Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking state universities for the number and ages of their students who sought or received gender dysphoria treatment, including sex reassignment surgery and hormone prescriptions, according to a survey released Wednesday.
Why he’s conducting the survey wasn’t completely clear. DeSantis has been criticized by LGBTQ advocates for policies seen as discriminatory, including banning instruction on sexual and gender identity in early grades and making it easier for parents to remove books related to the topic in public schools.
“We can see cuts in funding for universities to treat students with this condition, and I think an all-out elimination of services is certainly on the table,” said House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell.
The survey was released the same day the university presidents voted to support DeSantis’ anti-woke agenda and to reject “the progressivist higher education indoctrination agenda” and committing to “removing all woke positions and ideologies by February 1, 2023,” according to a Department of Education news release.
The survey is being sent to the university board of trustee chairs by DeSantis’ budget director, Chris Spencer.
“Our office has learned that several state universities provide services to persons suffering from gender dysphoria,” Spencer wrote. “On behalf of the Governor, I hereby request that you respond to the enclosed inquiries related to such services.”
The governor’s office did not respond to emails and a phone call seeking information about the purpose of the survey, which must be completed by Feb. 10. Spencer told the chairs the survey is to be completed as part of their obligation to govern institutional resources and protect the public interest.
Driskell said DeSantis is trying to remake the state’s universities “in his own image” as far as what can be taught and how students can be treated.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s a really terrifying place that we’re at in Florida history,” Driskell said. “What can happen is a brain drain where we have Florida students not want to stay here and attend school at our public colleges and universities.”
The survey is similar to one the governor is forcing state universities to complete regarding spending on diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory programs.
The current memo asks universities to “provide the number of encounters for sex-reassignment treatment or where such treatment was sought” as well as data for students referred to other facilities. It says to protect students’ identities when completing the information.
The survey requires a breakdown by age, regardless of whether the student is age 18 or older, of people prescribed hormones or hormone antagonists or who underwent a medical procedures like mastectomies, breast augmentation or removal and reconstruction of genitals.
Far-right pundit Jordan Peterson has finally discovered that his actions have consequences following several controversial tweets.
The anti-LGBTQ+ author has been told he could have his psychology licence revoked if he refuses to undergo a mandatory coaching program by the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO).
Peterson initially revealed he was obligated to take the course in a 3 January twitter thread.
“The Ontario College of Psychologists has demanded that I submit myself to mandatory social media communication retraining with their experts,” he wrote.
“About a dozen people from all over the world submitted complaints about my public statements on Twitter and [The Joe Rogan Podcast] over a four-year period claiming I had ‘harmed’ people with my views.”
The former Toronto psychology professor also aired his frustrations at the obligatory media training course in a 4 January column for The National Post.
He cited his tweets criticising Canadian president Justin Trudeau – for what he described as an “unconstitutional” COVID-19 travel ban, while also calling him a “puppet” – as the reason for the admonishment from the Ontario College of Psychologists.
“What exactly have I done that is so seriously unprofessional that I am now a danger not only to any new potential clients but to the public itself?” Peterson wrote.
Jordan Peterson has claimed his tweets criticising Justin Trudeau were predominantly why he is obligated to attend the media training session. (Getty)
Others have routinely cited his often blatantly anti-LGBTQ+ tweets and rhetoric, including claims that being trans is a “contagion” similar to “satanic ritual abuse”.
Peterson acknowledged these criticisms in his column, saying that he had been labelled “sexist, transphobic” and a “climate change denialist”.
Despite the plethora of examples detailing Peterson’s vehement anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments – including several dozen tweets and audio snippets of him comparing the trans community to “borderline schizophrenic” individuals – he failed to cite any in his article.
Most notable was his refusal to correctly gender actor Elliot Page in a set of tweets in July, prompting his several-month-long ban from Twitter before being reinstated after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the site.
After being banned, Peterson recorded a 15-minute YouTube video titled “Twitter ban” which saw the media pundit call gender-affirming healthcare a “viciously harmful fad”.
Since being reinstated, Peterson’s rhetoric against the transgender and LGBTQ+ community has continued among his repeated tweets of lockdown scepticism and far-right ideological rhetoric.
In a statement to Global News, the CPO said: “The college is not authorised to discuss this matter as per the confidentiality provisions of section 36 of Ontario’s Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991.”
A transgender woman in New Hampshire has filed a discrimination complaint against her employer for denying her healthcare coverage for gender-affirming care.
Lillian Bernier, 31, has been an employee of New Hampshire-based manufacturing company Turbocam since 2019. She began transitioning in 2020. According to the complaint, filed on December 16 with the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the company’s self-funded health coverage plan says that no benefits will be paid for “gender dysphoria treatment, including but not limited to, counseling, gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy, and related preoperative and postoperative procedures, which, as their objective, change the person’s sex and any related complications.”
Bernier, the complaint says, suffers from gender dysphoria and requires hormone replacement therapy, counseling, and medically recommended surgeries. As a result of Turbocam’s refusal to cover gender-affirming care, Bernier said she has paid out of pocket for medical care and put off treatment.
The complaint alleges that the company and Health Plans Inc., which administers Turbocam’s health coverage plan, are violating employment nondiscrimination provisions of the New Hampshire Human Rights Act, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“I’m proud of my work as a machinist at Turbocam,” Bernier said. “Like everyone else I rely on the pay and healthcare coverage from my job to support myself and my family. I’m just asking for fair coverage and to be treated the same as my coworkers.”
“It’s frustrating and overwhelming not to be treated equally and not to receive the full benefits my coworkers do,” she said in a statement. “I’m paying into the employee health plan like everyone else, but I have to pay completely out-of-pocket on top of that for my healthcare, which is a stress on me and my family. I take pride in my job and work hard, but no matter how much extra effort I put in, I’m not getting the full benefit of my work.”
Bernier’s lawyer, Chris Erchull, of GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) in Boston, said that she is simply asking “to be treated with the same dignity, humanity, and fairness as other employees of the company.”
“By maintaining a blanket exclusion of coverage for any health care related to transgender transition, the company is providing Lillian and any other transgender employees, presently or in the future, a lesser tier of benefits,” Erchull said. “It sends a message that her healthcare needs are not legitimate.”
“Turbocam sees Lillian and all employees as created in God’s image and is providing as much support as possible consistent with its Mission, faith, and the law,” Jordan Pratt, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, a Christian legal group representing Turbocam, said in a statement.
According to the company’s mission statement, Turbocam “exists as a business for the purpose of honoring God, creating wealth for its employees, and supporting Christian service to God and people.”
Pratt said that all Turbocam employees “have the option of taking a substantial cash bonus that they can use to choose any health insurance or medical services they desire. This should resolve the issue.”
But Erchull called the bonus a “red herring” and said that it is “insufficient to purchase other coverage.”
“A company like Turbocam does not have a legally protected right to provide lesser benefits to transgender employees simply because of the owner’s religious belief,” Erchull said.
In a statement, Health Plans Inc. said that “While we understand and empathize with the issues raised by GLAD, this employee is not insured by Health Plans Inc.” According to the statement, Health Plans Inc. processes health benefit claims for employers, but Turbocam has control over its health plan design and benefits.
As the Associated Press notes, depending on how the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission’s investigation proceeds, Bernier’s complaint could evolve into a lawsuit in state or federal court.
Same-sex married couples handle stress better than different-sex spouses do, according to a new study.
The study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships by researchers at the University of Texas Austin, found that while stress is common in all kinds of marriages, same-sex couples are able to deal with it better together.
By analysing survey responses of 419 couples on dyadic coping – coping as a couple – in both same-sex and different-sex marriages, researchers revealed that same-sex spouses were able to be more positive and collaborative in handling stress compared to their counterparts.
Same-sex married couples handle stress better than different-sex spouses do, according to a new study.
The study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships by researchers at the University of Texas Austin, found that while stress is common in all kinds of marriages, same-sex couples are able to deal with it better together.
By analysing survey responses of 419 couples on dyadic coping – coping as a couple – in both same-sex and different-sex marriages, researchers revealed that same-sex spouses were able to be more positive and collaborative in handling stress compared to their counterparts.
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The differences, researchers said, stem from links between gender and coping strategies.
For example, women married to men said that their spouses were more ambivalent and hostile in responding to stress compared to women married to women.
According to study author Yiwen Wang: “This research shows that while there are some gender differences in dyadic coping efforts, the effects of supportive and collaborative dyadic coping as well as of negative dyadic coping on marital quality are the same for all couples.
“Our findings also emphasise the importance of coping as a couple for marital quality across different relationship contexts, which can be an avenue through which couples work together to strengthen relationship wellbeing.”
The study’s authors believe that because the stress was handled better by both male and female same-sex couples, the key to their dyadic coping is their ability to work together to deal with stress, using their similarities in stress responses and their shared gender-related experiences.
Debra Umberson, Wang’s co-author, said that coping with stress collaboratively may even be more important for same-sex couples, who are less likely to have familial and institutional support compared to straight couples.
“Including same-sex spouses and looking at how they work with each other to manage stress as compared to different-sex spouses can help us better understand the ways in which gender dynamics unfold in marriages,” she said.
“Same-sex couples face unique stressors related to discrimination and stigma. Coping as a couple may be especially important for them as they do not receive as much support from extended family, friends or institutions as different-sex couples do.”
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Hot Octopuss are offering discounts as part of Black Friday, including their popular Guybrator. The masturbator, for people with penises is hands-free and app compatible, so you can enjoy it solo or with a partner. So which toys have been discounted, and which one is right for you?
Many of us have been cut from our usual networks of care, affection, pleasure and exchange during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of queer life, this seems especially palpable: So much of how we engage with each other centers around community, contact, and proximity, conditions which now might evoke potential danger and anxiety, risk even. One of the many transformations undergone in the pandemic, then, relates to the amount of time we’ve been forced to spend in isolation, barred from care and kin.
I, like others, found myself yearning anxiously for the outside world. And yet, in those same conditions, I also discovered an opportunity to go inward and cultivate a relationship that often faded into the background of an exciting and rich social life I longed to return to. I discovered a new relationship with mind, and this reinvigorated relationship has extended bountifully towards the shared queer life I practice with others in the world. Here, I seek to make a case for mindfulness as a vital aspect of queer communal care, one that is not separate from the concrete societal equity, justice, and health we so passionately strive towards.
Mindfulness and meditation tend to conjure up a wide variety of images that often distract us from what it actually is and how one could actually integrate such a thing in everyday life. On the one hand, there’s a tendency to associate meditation with a predominantly white and affluent “wellness fanatic” eager to jump on board with the latest form of cultural theft. On the other, there’s a mystified idea of meditation as the solemn activity of monks, a thing utterly incompatible with the busy and dynamic lives we often lead.
To address the first misconception: meditation and mindfulness (terms that serve as umbrellas for a rich and diverse set of culturally-specific practices) should not be considered the sole purview of the rich and trendy. Despite the aggressive forms of marketing and branding that have sought to make meditation yet another signifier of class, this practice does not belong to them. Arguably, it doesn’t belong to anyone at all, even if it is a central aspect of a variety of non-Western spiritual and cultural systems. This urge to brand and create the marketable “identity” of the “meditator” is antithetical to meditation itself.
The second misconception might be harder to overcome at first, given our tendency to relate to things by measuring up our insufficiency, to feel like these things are not for us, that our lives are anything but solemn. But, for all the truly spiritual potential that mindfulness can bring to one’s life, meditation should not become an untouchable, sacred, and pure thing.
Meditation essentially describes our relationship to mind, and our relationship to mind is truly all we have. All we do and say––all the ways in which the world, our environment, and our communities arrive at us and beckon our attention––passes through this elusive thing we call mind.
To be mindful, or to practice mindfulness, is not to sit and become anxious at the failure to block out all thoughts and be completely “blank.” It is, however, to slow down our reactiveness to these thoughts and external stimuli. To allow, to let be. It can involve breathwork or mantra repetition. But it can also look like informally taking the first five minutes of the morning and, instead of sprinting for the phone, to become aware of those first instances of consciousness as we emerge from sleep, before our attention scatters to the many things that are or appear to be urgent. To tend to our minds with the same care we seek for the world.
Perhaps more fundamental than the term “meditation” in a meditation practice is the word “practice” itself. It’s easy to forget that a practice already implies that we will struggle and falter a bit. It means, importantly, that we begin again and that we surrender the usual reflex of harsh judgment. It also implies that meditation is not a thing to be conquered, dominated, and perfected once and for all. To begin again, fresh and new each time, carries with it a very subtle but transformative teaching: mindfulness is a practice of recurring and insistent self-compassion.
The more we are able to allow ourselves––in those five or two or ten minutes of sitting in silence with our mind––to return to the breath even as we inevitably trail away (and we will, many times, even as “advanced meditators”), the more we become aware of how we can practice this compassion and non-judgement in other spheres of our lives, the spheres we inhabit in common with the consciousness of others, in the communities we hope to build and rebuild justly. A softness with self engenders a softness with the world in turn, but it must be practiced gently first within, then without. How could this not be but a building block of more compassionate and present communities, this care turned inward?
This was probably one of the early insights I gained from starting a meditation practice. Being part of that great social world outside my mind also meant being constantly at the mercy of comparison and harsh self-critique regarding the adequacy of my body or my social status. Queer people of color, especially, experience this kind of isolation and self-comparison in disproportionately higher levels given a world predicated on neutral whiteness and upward social mobility, where “queer” has often implicitly meant access to capital and to normative ideas about embodiment and attraction. We pursue these without question and seemingly to no end.
Mindfulness––the initial failure, the distraction and restlessness, their invitations to begin again––interrupted and made me aware of these habitual patterns of violence to the self. It has made all the difference to cultivate and nurture this inner space, a space I then am able to practice in community with others, where I become more present for those with whom I share and practice love queerly, and where I have so much more to offer.
Undoing these silent violences living in our mind is not separate from our communal efforts to eradicate violence in our relationships, encounters, and communities. During the first major lockdown in 2020, I attended a virtual community sliding-scale meditation with Rev. angel Kyodo williams, a Black writer, activist, and ordained Zen priest. This moment also coincided with the powerful wave of anti-racist activism and protest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Rev. Williams, predicting our tendency to criticize our attention span and our relationship to meditation, reminded us midway through the session that the undoing of carceral and police logic begins with a commitment to its undoing in ourselves. In meditation, this undoing looks like an ability to begin again, without shame or harsh discipline. I felt, in the BIPOC-centered space that seemed so opposite to social action, the seeds of compassionate and equitable futures to come.
Mindfulness matters to a queer communal future because this future stems precisely from the very now in which we live and breathe, from the very selves that dream up utopian possibility. A gentle and personalized daily practice of meditation is not antithetical to societal change. Rather, it paves the way for a sturdy foundation of compassion with self, one that puts us in a place where we are able to work towards holistic and all-encompassing health. There is no equity in common until we are all afforded space for the mind to relax, for the breath to settle, and for the openness required for empathy––one of the fundamental aspects of health, justice and equality––to thrive.
A note on some resources: here’s the website to sign up for rev. angel’s amazing and financially-accessible sessions, which happen at several moments throughout the year. I would also highly recommend her book Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. Meditation apps like Waking Up, for example, will give out renewable free one-year subscriptions on the basis of self-reported need. The meditation app Liberate has a wealth of Black-centered guided meditations.
Humans often want to fix things about ourselves that aren’t broken. From foot-binding to plain old circumcision, our species has historically been obsessed with altering our bodies — which I can’t help but think about today as it’s Intersex Awareness Day. The observance commemorates the first protest by intersex people — those of us born with atypical sex characteristics — against the practice of subjecting intersex infants and minors to cosmetic, sex trait-altering medical procedures, on October 26, 1996.
The impetus for fixing is so prevalent regarding the intersex population that it’s often come to define us, via statements such as “Intersex? You mean those people who are operated on as babies?” that I’ve heard countless times as a longtime advocate for the intersex community. While I’m thrilled that awareness about these nonconsensual medical procedures is growing, it’s notable that we don’t define other populations this way. For example, although circumcision is the most common surgery performed on males, imagine how weird it would sound to hear males defined as “people whose penises are operated on in infancy.”
Humans often want to fix things about ourselves that aren’t broken. From foot-binding to plain old circumcision, our species has historically been obsessed with altering our bodies — which I can’t help but think about today as it’s Intersex Awareness Day. The observance commemorates the first protest by intersex people — those of us born with atypical sex characteristics — against the practice of subjecting intersex infants and minors to cosmetic, sex trait-altering medical procedures, on October 26, 1996.
The impetus for fixing is so prevalent regarding the intersex population that it’s often come to define us, via statements such as “Intersex? You mean those people who are operated on as babies?” that I’ve heard countless times as a longtime advocate for the intersex community. While I’m thrilled that awareness about these nonconsensual medical procedures is growing, it’s notable that we don’t define other populations this way. For example, although circumcision is the most common surgery performed on males, imagine how weird it would sound to hear males defined as “people whose penises are operated on in infancy.”
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Given said weirdness, today I’d like to highlight the fact that intersex people are much more than just the medical procedures that we are often subjected to — and that we’ve been around way before they even existed. Take, for example, Gen. Casimir Pulaski, born in Poland in 1745 and known as the “Father of the American Cavalry.” As the Smithsonian documentary The General Was Female? details, when the monument marking Pulaski’s grave was temporarily removed, his remains were discovered to have certain female characteristics. After years spent analyzing his skeleton and DNA, a team of researchers concluded that Pulaski was probably born intersex, with XX chromosomes.
Despite his XX chromosomes, Pulaski appeared male at birth because of his intersex variation, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), which often masculinizes genitalia, Pulaski was able to serve in the military, becoming an American Revolutionary War hero after relocating from Europe. He is believed to have saved George Washington’s life in the Battle of Brandywine and is one of only eight people to be awarded honorary American citizenship, along with notables such as Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa.
Pulaski’s story illustrates that intersex people have been thriving for centuries before the surgeries used to change us existed, and it’s also a stark reminder of the harms and limitations of our current “fix it” approach. For today, in situations like Pulaski’s — where an individual has XX chromosomes and a variation known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia — medical experts routinely recommend surgical reduction of the phallic structure and estrogen hormone therapy to feminize the child’s body and assign them female. The assumption is that, due to their XX chromosomes, these individuals are “really” girls and should thus be made to look it. Yet there’s Pulaski, a man more successful than most of his counterparts.
We can only speculate about the countless other intersex people throughout history because, as with other LGBTQI+ folks, most of our history has been lost due to the fact that we’ve only recently been able to live openly as who we are. For example, when the news broke that Hollywood film legend Rock Hudson was gay, my mother, like many, had a hard time believing it. Had it not been verified after Hudson became the first major celebrity to die of AIDS-related causes, in 1985, he would have lived and died being misperceived as heterosexual. Similarly, had Pulaski’s remains not been uncovered, we would have never known that the prominent military hero was intersex.
Today, the vast majority of intersex people are still living this way — with their intersex status publicly unknown. It’s easy for me to understand why because until I was 28 I’d been living the same way. Although I’d been “out” as a lesbian for a decade, since college, everyone but my lovers and a handful of friends believed I was a non-intersex female. I knew I was different because my physical differences are very visible, but coming out as intersex in a world that only acknowledged males and females just didn’t seem like an option in the 1980s and early 1990s.
I came out precisely when and because I was asked, in 1996, to do so by a survivor of childhood surgeries, sometimes referred to as intersex genital mutilation. She had learned that I like my intersex body and feel blessed that I wasn’t subjected to IGM, and she thought it would be useful for people to hear this perspective. Having learned about the lifelong physical and psychological harms that often result from IGM — which can involve involuntary sterilization or the loss of sexual sensation, I agreed. I wanted the world to know that doctors’ claims that intersex children need to be altered in order to be happy are, in my experience, false.
Those who’ve watched me explore my intersex-ness since my 20s have, like me, viewed it as a positive aspect of who I am — one friend just recently called it my “superpower.” While I reminded her that millions of intersex people have not been afforded these experiences due to IGM and that even for me it wasn’t always easy due to societal ignorance about intersex people, the irony of her statement wasn’t lost. For me, being intersex has been a beautiful adventure, full of unexpected sexual pleasure and a rich understanding of both male and female experiences that I feel privileged to have known — which is essentially the opposite of what doctors who promote IGM predict intersex people will experience.
Incidentally, proponents of IGM like to dismiss my experience as an exception. Perhaps I just want to be different, some speculate, which makes me laugh out loud. As the queer child of Latinx immigrants in a white neighborhood and school and having a name so unusual I grew up hearing, “Hida, what’s that?” I often longed to blend in. Or, some speculate, perhaps I’m just unusually self-confident, in a way that we can’t expect normal people to be. Far from it! As those close to me know, I suffer insecurities as much as everyone else.
The true reason I like being intersex is simple: When you don’t raise a child to believe they’re defective, they’re more likely to end up feeling good about who and what they are — and it’s my hope that all future generations of intersex people are given the chance to experience this. On that note, a growing number of medical associations have begun to listen to intersex people. They are honoring their oath to “first do no harm” by recommending that no cosmetic surgeries be performed unless intersex people seek them out for themselves, as other adults sometimes do, and we couldn’t be more grateful.
Hida Viloria is the author of Born Both: An Intersex Life and is a long-term intersex advocate.
Views expressed in The Advocate’s opinion articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, Equal Pride.
ONE, a condom and lubricant company, is distributing the first and only condoms approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in anal sex. After the approval, ONE partnered with Walmart on new packaging to highlight the FDA clearance.
Walmart stores in the U.S. will exclusively carry the ONE Backdoor pack, a condom kit that is a “butt stuff approved” sampler of the different styles available from ONE.
The pack will feature products like the ONE Vanish, which is 25 percent thinner than the standard ONE condom. It works best with the ONE Move lube, according to the company. The ONE Super Sensitive line — thin, smooth condoms with 50 percent more lubricant — will also be included in the kit. Also included are different samples from the MyONE Custom Fit, which includes condoms of various sizes to accomodate appendages of different shapes and girth.
The Backdoor Pack’s Vanish and Sensitive condoms are sized via the company’s MyONE size method, which is based on popular purchasing habits and is slightly shorter and wider than a regular condom. The included FitKit measuring tool will also help buyers find their perfect cut.
Walmart will also carry 12-count packs of ONE Vanish and ONE Super Sensitive condoms, both with packaging that highlights “FDA cleared for anal use.”
The popular ONE Move silicone lube and the Oasis Silk lubricating lotion are also available in Walmart stores.
While monkeypox (MPV) cases are declining nationally, health officials are learning new details about who’s at greater risk and why. It’s shining urgent new light on known challenges to health and well-being and how they’re not only a risk to a person but to public health overall.
Alarming data has emerged linking severe cases of MPV in people living with untreated HIV who are also experiencing homelessness.
In a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), outlined in an early release of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) on October 26, 82% of study participants with severe MPV were also people living with HIV. And 23% were people experiencing homelessness. The study also found that 72% of the severe MPV cases among people living with HIV also had fewer than 50 CD4 cells, indicating a damaged immune system and disease progression from HIV to AIDS. Only 9% of people were taking antiretroviral medication at the time of their MPV diagnosis.
Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS (HOPWA) is responding to the intersecting health crisis of MPV, HIV, and homelessness. HOPWA is a long-time federal program providing grants to local communities, states, and non-profit organizations to assist low-income people living with HIV. HOPWA is directing grant partners to utilize funds to secure immediate housing for people impacted by the current MPV outbreak.
Rita Harcrow, Director, Office of HIV/AIDS Housing, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which manages HOPWA, tells GLAAD that along with medical interventions, health professionals invested in reducing occurrences of MPV and HIV must also prioritize housing.
“Housing equals better health outcomes, period. There are all these great medical interventions available, but if someone is experiencing housing instability, they don’t benefit from that,” Harcrow says. “They usually cannot focus on the medical resources available because they’re focused on where they will lay their head tonight.”
According to Harcrow, if a person is experiencing homelessness and is impacted by HIV and MPV, HOPWA is ready to intervene. The organization provides immediate hotel or motel resources for no more than 60 days over six months until more permanent housing is established, which often means placement on a waitlist.
“But while they’re in crisis mode, getting them out of that unsheltered homelessness is really important,” she says.
Black gay men, homelessness, and MPV
Housing instability is a vital concern, particularly for Black gay and bisexual men disproportionately impacted by HIV and severe cases of MPV. In 2019, Black people accounted for 13% of the U.S. population but 40% (479,300) of people with HIV. According to the CDC, Black gay and bisexual men accounted for 82% of HIV acquisitions. Black gay and bisexual men also account for the largest share of MPV cases, with 70% attributed to people of color.
“When we continue to look at the population most vulnerable for infection or inequities, I think [Black] people are at the front of that line,” says Daniel Driffin, Project Manager & Community Monkeypox Coordinator, HIV Vaccine Trial Network.
Driffin points to the social and structural determinants of health—income, health access, housing, and transportation as contributing factors.
“More than 70% of healthcare is connected to your employment. So, if you don’t have a full-time job, you probably won’t have health benefits. Not having a full-time job directly relates to where you can afford to live, which also directly relates to public transportation and other access components,” Driffin adds.
Leisha McKinley-Beach, a veteran Atlanta-based National HIV Consultant, tells GLAAD from a public health perspective, the holistic needs of Black gay and bisexual men have yet to be prioritized in working to achieve better overall health outcomes.
“You’ve got these systems that were never designed to impact Black people, especially Black same-gender-loving men, in ending this epidemic,” she says. “When the reality is if Black people weren’t diagnosed with HIV, if Black people weren’t achieving viral suppression, the money would dry up. It wouldn’t be a need if half of the epidemic is gone.”
McKinley-Beach says a different level of action needs to occur, focusing on the stigma attached to HIV and MPV. According to McKinley-Beach, stigma causes Black gay and bisexual men to not engage in care as often as their white counterparts, leaving them susceptible to disease progression and homelessness.
“When we talk about what stigma looks like in Black communities…that thing is so heavy, and it is impacting our decisions to access and sustain HIV care and treatment,” she says.” There won’t be viral suppression for Black communities until we address the people who are experiencing homelessness.”
“The barriers to housing are already there for LGBTQ [people], especially gay and bisexual men of color,” Harcrow says. “The stigma is there for HIV already, which we try to combat regularly. Discrimination is illegal in housing. If someone is experiencing housing discrimination because of their gender or perceived gender or orientation, that’s reportable,” she adds.
Driffin and McKinley-Beach are concerned that Black gay and bisexual men will continue to bear the brunt of poor health outcomes if public health professionals remain committed to utilizing the same playbook.
“As long as there is a tinge of other-ing involved in how we deliver services, not only healthcare-related services but social services, I think we will continue to see folks falling through the gaps,” he says.
Driffin’s observation bolsters HOPWA’s commitment to identifying and addressing the prevalence of HIV and homelessness experienced by Black gay and bisexual men diagnosed with severe MPV.
“We’re trying to help communities make the connection that housing can and should be used to address the needs of folks in the highest need of services,” Harcrow says.
People needing immediate housing assistance should contact a homeless provider in their area to connect to available resources. According to Harcrow, many communities have funds reserved for short-term rent, mortgage, and utility assistance.
“We have to have city [and public health] officials who understand HIV, housing, and the larger continuum of care,” Driffin says. “If we are placing folks in housing, but we’re not encouraging them to be the healthiest they can be—what are we doing?”
After five hours of tense testimony and protests, the Florida Board of Medicine voted Friday to start drafting a rule that would bar all minors in the state from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgeries as treatment for gender dysphoria.
Florida’s medical board is the first in the country to pursue such a rule, but Florida is among a wave of states where officials have attempted to restrict gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
By the end of Friday’s five-hour meeting, protesters began yelling “Shame!” at the board members, and some of them staged a “die-in” in the lobby of the Orlando International Airport, where the meeting was held.
Protesters stage a “die-in” in the lobby of the Orlando International Airport on Oct. 28, 2022.Courtesy Kat Duesterhaus
The vote is the latest update in a months-long effort led by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to restrict transition-related care for people under 18.
The effort to restrict such care began in April, when DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued nonbinding guidancethrough the Florida Health Department that sought to bar both “social gender transition” and gender-affirming medical care for minors.
Despite that support, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration issued a report in June that “found that several services for the treatment of gender dysphoria — i.e., sex reassignment surgery, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers — are not consistent with widely accepted professional medical standards and are experimental and investigational with the potential for harmful long-term affects.”
Just hours after the report’s release, Ladapo sent a letter to the Board of Medicine and asked it to establish a standard of care “for these complex and irreversible procedures.”
The board held its first meeting on the issue in August, and on Friday it officially voted to draft a ban on certain gender-affirming therapies for minors. The meeting began with expert testimony in favor of and against such care.
Dr. Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist in Rockland, California, cited often-criticized research that found 50% to 90% of children whose gender identity isn’t consistent with their assigned sex at birth grow out of the condition by adulthood.
“The basic problem with this treatment as I see it is: ‘What happens when you force a square peg into a round hole?’” he said. “You end up injuring or destroying the peg in the process.”
However, Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine who treats transgender people between the ages of 10 and 25, told the board that the research Laidlaw cited and the June report issued by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration are methodologically flawed.
“Neither of the authors of the state’s review is a subject matter expert,” McNamara said. “One individual is a dentist. The other is a post-doctoral fellow in biostatistics. At a bare minimum, the systematic review should be conducted by those who are qualified to assess the literature. I wouldn’t trust a dermatologist review of the literature on a neurosurgical procedure, for instance.”
After expert testimony, the board began the public comment period, which was scheduled to last two hours, according to multiple attendees.
The first nine attendees who spoke were in favor of restricting gender-affirming care for minors. Eight of them said they have detransitioned, or come to identify with their assigned sex at birth after having previously identified as trans. Only one of the eight had received gender-affirming medical care as a minor.
Chloe Cole, who described herself as an 18-year-old detransitioned female from California, said she began transitioning at 12 and received a double mastectomy at 15. At 16, she said, she realized she regretted her transition.
“All the talk about mental health, self perception, pronouns and ideology leads me to the question, why is a mental health epidemic not being addressed with mental health treatment to get at the root causes for why female adolescents like me want to reject their bodies?” Cole said.
The board also heard from the parents of transgender youths. Hope McClay, who has a 9-year-old trans daughter, said that she used to have to force her daughter to get short haircuts before she came out as trans.
“At one point she came up to me, at about three-and-a-half years old, and begged me, crying, and said, ‘Please, don’t make me be this way anymore. This is not who I am. I want to die,’” McClay said.
She said she and her family have consulted with medical professionals on medical care for their daughter, and they have found that allowing her to go through male puberty would be “psychologically damaging.”
“So we do not make these decisions lightly, but these are the decisions that should be made by the families, not by the state, and not by a board,” McClay said.
Jude Spiegel, the only transgender person to testify at Friday’s meeting, read the names of 17 trans teens who died by suicide “over living in a world that refused to acknowledge or accept them.”
With about 45 minutes left in the public comment period, board member Dr. Zachariah P. Zachariah said only one more person would be allowed to testify. The crowd protested, and he offered to provide an email where they could share their testimonies.
At one point, an audience member yelled that trans youths would suffer if the board voted to bar care: “The blood is on your hands!” To which Zachariah responded, “That’s OK.”
Emile Fox, a trans nonbinary person from Orlando who uses “they” and “he” pronouns, said they signed up to testify and weren’t able to, which frustrated them after the first eight people who testified were all in favor of restricting care, but none of them were from Florida.
“What was so appalling to me is how obviously staged this all was,” Fox said, adding that the board members didn’t appear to know that much about gender-affirming therapies. “They’ve been fed a narrative, and they ate it up.”
A spokesperson for the board said the committee “heard from subject matter experts and allowed for members of the public to speak on the issue at today’s workshop.”
“The content of public comment is not ‘stacked’ by Boards,” the spokesperson said in an email Saturday. “Any members of the public who were unable to provide comment can submit written comment via email to BOMpubliccomment@flhealth.gov within 24 hours of the conclusion of the workshop. These comments will be included in the rulemaking record and reviewed just as all other public comments.”
After the public comment period, the board attempted to come up with a rough draft of a rule. Initially, members considered making trans youths who were already receiving gender-affirming medical care exempt from the ban if they underwent an informed consent process, but they decided to cut that proposal.
Then, in a rushed exchange that attendees described as confusing, Zachariah pushed for a vote even as some board members asked for the proposal to be read aloud once more. He then said the motion was passed without saying what the final tally was.
Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Orlando, said that there would be another meeting on Nov. 4 at the Holiday Inn, Disney Springs, to discuss the drafted rule, and then there would be a 28-day approval process that would include additional time for public comments.
She believes the timing of the rulemaking process — just ahead of the election — is intentional.
“It’s so clearly intentionally designed to create a news cycle that further polarizes and politicizes gender-affirming care to distract from the affordable housing crisis, to distract from the impact of Hurricane Ian and property insurance rates,” she said. “We have some actual real problems to solve, big health disparities that we need to address and yet, instead of talking about those real-life concerns, trans issues are going to be front and center, and that’s truly designed to continue to divide us.”
Since a peak in August, the number of reported daily cases of the monkeypox virus has declined 85%.
That’s the latest seven-day average data from the Centers for Disease Control, indicating a drop from 443 reported cases at the height of the outbreak on August 6, to 60 cases reported on October 12.
As of yesterday, 27,022 cases of the monkeypox virus have been reported in the U.S.
Experts attribute the drop to a variety of factors. The monkeypox vaccine, with an 85% efficacy rate, helped slow the virus down. Men who have sex with men reduced their partners following the rise of cases in the wake of large gatherings around Pride month in June. And the virus, spread by close skin-to-skin contact, was self-limiting, unlike the airborne coronavirus, finding fewer places to spread as potential hosts reduced their exposure and the vaccine proved effective.
Centers for Disease Control
Another factor was a change in communications strategy. As cases began to rise sharply, it became clear that the virus was disproportionally affecting men who have sex with men, but officials at all levels of government were reluctant to highlight the fact, fearing the stigmatizing effect of a virus mislabeled as a “gay disease.”
In the middle of July, the New York City Health Department debated a strategy calling for gay men to reduce partners, issuing a statement that counseled caution: “For decades, the LGBTQ+ community has had their sex lives dissected, prescribed, and proscribed in myriad ways, mostly by heterosexual and cis people,” the statement read. New York would offer direction cognizant of “how poorly abstinence-only guidance has historically performed with this disgraceful legacy in mind.”
“Telling people not to have sex or not to have multiple sex partners or not to have anonymous sex is just a no-go, and it’s not going to work,” longtime AIDS activist and Housing Works chief executive Charles King told The New York Times at the time. “People are still going to have sex, and they’re going to have it even if it comes with great risk.”
In San Francisco, local officials decided the data should do the talking, expanding eligibility for the vaccine to all men who have sex with men who’d had multiple sexual partners in the previous 14 days. On July 28, the city announced a public health state of emergency, in an effort to prompt a more urgent response from the federal government and to put the city’s most at-risk population on high alert.
New York City followed suit with their own monkeypox state of emergency, at about the same time the World Health Organization’s director general recommended that men who have sex with men should consider limiting their partners. The CDC highlighted that guidance not long after.
At the federal level, in the beginning of August, the White House enlisted Dr. Demetre Daskalakis to help lead the administration’s response to the growing crisis and rectify a stumbling rollout of the vaccine. Daskalakis, who is gay, responded with a strategy directly targeting the MSM community, through outreach at large events attracting gay men, and even participating in a live Grindr forum addressing the issue, with explicit guidance for men who have sex with men to reduce their number of sex partners.
The new messaging seems to have worked. According to the CDC, by the middle of August, men who have sex with men reported changing their behavior because of the monkeypox outbreak: 48% reported reducing their number of sex partners, 50% reported reducing one-time sexual encounters, and 50% reported reducing sex with partners met on dating apps or at sex venues.
Centers for Disease Control
“The strategy worked,” Daskalakis told LGBTQ Nation, describing what he calls “a three-part trick that always works in addressing outbreaks and epidemics: community engagement, science and political will.”
“I think that the really frank, direct information that we generated through governmental public health, and then saw the community alter, magnify, and contextualize, got out,” said Daskalakis. “Seeing people who reduced their behaviors that could potentially expose them to monkeypox was definitely a part of this.”
Daskalakis added: “What’s important is that you don’t associate a virus with an identity, but rather talk about the behaviors that are associated with transmission of virus, and make sure the right people know.”
“I think the Biden administration kind of got its act together, but it was slower than it should have been,” Supervisor Raphael Mandelman, who pushed hard for San Francisco’s monkeypox emergency declaration, told LGBTQ Nation. “It was not a pleasant exercise, seeing this health crisis that the federal government was not adequately addressing, and seeing how slow the country was to get this vaccine, that had already been discovered, distributed into people’s arms.”
But, says Mandelman, “It seems like the gays have done a good job of getting their monkeypox vaccines, and it seems like we’ve kind of turned a corner. I can say this cautiously.”
