A county board in Ohio has refused to reconsider the disqualification of a transgender state House candidate who omitted her former name from circulating petitions, even as other transgender candidates have been cleared for the ballot.
The Stark County Board of Elections said in a statement Friday that it stands by its decision to disqualify Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer from Massillon, Ohio, because she did not put a name that no longer aligns with her gender identity — also referred to as a deadname — on the petitions used to gather signatures to get on the ballot. State law mandates that candidates disclose any name changes from the past five years on their petitions, with exemptions for changes resulting from marriage.
The law, meant to weed out bad actors, is unknown even to many elections officials, and it isn’t listed in the 33-page candidate requirement guide. Additionally, there is no space on the petitions to list former names.
Vanessa Joy.Vanessa Joy via AP
Joy said she’s frustrated by the county board’s decision and that, for now, her campaign is over. However, she said she is working with an attorney to try to change the law to be more inclusive of transgender candidates who don’t want to disclose their previous names for personal safety reasons, among others.
“I’m out of the race, but I’m not out of the fight,” Joy told The Associated Press on Monday.
The county board said in its statement that it was “sympathetic to” Joy’s argument that she shouldn’t be disqualified since the campaign guide did not contain the requirement, but said its decision “must be based on the law.”
All four transgender candidates for the Legislature this year have run into issues with the name-change law, which has been in place in some form for decades but is used rarely, usually by candidates wishing to use a nickname.
Fellow Democratic transgender House candidates Bobbie Arnold of Preble County and Arienne Childrey of Auglaize County were cleared to run by their respective boards of elections just last week. But if Joy does not succeed in changing the law before November and Childrey or Arnold win, they could technically still be kicked out of office.
Ari Faber, a Democrat from Athens running for the Ohio state Senate, has not legally changed his name and so has not had his candidacy challenged. Faber is running with his deadname on the ballot.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine previously said that the law should be amended and transgender candidates shouldn’t be disqualified on these grounds.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said his team will work to put the law on the candidate guide. But he said his office is not open to tweaking the law because public officeholders must be transparent with voters and are not entitled to such privacy.
It can be hard to follow what states are doing to attack (and sometimes protect) transgender people’s rights. Here are some stories from us and from around the web.
Ohio’s governor backs off his attempt to restrict gender-affirming care access for transgender adults and minors. (LGBTQ Nation)
West Virginia Republicans want to pass a “Women’s Bill of Rights” that contains no actual rights for women. Instead, the bill says that “equal” does not mean “same” or “identical” and bans trans people from using the correct bathroom. (AP)
A similar “Women’s Bill of Rights” bill made it out of committee in the Iowa legislature. (LGBTQ Nation)
Georgia Republicans introduced a “Women’s Bill of Rights” that would also end hate crimes protections for LGBTQ+ people in the state. (LGBTQ Nation)
Arizona Republicans have a bill to legally erase transgender people and ban trans women and girls from participating in school sports as their gender. (AZ Mirror)
Florida Democrats want the Biden administration to block the state’s new ban on transgender people correcting the gender markers on their ID. (LGBTQ Nation)
Virginia lawmakers voted to table all anti-transgender bills in their state, which included another “Women’s Bill of Rights,” a sports ban, and a bill to forcibly out transgender students to their parents. (Los Angeles Blade)
A transgender sports ban in Maryland was killed in committee. (Metro Weekly)
Tennessee Republican introduces a “detransitioner bill of rights.” (News Channel 9)
Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine warned of “medical refugees” being forced to travel from their home states to other states to get access to gender-affirming and reproductive health care. (Politico)
Kansas’s attorney general is telling public schools to out transgender students to their parents. (LGBTQ Nation)
A Colorado Democrat proposed a law that would require teachers to use their students’ correct names and pronouns. (LGBTQ Nation)
A bill to ban the Pride flag from Oklahoma state premises passed a committee vote. (KJHR)
Indiana launched an anti-LGBTQ+ tip line to combat “political ideology” in schools. Online activists flooded it with memes. (LGBTQ Nation)
A pizza restaurant in upstate New York has agreed to pay a transgender former employee $25,000 and take other steps to settle a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleged the worker was subjected to invasive personal questions and told he wasn’t “a real man.”
Quinn Gambino, a trans man, was a cook at T.C. Wheelers Bar & Pizzeria in Tonawanda, which is near Buffalo. Beginning in January 2021, according to the suit, the owners repeatedly asked questions about his genitalia and transition procedures, such as “Does she have female parts?” They “also intentionally misgendered Gambino by using female pronouns (such as ‘she’ or ‘her’) and stood by as employees and customers did the same,” says an EEOC press release.
Managers and coworkers further told Gambino he wasn’t “a real man” or “a real guy” and even likened being trans to pedophilia, according to the EEOC. Gambino reported the harassment to management, but it continued, so he resigned after four months. The EEOC, a federal agency, filed the suit last March in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York after an initial attempt to reach a settlement failed.
Under the settlement reached last week, T.C. Wheelers, which has denied any wrongdoing, will pay Gambino $25,000 in back wages and compensatory damages. The restaurant also agreed to take steps to prevent discrimination and harassment, such as requiring all owners, managers, and employees to undergo training on federal antidiscrimination laws, and it has hired an independent human resources monitor to investigate all employee complaints. The monitor will provide annual reports to the EEOC, which will look at the company’s business records when needed to ensure compliance.
“We appreciate T.C. Wheelers’ agreement to settle this lawsuit and make proactive changes, and we are proud to have obtained an effective resolution that compensates Gambino for what he endured and helps ensure that other transgender employees will be treated fairly in the future,” Jeffrey Burstein, regional attorney for the EEOC’s New York District Office, said in the press release.
“The EEOC considers protecting members of the LGBTQIA+ community to be an important enforcement priority,” added EEOC New York District Director Yaw Gyebi Jr. “We will continue to assure that transgender employees receive the full benefit of federal antidiscrimination laws in all industries.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans sex discrimination in employment. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is the latest piece of evidence demonstrating that restrictions on puberty blockers, hormones, and other care for transgender youth “deny children access to routine health care that has been shown to decrease dramatically high rates of suicide and depression.”
Yet conservative state legislators are unrelenting. More than 550 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced across the U.S. in 2023, and 80 were passed into law, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Just weeks into 2024, 285 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced. The majority of the bills target transgender minors, whether they be bans on gender-affirming health care, laws mandating that they use bathrooms and school facilities contrary to their gender identity, or policies forcefully outing them to their families.
Medical professionals say gender-affirming care has become more heavily scrutinized than other areas of medicine. To Dr. Carl Streed Jr., president of the U.S. Professional Association for Trans Health, this is not because of the actual science behind the treatment but instead due to “ideological” bias.
“The goalposts continue to be moved,” he said at the HRC 2024 State Legislative Press Briefing. “It’s one of those situations where I often will ask people if you can tell me honestly what evidence you need to consider changing your mind. And if they cannot do that, I definitely know they’re not thinking about the facts. They’re definitely thinking about this from an ideological perspective.”
The recent legislation wave is not just anti-science, added Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at HRC — it is also legally unsound. Regarding the bills that have been passed into law, one aspect she flagged was “how often our opponents have to cheat in order to win.”
“Some of the worst bills that passed last year passed after a circumvention of the usual process. So they passed because the rules were suspended, they passed in the last several hours or last hours of a [legislative] session, they passed after having cut off testimony contrary to the usual rules and public comment,” she explained.
Oakley attributes the sudden attention placed on transgender issues in legislatures, in part, to the culture war. Instead of leaving health care decisions to medical professionals, she said politicians have taken it upon themselves to “use transgender folks as a political wedge.”
“They do not really have any subject matter expertise at all,” she continued. “And in fact, when people are trying to offer subject matter expertise, [they are] absolutely rebuffed and rejected. These are folks who are doing what they’re doing because they perceive this to be their path to power.”
While the bans are hastily pushed through in many cases, they bring devastating consequences for the transgender residents of their states, young and older. As trans minors lose access to critical treatment, Streed said the restrictions also “continue to affect the science and affect our ability to continue to do research,” as they “get in the way of us being able to disseminate information effectively.”
If evidence is not enough to change their minds, what is?
Streed noted that “some of the easiest ways to combat misinformation is actually sharing narratives,” which data also supports. Severalstudies have shown that knowing a transgender person, whether in real life or in media, can increase support for transgender rights and decrease prejudice.
“We always like to say evidence changes minds, narratives change hearts,” Streed said, adding, “We need more people to feel comfortable, and we need to provide them protections and support in sharing their experiences around this.”
This rings true for Minna Zelch, a member of the leadership team at Trans Allies of Ohio, whose 19-year-old daughter is transgender. Zelch shared that after the state where her daughter was attending college passed anti-trans laws, she had to switch to a university in another state for her safety.
Many transgender people and their families have been forced to relocate in order to live unrestricted lives, and even the ability to move is a privilege not afforded to all. To be able to openly share one’s narrative is also a privilege, Zelch noted, which makes it all the more crucial to speak out if you can.
“As parents one thing we constantly tell our legislators is we are the first people to say there needs to be more research on this. We need more information, but these laws will make sure that never ever happens. And it’s very frustrating for for them to just to just dismiss it completely,” she said. “And so that’s why so many of us have chosen to risk our safety to tell our stories.”
The Advocate’s Christopher Wiggins contributed to this report.
A court in western Japan on Wednesday approved a transgender man’s request to have his gender changed in official records without undergoing sterilization surgery, the first known ruling of its kind since the country’s top court struck down a surgery requirement for such record changes.
The Okayama Family Court’s Tsuyama Branch said Tacaquito Usui, 50, could get the gender listed for him in his family registry updated to male. Usui original application for the revision was rejected five years ago.
“It’s like I’m standing at the start line of my new life,” he said during a televised news conference after Wednesday’s ruling came out. “I’m so excited.”
Japan’s Supreme Court ruled in October that a provision of a 20-year-old law that made the removal of reproductive organs a precondition for the legal recognition of gender changes was unconstitutional. The ruling, however, only applied to the sterilization provision and did not address the constitutionality of requiring other procedures.
The Okayama court found that the hormone therapy Usui received made him eligible for gender affirmation. Usui welcomed the recognition, saying he thinks the law in Japan might be evolving faster than the public awareness.
Many LGBTQ people in Japan still hide their sexual orientations and gender identities due to fear of discrimination at work and schools. The country remains the only Group of Seven member that does not allow same-sex marriages.
Activists have pressed for greater rights and protections. But change has come slowly in a country of conformity with a conservative government that sticks to traditional paternalistic values and is reluctant to accept gender, sexual and family diversity,
The law that the Supreme Court addressed in its ruling took effect in 2004. It stated that individuals who wanted to register a gender change needed to have reproductive organs, including testes or ovaries, removed. They also were required to have a body that “appears to have parts that resemble the genital organs” of their expressed gender.
More than 10,000 Japanese have since had their genders officially changed, according to court documents from another court case. A court in central Japan noted in last year’s case that sterilization surgery was not required in most of the approximately 50 European and central Asian countries that have laws that allow gender changes on official documents.
Legislation in West Virginia to narrow the definitions of gender would give women no further rights and is a way for Republicans to suppress transgender people, speakers at a public hearing said Thursday.
Dozens of speakers condemned the “Women’s Bill of Rights” while a handful spoke in favor of it during the 45-minute hearing in the House chambers at the state Capitol.
The legislation says that “equal” does not mean “same” or “identical” with respect to equality of the sexes. It would define in state statues and official public policies that a person’s sex is determined at birth and that gender equity terms may not be substituted. It also would establish that certain single-sex environments, such as athletics, locker rooms and bathrooms, are not discriminatory.
Marshall University student Max Varney said the bill uses women’s rights as a cover for transphobia.
“I stand before you as a transgender person in West Virginia. I am not a threat to the public, nor is my existence offensive,” Varney said. “This bill is dehumanizing. It is unjust. And it is disgusting.
“Why am I not supposed to be considered a person too?” Varney continued. “I am here today to show you that trans people in West Virginia are real. I am real. I exist. And I deserve to be treated with humanity.”
Mollie Kennedy, community outreach director for the American Civil Liberties Union’s West Virginia chapter, speaks out against a proposed “Women’s Bill of Rights” during a public hearing today.John Raby / AP Photo
Fairness West Virginia, the state’s only LGBTQ advocacy organization, said the bill does nothing to support women and among other things would ban transgender people from using government building restrooms that align with their gender identity.
The legislation is pending in the GOP-supermajority House of Delegates. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice strongly backed the bill at a gathering shortly before its introduction last month. Other states have seen similar moves: Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order on the narrow definitions of sex in August.
Attending both events was former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who criticized an NCAA decision allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete against her in a women’s championship race in 2022. Gaines is part of the anti-trans group Independent Women’s Voice.
The bill’s language lacks details such as enforcement mechanisms and penalties, leaving its potential impact unclear. In other states with laws restricting how transgender people can use bathrooms, officials have struggled to understand how they will be implemented.
Despite its broad “Bill of Rights” premise, the measure doesn’t address issues such as reproductive care, abortion, or affordable childcare. One lawmaker’s attempt to insert an equal pay clause was rejected when a House committee chairman ruled that it wasn’t pertinent to the bill, which is alternatively titled: “The West Virginia Act to Define Sex-Based Terms Used in State Law, Help Protect Single Sex Spaces, and Ensure the Accuracy of Public Data Collection.”
Supporter Nila Thomson said at the House Judiciary Committee’s public hearing that the bill “guarantees my rights to safety, privacy and protection. I’m so grateful you took the initiative to put forth this bill.”
But Mollie Kennedy, the community outreach director for the American Civil Liberties Union’s West Virginia chapter, called it a “bigoted bill.”
“We don’t need a women’s bill of rights to know how this legislature feels about women,” she said. “It is appalling and offensive.”
Another bill that would prohibit transgender students from using the school restroom that aligns with their gender identity advanced through the House Education Committee last month. That bill has not been taken up by the judiciary committee.
In 2020, the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Virginia school board’s transgender bathroom ban was unconstitutional. West Virginia is in the 4th Circuit’s jurisdiction.
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a 12-year-old transgender girl in West Virginia to continue competing on her middle school’s girls sports teams while a lawsuit over a state ban continues. The ban prohibits transgender athletes from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.
Kansas’ attorney general is telling public schools they’re required to tell parents their children are transgender or non-binary even if they’re not out at home, though Kansas is not among the states with a law that explicitly says to do that.
Republican Kris Kobach’s action was his latest move to restrict transgender rights, following his successful efforts last year to temporarily block Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration from changing the listings for sex on transgender people’s birth certificates and driver’s licenses to reflect their gender identities. It’s also part of a trend of GOP attorneys general asserting their authority in culture war issues without a specific state law.
Kobach maintains that failing to disclose when a child is socially transitioning or identifying as non-binary at school violates a parents’ rights. He sent letters in December to six school districts and the state association for local school board members, then followed up with a public statement Thursday after four districts, all in northeast Kansas, didn’t rewrite their policies.
The Kansas attorney general’s letters to superintendents of three Kansas City-area districts, Topeka’s superintendent and the Kansas Association of School Boards accused them of having “surrendered to woke gender ideology.” His letters didn’t say what he would do if they didn’t specifically require teachers and administrators to out transgender and non-binary students.
LGBTQ+ rights advocates saw the letters as seeking policies that put transgender and non-binary youth in physical danger but also as an attempt to tell transgender people that they’re not welcome. Jordan Smith, leader of the Kansas chapter of the LGBTQ+ rights group Parasol Patrol, said forced outing will create more anxiety for students and even push some back into the closet.
“It’s like they don’t want us to exist in public places,” said Smith, who is non-binary.
Five states have laws requiring schools to inform parents if their children use different pronouns, socially transition to a gender different than the one assigned at birth or present as non-binary, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which supports transgender rights. Another six have laws that encourage it, the project says.
Kansas is on neither list. A bill introduced last year would bar schools from using the preferred pronouns for a student under 18 without a parent or guardian’s written permission, but it did not clear a Senate committee.
GOP lawmakers did enact a law over Kelly’s veto that ended the state’s legal recognition of transgender and non-binary identities by defining male and female for legal purposes based on a person’s “reproductive anatomy” identified at birth. But Republican state Sen. Renee Erickson of Wichita, a vocal supporter and a former middle school principal, said it does not cover issues about whether schools must inform parents about a child’s gender identity at school.
Erickson said she now favors taking a look at the bill before a Senate committee, saying it addresses a “policy gap.”
“The parents have a right to know what is affecting their child. They’re an integral part, if not the most important part, in helping their child grow and develop with the values that the parent wants,” she said.
But Kobach didn’t cite Kansas law in his letters to the state school boards association, the Topeka school district and the Kansas City, Shawnee Mission and Olathe school districts in the Kansas City area. Instead, he cited U.S. Supreme Court decisions going back as far as 1923 that he said affirmed parents’ rights to control how their children are raised. His office released copies Thursday.
He told each of the four district that its policies on transgender students violated parents’ rights and said two other districts in the Wichita area quickly rewrote their policies after his letter arrived. In his letter to the school boards group, he noted it provides legal help to local districts.
“It would be arrogant beyond belief to hide something with such weighty consequences from the very people (parents) that both law and nature vest with providing for a child’s long-term well-being,” Kobach wrote in each of the letters.
State attorneys general serve as the lead lawyers for state governments, and most also oversee at least some criminal prosecutions. But they also look outward, and Kobach’s letters weren’t the first to issue warnings not grounded in a specific state law.
Last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent requests to at least two medical providers that don’t operate in his state for information about providing gender-affirming care as part of an investigation, though it’s not clear what Texas law would cover them. Washington state’s attorney general invoked a law there to block Seattle Children’s Hospital from complying, and QueerMed, a Georgia-based telehealth provider, said on its website that it will not comply.
As for Kobach, Tom Alonzo, a Kansas City, Kansas, LGBTQ+ rights advocate, argued that the Kansas attorney general is bent on “intentional marginalization” of transgender people.
“There’s no excuse for it,” he said as he staffed a table Thursday in the Statehouse. “I was a gay kid hiding in high school. I remember how ugly high school can be if you’re out.”
While the Kansas City, Kansas, district declined comment, the other three districts said they deal with transgender and non-binary students case by case and seek to work with parents. The Topeka district expressed confidence that its practices are legal. The four districts are among the largest in Kansas and together have more than 88,000 students or 18% of the total for the state’s public schools.
The strongest response came from Michelle Hubbard, the Shawnee Mission superintendent, in her district’s response in December. She said “it is rarely the case” that students seek something “entirely opposed” by their parents.
She also chided Kobach for not citing actual cases in the district of parents’ rights being violated and suggested that he was relying on “misinformation” from “partisan sources.” She called his use of woke “as an insult” disappointing in an attorney general.
“We are not caricatures from the polarized media, but rather real people who work very hard in the face of intense pressure on public schools,” Hubbard wrote.
A transgender “bathroom ban” in North Carolina caused a national uproar in 2016. Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Nick Jonas and a long list of other A-list performers canceled shows in the state. Global corporations Deutsche Bank and PayPal torpedoed plans to expand in Cary and Charlotte. The NCAA moved its scheduled championship games elsewhere.
Now, eight years later, after Utah passed a similar bill on Monday, the reaction beyond the state’s borders appears to be more of a shrug.
Neither of Utah’s largest businesses released statements in response to the legislation. Tens of thousands of out-of-towners, and an ensuing economic boost, were just heading home from the Sundance Film Festival, held annually in Park City. Global sensation — and queer icon — Bad Bunny is slated to headline a concert in Salt Lake City in upcoming weeks. Next month, Salt Lake City will be hosting first- and second-round games in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Representatives for the NCAA, Bad Bunny and Sundance did not immediately return requests for comment.
In fact, nine other states passed so-called transgender bathroom bills in the years between those passed by North Carolina and Utah, with little fanfare as well.
Moral Monday demonstrators head toward the General Assembly from the Bicentennial Mall after gathering and calling for the repeal of HB2 in Raleigh, N.C., in 2016.Jill Knight / Raleigh News & Observer via Getty Images file
Allison Scott, who volunteered as an on-the-ground activist in North Carolina to fight HB 2, described this week’s lackluster reaction to Utah’s “bathroom bill” and the several others that have been passed in recent years as “very telling.”
“We were all saying that with HB 2: ‘It’s not over,’” said Scott, who is also the director of impact and innovation for the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “Now, here we are several years later and we’ve seen these bills grow and increase and grow and increase year over year over year, and we’re right back not only where we started but worse.”
While the enactment of the Utah law has immediate implications for the state’s trans community, the tepid response to its passage also reflects a broader retreat on transgender rights that less than a decade ago galvanized corporate America, elite sports and Hollywood.
Utah House Bill 257, which is titled “Sex-based Designations for Privacy, Anti-bullying and Women’s Opportunities,” limits transgender people’s access to bathrooms in public schools and government-operated buildings. These include restrooms at Salt Lake City International Airport, which is managed by local government, and in Utah’s public hospitals and universities. It also specifies the state’s legal definition of “male” and “female” is based on a person’s genitalia at birth rather than their gender identity.
The bill makes exceptions for trans people who have received genital surgery and changed their gender marker to match their gender identity on their birth certificates.
Critics of the legislation have said the law will create a “dangerous situation for trans youth.”
Supporters of the legislation have argued that without a measure in place, men posing as trans women will go into women’s public restrooms and commit sexual misconduct.
Rep. Kera Birkeland, who sponsored the Utah law, said that the bill was necessary to close a “giant loophole for predators” and will only criminally charge offenders who commit “an offense of lewdness,” as the bill states.
“If the people just go in and use the bathroom the way they’re supposed to be used, they will be fine. That has remained consistent throughout the bill, throughout any change,” Birkeland said in a phone call. “We’re not targeting just people who are transgender or people who are like, ‘I’m going to miss my flight, I’m going to duck into the men’s bathroom because the line is shorter.’”
She also pushed back on criticism that the bill would create an environment where Utahns are policing trans people in public restrooms, pointing to a provision in the bill that would criminally charge people for falsely reporting trans people in public restrooms.
“We do not want to incentivize any vigilante people out there trying to be jerks,” she said. “The whole goal is just to ensure that everyone feels like they have a safe place to do private things.”
Erin Reed, a transgender journalist and advocate, pushed back on this, arguing that the legislation will create disruption for trans people regardless of the bill’s specifics.
“People are not going to go through the fine points of a 12-page law,” Reed said. “More likely than not, you’re just going to see trans people and cis people challenged in bathrooms.”
Aside from Utah and North Carolina, lawmakers in nine other states have enacted similar legislation in recent years, including in Florida, Tennessee and Kentucky, according to a tally by The Associated Press. The measures largely restrict trans people’s access to restrooms solely in schools or in schools and government-operated buildings.
But North Carolina’s law, HB 2, went further, barring trans people from using restrooms and changing facilities that matched their gender identities in most public spaces.
A sign protesting a North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access in the bathroom stalls at the 21C Museum Hotel in Durham, N.C., in 2016. Jonathan Drake / Reuters file
HB 2 — which was later partially repealed in 2017 — also prevented local governments from passing LGBTQ nondiscrimination measures and rendered then-existing protections, including one in Charlotte, moot. For this reason, the law affected a much broader segment of the population compared to today’s bills and therefore drew national ire, said Shannon Gilreath, a professor at Wake Forest University’s School of Law and a faculty member of the university’s gender and sexuality program.
“When one’s own interests are not directly compromised by some form of discrimination, one is less likely to respond or to care,” Gilreath said. “I might not believe that’s necessarily the right attitude to have — to do what’s expedient versus to do what’s right in a situation — but that’s human nature.”
Some studies back Gilreath’s line of reasoning.
A survey from the nonpartisan research group Public Religion Research Institute conducted last year found an estimated 79% of Americans support anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people. Policies that largely favor trans Americans solely received significantly less support, the poll found. However, Americans who say they know at least one trans person are much more likely to support pro-trans policies, a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center found.
Reed said that what’s changed from 2016 to now is that people — and even billion-dollar corporations — have become afraid of provoking the far-right.
She pointed to a group of conservative provocateurs who collectively have amassed tens of millions of social media followers in part by stoking outrage over LGBTQ issues. In several instances, threats of violence have followed the subjects of posts made or amplified by the group of right-wing influencers.
“These people are scary,” Reed said. “If the NBA All-Star Game threatened to pull a game right now? In this atmosphere? Today? They’d get bomb threats from conservatives.”
Last year, bomb threats were made to Budweiser factories across the country after trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s brand partnership with Bud Light created an online firestorm in pockets of right-wing social media. Target also pulled some of its LGBTQ-themed merchandise for Pride Month from its shelves last year after it said it received “threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”
Pride month merchandise at the front of a Target store in Hackensack, N.J., last year.Seth Wenig / AP file
Reed also suggested that it might not be politically advantageous for Republicans to go against the grain when it comes to issues that affect trans people.
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine faced political blowback after vetoing a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors in the state in December. Former President Donald Trump urged Ohio state lawmakers to override the veto, writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he was “finished” with the Republican governor. Ohio senators overrode the governor’s veto last week.
In recent weeks, local activists had been unsure whether Utah Gov. Spencer Cox would sign HB 257. Cox in 2022 vetoed legislation that aimed to limit transgender students’ ability to compete on girls sports teams in school, citing the disproportionate rate of suicidal ideation among trans kids.
Conservative lawmakers introduced more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures across the country, according to a tally by the ACLU, with the majority of them targeting trans people. Seventy-five of those bills became law, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Utah, which Cox signedinto law.
Cox signed Utah’s “bathroom bill” on Monday evening with little fanfare and issued a short statement after weeks of speculation on his position.
“We want public facilities that are safe and accommodating for everyone and this bill increases privacy protections for all,” the statement read.
The law is effective immediately.
In addition to Utah, legislators in five states — South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas and Iowa — have introduced their own “bathroom bills” or legislation that further expands “bathroom bills” already on the books, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Stephanie Vigil, a queer Colorado state legislator, flipped her district from Republican to Democrat. Now, she’s ready to make some other changes.
While the GOP has launched repeated attacks on transgender students nationwide, a local effort to prevent teachers from asking a teenager about their preferred pronouns has spawned a response from Vigil.
She’s introduced a bill requiring teachers to use a student’s preferred name in the classroom. Deadnaming a trans student would be considered discrimination.
“Making sure that we can create space for them to be seen and heard as their true self is very important,” said Nadine Bridges, the executive director of One Colorado, told the local news after the bill was introduced. “It’s a great opportunity to kind of create equity and inclusion in schools.”
A controversial effort by a school board that would have prevented school staff from accommodating trans students was ultimately defeated after students, parents, and activists objected.
“I’m kind of old-fashioned,” one school board member said at the time. “I know a boy when I see one, and I know a girl when I see one.”
The board has reservations about the proposed law too, insisting that “parents are responsible for determining the upbringing, education, care, and moral development of their child.”
“Parents do have the right, for their specific child, to make whatever decisions they deem best for that young person,” Bridges said. “They do not have the right to make decisions for every student that attends a charter school or a public school.”
“We’re talking about pronouns and names and making sure that a young person can be seen as their authentic selves. Why wouldn’t anybody want to create space for that?”
The bill would also create a task force to “examine existing school policies and provide recommendations to schools on how to best implement student non-legal name change policies.”
In an article published in the opinion section of The New York Times, opinion columnist Pamela Paul wrote a 4,500-word article filled with factual errors and unfounded assumptions about transgender care and the lived experiences of transgender people. Although the article is presented as a piece on detransitioners, the interviews serve as vehicles through which Paul packages inaccuracies and disinformation with faulty citations and claims that are not supported by the evidence she presents. The article is the latest in a seriespublished by The New York Times to do so, and a simple fact check of the claims presented easily debunks the article’s central premises as highly misleading.
It is notable that this is not the first time Paul has waded into LGBTQ+ issues with the seeming goal of covering for anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Previously, she wrote an article criticizing LGBTQ+ organizations for the use of the word “queer,” a word that many LGBTQ+ people use to describe themselves. She has written articles accusing transgender people of “erasing women.” However, this article is certainly her longest and most in depth attempt to tackle transgender issues; in doing so, she misses the mark.
Claim: Rapid onset gender dysphoria and transgender social contagion is making people trans.
Fact: Rapid onset gender dysphoria and transgender social contagion is not a validated theory, has been widely debunked as pseudoscience by major medical organizations.
“Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with some controversy, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly tween and teenage girls, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, severalresearchershave documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices.”
At the beginning of the article, Paul discusses “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” and “social contagion” as potential reasons for the apparent increase in transgender individuals in recent years, raising concerns that these individuals will detransition. However, her sources clearly contradict her premise. Her first source, used to support “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” is an article by Lisa Littman that has been retracted. Littman is notably one of the only researchers to argue for the theory, which has been repeatedlydismissed for lacking factual support and for recruiting subjects from anti-trans websites. Recently, unable to validate the theory, she collaborated with Leor Sapir, who lacks a background in transgender mental health care and works at the anti-trans Manhattan Institute, to broaden the definition of “Rapid” so that even a period of two to four years could be considered rapid. She then published it in a journal run by Ken Zucker, an anti-trans “expert” whose clinic was closed following accusations of conversion therapy.
The second set of links, claiming to show “several researchers” documenting the phenomenon, actually refers to only three researchers, not “several.” These “researchers” include Lisa Littman’s personal website, a retracted article by Michael Bailey (Lisa Littman’s treasurer), and another article by Lisa Littman herself. The sources cited for the “documented phenomenon” are the anti-trans website Transgender Trend and a SurveyMonkey poll distributed on Reddit and Twitter.
The only source that correctly represents the consensus is the source showing that professional organizations oppose ROGD as pseudoscientific. In a letter from over 60 psychological organizations, the coalition for the Advancement & Application of Psychological Science calls for the elimination of the term, stating, “There are no sound empirical studies of ROGD” and “there is no evidence that ROGD aligns with the lived experiences of transgender children and adolescents.” Paul, however, simply and misleadingly presents this letter as the organization stating “there is not enough quality research.”
A study in the prestigious journal Pediatrics entirely debunked the concept of ROGD, determining that most transgender people know their gender identity for years before they come out and seek treatment for gender dysphoria. When transgender people finally do come out, many are overjoyed to finally reveal their true self to the world around them – to others, however, the process may seem “rapid.” To ascertain whether transgender identification occurs “rapidly,” researchers directly asked transgender teenagers: “How long have you known you were transgender?” They discovered that on average, transgender people know their gender identity for four years before first coming out and presenting for treatment.
Claim: Stephanie Winn, a “licensed marriage and family therapist,” spoke out in favor of “approach gender dysphoria in a more considered way” but then was “investigated” for conversion therapy.
Fact: Stephanie Winn suggested the treatment of transgender youth with acupuncture to “see if they like having needles put in them” and stating it could “help spark desistance.” She also pushed the idea that transgender men should be estrogen to make them feel more feminine.
“They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy. In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.”
Paul then attempts to take readers through to other researchers who are, presumably, being “unfairly treated” for their “unorthodox” views on transgender people. One of those people is Stephanie Winn, who she presents as a “licensed marriage and family therapist” in Oregon. She claims that Winn simply spoke out “in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way” and was attacked for this. A simple click on Paul’s link, however, shows how this is a highly misleading claim and misrepresents the brutality of what Winn was proposing.
In the thread linked by Paul, Winn muses that transgender men have a “sense of being less feminine” and could be made to feel more feminine by giving them estrogen. There is absolutely no research behind this claim, and in fact, giving transgender people the hormone of their assigned sex at birth has been tried in the past with disastrous effects. In a paper published in 1967 by Harry Benjamin, one of the first major researchers into transgender care, he stated: “I have heard rather frequently in the patient’s history that androgen had been used in the past in an attempt to cure the transsexualism by masculinization. It is the wrong treatment. It aggravates the condition by increasing libido without changing its character or direction. Androgen is contraindicated.”
Winn has also advocated for the treatment of transgender youth with acupuncture, stating, “they can see how they like having needles put in them.”
“So Your Kid Wants To Live As The Opposite Sex” by Stephanie WinnStephanie Winn has not been investigated or attacked simply for “approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way.” Rather, attacks on Winn are linked to extremely cruel suggestions and musings around how transgender youth should be dealt using cruel, coercive, and painful conversion therapy techniques.
Claim: Transgender people may actually just be gay, and transitioning is a form of “conversion therapy.”
Fact: Gender and sexuality are different, many transgender people identify as gay or bisexual after transition, and gay acceptance is higher than trans acceptance.
Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation — and that gender ideology can mask and even abet homophobia. … “I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.”
The claim that transgender people are “actually just gay” is one that has been made repeatedly by those opposed to gender affirming care, and one that has been repeatedlydebunked. Paul wades into this claim by featuring Kasey Emerick, who claims that “believing homosexuality was a sin” played into her transition.
Factually, though, attitudes towards transgender people tend to be “significantly more negative” according to an article in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. This contributes to a much higher rate of violence and discrimination. Many transgender people, such as celebrity Laverne Cox, report that the most common response to coming out is, “couldn’t you have just been gay?”
According to the 2012 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, most transgender people identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer after transition. If transition was being used to “cure” being gay, it is a startlingly ineffective cure.
Claim: 80% of transgender individuals desist from being transgender if they go through puberty without intervention, and another study suggests that 30% of individuals stop taking hormone therapy medication.
Fact: Detransition rates are estimated to be between 1-4%. The study citing an 80% detransition rate is based on faulty outdated data, using criteria no longer in use. Furthermore, the study indicating a 30% discontinuation rate is based on military families not refilling their prescriptions through Tricare, rather than actual discontinuation of hormone therapy.
The claim that 80% of transgender youth detransition has been widely debunkedand is contradicted by modern research, which indicates regret and detransition rates of 1-4%, according to a review of newer peer-reviewed studies by Cornell University. Recent studies reveal that 97.5% of transgender youth maintain a stable gender identity after five years. The older article Paul references is a journal article in a publication with a very low impact factor; this article does not provide new data, and instead discusses the same two outdated sources commonly associated with the exaggerated “80% detransition rate” claim: Kenneth Zucker’s research from the 1990s on detransition, which uses outdated diagnostic criteria for “gender identity disorder” that misclassified feminine gay men as “disordered,” and Steensma’s studies from 2011/2013, known for similar methodological shortcomings.
Both of these studies share a similar problem that explains why the numbers are so different when compared to modern studies around transgender care: they utilize outdated criteria for “gender identity disorder,” which misclassified tomboys, masculine lesbians, and effeminate gay men as “disordered.” Notably, Zucker advocated for conversion therapy, arguing that “a homosexual lifestyle in a fundamentally unaccepting culture simply creates unnecessary social difficulties.” He also employed techniques aimed at coercing trans kids to conform to their assigned sex at birth, such as withholding cross-gender toys and advising parents “not to give in” to their trans youth’s desires to wear clothing that aligns with their gender identity.
The old criteria noted that to be diagnosed with “gender identity disorder,” you did not need to desire to be “the other sex.” Instead, the disorder was about gendered behavior that was deemed “too masculine” or “too feminine” by society, and purposefully included gay people who didn’t “act man or woman enough.” The new criteria, however, require the transgender youth to desire or insist to be the other sex.
Steensma’s2011 and 2013 studies had similar issues in his research, which in some ways had even worse methodological flaws. Steensma used the old criteria, which is not the way that gender dysphoria is diagnosed today. Worse, the two studies classified every youth who did not return to the clinic as having “desisted” or “detransitioned” with no long term follow-up. Half of the participants in the studies did not return and all were classified as having “desisted.” The sample sizes were tiny at the getgo – only 53 people were in the first study and 127 in the second study. Given the fact that a large portion if not the majority of Steensma’s patients were classified under decades old criteria and assumed permanently detransitioned simply for refusing to follow up, these studies cannot be used to make any reasonable claim of high desistance rates.
The last study that Paul refers to is a study released two years ago on military continuance of care. That study looked at all hormone therapy distributed under the military Tricare health insurance plan and determined that 30% of people stopped receiving their hormones through Tricare. What the study does not do, as Paul claims, is support the idea that “30% of people discontinued hormone therapy.” In fact, there are many reasons why people would no longer fill their hormone therapy through a military Tricare plan, especially towards the end of the study in 2017-2018:
The Trump administration began targeting transgender servicemembers, and many transgender servicemembers likely stopped filling their hormone prescriptions through Tricare for themselves or their family members, fearing being targeted.
Tricare has notoriously poor transgender care coverage, as evidenced by many military members responding to a thread discussing the results of this study, and many transgender servicemembers may opt to get their medication through a low cost alternative such as Planned Parenthood
Hormone therapy can be discontinued for surgery, fertility and pregnancy planning, and many other purposes.
Some nonbinary patients may obtain all the results they wish from hormone therapy before discontinuing, desiring no future results.
Transgender people may simply have not filled the medication through insurance and instead utilized online pharmacies, which have grown increasingly popular.
Transgender patients can easily fill prescriptions through GoodRX plans, which would allow them more privacy.
Transgender people may have been forced off care by military decisions
Even the authors of the article themselves state that they likely overestimate discontinuation:
“We only collected information on medication refills obtained using a single insurance plan. If patients elected to pay out of pocket for hormones, accessed hormones through nonmedical channels, or used a different insurance plan to pay for treatment before and/or after obtaining gender-affirming hormones using TRICARE insurance, we did not capture this information. This means that our findings are likely an underestimate continuation rates among transgender patients.”
There are many more factual errors contained within Paul’s article; it is 4,500 words long and covers virtually every anti-trans claim made in legislative hearings across the United States. Many advocates for transgender people, medical experts, and journalists have weighed in to cover other aspects of Paul’s piece. You can find those here:
