Danish toymaking giant Lego on Monday pledged to remove gender bias from its toys after research found girls were being held back by gender stereotypes.
The company, whose colorful building blocks and figurines sell in more than 130 countries, said it wants to make its products more inclusive so that children’s ambitions are not limited by gender.
“The company will ensure any child, regardless of gender identity, feels they can build anything they like,” Lego said in a statement.
Lego vowed to make its products “free of gender bias and harmful stereotypes,” saying there is a need for wider society to “rebuild perceptions.”
Lego did not elaborate on what exactly it would modify about its products to bring about these changes. However, in an emailed statement to NBC News, the company said it has transitioned its product and marketing department from gender-focused product groups to groups focusing on “passions and interests.” The company also said it has recently published a diversity and inclusivity playbook for its product design and marketing teams.
“The benefits of creative play such as building confidence, creativity and communication skills are felt by all children and yet we still experience age-old stereotypes that label activities as only being suitable for one specific gender,” Julia Goldin, chief product and marketing officer, said in a company statement.
Lego’s promise came as the company released new research showing that girls were more open to engage in different types of play than boys, but societal norms about play, including attitudes of their parents, limited their potential.
The research involved nearly 7,000 parents and children in seven countries, Lego said.
Some praised Lego’s decision, saying other companies would feel compelled to follow its lead.
“If manufacturers and stores alike stop relying on gender stereotyping in their appeals to children, we could begin to see more noticeable changes to the children’s marketplace,” Rebecca Hains, professor of media and communication at Salem State University and children’s media culture expert, said in a Facebook post, commenting on the announcement.
“They’re such a force in the industry that perhaps where Lego goes, others will follow,” she said.
The United Kingdom-based Let Toys Be Toys campaign, which challenges gender stereotypes in toy marketing, also welcomed the news on Twitter, saying the negative effects of gender stereotyping on children is something they have been raising with Lego since 2012. It also noted purple and blue branding of some Lego sets, catering to boys and girls differently.
“The idea that girls and boys play or should play with different toys is harmful — it reinforces harmful stereotypes,” said Pragya Agarwal, behavioral scientist and visiting professor of inequities and social justice at England’s Loughborough University.
A child plays during a visit to Legoland at the American Dream Entertainment Mall, in Rutherford, N.J.Anthony Behar / Sipa USA via AP file
On Saturday, California became the first state to say large department stores must display products like toys in gender-neutral ways.
The United Nations says that while some progress has been made in recent years, women and girls still carry the burden of gender inequality, with discriminatory laws and social norms remaining pervasive, and women continuing to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership. Its 2020 report found that less than 50 percent of working-age women are in the labor market, and unpaid domestic and care work falls disproportionately on women, restraining their economic potential.
A 2020 report by The Fawcett Society, a U.K. gender equality group, found that harmful gender stereotypes can significantly limit children’s potential, and the toys they play with can be a contributing factor. It found that 66 percent of parents want to see companies voluntarily advertise toys to boys and girls in the same way
A dildo-style home insemination kit is designed to make conception a pleasurable and intimate process for queer couples.
Even if queer couples decide to self-inseminate at home, the procedure can feel strange and clinical, but the Way device makes sure that there can still be fun when it comes to baby-making.
At first glance, the insemination device looks exactly like a minimalist, silicone, pink and white dildo. But on closer inspection, a small bubble is visible at the base, which is used to hold semen.
The kit comes with a jar, into which semen is deposited, before the user sucks it into the bubble. When inserted into the vagina during sex, the bubble can be pressed to release its contents.
The tubes through which the semen travels along the dildo can also be removed, and worn as a harness around the hand to inseminate the conceiving partner while fingering.
Way device designer Kamila Rudnicka, from Poland, told Dezeen: “Hands are very important when we are making love, especially in lesbian sex.
“That’s why I decided to use them to connect two people. Just using a device will not give them the same feeling as using their own body during sex.”
During the design process, Rudnicka said she consulted with gynaecologistsand psychologists, and also interviewed potentials customers.
She said: “I wanted to create a device that would help them focus on something other than just getting pregnant.
“In a survey I did of couples, the majority said that even if at-home insemination can be less effective they still want to try it in their own bed.”
Although home insemination is a great option for many couples, it is not always as effective as other methods like intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro insemination (IVF), which can be better choices for those struggling with fertility.
Rudnicka explained: “This is not a device for people who have been trying to get pregnant for years.
“It’s for couples where one side has HIV, for lesbian couples, transgender people and those with disabilities – people who are unable to conceive during their regular sexual activity… The hope is to make it a ‘first step’ people can take before resorting to the sterile medical procedure at the hospital.”
The Way is not yet on the market, and is still in the prototype phase, but the designer hopes it will be available for purchase in the near future.
We are lesbians and collaborators in the LGBTQ+ movement. We also have a third thing in common: We are both survivors of breast cancer. Each of our health journeys have led us to unite around a common goal to ensure that LGBTQ+ communities have what they need when facing a breast cancer diagnosis or getting treatment to prevent it.
In Dina’s case, she spent years undergoing countless procedures to mitigate her high breast cancer risks. She endured invasive surgeries that required grit, determination, resilience, and continual love and nurturing from her wife, Dom, their children, and their respective families. It went on for more than a decade.
Along the way, Dina also sought out support groups to help her cope with the emotions that arose around the bodily changes that resulted from her intense treatments. There, she faced a rude awakening. All of those groups were filled with straight women who did not react well when she spoke of her wife and her overall experience as a lesbian facing major breast health issues. In one online group, all but one of the women dropped off the call, after she shared insights from her LGBTQ+ perspective.
In another conversation, when Dina shared her sorrow over the loss she was feeling after a double mastectomy, the person she confided in quipped: “Well at least there’s still one set of boobs in your relationship,” referencing Dina’s wife, Dom, who has not faced any breast health problems herself. These incidents of insensitivity and misguided reactions left Dina feeling lonely, isolated, depressed, and unsupported.
Yet even as she rode the wave of these feelings, she felt a sense of resolve, knowing she had the skills, the contacts, and the wherewithal to make a change. As a registered nurse, author, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) expert, and CEO of her own health care consulting firm, she set out to give LGBTQ+ people a new resource. She enlisted Cindi’s advice as a breast cancer survivor, LGBTQ+ public relations pro, and friend.
Cindi overcame the immense challenge of major breast cancer treatment in 2018 and 2019, penning this op-ed for The Advocate at the time about the disparities facing LGBTQ+ people with cancer. She shared important statistics in the piece from the National LGBT Cancer Network and looked to the future about how to use her experience as a catalyst for giving back. The piece also highlighted how lucky she was to have good insurance, health care providers who respected her identity, and an amazing support system (including, most importantly, her wife, Rainie) to move through the difficulties. Far too many LGBTQ+ people with cancer lack these privileges.
Today, we, Dina and Cindi, are both healthy and thriving. So, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we are thrilled to announce that we have formed a new nonprofit to fill the resource gap for those in our communities who are confronted with breast health challenges. It’s called the Inclusive Community for Breast Health or as we affectionately call it, “I See Breast Health,” a play on our acronym. ICBH will provide education and resources for LGBTQ+ individuals who are in treatment for, or seeking to prevent, breast cancer, and work to build cultural competence within the health care system through collaboration with academic and health organizations.
As Dina saw firsthand during her own nursing education, there is a dearth of information on LGBTQ+ populations for those being trained as nurses, doctors, and other health care roles. ICBH plans to formally partner with academic institutions and engage with current medical students and future health care providers so they have the tools they need to provide excellent breast-focused healthcare for LGBTQ+ people. Some of these collaborations have informally begun.
And although we are only just beginning our work, we’re excited to share a non-research based survey focused on identifying LGBTQ+ community support needs in the area of breast/chest health. The responses we receive will help us understand what people are facing so we can better focus our programming priorities to meet those needs. We’re also organizing our first online educational panel that will include a variety of LGBTQ+ individuals with varying experiences and perspectives on breast health. That event is planned for November and we will share specific details on our social media pages in the near future.
We are grateful to take these first steps in launching what we believe will be a vital source of information for LGBTQ+ individuals with breast health concerns. We aim to create a safe space for those in our communities who are in the midst of these circumstances and looking for help. We want to give them the freedom to be fully authentic as they seek guidance and community support. We’re excited to lay the groundwork and start executing our programming in earnest over the next year, and we look forward to reporting back to you about our progress during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 2022.
Dina Proto, RN, is the Founder and CEO of Dina Proto International, a DE&I and LGBTQ+ Cultural Competency Consulting firm. In addition to her DE&I Healthcare Consulting firm, Dina is a Published Author, Speaker and Educator. In her book, Identity Impact: When Society’s Expectations Collide with the Authentic Self, Dina explores the clinical correlation between society’s projection of gender role and identity and healthcare disparities.
Cindi Creager is a media consultant with decades of communications experience in the news industry and LGBTQI non-profit world, including a successful tenure at ABC News, GLAAD, and her co-owned boutique public relations firm, CreagerCole Communications LLC.
A UK cervical screening pilot programme for trans men and non-binary people was so successful it could be used as a model for programmes around the world.
The pilot programme was launched in October 2019 in conjunction with the NHS as part of a study to address cervical cancer in trans and non-binary communities.
It offered weekly cervical screening clinics, only staffed by healthcare professionals with experience in treating trans and non-binary patients.
Of those who attended the clinic and gave feedback, 100 per cent were satisfied with the service, and a majority (60 per cent), said they would not have been screened if it were not for the clinic.
In the UK, screening is recommended every three years for all people with a cervix between the ages of 25 and 49, and every five years for those between age 49 and 64.
“Trans men and non-binary people are often reluctant to receive cervical screening, raising their risk of undetected human papillomavirus [HPV], which could lead to cervical cancer,” said Alison May Berner, a specialty trainee and clinical research fellow in medical oncology at Barts Cancer Institute in London, a specialist registrar with the Tavistock and Portman Gender Identity Clinic and the study’s lead author, per News Medical.
The results of the study were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved this month, indicating that it could have international implications, and Berner said she wants further research to look at trans-specific cervical screenings in a GP setting.
She said: “People assume that this population’s health care-related needs are solely related to transition. That’s not true.
“Trans and non-binary people are at risk of HPV infection and cervical cancer if they continue to retain a cervix, and they stand to benefit from programs designed specifically for them.
“If you’re a trans or non-binary person living in a place where these specialist services do not exist, I would encourage you to work with a trusted health care professional to build relationships and ensure that you get the appropriate screenings, while continuing to have your identity respected.”
Bria Brown-King, 29, a Pennsylvania native, was raised as a girl. As Brown-King got older, however, they realized they were developing differently.
“I didn’t have the feminizing puberty that the other girls in my class had,” said Brown-King, who was born with an enlarged clitoris and started to develop masculine traits during puberty, including facial hair and larger muscles.
Brown-King, who has since come out as nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, was born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH, a rare condition in which the body produces high levels of androgens — hormones that influence masculine characteristics. Those with CAH are considered intersex, an umbrella term used to describe individuals whose sex characteristics do not match strictly binary definitions of male or female. While rare, at least 1 in 2,000people are born with a genital difference caused by an intersex trait, according to Human Rights Watch, an international research and advocacy group.
Bria Brown-King.Courtesy Bria Brown-King
Though many children with CAH undergo “gender-normalizing surgery” to make the genitals look more typically female in infancy, Brown-King’s parents decided to wait until Brown-King was old enough to choose. But Brown-King said severe bullying over their appearance drove them to get the surgery at 13. Looking back, Brown-King, who now works for InterAct, an intersex advocacy group, said they would have made a different choice “had I known that it was OK to have the body that I had.”
These so-called gender-normalizing surgeries have been performed on intersex babies and toddlers since at least the 1950s — usually in secrecy, without ever telling the children when they get older. Until recently, doctors saw a genital difference as a “psychosocial emergency” and rushed to assign a gender and perform surgery, believing children would be psychologically harmed otherwise, according to Dr. Sue Stred, a retired pediatric endocrinologist who has worked with intersex youth for nearly three decades. Emergency surgery, however, is only necessary in rare cases — if a child can’t urinate properly, for example, according to medical experts who work with these children.
The exact number of hospitals that currently perform these surgeries is unknown, and only a handful specialize in such procedures. Adults who underwent these surgeries as children report mixed feelings, with many saying they have had no problems, while others say they are “just wrought with devastation” over complications, according to Kyle Knight, a senior researcher who interviewed dozens of intersex people for Human Rights Watch. Complications can include sexual dysfunction, loss of sensation, infertility and gender dysphoria, according to the report.
As more people tell their stories, an increasing number of organizations have condemned medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex youth, including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Physicians for Human Rights, the American Academy of Family Physicians, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Under mounting pressure, several hospitals have recently announced they would defer certain medically unnecessary genital surgeries until children are old enough to participate in the decision, including Lurie’s Children Hospital in Chicago, Boston Children’s Hospital and New York City Health & Hospitals, the largest public health care system in the United States.
“We empathize with intersex individuals who were harmed by the treatment that they received according to the historic standard of care and we apologize and are truly sorry,” Lurie Children’s Hospital announced in a statement last year. It was the first time a hospital had ever made such an apology.
‘The right answer right now isn’t clear’
There is fierce disagreement among doctors and advocates over whether surgical delays should extend to those with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Unlike many other intersex youths whose genetics and reproductive organs make it difficult to assign a sex, those with CAH have distinctly male or female chromosomes and sex organs — and only those assigned female at birth undergo surgery because of genital and hormonal differences.
As such, some people who work with these children wonder if delaying surgery would do more harm than good. Even adults with CAH are divided over this. A recent study from Europe, which surveyed 459 intersex adults who underwent genital surgery as children, found that 66 percent of those with CAH thought infancy or childhood was an appropriate age for this surgery, while 12 percent thought they would have been better off without it.
Bria Brown-King as an infant.Courtesy Bria Brown-King
Given these complexities, doctors and advocates have argued over whether children with CAH should be exempt from potential laws and policies that protect them from early cosmetic surgery. This was the case last year in California, when lawmakers, advocates and physician groups sparred over whether a bill, which would ban unnecessary surgeries on children with genital differences before age 6, was too broad. The bill, which was strongly opposed by the California Medical Association and Societies for Pediatric Urology, a group that represents the doctors who treat these patients, did not pass.
“The right answer right now isn’t clear,” Dr. Beth Drzewiecki, chief of pediatric urology at Tufts Children’s Hospital in Boston, said. “However, a blanket ban on surgery will not accurately support the views and voices of all of those that have variations in sex development.”
While Lurie Children’s Hospital has ended early medically unnecessary surgeries, it is considering an exemption for children with CAH, who experts say make up a majority of those who undergo feminizing surgeries. In an email, a spokeswoman for the hospital said the surgeries “will not be performed on CAH patients until we have evaluated the best practices and ethics and have released a white paper or report on the topic.”
The risks of ‘gender-normalizing surgeries’
There are no laws in the U.S. that regulate medically unnecessary gential surgeries for intersex children, Meanwhile, the current standard of care “remains an interdisciplinary team approach informed by parents’ wishes,” according to the AMA Journal of Ethics.
Taking this approach, more hospitals are hiring teams of surgeons, psychologists, social workers and genetic experts who work together to better understand a baby’s unique specific intersex trait, a process that can take weeks or even months, according to experts who work with these children. And doctors today are less likely to rush to assign a gender, though this may not always be the case.
“We still make recommendations for what gender we think the child is best going to feel, and we work that way,” Stred said. In cases where it is difficult to assign a sex, she said some doctors may recommend giving the child a gender-neutral name in case the child later disagrees with what sex they have been assigned.
Surgical techniques have improved greatly since the 1950s, with a better understanding of how to preserve sensitive nerves and tissue, according to Drzewiecki. She also said more surgeons today are giving parents options, rather than recommending surgery as a default solution.
“It’s really, I think, important to affirm to the families that their child is going to be OK with or without surgery,” she said, adding that “the most important thing is having transparency about what the risks are, and what the long-term risk over time will be, as well.”
One risk for those with CAH is stenosis, a condition in which surgically altered vaginal openings — performed in order to separate the urethra from the vaginal canal, which are typically fused in these children — can narrow over time, according to doctors. While the procedure is done to create a more typical vagina, doctors say it may be medically necessary to prevent urinary tract infections in some children, though the need for this is debated. A contentious way to prevent stenosis has been for parents or doctors to periodically insert a dilator in the opening to maintain it, though experts say this is usually traumatizing for children and, as such, is rarely done anymore.
Stenosis can lead to issues with menstruation and sex later in life, and may require additional surgery to fix, according to Dr. Frances Grimstad, a pediatric and adolescent gynecologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, who has training in these surgical repairs. And in general, she said, any early surgery performed on a child’s genitals is “playing a guessing game” as to what they will need or want in the future. Overall success rates of early surgeries are hard to pinpoint, she added, since health and insurance databases don’t accurately track them, and medical research tends to focus only on early outcomes.
“Surgeons who are doing these surgeries typically don’t follow their patients into their early 20s,” she said.
Brown-King said they developed urinary tract infections both before and after surgery and had to get additional surgery at age 19 to fix scar tissue.
“Surgery doesn’t fix everything,” they said. “I think that that’s kind of a narrative that sometimes doctors like to paint, that once you have surgery, things will be great. But that’s not necessarily the case.”
Surgery can also lead to mental health problems later in life, especially for those whose parents kept it a secret from them, according to Dr. Katharine Dalke, a psychiatrist at Penn State Health who specializes in LGBTQ and intersex populations. For many, she said, this sent a message that there was something “fundamentally wrong” with who they are, and that they “weren’t lovable otherwise.”
Parents struggle with surgery decisions
While some medical professionals are beginning to take a more nuanced and affirming approach to intersex care, the decision to perform early surgery remains in the hands of parents, who vary widely in their attitudes toward sex and gender. And many struggle to cope with the challenges of raising a child with a gential difference in a world that wants to know, “Is your baby a boy or a girl?” Under this pressure, parents may feel that “doing nothing equals doing harm,” according to Stred.
A protester outside Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York on Aug. 7.Casey Orozco-Poore
However, doctors say more parents are deciding to delay surgery, though it’s unclear how common this is. Those who make this choice often navigate a difficult journey alone, with few support groups or resources to guide them.
NBC News spoke to the father of a 6-year-old girl with CAH, who requested that his name not be published to protect his daughter’s privacy. So far, she identifies as a girl, though she is gender-nonconforming, and has had no issues with urinary tract infections, he said.
While he wants her to have “autonomy in determining her own identity,” he also said he worries she will resent him for not getting the surgery. He said he would let her get the surgery when she is old enough to decide.
“My fear is that she will want to do the surgery because of social pressure or peer pressure, and doing something simply to conform or avoid being different, I would have a harder time supporting,” he explained.
Dalke said that helping kids with genital differences begins with understanding “there’s nothing inherently pathological about” them, and that with help from parents and mental health providers, they can learn how to cope with bullying and even thrive.
For this reason, intersex advocates have fought for better education and psychological support for parents, and some lawmakers have begun to listen. That was the case this year when the New York City Council passed a bill that requires the city’s health department to provide intersex-inclusive education to parents and doctors.
There are hospitals that already provide psychological counseling for parents of intersex children, and some parents still struggle in spite of it. Recalling one mother who body-shamed her child during visits, Drzewiecki said children raised in nonaffirming environments are susceptible to psychological harm. And while it’s ideal to raise these children in an affirming way, she said, it’s “unrealistic” to expect that of “everybody in our society right now.”
As for Brown-King, they said surgery did not spare them from bullying, nor are they “worried about finding love” over the way they look. When asked whether those with CAH should be excluded from surgical delays, they posed a different question: “Why aren’t we having conversations with our children about the different ways to have a body?”
“There’s no such thing as having a clitoris that’s too large,” Brown-King said. “In the same way that penises come in all different shapes and sizes, so do clitorises. Why can’t we start to push that narrative instead?”
The United States has issued its first passport with an “X” gender marker, which denotes that someone is neither exclusively male nor female, the State Department said Wednesday.
This marks a milestone for nonbinary and intersex Americans, who make up an estimated 1.2 million and 4 million Americans, respectively, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, and interACT, an intersex advocacy group. An increasing number of intersex, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people have come out in recent years, but most of them have been unable to obtain IDs that accurately reflect who they are due to a patchwork of state laws across the country.
The State Department said that it expects to be able to offer the “X” designation to more people early next year.
The U.S.’ special diplomatic envoy for LGBTQ rights, Jessica Stern, called the moves historic and celebratory, saying they bring the government documents in line with the “lived reality” that there is a wider spectrum of human sex characteristics than is reflected in the previous two designations.
“When a person obtains identity documents that reflect their true identity, they live with greater dignity and respect,” Stern said.
The department did not announce to whom the passport was issued. A department official declined to say whether it was for Dana Zzyym, an intersex Colorado resident who has been in a legal battle with the department since 2015, saying the department does not usually discuss individual passport applications because of privacy concerns.
Zzyym (pronounced Zimm) was denied a passport for failing to check male or female on an application. According to court documents, Zzyym wrote “intersex” above the boxes marked “M” and “F” and requested an “X” gender marker instead in a separate letter.
Zzyym was born with ambiguous physical sexual characteristics but was raised as a boy, according to court filings. Zzyym later came out as intersex while working and studying at Colorado State University, and uses gender-neutral pronouns. The department’s denial of Zzyym’s passport prevented them from being able to travel to a meeting of Organization Intersex International in Mexico.
The State Department announced in June that it was moving toward adding a third gender marker but said it would take time because it required extensive updates to its computer systems. A department official said the passport application and system update with the “X” designation option still need to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget, which approves all government forms, before they can be issued.
The department now also allows applicants to self-select their gender as male or female, no longer requiring them to provide medical certification if their gender does not match that listed on their other identification documents.
The United States joins a handful of countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Nepal and New Zealand in allowing its citizens to designate a gender other than male or female on their passports.
Stern said her office planned to talk about the U.S.′ experience with the change in its interactions around the world and she hopes that might help inspire other governments to offer the option.
“We see this as a way of affirming and uplifting the human rights of trans and intersex and gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people everywhere,” she said.
It’s unclear how the policy change will affect state laws that do not recognize “X” gender markers. Twenty states and D.C. allow residents to use an “X” marker on their driver’s licenses, according tothe Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank.
States also have a mix of laws that regulate how someone can request a gender marker change on an ID. Twenty-two states allow people to decide what gender markers are appropriate for them — which is now the policy that the State Department will use — according to MAP.
That process, known as self-attestation, allows trans and nonbinary people to keep themselves safe, said Arli Christian, a campaign strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been pressuring the Biden administration to allow “X” gender markers on passports and advocates for laws that allow people to attest to their own gender.
“That is hands down the best policy for ensuring that all people have the most accurate gender marker on their ID,” Christian said.
The remaining states either require medical provider certification in order to update a gender marker, a court order and proof of genital surgery or they have an unclear law.
Anxiety. Depression. Stress. These are some of the emotions LGBTQ Americans experienced during the Trump administration, according to two recent studies. The reports, conducted independently, both landed on the same conclusion: There was a significant decline in the mental well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people while Donald Trump was president.
“Everybody’s worst fears came into reality,” Adrienne Grzenda, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA and lead author of one of the studies, told NBC News. “We were noticing this undercurrent of despair and hopelessness among our clients,” many of whom are LGBTQ.
While Trump is no longer in the White House, the ongoing introduction of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the states continues to expose LGBTQ people, especially children, to the risk of significant mental health consequences, according to some advocates and researchers.
‘Extreme’ and ‘frequent’ mental distress
A study scheduled to be published in the December issue of the journal Economics and Human Biology found that “extreme mental distress” — defined as reporting poor mental health every day for the past 30 days — increased among LGBTQ people during Trump’s rise and presidency.
The report, written by Masanori Kuroki, an associate professor of economics at Arkansas Tech University, compared the likelihood of extreme mental distress among LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people by using data on more than 1 million people interviewed from 2014 to 2020 for the government’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/9TzYQA1?app=1
This study found that the “extreme mental distress gap” between LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people “increased from 1.8 percentage points during 2014–2015 to 3.8 percentage points after Trump’s presidency became a real possibility in early 2016.” Even seemingly small increases in extreme distress are important, the study notes, because such distress is not common.
While Trump was not the first president to advocate and enforce policies widely considered anti-LGBTQ, his tenure followed the relatively pro-LGBTQ Obama presidency. The possibility of removing recently gained rights and protections “might be more damaging to LGBT people’s mental well-being than simply not having equal rights in the first place,” the study states.
While Kuroki’s report does include a cautionary note about attributing the increase in mental distress among LGBTQ people to the rise and presidency of Trump, he does note that “the findings do suggest that the Biden administration may have inherited higher rates of mental distress among LGBT people” than they would have “if Trump had not run and won the 2016 election.”
In his conclusion, Kuroki suggests that future research examine LGBTQ mental health under the Biden administration, which has already implemented measures to advance LGBTQ rights and protections.
“If presidents affect LGBT people’s mental health, then we should expect that the extreme mental distress gap between LGBT people and non-LGBT people to narrow under the Biden presidency,” he stated in his report’s conclusion.
Grzenda’s study used data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to measure whether the 2016 election and transition to the Trump administration led to a change in the number of sexual and gender minority (SGM) adults reporting “frequent mental distress” compared to cisgender, heterosexual respondents (frequent mental distress is defined as feeling depressed, stressed or unable to control one’s emotions during at least 14 of the last 30 days). Between 2015 and 2018, LGBTQ respondents reporting frequent mental distress increased by 6.1 percentage points, from 15.4 percent to 21.5 percent, while non-LGBTQ respondents reported a 1.1 percentage point increase, from 10.4 percent to 11.5 percent.
“A clear association exists between the 2016 election and the changeover to a decisively anti-LGBT administration and the worsening mental health of SGM adults, although a completely causal relationship cannot be fully established,” the report, published this year in the journal LGBT Health, states.
The effects, however, were not seen evenly among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.
“We’ve got to start looking at sub-populations more,” Grzenda said. “When we break it down, it was bisexual individuals and especially transgender individuals who were really hit the hardest.”
Grzenda said the differential impact on gender minority adults may be because of the Trump administration’s targeting of transgender rights and protections in military service, health care and access to public facilities. At the same time, the focus on lesbian, gay and transgender rights may have “exacerbated feelings of bisexual invisibilty/erasure,” and compounded existing stress for bisexual respondents.
The study, which had a sample size of nearly 270,000 adults, approximately 5 percent of them LGBTQ, states in its conclusion that its findings provide “data-driven support for advocacy efforts toward the implementation of unequivocal antidiscrimination protects on the basis of [sexual orientation and gender identity] across all domains of daily living, immutable to sudden political realignment.”
Grzenda, like Kuroki, notes that a definitive causal link cannot be drawn between the Trump administration and the decline in LGBTQ mental health with existing data, though both studies controlled for likely competing factors.
‘Bullying by legislation’
The effect of politics on LGBTQ mental health is not just relegated to the federal government and national policies. The spate of anti-LGBTQ legislation in statehouses raises concerns about other sources of mental health strain, particularly for young people.
From 2015 to 2019, 42 states introduced more than 200 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation, according to a recent study by Child Trends, a nonpartisan research institute, and the introduction of these measures were found to have negative mental health consequences on LGBTQ minors.
The report notes that Crisis Text Line, a global nonprofit that provides free mental health texting services, saw an uptick in messages from LGBTQ youths in the four weeks after their respective states proposed anti-LGBTQ legislation.
“This suggests the bills are harmful whether or not they are passed,” Dominique Parris, director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Child Trends and lead author on the study, told NBC News. “We need to understand the full scope of what these laws do to young people.”
Among the most common types of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced during the 2015-19 timeframe were restrictions on single-sex facilities, the report states.
This year alone, there have already been over 200 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced at the state level, Parris said.
“Oftentimes the argument in support of [these bills] is to protect children, but what this research suggests is that that may not in fact be the outcome, and simply proposing this legislation may cause children distress,” Parris said.
“When there have been public policy decisions, we hear about that on our crisis line,” Amit Paley, the project’s CEO, told NBC News.
When Trump banned transgender people from the military, the Trevor Project saw an increase in trans and nonbinary people reaching out for crisis services, he said. This was not due to trans people necessarily wanting to serve in the military, Paley added, but because a powerful public figure was making judgments about their worth.
“Young people are listening,” he said. “When their message is discriminatory and hateful, that does have an impact.”
Trans and nonbinary youth are at particular risk for the most devastating consequences of mental distress, including suicide, according to Trevor Project research.
“That’s not because LGBTQ trans nonbinary people are born more likely to consider suicide,” Paley said. “It’s because of the discrimination, isolation and rejection they face.”
Paley said that Texas legislators this year have introduced dozens of anti-LGBTQ bills, many of which target trans and nonbinary people.
On Wednesday, a bill that would that would require student athletes to compete on sports teams corresponding to their “biological sex” advanced out of committee and heads toward a full vote on the state House floor where it is likely to pass. The bill advanced despite emotional testimony from parents and students regarding the toll such a law would take on trans children, something LGBTQ children’s advocates have been sounding the alarm about for some time.
“Trevor Project has received almost 4,000 calls, chats and texts from trans and nonbinary people in Texas this year,” Paley said. “This is effectively bullying by legislation. It is dangerous and it is wrong.”
‘Some steps forward and several steps backward’
Advocates hope LGBTQ mental health might improve under the Biden administration, which has made public statements and enacted policies in support of LGBTQ rights.
However, some, like Paley and Parris, worry about the message that certain signals — like the ongoing support for Trump among many Republicans, the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ state legislation and the failure to pass the Equality Act in Congress — will send to LGBTQ youth and adults.
“I think we are seeing some steps forward and several steps backward,” Paley said.
A unique, one-time treatment for HIV has been given the green light to begin human trials by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Excision BioTherapeutics can now begin using the gene-editing treatment, called CRISPR, to explore if the process could potentially function as a treatment for HIV. Their treatment, EBT-101, uses CRISPR to cut out several pieces of the HIV genome through a one-time treatment.
Daniel Dornbusch, CEO of Excision, said the clearance of EBT-101 “represents an important milestone” for the company and is the “result of years of commitment to developing a functional cure for individuals living with HIV”.
“Although antiviral treatments can manage HIV infection, they require life-long treatment, cause side effects and do not provide the possibility of a functional cure,” Dornbusch said. “We are grateful for the FDA’s engaged review and acceptance of the IND for EBT-101 and look forward to initiating the Phase 1/2 clinical trial later this year.”
Treatments do not cure HIV but can reduce the virus’ ability to reproduce in the body. This can reduce the amount of the virus in the blood to undetectable levels, which means HIV cannot be passed on.
HIV is managed through antiretroviral drugs, which stop HIV from replicating in the body. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is a treatment for HIV which involves taking multiple medicines daily for the rest of a person’s life. According to the NHS, a combination of drugs is used because HIV can adapt quickly.
Dornbusch said it was important EBT-101 could work around the virus’ adaptability. He told Fierce Biotech that just making one cut means that the “virus can mutate around it”. So he explained that EBT-101 instead makes “multiple cuts to deactivate the viral genome”.
Dornbusch told PhillyMag that the trial will treat participants who are living with HIV and are already using ART to manage the virus. The participants will receive a single IV dose of EBT-101 over one to two hours and remain on ART for several months to measure the effectiveness of the treatment.
Then, the participants will stop ART while being monitored by medical professionals for their safety and wellbeing.
Dornbusch said the goal of the first trial is to demonstrate that the treatment is safe at all dose levels and to determine if subjects can remain negative after stopping ART.
“The goal, of course, is to find the first therapeutic to create functional cures for HIV,” he said. “The term ‘functional cure’ is an important distinction, as there will be no way to determine if EBT-101 will remove every viral genome from an individual, which is called a ‘sterilising cure’.”
He continued: “However, sterilising cures are not necessary, as the goal of the therapy will be for individuals to remain HIV negative by RNA testing, maintain normal levels of immune cells, and cease taking antiretroviral treatment – achieving a functional cure.”
In Ghana, home to a diverse array of religions, leaders of major churches have united in denouncing homosexuality as a “perversion” and endorsing legislation that would, if enacted, impose some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ policies in Africa.
In Nigeria, the umbrella body for Christian churches depicts same-sex relationships as an evil meriting the lengthy prison sentences prescribed under existing law.
And in several African countries, bishops aligned with the worldwide United Methodist Church are preparing to join an in-the-works breakaway denomination so they can continue their practice of refusing to recognize same-sex marriage or ordain LGBTQ clergy.
In the United States, Western Europe and various other regions, some prominent Protestant churches have advocated for LGBTQ inclusion. With only a few exceptions, this hasn’t happened in Africa, where Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran leaders are among those opposing such inclusion.
“They have always organized a group to maybe silence us or make the church disappear,” Omolo said. “They don’t want it to appear anywhere.”
Ghana, generally considered more respectful of human rights than most African countries, now faces scrutiny due to a bill in Parliament that would impose prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years for people identifying as LGBTQ or supporting that community. The bill has been denounced by human rights activists even as Ghanaian religious leaders rally behind it.
“Their role in perpetuating queerphobia and transphobia is clear and it’s very troubling and dangerous,” said Abena Hutchful, a Ghanaian who identifies as queer and co-organized a recent protest against the bill in New York City.
“The bill’s strongest supporters claim to be doing this in the name of religion,” says Graeme Reid, director of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT Rights Program. He called the measure “a case study in extreme cruelty.”
The lawmakers proposing the bill said they consulted influential religious leaders while drafting it. Among those endorsing it are the Christian Council of Ghana, the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the country’s chief imam.
“We don’t accept murderers, why should we accept somebody who is doing sex in a sinful way?” Archbishop Philip Naameh, president of the bishops’ conference, told The Associated Press. “If you take a stance which is against producing more children, it is a choice which is injurious to the existence of the Ghanaian state.”
The Christian Council — whose members include Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Anglican churches — considers homosexuality “an act of perversion and abomination,” according to its secretary general, the Rev. Dr. Cyril Fayose of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
“Homosexuality is not a human right and we reject it in all uncertain terms,” he declared earlier this year.
In Africa’s most populous country, the Christian Association of Nigeria has threatened to sanction any church that shows tolerance for same-sex relationships.
Such acceptance “will never happen,” Methodist Bishop Stephen Adegbite, the association’s director of national issues, told the AP.
Asked about Nigeria’s law criminalizing same-sex relationships with sentences of up to 14 years in prison, Adegbite said there are no alternatives.
“The church can never be compromised,” he declared.
Such comments dismay Nigerian LGBTQ activists such as Matthew Blaise, who told the AP of being manhandled by a Catholic priest distraught that Blaise wasn’t heterosexual.
“The church has been awful when it comes to LGBTQ issues, instead of using love as a means of communicating,” Blaise said.
In Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, Catholic Archbishop Alfred Adewale Martins told the AP that Catholic teaching “recognizes in the dignity of every human person.” However, he said LGBTQ people who enter into same-sex relationships are leading “a disordered way of life” and should change their behavior.
Nigeria is home to one of the United Methodist bishops, John Wesley Yohanna, who says he plans to break away from the UMC and join the proposed Global Methodist Church. That new denomination, likely to be established next year, results from an alliance between Methodists in the United States and abroad who don’t support the LGBT-inclusive policies favored by many Methodists in the U.S.
Bishops Samuel J. Quire Jr. of Liberia and Owan Tshibang Kasap of the UMC’s Southern Congo district also have indicated they would join the breakaway.
The Rev. Keith Boyette, a Methodist elder from the United States who chairs the Global Methodist initiative, said the African bishops’ views reflect societal and cultural attitudes widely shared across the continent.
“Same-sex orientation is viewed negatively,” he said. “That’s true whether a person is from a Christian denomination, or Muslim or from a more indigenous religion.”
In Uganda, where many LGBTQ people remain closeted for fear of violence and arrests, there is a retired Anglican bishop who in 2006 was barred from presiding over church events because he voiced empathy with gays.
In decades of ministering to embattled LGBTQ people, Christopher Senyonjo said he learned that sexuality “is a deep, important part of who we are. We should be free to let people be who they are.”
“Ignorance is a big problem in all this,” Senyonjo told the AP. “When there is ignorance, there is a lot of suffering.”
In 2014, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed a harsh anti-gay law that, in its original version, prescribed the death penalty for some homosexual acts. Later that year, amid intense international pressure, a judicial panel annulled the legislation on a technicality.
However, a colonial-era law criminalizing sex acts “against the order of nature” remains in place.
Frank Mugisha, a prominent gay activist in Uganda, described church leaders as “the key drivers of homophobia in Africa.” Some Anglican leaders, he said, have deepened their hostility toward LGBTQ people in a bid to not lose followers to aggressively anti-LGBTQ Pentecostal churches.
In all of Africa, only one nation — South Africa — has legalized same-sex marriage. Even there, gay and lesbian couples often struggle to be accepted by churches, let alone have their marriages solemnized by clergy.
“People tell me, ‘I grew up in this church, but now I am not accepted,’” said Nokuthula Dhladhla, a pastor with the Global Interfaith Network, which advocates for LGBTQ rights within the religious sector.
She said some religious leaders are privately supportive of same-sex marriage, but reluctant to do so openly for fear of being sidelined by their more conservative peers.
South Africa’s Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, world-renowned for his opposition to apartheid, has been an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights.
“I would not worship a God who is homophobic,” he once said. “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say ‘Sorry, I would much rather go to the other place.’”
Caroline Omolo, the activist pastor in Nairobi, said some Kenyan religious leaders blame LGBTQ people for the coronavirus pandemic.
“When we say we are still serving God, they don’t see something that’s possible,” she said. “They think it’s something unfamiliar and should be stopped.”
However, she said some faculty and students at Kenya’s theological schools support her LGBTQ church, which has about 300 members.
“The students, we call them the future generation, leaders of tomorrow,” she said. “When we have that population on our side, I believe there’s nothing that can shake us.”
Italy has voted down a bill to tackle hate crimes against women, LGBT+ people and those with disabilities, all in the name of religious freedom.
The bill – known as the Zan bill after the Democratic Party lawmaker and LGBT+ rights activist Alessandro Zan, who proposed it – was approved my the Italian parliament’s lower house last year.
The Zan bill, which would protect Italians from violence, hate speech and discrimination on the basis of sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability, has caused a divide in the country since it was introduced, with critics insisting that it would infringe on religious freedom.
On Wednesday, Italy’s senate voted 154 to 131 to block further debate on the bill for the next six months, according to Reuters. Advocates of the bill fear it will now be impossible to pass it before the legislature expires in 2023.
Zan described the outcome of the vote on Twitter as a “betrayal of a political pact that wanted the country to take a step towards civilisation”.
Gabriele Piazzoni, general secretary of of Italian LGBT+ rights group Arcigay, said that the state had “once again turned the other way” when it comes to homophobia and transphobia.
“We thank those who fought,” he added. “Shame on everyone else.”
The LGBT+ rights bill faced opposition from the Vatican and Italy’s far-right
The church feared prosecution for openly opposing same-sex marriage and adoption by LGBT+ families, and also opposed the bill’s requirement that Catholic schools would have to mark a day dedicated to fighting homophobia and transphobia.
The bill also faced fierce opposition from Italy’s far-right League party, with the party’s leader Matteo Salvini describing it as a “gagging law” which would mean that “those who think a mom is a mom and a dad is a dad” would end up in jail.
Andrea Ostellari, a League party senator and president of the Italian senate’s justice committee, managed to repeatedly delay the second vote on the bill.
According to The Guardian, Alessandro Zan said earlier this year that lawmakers who backed the bill were “being held hostage by a president who arbitrarily decides that the vote shouldn’t be scheduled because he belongs to a party that doesn’t want it”.
In a pattern that is becoming worryingly familiar around the world, the bill’s opposition also united anti-trans activists with the far-right.
In April, a group of 17 “feminist” and lesbian groups issued a joint statement against the bill.
Despite the bill aiming to protect Italians on the basis of both sex and gender, the groups declared that the term “gender identity” had been “weaponised against women”.
At the time, Zan rejected the letter, and responded: “To say that trans women are not real women is not acceptable.
“We are talking about people who are particularly discriminated against… Unfortunately, some statements by historic and radical feminists have the same content as the extreme right and religious fundamentalists.”
