Thanks for sharing, Susan. Indeed - can you imagine: "Harvard apologies unreservedly to Carole Hooven for the hurt and distress this has caused...this is not the Harvard we want to be."?
I shall miss your weekly reports. In an email box that is always overflowing, your updates have been one of the very few things I've always looked forward to reading each week. Thanks for your efforts to keep us informed. Good luck with all your future endeavors!
1. Does anybody know what's up with WY, SC , and KS , the three red states that don't ban "affirmative" care for minors? Are they working on it?
2. "Best practice surgical care for transgender youth". Is that the surgical care that "doesn't happen, nobody is operating on the kids" surgical care?
South Carolina is deep in the process. Wyoming is thinking about re-starting it, but it keeps passing their Senate and dying in their House without coming to a vote. The Kansas governor is a Democrat, and she vetoed at least four Republican bills last year re sex vs gender identity (sports, prisons, etc). The Republican legislature overrode her veto on every bill but not the one on the gender medicalization of minors.
Thank you, Kate. You've kept us so very well informed, and, I dare say, for those of us in the thick of it, made us feel less lonely and more sane, in our beliefs and our experiences. Thank you - and good luck with what's next!
Kate, your news briefs have been wonderful, this one included. Your contributions, with, as always, Alejandra’s terrific assistance, will be sorely missed. Here’s wishing you the very best of luck in whatever you do next, and I hope you’ll “report in” at some point and let us know what you’re up to. Thanks again, so very much, for all you do and all you are!
Kate, thank you for all your amazing work! You have done a great job. I can see how much time and work you put into this as a volunteer!
The WV bill raises a really interesting question: should cueing gender dysphoria ever be the goal? Obviously, trans-activists would say no, it's impossible to cure, and even if you could, it's genocide or trying to get rid of trans people. Reading this just now it occurred to me for the first time to ask if the "exploratory therapy" approach promoted as the reasonable alternative ever has curing gender dysphoria as a goal, and if it doesn't (ie, it's only about exploring distress and hoping dealing with distress indirectly addresses gender dysphoria), how do we feel about that? Are we allowed to think curing GD is the ultimate goal? Are therapists ever allowed to directly address it or must it always be an indirect, sideways approach to be considered ethical even among therapists who don't agree with the affirmation only approach? It reminds me a lot of the autism activism that sees a goal of curing autism (sometimes even treating the symptoms of autism) as a form of eugenics or certain Deaf activists who see cochlear implants as an attack on their culture. I haven't really thought about this. Has Lisa or other writers explored this angle?
Just to clarify: I understand that directly addressing and talking about gender with an individual client might not be the right approach for that client. I'm referring to the goal being to cure or at least greatly reduce gender dysphoria (like your goal would be for OCD or depression) as the goal, no matter how you go about it
My thought on this (if it matters at all!), as a parent of a trans-identified teen who has been researching and thinking about this for over 4 years, is that "dysphoria" is severe distress, whether it is related to "gender" or anything else. Is the goal of therapy to help alleviate distress? I would think so. Realistically, we cannot "cure" distress completely, because life isn't quite that tidy. There will always be some distress over, well, most things. Being a woman is hard, and being a man is hard. It will bring distress. The point of a "cure" is to relieve the distress enough so that one can function in life and have more joy than pain - without having to lie about one's biology and medically alter one's body parts. Anyone who thinks that is a bad thing is, in my humble opinion, not thinking straight.
Lastly, to be clear, nobody has to be stereotypically feminine or masculine to be relatively at peace with their biological sex. The goal of therapy should never be to get a person to abandon their naturally-occurring tendencies toward the "masculine" or the "feminine." Gender conformity is never the goal. Rather, the goal is simply to allow a person to move through life without hating and wanting to destroy biological characteristics of their body.
This is such a good response! Your thoughts definitely matter on this! It really drills down into you and communicates my jumbled thoughts so much better than I did. And you said something I didn't say but should have: that the goal isn't to change anything about how you express gender or what gender expressions you most relate to, but to reduce the distress that's getting in the way of functioning and feeling reasonably good about yourself.
From the article about 25% of Gen Z's identifying as LGBT: "In its LGBTQ identity breakdown, the report found 72% of Gen Z adults identified as straight, 15% as bisexual, 5% as gay or lesbian and 8% as something else. "
So... "Bisexual" often times means "Straight, but I just don't want to be boring". Ditto for "Queer", which may be another few percentage points of the "Something else". Which makes close to 90% straight people. I think we're not changing that much from previous generations. See this article: https://www.cspicenter.com/p/born-this-way-the-rise-of-lgbt-as-a-social-and-political-identity
"The author provides a high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves."
This teacher in Rhode Island, USA snagged a rare video of the trans suicide moral panic in action - a local school board member gaslighting the rest of the board:
Dear Kate, Thanks so very much for your wonderful work! I wish you the best in your future projects and family life. I have no doubt that your efforts have probably inspired a lot of your audience to step up and do more to point to the things that too many have been ignoring for too long. I imagine what you've done here will continue to have effects beyond what you might have imagined, so in that sense you haven't stopped doing this work really. You've seeded the storm, and now you can busy yourself with other tasks, knowing that the rain is coming soon.
I am late to the comments this time but wanted to share that I am really going to miss your column Kate. Thanks so much for bringing it to us. I hope we'll see you active in the comments of future Broadview articles.
Hi, folks: for anyone here interested in the Jo Phoenix case, it is now an even bigger win than it was. Her former employer, the Open University, not only will not appeal, but also is committing to use the damning judgment and initiate an independent review to change how it is operating. You can read the letter from the Vice Chancellor here: https://ounews.co/around-ou/ou-speaks-out/a-statement-from-professor-tim-blackman-vice-chancellor-of-the-open-university-regarding-the-recent-employment-tribunal-judgment/. More of this, please, and how I wish some of this will start to happen in the US.
Thanks for sharing, Susan. Indeed - can you imagine: "Harvard apologies unreservedly to Carole Hooven for the hurt and distress this has caused...this is not the Harvard we want to be."?
💯💯💯💯💯
I shall miss your weekly reports. In an email box that is always overflowing, your updates have been one of the very few things I've always looked forward to reading each week. Thanks for your efforts to keep us informed. Good luck with all your future endeavors!
Thanks, Kate. You will be missed!
A couple notes from the map:
1. Does anybody know what's up with WY, SC , and KS , the three red states that don't ban "affirmative" care for minors? Are they working on it?
2. "Best practice surgical care for transgender youth". Is that the surgical care that "doesn't happen, nobody is operating on the kids" surgical care?
South Carolina is deep in the process. Wyoming is thinking about re-starting it, but it keeps passing their Senate and dying in their House without coming to a vote. The Kansas governor is a Democrat, and she vetoed at least four Republican bills last year re sex vs gender identity (sports, prisons, etc). The Republican legislature overrode her veto on every bill but not the one on the gender medicalization of minors.
Thank you, Kate. You've kept us so very well informed, and, I dare say, for those of us in the thick of it, made us feel less lonely and more sane, in our beliefs and our experiences. Thank you - and good luck with what's next!
Kate, your news briefs have been wonderful, this one included. Your contributions, with, as always, Alejandra’s terrific assistance, will be sorely missed. Here’s wishing you the very best of luck in whatever you do next, and I hope you’ll “report in” at some point and let us know what you’re up to. Thanks again, so very much, for all you do and all you are!
"MAP" is a very unfortunate acronym for a LGBT thinktank.
Very unfortunate, hadn't thought of that.
I don’t get it...?
MAP is also used as a euphemism for minor attracted persons.
It's what we sometimes call hiding in plain sight.
Oh, ew! 🤮 Omg 😬
Kate, thank you for all your amazing work! You have done a great job. I can see how much time and work you put into this as a volunteer!
The WV bill raises a really interesting question: should cueing gender dysphoria ever be the goal? Obviously, trans-activists would say no, it's impossible to cure, and even if you could, it's genocide or trying to get rid of trans people. Reading this just now it occurred to me for the first time to ask if the "exploratory therapy" approach promoted as the reasonable alternative ever has curing gender dysphoria as a goal, and if it doesn't (ie, it's only about exploring distress and hoping dealing with distress indirectly addresses gender dysphoria), how do we feel about that? Are we allowed to think curing GD is the ultimate goal? Are therapists ever allowed to directly address it or must it always be an indirect, sideways approach to be considered ethical even among therapists who don't agree with the affirmation only approach? It reminds me a lot of the autism activism that sees a goal of curing autism (sometimes even treating the symptoms of autism) as a form of eugenics or certain Deaf activists who see cochlear implants as an attack on their culture. I haven't really thought about this. Has Lisa or other writers explored this angle?
Just to clarify: I understand that directly addressing and talking about gender with an individual client might not be the right approach for that client. I'm referring to the goal being to cure or at least greatly reduce gender dysphoria (like your goal would be for OCD or depression) as the goal, no matter how you go about it
My thought on this (if it matters at all!), as a parent of a trans-identified teen who has been researching and thinking about this for over 4 years, is that "dysphoria" is severe distress, whether it is related to "gender" or anything else. Is the goal of therapy to help alleviate distress? I would think so. Realistically, we cannot "cure" distress completely, because life isn't quite that tidy. There will always be some distress over, well, most things. Being a woman is hard, and being a man is hard. It will bring distress. The point of a "cure" is to relieve the distress enough so that one can function in life and have more joy than pain - without having to lie about one's biology and medically alter one's body parts. Anyone who thinks that is a bad thing is, in my humble opinion, not thinking straight.
Lastly, to be clear, nobody has to be stereotypically feminine or masculine to be relatively at peace with their biological sex. The goal of therapy should never be to get a person to abandon their naturally-occurring tendencies toward the "masculine" or the "feminine." Gender conformity is never the goal. Rather, the goal is simply to allow a person to move through life without hating and wanting to destroy biological characteristics of their body.
This is such a good response! Your thoughts definitely matter on this! It really drills down into you and communicates my jumbled thoughts so much better than I did. And you said something I didn't say but should have: that the goal isn't to change anything about how you express gender or what gender expressions you most relate to, but to reduce the distress that's getting in the way of functioning and feeling reasonably good about yourself.
Thank you!!!!
From the article about 25% of Gen Z's identifying as LGBT: "In its LGBTQ identity breakdown, the report found 72% of Gen Z adults identified as straight, 15% as bisexual, 5% as gay or lesbian and 8% as something else. "
So... "Bisexual" often times means "Straight, but I just don't want to be boring". Ditto for "Queer", which may be another few percentage points of the "Something else". Which makes close to 90% straight people. I think we're not changing that much from previous generations. See this article: https://www.cspicenter.com/p/born-this-way-the-rise-of-lgbt-as-a-social-and-political-identity
"The author provides a high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves."
Wow, this is extremely insightful! Thank you!
This teacher in Rhode Island, USA snagged a rare video of the trans suicide moral panic in action - a local school board member gaslighting the rest of the board:
https://twitter.com/RamonaBessinger/status/1751005197793464718
Dear Kate, Thanks so very much for your wonderful work! I wish you the best in your future projects and family life. I have no doubt that your efforts have probably inspired a lot of your audience to step up and do more to point to the things that too many have been ignoring for too long. I imagine what you've done here will continue to have effects beyond what you might have imagined, so in that sense you haven't stopped doing this work really. You've seeded the storm, and now you can busy yourself with other tasks, knowing that the rain is coming soon.
I am late to the comments this time but wanted to share that I am really going to miss your column Kate. Thanks so much for bringing it to us. I hope we'll see you active in the comments of future Broadview articles.
Thank you, Kate!
Thank you , Kate! Your gender roundups were my must-reads. Good luck with all your job changes. You are an inspiration to me.
Thanks Kate -- all the best. We will miss the updates. Fridays will not be the same.....