The head of trans healthcare at one of the largest hospitals in the US has reminded the public that puberty blockers are an “incredibly safe” and “reversible” treatment for transgender children.
Dr Joshua Safer, executive director at Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City, was speaking to NPR alongside Republican Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson – who recently tried and failed to veto a bill restricting gender-affirming treatments, including puberty blockers, for under-18s.
“The reason I vetoed the bill,” Hutchinson said, “is because we did not want to interrupt a treatment that the parents had agreed to, the patient agreed to and the physician recommended.”SPONSORED CONTENTWhat’s Huel’s Black Edition?By Huel
Hutchinson was overruled by Republican lawmakers, and Arkansas became the first US state to ban puberty blockers for trans kids. But Safer said that in his medical experience, puberty blockers are a “conservative options and they are reversible”.
“Puberty blockers are used in a number of medical situations, specifically so that hormones can be adjusted to a certain degree, and then they can be stopped, and things will revert to how they were,” he said.
“When we use these medications for transgender kids as well as for kids with precocious puberty, they’re incredibly safe,” Safer added. “That’s the reason why they are the conservative go-to medication for these kids.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is preparing litigation in Arkansas, stating that the anti-trans bill “will drive families, doctors and businesses out of the state and send a terrible and heart-breaking message to the transgender young people who are watching in fear”.
“This is a sad day for Arkansas, but this fight is not over – and we’re in it for the long haul,” said Holly Dickson, executive director of ACLU in Arkansas.
Dozens of similar bills attacking trans people, backed by the anti-abortion Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, are making their way through legislatures across the US.
Three North Carolina Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would force teachers to out any trans or gender non-conforming child to their parents.
Senate Bill 514 would make it illegal for any “government agents” to not “immediately” inform the parents or legal guardians of any child or young adult if that “minor under its care or supervision has exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria, gender nonconformity, or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex”.
This would compel any state employee, teacher, volunteer or contractor of a school district in North Carolina to out trans students under the age of 21 to their parents.
The bill – introduced by Republican senators Ralph Hise, Warren Daniel and Norman Sanderson – will also prevent doctors and other healthcare professionals from giving gender affirming care to trans youth under the age of 21. This includes performing gender affirming surgeries and administering puberty blockers, testosterone or estrogen.
Under the bill, medical professionals who provide gender affirming treatment to trans patients could have their license revoked and face a civil penalty of up to $1,000 per occurrence.
Kendra R Johnson, executive director of Equality NC, said in a statement that it is “heartbreaking” – but “not unexpected” – to see these “direct, repeated attacks” against trans and gender non-conforming youth in North Carolina.
“These attempts to control the bodies and medical decisions of parents and their transgender children are invasive, inappropriate and outright dangerous,” Johnson said. “Decisions about a child’s medical welfare should be made between that child, their doctor, and their parents or guardians – not lawmakers.”
She added that it is the “job of all lawmakers” to thoroughly understand the “entirety of their constituency” and “mitigate challenges instead of creating barriers”. Johnson said: “We cannot legislate the transgender community out of existence.”
Chantal Stevens, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina, added SB 514 is the latest in a “series of coordinated attacks on healthcare access” for LGBT+ youth across the US. She explained the “true aim” of such legislation is to “push trans and non-binary people out of public life”.
“Not only are these bills rooted in falsehoods, hate and fear-mongering, but they also invade the private interactions between each of us and our medical providers,” Stevens said.
The North Carolina bill comes after Arkansas became the first state to ban gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth. The Arkansas bill was passed by the state’s House of Representatives and Senate in March before making its way to governor Asa Hutchinson for approval. However, Hutchinson vetoed the bill on Monday (5 April), saying it was a “vast government overreach”.
It was when the governor of Arkansas vetoed his state’s bill to criminalize trans health care on Monday that it really hit me: The only thing protecting trans children right now is our anger. That anger is likely to run out.
There are more than a dozen proposed bills in state legislatures intended to effect the same changes, and the next bill may not generate the same uproar.
On Tuesday, Arkansas became the first state to ban gender-affirming health care for minors. Yet there are more than a dozen proposed bills in state legislatures intended to effect the same changes, and the next bill may not generate the same uproar. For one thing, it won’t be quite as new. With each bill, and each cycle of outrage, the thought of children being hurt won’t shock us quite so much. Many of the cisgender people who were passionate about this case will turn their attention to some other, fresher outrage; every partial victory will feel like proof they’ve won and permission to move on.
None of this should be that surprising. Trans children have been the subject of a very loud moral panic for years. You may already know the greatest hits: Abigail Shrier’s book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze That’s Seducing Our Daughters,” in which she argues that transmasculine teenagers are deluded victims of “peer contagion,” or Jesse Singal’s notorious Atlantic cover story “When Children Say They’re Trans,” a sympathetic piece on parents who “convinced” their children not to transition.
This rhetoric has consequences, and we’re seeing them. In the U.K., the Tavistock v. Bell decision found that teenagers were unable to consent to gender-affirming health care, even though they are considered competent to consent to most other forms of medical treatment. This effectively bans trans health care for children. On March 26, Tavistock was largely overturned when a court found that parents could consent to gender-affirming care on their children’s behalf.
In the U.S., we have the onslaught of bills intended to create the same ban. The bill in Arkansas was vetoed, but the General Assembly voted to overrule the governor, making the state the first to ban gender-affirming treatments and surgery for transgender youth. Chase Strangio at the American Civil Liberties Union has already promised legal action against the Arkansas bill, but the groups mobilizing to prevent these children’s transitions are not going to stop with one defeat, or even one big victory. If Arkansas is currently the worst state in America for trans kids, it won’t be for long.
This is not about who is “right.” If facts could win this, trans people and their allies would be winning.
This is not about who is “right.” If facts could win this, trans people and their allies would be winning.
“Transition,” for children, is not some risky medical decision entailing hormones and surgery. For the most part, it isn’t a medical decision at all; most trans children only need appropriate outfits and haircuts, and teens will also take fully reversible puberty blockers until they’re old enough to decide on surgery.
Denying children transition, however, is a major, irreversible, seriously body-altering process with lots of risk involved: It forces kids through the wrong puberty, keeps them in dysphoric pain through the already vulnerable years of adolescence and makes their adult transitions much harder. This assumes the children survive to adulthood. Many will not.
Yet inflammatory rhetoric has been allowed to seep into the nation’s bloodstream as anti-trans activists astroturf state after state with identical bills targeting these kids. When I say the only thing protecting trans children is adult anger, I mean it: Their lives and futures hinge on some (probably conservative) elected representative looking outside his window or at his social media feed and thinking, “Wow, if I actually make this stuff illegal, people will be really mad.”
Though I’m not a mind-reader, it seems clear that the governor of Arkansas almost certainly signed that veto because there was a national uproar over the brutality of the policies his state was enacting. He had a rational belief that the political cost he would incur outweighed the political benefits of siding with transphobes. Countless children’s lives depend on men just like him doing that same math and getting the same results.
The relentless catastrophes of the Trump years showed us exactly how carpet-bombing campaigns like this one play out: Bills criminalizing trans health care will keep coming, one after the other after the other, until almost no one registers the headlines any more, until some other big cause or crisis arrives to divert our attention. And then, when we’re all exhausted and everyone has stopped getting angry, the bills will pass and more children will probably die.
Trans people will obviously fight this until the end. Yet trans people are a tiny minority in this country, less than 1 percent by some estimates, and the success of any political fight depends on lots and lots of cis people caring too. It depends on cis people acting as if their own lives are at stake.
So here is what I will tell you: They are. If you are a parent, any one of these kids could be your kid. Any caring parent to a trans child is feeling some extremely deep terror right now. There’s nothing more painful on this planet than losing a child and nothing that frightens a good parent more than believing someone will hurt your child because you weren’t able to protect them. Even if your child isn’t hurt or killed, someone else’s will be. But you can get in there and fight for them, rather than making them carry it all alone.
Everyone who survives to adulthood incurs a certain obligation to children, especially those of us whose own childhoods were not ideal. If you suffered for lack of a safe adult, you know exactly why you need to be that safe adult now. Every child on this planet deserves someone who will speak up for them and defend them from bullying, whether that bullying comes from a peer or a parent or the great state of Arkansas.
There are so many adults in this country who want to harm trans children. Sometimes it seems like the bigots outnumber the allies, but I have to believe they’re just more visible than us right now. We have to get loud enough to drown them out; we have to make ourselves seen, in huge numbers, every time one of these bills comes up. Everything depends on our anger. All the protection these kids receive will come because we refused to quiet down or look away.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has told federal agencies that gay and transgender students are protected from discrimination under civil rights laws, reversing Trump administration guidance that limited the impact of a landmark Supreme Court decision last year extending employment discrimination protections to LGBT workers.
In an undated memo to federal agencies, Pamela Karlan, the head of the DOJ’s civil rights division, said that based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, the 1972 education civil rights law known as Title IX should be read as covering gay and transgender students.
“After considering the text of Title IX, Supreme Court caselaw, and developing jurisprudence in this area, the Division has determined that the best reading of Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ is that it includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation,” Karlan wrote in the memo.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the memo was issued March 26.
Title IX prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” in educational institutions that receive federal funding.
The court ruled 6-3 last year that the language in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting employment discrimination based on “sex” covered workers’ gender identity and sexual orientation. Karlan, who was named principal deputy assistant attorney general by the Biden administration in February, argued the case on behalf of Gerald Bostock, who was fired from his job with Clayton County after discussing his involvement with a gay softball league.
The decision was hailed by LGBT advocates who saw it as a watershed moment for civil rights, predicting that the majority’s interpretation of “sex” would extend similar protections in areas like housing, education and health care.
But just days before President Biden was inaugurated Jan. 20, the Trump administration’s DOJ issued a memo saying it would not be applying the standard in the Bostock decision to other areas.
Biden signed an executive order on inauguration day pledging to “prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation” and two days later the DOJ rescinded the Trump administration’s memo.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said he will veto HB 1570, a harmful anti-transgender bill that would prohibit doctors from providing medically necessary treatment to trans kids.
In a media appearance Monday, Hutchinson said concern about government overreach influenced his decision.
“House Bill 1570 would put the state as the definitive oracle of medical care, overriding parents, patients and health care experts,” he said. “While in some instances the state must act to protect life, the state should not presume to jump into the middle of every medical, human and ethical issue.
“This would be, and is, a vast government overreach,” he added.
The bill would have prohibited doctors from providing minors with treatments including puberty blockers, hormone therapies or any other transition procedures. Physicians who nonetheless did so could have seen their medical licenses revoked.
Despite the governor’s action, the bill isn’t totally dead yet: Legislators could override the veto with a simple majority vote of both chambers. The Arkansas Senate voted 28-7 last week in favor of the bill, which was called the Arkansas Save Adolescents From Experimentation, or SAFE, Act.
Hutchinson characterized the lawmakers’ efforts as “well-intended” yet nevertheless “off-course,” and he expressed concerns about how the bill would harm the mental health of transgender youth, perhaps leading to an increase in suicide, social isolation and drug abuse.
He added that while the number of people who would be affected is “an extreme minority,” they nevertheless “deserve the guiding hand of their parents and of the health care professionals that their family has chosen.”
The medical treatments that HB 1570 would have banned are reversible, as The Washington Post noted. And U.S. medical guidelines state that more permanent actions, such as gender-affirming surgeries, shouldn’t typically be performed until a patient is at least 18 years old.
HB 1570 is one of several anti-transgender bills that Republicans are pushing in at least 17 statehouses around the country. In addition to targeting access to medical care, legislation that limits transgender kids’ participation in sports that align with their gender identity has also become common.
Last week, Hutchinson signed a separate bill into law with precisely that purpose.
Almost all young people in the UK say they would support a friend who came out to them as trans, according to new research.
The independent survey of almost 3,000 secondary school pupils found that more than half (57 per cent) already have a trans friend.
Ninety-six per cent of LGBT+ young people said they would support a friend if they came out as trans, compared with 76 per cent of non-LGBT+ young people.
Carried out for LGBT+ young people’s charity Just Like Us for Trans Day of Visibility, the survey also reveals that while 84 per cent of secondary school pupils say they would be supportive “if a close friend came out as transgender”, only 76 per cent think that the same would be true of a teacher if their pupil came out as trans.
A total of 2,934 secondary school pupils, including 1,140 LGBT+ young people, aged 11 to 18 across 375 UK schools and colleges filled in the survey in December 2020 and January 2021.
Dominic Arnall, chief executive of Just Like Us, called for schools to ensure trans young people are as welcomed at school as they are by their peers.
“We are really glad that, with this independent research, we are able to shine a light on the opinions of young people themselves and how supportive they are of their trans peers,” said Arnall. “Secondary school age young people are clearly incredibly supportive of trans people and would have no problem with a friend coming out as trans.”
He added: “We hope that this is positive motivation for parents, schools and the media at large to embrace trans and all LGBT+ young people and accept them for who they are.”
One straight pupil in Year 11 at a school in the North East said: “Being transgender isn’t really a choice. If we are close friends then we are close friends for a reason and them being trans wouldn’t change that.
“It would have no negative impact on my life so there is no reason for me to not be as supportive as possible and make them feel comfortable.”
In October, new Home Office figures showed that police investigate seven transphobic offences every single day in the UK, with the numbers having quadrupled between 2014-15 and 2019-20 – a 354 per cent increase
As anti-trans hostility increases in the UK, a report from Galop found that more than a quarter of trans people have experienced transphobia at school, college or in their place of work. As a result, 40 per cent of trans people are too afraid to go to school or work.
The Pentagon on Wednesday will sweep away Trump-era policies that largely banned transgender people from serving in the military, issuing new rules that offer them wider access to medical care and assistance with gender transition, defense officials told The Associated Press.
The new department regulations allow transgender people who meet military standards to enlist and serve openly in their self-identified gender, and they will be able to get medically necessary transition-related care authorized by law, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal decisions not yet made public.
The changes come after a two-month Pentagon review aimed at developing guidelines for the new policy, which was announced by President Joe Biden just days after he took office in January.
Biden’s executive order overturned the Trump policy and immediately prohibited any service member from being forced out of the military on the basis of gender identity. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin then gave the Pentagon two months to finalize the more detailed regulations that the military services will follow.
The new rules also prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. Their expected release Wednesday coincides with International Transgender Day of Visibility.MORE STORIES:
Austin has also called for a reexamination of the records of service members who were discharged or denied reenlistment because of gender identity issues under the previous policy. Results of that review have not been released.
Until a few years ago, service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender, but that changed during the Obama administration. In 2016, the Pentagon announced that transgender people already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly, and that by July 2017, they would be allowed to enlist.
After Donald Trump took office, however, his administration delayed the enlistment date and called for additional study. A few weeks later, Trump caught military leaders by surprise, tweeting that the government wouldn’t accept or allow transgender people to serve “in any capacity” in the military.
After a lengthy and complicated legal battle and additional reviews, the Defense Department in April 2019 approved a policy that fell short of an all-out ban but barred transgender troops and recruits from transitioning to another sex and required most individuals to serve in what the administration called their “birth gender.”
Under that policy, currently serving transgender troops and anyone who had signed an enlistment contract before the effective date could continue with plans for hormone treatments and gender transition if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
But after that date, no one with gender dysphoria who was taking hormones or had transitioned to another gender was allowed to enlist. Troops that were already serving and were diagnosed with gender dysphoria were required to serve in the gender assigned at birth and were barred from taking hormones or getting transition surgery.
The new policies being released Wednesday are similar to those developed in 2016.
As of 2019, an estimated 14,700 troops on active duty and in the reserves identify as transgender, but not all seek treatment. There are more than 1.3 million active-duty troops and close to 800,000 in the National Guard and Reserves.
Since July 2016, more than 1,500 service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria; as of Feb. 1, 2019, there were 1,071 currently serving. According to the Pentagon, the department spent about $8 million on transgender care from 2016 to 2019. The military’s annual health care budget tops $50 billion.
All four service chiefs told Congress in 2018 that they had seen no discipline, morale or unit readiness problems with transgender troops serving openly in the military. But they also acknowledged that some commanders were spending a lot of time with transgender people who were working through medical requirements and other transition issues.
Laverne Cox, Gabrielle Union and Halle Berry have joined hundreds of prominent feminists in taking a stand for trans women and girls.
More than 465 feminist leaders in business, entertainment, media, politics and social justice signed an open letter released by GLAAD in honour of the Transgender Day of Visibility on Wednesday (31 March).
The letter calls for an end to the ongoing discriminatory rhetoric and attacks against trans people, and serves as a proud statement of solidarity between cis and transgender women.
Signatories include A-list celebrities such as Regina King, Selena Gomez and Megan Rapinoe, as well as activists and women’s rights groups like Gloria Steinem, the Me Too Movement and Planned Parenthood.
Others who signed include Mj Rodriguez, Patricia Arquette, Judith Light, Cynthia Erivo, Anna Wintour, Chelsea Clinton, Sarah Paulson, Peppermint, Lena Dunham, Beanie Feldstein, Alison Brie, Bella Hadid, Lena Waithe, Wanda Sykes and Janelle Monáe.
“Trans women and girls have been an integral part of the fight for gender liberation. We uphold that truth and denounce the ongoing anti-transgender rhetoric and efforts we witness in various industries,”
“We acknowledge with clarity and strength that transgender women are women and that transgender girls are girls. And we believe that honouring the diversity of women’s experiences is a strength, not a detriment to the feminist cause.
“All of us deserve the same access, freedoms, and opportunities. We deserveequal access to education, employment, healthcare, housing, recreation, and public accommodations. And we must respect each person’s right to bodily autonomy and self-determination.”
The signatories highlight the “wave of bigoted governmental policies and legislation” launched this year in the form of bills banning trans healthcare and inclusion in sports. They draw parallels with past efforts to legislate cis women’s healthcare, warning: “We refuse to let youth endure that now.”
The letter calls on others to fight against these “unnecessary and unethical barriers” placed on trans women and girls by lawmakers, as well as “those who co-opt the feminist label in the name of division and hatred”.
“Our feminism must be unapologetically expansive so that we can leave the door open for future generations,” they state conclusively. You can read their letter here in full.
Today, we honor and celebrate the achievements and resiliency of transgender individuals and communities. Transgender Day of Visibility recognizes the generations of struggle, activism, and courage that have brought our country closer to full equality for transgender and gender non-binary people in the United States and around the world.
Their trailblazing work has given countless transgender individuals the bravery to live openly and authentically. This hard-fought progress is also shaping an increasingly accepting world in which peers at school, teammates and coaches on the playing field, colleagues at work, and allies in every corner of society are standing in support and solidarity with the transgender community.
In spite of our progress in advancing civil rights for LGBTQ+ Americans, too many transgender people — adults and youth alike — still face systemic barriers to freedom and equality. Transgender Americans of all ages face high rates of violence, harassment, and discrimination.
Nearly one in three transgender Americans have experienced homelessness at some point in life. Transgender Americans continue to face discrimination in employment, housing, health care, and public accommodations. The crisis of violence against transgender women, especially transgender women of color, is a stain on our Nation’s conscience.
To ensure that the Federal Government protects the civil rights of transgender Americans, I signed, on my first day in office, an Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.
Today, we are proud to celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility alongside barrier-breaking public servants, including the first openly transgender American to be confirmed by the United States Senate, and alongside patriotic transgender service members, who are once again able to proudly and openly serve their country.
We also celebrate together with transgender Americans across the country who will benefit from our efforts to stop discrimination and advance inclusion for transgender Americans in housing, in credit and lending services, in the care we provide for our veterans, and more.
Half of Generation Z thinks that traditional gender roles and labels related to the gender binary are outdated, according to a refreshing new study.
As issues of gender equality continue to challenge societal norms and influence public opinion, US-based ad agency Bigeye sought to understand consumers’ perception of gendered products and advertising.ADVERTISING
For the 2021 Gender Study the agency polled 2,000 adults from a range of ages, incomes, locations, and gender identities. Questions included the kinds of clothing they wear to their opinion on gender-neutral children’s toys and education.
They found that 50 per cent of Generation Z-ers are pushing back against the gender binary, and that sentiment is even higher among Millennials at 56 percent.
More than half (51 per cent) of all respondents agreed that, in a decade, we will associate gender with stereotypical personality traits, products, and occupations much less than we do today.
“While the majority of Americans are cisgender, a significant percentage of younger generations believe the notion of identity is fluid and decidedly non-traditional,” said Adrian Tennant, VP of Insights at Bigeye and the leader of the research team.
“This study provides a snapshot of the broad, generational spectrum of opinions and beliefs held toward gender identity and expression within the media we consume daily through TV, ads and online platforms.
“While the majority of older generations remain skeptical of advertising’s ability to change perceptions of traditional gender roles, Gen X and younger are leading the charge and challenging brands to portray more diverse audiences and expressions.”
It seems women are more likely to embrace gender-neutrality than men, as nearly three-quarters of cis female parents encourage gender-neutral play for their children (73 percent), a figure significantly higher than cis male parents (59 per cent).
And fifth of female respondents believe that none of the consumer product categories benefit at all from being gendered.
“Toiletries are constantly gendered and it is completely unnecessary. They should be labeled with the qualities of the product and the fragrance, if any. No mention of male or female is needed,” one Gen Y respondent wrote.
In another positive finding, LGBT+ participants were more likely to have faith in the next generation, with 82 per cent of queer millennials and 88 per cent of queer Boomers believing that Gen Z is better educated about non-binaryand transgender identities.
