The 85-year-old self-described conservative had been invited by his grandson to a public hearing on a Republican-authored bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth in the state. He decided to make the short drive from his home in Milwaukee.
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For hours, Jones listened to the stories of kids who wanted to transition and said it seemed like âtheir brain was tearing them apart.â He now believes the decision to receive gender-affirming care should involve a child, a qualified doctor and a parent â not lawmakers. He likened the issue to lawmakers banning doctors from providing abortions.
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Jones said a 14-year-old transgender teen â one of the youngest speakers who advocated for their right to go on hormones â helped to change his perspective at the hearing. In their testimony, they shared that they had recently contemplated suicide.
âI started to listen to this kid, and it wasnât some kind of whim or something like that. This kid was actually suffering,â Jones said. âAnd I thought to myself, nobody has to do that. Youâre only a kid.â
The GOP-controlled committee voted to advance the bill. Republican lawmakers in the Assembly passed it last week.
âChildren are not allowed to get tattoos, sign contracts, get married, or smoke â so why would we allow them to physically change their gender?â Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, said in a statement.
Jones had a different take.
âAll of these kids, they deserve a chance to see where they belong,â he said.
Trans rights
âJust plain old Larryâ: A Wisconsin manâs testimony about gender-affirming care went viral. Hereâs his story.
This Is Wrong
in London Review of BooksThere are two significant problems with using gametes to define sex. First, no one checks gametes at the moment of sex assignment, let alone at conception (when they donât yet exist). They are not observable. To base sex assignment on gametes is therefore to rely on an imperceptible dimension of sex when observation remains the principal way sex is assigned. Second, most biologists agree that neither biological determinism nor biological reductionism provides an adequate account of sex determination and development. As the Society for the Study of Evolution explains in a letter published on 5 February, the âscientific consensusâ defines sex in humans as a âbiological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex.â They remind us that âsex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.â Interplay, interaction, co-construction are concepts widely used in the biological sciences. And, in turn, the biological sciences have made considerable contributions to gender theory, where Anne Fausto-Sterling, for example, has long argued that biology interacts with cultural and historical processes to produce different ways of naming and living gender.
The language of âimmutabilityâ belongs more properly to a natural law tradition in which male and female kinds are established by divine will and so belong to a version of creationism. They are immutable features of the human, as Pope Francis has affirmed. Trump speaks in the name of science, but the cameo appearance of the gamete theory notwithstanding, he does so effectively to insist that God decreed the immutable character of the two sexes, and that he, Trump, is decreeing it once more, either to echo the word of God, or to represent his own word as the word of God. Religious doctrine cannot serve as the basis for scientific research or state policy. But that what is happening in this executive order.
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When authoritarians promise a return to an imaginary past, they stoke a furious nostalgia in those who have no better way to understand what is actually undermining their sense of a durable and meaningful future. We find this in the discourse of the AfD in Germany, the Fratelli dâItalia, Bolsonaroâs followers in Brazil, Trump, OrbĂĄn and Putin. But we also see the anti-gender animus among centrists hoping to recruit support from the right in order to stay in power. When diversity, equity and inclusion become âthreatsâ to the order of society, progressive politics in general is held responsible for every social ill. The result, as we have seen in recent years, can be that popular support ushers in authoritarian powers who promise to strip rights from the most vulnerable people in the name of saving the nation, the natural order, the family, society, or civilisation itself. Ideals of constitutional democracy and political freedom are regarded as dispensable in the course of such campaigns, since the preservation of the nation must be put before all else: it is a matter of self-defence.
The New McCarthyism: LGBTQ+ Purges In Government Begin
in Erin in the MorningIn the early 1950s, a moral panic over gay people swept across America. LGBTQ+ individuals were cast as threatsâvulnerable to blackmail, labeled âdeviant sex perverts,â and accused of colluding with communist governments. Senator Joseph McCarthy, infamous for the Red Scare, pressured President Eisenhower into signing an executive order purging LGBTQ+ people from government service. With that signature, the campaign escalated rapidlyâup to 10,000 federal employees were fired or forced to resign during what became known as the Lavender Scare, a far less taught but even more devastating purge than the Red Scare. The episode remains a lasting stain on U.S. history. And now, it appears we are witnessing its revival: 100 intelligence officials were just fired for participating in an LGBTQ+ support group chatâan internal network not unlike employee resource groups (ERGs) at most companies.
The firings stem from out-of-context chat logs leaked by far-right commentator Chris Rufo on Monday. Sources tell Erin in the Morning that the chat functioned as an ERG-adjacent LGBTQ+ safe space, where participants discussed topics like gender-affirming surgery, hormone therapy, workplace LGBTQ+ policies, and broader queer issues. Rufo, however, framed these conversations as evidence of misconduct, claiming that âNSA, CIA, and DIA employees discuss genital castrationâ and alleging discussions of âfetishes, kink, and sex.â To Rufo and his audience, merely talking about being transgender and the realities of transition is enough to be labeled âfetishâ content.
Eisenhower and McCarthy would have killed for such an easily accessible list of LGBTQ+ federal employeesâand the flimsy pretext to purge them.
Within a day of the chat logsâ release, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that all participants in the âobscene, pornographic, and sexually explicitâ chatroom would be terminated.
Politics, Not Biology, Is Driving Legal Efforts to Classify Sex
in Scientific AmericanA 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 arenât male and female (usually these are intersex and male). And a few species have only one sex (usually female). The biological reality is that âmaleâ and âfemaleâ 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. Thatâs 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 âimmutableâ categories. Yes, most humans have either XX or XY chromosomes, but as Judge Reyes noted, some donât. 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 ovaâbut not always. The chromosomes one has do not always predict oneâs gonads or oneâs genitals or even all the elements of oneâs reproductive tract. It is true that most people have the âtypicalâ combo of chromosomes, gonad and genitals, yet there are tens of millions of people alive right now who donât. 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 donât 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.
Transgender Health Data Wiped from CDC Records by Trump Order
in TransVitaeThe CDCâs move to comply with Trumpâs executive order is not just an attack on transgender inclusionâit 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 slightâit 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.
âThis is an attempt to legislate us out of existence,â said a transgender activist who wished to remain anonymous. âThey are trying to make it so that we donât âexistâ in public data, and if we donât exist in the data, we donât exist in policy. If we donât exist in policy, we donât get protections. And if we donât get protections, they are making us more vulnerable.â
Marco Rubio May Have Just Banned Trans Foreigners Seeking Visas From US Entry
The document, titled âGuidance for Visa Adjudicators on Executive Order 14201: âKeeping Men Out of Womenâs Sports,ââ 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 applicantsânot just athletes. It mandates that âall visas must reflect an applicantâs sex at birthâ and grants officials the authority to deny visas based on âreasonable suspicionâ of a personâs transgender identity.
âBoth immigrant and nonimmigrant visa applications request that an applicant identify their sex as either male or female. Moreover, all visas must reflect an applicantâs sex at birth,â the cable reads. When verifying an applicantâs sex assigned at birth, it states that the adjudicator can ârely on documents provided by the applicant,â but that âif other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicantâs sex, you should refuse the case under 221(g) and request additional evidence to demonstrate sex at birth.â
The memo goes on to state that applicants âmisrepresenting their purpose of travel or sexâ could be targeted for permanent ineligibility. It states that some common scenarios that would trigger this is if the misrepresentation is âmaterial,â 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 âmaterialâ for transgender entrants⊠for instance, transgender activists, immigrants fleeing oppressive regimes, and more could be swept up under this provision.
Whose hands on our education? Identifying and countering gender-restrictive backlash
in Advancing Learning and Innovation on Gender Norms (ALIGN)Around the world, gender-restrictive actors are organising to suppress gender-equality in schools. ALIGNâs 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.
Defending Trans Lives In a Deep-Red State | "Seat 31" (Oscar Shortlisted)
in The New Yorker for YouTubeYou'll need a box of tissues or three.
The Gender War Is A Forever War, Continued
As Iâve written before, itâs 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 enforcedâby Trump or those he can successfully deputize as snitches, informants, and recruitsâthe more people will captured in their dragnet.
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The essentialist definitions provided by the Trump administration for âsex,â âman,â and âwomanâ 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 âgenderââas one White House official unconvincingly told a reporter last week, âI donât think anyoneâs trying to do a dress code or anything like that.â But sex is not simply whatâs between your legs and gender is not simply what you wear. The physical characteristics we associate with âmaleâ and âfemaleâ are themselves broad, malleable, and overlapping. Particularly in the age of transvestigatorsâwhen the gender identity of women of color, in particular, is challenged if they fall outside the thin, European, and white idealâsuch a judgment is clearly aimed at nothing as abstract as an âideologyâ 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 âeradicating transgenderism from public life entirely,â 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 itâor, as trans people do, challenge the very notion of its inevitabilityâthey can justify a permanent state of fear and persecution.
The Gender War Is A Forever War
for SubstackIn this instance and this instance only, letâs take Michael Knowles at his word. Shortly after telling a roaring crowd heâd like to âeradicate transgenderism from public life entirely,â he began threatening legal action against media outlets that characterized his demand as aimed at transgender people.
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Trump unveiled last month a sweeping plan to âend left-wing gender insanity,â ranging from bans on gender-affirming care, a Constitutional amendment legally defining âsexâ and implicitly defining âtransgenderâ out of existence, and the establishment of an accreditation agency that will require teachers to provide students a âpositive education about the nuclear familyâ and threaten prosecution against any who refuse. Combined with the 2023 state legislative session thus far, defeating this âtransgenderismâ is no slight project, requiring a lot of persecution, censorship, and punishment aimed at controlling behavior and speech which flouts the anti-gender rightâs 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 conservatismâs 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 peopleâs absence from public life; the first mistake was, in his telling, failing to sufficiently oppose second wave feminism.
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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 peopleârevealing them for the construct they areâmost people break them in one way or another, and even our elimination (were such a thing even possible) wouldnât 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 âtransgender.â Labeling the anti-gender right as genocidal against trans people is, believe it or not, letting them off too easy.
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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 âwar on terror,â a âwar on drugs,â or a âwar on crimeââan endless excuse for policing, surveillance, censorship, and violence.