Throughout his campaign for Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin embraced the rhetoric of “parental rights,” allowing it to guide his campaign’s position on key issues, including mask mandates and diversity efforts in our K-12 system.
To be clear, there is a dire need to ensure that parents have a voice in our education. The disregarded mental health concerns, failure to appropriately implement accommodations for disabled students, and lackluster equity responses during the COVID-19 pandemic made clear the school systems were largely ill-equipped to handle community concerns. As students, we are acutely aware of the difficulty in engaging with education leaders: We constantly raise concerns that fall onto deaf ears. We can only imagine the similar frustrations of parents and teachers.
Nonetheless, the failure of education leaders to address the needs of community members is not partisan but institutional. It is abundantly clear that the convoluted processes of school boards are not suited for widespread stakeholder engagement. But Gov. Youngkin’s embrace of parental rights is not centered on improving community relationships. Instead, he exploits the language of parental rights to attack marginalized students, with the goal of advancing his political prospects.
Before he even assumed office, Youngkin supported efforts to censor books, attackingBeloved, the acclaimed Toni Morrison novel. Ignoring that Beloved can be a powerful tool for students to confront difficult truths around racism, Youngkin instead sought to allow some to censor the book in our classrooms. More recently, the governor has championed Senate Bill 656, which would allow parents to opt students out of classroom instruction deemed “sexually explicit.” SB 656 includes “homosexuality” in its definition of sexually explicit and mandates an onerousapproval process for any instruction that meets this standards, chilling the already limited queer representation in our classroom. After all, why would teachers, already overworked, go through the process of getting approval for texts that include LGBTQIA+ people when they can simply opt for content without us?
More recently, Youngkin’s Department of Education released draft changes to Virginia’s model transgender policies. The original guidelines required school districts to implement evidence-based protections for queer students, including prohibitions against the forced disclosure of a student’s LGBTQIA+ identity and upholding the right of queer students to be addressed by their correct pronouns and name.
As students, we experienced the power of the original guidelines. The fear of outing, for example, hangs over the head of every queer student from an unsupportive household. We once worked with a student who was denied water after their parents found out they were gay, and we’ve worked with other students whose parents have threatened them with conversion therapy. The original affirming guidelines, while not perfect, removed some of this fear.
WIthout the constant worry that teachers would out our friends to hostile parents, we were finally able to be ourselves. We saw our transgender classmates finally walk through the halls without having to justify their existence at every moment. We saw our friends sit up taller in class, knowing that their identities were protected.
But the revised guidelines revoke that progress. With forced outing provisions, a refusal to acknowledge a student’s transition without both parental consent and legal documentation, and a bathroom ban, the new draft revisions to the model transgender policies erase our community’s existence. They effectively take away the one place where we could be ourselves and will only heighten abuse, harassment, depression, and suicide.
The draft guidelines have already seen massive opposition. We helped organize walkouts of more than 12,000 students at schools across Virginia, and well over 50,000 comments, most opposed, have been left on the DOE’s public comments website. But Glenn Youngkin seems to be ignoring Virginian voices, instead using these policies as a change to address national conservative audiences as he gears up for a potential 2024 presidential run.
Lost in all the governor’s politicking is the real harm done to students. We have had to talk friends out of taking their lives, and we rarely meet a queer student who isn’t struggling with their mental health. Our experiences aren’t unique: Research consistently suggests that the majority of LGBTQIA+ students are vulnerable to depression and suicide. Yet our governor is hell-bent on removing the solace and affirmation found in inclusive books, classroom instruction, and school regulations for his own political future, rather than address the real crises in our schools.
Our schools are in crisis. We hope our leaders stop focusing so much on polling boosts and fundraising hauls and instead, address the depression, abuse, and harassment that ravages our schools.
Natasha Sanghvi, Ranger Balleisen, Casey Calabia, Juno Teller, and Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter are students in Virginia who helped organize a massive school walkout this month in protest of Youngkin’s reversal of protections for trans students in schools.
Views expressed in The Advocate’s opinion articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, Equal Pride.
Because I’ve been writing this column for several years, and get to talk to lots of amazing people, my friends, mostly the straight ones, like to quiz me about who’s gay, who’s not, and who’s in the closet.
This fishing expedition is mostly generational, since it’s mostly my contemporaries who inquire about the sexuality of celebrities and politicians. Those of us who are LGBTQ+ and over 50, still look on with low-level shock when someone we know announces they are queer.
For straight people in this demographic, being gay, or being in the closet is still something that they sensationalize. The current generation just shrugs. They might debate Harry Styles, for example, and that’s because he’s thrown up the question for debate. He’s often accused of gay- baiting, but if he were to come out tomorrow and say he was in a relationship with a man, most young people would simply congratulate him.
I always confess to the fact that I really don’t have any inside knowledge on anyone, and I hear the rumors just like everyone else. Rumors are just rumors, until someone comes forward and confirms or denies them. Meanwhile innuendo, and jokes about the person’s sexuality abound.
For politicians, particularly in Congress, it’s a bit different. Capitol Hill is a very small community. When I worked there, I, like many, knew who was in the closet mainly because we’d see them in a gay bar or knew someone that had a relationship with them. There really were no secrets on the Hill.
For example, most of us knew former Wisconsin congressman Steve Gunderson was gay before he was outed on the House floor. I spoke to Gunderson on the 25th anniversary of that moment and wrote a column about it.
Gunderson was publicly thrown out of his closet, after right-wing Rep. Bob Dornan joked about Gunderson on the floor of the House of Representatives during a debate on a bill that would have discouraged school districts from adopting gay-friendly curricula. “My fellow Republican has a revolving door in his closet,” said Dornan. “He’s out. He’s in. He’s out. He’s in.”
It was all a way to poke and joke about Gunderson’s sexuality.
“Clearly, we were living in different and difficult times regarding public officials being openly gay,” Gunderson told me. “At that time, there was no process for coming out as gay, nor were there any predetermined examples and parameters about how to come out.”
Today, there are 11 openly LGBTQ+ members of Congress. And, this year, for the first time ever, two gay men, one a Republican and one a Democrat, are running for Congress in New York’s Third Congressional District.
To be sure, not everyone is out. Whether they choose to remain in the closet might be for several reasons, because they’re fearful of the reactions of their constituents, that they still think being gay is a scarlet letter, or out of some deep seeded self-loathing which sometimes can backfire.
Case in point, former Illinois Republican congressman Aaron Schock. He was on a trajectory to be a rising star in the party, when he began to unravel, all the while denying rumors that he was gay. He eventually came out after a federal investigation into his campaign funds ended.
Everyone who I knew who still worked on or around the Hill knew he was gay, so when he came out, that wasn’t a surprise. It also proves that there are some U.S. legislators who are most definitely hiding. There are 535 members of Congress. The most recent Gallup poll estimated that 5.6 percent of the U.S. population is LGBT. Translating that to Congress, that would allow for at least 30 queer members, which means that in a very theoretical hypothesis, 19 are hiding in the closet.
Now, that brings us to what you’ve all been waiting for, ever since the title of this column drew you in — is Senator Lindsey Graham gay? First, I have no idea. I do know that, again, my friends who work on or around the Hill have their own opinions. In fact, one of them texted me on Saturday a story that appeared on Mediaite. “Did you see this????” She said with all those question marks.
The story was about a wild discussion the night before on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, hosted by Stephanie Ruhle. She just replaced long-time network anchor Brian Williams.
Ruhle’s show has proven to be a bit more animated than Williams’s version. On Friday’s show, during one of the last segments, Ruhle hosted a panel that included Nancy Giles of CBS Sunday Morning‘s Nancy Giles, Ron Insana of CNBC, columnist Liz Plank, and lesbian comic and podcaster Judy Gold.
The group began to discuss Senator Graham’s ill-timed, ill-thought out, and cruel national abortion bill — which would ban the procedure nationally — and then sequed into a poke and joke about his sexuality.
“Why do this? Republicans don’t even support it across the board. He’s dividing Republicans,” Ruhle said. Which brought protest from Giles that Graham was telling women what to do with their bodies.
Giles’s statement was seconded by Gold, who was goaded on to continue by Giles, “He’s never seen a vagina! He’s never seen a naked woman!” Gold blurted, as the whole panel laughed it up, including Ruhle. “And he is telling me?”
Of course, we all know what Gold was suggesting. She said it in a way that made it appear to be a joke, which is why everyone was laughing.
“We don’t know that for sure. We do not know that for sure,” Ruhle said. “It’s probably true, it’s probably true,” Plank replied. “Judy we would refer to that as an unconfirmed report,” CNBC’s Insana interjected. “Someone needs to find out!” Plank corrected. “I’m going to speculate…” Gold said. (See below, at the 35 minute mark.)
Speculate, speculation, speculating, speculative. Those words have appeared in the past when others have…well, speculated, about Senator Graham. Just this week, The View host Whoppi Goldberg had to walk back another poke and joke that hinted at Graham’s sexuality, and when she did backtrack, one viewer on Twitter wasn’t happy with her, “I have no idea why she had to scale back on a suggestive, subtle joke that half the country has already been speculating about anyway concerning Ms. Graham lol. You’re fine Whoopi.”
This week it would appear that Graham’s sexuality has gone from “speculative” to a national open secret. Is it right for “half the country” to be speculating about Graham? Is it ok to use his sexuality as punchline material? Is there a need for these comedians to walk back their jabs? Or are their jokes more a poke at a sensitive subject for Graham? If they are just innocent teasing, then why walk them back?
For as long as I can remember, and I’ve been following politics obsessively even before Graham was elected to the House in 1995, I’ve heard rumors about Graham. I’ve poked and joked about those rumors — not here — but during private conservations. In fact, to me this whole dance around Graham’s sexuality seems more like a sophmoric joke, especially with that uncomfortable “Lady G” nickname that trends on Twitter every other month.
The fact that he may or may not be gay, to me, seems far less important than the inherent danger he creates in his job as a bachelor senator. His flip flop about Trump from calling him a “jackass,” a “kook,” “a race-baiting bigot,” to last month saying there would be “riots in the streets” if Trump was prosecuted is an affront to the decorum of a United States senator.
His phone call to Georgia election officials was most likely illegal and completely outside his role as a representative of South Carolina.
His whiplash from condemning Trump for January 6 to condemning the January 6 committee is beyond unacceptable for someone who swore an oath to the constitution.
And, his absurd legislation of creating a national abortion law flies in the face of his repeated comments that abortion should be left to the states. His reversal, and his audacity to author a bill on behalf of women, when he is a loutish, 67-year-old white man who has never been married, never fathered a child, dealt with a pregnancy, dealt with a wife whose life was in jeopardy because of a pregnancy, or a daughter whose future was in danger…well, a real man wouldn’t be this sanctimonious.
Graham’s sexuality might be private, and the jokes about it juvenile and tinged with homophobia, but his efforts at tearing the fabric of American democracy is far more offensive. It’s hard to get more angry at Judy Gold and Stephanie Ruhle than the man who’s working overtime to take away their rights — and those of all American women.
Views expressed in The Advocate’s opinion articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, EqualPride.
We who live with HIV live in a country where many of our fellow citizens seem adamantly determined to negate our very lives. Thirty-seven states continue to criminalize being HIV-positive, despite our knowing that people living with undetectable viral loads cannot pass the virus on to others via sex. Twelve of those states refused to expand Medicaid, cutting many PWAs off from the medications they need to live. During the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the services available to people living with HIV were curtailed: as funds and personnel were diverted from HIV to COVID-19, clinics closed; testing for HIV declined; PrEP use withered; sheltering-in-place and quarantining forced many long-term survivors back into the kind of isolation and loneliness that we had just begun to address. With many of us long-term survivors living at or below the poverty level, worldwide inflation has made it increasingly difficult to afford the basics of life like food and shelter. The last two years have been abnormally grim for us.
The HIV-negative members of the LGBTQ+ community have not been spared the back-sliding in the efforts to secure our civil rights. Anti-LGBTQ forces in Florida have criminalized even speaking about LGBTQ people in school classrooms, with many states poised to pass copy-cat laws like Florida’s. The activist, uber-conservative Supreme Court that overturned Roe V. Wade, leading to the criminalization of those who seek or perform abortions, signaled quite clearly that their next targets are the right to use contraception and the right to same-sex marriage. With the Court’s conclusion that there is no Constitutional right to privacy, the right to engage in homosexual sex acts may well be on their chopping block, despite the guarantees in Lawrence v. Texas.
Our transgender sisters and brothers, regardless of their serostatus, are under constant threat in Republican-controlled states. South Dakota, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas have all enacted laws that inhibit the availability of gender affirming care — with some states actually criminalizing doctors who offer gender affirming care. Conservative politicians and church leaders routinely mock transgender folks and the use of appropriate pronouns. The transgender community has weathered the bulk of attacks in recent years.
But we have all been vulnerable. For every step forward toward true equality we have taken, we seem to have taken two steps back in recent years. None of the advances we have made is immune to the forces that seek to erase those advances. There are citizens and politicians in our country who seem hell-bent on making our lives as miserable as possible.
In the face of all this hatred and bigotry, I ask again, “Thanks for what?”
The only answer I can give is a very personal one, a list of things that I strive to be grateful for.
I’m grateful for the medications that have kept me alive since 1996 (even despite the ones that caused my advanced osteoporosis). I am grateful for the many long-term survivors whom I’ve gotten to know through SFAF’s Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network and through Shanti’s Honoring Our Experience — friends with whom I share much more than just serostatus, friends whose love and support have sustained me through more than my share of setbacks. I am thankful that after five years of being confined to a wheelchair, I am finally walking again! I am thankful that despite the ravages of living with HIV for thirty-three years, despite facing a handful of death sentences, I will celebrate my seventieth birthday next month. I am thankful that despite my advanced ageing (70 is the new 85!), my brain still functions well enough for me to be able to string words together in coherent sentences… sometimes!
The one, the only thing that I never struggle to be grateful for is the enduring love and support of a great, generous, loving man. My husband Rick Greathouse has been a true godsend, not only for the last two years, but for the twenty-one years we’ve been together. He has wholeheartedly supported my writing — every time I write something, he is my first and best reader; in fact, his love and support are the sole reason I was able to break a 33-year trauma-induced writer’s block, and he has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me whenever I’ve taken my writing public. He has taught me patience in dealing with things I cannot control and courage in changing those things that I can control. He has weathered my every illness alongside me, and during those long years that I spent in a wheelchair, he never once complained about having to push me around this hilly city. He has dried my many tears and brought more joy and laughter into my life than any one man deserves. They say a good man is hard to find. I am forever deeply grateful that I found one of the best.
And so, despite this hateful world that seems to wish harm and grief on all of us, it is still possible to feel gratitude every day. It’s difficult sometimes to maintain that sense of gratitude, for all of us. But we must. We all must find and nurture those things that make us grateful for each new day in a world that seems to conspire against our joy.
For this Thanksgiving and throughout the coming season, my wish is that you live every day filled with bountiful joy and gratitude for life. You deserve it!
According to the Republican National Committee for Life, “The Republican Party must continue to uphold the principle that every human being, born and unborn, young and old, healthy and disabled, has a fundamental, individual right to life.”
With the stunning revelations of a leaked 98-page majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito proposing to completely gut the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, it seemed inevitable with the unprecedented maneuvering and court-packing of ultra-conservative “justices” under the Trump regime.
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The Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, provided states the ability to take away the constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion, which has been granted for the past 49 years. It could reverse, as well, the right to contraception, marriage equality for same-sex couples, interracial marriage, sexuality education, and the total erasure of voting rights.
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Republican leaders announced that among their primary and immediate items on their legislative agenda after the election of Donald Trump was to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. While these healthcare clinics do not receive direct federal funding, they collect approximately $500 million in federal programs from payments and grants, which comprise about 40% of the organization’s yearly budget.
Though an estimated 2.5 million people throughout the country access Planned Parenthood each year for annual health checkups, screenings for diseases, and contraceptives, Republicans had attempted to defund Planned Parenthood only to face a veto when President Obama sat in the Oval Office.
On November 20, 2022, as we commemorated Transgender Day of Remembrance, a shooter in Colorado murdered five and injured 18 beautiful people at Club Q. My heart goes out to the victims and their families. As a nation, we must confront the hatred while continuing to demand gun safety measures.
In addition to the shooter, I indict our society that stereotypes and weaponizes our LGBTQ bodies as fodder for advancing its patriarchal Christian white supremacist authoritarian agendas.
We experience today many politicians, clergy, community and school officials who are targeting queer, trans, and gender non-binary people in promoting bigotry with their words and their actions by marginalizing and disenfranchising us through their legislation to prevent discussions of our lives in the classrooms and by banning books discussing our lives, by promoting fear and hatred by calling us “groomers,” by criminalizing parents who support their children’s gender identities and forms of expression, by eliminating trans athletes from sports, from preventing trans and non-binary folks from using public accommodations corresponding with their gender identities.
In my continuing quest to understand and make meaning of current political, economic, and social realities, I constantly glance back into historical eras looking for similarities and parallels from which I can draw conclusions and possibly learn from past mistakes we as humans have made. While each era unquestionably poses unique conditions and challenges in many respects, I believe history has enumerable lessons to teach if we are willing to learn.
Though I rarely offer comparisons between events transpiring before and during the ascension to power of the German Third Reich with resemblances to the contemporary United States – since to do so could result in trivializing one of the most horrific episodes in human history – nonetheless, I am haunted by certain parallels that demand voicing.
I am troubled by multiple similarities between that time not so very long ago and the discourses expressed and events transpiring today. I want, therefore, to highlight, in particular, the parallels I see in Nazi portrayals and understandings of sex, sexuality, gender, and gender expression: a divisive and brutal program that was anti-feminist, anti-women’s equality, anti-women’s reproductive freedoms (anti-family planning, anti-contraception, anti-abortion), anti-lesbian, anti-gay, anti-bisexual, anti-transgender, anti-gender nonconforming, anti-sexuality education in schools.
On Homosexuality
The Nazis ruthlessly enforced and eventually extended Paragraph 175, the section of the German Penal Code dating back to 1871 with the unification of Germany: “Unnatural vice committed by two persons of the male sex or by people with animals is to be punished by imprisonment; the verdict may also include the loss of civil rights.”
Nazi ideology rested on the assessment that homosexuals (males) lowered the German birth rate; they endangered, recruited, enticed, and corrupted youth; that a possible homosexual epidemic could spread; that homosexuals are “potential oppositionists” and enemies of respectable society; and that sexual relations between people of the same sex impairs their “sense of shame” and undermines morality, which inevitably will bring about the “decline of social community.”
Even before taking power, in their daily newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi party argued:
“Anyone who thinks of homosexual love is our enemy. We reject anything which emasculates our people and makes it a plaything for our enemies, for we know that life is a fight, and it is madness to think that men will ever embrace fraternally. Natural history teaches us the opposite. Might makes right. The strong will always win over the weak. Let us see to it that we once again become the strong. But this we can achieve only in one way — the German people must once again learn how to exercise discipline. We, therefore, reject any sexual deviation, particularly between man and man, because it robs us of the last possibility of freeing our people from the slave-chains in which it is now forced to toil.”
While Nazi ideology and practice rejected lesbianism as well, they did not criminalize same-sex sexuality between women, as they had in Germany’s Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code, because they believed that so-called “Aryan” lesbians could at least birth children for the “New Germany.”
On the other hand, Heinrich Himmler, Gestapo head and chief architect of the Reich’s anti-homosexual campaign, justified his actions by arguing that male homosexuals were “like women” and, therefore, could not fight in any German war effort.
Subsequently, he conducted surveillance operations on an estimated 90,000 suspected homosexuals, arrested approximately 50,000, and transported somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 to several concentration camps throughout the Nazi dominion. Very few survived.
Upon coming to power in 1933, under their Youth Leader, Baldur von Shirach, the Nazis took over all youth groups converting them into Hitler Youth groups. One action taken following consolidation was to eliminate all signs of “homosexual corrosion” because it allegedly threatened state control by “fostering political conspiracies.”
Nazi leaders purged all boys suspected of “homosexual tendencies.” They tried and convicted an estimated 6,000 youth under Paragraph 175 between 1933 and 1943.
Hitler also proposed eliminating all sex education from the German school system and encouraged parents to take on the primary responsibilities for sexuality instruction within the home.
While the Catholic Church spoke out then and today against same-sex sexuality, their policies boomeranged and hit them in their faces. Used primarily to silence any potential resistance from the Church, the Nazis conducted their so-called “Cloister Trials” in which they dissolved Catholic youth fraternities, arrested and incarcerated large numbers of priests, religious brothers, and Catholic laity in prisons and concentration camps, accusing them of being “threats to the state” on fabricated charges of homosexuality. For example, prison guards at Dachau concentration camp murdered Catholic priest Fr. Alois Abdritzki, one of many fatalities from the “Cloister Trials.”
On Women
Alfred Rosenberg, one of the Nazi’s chief ideologues, directed his misogynist outrage against women: “The emancipation of women from the women’s emancipation movement is the first demand of a female generation trying to rescue nation and race, the eternally unconscious, the foundation of all civilization, from decline…. A woman should have every opportunity to realize her potential, but one thing must be made clear: Only a man must be and remain judge, soldier, and politician.”
Englebert Huber, a Nazi propagandist, dictated the “proper” place of women in the Third Reich, figuratively (and literally as well) beneath men: “In the ideology of National Socialism, there is no room for the political woman….[Our] movement places woman in her natural sphere of the family and stresses her duties as wife and mother. The political, that post-war creature, who rarely ‘cut a good figure’ in parliamentary debates, represents the denigration of women. The German uprising is a male phenomenon.”
The Nazis added Paragraph 218 of the German Penal Code to outlaw abortions and established a national file on women who had undergone and doctors who had performed abortions.
On “Indecency”
In their increasing obsession with “purifying” the social sphere, Nazi leadership enacted the “Decree for Combating Public Indecency,” which included such provisions as working to eliminate prostitution, closing all bars and clubs that “are misused for the furtherance of public indecency” including “public houses solely or mainly frequented by persons engaging in unnatural sex acts” (a.k.a. homosexuals), and closing kiosks and magazine stands in libraries and bookshops “whether because they include nude illustrations or because of their title or contents, are liable to produce erotic effects in the beholder.”
Though Pope Pius XII maintained a position of neutrality and rarely spoke out against the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime, of which he was roundly criticized in some circles, The Vatican, on April 3, 1933, praised the Reich on this policy:
“The Vatican welcomes the struggle of National Germany against obscene material. The strong measures that Prussia’s Minister of the Interior Göring has ordered for the combating of obscene writings and pictures…have received serious attention in Vatican circles. It will be recalled that Pius XII, in his recent encyclicals, has repeatedly and vigorously stressed that defensive actions against obscene material are of fundamental importance for the bodily and spiritual health of family and nation, and he most warmly welcomes the type and manner…with which this struggle has been undertaken in the new Germany.”
The Patriarchal Connecting Strand
The Nazi regime connected multiple forms of oppression when Heinrich Himmler reorganized the Reich Criminal Police Bureau to centralize operations by creating a national file on male homosexuals, transgender people, what they referred to as “wage abortionists” (women and their doctors), and to monitor the production and ban the use of contraceptives to “Aryan” women.
Within this Bureau, they established The Reich Office for Combatting Homosexuality and Abortion, which in the single year of 1938 alone, conducted 28,366 arrests for abortion, and 28, 882 arrests of male homosexuals.
The common thread running through Nazi ideology regarding gender, gender expression, and sexuality was an intensive campaign to control individuals’ bodies and the bodies of members of entire communities in an attempt to control their minds.
Women and LGBTQ people have been constructed as second-class and even third-class citizens not merely in Nazi Germany but today as the current political discourse indicates. But women and LGBTQ are certainly not victims because through it all, women and LGBTQ people as individuals and as groups have resisted and challenged the inequities and have pushed back against patriarchal constraints.
I hope, though, that we as a society can learn from the tyranny of the past.
Q.Digital CEO Scott Gatz penned this foreword for Joe Gantz’s new book, The Secret I Can’t Tell: The First Generation of Children from Openly Gay and Lesbian Homes. Gantz located five same-sex-headed households in different parts of the nation, embedded with them for a week, and from 1979–1983 interviewed these lesbian and gay parents and their children about what effects the fear-mongering and anti-gay pressures had on them. Updated in 2022 with new interviews with the children (now adults in their 50s), the book is a fascinating glimpse into how far the LGBTQ community has come – and how far it still has to go. Q.Digital is the publisher of LGBTQ Nation.
When my son was in kindergarten, the children taught their classmates about their life outside the classroom. The kids learned a bit about each other’s day-to-day lives, what they liked to do for fun, and all about their pets and family members. Toward the end of the year, the class read Todd Parr’s The Family Book, a brightly-hued book that celebrates all different kinds of families through fun illustrations and humor. Taking inspiration from The Family Book, the kindergartners drew their own pages for a book with two captions that included “All families have_____” and “Some families have_____.” The answers reflected their age: “Some families have dogs,” “Some families have cats,” “All families have love,” and “All families have toys.” And most importantly for my family: “Some families have two dads,” and “Some families have two moms.”
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That kindergarten exercise probably could never have been imagined by the families interviewed in A Secret I Can’t Tell. In the 40 years since this book was originally published, we have come a very, very long way. Unlike the era in which marriage was not available to people like my husband and me, today, LGBTQ people in the United States (and in 29 countries) enjoy equal marriage—and, according to a Family Equality Council survey, 63% of millennial LGBTQ people want to start a family, or grow theirs. Marriage isn’t just a ceremony or a piece of paper, either. According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are 1,138 statutory provisions in which marital status is a factor in determining benefits, rights, and privileges.
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The kids Joe Gantz interviewed between 1979–1983 were raised by same-sex couples who did not have the right to exist in the way they do today. These families were not supported by the law or their communities, and the children frequently expressed the view that no one their age would understand their family structure. That came with a grave cost: keeping their home life concealed.
Unfathomable to those young people is the kind of world my son is now growing up in. It’s a world where he can see many families just like his, and it’s a world in which young people feel much safer coming out and are doing so in record numbers. Each summer, Family Week in Provincetown, Massachusetts, brings together hundreds of LGBTQ-parented families for a week of connection, activities, and fun. It’s truly awe-inspiring to look across a beach of thousands of people, all from LGBTQ families. Today we have organizations supporting us, like those that run Family Week. Family Equality is the organization advocating for and connecting LGBTQ Parents, and COLAGE is dedicated to connecting children of LGBTQ people. These organizations help families find each other—even in isolated places with very few LGBTQ people. I treasure that my son gets to grow up knowing that a community of people supports him and that his family isn’t something he needs to keep secret.
Chapter 1’s Selena sums it up best in her 2022 update: “I think it is going to be really hard for anyone who is being raised in a gay family now to understand what it was like to be a part of that forty years ago. Because it was a completely different world…[The change has] felt like the speed of light!”
The stories in these chapters contain pain, love, dysfunction, and joy. Any family has a mix of all of these things in different measures. But these families had more than their fair share of pain, dysfunction, and difficulty as they held tightly onto their secret. They feared being ostracized or losing their jobs, but more frighteningly feared their families being split up. Some lesbian and gay parents were stripped of their parental rights because being in a same-sex relationship meant they were violating state sodomy laws or they were viewed as “deviants” by family court judges. With distance, we can see that these fears led to anguish, anger, poor behavior, dysfunction, and a lot of pain. The pressure to keep a secret likely exacerbated normal teenage angst and added stress to already stressful parenting situations. This pain was caused by a society that forced these families to hide in fear. As you read these interviews, I encourage you to remember the prevailing societal force that shaped many of these moments.
By returning to his subjects in 2022, Joe shows their stories in true context. Time heals many wounds, and as we grow older, we remember the good times and gain perspective on the bad times. These families were full of love and wanted to be the best they could be for each other. Some of the kids are now parents, some are married, and some are divorced, creating new chapters in their lives undoubtedly marked—but not always limited by—the secrecy they were forced to maintain growing up. I delight in reading the stories of their own kids knowing LGBTQ kids and families, and how their grandparents were LGBTQ. In just one generation, their families are in a whole new world.
Our society is a much better one today now that families like ours can live freely and openly. The unfair pressure on parents and kids to keep a secret is devastating to witness, and I’m glad that for many families, this is in the past.
Sadly, we are at risk of returning to some of those days.
We live in a societal backlash that seeks to force our families back into the closet. Laws in multiple states (most infamously Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” bill) are shutting down all discussion or mention of LGBTQ people and our families in schools. Todd Parr’s The Family Book has become one of the most banned books in U.S. schools and libraries. Teachers and students are forcing themselves and the story of their families back into the closet, once again making their lives a secret they can’t tell. And several justices on the Supreme Court have signaled their interest in overturning the Obergefell decision that made marriage equality the law of the land. And the Equality Act has yet to pass, meaning there is no federal law protecting equal marriage and the many family rights that come with it.
I recently met a young transgender girl in Texas, roughly the same age as many of the children in A Secret I Can’t Tell. She kept her gender identity a secret from her classmates until someone found out and told everyone. Her family was forced to pull her out of school and has since moved to another state after Texas enacted a law criminalizing parents who provide gender affirming care to their children. It is unfair and unacceptable to put this burden on our children, and yet here we are again.
It’s been 40 years since Joe Gantz interviewed these families. Even today, the love and laughs and struggles are something we can all relate to. The forced secrecy and pressure these kids and parents felt are foreign to most people today, and that’s a testament to how far we really have come. I hope that we can all read these stories, the 1983 interviews and the 2022 updates, and see a fully rounded picture of how alike we all are and how unique their challenges were. I hope that these stories teach us what once was and could be again if we don’t course correct.
These stories, rich and complex, are not just a view into another era. They are a time capsule. Let’s act to ensure that they do not also contain an urgent warning for our future.
Humans often want to fix things about ourselves that aren’t broken. From foot-binding to plain old circumcision, our species has historically been obsessed with altering our bodies — which I can’t help but think about today as it’s Intersex Awareness Day. The observance commemorates the first protest by intersex people — those of us born with atypical sex characteristics — against the practice of subjecting intersex infants and minors to cosmetic, sex trait-altering medical procedures, on October 26, 1996.
The impetus for fixing is so prevalent regarding the intersex population that it’s often come to define us, via statements such as “Intersex? You mean those people who are operated on as babies?” that I’ve heard countless times as a longtime advocate for the intersex community. While I’m thrilled that awareness about these nonconsensual medical procedures is growing, it’s notable that we don’t define other populations this way. For example, although circumcision is the most common surgery performed on males, imagine how weird it would sound to hear males defined as “people whose penises are operated on in infancy.”
Humans often want to fix things about ourselves that aren’t broken. From foot-binding to plain old circumcision, our species has historically been obsessed with altering our bodies — which I can’t help but think about today as it’s Intersex Awareness Day. The observance commemorates the first protest by intersex people — those of us born with atypical sex characteristics — against the practice of subjecting intersex infants and minors to cosmetic, sex trait-altering medical procedures, on October 26, 1996.
The impetus for fixing is so prevalent regarding the intersex population that it’s often come to define us, via statements such as “Intersex? You mean those people who are operated on as babies?” that I’ve heard countless times as a longtime advocate for the intersex community. While I’m thrilled that awareness about these nonconsensual medical procedures is growing, it’s notable that we don’t define other populations this way. For example, although circumcision is the most common surgery performed on males, imagine how weird it would sound to hear males defined as “people whose penises are operated on in infancy.”
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Given said weirdness, today I’d like to highlight the fact that intersex people are much more than just the medical procedures that we are often subjected to — and that we’ve been around way before they even existed. Take, for example, Gen. Casimir Pulaski, born in Poland in 1745 and known as the “Father of the American Cavalry.” As the Smithsonian documentary The General Was Female? details, when the monument marking Pulaski’s grave was temporarily removed, his remains were discovered to have certain female characteristics. After years spent analyzing his skeleton and DNA, a team of researchers concluded that Pulaski was probably born intersex, with XX chromosomes.
Despite his XX chromosomes, Pulaski appeared male at birth because of his intersex variation, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), which often masculinizes genitalia, Pulaski was able to serve in the military, becoming an American Revolutionary War hero after relocating from Europe. He is believed to have saved George Washington’s life in the Battle of Brandywine and is one of only eight people to be awarded honorary American citizenship, along with notables such as Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa.
Pulaski’s story illustrates that intersex people have been thriving for centuries before the surgeries used to change us existed, and it’s also a stark reminder of the harms and limitations of our current “fix it” approach. For today, in situations like Pulaski’s — where an individual has XX chromosomes and a variation known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia — medical experts routinely recommend surgical reduction of the phallic structure and estrogen hormone therapy to feminize the child’s body and assign them female. The assumption is that, due to their XX chromosomes, these individuals are “really” girls and should thus be made to look it. Yet there’s Pulaski, a man more successful than most of his counterparts.
We can only speculate about the countless other intersex people throughout history because, as with other LGBTQI+ folks, most of our history has been lost due to the fact that we’ve only recently been able to live openly as who we are. For example, when the news broke that Hollywood film legend Rock Hudson was gay, my mother, like many, had a hard time believing it. Had it not been verified after Hudson became the first major celebrity to die of AIDS-related causes, in 1985, he would have lived and died being misperceived as heterosexual. Similarly, had Pulaski’s remains not been uncovered, we would have never known that the prominent military hero was intersex.
Today, the vast majority of intersex people are still living this way — with their intersex status publicly unknown. It’s easy for me to understand why because until I was 28 I’d been living the same way. Although I’d been “out” as a lesbian for a decade, since college, everyone but my lovers and a handful of friends believed I was a non-intersex female. I knew I was different because my physical differences are very visible, but coming out as intersex in a world that only acknowledged males and females just didn’t seem like an option in the 1980s and early 1990s.
I came out precisely when and because I was asked, in 1996, to do so by a survivor of childhood surgeries, sometimes referred to as intersex genital mutilation. She had learned that I like my intersex body and feel blessed that I wasn’t subjected to IGM, and she thought it would be useful for people to hear this perspective. Having learned about the lifelong physical and psychological harms that often result from IGM — which can involve involuntary sterilization or the loss of sexual sensation, I agreed. I wanted the world to know that doctors’ claims that intersex children need to be altered in order to be happy are, in my experience, false.
Those who’ve watched me explore my intersex-ness since my 20s have, like me, viewed it as a positive aspect of who I am — one friend just recently called it my “superpower.” While I reminded her that millions of intersex people have not been afforded these experiences due to IGM and that even for me it wasn’t always easy due to societal ignorance about intersex people, the irony of her statement wasn’t lost. For me, being intersex has been a beautiful adventure, full of unexpected sexual pleasure and a rich understanding of both male and female experiences that I feel privileged to have known — which is essentially the opposite of what doctors who promote IGM predict intersex people will experience.
Incidentally, proponents of IGM like to dismiss my experience as an exception. Perhaps I just want to be different, some speculate, which makes me laugh out loud. As the queer child of Latinx immigrants in a white neighborhood and school and having a name so unusual I grew up hearing, “Hida, what’s that?” I often longed to blend in. Or, some speculate, perhaps I’m just unusually self-confident, in a way that we can’t expect normal people to be. Far from it! As those close to me know, I suffer insecurities as much as everyone else.
The true reason I like being intersex is simple: When you don’t raise a child to believe they’re defective, they’re more likely to end up feeling good about who and what they are — and it’s my hope that all future generations of intersex people are given the chance to experience this. On that note, a growing number of medical associations have begun to listen to intersex people. They are honoring their oath to “first do no harm” by recommending that no cosmetic surgeries be performed unless intersex people seek them out for themselves, as other adults sometimes do, and we couldn’t be more grateful.
Hida Viloria is the author of Born Both: An Intersex Life and is a long-term intersex advocate.
Views expressed in The Advocate’s opinion articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, Equal Pride.
While public sentiment toward transgender people in the U.S. continues to warm, anti-transgender campaigners are exploiting the public’s uncertainty about trans youth to promote Florida-style bans on gender-affirming care.
And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Boston Children’s Hospital has been on the receiving end of at least three bomb threats this year due to misinformation about health care for transgender youth being provided there.
The piece hinges on what the authors describe as “emerging evidence of potential harm” related to the use of puberty-suppressing medications for transgender youth. But transgender health experts say that the data referenced in the Times‘ reporting comes to a different conclusion. The Times’ analysis of this data is so misleading that some advocates are questioning the motives behind the piece.
I talked with three experts – a trans advocate and educator, a psychology researcher, and a gender-affirming healthcare provider – to better understand what the Times got wrong and why it matters. Their criticisms touched on a range of issues including the data, the sources, and the framing of the issues. Many of these concerns are echoed by transgender people and care providers across the country.
“Basically, any way you slice it, this is not investigative journalism,” said Dr. Quinnehtukqut McLamore,
Dr. Quinnehtukqut McLamore, a psychology researcher familiar with the studies on gender-affirming care, criticized The Times’ interpretation of the data about puberty blockers. Dr. Quinnehtukqut McLamore
who has a Ph.D. in Psychology and conducts research at the University of Missouri at Columbia. “This is storytelling and editorializing from science they – at best – don’t understand because they don’t apply a logical lens to it.”
Critics of the Times piece said the reporters did get a few things right: More research on transgender health topics is needed. The reticence of drug companies to conduct research with transgender people creates barriers for FDA approval. Bone scans are beneficial for youth before and during treatment with puberty blockers.
And the most concerning is the fear that research findings could be exploited in the current political climate.
The Times article is itself a clear example of this exploitation in action and is arguably more dangerous than the transparently transphobic content published by opponents of trans rights. By echoing their claims in an ostensibly objective news outlet with a large, mainstream audience, the authors lend legitimacy to hateful extremists.
Many of the false claims promoted by those who believe gender-affirming care is tantamount to child abuse are presented to readers as if they’re objective fact. While this would be dangerous enough in an opinion piece, the Times framed this reporting as a well-vetted public service piece:
As growing numbers of adolescents who identify as transgender are prescribed drugs to block puberty, the treatment is becoming a source of confusion and controversy.
We spent months scouring the scientific evidence, interviewing doctors around the world and speaking to patients and families.
Here’s a closer look at what we found.
The celebratory response from far-right pundits is revealing. The Daily Wire‘s Matt Walsh, whose film What is a Woman? manipulates the documentary format in an attempt to legitimize harmful transphobic myths, took credit for “[forcing] the NYT to admit that puberty blockers are dangerous.”
Jenn Burleton, director of the TransActive Gender Project at Lewis and Clark’s College of Education and Counseling, has watched media narratives about transgender people evolve over 35 years of advocacy work. She’s seen the damage anti-transgender rhetoric can do. As part of the college’s first-of-its-kind certificate program in Gender Diversity in Children and Youth, Burleton lectures on the origins and impacts of anti-transgender bias.
Jenn Burleton, program director for the TransActive Gender Project, was interviewed for The New York Times piece but said the reporter’s coverage missed the mark.
She was one of the experts interviewed for the Times article. But Burleton told LGBTQ Nation she was disappointed that the reporter declined to include any discussion of the forces behind the current campaign against gender-affirming care.
“I primarily discussed the immense amount of disinformation being spread about trans-affirming healthcare, specifically as it impacts adolescents and teens,” Burleton recalled. “[Megan Twohey] seemed very interested in looking into that, and I believed the story was going to have content that exposed the false claims being made in white nationalist media and in some state legislatures.”
Instead of delving into the well-documented rise in trans antagonism promoted by far-right religious and political groups, the brief mention of Burleton portrays her as a pushy activist, prodding healthcare providers and advocating for “early and easy access” to puberty-suppressing medication.
Dr. AJ Ecker, a nonbinary trans doctor, provides gender-affirming care at Connecticut’s Anchor Health.
Dr. AJ Eckert, who directs the gender-affirming care program for Anchor Health in Connecticut and teaches at Quinnipiac University’s school of medicine, described the report as “another hit piece against trans people.” He also expressed frustration about the timing of the story, which was published on the first day of Transgender Awareness Week.
“I don’t understand how a journalist in good faith can publish something like this,” Eckert told LGBTQ Nation. “Trans youth are a vulnerable target and this is just so extremely sh**ty.”
Far from clarifying confusion about the safety and efficacy of “puberty blockers” in easing gender dysphoria, the reporting fuels an increasingly vitriolic debate over the existential rights of transgender people. The most vocal opponents of prescribing medications like Lupron to temporarily suspend exogenous puberty – or puberty a person would go through absent puberty blockers – are not calling for a more cautious approach. Rather, they advocate for the eradication of transgender identities altogether.
As trans Harvard Law instructor Alejandra Caraballo pointed out on Twitter, “The anti-trans side doesn’t want research, they want us eliminated.”
But no amount of research will make a difference if media outlets like the Times are unable or unwilling to accurately translate its findings and their significance.
“The entire article is based on the premise that puberty blockers are horrible for bone health,” Dr. Eckert explained. Through cherry-picked anecdotes and quotes, the story paints a picture of children being pushed into taking a dangerous and untested drug that might give them osteoporosis and which locks them into a medical transition process.
The Times describes one teen’s experiences:
During treatment, the teen’s bone density plummeted — as much as 15 percent in some bones — from average levels to the range of osteoporosis, a condition of weakened bones more common in older adults.
The anecdote elicits an emotional response, but there is no data to support the claim that puberty blockers are giving teenagers osteoporosis. Unfortunately, the average reader won’t dig into the cited research studies to fact-check these claims – they will simply trust that the Times’ interpretation of that data is accurate and presented without bias.
What Does the Data Say?
“Simply put, there’s no evidence in their review that puberty blockers lower adolescents’ bone mineral density at all. And here’s how I know this: [the studies] say so,” Dr. McLamore explained.
They explained that the difference in bone density between trans youth on blockers and their cisgender peers is attributable to the difference in exposure to sex hormones. Also, trans youth are more likely to have lower bone density before starting puberty blockers, due to a dysphoria-related lack of exercise and nutritional deficiencies.
“Puberty causes an increase in bone density. Blocking puberty will then halt this increase; therefore, bone density will decrease in these trans youth compared to cis youth, an expected result,” Dr. Eckert explained. “Trans youth treated with puberty blockers in early puberty have changes in bone health comparable to those of cis youth of their experienced gender.”
Also unfounded is the claim that gender-affirming care reinforces trans identity, as if healthcare providers are encouraging a bad habit by indulging a patient’s desire for medically-appropriate care.
“According to the gender-critical crowd, affirming a youth’s gender identity, whether socially and/or medically with blockers, causes a youth to double down on that identity. It’s an oft-cited argument to dissuade parents and school environments from affirming youths’ true identities,” Eckert explained. “There is precisely zero evidence that blockers ‘lock in’ a trans identity. Yes, many trans youth start gender-affirming hormones. Trans adolescents know who they are. Those youth who started on blockers and moved on to gender-affirming hormones do so because they are trans.”
To force youth to delay transition in the hopes that puberty will reaffirm their sex assigned at birth is cruel and potentially deadly. Heightened gender dysphoria is associated with an increased risk of suicidality.
“Puberty does not ‘help clarify gender,’” Eckert said. “For many of us, puberty can be highly traumatic and irreversible; waiting to see if gender dysphoria resolves is not a neutral response.”
On the contrary, puberty blockers can prevent the need for future surgeries by preventing the development of noncongruent sex characteristics like breasts or facial hair.
What’s the Harm?
As many transgender folks have observed, the study authors and named sources include a cast of familiar antagonists. And while the Times mentions in passing that some of these sources have testified in favor of state-level bans on gender-affirming care, their names are not cited in connection with the article’s dubious claims, leaving readers to take them at face value.
Of the 50-plus sources the authors say they interviewed, only about a dozen are named in the article. According to the Times, this is because several sources requested to not be named and more than a dozen declined the interview. Instead, they are cited under the syntactical cover of “some experts,” significant enough to matter but not specific enough to be held accountable.
Why do these concerns matter? Because they have a real-world impact. A well-functioning press has the power to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” But a reckless reporter’s pen can be just as harmful as a drunk surgeon’s scalpel.
The article repeatedly and uncritically leans into the talking points of anti-transgender extremists, parroting their narratives without examining their sources. As a result, advocates of gender-affirming care are finding themselves in a never-ending game of Whack-a-Myth.
“I’m tired of repeatedly refuting the same points,” Eckert said, noting that they have been so busy responding to the false claims that they have gotten little sleep since Monday. “But I have to keep doing it until mainstream media starts platforming trans voices alongside these biased and transphobic editorials.”
Though public trust in media is on the decline, the Times has managed to maintain a reputation as a trustworthy news source, particularly among the sort of well-educated, left-leaning readers who are most likely to support transgender rights.
The credibility of this story is also bolstered by its byline. Lead author Megan Twohey is best known for helping break the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault story. A film about her journalistic accomplishments, She Said, hits theaters this week. Co-author Christina Jewett is an award-winning journalist who focuses on issues including drug safety. Readers can’t be blamed for seeing them as trustworthy.
“The harm done by this article is not that it reveals disagreement about treatment methodologies among a relatively small group of providers and researchers. Disagreement and unbiased, ethical discussion about healthcare is imperative to delivering improved healthcare,” TransActive’s Burleton explained. “The harm done by this article is that it implies that trans-affirming providers and advocates oppose asking questions that will improve trans-affirming healthcare. The article ignores the [denial] that anti-trans zealots – including some care providers/’experts’ – have about the very existence or authenticity of gender expansive identity.”
Whether the author’s missteps are due to malice or ignorance is up for debate. But it is worth noting that neither of the reporters has much experience covering transgender issues. That much is clear from the language they use to describe the experience of being transgender. The authors conflate gender dysphoria and trans identity with “the discomfort of puberty” and cite an interest in wearing dresses as evidence that a child must not have a masculine gender identity. At one point, they go so far as to describe supporters of gender-affirming care as “enthusiasts.”
The Times owes transgender people an apology – and some serious soul-searching – after platforming anti-trans extremism under the guise of investigative journalism. While Monday’s front-page story purports to be a thorough analysis of the scientific research, it traffics in a dangerous misrepresentation of the data. It’s not the first problematic piece from the Times, but it is the most high profile. And while other media outlets are guilty of similar missteps, reporters like Twohey and Jewett (and their editors) should be capable of better. And if they aren’t, perhaps the Times should consider assigning these stories to transgender journalists.
As Americans, we encounter diversity daily. While we continue to see some signs of progress, the 2021 LGBTQ Youth Mental Health Study by the Trevor Project noted that at least once in their lifetime, 75% of LGBTQ youth reported experiencing discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. No matter how much progress we make, discrimination in any form hurts and can have a grave impact on one’s mental health.
As the Director of Health Care International’s (HCAI) Youth & Family program, I have the good fortune of being able to speak to teachers, parents, school administrators and kids about how the power of kindness and acceptance can save lives.
We will always encounter diversity, in some form throughout our lives, and inclusivity is not guaranteed. But the fact is that in the LGBTQ community, if a person has just one individual to support and include them, it can make a lifesaving difference.
According to the Trevor Project study, lower suicide rates were reported for LGBTQ youth who had access to spaces that affirmed their gender identity and sexual orientation. The statistics are even more significant in the transgender and non-binary community where youth suicide rates were cut in half when pronouns were respected by the people they lived with compared to individuals whose pronouns were not respected by anyone with whom they lived.
I know this to be true because I am often that one person for many of these kids. Through my work with HCAI, I am often called upon when a child is in a dire situation. There have been many instances when I am meeting with a child in a psychiatric hospital after an attempted suicide. Most times, these kids are there because of the anxiety and depression they experience due to feeling a lack of love or acceptance.
The foundation of HCAI’s Youth & Family Program is empathy, kindness and acceptance. Most of all, these kids and families need to know they aren’t being judged and that they are in a safe environment to speak and feel freely. When they come to us or when we are called in to help, the first thing we do is listen.
It’s human nature to tell someone “Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay.” But, in most cases, the kids that I encounter do not feel okay. In fact, they are very close to committing self-harm or even worse, committing suicide. The key is to empathize and listen and connect them with the right assistance. The first thing we say is “We are sorry you are suffering; how can we help?”
During one of our recent school trainings, a transgender student asked to meet with me prior to the workshop. He shocked me when he said, “You helped me when I was in the hospital two years ago.” It was a total surprise to see a transformed teenager who was previously nonverbal and refused to communicate with me at that time.
I realized I had previously worked with him while he was at a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt – nearly two years prior. At the time, he had no support system and was nonverbal simply because he felt like his voice was not heard. I knew at that moment that we needed to help him. We started by assuring him that he could be his authentic self and that we believed him.
HCAI provided him with a binder – a compression undergarment to flatten the chest – and today he is continuing his journey to transition. It only takes one person or organization’s unconditional support to significantly reduce the suicide risk.
Sometimes the only support that kids will experience is outside their home – at school and with friends. Therefore, it is important for schools to set the tone of acceptance. When we meet with schools, we ask administrators and teachers, “Do your students walk into your building and see themselves represented every day?” Kids cannot be what they do not see. If they see themselves in the curriculum, in the library, in the Pride flag that is flown year-round, their path to acceptance and reduced mental health crises increases.
In fact, the Trevor Project study noted that LGBTQ youth had lower rates of attempting suicide when they found their school to be LGBTQ-affirming.
How can we expect a student to give 100% when they can’t be 100% of who they are? Imagine students that must worry about getting beaten up, teased or even which bathroom they need to use simply if they try to live their truth. If gender identity and sexual orientation is all they can think about because they aren’t being accepted and living freely, it is not only preventing them from moving forward but also from being their best selves both physically and mentally.
The indisputable reality is that the LGBTQ community – and transgender and non-binary individuals even more so – are facing mental health concerns at an alarming rate. The benefits of something as simple as a sense of belonging is lifesaving. In HCAI’s Youth and Family Program workshops and trainings, we ask parents, caregivers and educators to lead with empathy, kindness and acceptance. Diversity happens. Inclusion is a choice that can save a life.
It is critically important for LGBTQ youth to have access to resources, services and support that enables them to feel accepted and included. Even more, the support of one family member, friend, mentor, coach, or teacher could be the relationship that saves a life. In their 2019 Youth Mental Health Study, The Trevor Project found that LGBTQ youth who reported having at least one accepting adult were 40% less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year.
HCAI can be a resource to connect LGBTQ youth with the people and services they may need. If you know someone who is struggling with their mental health, be the person who makes a difference and act today.
As director of HCAI’s Youth and Families program, Tony Ferraiolo helps to provide a safe, supportive place for LGBTQ youth and their families. Tony joined the HCAI family in 2021. The program aims to build bridges within communities so every child can be their authentic self and walk a path of happiness filled with love and kindness. After years of struggling with his own gender identity, Tony transitioned in 2005. Realizing that he went through this difficult time not knowing any other transgender person, he made it his life purpose to support LGBTQ youth and their families. Tony is also a certified life coach, published author, and holds a teaching certification in mindfulness. He is co-founder of the Jim Collins Foundation, a nonprofit providing financial assistance for gender-confirming surgeries. Tony was the subject of the award-winning documentary A Self-Made Man. To learn more about Health Care Advocates International visit https://www.hcaillc.com/.
Editor’s note: This article mentions suicide. If you need to talk to someone now, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860. It’s staffed by trans people, for trans people. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for LGBTQ youth at 1-866-488-7386. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
The trial over Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for trans children recently began. As vulnerable children await to hear if their bodily autonomy will be stripped away, we should remember that cisgender children seek gender-affirming care with relatively little social stigma attached.
Twenty years ago, in rural Maine, I was one of them.
As a teen boy who identified as a boy — randomly sprouting breasts really, really sucked. I hated my body, wore a shirt in the pool, dreaded the school locker room, dressed in layers and walked hunched over to hide my shape.
When I was going through puberty, my body’s hormones were firing in every direction, and I started developing breast tissue similar to a girl’s. The technical term for this condition is gynecomastia, but most of us know it as the dreaded “man-boobs.” Up to 60% of teen boys have asymptomatic gynecomastia, according to the National Institutes of Health. Adolescent symptomatic cases, like mine, are less prevalent, but it affects about 65% of adult men.
As a teen boy who identified as a boy — randomly sprouting breasts really, really sucked. I hated my body, wore a shirt in the pool, dreaded the school locker room, dressed in layers and walked hunched over to hide my shape. I lived in constant fear of nipple-grabbers at school (teen boys are weird) and being outed as a “boob-haver.” I was uncomfortable and embarrassed 24/7 and had about zero percent confidence in myself, all because of the misalignment between how I felt I should look and how I actually looked.
When I confided in my conservative dad about what was happening, I was about 15. He saw how much this was holding me back, and we immediately went to a plastic surgeon for a consultation. A quick procedure and a few weeks of wearing an ace bandage later, I was flat-chested and finally had a body that looked like mine.
Trans children deserve the same consideration.
The next year was the best year of my life up to that point. I felt great. I felt confident. I made a ton of new friends, decided to get in shape, played a sport, put gel in my hair, started dating, partied — all the good stuff. For the first time, I felt and acted like an average teen instead of just barely participating out of aggressive discomfort and fear. I went from a guy who hated being seen to the most seen guy at school in no time.
Over the years, I’ve had medical procedures that saved my body, but my breast reduction saved my mind. Receiving care that affirmed my perceptions of my gender drastically changed my life for the better. I can attest that having mind-body alignment feels like a superpower.
The care that I received is just one small example of the gender-affirming care that cisgender folks receive regularly. We just call it “health care.” I got breast-tissue reduction surgery, but breast augmentation for cisgender women to conform to a perception of womanhood is even more common. Cisgender people alter their eyes, noses, lips, faces, hairlines, facial hair, body hair, height and even the nether regions to more closely align with our culture’s ideals of “the perfect man” or “the perfect woman.”
We frequently change or “enhance” our bodies hormonally, too. Kids have been dosed with human growth hormone since the ‘60s to make them taller, and men looking to achieve a cartoonish level of “manliness” get testosterone pumped into their veins. Hormone replacement therapy is commonplace for cis-women and menlooking to maintain or enhance their vitality in ways that align with their gender identities and gender ideals.
The care that I received is just one small example of the gender-affirming care that cisgender folks receive regularly. We just call it “health care.”
But I don’t see the care that affirms cisgender norms, expectations and functions, including for children, being questioned to the same extent as transgender care. By contrast, even the most basic of trans care — respecting gender identity and expression, puberty blockers and hormone therapy — is scrutinized endlessly and demonized to the point of being life-threatening for patients and doctors alike.
The double standard is glaring. And a recent viral interview between Jon Stewart and Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge about her state’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth points to a large part of the problem. Without being able to name a credible source, Rutledge claimed that 98% of youth with gender dysphoria would grow out of it. To which Stewart replied, “Wow, that’s an incredibly made-up figure.”
This idea of elected officials stripping away the autonomy of parents and children to make the kinds of medical decisions that would be best for them is appalling. As Stewart pointed out to Rutledge, the state is not even allowing parents to weigh their options based on the guidelines of the country’s top medical organizations.
We should think more deeply and compassionately about those seeking health care in the trans community as they suffer mind-body misalignment that many of us can’t even imagine. Having a little empathy is a good thing, and for those of us who get to bathe in the privilege of doing whatever the hell we want to our bodies, it’s probably even our responsibility.
Some folks may disagree that the care I received was gender-affirming, and I’ll admit I’m not an expert on health care — cis, trans or otherwise — but I am an expert on me, what I did and why I did it. For me, it was straightforward: I’m a dude, I was born a dude, I want to be a dude, and having breasts didn’t align with that for me. They needed to go for me to live a fuller life.
Some may also argue that societal pressures and expectations influenced my choices, and to that, I don’t necessarily disagree. Who knows, if breasts on a guy were the pinnacle of manliness in 2002, I might have rocked it, but surgery is a lot faster than turning the Titanic of culture, and I would have missed some of the best years of my life waiting.
Here’s what I know for sure, had I been trans and seeking the same surgery, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have been as easy as it was for me — 20 years ago in rural Maine or today.
Australia’s national men’s football team, the Socceroos, just became the first FIFA World Cup side to collectively speak up on human rights issues in Qatar. In a powerful video released on October 27, sixteen current and former Australian players, supported by the broader playing group, expressed their solidarity with migrant workers and LGBT people, making it clear that “universal values like dignity, trust, respect and courage should define football values.”
Players correctly assessed the situation in Qatar, where important reforms have been introduced but require better implementation. More importantly, they acknowledged that the decision to host the World Cup in Qatar resulted in preventable suffering and harm to “countless migrant workers,” who are not covered by recent reforms.
FIFA did not require Qatar to make labor rights commitments for the millions of migrant workers that FIFA knew Qatar would need to build the World Cup infrastructure.
“These migrant workers who suffered are not just numbers. Like the migrants that have shaped our country and our football, they possessed the same courage and determination to build a better life,” said president of the players union and former Socceroos player Alex Wilkinson
In the video, the Socceroos strongly endorsed an effective remedy for migrant workers who have been denied their rights, supporting a migrant workers center and the decriminalization of all same-sex relationships.
Qatari authorities responded to the video insisting that “no country is perfect,” and that “Protecting the health, safety, security and dignity of every worker contributing to this World Cup is our priority.” But they fell short of committing to set up a remedy fund for workers who faced abuses because reforms came too late or were weakly implemented.
In May, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, and a global coalition of rights groups, unions, and fans, launched the #PayUpFIFA campaign, demanding FIFA provide financial compensation for serious abuses against migrant workers, including deaths, injuries, unpaid wages, and exorbitant recruitment costs.
Unprecedented, bold acts of solidarity by both current and former Australian football players have set an important example. FIFA should follow up by announcing it will make right the abuses it has both enabled and will profit from.
