BROADview in Brief

What's Been Going on in Gender Land?

BROADviewers, please welcome Kate Parker to the fold. She’s going to be working on our weekly roundups (with some headline aggregating help from another woman who chooses to remain anonymous). You may have recently heard Kate on Gender: A Wider Lens. She is deeply knowledgable about schools, books, gender, and parenting trans kids and will be sharing her skills and wisdom with us. If you have any headlines, videos, or studies you think should go in future roundups, you can send them here. Thanks!

—LD

No Way…to watch? As noted on BROADview earlier this week, under pressure from the activist group Queer Trans Project, AMC canceled the June 21 screening of No Way Back: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care (previous title: Affirmation Generation). Newsweek covered the controversy pretty well, and I particularly appreciated their use of quotation marks around the term “anti-trans.” Those who are concerned about the weak evidence base for the medicalization of trans youth often consider themselves to be the pro-trans faction, and see organizations like Queer Trans Project—which try to suppress the open review and debate of trans medical care—as being ironically anti-trans. Using quotation marks is one way for journalists to handle the discrepancy, although it would be even better to simply describe the conflict and drop the labels. We’ll see if that shifts over time. In the meantime, you can get updates on when the documentary will be available again here.

Another documentary, from Epoch Times, quietly premiered at the Manhattan Film Festival last week. Maybe quiet is key? If you’ve seen it, tell us about it in the comments.

Red and blue states in the USA continued their sometimes surreal gender proxy battle. California pushed the boundaries of government intervention in parental rights through bills such as AB 957, which would use a parent’s affirmation—or lack thereof—as a criterion in custody battles, and could lead to non-affirming parents losing custody. We already know that’s been happening.

This despite the fact that, according to a recent poll byHarvard Harris, 67 percent of Democrats don’t believe children under 18 should receive gender surgeries or puberty blockers. Some 78 percent of all voters agree. In fact, per an op-ed by Wilfred Riley in Newsweek, Americans are getting more conservative on this particular issue. (Funny how saying biological sex is real is now considered conservative.) People of color in particular are cooling to gender identity ideology, per a recent study.

Meanwhile, Tennessee ordered the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to turn over its transgender patients’ medical records, becoming the latest conservative state to open a transgender medical billing fraud investigation.

Where will it all end? Perhaps the blue and the red can come together to agree that British educators have lost the plot when it comes to taking children who identify as horses out for a canter while at school, as The Telegraph has been reporting this week.

A few things I’ll note for Americans: while the high school cat litterbox story over here was widely debunked last year, anecdotally, there are teen furries who are publicly, well, out in US high schools. (If you’ve ever wondered what that + includes in LGBTQIA+, this is one of the tamer subgroups, if you’ll excuse the pun.) But that is not the same as being a “therian”—genuinely believing you’re an animal—which is what is being described in British media. That is pretty typical behavior for preschoolers, but what happens when you tell little Jane that since she thinks she’s a cat, she really is a cat?

We may find out thanks to our friends across the pond, and its parallels to early gender affirmation are hard to miss. Of course, this is being covered as part of a larger education story in England, with yet another secret recording of a teacher, this time demanding that two 13-year-old girls toe the gender ideology (and therian) line or find a different school. Some Brits seem amazed at how these students stood up for themselves, but I think I follow too many tough-as-nails British women online to be surprised that some of them develop their nerves of titanium in their early years. 

More transition regret continues to make the news this week, from new lawsuits like this one against the healthcare behemoth Kaiser, to Maine blocking a detrans care bill, to personal testimonies like the now-hidden vlog from yet another new detranstioner, who was featured as a minor in an MTV doc about trans kids. The young people who go public with their personal histories deserve respect, sensitivity, and a lot of gratitude for raising awareness. Instead their stories are often picked up by the tabloids and sensationalized (no, I won’t link in this case). What are some things to pay attention to as these narratives unfold? For one, the intense physical harm that can happen when online influence melds with the sloppy practice of affirmation-only therapeutic and medical interventions, leading to some very young teens and adults feeling shell-shocked at what they’ve done “to themselves.” I put the latter in quotes since they didn’t actually do anything to themselves, as will no doubt be clear as more malpractice cases come forward.

Meanwhile, a new study apparently “confirms” the benefits of gender medical interventions. It isn’t linked to in this article, which says: “One study finds that when trans men get immediate access to hormone/testosterone therapy as part of a gender-affirming treatment plan, their mental health improves markedly. Another finds that when trans teens embark on hormone therapy they rarely, if ever, regret their decision.” The study followed 64 people over three months. Those who got the interventions they wanted felt better. Those who didn’t get what they wanted felt worse. They might also feel just as good with an anti-depressant or a new jogging regimen. And I believe several European countries have systematic evidence reviews to show the study authors.

But, according to The Spectator, our problem is “US insanity on the issue.” “Everyone seems to be embracing the wave of caution on medical treatment of gender dysphoric minors — except for the United States,” they write in this excellent article which, I might add, is very, very similar in scope to what Lisa just submitted to The New York Times, and which they rejected. “The political left in the United States typically heralds Europe, and especially the Nordic countries, as a beacon of progressivism due to its embrace of socialized medicine and other redistributive economic policies. But they’ve been uncharacteristically silent about how government-run healthcare systems across the pond have turned their back on the idea that there is any medical consensus on how to treat children with gender dysphoria.” Yes, indeed.

If you’re paying attention to how extremist political ideas impact the sciences—this time from the left—there’s a terrific long read that came out this week in Skeptical Inquirer. “The Ideological Subversion of Biology,” by University of Chicago Professor Emeritus Jerry Coyne and Williams College Professor Luana S. Maroja, delves deep into the real-world consequences of hiding scientific truth and suppressing research in a way that’s both accessible and enlightening. Yes, it’s detailed, and yes, it’s worth it, not least because they have a frank and straightforward discussion about challenging topics in biology that I’ve felt uncomfortable about myself.

Last week Lisa mentioned that Genspect has formed The Killarney Group. This week, I’ll add to the Genspect news with their announcement that they’re holding their next conference the weekend of November 4th in Denver—again as a parallel alternative, this time to the USPATH conference. They’re starting to announce their presenters, and you can keep up with the latest info by signing up for updates on the Genspect website. 

For a deeply entertaining and disturbing look at how media style guides are reflecting and encoding gender identity ideology, check out journalist Gerald Posner’s detangling of the AP’s Style Guide.

From the Johns Hopkins LGBTQ Glossary to the latest trans polling, there’s always more to discuss with the latest gender news. What have you been reading, watching, listening to? Please add in the comments below!