“Jeopardy!” champ Amy Schneider testified Wednesday against an Ohio bill that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth in the state.
The Ohio native — who became a household name after winning 40 consecutive games on the popular quiz show from November 2021 to January 2022 — opened up about life as a transgender woman, and the relief she felt after transitioning.
Schneider, who came out as trans about five years ago, said that “from the moment that I was born, there was this quiet alarm going off at the back of MY head” that only stopped after she began transitioning.
“After decades of living with that agony, I came out as trans, and I began receiving gender-affirming care. And for the first time in my life, that alarm went silent, and I knew peace and quiet for the first time,” she said. “The only way I was able to live with it before was because I thought there was no other way to live. But to have gotten that peace, and to have that alarm turned on right now, would be so devastating.”
Today, her life is “going great, like beyond my wildest dreams” — but she doesn’t know how she would feel if she no longer had access to hormone therapy.
“I don’t know that I could go on living,” she said. “I hope that I would, and I hope that I’d find a way to do it, but I really believe that I might not survive.”
Speaking against House Bill 454 — which would bar access to puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapy and gender-confirmation surgeries for people under 18 — Schneider asked lawmakers to “please don’t force (kids) to go that constant feeling of wrongness and danger.”
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “gender-affirming care improves the mental health and overall well-being of gender-diverse children and adolescents” — an assessment supported by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
_____
