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Javier E

Transgender athlete bills put trans girls at center of America?s culture wars, again - ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...b-afbe-9a11a127d146_story.html

transgender athlete culture trans sports

shared by Javier E on 30 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Tennessee state Rep. Bruce Griffey (R), who has a cisgender daughter on a school golf team, is co-sponsoring a bill that would allow school competition only based on the sex listed on one’s birth certificate.
  • “What if one of the boys is not doing well, so he pretends to be transgender to win?” he asked. “I’m protecting a discriminated class: that’s girls and women in sports.”
  • But detractors say arguments about biological advantages among transgender athletes are based on limited research and put an outsize focus on a tiny fraction of young competitors. About 2 percent of high school students in the United States identify as transgender
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  • The Montana youth athlete bill passed the state House on a 61-to-38 vote and is moving to the Senate.
  • Democratic opponents of these bills and some political experts charge that the legislative efforts amount to a political power play to rally the conservative base around an issue they see as threatening traditional gender roles.
  • The Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group for socially conservative causes, published a blog post this week that charges transgender athletes with hijacking competitive opportunities and calls Biden’s executive order a threat to “gut legal protections for women and girls.”
  • “It’s an easy way for them to show that Democrats have just gone over the edge, that there is no limit to how far they will push these radical ideas.”
  • For generations, anti-trans messaging in the United States has largely focused on transgender women rather than transgender men,
  • Trantham said one of the first people she notified when she decided to file the bill was the head of the LGBTQ advocacy group South Carolina Equality.“I want to make sure you guys understand this is not me trying to hurt the transgender community,” Trantham said she told him. “This is me trying to protect girls in women’s sports.”
  • LGBTQ activists and many pediatricians say that the medical treatments transgender youth receive to align their bodies with their gender identity mitigate the physical disparities in athletics.
  • “I’ve seen arguments that this will be the end of women’s sports,” said Katrina Karkazis, a cultural anthropologist and bioethicist. “If so, it should have ended already.”
  • “Values always matter and there’s a divide in our country over values,” Deutsch said in a phone interview Thursday. “I stood up and said this is not a hate bill. It’s about biology. It’s science. You can’t change your sex. You can look like a boy, you can take hormones and sex operations but it doesn’t make you a boy. Your gender can be a boy, but you can never change your sex.”
  • while public opinion polls across the board show support for transgender military service and other transgender rights, support softens when it comes to public accommodations and sports, Haider-Markel said.
  • School athletics are “an extremely competitive environment,” said Trantham, whose daughter was a high school basketball player. “If it was my daughter and she needed that scholarship to go to college, it would be very important to me that she was playing on an even playing field.”
  • Serano argues that the disparity is rooted in sexism and misogyny, and the idea that “there’s a certain amount of societal respect for wanting to be a man.” Even when it comes to cisgender children, she said, “people are a lot more disturbed, concerned by feminine boys than they are by masculine girls.”
  • bills about transgender athletes trigger the idea that “this is wrong; this male person is in this space that is supposed to be segregated to protect girls and women,
  • “None of these bills are based on real-life problems,
  • Transgender cross-country runner Juniper Eastwood started competing for the women’s track team at the University of Montana after she began presenting as female and taking testosterone suppression medication. She said running improved her mental health. At one point, Eastwood said, she had contemplated suicide so she wouldn’t have to deal with knowing she was transgender.
  • Eastwood said she’s hopeful that a new generation of conservatives will learn to understand who transgender people are, just as many conservatives have come to accept the gay community.“It’s just going to take a long time,” she said. “It won’t happen this year.”
mimiterranova

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Signs Transgender Athlete Bill Into Law : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ransgender-athlete-bill-into-l

florida transgender Culture

shared by mimiterranova on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Florida's Republican governor signed a bill Tuesday barring transgender females from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes born as girls, plunging the state into the national culture war over transgender rights.
  • "In Florida, girls are going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports,"
  • The NCAA, which oversees college athletics, has said it has "a long-standing policy that provides a more inclusive path for transgender participation in college sports." The NCAA currently requires transgender women to get treatment to lower their testosterone levels before they can compete in women's sports.
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  • The measure approved by the GOP-led Legislature takes effect July 1. It says a transgender student athlete can't participate without first showing a birth certificate saying she was a girl when she was born
  • The law would not bar female athletes from playing on boys or men's teams.
  • Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David said the new law would not only harm transgender girls. "All Floridians will have to face the consequences of this anti-transgender legislation — including economic harm, expensive taxpayer-funded legal battles, and a tarnished reputation."
  • The Florida law mirrors an Idaho law, the first of its kind when enacted last year, that is now mired in legal challenges. GOP governors in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee recently signed similar measures.
  • North Carolina stood to lose $3.8 billion over a dozen years because of a so-called "bathroom bill." Those losses were averted when a 2019 settlement kept the state from barring transgender people from using bathrooms that conformed to their gender identity.
  • mimiterranova on 03 Jun 21
     
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criscimagnael

Gov. Abbott Pushes to Investigate Treatments for Trans Youth as 'Child Abuse' - The New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...t-transgender-child-abuse.html

shared by criscimagnael on 07 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • Gov. Greg Abbott told state health agencies in Texas on Tuesday that medical treatments provided to transgender adolescents, widely considered to be the standard of care in medicine, should be classified as “child abuse” under existing state law.
  • “all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children who may be subject to such abuse, including doctors, nurses, and teachers, and provides criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse.”
  • It is still unclear how and whether the orders, which do not change Texas law, would be enforced.
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  • “This is a complete misrepresentation of the definition of abuse in the family code,” Christian Menefee, the Harris County attorney, said in an interview.
  • “We don’t believe that allowing someone to take puberty suppressants constitutes abuse,”
  • Governor Abbott’s effort to criminalize medical care for transgender youth is a new front in a broadening political drive to deny treatments that help align the adolescents’ bodies with their gender identities and that have been endorsed by major medical groups.
  • Arkansas passed a law making it illegal for clinicians to offer puberty blockers and hormones to adolescents and banning insurers from covering care. But the law was temporarily blocked by a federal judge in July after the American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of four families and two doctors.
  • Several such bills were also introduced in Texas. None passed.
  • She said that blocking gender-affirming care and forcing teenagers to go through the physical changes of puberty for a gender they don’t identify with was “inhumane.”
  • “Our nation’s leading pediatricians support evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender young people.”
  • A growing number of transgender adolescents have sought medical treatments in recent years. Transgender teenagers are at high risk for attempting suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Preliminary research has suggested that adolescents who receive such medical treatments have improved mental health.
  • “What is clear is that politicians should not be tearing apart loving families — and sending their kids into the foster care system — when parents provide recommended medical care that they believe is in the best interest of their child.”
  • “It’s designed to make parents scared,” he said. “It’s designed to make doctors scared for even facilitating gender-affirming health care.”
  • “Minors are prohibited from purchasing paint, cigarettes, alcohol, or even getting a tattoo,” Jonathan Covey, director of policy for the group Texas Values, said in an emailed statement. “We cannot allow minors or their parents to make life-altering decisions on body-mutilating procedures and irreversible hormonal treatments.”
  • Professional medical groups and transgender health experts have overwhelmingly condemned legal attempts to limit “gender-affirming” care and contend that they would greatly harm transgender young people.
  • “Gender-affirming care saved my life,” they said in a statement. “Trans kids today deserve the same opportunity by receiving the highest standard of care.”
katyshannon

South Dakota Could Pass 'Bathroom Bill' Affecting Transgender Students | TIME - 0 views

time.com/...athroom-bill-religious-freedom

south dakota pass bathroom bill transgender students lgbt rights discrimination US politics crisis culture

shared by katyshannon on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • South Dakota is on the cusp of becoming the first state in the nation to require public school students to use facilities like bathrooms based on their “chromosomes and anatomy” at birth.
  • The so-called “bathroom bill,” which passed the state House in early February and is being debated by the state Senate Tuesday, marks a revival of the charged fights that played out in states across the country in 2015.
  • At least five other states have considered similar “bathroom bills” this session, and scores of other measures that LGBT rights advocates consider discriminatory are pending in legislatures around the U.S.
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  • Among them are variations on a proposal that exploded in Indiana last year, when controversy over a so-called religious freedom law became a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over religious belief and legal equality. The Hoosier State’s measure led to an estimated $60 million in lost revenue, and after weeks of economic and political pressure, Indiana Governor Mike Pence approved revisions to the law clarifying that businesses couldn’t use it to turn away LGBT patrons.
  • To many supporters, these bills are necessary to protect deeply held religious beliefs and are worth the controversy and lost revenue. To critics, however, the measures seemed aimed at allowing people to treat LGBT citizens differently, based on moral opposition to homosexuality and transgenderism, and serve as a reminder that the lessons of the Indiana fight were fleeting.
  • The fight in South Dakota echoes earlier clashes over gender identity and bathroom use of transgender people. The sponsor of the South Dakota bathroom measure, state Rep. Fred Deutsch, has argued in committee testimony that it is necessary to protect the “bodily privacy rights” of “biologic boys and girls” and that transgender students should be offered alternate accommodations if they do not wish to use the facilities that correspond to their sex assigned at birth.
  • The fight has played out at the state level largely because there is no federal law that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Equality Act, a federal bill that would create such protections, is unlikely to go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress.
  • Rebecca Dodds, the mother of a transgender son who recently graduated from high school in the state’s famed Black Hills, said compelling students to use a separate facility could force them to out themselves to their peers, which could lead to harassment or violence.
  • Though the bill does not specify what those accommodations would be, schools that have dealt with conflicts over bathroom use have often instructed transgender students to use staff or nurse facilities, or facilities in buildings separate from their peers. The Department of Justice has issued several rulings and opinions that say such treatment of transgender students amounts to sex discrimination under Title IX, though federal courts are still weighing the issue.
  • It extends protections for people with three moral beliefs that are laid out in the bill’s text: (1) Marriage is or should only be recognized as the union of one man and one woman (2) Sexual relations are properly reserved to marriage (3) The terms male or man and female or woman refer to distinct and immutable biological sexes that are determined by anatomy and genetics by the time of birth.
  • While critics worry about such bills being used to turn away LGBT people from housing, jobs or businesses, they also worry it could open the door to a broader insertion of personal morality in the public sphere. A pharmacist might, for instance, refuse to fill a birth control prescription for an unmarried woman or a child care agency might refuse to look after a boy or girl with gay parents, without risk of losing their state licenses.
  • Speaking in support of the bathroom bill, a representative from South Dakota Citizens for Liberty said the measure offers a good compromise: “It allows for the sensitive accommodation of students who are experiencing personal trials,” Florence Thompson testified at a hearing of the Senate education committee on Feb. 11. “And does so without giving preferential treatment to a tiny segment of the student population at the expense of the privacy rights of the vast majority.”
  • Meanwhile, the majority of states lack LGBT non-discrimination laws, although a bill in Pennsylvania will likely add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s non-discrimination protections.
  • In Georgia, where lawmakers are considering at least four religious freedom bills, a group of businesses—including Coca-Cola, AT&T and Delta—has formed to promote “inclusive” policies, explicitly mentioning sexual orientation and gender identity as qualities that should be respected.
  • In South Dakota, dollars and cents may determine whether the bathroom bill passes too, with the ACLU arguing that the passage of such a law would put the state in direct conflict with federal policy—and therefore all but guarantee costly litigation for school districts that are forced to choose to follow one or the other. Failing to comply with guidance from the Department of Education, which has said that students’ gender identities must be respected, could run the risk of costing local districts hundreds of millions in federal funds.
  • Yet supporters like Deutsch say that the guidance coming from the federal government is the reason such bills are needed, so that South Dakota won’t be pressured into providing facility access for transgender students that is not yet explicitly laid out in federal law.
martinelligi

Republicans And Democrats Largely Oppose Transgender Sports Legislation, Poll Shows : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...er-sports-legislation-poll-sho

republicans democrats policy

shared by martinelligi on 16 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • In at least 30 states nationwide, lawmakers have introduced bills aiming to keep transgender girls and women from participating on girls' and women's sports teams. These type of restrictions have become a major culture war battle, with Republican lawmakers being the loudest proponents of such bills, while Democrats often oppose them.
  • Republican voters aren't that enthusiastic about those proposed laws, even while they do have reservations about transgender sports participation.
  • Just 29% of Republicans said they "support a bill that prohibits transgender student athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity." Moreover, there was no significant party divide: Similar shares of Republicans, Democrats and independents also said they oppose the bills.
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  • While there is no apparent partisan divide on legislating the issue, there is a pronounced partisan divide on transgender sports participation itself
  • This suggests that while many Republicans and some independents may feel strongly about keeping transgender girls off girls' teams, they have a much smaller appetite for states being involved in that issue.
  • Political party isn't the only major dividing line when it comes to opinions on LGBTQ issues; age also seems to play a significant role. Fully 78% of millennials and people in Generation Z support the Equality Act; progressively smaller shares of Generation X (61%), baby boomers (54%) and people in the silent and greatest generations (46%) support it.
Javier E

Most 'Transgender' Kids Turn Out to Be Gay - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...re-conversion-therapy-58111b2e

transgender homosexual conversion culture history

shared by Javier E on 16 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • I’ll be celebrating Dec. 15, the 50th anniversary of the American Psychiatric Association’s decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. The longstanding designation was based on prejudice, not medical research, and the revision marked the beginning of the end for so-called conversion therapy, which sought to “cure” gays and lesbians of a nonexistent malady.
  • Half a century later, the medical establishment is pushing a new kind of conversion therapy under the guise of transgender identity. No one is suffering more than gay kids
  • In Canada, where I practice, and in the U.S., physicians provide what’s euphemistically known as “gender-affirming care” to patients as young as 8, and the leading transgender health association has opened the door to interventions at even earlier ages. Under this framework, those who feel uncomfortable with their bodies may receive a medical regimen including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgeries. These interventions typically stunt, remove or irreversibly modify a patient’s sexual development, genitals and secondary sex characteristics
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  • Any endocrinologist or other physician who rejects this approach is alleged to be endangering the health and even the life of his patients.
  • Research shows that some 80% of children with “gender dysphoria” eventually come to terms with their sex without surgical or pharmaceutical intervention
  • But are these patients really “transgender”
  • Multiple studies have found that most kids who are confused or distressed about their sex end up realizing they’re gay—nearly two-thirds in a 2021 study of boys
  • This makes sense: Gay kids often don’t conform to traditional sex roles. But gender ideology holds that feminine boys and masculine girls may be “born in the wrong body.”
  • In this light, “gender-affirming care” looks a lot like conversion therapy.
  • Now it takes the form of rendering teenagers sterile and sexually dysfunctional for life.
  • linicians from the main U.K. transgender service referred to prescribing puberty blockers as “transing the gay away”—a play on the description of old-fashioned conversion-therapy as “praying the gay away.” A clinician who resigned from the U.K. service accused it of “institutional homophobia.” Clinicians at the service had a “dark joke” that “there would be no gay people left at the rate Gids”—the Gender Identity Service—“was going.”
  • Consistent with conversion therapy, physicians are telling young gays and lesbians that something is wrong with them, based on a regressive view of what it is to be male or female
  • The resulting interventions often create lifelong medical problems, both physical and mental. Contrary to advocates’ claims, there’s no evidence that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries reduce the risk of suicide.
  • Children who take this road face a lifetime of pain, infertility and anguish
  • society has been told that accepting transgender identity is the same as accepting gays and lesbians. But it isn’t. Even well-intentioned acceptance of transgender identity disproportionately harms them
Javier E

Schools to blame for boys idolising Andrew Tate, says sacked teacher | News | The Times - 0 views

www.thetimes.co.uk/...-says-sacked-teacher-3d9ctgznb

toxic masculinity teacher uk chivalry

shared by Javier E on 25 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • The rise of the influencer Andrew Tate has vindicated the decision to show Eton College pupils a controversial video on masculinity, according to the master who was sacked for doing so.
  • It also stated that “male aggression is a biological fact” and aired concerns about women competing in sports against transgender women.
  • “I think Tate is a symptom of what’s currently going wrong regarding the teaching of boys in schools,” Knowland said from his home in Stowmarket, Suffolk.
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  • “In a properly functioning education system, that’s giving them really robust messaging about what it means to be a man, they would have antibodies to fight off the sick messaging that Tate is giving. All they see is the guy who’s got a Bugatti and joking about telling women to make him a sandwich.
  • “When teachers try to explain why Tate isn’t someone to look up to, the teenage boys ask them, ‘Well, what colour is your Bugatti?’
  • “The premise needs to be attacked directly, which is that ‘no, money isn’t the main index of masculinity’. Otherwise, we would all just be looking up to gangsters and criminals.”
  • Knowland, who teaches English and has forged a career as an online tutor, was sacked in 2020 after refusing to take down a video he made for his students called The Patriarchy Paradox, which repeated claims that women would revert to a primitive life without men.
  • Knowland believes the issues he was seeking to address in the lecture, which is still on his YouTube channel and has had 255,000 views, have only increased since his sacking.
  • The Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) decided to take no action against Knowland after an inquiry. Eton College has previously said that the ruling did not undermine its decision to dismiss him.
  • The school reported the lecture to the TRA, which considered charges of undermining tolerance and failing to safeguard students but closed the case with no further action. In a statement, the school said: “This does not mean that Mr Knowland did nothing wrong or that Eton was not entitled to dismiss him.”
  • He added: “I think the most interesting part about the lecture and what resonated with my supporters was my stress on chivalry and the idea that a man’s strength should be put to the service of the weak and his family.
  • “Chivalry is the thing that we’re missing today and it’s become deformed and turned into machismo, which is masculinity without any sense of humility or meekness. I think this is what we need to return to. Some of the problems that Tate is addressing, things like men should be assertive, men should be competitive, men should be strong, etcetera, chivalry agrees with.
  • “But chivalry says, ‘Why do they need to be those things? Because it’s to serve the weak, not themselves.”
  • Knowland, 37, believes that Tate — who rose to infamy last year after videos of his diatribes led to him becoming the world’s most googled person — has tapped into a “malaise” among young men caused by the teaching of boys in schools.
  • As an example, last month Scotland had to pause movement of transgender prisoners after a row over whether a transgender female rapist should be imprisoned with biological women.
  • “For some, even saying that there are biological differences between men and women is offensive. That’s what my lecture said, that men are stronger,” Knowland added. “I don’t think that [women] should [compete in sport against transgender women]. I don’t think it’s safe.
  • The example I gave in the lecture [was] of the transgender fighter who fractured the woman’s skull, and could easily have killed her. I think there are good reasons why sporting bodies are moving towards and in some cases have already decided that there’s not going to be next events like that.”
  • During the Eton furore Simon Henderson, the head master of Eton, was criticised in some quarters for pursuing a “woke” culture at the school and his critics referred to him as “Trendy Hendy”. They pointed to pupils being asked to wear Black Lives Matter waistcoats and decolonising its curriculum as examples of the institution being captured by ideologues.
  • The content Knowland produces on his YouTube channel continues to be controversial. A recent video by the devout Catholic is entitled “Eight facts that killed evolution for me”.
  • “The lecture was addressing some very live issues at the time and it’s only got worse since then,” he said. “Women now feel that they haven’t got safe spaces to get undressed to go to a swimming pool. So those concepts in the lecture were hard hitting and provocative, because these are topics that are big ones that people have strong feelings about.”
  • While Knowland does not agree with the term transgender — “there are only two categories of sex, using the term transgender concedes too much ground” — he is alive to the issue of transphobic bullying. The issue has been in the spotlight this month after Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old transgender girl, was stabbed to death in a park.
  • “People being subjected to transphobia is terrible,” he said. “People shouldn’t mistreat anybody just because they’ve got a mistaken idea that they are a woman. They need to be treated with compassion, not attacked or bullied.”
  • Knowland’s newfound career as an online tutor, as well as hosting a podcast, has eased some of the pressure he felt after his sacking. He said: “At Eton our family home was a benefit, so that was on my mind when I was leaving. I had to wait a couple of years after leaving to get a home because being self-employed, you have to get all the paperwork to get a mortgage.
  • “I’ve actually had parents get in touch because they supported me over what happened at Eton and wanted me to tutor their children.
  • “Losing my job was concerning but it gave me an insight into what it feels for someone to be cancelled. Fear is such a powerful weapon to stop people believing what they’re passionate about.
  • “People feel they can’t say anything, because consequences are going to be too severe, but now I’ve been through it I’ve actually found it freeing.”
lilyrashkind

Utah bans transgender athletes in girls sports : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...sgender-athletes-veto-override

politics us

shared by lilyrashkind on 26 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers voted Friday to override GOP Gov. Spencer Cox's veto of legislation banning transgender youth athletes from playing on girls teams — a move that comes amid a nationwide culture war over transgender issues. Before the veto, the ban received support from a majority of Utah lawmakers, but fell short of the two-thirds needed to override it. Its sponsors on Friday successfully flipped 10 Republicans in the House and five in the Senate who had previously voted against the proposal.
  • Salt Lake City is set to host the NBA All-Star game in February 2023. League spokesman Mike Bass has said the league is "working closely" with the Jazz on the matter.
  • I cannot support this bill. I cannot support the veto override and if it costs me my seat so be it. I will do the right thing, as I always do," said Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher. With the override of Cox's veto, Utah becomes the 12th state to enact some sort of ban on transgender kids in school sports. The state's law takes effect July 1.
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  • Leaders in the deeply conservative Utah say they need the law to protect women's sports. As cultural shifts raise LGBTQ visibility, the lawmakers argue that, without their intervention, more transgender athletes with apparent physical advantages could eventually dominate the field and change the nature of women's sports.
  • he team is also partially owned by NBA all-star Dwyane Wade, who has a transgender daughter.
  • The looming threat of a lawsuit worries school districts and the Utah High School Athletic Association, which has said it lacks the funds to defend the policy in court. Later Friday, lawmakers are expected to change the bill so state money would cover legal fees.
  • But the ban won support from a vocal conservative base that has particular sway in Utah's state primary season. Even with primaries looming, however, some Republicans stood with Cox to reject the ban.
  • Friday's deliberations came after more than a year of debate and negotiation between social conservatives and LGBTQ advocates. Republican sponsor Rep. Kera Birkeland worked with Cox and civil rights activists at Equality Utah before introducing legislation that would require transgender student-athletes to go before a government-appointed commission.
  • The proposal, although framed as a compromise, failed to gain traction on either side. LGBTQ advocates took issue with Republican politicians appointing commission members and evaluation criteria that included body measurements such as hip-to-knee ratio.
  • The group Visit Salt Lake, which hosts conferences, shows and events, said the override could cost the state $50 million in lost revenue. The Utah-based DNA-testing genealogy giant Ancestry.com also urged the Legislature to find another way. The American Principles Project is confident that states with bans won't face boycotts like North Carolina did after limiting public restrooms transgender people could use. It focused on legislation in populous, economic juggernaut states like Texas and Florida that would be harder to boycott, Schilling said.
  • Ready for more bad infectious diseases news? There's an outbreak of bird flu making its way into U.S. poultry flocks. If the virus continues to spread, it could affect poultry prices — already higher amid widespread inflation. The price of chicken breasts this week averaged $3.63 per pound at U.S. supermarkets — up from $3.01 a week earlier and $2.42 at this time last year, the Agriculture Department says.
  • The latest data from the USDA show 59 confirmed sites of avian flu across commercial and backyard flocks in 17 states since the start of the year. That figure includes chickens, turkey and other poultry. The USDA identified a case of avian flu in a wild bird in mid-January, the first detection of the virus in wild birds in the U.S. since 2016. Wild birds can spread the virus to commercial and backyard flocks. By Feb. 9, the virus had been identified in a commercial flock in Indiana.
  • The last major avian flu outbreak in the U.S. was from December 2014 to June 2015, when more than 50 million chickens and turkeys either died from highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) or were destroyed to stop its spread.
  • Whether the 2022 avian flu will affect the price of eggs and poultry depends on how widespread it becomes, says Ron Kean, a poultry science expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences. "In 2015, we did see quite an increase in egg prices," Kean told Wisconsin Public Radio. "The chicken meat wasn't severely affected at that time. We did see quite a loss in turkeys, so turkey prices went up. So, we'll see. If a lot of farms contract this, then we could see some real increases in price."
  • For producers who suspect their flock may be affected by avian flu, the USDA has a guide to the warning signs, including a sudden increase in bird deaths, lack of energy and appetite, and a decrease in egg production. If a flock is found to be infected by bird flu, the USDA moves quickly — within 24 hours — to assist producers to destroy the flock and prevent the virus from spreading.
  • A new Virginia state law prohibiting mask mandates in public schools does not apply to 12 students with disabilities whose parents challenged the law, a federal judge has ruled. Last month, the parents of 12 students across Virginia asked the court to halt enforcement of the law, saying it violated their rights under the federal American with Disabilities Act. The law, signed by newly elected Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, went into effect March 1; it gives parents a say over whether their children should wear masks in school.
  • The group of parents have children whose health conditions range from cystic fibrosis to asthma that put them at heightened risk for COVID-19.
  • The American Civil Liberties Union, which was one of several legal organizations that filed on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the injunction served as a "blueprint."
  • In a statement, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said the ruling affirms that "parents have the right to make choices for their children."
  • When Judge Katanji Brown Jackson entered the Senate chamber this week to face questions on her readiness to join the Supreme Court, she did so as the first Black woman in the nation's history to be nominated to that position. For many Black law students and professionals, including a group of 150 who traveled from across the country to watch the historic hearing, Jackson's rise to likely associate justice gives a message of profound hope for what they too might one day be able to accomplish.
  • Dudley was one of 100 law students selected nationwide to attend a series of events and watch parties for Jackson's nomination, hosted by the progressive organization, Demand Justice. The group also included 50 public defenders — a nod to Jackson's own background in that field. "I see a lot of myself in her. I see a lot of my friends in her, and I wanted to be there to support," Dudley said, calling Jackson "overly qualified to sit on the Supreme Court."
  • The cohort of legal professionals cheered on Jackson as she faced questions from Republicans about her past cases, particularly those relating to child sex abuse, and on what school of thought she would bring to determining the constitutionality of high-profile cases. Republicans had vowed to oppose President Joe Biden's nominees to the court, and when news of Justice Stephen Breyer's imminent retirement broke, the GOP quickly mobilized to attack potential nominees who might replace the longtime liberal justice on the bench.
  • Particularly, some sentencing decisions in child pornography cases drew GOP fire. But Jackson's measured responses throughout the three days of questioning solidified the support of many onlookers, who reveled in what it would mean to have a Black woman sit on the bench for the first time in the court's 233-year history. "The fact of the matter is that I'm the father of three black girls, right? And to be able to tell them that finally, someone who is Black — female nonetheless — is finally on the precipice of a mountain that has never been climbed before by any other Black woman, is huge," said Edrius Stagg, a third-year law student at Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge.
  • Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — whose break from Democrats on a number of politically fraught votes had worried some as to whether he would support Biden's nominee — announced on Friday he would vote in favor of Jackson's confirmation, all but assuring her path to join the bench.
  • For some, the optics of seeing Jackson — a Black woman — defend her credentials to a group of largely white, predominantly male detractors, was a familiar scene. It has played out, students said, in workplaces the world over and across the socioeconomic spectrum.
  • Booker called the attacks on Jackson's record "dangerous" and "disingenuous," noting the complexities of cases that had been boiled down to their basest points in order to damage Jackson's image.
  • "I'm not gonna let my joy be stolen," he continued. "Because I know, you and I, we appreciate something that we get that a lot of my colleagues don't." And while Jackson's opponents peppered her with politically polarizing questions, her supporters grew even more convinced that Jackson was qualified for the job. "To see her hold her composure and just answer the questions just to the best of her capabilities was just really great to see," said Jasmine McMillion, a third-year law student at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University College of Law.
hannahcarter11

Pride Month organizers to draw attention to anti-transgender laws | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...ttention-anti-transgender-laws

pride anti-transgender laws discrimination Biden

shared by hannahcarter11 on 31 May 21 - No Cached
  • Tuesday marks the beginning of Pride Month, and LGBTQ groups say they plan on drawing attention this year to the anti-transgender bills making their way through state legislatures across the country.
  • GOP-backed measures targeting transgender people have picked up steam in recent months, ranging from bills banning transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports to legislation prohibiting gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
  • By HRC's tally, 250 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year, including at least 35 blocking transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “We have members of the trans and non-binary community that are living in a state of fear.”
  • Pride Month organizers and LGBTQ groups said Pride Month this year will also reflect the new administration in the White House.
  • David touted President BidenJoe BidenTexas Democrats stage walkout to block passage of sweeping election overhaul package DOJ adds four defendants to Oath Keepers conspiracy case Biden remembers late son Beau in Memorial Day remarks MORE’s support for the Equality Act, House-passed legislation that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, education and other areas.
  • More immediately, many Pride Month organizers are focused on holding either in-person or hybrid events during June after last year's gatherings were largely online due to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • “Because we’ll be having events throughout the month of June and throughout the year, folks should anticipate in-person events, some like we’ve been traditionally known for, but also many innovative, broader reaching, and more diverse experiences,” Gerald Garth, board treasurer for LA Pride, told The Hill.
martinelligi

Idaho's Transgender Sports Ban Faces A Major Legal Hurdle : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ban-faces-a-major-legal-hurdle

transgender Policy Politics

shared by martinelligi on 03 May 21 - No Cached
  • Do transgender women and girls have a constitutional right to play on women's sports teams? That question will be argued before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday
  • Do transgender women and girls have a constitutional right to play on women's sports teams? That question will be argued before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.
  • That law never went into effect. U.S. District Court Judge David Nye issued an injunction last August, writing that the plaintiffs who challenged the law are "likely to succeed in establishing the Act is unconstitutional as currently written."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Hecox ran track and cross-country in high school, competing on boys' teams before she transitioned. Now that she's medically suppressing her testosterone levels, she says she's seen her athletic performance level decline.
  • However, in his ruling blocking Idaho's trans sports ban, Judge Nye knocked those arguments down. It remains a matter of "significant dispute," he wrote, whether "transgender women who suppress their testosterone have significant physiological advantages over cisgender women."
  • ncluding the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee. Those elite athletic organizations allow transgender women to compete on women's teams if they've met certain criteria in suppressing their testosterone levels.
anonymous

Transgender athlete sues USA Powerlifting over competition ban - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...-over-competition-ban-n1253960

shared by anonymous on 13 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Transgender powerlifter JayCee Cooper is suing USA Powerlifting, the sport's biggest U.S.-based organization, after it barred her from competition on the basis of her gender identity.
  • "It came as a surprise to me that when I applied to compete at my first competition, I was told that I couldn't compete specifically because I'm a trans woman,"
  • The International Olympic Committee adopted guidelines in 2015 permitting trans women to compete if their testosterone remains below a certain level for at least 12 months.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Cooper's lawsuit says she was rejected from competing even though she provided documentation that her testosterone levels had remained under the IOC's accepted limit for two years.
  • "USAPL denied Ms. Cooper's eligibility to compete because she is a transgender woman, withdrew her competition card because she is a transgender woman, and then went on to adopt a categorical ban on participation by transgender women athletes at USAPL competitions,"
  • "USA Powerlifting is not a fit for every athlete and for every medical condition or situation," the organization's Transgender Participation Policy states. "Simply, not all powerlifters are eligible to compete in USA Powerlifting."
  • The policy says USA Powerlifting is a "sports organization with rules and policies" that "apply to everyone to provide a level playing field."
  • "Men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women," it says. "These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone do not go away. While MTF [male-to-female] may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over than of a female."
  • Cooper said Tuesday that she began lifting in 2018 and said training her body for the sport empowered her in ways she couldn't previously have imagined
  • "As a trans person, this took on additional meaning, because our bodies are so politicized and demonized regularly," she said.
  • "There are a myriad of factors that help determine someone's success in competition," Erin Maye Quade, advocacy director at Gender Justice, said Tuesday. "Anti-trans propaganda's fixation on a single factor lays bare their plot to perpetuate rigid ideas about how women are supposed to look and sound and act."
  • "I grew up pursuing Olympic dreams, and that was taken away from me in the sport of powerlifting," Cooper said. "I don't want anyone to experience what I and other trans athletes have and continue to experience."
johnsonma23

Mississippi to join states' suit against Obama's transgender bathroom policy | MSNBC - 0 views

www.msnbc.com/...as-transgender-bathroom-policy

suit politics msnbc transgender culture

shared by johnsonma23 on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • Mississippi to join states’ suit against Obama’s transgender bathroom policy
  • Mississippi plans to back the 11 other states that filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom policy at public schools
  • Texas is leading the lawsuit, and governors from Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Utah are also on board.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • ordered all of the nation’s public schools to honor transgender students’ bathroom of choice.
  • “into laboratories for a massive social experiment.”
  • denying workers from using a bathroom based on their gender identity amounts to sex discrimination.
rachelramirez

Will the Olympics Finally Embrace Trans Athletes? - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...ly-embrace-trans-athletes.html

olympics lgbtqia policy

shared by rachelramirez on 28 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Will the Olympics Finally Embrace Trans Athletes?
  • The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which previously required transgender athletes to undergo gender-reassignment surgery in order to compete, is now expected to recognize that distinction by allowing all transgender men to compete in the male category “without restriction” and allowing transgender women to compete in the female category after a year of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
  • To date, no openly transgender athlete has competed in the Olympics,
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In spite of this, the Stockholm Consensus, which was adopted by the IOC in 2004, required transgender Olympic hopefuls to wait “two years after gonadectomy [removal of the gonads]” to be eligible for competition.
  • the Women’s Sports Foundation, and the It Takes a Team! campaign noted that “any athletic advantages a transgender girl or woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen therapy.”
anonymous

A Teacher Is On Leave After Refusing to Use Transgender Students' Pronouns : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-a-new-policy-for-trans-studen

shared by anonymous on 03 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • A Virginia elementary school teacher is suing the Loudoun County School Board after he was suspended following comments he made against a proposed new policy that would expand rights for transgender students.
  • "I'm a teacher, but I serve God first, and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa, because it's against my religion," said Cross, who says he is Christian. "It's lying to a child. It's abuse to a child. And it's sinning against our God."
  • Two days after the public meeting, Lucia Villa Sebastian, Loudoun County Public Schools interim assistant superintendent for human resources and talent development, informed Cross in a letter that he was being put on administrative leave with pay as the district investigated allegations of "conduct that has had a disruptive impact on the operations of Leesburg Elementary School."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Cross' lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Virginia Circuit Court for Loudon County, claims that the school district retaliated against him for his comments during the public meeting and that his suspension constituted a violation of his rights to freedom of speech and religion.
  • The proposal would also amend an existing school district policy by allowing students to participate in activities such as sports "in a manner consistent with the student's gender identity."
  • At the public meeting, Cross rose in opposition to draft policy 8040, a proposal that would allow transgender and gender-expansive students to use names and pronouns outside their legal names and "regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student's permanent educational record."
  • Several states including Idaho, Florida and Tennessee have recently enacted laws restricting the ability of transgender athletes to participate in sports based on their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.
  • Byard, the Loudoun County Public Schools public information officer, said the proposal would align district policy with the Code of Virginia and the Virginia Department of Education's guidelines for the treatment of transgender students.
hannahcarter11

Alabama Trans Youth Dismayed By State's Effort To Block Medical Care : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ates-banning-medical-treatment

alabama trans youth

shared by hannahcarter11 on 09 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • So Hall is watching with alarm as the Alabama legislature advances bills that would outlaw hormone treatment for him and other trans youth in the state.
  • Thinking of the bills' proponents, he says, "Why should some guy who has never met me ... why should he get to tell me what I can and can't do? Why does he get to decide what is right for people who just want to be happy?"
  • This year, state legislatures have proposed a record number of anti-transgender bills.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Alabama is one of 20 states that have introduced bills that would prohibit gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.
  • Alabama's bill is one of the toughest. It would make it a felony to provide transition-related medical treatment, such as puberty blockers, hormones or surgery, to transgender minors.
  • Hall was assigned female at birth. But, he says, when he hit puberty around fifth grade, "That's when I started to fully get uncomfortable with, like, the way that I looked or the way that I felt. Like, in my head I looked a different way than I looked in the mirror."
  • This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement calling bills that prohibit trans medical care, or that ban trans girls from women's sports teams, "dangerous."
  • The Alabama legislation is called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.
  • It passed overwhelmingly in the state Senate, by a vote of 23-4, and could go before the full House as early as this week.
  • At a House health committee hearing this month, lawmakers heard an impassioned plea from Sgt. David Fuller with the Gadsden, Ala., police department, who is father to a transgender girl.
  • Those who treat transgender youth say remarks like these are not just factually wrong; they also stigmatize an already marginalized and vulnerable population.
  • The swift progress of the trans medical care ban through the Alabama legislature has caused anxiety for families like theirs.
  • She points out that in their Birmingham clinic, no minor child is making the decision for treatment on their own. There is a detailed informed-consent process, and the child, their parents and the entire medical team all have to agree on a treatment plan.
  • But if the Alabama bill becomes law, she and her medical team could be charged with class C felonies for prescribing puberty blockers or hormones.
  • That means they could face up to 10 years in prison.
  • LGBTQ advocacy groups are gearing up for immediate court challenges if any of the medical care bans bubbling up around the country become law.
  • For Hall, Alabama's legislation would deny something essential: the person he knows himself to be. And, he says, the notion that he's a "gender-confused child" who's just "going through a phase" causes real pain.
Javier E

I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I'm Blowing the Whistle. - 0 views

www.thefp.com/...hought-i-was-saving-trans-kids

trans clinic abuse drug therapy gender dysphoria treatment

shared by Javier E on 11 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • Another disturbing aspect of the center was its lack of regard for the rights of parents—and the extent to which doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children.
  • when there was a dispute between the parents, it seemed the center always took the side of the affirming parent.
  • no matter how much suffering or pain a child had endured, or how little treatment and love they had received, our doctors viewed gender transition—even with all the expense and hardship it entailed—as the solution.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • Besides teenage girls, another new group was referred to us: young people from the inpatient psychiatric unit, or the emergency department, of St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The mental health of these kids was deeply concerning—there were diagnoses like schizophrenia, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and more. Often they were already on a fistful of pharmaceuticals.
  • Being put on powerful doses of testosterone or estrogen—enough to try to trick your body into mimicking the opposite sex—-affects the rest of the body. I doubt that any parent who's ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes. 
  • There are rare conditions in which babies are born with atypical genitalia—cases that call for sophisticated care and compassion. But clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals—and most of these teens haven’t even had sex yet. They had no idea who they were going to be as adults. Yet all it took for them to permanently transform themselves was one or two short conversations with a therapist.
  • Other girls were disturbed by the effects of testosterone on their clitoris, which enlarges and grows into what looks like a microphallus, or a tiny penis. I counseled one patient whose enlarged clitoris now extended below her vulva, and it chafed and rubbed painfully in her jeans. I advised her to get the kind of compression undergarments worn by biological men who dress to pass as female. At the end of the call I thought to myself, “Wow, we hurt this kid.”
  • How little patients understood what they were getting into was illustrated by a call we received at the center in 2020 from a 17-year-old biological female patient who was on testosterone. She said she was bleeding from the vagina. In less than an hour she had soaked through an extra heavy pad, her jeans, and a towel she had wrapped around her waist. The nurse at the center told her to go to the emergency room right away.
  • We found out later this girl had had intercourse, and because testosterone thins the vaginal tissues, her vaginal canal had ripped open. She had to be sedated and given surgery to repair the damage. She wasn’t the only vaginal laceration case we heard about.
  • Bicalutamide is a medication used to treat metastatic prostate cancer, and one of its side effects is that it feminizes the bodies of men who take it, including the appearance of breasts. The center prescribed this cancer drug as a puberty blocker and feminizing agent for boys. As with most cancer drugs, bicalutamide has a long list of side effects, and this patient experienced one of them: liver toxicity. He was sent to another unit of the hospital for evaluation and immediately taken off the drug. Afterward, his mother sent an electronic message to the Transgender Center saying that we were lucky her family was not the type to sue.
  • Here’s an example. On Friday, May 1, 2020, a colleague emailed me about a 15-year-old male patient: “Oh dear. I am concerned that [the patient] does not understand what Bicalutamide does.” I responded: “I don’t think that we start anything honestly right now.”
  • There are no reliable studies showing this. Indeed, the experiences of many of the center’s patients prove how false these assertions are. 
  • Many encounters with patients emphasized to me how little these young people understood the profound impacts changing gender would have on their bodies and minds. But the center downplayed the negative consequences, and emphasized the need for transition. As the center’s website said, “Left untreated, gender dysphoria has any number of consequences, from self-harm to suicide. But when you take away the gender dysphoria by allowing a child to be who he or she is, we’re noticing that goes away. The studies we have show these kids often wind up functioning psychosocially as well as or better than their peers.” 
  • When a female takes testosterone, the profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months. Voices drop, beards sprout, body fat is redistributed. Sexual interest explodes, aggression increases, and mood can be unpredictable. Our patients were told about some side effects, including sterility. But after working at the center, I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor.
  • To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. 
  • The doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion. They even acknowledged that suicide has an element of social contagion. But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate.
  • Frequently, our patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had. We had patients who said they had Tourette syndrome (but they didn’t); that they had tic disorders (but they didn’t); that they had multiple personalities (but they didn’t).
  • The girls who came to us had many comorbidities: depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity. Many were diagnosed with autism, or had autism-like symptoms. A report last year on a British pediatric transgender center found that about one-third of the patients referred there were on the autism spectrum.
  • This concerned me, but didn’t feel I was in the position to sound some kind of alarm back then. There was a team of about eight of us, and only one other person brought up the kinds of questions I had. Anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe. 
  • I certainly saw this at the center. One of my jobs was to do intake for new patients and their families. When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When I left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school. 
  • Until 2015 or so, a very small number of these boys comprised the population of pediatric gender dysphoria cases. Then, across the Western world, there began to be a dramatic increase in a new population: Teenage girls, many with no previous history of gender distress, suddenly declared they were transgender and demanded immediate treatment with testosterone. 
  • Soon after my arrival at the Transgender Center, I was struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment. The center’s physician co-directors were essentially the sole authority.
  • At first, the patient population was tipped toward what used to be the “traditional” instance of a child with gender dysphoria: a boy, often quite young, who wanted to present as—who wanted to be—a girl. 
  • During the four years I worked at the clinic as a case manager—I was responsible for patient intake and oversight—around a thousand distressed young people came through our doors. The majority of them received hormone prescriptions that can have life-altering consequences—including sterility. 
  • I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.
  • Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.
  • Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.
  • For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt. 
  • The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus. 
  • All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, which had been established a year earlier. 
cjlee29

Ted Cruz, Attacking Donald Trump, Uses Transgender Bathroom Access as Cudgel - The New ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ansgender-rights-bathroom.html

shared by cjlee29 on 29 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • HighlightBookmarkSticky
  • As Senator Ted Cruz of Texas seeks every possible edge to stop Donald J. Trump, he has seized on a once-obscure issue with a proven power to inflame conservatives: letting transgender women use women’s bathrooms.
  • a state with many social conservatives that is all but a last stand for him in his fight to deprive Mr. Trump of the Republican presidential nomination.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Mr. Cruz has alternated between mockery and outrage nearly every day in highlighting Mr. Trump’s stance
  • Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both agree that grown men should be allowed to use the little girls’ restroom
  • campaign’s private polling indicates that the bathroom issue has the power to help close the gap
  • In leveraging the issue, Mr. Cruz has raised the specter of sexual predators in women’s restrooms
  • conservatives around the country have effectively invoked to defeat anti-discrimination laws
  • The topic could surface in July at the Republican convention, where a fight is already brewing in the platform committee to overturn the party’s historical objection to same-sex marriage.
  • Even with the transgender protections deleted, the bill died.
  • Social conservatives in Indiana have been on high alert since last year, when Gov. Mike Pence and fellow Republican lawmakers amended a so-called religious freedom law
  • He said Mr. Cruz’s attack on Mr. Trump was meant to show that Mr. Trump is a liberal who supports the right of transgender people to “choose the bathroom that aligns with their identity that day.”
  • But it was North Carolina that thrust the issue into the nation’s consciousness last month, after state lawmakers passed a law prohibiting transgender people from using a public restroom that does not correspond to the gender on their birth certificate.
  • Later, Mr. Trump amended his stance, saying it was up to cities and states to decide on their own.
  • That did not stop Mr. Cruz from saying the country had gone “stark raving nuts
  • She added that 85 to 90 percent of sexual assault victims know their attackers. “Pay attention, read the news, get an understanding,” she said. “This whole argument about going to the bathroom is just ridiculous.”
malonema1

Trump Bans Transgender Americans From Serving in the Military - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...534939

US history crisis trump

shared by malonema1 on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • President Trump has announced that transgender Americans will not be allowed to serve “in any capacity” in the U.S. military, a move that could affect thousands of people serving in the armed forces and which resulted in almost immediate pushback from influential Republicans.
  • Trump’s announcement is the latest in a set of steps his administration has taken to walk back Obama-era policies on transgender Americans. The biggest shift is the reasoning: Rather than framing his decision in the language of rights or morality, as Obama-era officials did, Trump spoke about the new transgender policy in terms of military efficiency. The decision is likely to trigger major blowback from Democratic legislators and LGBT activists who long pushed for full acceptance of transgender service members. It will also bring gender identity back into the spotlight, reigniting a culture-war debate surrounding a president who has tried to sell himself as a friend of LGBT rights.  
  • While there has not been much research done on this question, according to Rand, policies welcoming lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans to serve openly in the military did not diminish units’ effectiveness. The Rand researchers expected “little or no impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness, or readiness” resulting from Obama’s policy.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • John McCain joined in with more explicit criticism. “The president’s tweet this morning … is yet another example of why major policy announcements should not be made via Twitter. The statement was unclear,” the Arizona senator said in a statement. “There is no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military—regardless of their gender identity.” NBC reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee, headed by McCain, was not briefed in advance of the White House’s announcement.
Javier E

Is a Film About a Transgender Dancer Too 'Dangerous' to Watch? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...x-film-transgender-debate.html

transgender dancer film

shared by Javier E on 06 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • “Girl” sounds like a film that transgender moviegoers might rally around. It depicts a teenage trans girl, Lara, raised by a single father who supports not only her dreams of becoming a ballerina but also her gender confirmation surgery. It’s set in Belgium, so much of Lara’s health care is paid for and her doctor and therapist are encouraging caregivers. And it’s a prize winner that is up for a best foreign-language Golden Globe on Sunday.
  • Yet “Girl,” which has been picked up by Netflix, faces a firestorm, one that pits the director, Lukas Dhont; the trans woman who inspired it, the dancer Nora Monsecour; and the film’s supporters against trans activists and others who consider its scrutiny of a trans character’s body so dangerous that they urge no one to see it
  • “Girl” asks a provocative question: Have we gotten to a place where a film can explore dark aspects of an individual trans character without feeling regressive? No one should have the burden of representing a class of people in a film; real people are complicated. But what happens when a movie is both art and a trigger?
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • That’s the question behind the two main criticisms of “Girl.” One is that neither Dhont nor his co-writer, Angelo Tissens, nor the young actor who plays Lara, Victor Polster, are transgender
  • The other objection, the one that has prompted foes to label the film “traumatizing” and “sickening,” involves scenes near the end.
  • The outrage has played out ferociously online. The film critic Oliver Whitney wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that “Girl” is the “most dangerous movie about a trans character in years.” Whitney, who identifies as trans masculine, told me that seeing a trans girl mutilating herself suggests “it’s part of her survival, and that’s harmful.” He said he was most upset that the film “sends a damaging message to all audiences, but especially to trans folks suffering from dysphoria who may not have access to medical care or information about medical transitions.”
  • Three trans women who saw the film at a screening in Los Angeles said it was the film’s dark territory that made it compelling. Crystal Stull told me “Girl” was “the closest that cis people in society will ever get to understanding just how bad dysphoria can really get.
  • Ann Thomas, the founder of Transgender Talent, a talent listing service for trans people, chastised the campaign against it.“The message these arrogant trans activists are saying is that Nora doesn’t have the right to tell her story,” said Thomas, who also defended “Girl” in an opinion piece for The Advocate.
  • “We’re worried about harm reduction,” said Elena Rose Vera, the deputy executive director of Trans Lifeline, who has not seen the movie. “We just want to protect our community.”
  • Monsecour told me she hoped the trans community knew that “Girl” was a beginning, not an end.“I have a platform to speak with ‘Girl,’” she said. “Without ‘Girl,’ I wouldn’t have that. There’s a lot of work to do, but I’m confident that more trans people will tell their stories.”
anonymous

Sarah McBride of Delaware becomes first transgender state senator in U.S. history - POL... - 0 views

www.politico.com/...-state-senator-delaware-433990

shared by anonymous on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Sarah McBride has become the first openly transgender state senator in U.S. history after winning a state Senate seat in Delaware on Tuesday night.
  • She is part of a surge of transgender candidates running for office this election cycle.
  • McBride, who made history at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 when she became the first openly transgender person to speak at any major-party convention in the U.S.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • There are currently four openly transgender U.S. state legislators
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