BROADview in Brief: Weekly News Roundup, 10/10

Dear SCOTUS, won't you come out to play?

Oct 10, 2025

Welcome to the restart of the weekly news roundup and non-gender recommendations—a tradition that started here, was briefly part of my former podcast, and which I’ve returned to doing here! I’ll make it free for another week, after which it’ll go behind a paywall for my paid subscribers, to whom I’m deeply grateful. (P.S.: I have a new gift for founding members: a hand-felted Chronika ornament for your Christmas Tree or Hanukkah bush—either an OY or a fried egg, your choice.) A paid subscriber hang is coming soon.

Non-gender recommendation of the week:

The documentary One to One, about John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s magical time of television-watching, activism, and music in New York City’s West Village. There’s so much to say about it, but I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just add that it made me think a lot about the scope of activism, the tendency for people to become radicalized, and how even the most brilliant people love to watch TV. Please watch it, and then let’s discuss in the comments.

And now, to the news:

The biggest development of this week, of course, was the conversion therapy case before the Supreme Court. The question before the Court was: Is therapy speech, in which case it’s protected by the First Amendment, or is it conduct, in which case the state can regulate it.

The problem with that question is that it’s both. The other problem: it’s not the right question. What we need to ask is: what do you mean by “conversion therapy?” As I wrote earlier this week, historically, that term had nothing to do with gender identity. And it’s appropriate to ban shock treatments to dissuade someone from being gay (if the medical or mental health communities didn’t stop the practices themselves). The problem is, the term has now concept-crept to include simply exploring why someone might want to transition. Read the transcript and listen to the oral arguments on SCOTUS’s site.

Meanwhile, a district judge upheld North Dakota’s ban on gender transition treatments for minors.

In other news, the Trump administration has been investigating whether gender-affirming practices at Philadelphia’s CHOP constitute fraud. Short answer: it sure seems so. They found that “between 2017 and 2024, CHOP providers diagnosed 250 minors with central precocious puberty at age 10 or older, ‘including numerous teenagers aged 14 to 18,’” per the Philadelphia Inquirer. You’ll recall that for puberty to be precocious, it has to start before normal puberty—typically before 8 in girls and 9 in boys.

The article also discusses off-label uses of hormones and blockers, noting that the practice is common. It then offers this framing:

We still really need media training on how to report this story. We’ve surfaced enough evidence to disrupt the “safe, effective, and medically-necessary” talking point, and to assert that medical associations are political lobbying groups, not non-partisan, patient-centered organizations. In addition, the pushback against these treatments may now be located within the Trump administration, but it’s impossible to ignore a the chorus of people who’ve been humming this tune—or caterwauling it—for years, including liberals, feminists, gay people and old-school transsexuals.

Well, progress nonetheless.

Headlines

What Comes After Gender Affirmation — Fall 2025 (The New Atlantis)
Judge halts New York county from enforcing transgender athlete ban after roller derby league sues — October 9, 2025 (AP)
Oregon’s transgender health care law faces obstacles two years on — October 9, 2025 (Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Transgender Person Can’t Adopt Kids: HC — October 9, 2025 (Times of India)
Pressured by Transgender Activists, Star Academic Backs Out of His Own Research — October 8, 2025 (The New York Sun)
Attorney General Ken Paxton Launches Undercover Operations to Infiltrate and Uproot Leftist Terror Cells in Texas After Increased Political Violence — October 7, 2025 (Texas Attorney General)
Long Island School District Slapped with NYCLU Lawsuit Over Transgender Bathroom Ban: “They Are Abusing Their Power” — October 7, 2025 (New York Post)
Efforts to Suppress or Change Gender Identity Prove Ineffective and Harmful — October 7, 2025 (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute)
Texas Tech System’s Vague Guidelines on Gender Identity Spur More Questions Than Answers — October 7, 2025 (Texas Tribune)
Some School Board Members Urge Minnesota to Comply with Trump Transgender Order — October 7, 2025 (MPR News)
Transgender Americans Ask Supreme Court to Leave Order in Place Allowing Them to Choose Sex Markers on Passports — October 6, 2025 (SCOTUSblog)
“New Report Says Cass Review Should Not Be Benchmark for Trans-Healthcare in Australia” — October 6, 2025 (Star Observer)
‘Ghosted by the one who did the mastectomy’: Detransitioners face ‘detransphobia,’ study finds — October 6, 2025 (National Post)
Trans Activists Hijack NHS Study — Gender-Curious Children — October 5, 2025 (Telegraph)
Can Conversion Therapy Be Banned? Colorado Faces Speech Test at the Supreme Court. — October 5, 2025 (New York Times)
Meloni’s Italy Looks to Restrict Talk of LGBTQ+ Sexuality in Schools — October 4, 2025 (Washington Post)
UCSF, CHLA emails describe scrubbed web pages, media threats, withheld study details on pediatric gender treatments — October 4–5, 2025 (Yournews.com)
“Exclusive: UCSF Emails — ‘Shoddy Gender Science,’ Child Sex Changes” — October 3, 2025 (Daily Caller)
“Exclusive: Detransitioner Sues Over Coerced Surgeries, Medical Malpractice” — October 1, 2025 (CatholicVote)
Transgender Scandal Documents Show UC San Francisco Doctors Gave Puberty Blockers to Children as Young as Nine — October 1, 2025 (Judicial Watch)

Videos

Mia Hughes’ talk on extreme overvalued belief, from the Genspect conference, is now on YouTube. This talk explains the group’s campaign to repathologize transgender identity.
SNL almost makes fun of the furor over JK Rowling’s standing up for women’s rights. Almost.

Events

10/19: DIAG and gender-critical meetup in Hudson NY. RSVP here (click “contact the organizer” to get verified. If you already know one of us, drop us a line to skip the verification!)

10/28: CAN-SG (Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender)’s Are academics allowed to talk about sex? A free online webinar on October 28, 2025, discusses obstacles faced by researchers in sex and gender due to pressures on academic freedom. Panelists, including experts in medicine, sociology, psychology, and philosophy, will share experiences and explore solutions

Coming up in LA: