A 23-year-old trans man was fatally shot outside a dollar store in Lynchburg, Virginia.
At around 5:55pm on Monday afternoon (12 June), police arrived at the Family Dollar at 2029 Fort Avenue to find Novaa Ru Watson suffering from “malicious wounds”.
He was rushed to the Lynchburg General Hospital where he later died of his injuries, the Lynchburg Police Department said in a statement.
Police officials confirmed to The News & Avenue that investigators are looking into whether the shooting stemmed from a domestic dispute.
They confirmed that a child was found at the scene of the shooting and was unharmed, but did not provide any other details.
Detectives added that they are investigating the shooting as a homicide but there is currently no evidence of a hate crime.
Watson’s family confirmed to the authorities that the victim was a trans man and his pronouns were he/him.
While they were reportedly not aware of him going by a name other than his deadname, they claimed, friends said his name was Novaa, which is listed on his personal Facebook profile. Others said he went by ‘EJ’ and ‘E’.
He is, at the least, the 29th trans person slain in the US, according to LGBT+ groups, yet another victim of what the American Medical Association has dubbed an “epidemic of violence“.
Novaa Watson was a person full of ‘good vibes’, says friend
Watson, who grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, had only days ago celebrated his 23rd birthday.
On his social media, he often rapped and shared quotes from his favourite artists, such as Drake.
Loved ones described him as a reliable and high-spirited person who would answer a person’s phone call no matter what, in tributes posted to Facebook.
“He was loved and like[d] by everyone,” Torri Chippe, a friend of Watson’s since middle school, told The News & Avenue.
“He was one of those people that was just good vibes and energy.”
Watson was deadnamed throughout official police documents as well as local news reports.
By the estimates of Human Rights Campaign, a top LGBT+ rights group, around three-quarters of all known victims are misgendered by media and/or by law enforcement.
“This violence is staggering,” said Tori Cooper, HRC director of community engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative in a statement earlier this month.
“And if it continues, we will record more cases of fatal violence against trans and gender non-conforming people this year than any prior year.
“As we continue to see unprecedented levels of fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people, everyone must speak out in support of trans lives.”
The American Medical Association (AMA) has delivered a firm rebuke to the spate of anti-trans bills attempting to criminalise healthcare for trans youth.
Arkansas became the first state to ban puberty blockers and gender affirming treatment for trans minors in April, while similar bills are currently being considered in up to 20 state legislatures
State representatives are pushing their discriminatory bans through despite firm opposition from medical and healthcare advocacy groups, including the AMA – which is the largest association of physicians in the United States.
The American Medical Association recommitted to its already established position in a wide-ranging statement issued on Tuesday (15 June).
The group characterised such bills as “governmental intrusion into the practice of medicine” and said efforts to ban healthcare for trans minors will ultimately prove “detrimental”.
“Legislatures in 20 states this year proposed banning physicians and other health care professionals from providing medically necessary gender-affirming care to transgender and gender-diverse youth,” the AMA said in a statement.
“In response to this legislative trend, physicians and medical students at the AMA’s House of Delegates meeting voted to meaningfully expand the organisation’s strong opposition to undue restrictions on medical care to populations that have been politicised in state legislatures.”
AMA will support human rights by opposing anti-trans bills
Michael Suk, AMA board member, said that gender-affirming care is “medically necessary” and “evidence based” and insisted that it “improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.”
The AMA drew attention to a letter it delivered to the National Governors Association in April which argued government overreach in healthcare can have “tragic consequences for transgender individuals”.
“The AMA is a strong supporter of human rights and freedoms and will continue to strongly oppose discrimination based on an individual’s sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity,” the statement said.
The group promised to keep working to protect trans and gender diverse young people’s right to “explore their gender identity under the safe and supportive care of a physician”.
There was widespread outcry when Arkansas legislators banned healthcare for trans youth in April – but that law is far from the end of the road for transgender people in the United States.
Similar bills are either currently being considered, or have already been considered, in Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Missouri, Alabama, Montana, Louisiana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, North Carolina, Utah, Georgia and others.
State lawmakers across the country have introduced at least 171 pieces of legislation that target the rights of transgender people this year, according to a new legislative database compiled by the Progressive Caucus Action Fund, a grassroots group that opposes the bills.
At least 19 of the bills ― 13 that specifically target trans people and six more that could more broadly hurt LGBTQ rights ― have already become law.
“We’re only six months into 2021 and it’s already been a devastating year for protecting transgender people,” said Ricardo Pacheco, a researcher at the Progressive Caucus Action Fund who compiled the database. “The expectation that quite a few more of these will pass in the next few months.”
Republican lawmakers have introduced the vast majority of the bills, both in states the GOP controls and those where Democrats hold majorities. Ten states, all with Republican legislative majorities and governors, have enacted new anti-trans laws this year. Four other bills have passed through GOP legislatures but have been vetoed by governors.
The push for anti-trans laws has intensified as part of a broader Republican culture war against the basic and individual rights of women, Black people, immigrants and LGBTQ people. Right-wing lawmakers believe they can weaponize trans rights — and people’s very right to exist as trans — as a wedge issue. This has exhausted activists and had demonstrably negative mental health effects on members of the trans community, said Dr. Ruadhán Woods, a trans and queer organizer for Hometown Action, a group in Alabama that opposed an anti-trans bill that became law in that state.
“There’s just a lot of helpless feelings,” Woods told HuffPost. “People in our community really are looking for support and solidarity, and for representation in the government. And the fact that legislation is actively trying to essentially erase trans kids from being able to get support, and really criminalize existing … The morale is extremely low, even though the bar has been low for a long time.”
The aggressive nature of the GOP’s effort to restrict trans rights is on full display in the database, as are the ways that effort has changed. The so-called “bathroom bills” that were once in vogue as Republicans tried to block trans people from using restrooms and public facilities that correspond with their gender identity have largely given way to other types of legislation.
This year, Republicans are largely taking aim at trans students’ ability to play scholastic sports that correspond with their gender identity, a push that has largely targeted trans girls and women in high school and college. Lawmakers have introduced 76 bills aiming to limit trans people’s participation in sports, according to the database, and such bills make up roughly 45% of all anti-trans legislation introduced this year.
It’s clear that the anti-trans bills that are centered around sports really just want sports to be something that trans people don’t participate in.Ruadhán Woods, Hometown Action in Alabama organizer
Seven states with Republican legislatures ― Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and West Virginia ― have enacted such laws. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) vetoed similar bills after they were passed by GOP legislatures. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) also vetoed a bill barring trans youth from playing school sports that match their gender identity — but later signed two executive orders doing just that.
Those bills have largely sought to vilify trans identity, and curtail the right of trans women and girls to play sports against cisgender athletes. Republicans have touted the laws as a way to protect women’s sports and Title IX, the federal law meant to guarantee equal access to education and sports participation for women. They have adopted the mantle even though many conservatives have long been skeptical of Title IX and efforts to bolster women’s equality in sports, and despite the fact that many GOP lawmakers have been unable to point to incidents of trans women and girls taking spots away from cisgender athletes.
Activists, education experts and health professionals have for years pointed to evidence that increasing sports participation could bolster mental health, self esteem and other health and education outcomes for trans youth. But no amount of pushback, data or discussion about trans athletes or their basic right to play sports has swayed Republicans.
“It’s clear that the anti-trans bills that are centered around sports really just want sports to be something that trans people don’t participate in,” Woods said from Alabama, where Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed one such bill into law in April.
Legislation targeting trans peoples’ ability to access health care and treatment make up the second largest share of bills under consideration in state houses across the country. Republican lawmakers have introduced 51 such bills this year, according to the database.
Tennessee Republicans have passed at least two bills that are similar to the “bathroom bills” that many GOP states sought in recent years. One requires businesses that have multi-person bathrooms or locker rooms to post signs if they let trans people use bathrooms of their choice; another allows students and teachers to refuse to use such facilities at school if trans people are allowed to use them, and requires schools to provide those students and staff separate bathrooms to use.
Tennessee — which adopted a law barring trans youth from participating in sports — also passed a broader anti-LGBTQ law that requires schools to inform parents ahead of any classroom discussion about gender identity or sexual orientation, and allows parents to opt students out of any such class.
The Progressive Caucus Action Fund’s database includes the latter law in its count, along with others that have passed in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota that more broadly restrict LGBTQ rights on religious freedom or free speech grounds. Oklahoma Republicans approved a new law that prohibits mandatory diversity training “regarding gender identity, sexual orientation, race stereotyping and sex stereotyping.” The broader laws, LGBTQ advocates say, provide an example of how the GOP’s culture war legislation can often target multiple groups at once, including LGBTQ people, Black people, Native Americans and women.
Most state legislative sessions have ended and more GOP proposals failed than passed, even in red states like Arizona, Kentucky, South Carolina and Texas. But it’s still possible that more anti-trans laws could pass in Ohio and other states where lawmakers are still in session.
The legislative onslaught has already had negative effects on trans youth: A common view among trans people, Woods said, was that they weren’t surprised by efforts to target their rights in Alabama and nationwide “because nobody cares about our community anyway, so we just have to care for each other.”
“That’s a very sad and tragic thing for most young people to have already embraced or come to understand,” Woods said. “So for me, it’s more than just fighting legislation. It’s really fighting for community members to be able to be represented and for our rights to be protected and upheld.”
House Democrats passed the Equality Act, major legislation to protect LGBTQ rights, in February, but it faces long odds in the Senate thanks to Republican opposition.
Legal challenges could ultimately thwart some of the new laws. Last year, a federal court ruled that an Idaho law barring trans women and girls from participating in sports that match their gender identities was unconstitutional. The ruling is subject to an appeal that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard in early May.
Civil rights groups have already filed legal claims against several other new laws passed this year. Progressives and LGBTQ rights groups are also pushing Senate Democrats to pass the Equality Act, a bill that would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public facilities, education, employment and other areas, and help preempt many of the new state laws.
Democrats in the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act in February, but prospects for the bill’s ultimate approval in the Senate, where it must overcome Republican opposition and the legislative filibuster, are dim.
“That’s where the next push needs to be,” Pacheco said. “It’s not necessarily just reacting to what states are doing, but it’s being proactive and it’s being preemptive by passing the Equality Act to make sure that LGBT youth and trans youth in our communities have those protections.”
But the nature of attacks on trans rights, Woods said, makes it clear that one piece of federal legislation won’t be enough. Efforts to curb those rights are likely to continue, and there’s no silver bullet argument or piece of legislation that can fully stop them when “the majority of people who are making these decisions are doing a really intentional job of not listening to the voices of the people who are most affected,” Woods said. So even if the Equality Act passes, there will “still be a lot of work to do” to create the cultural, social and political shifts necessary to fully protect trans people nationwide, and convince lawmakers and the public to see trans rights through the lens of basic human rights.
“We have people actively working against our community’s existence,” they said. “This is going to take some time and there is a lot of work left to do for people who insist on pushing trans identity and rights into a position of debate.”
Dr. Stephanie Ho, a family medicine physician in Fayetteville, Arkansas, said she’s had state legislators in her exam room before.
Ho, who has provided gender-affirming care to transgender people in the state since 2015, is also an abortion provider, so she is familiar with lawmakers’ restricting the care she provides. She said she wasn’t surprised when the Legislature overrode Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto of a bill last month that would ban puberty blockers, hormones and surgery for transgender minors.
“I think that it’s kind of ridiculous that we’ve gotten to the point that we’re letting politicians dictate how health care is delivered and what kind of care can be given to whom,” said Ho, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health.
“I think the last thing I’ve ever wanted, being an abortion provider or somebody who provides gender-affirming care, is to have a politician in the back of my mind in the exam room making me think about ‘Oh, I wonder if I should do this, if it’s OK,’” she said. “They’re essentially trying to practice medicine without a license. And that’s incredibly wrong.”
Arkansas was the first state to pass a ban on transition care for minors. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee last week signed a similar billbarring prepubertal youths’ access to transition care like hormone therapy. Advocates say no doctors in the state provide hormone therapy for prepubertal youths, The Associated Press reported.
So far this year, state legislatures have considered 35 bills to ban or limit gender-affirming care for trans minors, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Physicians say that the bills negatively affect their patients’ health before they even become law and that they require doctors to go against medical standards of care. Legal experts say the bans could also open providers and hospitals up to lawsuits or put them at risk of losing federal funding.
Ho is trying to support her patients as best she can until Arkansas’ law takes effect this summer.
“It’s just a matter of making sure that my patients know that, whether I can provide them hormones or not, we’re still here for them to support them in any way that we can,” she said. “Of course, I’m going to practice within the bounds of the law, whether I agree with it or not, because me being in jail doesn’t help any of my other patients at all.”
Creating ‘contingency plans’
Some physicians, like Dr. Izzy Lowell, who founded a telemedicine practice called QMed in Atlanta in 2017, started planning for the bills months ago.
Dr. Izzy Lowell, second right, founder of QMed.Bonnie Heath
In April, Alabama’s Senate passed a bill that would have made it a felony for doctors to provide minors with gender-affirming care. The bill died Monday after the House missed the deadline to vote on it. Lowell said that when it first passed, the minor patients she treats in Alabama were scared and frustrated.
“It was clear that the state of Alabama was coming after transgender teens, and we talked about some contingency plans,” she said. “Based on each case, I tried to give them as many refills as possible and told them: ‘Go pick up as much of your medicine as you can. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.’”
Lowell is licensed and practices in 10 states via telemedicine, so she also talked with her legal team and with patients in states considering bans about how her patients could continue care should their states ban it. She said her patients’ parents would have to drive to other states, which would “place an extraordinary burden on these families.”
“If they were, for example, able to get over the border into Tennessee or South Carolina and sit in a parking lot somewhere, I could see them technically with my South Carolina license or Tennessee license or my North Carolina license and perhaps find a local pharmacy there and have them pick up the prescription, but it would be a day’s worth of driving for them to get somewhere where I could see them legally,” she said.
Because leaving the state just to get care would be a burden, families in states where transition care restrictions have passed have movedor are considering moving.
The costs of losing ‘lifesaving’ care
Many minors whose parents don’t have the time or money to drive out of state would be forced to stop transition care if their states passed laws like Arkansas’, which comes with potentially life-threatening health risks, physicians say.
Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the American Psychological Association, support gender-affirming care for trans youths and oppose efforts to restrict access.
Supporters of the Arkansas bill argue that transition care for minors is “experimental” and that trans minors often change their minds about their genders and detransition later in life. Medical experts say neither of those claims are backed by scientific evidence. On the contrary, research has found that access to gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers reduces the risk of suicide among trans youths.
Ho said the danger is evidenced by what happened when Arkansas’ bill passed through one legislative chamber. Dr. Michele Hutchinson, a physician at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Gender Spectrum Clinic, testified before the state Senate in March that there were “multiple kids in our emergency room because of an attempted suicide, just in the last week,” after the House passed the bill.
Ho said that “since then, I have had one of my own patients attempt suicide,” adding that she has talked to her patients about what would happen if a judge doesn’t block Arkansas’ law from taking effect. The law also bars her from referring her patients to other physicians who provide gender-affirming care. Unless her patients were able to leave the state, they would be likely to lose access to hormones, so she talked to them about what that would mean.
Lowell said forcing people who were assigned female at birth to stop testosterone would cause them to suffer symptoms of low testosterone, which include inability to concentrate and low energy. “They would start doing badly in school most likely, until their bodies started producing estrogen a few months later, and then they would restart their periods, restart breast growth, and it would undo all of the changes that we tried to achieve with testosterone.”
If people assigned male at birth were forced to stop taking estrogen, it “would be like going through instantaneous menopause,” Lowell said. For about a year, they could have symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, irritability and mood swings, among other issues, such as negative impacts on emotional well-being.
Doctors worry that minors who already receive and rely on transition care would get hormones illegally if they had to. Dr. Ricardo Correa, a board member of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality, treats trans veterans in Phoenix, where, he said, trans people have traveled to the border to buy hormones illegally when they can’t get them. He said state bans would worsen the problem.
“It will just create chaos in the system from black markets that are going to start selling this kind of medication in that state,” he said.
Lowell said that hormone therapy is safe when it is monitored by a doctor but that using it without medical supervision could cause health problems, such as liver failure, kidney failure or heart problems.
“There’s very serious consequences of completely unmonitored, sort of black market medication use in this situation,” she said.
‘A form of medical malpractice’
Legal experts and advocates say that in addition to having dangerous health impacts, bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youths could expose health care providers to legal and regulatory problems.
Valarie Blake, a law professor at West Virginia University specializing in health care law, said there’s “a pretty strong case” that Arkansas’ law is discriminatory under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which protects against discrimination based on sex.
The Biden administration announced this month that it would interpret Section 1557 to protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — reversing a Trump-era policy that cut protections for transgender people.
Hospitals and physicians receiving federal funding, such as Medicare and Medicaid payments, are required to comply with laws like Section 1557, Blake said; otherwise, they risk losing the funding.
Arkansas’ law could trigger that risk by allowing physicians and hospitals to prescribe puberty blockers and hormones to cisgender minors for precocious puberty but not transgender teens.
“If the reason that they’re not doing it for transgender teens is because of the fact that they’re transgender, then there’s a very good case that the reason that they’re refusing the treatment is based on the gender identity and not anything else,” Blake said.
“It really puts health care workers in an untenable position when the federal government makes it plain that this is discrimination and has the money to back it up to basically say, ‘We can pull away all of the resources,’ and yet the state persists,” she said.
The American Civil Liberties Union argued in a lawsuit it filed Tuesday against Arkansas that the trans health restrictions are unconstitutional, but Blake said that’s not set in stone.
“We don’t have clear precedent on the books yet to suggest that LGBTQ categories are fully protected in that manner, which is why we’ve been seeing various kinds of Equal Rights Amendment-type laws trying to work their way through Congress,” she said, referring to the Equality Act, a bill that would protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations, education and other areas of life.
The bill passed the House in February, but it has stalled in the Senate. “If something like that passes, then suddenly Arkansas as a state is in big trouble,” Blake said.
Lowell said thinking about the potential legal issues “keeps me up at night.” Physicians are required to give patients several months’ warning when they can’t see them anymore and to do their best to find other providers who can see them if they’re unable to.
But laws like Arkansas’ bar physicians from referring patients to other providers for transition care. “In this case, I can’t do any of those things, and I just have to say, ‘Bye,’ and ‘I’m not allowed to see you anymore,’” she said. “That’s patient abandonment, which is a form of malpractice.”
Lowell said that when the first restrictions were introduced several months ago, she felt angry and anxious all the time.
“I worry about what might happen to my patients if these bills are passed and worry about going to jail myself,” she said. “I struggle with the question of what I would do: continue to support my patients and risk going to jail for years or follow these hateful laws? Thankfully, I have not had to answer this question yet, but I will never abandon my patients.”
Justin Santiago, 66, the first trans man in Puerto Rico to change his name and gender on his birth certificate, remembers the long-ago incident that led to years of pain he hopes other teens don’t have to endure.
During biology class in the mountain town of Barranquitas, Santiago would sit at his desk, take a wooden pencil, grab a sheet of paper and write love letters to his teacher.
She had a voluptuous body, Santiago recalled, and wore her curly blonde hair tied back. He wrote the letters hoping that one day she would reciprocate his feelings. Every time Santiago wrote a love letter he would leave it in the teacher’s mailbox and hope for the best.
One day, the school counselor asked him to visit her office. She told him that leaving such notes was wrong.
“Because she is my teacher?” Santiago asked.
“No, because she is a woman, like you,” the counselor replied.
“But I’m a man,” said Santiago, then 15 and a trans youth.
The incident led to years of conversion therapy — an unscientific practice that seeks to change people’s sexual orientation and gender identity through psychological techniques, causing guilt and shame.
“They broke me and turned me into a sick person,” Santiago said. The treatment involved prescribing him psychiatric drugs that led to other dependencies, he said, with no one ever held accountable.
On May 6, a Puerto Rico Senate committee killed Senate Bill 184, which would have banned conversion therapies in Puerto Rico. The failure to advance the bill was a blow to LGBTQ advocates like Santiago, who had told his story before the Committee on Community Initiatives, Mental Health and Addiction.
Though former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló had signed a 2019 executive order banning conversion therapies in the U.S. territory, the bill’s sponsors wanted the ban codified into law, to prevent a future anti-LGBTQ+ rights governor from annulling Rosselló’s mandate.
“Don’t hurt your children”
Santiago hopes telling his story serves as a cautionary tale for younger generations. “If my story helps one person not have to experience the torture that I went through, for me that is enough,” he said.
He pleads with parents: “Don’t hurt your children.”
After telling his school counselor that he was a man, Santiago was removed from class and he never saw that teacher again. The counselor called his parents, Jesús and Justina, to inform them about Santiago’s notes. To continue studying there, he had to visit a psychiatric center in Río Piedras in the island’s capital. His parents, a farmer and a housewife, traveled by public transportation for nearly 2 hours to get Santiago to his appointments.
Santiago recalled that he had to sit in a chair in front of the desk of his psychiatrist, who constantly questioned him about his gender identity. She had a cross on her wall and sometimes mentioned God.
“I remember that she asked me if I would ever be happy. And I asked her, are you?” Santiago said.
He insisted that all he wanted was to have surgery to make his body look like he felt — a man. But the psychiatrist emphasized that that was not possible.
“She immediately prescribed drugs,” Santiago said.
When Santiago was 18, the psychiatric center gave him a letter with his dead name (the name he was given at birth) written on the envelope.
“Don’t open it!” the psychiatrist said, telling him it was for his parents. But he ignored her orders and learned he was being diagnosed with schizophrenia and chronic neurosis. The report also mentioned that Santiago “felt no guilt about the damage he was doing to his parents.”
Santiago, who insisted he wasn’t suffering from mental illness, said he and his family never discussed what happened in those sessions. He stopped using the prescribed medications, but said he became an alcoholic.
LGBTQ activist Justin Santiago.Courtesy Justin Santiago
Miguel Vázquez-Rivera, a psychologist who has served trans, queer and nonbinary communities for over a decade, says that the use of prescribed medications can lead a person to seek ways to relieve pain through other substances, like tobacco and alcohol.
“The psychiatrists constantly told me that I was going to hurt my parents and my family. It caused me to get sick. I never wanted to hurt them,” Santiago said. “The idea of committing suicide was always in my head, but I did not do it, so I wouldn’t hurt my family. That’s why I did not kill myself.”
Santiago doesn’t remember psychiatrists telling him that loving a woman was wrong. But they rejected his gender identity as a trans man.
A right to raise children “according to their convictions”
Conservatives like Sen. Joanne Rodríguez-Veve and Rep. Lissie Burgos-Muñiz, of Proyecto Dignidad (The Dignity Party), a Christian-led party founded in 2019, opposed the bill against conversion therapies. Rodríguez-Veve has argued that “parents have a right to raise their children according to their convictions.”
Rodríguez-Veve, who voted against bringing the bill to the Senate floor, was criticized by LGBTQ activists for repeatedly questioning if the legislation would open the door to allowing minors to undergo hormone-blocking processes without parental consent — which was not the case. Rodríguez-Veve did not respond to requests for comment.
It is not the first time that the island’s Legislature has blocked a bill against conversion therapies. When a version of this year’s bill was introduced in 2019, the House of Representatives’ Legal Committee denied that those practices were carried out on the island. At the time, the body was chaired by Rep. María Milagros Charbonier, who resigned last year after being arrested on federal corruption chargesand has a long history of spearheading anti-LGBTQ measures.
Since the bill was introduced, conservative and religious public officials have argued that conversion therapies do not exist on the island. Vázquez-Rivera, the psychologist, disagrees. Through his practice, he says he’s seen conversion therapy lead to anxiety, depression, drug abuse, maladaptive behaviors and suicide attempts.
Eunice Avilés, a doctor in psychology with 16 years of experience working with trans communities, insisted that conversion therapies are not always called that, making them harder for officials to identify. Sometimes, they are sold under the guise of “religious counseling sessions.”
“When they insist that who you are (your gender identity) and what you feel is wrong, that damages you from the innermost fiber of your body to the outside,” Avilés said. “That is violence.”
Several LGBTQ+ community members who offered their testimony in the public hearings for the bill said they had been exposed to these practices through religious groups.
“Sin is not homosexuality,” Pedro Julio Serrano, a well-known LGBTQ+ activist, said at the public hearings. “Sin is homophobia.”
Serrano urged Santiago to tell his story. He knew that Santiago would not agree to tell his testimony before the commission without the support of his community. Although conversion therapies had been going on in Puerto Rico for years, the issue is now coming to light, and Santiago would finally have the opportunity to tell his story, Serrano said.
Santiago says he had to prepare himself to tell his story in public. Decades have passed since he was put through conversion therapies, but he does not feel like he has healed.
“My parents would have loved me”
Santiago recalled a visit to his father just a few years ago. He told his dad that he never had identified with the name he was given at birth. He told him he planned to change it and call himself Justin Jesús, in honor of his parents.
His father looked at him for a few seconds and, looking concerned, told him it would be difficult to call him Justin Jesús because he would feel like he was talking to someone else.
“You are my father. You can call me whatever you like,” he replied. Santiago asked for his blessing and told him that he loved him. His dad hugged him and said he loved him, too.
“That conversation didn’t last 45 seconds. It took me 62 years to have that conversation with my father,” Santiago said. “This is all those people’s fault. My parents would have loved me.”
When his mother died in 2007, Santiago assumed in full his gender identity, decades after the first time he expressed he was a man. During a nine-month period, he began taking hormones, underwent surgery, and changed his name and gender on legal documents.
“Making history”
In 2018, Judge Carmen Consuelo Cerezo of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico declared that the local government’s policy of not allowing trans people to change their birth certificates was unconstitutional.
The timing allowed Santiago to make history as the first trans man to legally change his gender identity in Puerto Rico.
Carmen Padilla, a friend of Santiago for more than 30 years, accompanied him to his double mastectomy. Padilla lived in Boston and came to Puerto Rico for three weeks to help Santiago during the post-operation recovery. “He was prepared for this. I’m very happy that he found himself,” Padilla said.
Serrano, the activist, who has known Santiago for a decade, said that for many years Santiago “manifested himself as a lesbian with masculine experiences,” before being able to affirm his gender identity.
When Santiago began to assume his identity as a trans man, he looked “much happier, more dynamic and more assertive,” Serrano said. After Santiago was administered hormones and had surgery, Serrano said he soon saw the effects — hair growth on Santiago’s chin, changes in his voice and gait, and a masculine haircut.
“He looked empowered. It was a rebirth,” Serrano said. “He recognized that through his experiences he could become a leader in the trans community.”
Santiago is now an icon of activism in the transmasculine community who has blazed paths for other transgender Puerto Ricans. Younger generations affectionately call him “TransPa.”
He and other LGBTQ activists say they will continue to advocate against conversion therapy and push for legislation against it.
As a teenager, Santiago wrote letters to his teacher. Decades later, after his surgery, Santiago wrote a love hymn to himself.
I do not transition; I reaffirm myself from my skin and my own identity
I free myself and vindicate
before an oppressive binary system
that insists on controlling and invalidating my existence
in diversity
His existence, Santiago says, is “a cry of freedom” that he now shares with the world.
Trans and non-binary people experience barriers to accessing cervical screenings due to discrimination, new research has confirmed.
The findings from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, which were published in the British Journal of General Practice on Tuesday (18 May), surveyed 137 trans men and non-binary people about their experiences with cervical screening.
Among the respondents, 47 per cent reported they were eligible for cervical screening – but just over half (58 per cent) of this group had ever been screened for cervical cancer. Only 53 per cent of those eligible felt like they had sufficient information about cervical screening.
According to the research, trans men and non-binary people faced a range of factors impacting their ability and intention to attend cervical screenings. This included female-focused information, not receiving invitations for screenings and being discouraged or turned away from attending cervical screenings. Some participants felt they would not be able to attend the test because of of medical professionals’ lack of expertise in gender dysphoria.
Almost all the participants in the study, which was conducted in partnership with the Gender Identity Clinic at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, felt that training for healthcare professions would be useful. Participants said this should include LGBT+ awareness training, education on inclusive language and terminology and “reports from those with lived experience of gender diversity”.
The NHS says any person with a cervix between the ages of 25 to 49 should be invited to a cervical screening every three years. All people with a cervix who are registered with a GP and aged 50 to 64 are invited for a cervical screening every five years.
But according to the charity’s report, the NHS cervical screening programme invites only people who are registered as women or female to take part. The researchers said this means trans and non-binary people, who are registered at their GP as male, will usually have to request a test.
Laurie Hodierne, a trans man and doctor, told the BBC that he was re-registered as male by his GP surgery, meaning he could potentially miss out on being flagged for life-saving cervical smear tests.
He said, as a doctor, he understands “how the systems work and the language”, but he still finds it “exhausting” to keep asking for appointments and chase up on results.
“You keep coming up against a brick wall,” Hodierne said. “It’s a healthcare inequality in the sense that you aren’t able to get access to the screening programme in the same way.”
Of the participants in the research, only 61 per cent were aware that being registered with the GP as male meant they are not routinely called for cervical screening appointments.
Rebecca Shoosmith, acting chief executive at Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, said in a statement that accessing the live-saving screening can be difficult for many people but especially for trans and non-binary people.
Thomas Hardin, a 35-year-old trans woman, was murdered this month in a brutal killing spree across two US states.
Hardin, described by those who knew her as an affable wisecracker, was killed at her home in York, South Carolina on 2 May. Local officials have not confirmed a cause of death, but witnesses say she was shot.
It’s believed that she was killed by a man she had been romantically involved with, and who is also accused of shooting two other people that same day.
The suspect, Tyler Terry, has been linked to killings across both South Carolina and in St Louis, Missouri. The pair, friends and neighbours claimed, and “had a falling out” after Hardin asked Perry to move out.
A woman named Adrienne Simpson has also been charged in the murder of one of the victims – her own husband, Eugene Simpson.
An arrest warrant alleged she and Terry shot Eugene that night and dumped his body on Stroad Road, with the pair compared to Bonnie and Clyde by investigators, WSNC said.
Police tracked the pair down at a Bojangles restaurant parking lot in Richburg, South Carolina, on 17 May only for a high-speed chase to ensue.
Shots were fired by Terry at Chest County deputies during the chase, denting multiple police vehicles.
Simpson was arrested that night after crashing the car along Highway Nine, having since been charged with accessory, but Terry fled from the scene.
But following a sprawling, days-long search effort which saw the FBI assist, the Chester County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Monday (24 May) that “Terry is in custody”.
“No shots were fired by any party,” it wrote. “Everyone (including Terry) is safe.”
What happened to Thomas Hardin?
At around 8:40pm, York Police officers arrived at Hardin’s home along Lowry Road for a wellbeing check after concerned friends had not heard from her for nearly a day.
Hardin’s vehicle was parked outside the home and the door was ajar, police said.
“It wasn’t normal,” Hardin’s friend, Chimere Hicks, told WIS 10 News. “We knew something was wrong then and we [she and Hardin’s cousin] both started crying.
“I think the police made a comment like, ‘oh my gosh’, when he went in. And we knew then.”
“He had put Tyler out of his house months ago,” Hicks added.
“He was giving him a place to stay because he didn’t have anywhere to live. And it just wasn’t working out and so he put him out.
“He [Terry] would always send him [Hardin] threatening messages, calling him names, just doing a lot of things to him.
“I just kept telling Thomas it’s not safe. You know you come home at night. But he always said no I’m not scared of him.”
Loved ones and law enforcement said that Hardin used both she/her and he/him pronouns. “He would say he or she,” Hicks said.
“Thomas didn’t care. When I’m talking to him, sometimes I’m saying he, sometimes I’m saying she. He did not care.”
Hardin’s tragic and turbulent death brings with it for many activists a disturbing sense of familiarity.
Following an already record-breaking 2020, this year has seen an alarming surge in transphobic violence and killings that put 2021 on pace to become the most deadly year yet for trans folk, activists warn.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, which closely tracks the wave of brutality, this year has seen “at least” 26 trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people killed – not counting Hardin.
The spate of violence, it says, is no doubt even higher considering that misgendering and deadnaming remains rife in police and press reports.
Serenity Hollis has become at least the 25th transgender person to be killed in the United States so far this year as anti-trans violence continues to escalate.
Hollis – who was originally from Orlando, Florida – was shot dead in Albany, Georgia on 8 May, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT+ non-profit. She was just 24 years old.
Compounding the tragedy, Serenity Hollis was repeatedly misgendered and deadnamed following her death by both local media and law enforcement authorities.
Police have not yet made an arrest in the case, which saw Hollis shot in the back and killed in the early hours of the morning on West Highland Avenue, Albany.
Local law enforcement authorities have confirmed that they are investigating Hollis’ death as a potential hate crime.
Robyn Osberry, Hollis’ mother, said: “The person that’s responsible has no idea what they took from us… I absolutely want to see that justice is served.”
Following the tragic news, Tori Cooper of the Human Rights Campaign said 2021 is on course to break the record for the highest number of trans or gender non-conforming people violently killed in a single year.
“We’re less than half way through the year and we’re already on track to break 2020’s devastating record for incidents of fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people,” Cooper said.
“This outbreak of violence against transgender people, particularly Black trans women, must stop.”
Police have urged anybody with information on Hollis’ death to contact the Albany Police Department at 229 431-2100, or they can call Crime Stoppers on 229 436-TIPS.
The Human Rights Campaign recorded 44 deaths of trans and gender non-conforming people in 2020, the highest number ever in a single year.
The healthcare ban in Tennessee differs slightly from Arkansas’s, in that is bans affirming healthcare for prepubescent trans kids, rather than all trans minors.
The law prevents medical practitioners from prescribing puberty blockers or hormone treatment for trans youth before they enter puberty. The legislation only allows the prescription of “hormone treatments for prepubertal minors” if they have a diagnosis of “growth deficiencies” or “other diagnoses unrelated to gender dysphoria or gender incongruency”.
Lee is in his first term as Tennessee governor, but has used his time to relentlessly attack trans folk.
Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David said in a statement: “If lawmakers really care about the best interests of trans youth, they would focus on improving access to quality healthcare instead of playing doctor themselves.
“Patients, parents and health care providers should be guided by science and medical best practices rather when seeking treatments, not the whims of the state legislators.
“Governor Lee has made Tennessee a pioneer in anti-transgender discrimination… Unfortunately his decision to sign SB126 (HB1027) therefore comes as no surprise.
“He and his anti-equality colleagues are advancing policy based on fear, not science and they will ultimately lose this fight.”
Tennessee governor Bill Lee has signed a bill which bans trans students from accessing bathrooms which align with their gender in public schools.
Governor Lee signed the bill, called the Tennessee Accommodations for All Children Act, on Friday (14 May). It requires public schools to ensure pupils have access to bathrooms designated for their sex, which it defines as “a person’s immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth”.
The bill adds: “A reasonable accommodation does not include access to a restroom or changing facility that is designated for use by members of the opposite sex while persons of the opposite sex are present or could be present.”
The repeated attacks on trans rights in Tennessee has prompted a widespread backlash from Americans, including Jennifer Pritzker, the world’s first and only out trans billionaire. Even the Log Cabin Republicanscalled the bill requiring businesses to post signs if trans people use their bathrooms “misguided”.
President of the Human Rights Campaign Alphonso David said in a public statement: “The state of Tennessee is quickly becoming a national leader for anti-LGBTQ legislation, as lawmakers would rather discriminate against LGBTQ youth than focus on real problems facing Tennesseans.
“I want to be clear: Gov. Lee’s shameful decision to sign this baseless and discriminatory bill into law will harm the health and well-being of trans students in Tennessee by creating daily degrading experiences for them at school.
“These ‘Slate of Hate’ bills are unjustifiable and must stop.”
HRC director Melodía Gutiérrez added: “[Tennessee’s elected leaders] have no regard for the damaging impact these bills have on the mental health of transgender students — who have been begging state leaders to leave them alone.”
