When Gaines Blasdel decided in 2012 that he wanted surgery so his physical identity would match the male character he’d long had in his head, his health insurance wouldn’t cover it — not even student coverage at Hampshire College, which he admits with a laugh is the “social justice warrior capital of the world.”
Blasdel went ahead in 2012 and had his breasts removed at his own expense, but by the time he wanted a phalloplasty to construct a new penis in 2017, the insurance situation changed.
