Kait Sanchez has written a great review of the real science on trans kids. Her article makes it clear that the current wave of transphobic American legislation is based on lies, outdated studies or grotesque misrepresentation of contemporary science.
Bookmark for future reference!
Here’s a key quote:
«Arkansas is one of 20 states to attempt bans on gender affirming medical care for young people in the last year. All of the bills try to weaponize science — in the form of questionable, outdated, or misinterpreted research — against trans children and their parents while willfully ignoring both the experiences of trans people and the expert opinion of many groups of scientists, scholars, and doctors.
“They’re saying they’re doing science, but they’re ignoring what all the scientific associations are saying,” says Florence Ashley, a transfeminine jurist and bioethicist who studies the ways science and legal systems affect trans youth. The American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Endocrine Society, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and others have consistently opposed the bills.»
“So much respect to older trans people who endured so much to just be themselves I dedicated my Trans Pride Colouring Book to Nemo, a stealth trans man born in 1948.”
This book is dedicated to Nemo, a trans man who was born in 1948. Nemo came out to his family when he was 14 years old. At the time, there was neither knowledge nor information about transgender people and he, like many others, was ridiculed and stigmatized. But despite all the odds, he persisted.
In 2011, Nemo switched on his television to see a documentary series about myself and six other trans people. He reached out and asked to meet with me. He explained to me that it was the first time he’d seen someone like himself represented on-screen. After years of being stealth and the passing away of his best friend who was the only other transgender person in his life, Nemo was incredibly isolated and lonely…
But despite all that, Nemo has come out on the other side and is finally living his life for himself and nobody else. Nemo is so delighted with how things have changed in the past few decades and it makes him so happy it to hear stories of trans people celebrating who they are. Seeing transgender kids and teenagers be able to come out at young ages is incredibly important and serves as inspiration and reassurance for the older generations that what they went through really did have an impact.
The Trans Pride Colouring Book is a colouring book packed with content designed to make trans people of any ages feel celebrated, supported and seen.
The American Republican Party’s decent into darkness is a tragedy and their treatment of trans kids is a crime. Still, it is important to keep in mind that they are losing in many states.
Pink News reports that the Texas House had a deadline to pass bills from the Texas Senate of midnight Tuesday (25 May), which expired before Senate Bill 29 (SB29) could receive a vote. It is dead and good people everywhere are celebrating.
In other news: Nashville’s top prosecutor has refused to enforce a “hateful” Tennessee law that demands businesses post signs saying trans people can use their bathrooms. District Attorney Glenn Funk said to News4 Nashville that he believes that every person is welcome and valued in Nashville:
“Enforcement of transphobic or homophobic laws is contrary to those values. My office will not promote hate.”
Photo text: From tweet by Texas representative Ana-Maria Ramos: “We did it! During a 14 hour day at the lege, we successfully stopped SB29 - an anti-trans sports bill that threatened to hurt our Texas trans youth. Today was a testament to the resilient spirit of the amazing trans community and all of the allies who stood by us all session.”
Over at twitter @FireceMum presents a new article from the renowned science journal Nature on trangender youth in Belgium. The article provides some very helpful insight into why the number of trans youth seeking health services is going up.
@FierceMum, who presents herself as “a fierce advocate of her trans daughter, blogger, writer, PhD researcher, mum & intersectional feminist” writes this in her thread:
First of all, it provides a useful reference for the Nuffield and Cass reviews that both seem perplexed as to the rise in children coming to Gender Clinics worldwide.
“A recent Belgian study found that the average age of self-realization is 12.7 years throughout different generations, but the coming-out age has dropped significantly from 33.2 years in the generation born between 1965–1970, to 27.7 years in the generation born between 1971–1985 to 17,5 for those born between 1986–2000 [45]. This decreased coming-out age explains why an increase in the pediatric clinics can be noted.”
Next it looks at the numbers of youth who continue accessing gender services. The paper looks at 177 youth aged 12-18 on first appointment at the service between 2007 and 2016 (average age 15 at first appointment).
It focuses on 172 youth. 29 of these stopped going to the children’s gender clinic. 7 of these had re-enrolled in adult services by the time the study was conducted.
87% (150/172) continued accessing gender services.
Of the 22 who stopped accessing Belgian gender services, only 2 were interviewed (others were not found or refused to engage). One was living in assigned gender, and did not need gender services. The other was gender fluid, and did not need medical intervention.
TW to follow in this thread. (mention of suicide).
5 out of the 177 adolescents in the Belgian gender clinic (2.8%) are reported to have taken their own lives.
I know the statistics & frequently see & hear the realities of trans kids & teens, but this is still deeply shocking & profoundly upsetting to read. Trans kids & trans youth continue to be failed so badly in so many ways.
Tackling institutional transphobia and societal prejudice won’t solve all problems, but it is a bloody good place to start.
Providing trans positive de-pathologising affirming healthcare for trans adolescents won’t solve all problems, but is an important component of wellbeing, strongly correlated with positive outcomes.
Childhood affirmation, embracing and celebrating trans kids to be recognised and validated at all ages won’t solve all problems, but it helps trans kids grow up secure and with self-esteem.
Providing gender affirmative guidance, counselling, advice and support for parents can help ensure families and homes are safe and nurturing environments for all children.
Schools can do more to ensure they provide safe and affirming spaces for all trans and gender diverse kids, spaces where gender diversity is normalised and embraced, where diversity is visible and validated, where microaggressions and cisnormativity is tackled.
Every trans kid and trans teen who I have had the privilege to get to know is someone I look up to, am proud to know, am impressed by. Trans kids are awesome. And we continue to fail them.
You might say that big corporations do nothing if it does not create some profit. Maybe, but that does not mean that what they do cannot have a positive effect on society.
So when Pantene presents and ad that tell the positive story about a transgender girl being accepted and helped by family and friends, I take that as a good sign. In spite of all the right wing extremist and “gender critical” transphobia, companies like Procter & Gamble see that the tide has shifted towards more LGBTQA friendly attitudes.
Over at twitter Pantene writes:
Hair is a large part of our identity. And for LGBTQ+ youth like Sawyer, who choose to express themselves, their style, & their creativity through their hair style, it can help them feel seen.
In another tweet they say that transphobia has no place in their world or in their feed.
It’s a simple and authentic story with a message that everyone is welcome and accepted… so I think it says more about the people mad about it than anything else. If I had more hair I’d use more of your products
New research on depression may throw some light upon the way transgender and nonbinary people experience depression. In “We’ve Got Depression All Wrong. It’s Trying to Save Us,” Alison Escalante argues that depression may be part of a biological survival strategy.
Normally depression is seen as a negative side effect of emotional trauma, abuse or some random physiological or medical factor. Depression is not seen as something functional or meaningful per se.
However, I have seen research that tries to explain depression as an attempt to achieve the social isolation needed for healing and recalibration.
This article takes this argument one step further: Depression leads to a kind of withdrawal that reduces the risk of violence and abuse from people around us. So in a dysfunctional family with an abusive parent or spouse, the body triggers a kind of inertia that may protect a person agains physical or emotional violence.
When the inner need for growth collides with people’s desire to conform
Think of it this way: We are all born with a need for self expression and self realization, which may lead to conflict with others. Good parents and good friends give people room to explore and express themselves (within reason).
Sociopaths, control freaks and people driven by fear of social exclusion may see such independence as a threat to their own hegemony and/or status in society. They will therefor use violence to curtail this freedom. They may even think of this as a way of “helping” the child.
There is this idea among cis folks that trans people has always known that they are transgender. That is not always the case.
Sure, they may have felt that something was wrong, but if they haven’t had the language needed to make sense of those feelings or people to help them explore who they are, it may take years before it finally clicks: “Ah, that is why I have been so distraught all the time!”
Medico et al. (2020) interviewed 10 trans youth and their parents attending a support group in Switzerland; the youth ranged in age from 9 to 21, with seven trans boys and three trans girls. Consistent with the findings of other publications, the authors reported that “a few months to a few years elapsed from the moment youth reached self-understanding to when they first came out to others.” However, their experiences were not homogeneous and did not follow a single straightforward path – instead, the authors identified three distinct pathways of development and disclosure among these youth.
The three pathways are:
1. The “affirmed” children, who express across-gender identity to the family in early childhood.
2. The “silent” children, who has a felt, embodied sense of something being wrong, but this is difficult to label or express.They do not reveal their gender identity until the onset of puberty.
3. The “neutral” pathway represents young people who come out as trans as soon as social pressure and the development of secondary sexual characteristics makes gender become an issue, but who has not experienced the same degree of distress prior to puberty.
The neutral group may, for instance, include assigned-female youth who has lived “a form of social masculinity during childhood” until this became socially unacceptable.
The authors make clear that “no evidence indicates that youth suddenly become trans at adolescence” – instead, this clarification and emergence is the result of a process that includes several factors. Among these are gender subjectivity, an internal feeling of something not being right; embodiment, the understanding that this feeling relates to bodily sexed features and social experiences of gender; and gender identity, the actual identification with an explicit trans label. For these children, this process is anything but a simple, sudden, or rash decision.
I would also add that many trans people do not make sense of their transgender nature until much later in life, and even if they do they may keep it a secret out of fear of invalidation and social exclusion. The main reason for people coming out late as trans is transphobia, plain and simple.
She points out that the insistence by some parents that their child “pick a gender”—for the comfort and ease of others—can be invalidating for kids and can negatively affect their mental health.
Here are some of her tips:
Introduce books, TV or films with characters who identify as LGBTQ+ and comment in a way that is affirming of all sexual and gender identities
Ask them if everything is okay and tell them you love them and they can talk to you about anything.
If they do want to come out, say, at school, you can be helpful in facilitating meetings with school administrators or teachers.
Educate yourself about nonbinary identities. Your child should not have to teach you.
The term nonbinary can be used to describe anyone who doesn’t feel they fall into the categories of either male or female, including—but not limited to—people who identify as gender fluid, agender (without gender), or a third gender. Find out what applies to your child.
If your child wants you to use they/them pronouns to refer to them instead of she/her or he/him, use the correct pronouns.
Transhood was filmed between 2014 and 2019 in the politically and religiously conservative Kansas City area, and follows the lives of each of the four children as they navigate growing up transgender.
“What I really hope is that people realize we’re human,” Avery says in the clip. “We’re not like, some exotic species. We have human emotions. That’s what matters.”
The movie was directed and produced by Sharon Liese.
