BROADview in Brief
Deep breaths, people
The big news this week has been the New York Times’ coverage of Jamie Reed and what happened at the Washington University at St. Louis Gender Clinic. Azeen Ghorayshi does a deep dive, and, as Lisa has noted, the reporting is definitely getting more nuanced. However, it still has a ways to go--be sure to check out Lisa’s suggested edits to the story if you haven’t already.
I had to laugh at The Free Press’ snarky but true “We Lead, They Follow” tweet. I think what still disturbs me about some of the mainstream coverage as reporters try to correct course is that even now they aren’t accurately conveying the uncertain outcomes for these children, which were pretty comprehensively covered in the Porto Biomedical Journal back in 2017: as children move from puberty blockers to cross sex hormones, they will be sterilized; their developing sexuality--both mental and physical--is repressed by the blockers and their natural libido may be permanently thwarted; the blockers make later genital surgeries very difficult for males; and there are unknown outcomes for adolescent brain development. The original small Dutch study showing some positive mental health outcomes has never been replicated, and there’s no good evidence medicalization helps anyone.
Some progressives try to paint parents and politicians who are concerned about children’s healthy development as somehow “creepy,” but I don’t know a single adult transitioner who is sorry they had kids or sorry to have a healthy adult sex life. What has gone so very wrong in our society that we are now cutting the breasts off thousands of young American females before they even understand the breast as an erogenous zone? Why do journalists on the left dance around this, even as the new JAMA Network Open paper referenced by the New York Times noted there were 3678 gender-affirming surgeries for 12 to 18-year-olds from 2016 to 2019? It’s a safe bet that the numbers are going up.
And we take it to an extreme. In the UK, that can look like the recent disturbing case of AI, a mentally disabled young adult who was approved for medical transition despite limited cognitive abilities and multiple mental health crises. A similar story played out in the US a few years ago, when the mother of a young woman with Down Syndrome crowd-funded to have her daughter’s breasts removed.
Deep breath, Kate.
In other news, Bernard Lane wrote a helpful round-up of Republican court arguments defending red state restrictions on youth gender medicalization. As a person from the rational left, it’s nice to see conservative coordination on this issue, as the attorneys general from Alabama and fifteen other American states step in to support Missouri’s new law in an important amicus brief. I’m looking forward to when the subpoenaed material from WPATH and other affirming medical organizations is publicly released from multiple court cases. I hope the Unyielding Bicyclist will unpack it all for us when the time comes!
California continues to make headlines: first, in a horrendously sad story, Lauri Carleton, a shopkeeper near Lake Arrowhead, was murdered by Travis Ikeguchi for displaying a Pride flag outside her store. Ikeguchi had heinous anti-LGBT posts on his social media accounts. A Yolo County librarian made what I think will be a costly First Amendment mistake when he kicked a Moms for Liberty meeting out of the Davis, California branch for misgendering male athletes. And Temecula Unified became the fourth California school district to require parental notification of a school gender change.
Meanwhile, in rock ‘n’ roll news, school is no longer out for Alice Cooper—he’s read up and ready for his gender final exam: in a recent interview with Stereogum, he lays out that he thinks gender ideology is a fad and that a lot of what we’re telling young people is harmful. For that, Billboard magazine calls him anti trans and repeats extremist misinformation such as gender-affirming care improves mental health and WPATH doesn’t recommend genital surgeries for minors. Wrong and wrong.
Finally, Scientific American continues its abandonment of science with yet another article claiming to debunk ROGD. It’s a new cohort. It’s a different kind of patient. Why spend so much time fighting this reality instead of navigating it?
I had a reader remark that if you miss a couple of weeks of BROADview in Brief, it can be hard to catch up, and he’s not wrong. As Ferris Bueller (they/them) might say in their new movie, Ferris Bueller’s Vibe Check, “Gender moves pretty fast…if you stop and look around once in a while, you’ll completely miss it.” I get it. How do we help new or intermittent readers stay in the know without being overwhelmed? Should Lisa have a “Gender Quick-Start Guide” with just a few key essay and article links that are occasionally updated? Please share your ideas below.
Many thanks for the thoughtful points you make both in the comments and through this form. See you next week!
I think a "Quick Start" guide is a great idea. One feature that would be helpful in it: a list of the most frequently cited "pro-affirmation" studies, with a breakdown of their flaws. It may also be useful to include studies that are sometimes attacked by TRAs and LGBT advocates as being flawed, such as the Littman ROGD one and the studies on desistance, and acknowledge *their* strengths and weaknesses, too.
So many people argue the "pro" position by saying "studies show X and Y." We need to be able to respond by saying: "Alright, which studies are you talking about? Because that study you mention that is often touted as showing X? It actually shows Z."
The avoidance of the future sexual function and inability to breastfeed 'topics' is very disheartening. Some consistent facts and language on this topic may be helpful as yes, it can feel awkward to discuss a child's future sexual function. And perhaps this responsibility falls more heavily on women. But, if one believes that an 8 year old girl is not mature enough to say "I'm confident I won't care about having orgasms or breastfeeding" then awkward we must be. Perhaps that brings up another area for discussion: adults who are mocked as oppressive or disrespectful for understading child psychological development when they believe they have more foresight and better critical thinking than an 8 year old. In the rightful attempt to respect a child's autonomy (to perhaps pick out their own clothes and decide their own activities) it has gone too far. Enjoy your Fridays everyone.