll bet they wouldn't dream of funding surgery for students with broken bones.
I guess John Doe's desire for breasts trumps my desire for the most recent academic journals.
April 21, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Simple 6th grade biology, your sex is determined at the cellular level of our bodies. Unless they can "change" your sex in all of your cells then this type of surgery only mutilates.
This problem is a mental problem.
April 21, 2010 at 1:42 pm
It's like Body Integrity Identity Disorder except it has a substantial constiuency, so it's ok. Faugh.
April 21, 2010 at 2:26 pm
School covers self-mutilation, great. Parents will be so pleased when their son comes home a 'daughter' or vice-verse.
April 21, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Folks, for a college that stresses traditional values I recommend the wife's alma mater; Baylor University in Waco, TX.
Their code of conduct mandates automatic and permanent expulsion for any coed who poses for a mag such as Playboy (Hugh Hefner's boys have been trying for years to get a Baylor girl. No luck). They'll automatically notify the parents of any arrests made of a little darling who might be residing in a dorm far from home and thinking they'll kick up their heels a bit. They've only recently allowed coed dancing on campus. Maybe they're a wee bit strict but you can bet there'll be no "gender bending" going on there.
As you might have guessed they're not Catholic (but enrollment is open to all faiths), they're Southern Baptist.
Go Bears!
April 21, 2010 at 8:18 pm
A woman thinks she's Cleopatra, she gets inpatient therapy.
She thinks she's a man, she gets surgery. At $50K.
Right.
April 21, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I go to a public university in California and my school covers gender reassignment expenses as well. So parents and students are not the only ones shouldering the costs of gender reassignment but also the tax payers of the state
April 24, 2010 at 9:05 pm
romishgraffiti – That's exactly what I think of every time someone tries to defend gender reassignment surgery. It's a mental disorder, plain and simple.
May 1, 2010 at 6:16 am
You have GOT to be kidding right?!
Transgender people anguish almost their entire lives waiting to have their gender *confirmed* via surgeries. IT IS NOT cosmetic only. It relieves emotional depression and stress with being in the wrong bodies! Insurance policies rarely pay for this stuff and the person suffers emotionally because of it. They don't *let* you walk into a plastic surgeon's office and say I want to do this and it gets done. It is a LONG arduous process where doctors and therapists reccomend the procedure to happen.
This is VERY different from some woman just wanting larger or smaller tits.