BROADview in Brief

Psycho Killers and Gender Doulas

Pamela Colman Smith via Wikimedia Commons: The Fool from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck

As I write this In Brief, much of Maine is sheltering in place as a madman with an assault rifle remains at large after a shooting spree that killed 18 people and injured many more in Lewiston. The suspect seems to have targeted random townspeople, and according to NewsNation, he “recently reported mental health issues including hearing voices…he was also reported to have been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks during the summer of 2023.” In the depressingly predictable ritual of American mass-shooting reporting, far-left publications like The Advocate immediately comb the suspect’s social media to see if they can tie a rampage to anti-trans views. The idea is to show readers that a killer does not kill because he’s crazy and has easy access to guns. Rather, he kills because he’s a right-wing hater: right-wing people are inherently extremists, usually evil, often transphobic, and they are driven to murder by conservative comments on Twitter so free speech causes literal violence. 

And can I blame The Advocate when far-right publications like The Daily Wire play a similar but mirrored movie when the shooter is trans? 

In a sad demonstration of the horseshoe theory, at least the far right and far left agree on one thing: killers don’t kill because they’re crazy and have easy access to guns. However, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Americans actually do need to keep talking about gun access and gun violence as a social contagion.

Bates College is in Lewiston and is the current home of a surprising number of California students I know and probably some students and faculty you know or know of, too. Professor Tyler Austin Harper comes to mind, and he’s already written a frank essay on the shooting for The Atlantic. 

Moving on from psycho killers who may or may not be pro or anti-trans, what else happened this week in US gender news?

• If you haven’t already seen it, Lisa covered FAIR in Medicine’s first-ever exhibition table at the American Academy of Pediatrics conference in Washington, DC, last weekend. Check out her reporting here--it sounds like the responses were…complicated.

• A father is suing the New Jersey Department of Education and the Cherry Hill Board of Education for policies that encourage keeping students' gender identities secret from their parents. 

• Meanwhile, the march of New Jersey school districts rescinding these sub rosa policies continues, with the Sparta Board of Education joining the list.

• In a historic and ominous first for the American Academy of Pediatrics, Isabelle Ayala, a 20-year-old detransitioner from Florida, is suing the Academy (along with Dr. Jason Rafferty, Dr. Michelle Forcier, and others) because they “knowingly mislead the public in publishing and disseminating a fraudulent 'policy statement' on affirmative care.” Ayala was prescribed testosterone at age 14 after two appointments and a brief in-patient stay at a hospital in Rhode Island.

• J. Michael Bailey and Susana Diaz had their paper “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases” retracted by Springer in June, but it’s been re-published in the new Journal of Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences and is available here. 

In international news:

• Nurse Amy Hamm’s disciplinary hearing continued in Canada to determine whether she can keep her nursing license--my goodness, what a slow process! They started a year ago! As far as I can tell, her crime is that she uses sex-based pronouns on Twitter for transwomen and states that transwomen are men and shouldn’t be housed in female rape shelters. Am I missing something? Please share below! The big controversy now is whether the court will allow Canadian psychiatrist James Cantor to testify on Hamm’s behalf. Cantor mostly works with pedophiles now but has stepped up his expert witness work on gender. A subscriber shared a CBC profile of him that was published last week, noting that some people view it as a hit piece but that it was still surprising that the CBC allowed Cantor’s opinions to be shared.

• A British mother has won her case to block her ex-husband from taking their 15-year-old daughter to a private gender clinic to medicalize her identity. The order only lasts until the child turns 16, so the mother will return to court to seek a stay until she turns 18. This ruling may set a UK precedent for divorced couples when there’s disagreement over treatment for a gender-distressed minor.

• The Irish National Gender Service revealed that over 50% of Irish citizens seeking gender transition have an autism diagnosis. That’s even higher than they’ve seen in the UK, where 35% have an autism diagnosis.

• A British FTM filmmaker received £64,000 of public money to interview possible sperm donors for a live Netflix show. For some reason, this is controversial. 

• British writer and almost-therapist James Esses discussed the latest controversies regarding Scientific American magazine and its inclusion of trans pseudoscience for Spiked. 

• A subscriber shared a Sex Matters clip of a recent House of Lords medical language discussion, with Labour peer Dianne Hayter, Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town, having none of that “pregnant staff” obfuscation, thank you very much!

• In Australia, Bernard Lane reported that a draft private senator’s bill calls for practitioners to be struck off if they medically transition a minor.

Are you feeling stressed out by all this gender drama? I learned today that there is a hip new type of spiritual support out there that may be just what you need: a gender doula. In an earnest and in-depth interview with self-described doula Eli Lawliet, LA Times staff writer Laura Newberry revealed that Lawliet can help with everything from talking through weird feelings about gender to redoing your wardrobe. Lawliet will work with anyone “questioning, exploring, or transitioning gender,” and we certainly do a lot of questioning here. Newberry failed to mention that Lawliet also specializes in “gender expansive tarot” and a metaphysical practice called “snake medicine” (because it’s based on the shed cycle of a snake, not sure if snake oil is involved). Now you know, and perhaps you hear The Fool calling to your higher self to have your cards read. As Frank Lloyd Wright allegedly said, “If you tilt the whole country sideways, Los Angeles is the place where everything loose will fall,” and as a California resident, I have to say he wasn’t far off the mark. Hang tight lest you roll my way!

Please keep your head low, stay chill, stay safe, and share your thoughts in the comments below or through this form.

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With a grateful hat tip to the research assistance of Alejandra Q.