Trans rights

A useful explainer for bewildered relatives, etc.:

Clear definitions of categories matter in the law. The use of two sex categories to talk about a species is standard in biology. In many animal species, including people, however, there are individuals who are neither male nor female or who are sometimes both. In other species, there are two sexes, but they aren’t male and female (usually these are intersex and male). And a few species have only one sex (usually female). The biological reality is that “male” and “female” are not universal immutable biological classifications but rather descriptions of typical patterns in reproductive biology. These categories, male and female, are used by biologists who fully understand that they rarely represent all the relevant biological variation in any given species or identical sets of variation across different species.

Sex is not one single, simple, uniform biological reality. Thus, biology cannot be invoked as a basis for such in legal terms. That’s the bottom line.

Of course, men and women are not the same, and reproductive biology does structure important aspects of human bodies and lives. But none of the key biological systems associated with sex in humans (chromosomes, gonads, genetics, hormones, and so on) come exclusively in two “immutable” categories. Yes, most humans have either XX or XY chromosomes, but as Judge Reyes noted, some don’t. People with either testes or ovaries are most common, but some people have both, and a few have ovotestes. Usually those with testes can produce sperm, and those with ovaries produce ova—but not always. The chromosomes one has do not always predict one’s gonads or one’s genitals or even all the elements of one’s reproductive tract. It is true that most people have the “typical” combo of chromosomes, gonad and genitals, yet there are tens of millions of people alive right now who don’t. These people are not errors, aberrations or problems; they are a part of the range of variation in our species. They are all real people. In fact, many who have these variations don’t even know it. You might be one of them.

In making laws, then, we need to recognize what the actual range of variation in sex-related biology is and how it maps across everyone.

The CDC’s move to comply with Trump’s executive order is not just an attack on transgender inclusion—it is a fundamental assault on evidence-based policymaking. Public health data drives funding allocations, legislative protections, and medical advancements. Without accurate data on transgender individuals, lawmakers and health officials will be unable to craft policies that address the unique challenges faced by the trans community.

For transgender individuals, this erasure from federal data is more than an administrative slight—it is a direct threat to their health, safety, and survival. Without demographic representation, there will be fewer initiatives tailored to trans healthcare needs, fewer resources allocated for trans youth mental health programs, and fewer protections against discrimination in medical settings.

“This is an attempt to legislate us out of existence,” said a transgender activist who wished to remain anonymous. “They are trying to make it so that we don’t ‘exist’ in public data, and if we don’t exist in the data, we don’t exist in policy. If we don’t exist in policy, we don’t get protections. And if we don’t get protections, they are making us more vulnerable.”

The document, titled “Guidance for Visa Adjudicators on Executive Order 14201: ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,’” is ostensibly focused on preventing transgender athletes from traveling to the U.S. However, one section appears to apply far more broadly, targeting all transgender visa applicants—not just athletes. It mandates that “all visas must reflect an applicant’s sex at birth” and grants officials the authority to deny visas based on “reasonable suspicion” of a person’s transgender identity.

“Both immigrant and nonimmigrant visa applications request that an applicant identify their sex as either male or female. Moreover, all visas must reflect an applicant’s sex at birth,” the cable reads. When verifying an applicant’s sex assigned at birth, it states that the adjudicator can “rely on documents provided by the applicant,” but that “if other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicant’s sex, you should refuse the case under 221(g) and request additional evidence to demonstrate sex at birth.”

The memo goes on to state that applicants “misrepresenting their purpose of travel or sex” could be targeted for permanent ineligibility. It states that some common scenarios that would trigger this is if the misrepresentation is “material,” which it states would be the case for transgender athletes entering for an athletic competition. However, even this section does not limit it to transgender athletes - many other reasons for entry may be considered “material” for transgender entrants… for instance, transgender activists, immigrants fleeing oppressive regimes, and more could be swept up under this provision.

Around the world, gender-restrictive actors are organising to suppress gender-equality in schools. ALIGN’s review of the latest evidence reveals that anti-gender backlash in education is taking place from contexts as diverse as Afghanistan, Chile, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Uganda, the US.

This ALIGN Report focuses on the activities of gender-restrictive actors and organisations who seek to promote a narrow vision of gender relations through the education system. The research shows that their influence is expanding efforts to entrench patriarchal social norms and a binary view of gender, and gaining ground across the globe.

Common aims and tactics include: to remove comprehensive sexuality education from schools, restrict girls access to learning, reinforce patriarchal gender stereotypes in textbooks and reject gender-inclusive policies in school environments. These groups are sustained by deep financial networks which drive effective strategies to amplify misinformation, provoke parental protests, and impose traditional family values.

You'll need a box of tissues or three.

As I’ve written before, it’s hard to imagine a world in which this onslaught of restrictions and censorship remains exclusively focused on the small minority of people who call themselves transgender. Among Musk, Trump, and all their failsons, anti-transgender animus is a patriarchal desire for control and purity paired with misogynistic and racial dreams of a white and masculine re-ascendancy, the dawning of a walled-in golden age free of alien influences, deviant impulses, or human empathy. Those of us who reject our gender assignment are convenient scapegoats, vulnerable to misrepresentation and public shaming. But ultimately the rules we break are broken by all people to one extent or another, and the tighter those rules are enforced—by Trump or those he can successfully deputize as snitches, informants, and recruits—the more people will captured in their dragnet. 

[…]

The essentialist definitions provided by the Trump administration for “sex,” “man,” and “woman” are an effort to suggest they have no concern or regard for the categories of behavior and aesthetics that might come to mind when you hear the word “gender”—as one White House official unconvincingly told a reporter last week, “I don’t think anyone’s trying to do a dress code or anything like that.” But sex is not simply what’s between your legs and gender is not simply what you wear. The physical characteristics we associate with “male” and “female” are themselves broad, malleable, and overlapping. Particularly in the age of transvestigators—when the gender identity of women of color, in particular, is challenged if they fall outside the thin, European, and white ideal—such a judgment is clearly aimed at nothing as abstract as an “ideology” but against people and their deviant, literally non-binary bodies.

They do so not only out of an individualized hatred against a clearly labeled sexual minority but in defense of a faux-naturalized ideal, a vision of perfect manhood and womanhood born of nature yet clearly nonexistent without a police state enforcing it. This is why, as I wrote when a CPAC speaker called for “eradicating transgenderism from public life entirely,” the gender war is a forever war. They likely know this mythical ideal is beyond their reach. But by demonizing those who fall furthest from it—or, as trans people do, challenge the very notion of its inevitability—they can justify a permanent state of fear and persecution. 

In this instance and this instance only, let’s take Michael Knowles at his word. Shortly after telling a roaring crowd he’d like to “eradicate transgenderism from public life entirely,” he began threatening legal action against media outlets that characterized his demand as aimed at transgender people.

[…]

Trump unveiled last month a sweeping plan to “end left-wing gender insanity,” ranging from bans on gender-affirming care, a Constitutional amendment legally defining “sex” and implicitly defining “transgender” out of existence, and the establishment of an accreditation agency that will require teachers to provide students a “positive education about the nuclear family” and threaten prosecution against any who refuse. Combined with the 2023 state legislative session thus far, defeating this “transgenderism” is no slight project, requiring a lot of persecution, censorship, and punishment aimed at controlling behavior and speech which flouts the anti-gender right’s standards for how good boys and girls are supposed to conduct themselves.

In truth, however, even this totalizing approach to gender nonconformity is still too narrow. As Knowles himself has acknowledged, the focus of conservatism’s construction of cisgender, heterosexual gender identities must be far more ambitious than simply taking the country back to the relatively recent time period when a frequently bipartisan consensus enforced transgender people’s absence from public life; the first mistake was, in his telling, failing to sufficiently oppose second wave feminism. 

[…]

The vagueness and ubiquity of gender norms leaves this project with no certain end point or rubric for victory. While transgender people flout more of these rules than cisgender people—revealing them for the construct they are—most people break them in one way or another, and even our elimination (were such a thing even possible) wouldn’t suffice. We are all gender non-conforming in ways big or small, ranging from our relationship to reproductive labor and capitalism to how we present ourselves to the world. A campaign enforcing gender conformity, then, will expand well past the relatively small fraction of the population that calls themselves “transgender.” Labeling the anti-gender right as genocidal against trans people is, believe it or not, letting them off too easy. 

[…]

The experience of defying gender norms for amusement, convenience, or survival is a universal one even as specific populations are forced to do so more frequently and punished more harshly for it. Thus, a war against gender nonconformity holds all the promise for the authoritarian personality as a “war on terror,” a “war on drugs,” or a “war on crime”—an endless excuse for policing, surveillance, censorship, and violence.

Republicans for years have tried to legislate their personal beliefs about life beginning at conception. They’ve introduced versions of a bill called the Life at Conception Act 13 times since 2011. These efforts have almost certainly influenced the “conception” language in Trump’s latest executive action.

Dr. Richard Bribiescas, an anthropology professor at Yale University and the president of the Human Biology Association, said the order’s definitions of “sex” and “gender” ignore all kinds of variations that take place in human development.

“Woman/man, boy/girl are gender identities that do not necessarily align with biological characteristics of sex,” he said in an email. “Genders are components of human variation that are influenced by culture, identity, and many other non-biological factors. To illustrate the difference between sex and gender, we can talk about male/female chimpanzees (our closest evolutionary relative) but it would be non-sensical to discuss chimpanzee women, men, boys or girls.”

Trump’s definitions of “female” and “male” are also flawed, said Bribiescas, because he is tying them to something called “anisogamy” in biology, or the observation that females of some species, including humans, tend to produce larger gametes (the reproductive cells that come from germ cells) compared to males.

Anisogamy is not a universal rule in biology, he said. But Trump’s executive order defines females as people belonging to the sex that produces “the large reproductive cell” and males belonging to the sex that produces “the small reproductive cell.”

The size of a person’s gametes is “just one characteristic among many (ie., genetic, hormonal, developmental, physical) that is used to describe sex,” Bribiescas said. “Clearly, this order is not fully informed by current biological science.”

In short:

The Queensland government has announced a review into the evidence for stage one and two hormone therapies for children with gender dysphoria.

While the review is underway, a pause will be placed on new patients under the age of 18 from receiving hormone therapy in the state's health system.

What's next?

Health Minister Tim Nicholls says the pause will remain in effect until the government considers and acts on the outcomes of the review.

[last updated 23/01/25]

Wednesday 10 April 2024 saw the long-awaited publication of the final report of the Cass Review. This report was commissioned by NHS England, and provides a review of evidence plus recommendations regarding gender identity services for children and young people.

On publication, the Cass Review’s findings and recommendations were welcomed by the majority of UK media outlets, NHS England, the Editor-in-Chief of medical journal the BMJ, conversion therapy proponents such as SEGM, Sex Matters and Transgender Trend, plus spokespeople for the Conservative and Labour parties, who promised to ensure it will be “fully implemented”.

Conversely, the Review has been extensively criticised by trans community organisations, medical practitioners, plus scholars working in fields including transgender medicine, epidemiology, neuroscience, psychology, women’s studies, feminist theory, and gender studies. They have highlighted problems with the Cass Review that include substandard and inconsistent use of evidence, non-evidenced claims, unethical recommendations, overt prejudice, pathologisation, and the intentional exclusion of service users and trans healthcare experts from the Review process.

This post provides a round-up of links to written commentary and evidence regarding problems with the Cass Review, plus quotes pulled from each. In light of these, I believe that it would be extremely harmful to implement the Review’s findings in full.