BROADview in Brief

A breakthrough at the American Academy of Pediatrics, congressional hearings, Barbies, books, and a whole lot more

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: I normally finish rounding up the gender news on Wednesday nights in preparation for Friday’s publication, but we have late-breaking information this week. On Thursday, the American Academy of Pediatrics Board of Directors voted 16-0 to reaffirm its 2018 policy statement on the care and support of transgender children and adolescents. However, as Azeen Ghorayshi reports for the New York Times, it also voted to commission a systematic review of the evidence for so-called gender-affirming care, a step that has been so controversial to the organization that member pediatricians have not been allowed to bring forward a resolution asking for just such a review at the AAP’s annual meeting for at least the past two years. As you’ll note in the New York Times, a leading American expert on evidence-based medicine, Dr. Gordon Guyatt, criticizes the AAP for continuing to push current medical treatments before a review is complete. Evidence reviews typically have a very specific protocol and process, and the AAP is acting ahead of any results. However, they created their original policy statement without an in-depth examination of the evidence base, so this is hardly new.

It’s important to note that in the United States, the Endocrine Society already conducted a review of the evidence for the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. It found all of the research results to be very low or low quality, yet still recommended that endocrinologists continue the practice of providing these medications to adolescents. The AAP board vote does not necessarily mean anything will change. Nevertheless, it is a crucial shift that may help them move as an organization from no debate on gender-affirming care to dialogue. Many thanks to Dr. Julia Mason and the stalwart team of clinicians at the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine who have been working hard on this issue in the face of relentless misrepresentation and personal attacks over the years.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming: On July 27th, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government held a contentious hearing in DC on gender medical care and gender regulations in sport that included speakers on all sides. You can watch the discussion on C-SPAN, but Libby Palanza shares a balanced summary of key points for the Maine Wire here. Long and short, Republicans and Democrats deeply disagree on the issues (surprise!), and Democrats find it frightening to talk about--I think because they have been so misinformed about suicide risks that they’re convinced that frank conversations will literally lead to teenagers’ deaths.

In Oklahoma, Governor Kevin Stitt became the first US governor to bring in a Women’s Bill of Rights by executive order versus through the legislative process. The policy template is an interesting collaboration between the right-leaning Independent Women’s Voice and Independent Women’s Law Center (created by the Independent Women’s Forum) and the left-leaning Women’s Liberation Front. It has also been adopted in Kansas but will no doubt be under discussion in a number of state legislatures in the near future. 

Meanwhile, in Indiana, a federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that transgender students must have access to bathrooms based on their gender identity. So when will all this conflict head to the Supreme Court? This is a very good question with no real answers, as Morgan Watkins reports for NPR.

In other parts of the world, the French medical website Journal International de Médicine (JIM) published the results of a recent non-representative online survey of health professionals on the use of hormones for gender dysphoria in minors, and the overwhelming majority supported a ban. For context, JIM is owned by WebMD, which uses both Medscape and JIM to reach French medical practitioners, and JIM is read by approximately 350,000 of them. France is waiting for updated guidance due out in September on the medical transition of minors (Google Translate is your friend if your French is rusty).

While Barbie has been dominating movie screens in the United States, the name is back in the headlines in Ireland, as the Irish Mirror reveals that the infamous Barbie Kardashian has finally been moved to a men’s prison for safety reasons. It’s highly disturbing to read about the case, as Jo Bartosch noted in Spiked last March, so brace yourselves.

In a surprise move, the British progressive magazine The New Statesmen published a sex vs gender debate between evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and humanities professor Jacqueline Rose. Dawkins writes a clear, logical argument…Rose, not so much. Perhaps Rose was influenced by American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s May interview with sports journalist Stephen Smith which Colin Wright dissects in "Neil deGrasse Tyson Should Stick to Physics" on his Reality’s Last Stand substack this week.

You’d think open access to opposing viewpoints would be a cause worth fighting for by British librarians, but sadly this is not so. Craig Simpson writes in The Telegraph that guidance being sent to local libraries and shared across professional British library associations recommends that librarians be cautious about the purchase and display of gender critical titles because many in the LGBTQI+ community find them “offensive,” while simultaneously suggesting that librarians schedule drag queen story hours, shift to gender neutral toilets, and buy “two copies of as many [LGBT youth] titles as possible.”

Move over Rachel Dolezal, so sad, too bad Rebecca Tuvel, journalist Emi Tuyetnhi Tran covers “race change to another” (aka RCTA aka transracialism) and its increasing visibility on sites like TikTok for NBC News this past week. The experts she interviews hold some of the same positions I’ve seen in the past, namely that RCTA is not legitimate the way being transgender is (or should I call it sex change to another/SCTA?) because people have suffered trauma and oppression due to racism but apparently not due to sexism. The rebranding current RCTA/transracial practitioners are attempting is fascinating, as are the unusual rituals Tran brings to light, particularly the use of subliminals. It reminds me of what I’ve heard about the phenomenon of sissy porn, but to be honest, I have not wanted to sully my hard drive with that particular search. 

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