BROADview in Brief

And around and around we go...

Photo by Ethan Hoover on Unsplash

We go up, we go down, we spin round…it was a fascinating week, as always, in genderland, even as we whirl our way to the end of 2023. Many Americans are already on winter break, but not the courts! Let’s take a look at the carnival of courthouse activity this week:

Arguably, the most significant ruling was the revival of Soule et al. v Connecticut Association of Schools et al. by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. As you’ll recall, that was the case brought by four Connecticut high school female athletes who were regularly trounced by two trans-identified male athletes in interscholastic track competitions from 2017 to 2019. They contended that this Connecticut high school athletics association misapplied Title IX by allowing trans students to compete based on their gender identity instead of their sex. A lower court judge had tossed the case out as moot: after all, the girls weren’t in high school anymore and would never race against these two trans runners again, so who cares? A smaller panel of the Second Circuit Court agreed. But in a “rare full meeting of all active judges on the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan,” the court ruled that the girls (now women) do have standing, and they’ve sent the case back to the original lower court judge to be heard. The wheels of American justice grind slowly--this could very well be the trans sports policy case that makes it to the US Supreme Court, but it could still take years for it to get there.

In other legal news:

• The Supreme Court of Virginia reinstated the case of high school French teacher Peter Vlaming, who was fired for refusing to use a student’s new gender pronouns based on his Christian beliefs. He had accommodated the student by using the new name and avoiding pronouns, but that wasn’t good enough for his school district. Vlaming’s case was initially thrown out before any evidence was presented in court, but he and his lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom will be heading back to trial to defend his “religious and philosophical” belief that biological sex is fixed and unchangeable. Yes, that’s a religious belief now, people.

• 19 liberal states and the District of Columbia have signed onto an amicus brief supporting a federal court ruling that currently blocks that Arkansas’ ban on youth gender medicalization.

• A Michigan family is suing the Rockford Public School District for secretly socially transitioning their 13-year-old daughter. This is yet another Alliance Defending Freedom case--what a boon gender identity ideology has been for that organization.

• In Oklahoma, the family of a trans-identified student is suing the Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education for their new rule prohibiting gender changes in school records.  

• The ACLU of Montana has filed suit on behalf of a “transgender man, a two-spirit Native American, a nonbinary person, an intersex individual, and a nurse practitioner” against the State of Montana for their new legal definition of sex as either male or female and based on a person’s biology at birth. Of course, my real question is what happens when they all walk into a bar, so if you have any ideas on that, let me know!

In sports news, there was a new research paper released this week in the BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine journal titled “Performance of Non-Binary Athletes in Mass-Participation Running Events,” which found that the performance differences between natal male and natal female non-binary athletes corresponded to their sex, not their gender identity. Shocker, I know. At first, I thought this was yet another example of the foolish science moment we find ourselves in, and, of course, it is. However, one of the authors made the point on Twitter/X that sports policies are being made based on gender identity, so this type of research is currently needed to clarify whether athletic performance is determined by sex, not gender identity. 

Speaking of research, it’s also worth checking out the new Sapir, Littman, and Biggs letter to the editor in the Archives of Sexual Behavior for a reanalysis of Jack Turban et al.’s claim that there is no data supporting the phenomenon of rapid onset gender dysphoria (spoiler alert: there is!): The U.S. Transgender Survey of 2015 Supports Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria: Revisiting the “Age of Realization and Disclosure of Gender Identity Among Transgender Adults.”

On the international front, our intrepid researcher Alejandra Q was overwhelmed by the news out of England this week, with the official release of the government’s draft non-statutory guidance on gender questioning children for schools and colleges [note: colleges here means 6th form or further education colleges in England, ie, an institution where students aged 16-19 study for advanced post-secondary exams and certifications or an institution that offers apprenticeships and other types of vocational training to secondary students].

Needless to say, the guidelines are controversial: teachers will not be required to use a student’s preferred pronouns or accommodate a social transition, teachers can call students “boys” or “girls” (yes, a British teacher got into hot water at a girls academy a couple of years ago for saying “good afternoon, girls” to a group of young females), children would be required to use bathrooms based on their biological sex unless that’s too distressing, in which case a school would make alternative arrangements for individual students that don’t impinge on sex-segregated spaces. But many Tories believe the guidelines leave too many loopholes, while trans activist organizations like Stonewall UK believe they’re “not fit for purpose” because they don’t require automatic gender affirmation.

There has been a lot of coverage, including from the BBC, The Times of London, and ITV News. You can also listen to Times opinion columnist Janice Turner discussing the new guidelines here—thank you to subscriber Sue for sharing. Take a look and see what you think: too soft, too hard, or just right? The British government will be taking feedback from the public until March 12, 2024.

• Also, in the UK, two teens were convicted for the murder of trans 16-year-old Brianna Ghey, and The Guardian looked carefully at why the prosecution did not consider this a hate crime as much as a crime of convenience. If you are familiar with the infamous British fox-killing barrister, Jolyon Maugham, you will see him apologize on the record for tweets he made during the trial in this report.

• .The Scottish government has decided not to appeal the loss of its case against the UK for vetoing gender recognition legislation in Scotland.

• Remember those new school policies in New Brunswick, Canada, mandating parental involvement in school social transitions? Yes, well, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is now suing to overturn those regulations.

• Bernard Lane expanded his beat from Australia to Germany as he reported on the first German government scientific report noting uncertainties around the use of puberty blockers, “It cannot be ruled out, for example, that puberty-suppression therapy could lead to a lasting impairment of psychosexual or psychosocial-cognitive development.”

• In Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe news, Unherd chose Dora Moutot’s June essay on the corruption of French feminism by American activism as one of their Best of 2023 essays (and yes, Moutot notes that the French have been hoist with their own petard, thanks to philosophers Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault).

• The World Health Organization announced that it will be developing trans health guidelines. Do you think these will be of any value? Here are the biographies of the people who will be developing them.

Before I go, I want to update some recent In Brief stories. First, the Catholic women’s college in Notre Dame, Indiana, that had said it would start considering transwomen/trans-identified males for admission has reversed that decision. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is still undecided on whether to sign or veto legislation banning youth gender medicalization in that state. He must make up his mind by December 29th. And finally, KCRW, the Santa Monica, California NPR station, broadcast an interview with Molly Hennessy-Fiske, the Washington Post journalist I mentioned two weeks ago who profiled detransitioner Prisha Mosley—thank you to subscriber Lisa for sharing that link, and I’m glad you didn’t yell at the radio once during the interview!

Have an excellent weekend, and please share your thoughts in the comments below or through this form. The regular In Brief will be on hiatus next week for the holidays. 

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I am indebted, as always, to the excellent research assistance of Alejandra Q.