BROADview in Brief
A trifecta of harm
The fallout in Missouri from Jamie Reed’s disturbing allegations about the care young patients received at the Washington University in St. Louis Transgender Center continues this week. The Center announced that it will completely stop providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children, even those who currently fall under a legal exemption for continuing care. Missouri’s recent law banning the gender medicalization of minors, SB 49, also allows gender clinic patients to sue until 15 years after they turn 21 or from the date of harm, whichever is later. As the Center put it, that creates an “unsustainable liability for healthcare professionals and makes it untenable for us to continue to provide comprehensive transgender care for minor patients without subjecting the university and our providers to an unacceptable level of liability.” It’s so strange that these clinicians seem to have suddenly lost confidence in the long-term benefits of the care they’re providing.
Perhaps this happened when doctors at the Transgender Center realized they couldn’t provide their legal counsel with good evidence for their existing interventions. We can only speculate, but in the continuing saga of low-quality gender affirmation research, Leor Sapir reported for City Journal on the latest JAMA Open Network study that claims to show benefits for early access to testosterone for transmen. TLDR: nope.
Meanwhile, Christina Buttons shared that the fifth detransitioner lawsuit against the medicalization of minors has been filed, this time against doctors and therapists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Luka Hein asserts that at the age of 16 and at a very difficult time in her life, practitioners pushed her to undergo a double mastectomy and start cross-sex hormones, causing her to experience permanent physical and emotional harm. I have a feeling we’ll stop counting the lawsuits individually soon.
Do I need to mention that gender affirming care, parental rights, and transgender athletes remain hot topics across the US? They do, as you can see here in Kentucky and Tennessee, Maryland, and Illinois. And in breaking news from California, two teachers in the Escondido Union School District near San Diego have won a preliminary injunction in federal court against the Escondido Union School Board. That will stop the enforcement of a school board administrative regulation requiring that teachers hide student gender transitions from their parents. The entire ruling is well worth the read and includes important testimony from former USPATH president and current whistleblowing psychologist Dr. Erica Anderson.
The decision, by controversial federal judge Roger T. Benitez, concludes, “The school’s policy is a trifecta of harm: it harms the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention to determine if the incongruence is organic or whether it is the result of bullying, peer pressure, or a fleeting impulse. It harms the parents by depriving them of the long recognized Fourteenth Amendment right to care, guide, and make health care decisions for their children. And finally, it harms plaintiffs who are compelled to violate the parent’s rights by forcing plaintiffs to conceal information they feel is critical for the welfare of their students -- violating plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.” We’ll see how this plays out in the continuing legal battles between pro parents’ rights California school districts and the pro secret transition California Attorney General.
It’s fascinating to see religious groups within the same denomination go different directions on gender. The formerly single sex Catholic colleges in Minnesota will now admit students based on gender identity, not sex. But it’s quite clear that that wouldn’t fly in Cleveland, as the Cleveland Catholic Diocese says no to rainbow flags, social or medical transition, and gender pronouns in its schools. The latter is probably the more common Catholic school stance, but Pope Francis tries to walk a centrist line when it comes to LGBT inclusion in the Catholic Church, as Christopher White noted in the National Catholic Reporter last month.
To our north, some Canadians are celebrating that the Conservative Party of Canada has overwhelmingly passed two resolutions against gender identity ideology: one that supports a ban on the gender medicalization of minors and another that asserts that women have the right to single sex spaces and services. But what stance will Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre take? Reporting for the CBC, Catherine Cullen says it’s too soon to say. And is there even a chance that Canadian Conservatives could win in upcoming elections? Stephanie Taylor discusses the possibilities here for The Canadian Press.
In a bizarre twist on the other side of the Atlantic, the British conservative government commissioned an inquiry into materials being used for sex ed in schools after much parental hue and cry about a lack of transparency…only for the Education Secretary to announce that she would not share that panel’s findings and recommendations. Hunh? Also in the UK, Katie Strick interviewed fellow journalist Hadley Freeman on women and cancel culture for The Evening Standard, and a subscriber shared Jo Bartosch’s exasperated essay in Spiked on the bias of British museums when it comes to gender activism, particularly in light of the latest demonstration against Sex Matters at the People’s History Museum in Manchester (Helen Joyce writes about that here).
Speaking of England, I’ve been listening this week to the excellent audiobook version of When Kids Say They’re Trans with its lovely English-accented narrator. I’ve been mildly traumatized by the British pronunciation of a wifi router as a ‘rooter’—which calls plumbing blockages to my mind, along with sexist ads from olden times—but I highly recommend its practical and compassionate advice for readers with trans-identified kids in their families.
With the amount of material our intrepid researcher Alejandra Q gathers each week, we could be forgiven for thinking that the Western world does nothing but navel gaze on gender these days. I’m so happy to synthesize the news here, but what really intrigues me is the ways the current conflicts about gender may be reflecting larger patterns of human beliefs and behaviors over time. On an individual scale, I found this excellent older episode of This Jungian Life, but I’m looking for a discussion that steps back to reflect on what gender may be metaphorically representing in current human society as a whole. Any suggestions?
In the meantime, many thanks to subscriber Steersman for sharing what looks to be a highly relevant academic conference being held in New Mexico at the end of this month, Sex/Gender Differences: The Big Conversation. Organized by Professor Marco del Giudice from the University of New Mexico with the Santa Fe Boys Educational Foundation, they’re bringing together global experts in evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and more with a wide range of intellectual views on the intersection of sex and gender. Most of the speakers have a “more light, less heat” approach to the complicated issues involved. You can attend the conference online—it’s free, but you do have to register.
Please share your thoughts, insights, and further information in the comments below and through this form. See you next week!
With much appreciated research assistance from Alejandra Q.
Wow, thank you for another information filled and action packed episode of Broadview in Brief! I love particularly your rumination, which I have been curious about as well: “but what really intrigues me is the ways the current conflicts about gender may be reflecting larger patterns of human beliefs and behaviors over time.” I do think, as a society, we are vastly underestimating the cascade of traumas arising out of living through the pandemic, and historical analogues could have much to teach us here.
There is a post by Colin Wright that connects to this, and I have been wondering ever since I read it what lessons we might learn from historic examples, such as the huge rise in spiritualism in the wake of the trauma of WWI, the Scopes trial era, and, related to that, the more recent case Wright describes in the linked article, from which this excerpt is taken:
“In the 2005 case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, plaintiffs contested a Pennsylvania school district’s policy that mandated teaching the religious concept of Intelligent Design (ID) alongside evolution in biology class. Biologists were summoned to defend the extensive evidence supporting evolution and explain how ID does not meet the fundamental standards of the scientific method: ID is unfalsifiable and relies on supernatural explanations that fall outside the purview of science. . . .
“While both arguments highlight genuine complexities within biology, they misconstrue the actual scientific understanding. In the Kitzmiller case, the presiding judge, a Christian appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush, saw through the ruse and ruled against teaching ID as science, stating that “ID is a religious view . . . and not a scientific theory.” The denial of biological sex is no different, and its societal impacts are more pervasive and harmful than the denial of evolution.”
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-sex-binary-on-trial
Kate, I think with this you have hit on a particularly rich, untapped vein to pursue, and I look forward to learning anything further you, and others here, discover.
Kate, Another thought on the question you pose about societal changes, I am reading Eric Hoffer's the True Believer (1951) and think that while it's outdated in some ways, he was really on to something in terms of understanding how societal change happens and in particular how mass movements are fueled. Here's a quote, “There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived.” I wish Hoffer were around today as I'd be very interested in his thoughts on gender!