Where should Gavin Grimm, a Transgender Boy, use the bathroom? When you were a kid like Gavin, you wouldn’t believe it

It is the middle of the academic year in a small town in Virginia. Dozens of speakers have gathered at a school board meeting for their chance to comment on the board’s most burning issue: Where should Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, use the bathroom?

I had become the agenda item and the subject of headlines not just in my hometown, but across the country. I was called a freak by parents of kids I grew up with at a school board meeting and they were talking about my private parts in public. They would go to a lot of effort to cause harm to a child.

My activism on transgender rights led me to write a children’s book with co-author Kyle Lukoff called “If You’re a Kid Like Gavin,” detailing my battle for equality and freedom. I’m hoping that even if transgender kids don’t have the support of a loving parent like I did, they’ll see themselves reflected in its pages.

And I know that because I’m over 30. I have been raised to believe in those things. And transgender people are taught how to hate ourselves. I think that there is a lot of institutional memory that still exists within a lot of even nominally liberal institutions in American life that still try to tell that exact same story about trans lives as unlivable and still rely on a lot of the same tropes.

Even as a high school student, I saw that threats to the lives of trans Americans had reached a dangerous tipping point. I had never wanted to be an activist. I was a kid. But it was my job to spread the word about the community that was pushed to the margins.

These treatments have allowed me to become a person that I was meant to be, and have been studied and peer reviewed, as well as being the best practices of leading health organizations.

Across the country they are being banned, challenged or indefinitely delayed while people are put through a lot of hoops and hurdles to get access to treatment.

My case ended in a victory for trans students. The win at the Fourth Circuit level meant that, within the jurisdiction of Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, the protections afforded by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 include transgender people. The Supreme Court did not allow the decision to stand. A model policy that was set by the Department of Education required that all schools in the Fourth Circuit provide for the rights of trans students.

After wending its way through the system for four years, the courts ruled the school board was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the US Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law barring schools from sex discrimination.

This is seen as a catastrophe by the right-wing. I have to remind people that this happened in liberal and progressive spaces. I was aware that 80 percent of the country thought it was illegal to fire somebody because of their sexual orientation. So I often have to remind people in liberal progressive spaces that this case even happened.

The Protest for Age-Adequate Treatment for Trans Persons: Virginia’s Governor Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Ken Paxton

The new governor of Virginia was Glenn Youngkin, who was elected after running a platform that included misinformation and attacks against marginalized communities.

Shortly before he faced a primary, he and Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a letter to the state’s child welfare agency asking them to put age-appropriate care for trans youth in the category of child abuse. That does a few things.

And notably, Virginia’s model policy contains language permitting schools to go beyond the guidelines and institute even more restrictive rules, saying “Each school board shall adopt policies that are consistent with but may be more comprehensive than the model policies developed by the Virginia Department of Education.”

It seems as if Youngkin is willing to reject established federal and state law and guidance from leading authorities on the physical and mental health of kids and young adults. Youngkin and his administration have couched discriminatory actions in language about protecting children, religious liberty and the rights of parents, but it is my belief that his real agenda is scapegoating a minority already under duress, in a cowardly bid to gain support from his base.

He may succeed in that, but his gains will be temporary. Thousands of students across Virginia walked out of school to protest Youngkin’s proposed restrictions on trans students. Protests are continuing against this unjust proposed policy. The community of trans individuals is still alive and well.

Utah’s governor signed a bill into law that prohibits the use of hormones and surgery for kids who want gender-affirming care.

Cox said that it was wise to pause these permanently and life changing treatments for new patients until more and better research can help determine the long-term consequences.

Proposal for a Supreme Court Justice Scale Action Plan to End Transgender Gender Pay and Health Care: State Reply to the Cox-Criminals Correspondence

“While we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us, we sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures,” he said.

The civil rights organization said in its letter to Cox that it was deeply concerned about the effects this law would have on people’s lives and medical care.

It was shocking to see that in political language. And it’s even more shocking to realize that what they’re looking for in these bills is not to end these treatments. They do not want to end these treatments for everyone. They were specifically trying to end them so that people who are looking for them will be able to change their gender assignments in order to reflect who they are. They are protecting the other treatments.

The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Mike Kennedy, a Republican family doctor has said government oversight is necessary for vital health care policy related to gender and youth.

Cox also signed another measure that would give students school-choice style scholarships to attend schools outside the public education system. The increase in teacher pay and benefits was part of the bill.

At least a dozen other states are considering similar legislation in what has emerged as a landmark year for school choice battles. Concerns about the privatization of public education have resurfaced as a result of the debates. If enacted, they could transform the nature of state government’s relationship with the education system and deepen contrasts between how going to school looks in many red versus blue states.

The Utah measure allocates $42 million in taxpayer funds to pay for scholarships so students can attend private schools. Roughly 5,000 students would receive $8,000 scholarships, which is roughly double the state’s “weighted pupil unit” funding that follows students to their schools. In order to appease opposition from the state’s teachers’ union, the bill includes a $6,000 salary and benefits for Utah teachers.

“School choice works best when we adequately fund public education and we remove unnecessary regulations that burden our public schools and make it difficult for them to succeed,” Cox said.

State Sen. Liz Larson Condemned the Florida Gender-Affirming Care Act of July 1, 2011 During the Regular Sex Occupation

The Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine passed rules that will prohibit sex hormones and procedures for children under the age of 18 because of the encouragement of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Patients under the age of 18 are not permitted to receive puberty-blocking medication, as well as sex hormones and the surgeries related to gender transition. Health care providers who violate the new law, which takes effect on July 1, risk civil suits and losing their professional or occupational licenses.

counseling is an individualized form of health care that includes talking people through their identities in order to help them move past the shame that so many of our culture pushes on to trans people.

“We care deeply about children who are struggling with their identities and want to provide them with true meaningful help, not permanent physical damage,” the Republican said.

Then, in older adolescents and adults, you begin talking about hormone replacement therapy, which, if you’re looking for feminizing effects to reflect your gender identity, will include a testosterone blocker and some form of estrogen. And if you’re looking for masculinizing effects, that usually includes testosterone.

During the debate before the bill passed, Democratic state Sen. Liz Larson saidurgeries-gone-wrong are not happening in South Dakota. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the state legislature when I’m in the doctor’s office.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of South Dakota also issued a statement Monday condemning the new law, calling the signing a “heartbreaking and tragic day for thousands of South Dakotans and their families.”

The Florida Department of Health, meanwhile, said last April that children who identify as transgender or gender diverse should not be offered any social transition care, while Alabama earlier that same month passed a law making it a felony for doctors to administer gender-affirming care for minors.

She’s keeping a close eye on states that want to ban gender-affirming care not just for minors, but for adults, too. “I don’t think that this is gonna slow down,” she says. “I think that more and more states are going to ban, likely first for minors and then, you know, try to move on to adults. Which is why I think it’s so critical that we stop them here in Florida.”

After completing fifth grade she decided to use “they” or “met” as her pronouns. Now a seventh-grader in Gainesville, Fla., with a passion for manga and anime video games, and a bedroom filled with stuffed animals, Liz identifies as female and transgender.

After receiving months of counseling and a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, Liz began receiving puberty blockers. Every three months, she gets a shot of Lupron, a gonadotropin-releasing hormone, or GnRH, that essentially presses the “pause” button on male puberty.

Virginia says she has seen her daughter Light up with gender-affirming care. “It’s fun and exciting for her to be able to be exactly who she wants to be,” she says.

As for existing patients such as Liz, who may want to proceed on to cross-sex hormones (estrogen in her case; testosterone for transgender males), the language of the new rules is vague.

Parental Rights in Florida: A Bound on Gender-affirming Care in the Light of Gov. DeSantis’ ‘Gut Punch’

“It doesn’t feel like it’s over, which makes living in Florida really challenging right now, because you’re being told that your child shouldn’t be able to be who they are, and that it would be better if they didn’t exist,” she says.

If things get too bad, she’s considering going to a boarding school that doesn’t reside in Florida for high school.

Gov. DeSantis has targeted LGBTQ rights, and has made “parental rights,” especially in education, a running theme as he eyes a potential White House bid.

“It’s a gut punch,” she says. “It’s so frustrating to hear the rhetoric of parental rights be used to say, ‘Kids shouldn’t have access to treatment because we need to let them be kids.’ When it’s like, you’re right. And guess what? That’s what I want for my child.

But Gov. DeSantis has called the treatment “an example of woke ideology infecting medical practice.” The state’s surgeon general, who was appointed by DeSantis, called the treatments “risky” and “struggling.” Dr. Vila said that the Board of Medicine was acting to protect kids from irreversible harm by banning gender-affirming care.

The board of medicine members have contributed to Gov. DeSantis’ campaigns or political committees, as reported by the Times.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/20/1157493433/florida-bans-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids

Florida Bans Gender-affirming Care Trans Kids: A Conversation-Starting Dialogue for Pediatric Endocrinology

Pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Kristin Dayton, who runs the Youth Gender Program at the University of Florida in Gainesville, disputes claims that gender-affirming care is risky or experimental.

She says there are tons of evidence to support her claim that this is safe for children. “It’s pretty offensive to me, because I pride myself in being someone who always follows the evidence, does the right thing for my patients.”

Dayton worries about her patients, many of whom haven’t yet started on puberty blockers or hormones, and now won’t be able to. “People are feeling incredibly panicked and sad and distressed and coming to our office saying, ‘What are we going to do when this passes?’ And frankly, we don’t have the answers.”

Evans is concerned about the ban’s impact on her patients’ mental health. There are clear benefits to medical transition. “Depression rates go down. Along with that, suicidal ideation and attempts go down,” she says. “Anxiety goes down.” Eating disorders rates start to go down. Substance abuse rates start to go down.”

The doctor of a trans boy said that he will not prescribe anything other than puberty blockers. She said that he has said many times he doesn’t want to go to jail.

When NPR visited her at home, she was wearing a tee-shirt that says “Believe Trans Kids.” “I probably have a shirt for every day of the week!” she says with a laugh. It’s a great conversation starter.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/20/1157493433/florida-bans-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids

What does a trans kid want to do in Florida? A need to protect himself from the “constant invalidation” of who he is

When River was three years old, he started saying he was a boy and presenting as a boy.

Sandi says she’s seen her son flourish in the past year since he started on puberty blockers. “I have this glorious picture right after he got his first puberty blocker shot where he is literally, like, ear to ear smiling,” she says. He’s glowing. I felt like he was ready to relax.

In the current climate, she worries about what she calls “the constant invalidation” of who River is. She says that seeing that who you are is a political debate and makes you feel less human.

She is demoralized by the constant focus on trans kids. She says there are some days when you are paralyzed by fear of what will happen next to your child. “But you can’t show that to your beautiful, wonderful trans kid. And it’s exhausting. You know, it’s so exhausting.”

Sandi is on regular calls with other families who have trans kids, many of whom are planning what she calls “escape routes.” They’re considering moving out of Florida to more trans-friendly states.

She and her husband are thinking about moving to Oregon, where they have family. But it’s hard to imagine uprooting their entire support system.

“It’s absurd that you have to look for a new home to have access to health care in the U.S,” she says. “I just want my kid to be happy and healthy. And I just don’t think that’s a lot to ask.”

Nikole Parker, director of transgender equality for the LGBTQ civil rights group Equality Florida, has talked with a number of families who are actively planning to leave the state.

They are like, “Listen.” The health care for my kid is my number one priority. And there are states who will allow that to happen seamlessly. I will not sit here and wait to see what happens. “

“As a born and raised Floridaan, I feel like we need to make sure that we are firm in our stance regarding discrimination of all types,” she said. And it just makes me sad to see where we are, because this isn’t the Florida that I was born in.”

Trans advocates want to fight Florida’s new rules in court. Simone Chriss, director of the transgender rights initiative with the nonprofit public interest law firm Southern Legal Counsel in Gainesville, is among the lawyers who will lead that fight.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/20/1157493433/florida-bans-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids

When Transcendents Lose Their Power, They Can Fly: The 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, April 22-26

It can be very demoralizing to feel like we are losing on a daily basis. She says that it really does take a toll. “All we can do is fight.”

So the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference wrapped up this past Saturday. If you don’t follow it, it’s a big deal every year, because it is the clearest window into modern conservatism. It includes politicians and media people.

Right now is making trans people their target. The most ambitious conservatives want to push them out of the public eye in order to make their lives harder. Individually, these policies, they have various rationales, a lot of them have conflicting rationales. But I think collectively, if you look at them, you see that what Knowles said was true.

The goal of the right is to eliminate the ability for trans people to live in public or to be able to become themselves. This is a policy. It is not just rhetoric. It is much more than just writing a comment on social media. And so I wanted to talk about these policies.

People who follow politics have a sense this is happening, but it might not be of the scale and cruel nature of these policies. I think in a lot of the mainstream press, there is more attention to the hard edge cases. The rules of NCAA swimming meets are a topic of discussion. What about the rare but real cases where somebody transitions and regrets it? What kind of medical assessment and parental involvement should you need to access this kind of care as a minor?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

What is Gender-Affirming Care? Why do we need them? A.C.L.U. and Lambda Legal, where it came from, and how the Texas Family Law Reform Commission can challenge it

And I don’t think those questions are fake, and I don’t think they’re easy, and I don’t pretend to have the answers to them. But I think it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the overwhelming political and material reality here, which is that trans people already face now terrible discrimination and difficulty — higher rates of poverty and homelessness and violence, workplace discrimination — just living their lives.

The A.C.L.U. has a project called the Women’s Rights Project. The A.C.L.U. has been involved in tracking and fighting these policies. Branstetter has a unique sense of how this is coming together on the ground.

Gender-affirming care will definitely be a part of the conversation, but it is central to a lot of the discussion in Texas and elsewhere. What is gender-affirming care, and which parts of that care package didAbbott try to get classified as child abuse?

One, it mobilizes the state family policing agency. Advocates have been complaining about the power of child welfare agencies for quite some time. And this power often gets used in very discriminatory ways, in particular against poor, Black, Indigenous, immigrant families. Queer youth, especially, are overrepresented in our nation’s foster care system.

The first effect of the directive is that it requires that agency to investigate. And one of the first people they targeted is actually a client of ours who we are representing alongside the A.C.L.U. of Texas and Lambda Legal in one of two challenges to this directive, who was a DSPS employee themselves.

The other thing this does is anyone who’s ever worked in a field with kids, if you’ve ever been a teacher or an educator or a child care provider, you know that you’ve probably signed some paperwork making you a mandatory reporter, meaning that if you have reason to suspect that a young person is being abused, as the law defines it, then you must turn them in.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

How does access to health care affect the lives of cisgender and transgender young people? A case study of the Arkansas state’s ban on gender affirming care

What that means is that the vast majority of people who want to receive health care treatments have a long road ahead before they are able to get them. This care is hard to access in rural areas of Texas.

And just to put some numbers on that. There was a study where 56 percent of the young people in the study had suicidal thoughts. That was close to 20 percent of cisgender youth. 31 percent of transgender youth reported a previous suicide attempt versus 11 percent of cisgender youth. How does access to care affect that?

Foundationally. When I was in Arkansas, I was in a courtroom that was challenging that state’s ban on affirming gender affirming care, and there were many medical experts and doctors who spoke to the impact that this care has on young people. It’s very abstract. I think it would be very hard for a lot of cisgendered people to understand what dysphoria is and how much it can impact your life and stunt your emotional development and your emotional growth.

I think that could be something that a parent would want for their child. And the, at times, cartoonishly vile rhetoric around this care is very much meant to obscure that positive impact that it has on people and very much meant to obscure the pain of being denied it, particularly when you know that it’s an option that you could pursue.

A lot of young people are going through a situation where they are banned from everything in order to get a better life and they also have politicians who have never met them or talked to other people like them who have already had a better life.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

What is it like to be a transgender? What is the foundation of the argument that it is child abuse to use puberty blockers or hormone therapy?

And I think the word that comes to mind when I’m usually trying to describe what dysphoria is like to cisgender people is a deep sense of inauthenticity, a deep sense that you were playing a role for other people. I think most people are able to relate to that because we all have to do it in one way or another. We have to meet people’s expectations.

I think it can be hard — a colleague of mine, Rebecca Kling, has this metaphor of this giant bag of rocks that you’re carrying around your entire life. And after a certain point, you kind of tire out. Either stop going or put the bag of rocks down.

When gender is assigned to you over the course of your entire life, it feels like you are not who you say you are and it can make you feel like you are not who you really are. It’s an all-consuming sense.

I see a lot of encouragement in that because it means that more trans people feel safe, that they feel that they will, at the very least, find a community of people like them. You hear people talking about how they’re the only one and I think I’m the only one. That they had no concept that there were other people in the world who felt like they did.

So how then does Abbott or Paxton, the attorney general, in these letters and opinions, make the argument — what is the foundation of the argument that it is child abuse to use puberty blockers or hormone therapy?

In terms of their willingness to just sweep aside the existing body of evidence and the actual reality of what this care is like, there’s a lot to learn here from how the anti-abortion movement has framed abortion care. You already have seen the process of hunting around for any tail end risk, or any hypothetical in which this care may have no negative consequence at all. Then justifying banning it.

Most trans people take these risks very seriously. Everyone is sensitive to these even in the informed consent model of providing this care. For people under 18, there is a long road to mental health counseling and assessment that needs to be done.

So what are some of those risks, speaking not here about the surgical interventions, which are, I think, pretty rare for minors, but the hormone and puberty blockers?

testosterone is a controlled substance and has a low risk for misuse and for abuse. In the rare instance that somebody goes on from puberty blockers directly to hormone therapy, it may gradually increase their risks for osteoporosis. As a New York Times report found, it will gradually increase the risk for experiencing osteoporosis in their 50s, instead of their 60s.

We need to trust the person who is being cared for to access it if they are aware of the risks and effects of the care. If you really feel like your personhood is on the line, you will experience osteoporosis in your 50s instead of your 60s when I get to it, I guess. It would be incredible to live into my 50s.

So I think, like I said, a lot of these arguments are generally in bad faith because all health care carries risks. There are a lot of health care that isn’t affected by these bans which carry worse risks and are not the subject of legislation or litigation.

We spoke to the author of the guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics about this care. And one point he kept making is that this kind of care is a very, very highly individualized process.

It is built on a lot of discussions between the patient and their doctors, if it is a minor, with their families.

Texas is saying no, we don’t know better, we know so much better, if you engage in any real way going down the path on it to puberty blockers or other pharmaceutical interventions, we will functionally criminalize it. It is a pretty striking claim that the government knows best.

You can see that they are doing the same things on gender-affirming care. And something to keep in mind is it’s very easy to imagine them running this playbook on birth control. You can see that they are laying the groundwork.

People who have access to birth control, particularly hormonal birth control, know that it is very individualized. Side effects can be carried by it. It can be a cause of risks. And people hopefully trust you to manage those risks and to weigh them against your desire to not get pregnant, which, depending on who you’re talking to, is you rejecting your gender assignment in the same way that a transgender person is.

I think people still have this process of having an I.U.D. because they want some degree of control over their bodies and writing their life story for themselves.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

Where is the directive on a family’s L.G.B.T. rights organization, A.C.L.U. Texas is in court?

Well, let me ask you where this particular directive stands now. You mentioned that A.C.L.U. Texas is in court.

For folks who don’t know, PFLAG is one of the oldest L.G.B.T. rights organizations in the country. And they specifically work with parents of young queer people. One of the first organizations to mention gender identity in their official policies was the one that protects trans youth. And they have hundreds and hundreds of chapters across the country. And I’ve gone to these, and they’re usually a lot like support groups. Parents talk through with their young queer person that they need to protect them from discrimination and advocate for their rights but also changing their own expectations for what life will be like based on their queer identity.

So we file on behalf of PFLAG National and receive an injunction on behalf of PFLAG National, so that if a family is a member of PFLAG national, they are protected under that injunction, which, in Texas, last I heard was somewhere around 600 families. There are thousands of families that are still exposed to this directive.

In reality, the number of cases that have been opened is relatively small. It was under 20 when I heard it. Each time a case was open, it was closed. And that’s enormously relieving, in that it means whatever accusation Greg Abbott wants to make against them, these folks are being exonerated by the state agency.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

Intersex children’s health care: does the investigation really involve a child? The case for a non-adolescent

That said, even just the process of the investigation is a major invasion into a family’s life, and particularly when we’re talking about young people who are really, like I said, struggling to imagine a future world with them in it.

You usually hear that this is only about children. We try to protect children as a special class. They are unsure who they are yet. Maybe they were influenced by something on TikTok. A lot of these bills are for adults.

Tell me how intersex people play a part in this. Can you tell me what intersex means and where these conservative groups stand on health care for that population?

I would challenge the idea that there is a consensus. I think that’s false, most of the groups that are involved in this discussion are well-known in the right-wing circles for printing off this legislation and distributing it across the states.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

What Do Human Rights Advocates and Proponents of Gender-Aligned Birthright Surgery Tell Us About Our Lives? A Social Gender Hierarchical Change

Intersex people are those born with nonnormative sexual characteristics. Intersex conditions can range from hormonal sensitivities down to people born with what might be called anomalous sexual characteristics or maybe the presentation of sexual material that is associated with one sex right next to sexual material that is associated with another sex.

And a big target of human rights activists and of the intersex rights movement is getting hospitals to drop that default setting of launching towards performing these surgeries on literal infants. It was dropped as the default by the Children’s Hospital. The American Medical Association and other groups have begun to include each other.

Right. Exactly. We had sued and blocked the bill from becoming law in Arkansas because it didn’t allow gender-affirming care for trans kids. You can find that not just in the family, but in the right wing’s view of intersex people.

The other way of thinking about the issue is that it is a response to actual progressive victories on this and that the reality of how many trans children are in our society has changed. What do you think about those as explanations?

All of the right-wing legislature is now full of these bills. And it’s been a pretty quick move to the center of their agenda. Politics in this era has been changing as to what the core cleavages are, what people will compromise on and what they won’t do, as we’ve been watching or living through it.

And I think the broad understanding of the Republican Party 15 years ago — and I think it was true — is that they talked to social conservatives, they talked social conservatism, but they governed economic conservatism. Corporate tax cuts were the actual non-negotiable. And then they would tell the Evangelicals what they needed to hear to turn out to vote.

And that over this period, that’s more or less flipping. And you now have the post-Trump Republican Party. There’s a lot of people who are kind of confused and often opportunistic on economics. I would call this question of the traditional American hierarchy of society a social gender hierarchical change.

There is a search going on for the issue that cracks this open. I think that there was a view about immigration. That was the first play of Donald Trump. And it worked for him to a degree, but it’s actually not popular to be highly anti-immigrant in this country. And then particularly post-George Floyd, when there were the protests that had riot elements in them, you had a backlash on Black Lives Matter. That failed after that. In 2020, Joe Biden wins the election.

I am curious if you have understood the transition to the center of the Republican agenda for these types of issues, because you are more familiar with this than I am.

You point out that there’s a divide in the right between economic and social conservative concerns. One, I think they have more similarities than they differ. Conservative economics tend to produce socially conservative outcomes.

The last decade has seen a lot of motivation in the social conservative wing of the right-wing political movement, which has focused on a specific construction of what it means to be American along racial lines.

And likewise, before that, in 2004, in Lawrence v. Texas, when the Supreme Court found that the state could not criminalize same sexual relations, that was very much also founded in this private life, in this private space. If the government isn’t looking into what consenting adults are doing behind closed doors, then then it’s not about making sure.

This was the first test of trans rights in the political sphere. There were some fights around HERO, and we can discuss that history with you. But this was definitely the largest conflagration that gendered rights had had in some time.

And the bill was signed into law. A number of corporations and large institutions have pulled events out of North Carolina. We won’t spend money in a state that would support this hate. The cost of North Carolina’s economy was believed to be around $3 billion by one analysis.

In no small measure, Pat McCrory lost re-election because he decided to focus on this issue at the expense of the rest of the state. And this caused a deep sense of frustration within the conservative movement. And I think it was the dawning of what you often hear now described as woke capitalism, the idea that the culture has left our values and they’ve taken corporations with them.

So therefore, we can no longer trust the Chamber of Commerce crowd to act in defense of socially conservative actions. fusionism was almost finished, the idea of libertarians and libertarians-focused economics and ties to Evangelicals were almost done.

Social conservatives begin to feel a bit left behind. And particularly because the legislative agenda of the Trump administration was pretty much dominated by the Trump tax cuts, which as far as they’re concerned don’t move them towards their goals of rewiring the back ends of American culture to reflect these deeply conservative values.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

The Supreme Court has declared that sex discrimination extends to queer workers, and if you fire someone because you are a transgender, you are in violation of the civil rights act

And the Supreme Court finds, in a 6-3 decision, in June of 2020, that these protections extend to queer workers. That if you fire somebody because they’re transgender or because they are queer, then you are exhibiting sex discrimination. You are in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

The A.C.L.U. represented a person. She was a woman in her 50s. She worked at a funeral home. She came out as transgender. She wrote this impassioned letter explaining that this is very important for her. The funeral home turned around and fired her two weeks later.

And really since the Civil Rights Act has been passed, sex discrimination has been expanded as a definition. So it now covers lots of pregnancy discrimination. It covers lots of sexual harassment. It covers what’s called sex stereotyping. Basically, you make judgments about what a person should do based on their biological sex.

And I think one of the reasons you see this massive reaction is because a lot of the legal victories on behalf of L.G.B.T. rights up to this point had very much hinged on the private life. So Obergefell and the right to marry, for example. As much as you’re running into the issues of does a baker need to make a wedding cake or does a website need to make a website for a gay couple that’s getting married, the foundational right to marry is about a right to privacy, as well as just equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment.

In contrast, Bostock was very much about your public life. Suddenly, we are in the workplace. Now suddenly somebody has the right to be trans in the workplace, around other people even, Ezra. And there is the logic that the opinion, which was written by conservative golden boy Justice Neil Gorsuch, the logic of his opinion, it doesn’t take a whole lot of thinking to then apply it to all other laws, which prohibit sex discrimination, including Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, or Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits sex discrimination in health care.

I want to get at something that you touched on there, which is that as part of what has changed in the politics of this, one, in a way that maybe progressives don’t realize or admit. You mentioned the quiet revolution here in the Obama administration, where policy became much more equal in this area. You mentioned some very, very important cases that pushed forward non-discrimination.

And some of the backlash actually was a response to the fact that the equilibrium on this was being pushed forward. It was being pushed towards justice. And that created a kind of opposite counter-reaction. There is a belief that many people would have suppressed it if they had known about it, and we are seeing a rise of that now, but I think that is because more people are coming out as trans. The number of trans kids is on the rise.

In your book, which is available in stores now, you explain that it is not inherently a negative thing. When moving forward on important progressive issues, it is necessary to have both sides of the story. Over the course of American History, when there’s a consensus around an issue, it’s usually around an issue of discrimination or an issue that we now view differently and are very glad that we had a controversy on.

It is a cliché to write about the second term of the Obama administration in such a way that you mention the name of Laverne Cox on the cover of Time.

I think a good place to start thinking about that is when the consensus was that trans rights are unnecessary and ludicrous. There was a cultural and political consensus about trans life being unattractive, trans bodies being unsafe, and trans people being unreliable.

And over the course of decades of advocacy, and public education campaigns, and meeting with lawmakers, building a degree of power, you begin to see that slowly creak open over the course of the early 2010s. It was one reason why we were portrayed as poor and uneducated in a culture which saw us as a threat.

And not just using the language of today of transgender and finding these early examples in the 1990s you can find and things like that, but using the old language of transvestite and transsexual. And what you find is not very pretty. And I don’t think that’s specific to The New York Times at all. I think a lot of institutions in American life have the same history.

I want to go back then also to something else that happened in this period that you kind of touched on right around North Carolina, which is the North Carolina bathroom bill was not the only bill and not the only kind of social justice question, but I do think it was one of the first that began to open a wedge that is still not at all closed between the Republican Party and particularly major parts of corporate America.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

What’s Happening in Florida When Governor DeSantis Made a Deal With Black Lives Matter: The Case of the Big Business Party

So I mean, we’re talking in a week where Governor DeSantis succeeded in taking away some special autonomous privileges that Disney had in Florida. I mean, Disney, which is one of the big namesake Florida employers.

It was over Disney’s response to the Don’t Say Gay Bill which is very targeted, I think it is fair to say, at trans people. And I think there’s been a particular important dimension in our politics right here at this line where you’ve had the woke corporations fight around Black Lives Matter. But in an ongoing way, you really have it around these issues.

There is still plenty of deregulatory efforts and corporate tax cuts in the Republican Party, but it seems to be forcing a weird realignment where the party used to be known as the big business party.

For its speech. One, I think it goes to show how intense the commitment on this set of issues is in the Republican Party right now. But two, I’d just be curious to hear you reflect on the way it is slightly altering some of the Republican Party’s traditional alignments and forcing members within it to choose sides.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

The Do Don’t Say Gay Law, the Heath Has Two Mommies, Is David Against This Goliath?

Sure. So the Don’t Say Gay law, as it’s popularly known, the Parental Rights in Education Bill, prohibits discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade. The Florida House introduced a version that would extend it all the way to the eighth grade. It’s funny how that happens.

And this has resulted in queer teachers feeling like they need to hide who they are at school. So the pulling down of just basic symbols of L.G.B.T. pride like the rainbow flag right down to the banning of books that mention queer people. So “Heather Has Two Mommies” or “And Tango Makes Three,” which is literally a book about gay penguins. And it very much is part and parcel with this goal of regarding queer identities as an ideology that’s being forced onto people.

I believe that the fight with Disney allows him to tell the story and keep telling it. So instead of the young queer kids he’s demonizing or the parents who are now afraid their kid might mention that they have two moms and will get them in trouble or the teachers that you’ve read about who now feel like they have to leave the state altogether, instead of those real people who are being scared, now the story is Ron DeSantis takes on woke capital and Disney forcing its ideology on our children.

I think he is picking the frame for himself by picking that fight. And he’s positioning himself as the David against this Goliath, when it is, in fact, he himself who is the empty-headed bully wandering around the playground and smashing kids face into the dirt.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

Trans history: where are we now? Where are we going? Where do we come from, where do we go? Where is the world going?

One question I have about it is whether or not it’s getting worse and better at the same time, which is to say we’ve been talking about, particularly red states, where a lot of, I think, quite terrible legislation is being proposed and where the rhetoric has gotten very vicious. I don’t believe that can be discounted.

But there are also blue states that have been, I think, and some of them trying to move in the opposite direction. So are there places that are brighter to you? That at the same time we’re seeing not just backsliding, but actual literal demonization and scapegoating, are there places that are looking more like there’s no bottom, that there’s also you can look up towards — I don’t want to say no top. I am not sure if it works.

A different kind of future is what it is. If you follow the places that are getting worse and are not more hopeful, you might not see what a better place it is.

So you referenced that the number of openly trans people — and that word “openly” is important here — has been rising and particularly in younger generations. Over the years, I believe that matches the rise of L.G.B. identification. People are fond of citing this chart around left-handedness, and that once public schools stopped hitting children for writing with their left hand, suddenly there was a huge surge in left-handedness identification.

Then, as the internet grows and social media grows, I know that there’s a lot of anxiety that there are young people self-diagnosing themselves with gender dysphoria and rushing off and getting their breasts removed because they saw it on a TikTok video or whatever else, right? That’s not what I see when I see trans people gathering online.

We used to be separate by geography, but I can see that it is changing. That trans people are, of course, very naturally gravitating towards people who are like-minded, who have similar experiences, because, believe it or not, the world still doesn’t greet transgender people with absolute joy.

And it’s very hard to find people who share that experience, especially in a lot of rural areas across the country. The internet has an interesting place in trans history, where we can share our wisdom and experiences. We are all isolated from one another because trans life is considered impossible and unlivable.

I’m going to start with a book by Gregory Woods called “Homintern.” It is a history of queer culture pre-Stonewall, from the trial of Oscar Wilde to the sexual revolution. And it is this incredibly rich, entertaining, vibrant history of people making space for themselves when, as many people who grew up queer did, they thought they were the only one, including finding community before they even really had the language to describe queer identities. And it’s a fantastic history told through, I mean, love notes and cocktail napkins and police reports and gossip. And it’s very juicy in parts.

And it’s just fascinating to think, how did the arrest of Oscar Wilde, one of the world’s most famous playwrights, change how the media and politics regarded gay people? Josephine Baker had been learning from drag queens in Harlem and Washington. How did George Orwell reckon with his own homophobia?

The second book is titled “Caliban and the Witch” by Silvia Federici. Federici was an important player in the wages for housework movement. The novel Caliban and the Witch was written after a labor shortage and revanchist movement to assign rigidly strict gender rules onto people that target queer people and women.

The Black Death was a disease. The witch hunts that occurred in Europe in the 19th century were used to rid the area of women who did things like offer abortions or contraceptives.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

The Ezra Klein Show and Gender Transition Interventions. I. The Missouri Department of State is Proposed to a Proposed Rule

And then third, I’m going to recommend a little book called “Can the Monster Speak?” by Paul Preciado. He is a person who is different from the norm. The lecture he gave in front of the group of Freudians was contained in the book Can the Monster Speak?

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. There is a mixing by Efeim Shapiro. Original music by a musician. Shannon Busta wrote an audience strategy. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Dr. Jason Rafferty, Lisa Black, Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

State law already prohibits experimenting with gender transition interventions, because they are experimental, Andrew Bailey said in a news release.

The rule will take effect 10 days after it is filed with Missouri’s secretary of state office, as of Tuesday morning.

Comments on ‘Bayleycare for children in the United States’ by C.J. McKay and C. McNicholas

Bailey said Monday that his efforts are aimed at protecting children and that the care is a part of “a woke, leftist agenda” that results in “irreversible consequences.”

But Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region & Southwest Missouri, called Bailey’s claims “medically false and harmful” in a series of tweets on Monday.