Thursday Open Thread: Hopes for the New Year

What do you need, and want to see?

Photo by Roven Images on Unsplash

My family celebrated Chronika yesterday, as we will not be in town for the actual holiday, which apparently falls on December 25th each year and unfolds in a remarkably similar fashion to what some call Christmas. So that makes today just about New Year’s, based on the new rules of time created in my apartment.

It’s been quite a year, full of twists and turns and surprises.

We learned that WPATH had commissioned evidence reviews, lying in their “standards of care” and saying they didn’t, pressuring Johns Hopkins to suppress those reviews because they didn’t support the efficacy of youth gender medicine, or the notion that it’s “evidence-based and life-saving.”

We heard Chase Strangio admit in front of the Supreme Court that suicide among gender dysphoric youth is very rare—thus the “transition or die” narrative also faded.

We read an admission by the editorial board in The Washington Post that “Multiple European health authorities have reviewed the available evidence and concluded that it was ‘very low certainty,’ ‘lacking’ and ‘limited by methodological weaknesses.’ Last week, Britain banned the use of puberty blockers indefinitely due to safety concerns.”

Game on.

I’ve had far more parents reach out to me, suddenly aware that the assumption that their gender dysphoric child must get on blockers immediately, or even socially transition, is not rooted in science. I always make time to talk to these parents, explain the issues, and try to connect them to others and to unbiased resources to help them make the best decisions for their kids. I promise that next week I’ll finish a “rabbit hole 101” piece.

In the meantime, I want to thank the people who’ve stuck around here while I’ve been producing slightly less as I worked on the book. And I want to know: Where do you think we need to go now? What do people still need to know, to understand? What would you like to see happen in 2025?

My concern has been that cutting off the affirmation supply ignores the demand built up by the institutionalization of gender identity—in law, psychology, medicine, education, journalism. I am still dreaming of some kind of truth and reconciliation committee. I still want all the data. I still understand more about why this all happened than I do about exactly what happened. I want the whole truth.

But I also think we need more than repeal—we need replacements. We need new and better school guidelines. New and better medical and psychological guidelines. We need a plan for how to educate lawmakers about gender identity, and the consequences of threading it into law and policy.

Please leave your hopes, desires, fears, predictions in the comments. Happy new year.