Berkeleyside32%
New Berkeley clinic aims to make hair removal less painful for trans community 13%
By Nathan Dalton55%
7/23/2026, 9:44:18 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Negativity Bias, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 11.7% saturation with 127 hits. Analysis detected 1,229 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,082 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 29.4% and a BS Rank of 13% (18,512 of 21,099 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 87.70% of the article peer group.
When Umbra Williams first walked into an electrolysis clinic, she was treated as some sort of “predator,” she said, an experience familiar to many trans women.
“I had honestly stopped looking for electrolysis in the Bay Area because I had two prior very unpleasant encounters,” said Williams, 44, who transitioned three years ago.
But then she saw a Facebook ad for a new clinic in Berkeley called Airship Electrolysis that was trans-owned and dedicated to gender-affirming care.
And it wasn’t far from her home in El Cerrito.
When she walked into the clinic for the first time and was greeted warmly by a trans receptionist, Williams said it was like “a breath of fresh air.”
Trans people make up a large part of the electrolysis market, but most clinics don’t cater specifically to the community, according to Leo Goodyear, who founded Airship with his wife, Jude, in May 2025.
Electrolysis is a method of removing unwanted hair using a fine probe that is inserted into each individual hair follicle.
A low level electrical current causes a chemical or heat reaction that kills the hair follicle at its root.
Unlike laser hair removal, electrolysis is permanent and works on all hair colors and skin types.
It was first used to zap follicles in the 1870s.
The process is tedious and time consuming.
Electrolysis takes multiple hours-long sessions that can take up to a year to complete.
“A lot of trans people in their transition, specifically trans women, spend more time with their electrologists than they do with their therapist, than they do with their surgeon, than they do with their doctor,” said Jude.
The Goodyears were inspired to start Airship after Leo needed electrolysis prior to gender-affirming surgery.
He didn’t realize what he was getting himself into.
“It’s very expensive, it’s very time consuming, it’s painful,” said Leo.
“And I was needing to commute really far in order to do it.”
The Goodyears were living in Berkeley at the time and there wasn’t an electrolysis clinic within a 20-mile radius that didn’t have a long waitlist.
“To be able to do it in the timeline that we were given was almost impossible,” said Jude.
“He had to spend so much money out of pocket, he was completely on his own with getting insurance coverage and we were like, ‘Huh, this is an opportunity.’”
The Goodyears had been aggressively saving money and looking for a business opportunity for some time.
And a mere eight weeks after Leo’s surgery, Airship Electrolysis was born.
Airship Electrolysis works with Kaiser, Sutter, Anthem and more
In the beginning Airship was only open part time and had just one electrologist.
But the demand for their services was high, verifying the Goodyears’ hunch that the business would go over well in Berkeley.
And it wasn’t long before they landed their first insurance contract with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California.
“That basically sold us that we were going to do this,” said Leo.
“Because the demand from Kaiser patients was so high.”
The uptick in demand meant that Airship needed more electrolysis practitioners, and the Goodyears came up with a novel plan to find them.
They took $60,000 of their own money and founded a scholarship to send trans people to electrolysis school.
“We found four people who we thought were really talented and promising and had the potential to work here when they were done with the scholarship,” said Leo.
“And then as a result of that scholarship, it opened up hiring channels with these schools that trained people and we were able to build our team further.”
Airship now has seven practitioners, plus an admin staff of four, who work at two locations in the Elmwood near Alta Bates Summit Medical Center.
To date Airship has processed 487 intakes and treated 272 patients.
And it’s actively seeking more.
Airship is also working with more and more insurance carriers.
“From day one, we knew that we wanted to do insurance work,” said Leo, who was inspired after working at the Gender Confirmation Center of San Francisco early in his career.
“[It] was one of the premier surgery centers to open up and scale and really take insurance and to really tailor their services to the trans community,” he said.
In order to qualify for insurance coverage, most patients need a gender-dysphoria diagnosis.
Under such a diagnosis, electrolysis is considered a medically necessary treatment.
Beyond Kaiser, Airship works with Sutter Health, Berkeley SHIP/Wellfleet, North East Medical Services (NEMS), Contra Costa Health Plan (CCHP), San Francisco Health Plan (SFHP), Blue Shield of California, Anthem Blue Cross, Cigna, Aetna and others.
Having insurance coverage is a godsend to most patients.
The out of pocket rate at Airship is $170 per hour and most patients need dozens and dozens of hours of electrolysis.
Connor Stuart-Paul, 31, started electrolysis treatments at Airship in October.
She has logged 84 hours so far, with 25-30 hours to go, at least.
“I have already hit my out-of-pocket max just with electrolysis essentially,” she said, referring to the maximum yearly amount an insured person must pay before their insurance pays for services in full.
Stuart-Paul spent many of those hours with an electrologist who was also a trans woman.
“Having someone I could talk to about other kinds of gender-affirming care was really, really nice,” she said.
“Just having other queer people working there, I’ve always found it easy to work with them.”
Part of Airship’s mission is to create work opportunities for trans and queer people and to pay them a living wage.
Electrologists at the clinic make between $45-$55 per hour.
The Goodyears also want Airship to stand as a model of trans and queer business success.
“I think it’s really important to show trans people in positions of ownership over our own healthcare needs,” said Leo.
“Not in a position of receiving charity or being victims or people feeling sorry for us, [but] owning our needs, making money and serving our own community.”
*Airship Electrolysis*, 2999 Regent Street, Suite 300A, Berkeley / 3101 Telegraph Ave, Suite 9, Berkeley.
Phone: 510-812-7084.
Connect via *Instagram*.
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4speakers42%attributed speech625writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageJude Goodyear
84 attributed words18% of attributed speech54% writer coverage
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