In order to understand oppression as a subconscious thing, let's take a couple of examples.

Many women complain that they express an idea that is immediately dismissed, only for a man to be cheered for saying the exact same thing, minutes later.

I have witnessed time and again a woman pointing to the correct explanation or solution for a bug and a man just ignoring her repeatedly, only to exhaust all other solutions before arriving to the same conclusion and solution.

There is a ton of lab research to show this goes beyond anecdotal evidence. Some researchers recently showed that for the same length of speech, women speakers were judged as being overtaking the dialog.

In fact, the balance that the average listener gauged as fair was 70% male speech vs 30% female speech. Don't get me started about bias of doctors, not only against women and transgender people, but, let's face the elephant in the room, black people.

A recent study had found that doctors hold outdated racist tropes, for instance, that black people are more resistant to pain. Doctors are also more likely to discount complains from any marginalized group, and send them home with a "have less stress" tap on the back, when in reality they do have something serious. The list goes on and on.

There is a whole book, called "Dying of Whiteness", which shows that white people are opposed to welfare measures, when they think that black people will benefit from welfare too.

The number of leftist and anarchist people who maintain some blatant form of medicalized cisgenderism is astonishing. And this is not about transphobia only. The track record of many collectives with sexism is harrowing.

Someone recently wrote "Why I am not giving to your mutual aid project", TL;DR because every collective has a couple of skeletons of sexual abuse in their closet.

Haven't we all seen the silent machismo and the solidarity between male authority figures in these spaces? Whenever a story like this pops up, the whole repertoire of discount tropes for sexual abuse allegations is taken out from the secret place it is kept for emergencies like this.

This is consequential for broader organization as well, not only gendered and racialized oppression. In a strict Bakunian sense, the informality of a circle of buddies pulling the strings on any topic of field of activity is a form of State. A kyriarchy, or oppression.

And there are more oppressions that we don't even know, in jobs, universities, hobbies, and more. Some of them can be traced back to sexism, like the hard-science superiority complex has sexist undertones, but wherever there is inequality, there is oppression.

It seems that people have a predisposition to form groups and make rules that reify social categories, for instance when some universities are considered elite and others shitholes, or some squat is seen as true hardcore anarchists and the others as alternative lifestyle hippies.

ALL of this operates subconsciously.

For quite some time I thought that the channels of anarchist organization would remedy human predisposition towards inequality, oppression, and bias. I now realize that this can not happen automatically, but a serious component of self-reflection to transcend internalized kyriarchies must be necessary.

But we now see the prevail of the most vulgar and raw inequality instincts, enabled by systemic capitalist indoctrination and consent manufacturing campaigning. And we know that this seed is also present in leftists and anarchists.

I believe that something horrible is about to happen the following five to ten years. We will then reflect, as we did in the aftermath of the two first world wars, on human predisposition to outgroup, other, dehumanize and eliminate.

We might as well reinvent the science of the human psychology of obedience, conformity, prejudice, oppression and kyriarchy. And anarchists might have to reinvent the principles of political organization, this time to include the understanding of subconscious oppression, and embrace procedures to address and transcend all kyriarchies.

That would stay truth to the spirit of complete abolition of all State, including internalized states of mind. (The pun is not intended.) In fact, I finally tend to agree with some anarchist pedagogists, that preparing people to be active members in an equal society, free of oppressions, the work must start in childhood, to eradicate the instincts of property, selfishness, power and supremacy.

So, although it might seem there could not be a bleakest time to raise such issues, that in fact the struggle for visibility, for the normalization of queer lives, for the subversion of verbal sexism, and so on and so forth, all were important and integral to the anarchist cause.

The white male racist kleprocratists might shed ours and many of our siblings' blood over the next ten years. But 2030's anarchism will re-discover the procedures that engender these demands and bake the relentless struggle for complete equality right into the channels of anarchist social organization and generational reproduction.

A specialized iPhone app was used to block internet access, recording any time that the feature was disabled.

In numbers, nearly all the participants — 91 percent — improved on at least one of the three outcomes, while around three-quarters reported better mental health by the end.

The findings even suggest that the intervention had a stronger effect on depression symptoms than antidepressants, and was roughly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy.

What's driving all this? Ward suggests that the simplest explanation is that the experiment forced participants to spend more time doing fulfilling things in the real world.

Gallup surveyed 1,001 adults last month, and published the results on Monday (February 10).

Although a slight fall from previous years, more than half the respondents (58 per cent) still said they openly support trans women and men serving in the military.

The most support came from Democrat voters, with 84 per cent backing the idea, while only 23 per cent of Republicans felt the same way, a fall from 43 per cent in 2019. Among Independents, backing fell from 78 per cent to 62 per cent during the same period.

I recently came across several videos of Hans Georg Moeller. Although I got the reference from a leftist source, and there were no early signs to deter me from engaging with his work, I reach the conclusion that his discourse is detrimental to trans activism and unsafe for trans people. Disclaimer: I am no expert in his work, and I watched a couple of his videos. So take what I say here with a grain of salt, if you want. But I think that activists and trans people should be aware that this is probably a problematic philosopher, exerting some influence in leftist transphobe spaces. And in doing so, following the links to his videos provided none of the usual warnings and red flags that are present when entering critter territory. I would rather have people be warned that this philosopher if not "gender-critical" (which I believe) is "gender-critical adjacent", and this should inform whether you want to engage with his ideas or not (which I advise not).

My opinion is formed by the following clues:

• In his video on Contrapoints' Pronouns he mostly refers to texts that are written by gender critical authors. He never cites a transfeminist scholar.
• He frames transness as a symptom of overinvestment to extremely online profiles, and he has written at least one paper about it ("From Identities to Profiles").
• He engages the topic of "wokeism" as an extension of identity politics. This is not in itself damning in this particular case. But there are some deeper problems with it, which relate to broader trivialization of TERF shit in leftist intellectuals.

In discussing "wokeism" he seems to be iffy with established gender terminology, for instance he says "she has all of her identities on, she is cisgender, bisexual and all that". You know what, "cisgender" is not an identity extravaganza, it is an established term to refer to people that are not trans, what MAGAts insist is "normal".

On the other hand he is not quite restrained in inventing novel terminology about gender issues. Gender sincerity, gender authenticity, etc. Again, coming up with terms could be justified if he wants to add other layers of useful abstraction, but in this case I thought this is just obfuscating things that are already known and have simple, intuitive names already: Performativity, gender roles, gender identity, gender expression, gender non-conformity.

There should be no problem to these decades-old terms that are available in numerous sociological dictionaries and reference websites. The only problem is that chuds don't want to hear those terms. And boy were there chuds in the comment section!

An easy objection here could be that Moeller does sth virtuous, by inventing this terminology he makes trans concepts more accessible to people that despise "gender ideology". But is that so? If you translate his argument in the common tongue, he simply says that trans people internalize and perform gender roles, while utterly missing the point that cis people do too. And, at the same time, borderline perpetuating the myth that trans people reproduce stereotypes. All in all, his verbosity tells us nothing new or interesting, rather than providing entry points of legitimacy to more outspoken gender-critical voices, and giving the average chud the vague confidence that Contrapoints and Thorn have somehow been "debunked".

This reactionary ideological function of Moellers' flies under the radar of some trans-positive viewers all the same. Being referred by leftists, and unprimed by the usual walls of red flags that come with other anti-trans commentators, it is easy to tilt your head and listen closely, setting yourself up for an equally alienating, if not traumatic, experience. This friendly guy does not throw the typical dogwhistles people have developed knee-jerk reactions to. He does not purposefully misgender people (although he slips up, but well, true allies tend to not slip up), and he does not seem to make his whole personality about being a dick to trans people. He discusses hijras as a third gender to make his point of "gender sincerity" (ie hijras do not subvert gender roles).

It is easy then to not understand that you are exposed to a re-framing and subverting of trans advocates' assumptions, and introduced to the idea that these assumptions might not be warranted at all. A trans woman in the comments even says "Good analysis, it is a pity he reaches a wrong conclusion." Well perhaps it is not an accident. This has historically been an attack vector of transphobes, with payroll think-tank pseudo-intellectuals, who push the idea that "sex change is absurd and infeasible" in more palatable ways to less supremacists audiences. Well, one of the intended audiences are leftists.

But what is his conclusion? Here goes: People are extremely online and overinvest to their online profiles. Technology has reached a point where people seek body modifications to match their internet selfs. Trans people should invest less to bioengineering solutions (ie transition) and learn to be happy as gender-subversive cis individuals. (An opinion we immediately register as transphobic when it comes from right wing commentators). This is a gender critical position and a usual justification for conversion therapy and persecution of affirming one's identity even by verbally using pronouns. So I don't really care about how you reach your conclusion, if your conclusion is trans genocide, especially with all that is happening right now.

That is not to say that his conclusion is justified. Heck, it is not even "just" a logical leap from his previous arguments. Did he reach that conclusion with propositional calculus, or backwards inference? No, he reached it by renaming things arbitrarily and furnishing the novel terminology with established anti-trans authors and frameworks. Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsey, Kathleen Stock, Mary Harrington, and what have you. Ah, yes, Slavoj Zizek, whom he links in the video description as a good follow up. Well guess what, Zizek holds really bad positions on trans people. And guys like Zizek and Moelller made me think "ah that's the ideological man-womb of way so many leftist transphobes".

To sum up, Moeller: rejects the established terminology, ignores trans scholars and mainstream medical concepts about trans people, bisects Contrapoints and Abigail Thorn videos with self-styled verbal abstractions, responds to these abstractions with TERF references and assumptions, and reaches widely acknowledged as gender-critical conclusions, sprinkling some "trans is the edge case of hegemonic individuation" psychobabble to win over the leftists.

My quick response to the "individuation/identity politics" reactionary buzzwords is that when the system targets you for being homosexual and imprisons you, it is not an individual thing. When the system comes over to your continent to capture and enslave you, it is not an individual thing. And so on and so forth. You are targeted on the exact grounds of not being a white hetero cis male of Germanic origin. Moeller knows that (he says that his red hair do not constitute an "identity") but chooses to ignore it, and portrays these group-based oppressions as irrelevant in modern discourse. This is the archetypal anti-woke position, that there is no institutional violence and oppression lingering on from patriarchy, slavery, segregation, colonialism, homosexual persecution. "Everybody is free and equal now, right? The tables even are turned over now, it is the minorities that oppress us, etc, etc".

Despite Hans Georg Moeller can easily fly under the radar of a trans inclusive person as legitimate discourse, he relies upon transphobic sources and reaches typical transphobic conclusions with way less rigor than his verbiage advertises. On top of that, his other analyses, which I won't discuss now, bear even more sad links to extremist reactionary discourse. For instance, his critique of German guilt-fetishism about the Holocaust, which he considers a driving force (beside identity politics) of "wokeism", apparently resembles comments Musk made at the AfD rally ("Germans should stop feeling guilty about the past etc").

Having looked around I nowhere find Moeller being listed as a problematic scholar, but my analysis of him so far has persuaded me that he is a Jordan Peterson of the left, and I would not like any trans person fall prey to his palatable enabling of harmful and alienating discourses.

geteilt von: https://lemmy.ml/post/25037238

Note: I was writing this text throughout the past week. Yesterday Trump signed an executive order (Erin Reed breaks it down here) which forbids changing one's appearance to conform with the “opposite biological sex”. I spent all my big words in the text. TL;DR Bathroom bans are an entry point to criminalizing being trans, which now must be crystal clear that it was.

Two common comebacks with which trans advocates respond to respond to the scourge of bathroom bans are the following: On one hand, it is not feasible to confirm people’s assigned sex for an act so mundane as visiting a public restroom. On the other, enforcing the bans cause cisgender people to be questioned and harassed if they do not meet expectations of how a member of their assigned sex should look like.

Trans advocate organizations, and some Democrats, during an early 2025 hearing of an anti-trans sports ban, correctly stated that such a ban will open up opportunities to perverts to interact with children to “inspect their gender”.

The legislation has an “intrusive focus on scrutiny of students’ bodies,” according to over 400 human rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and Advocates for Trans Equality. The groups issued an open letter to the legislature in opposition to the laws, which they said “invite scrutiny and harassment of any other student perceived by anyone as not conforming to sex stereotypes.”

According to trans man scholar Jack Halberstam[^1], masculine, androgynous, butch, women, trans men, all face policing a women restrooms as well, despite being assigned female at birth. Bathroom bans enforce gender role stereotypes: rather than biological sex, it is feminine self-presentation that it is enforced. Even expected statistical variation within cisgender women, such as height, can also make a person target to gender policing vigilantes. To bring this point home, many cis-passing trans women are not questioned in women restrooms, whereas butch cis women are. It is not chromosomes or genitals that are beholden in these cases, but perceived femininity.

But if appearance is not a conclusive estimate of a person’s assigned sex at birth, advocates continue, the only way to enforce bathroom bans is to have genital inspectors, public restroom permits and certificates, which are impractical and defeat the very concerns of dignity and safety, which are the very issues supposedly stemming from "allowing" trans women in female bathrooms.

By the same coin, enforcing restroom use according to chromosomes or genitals will mandate that trans men use female restrooms, which itself reverses the problem. The right suggests that self-determination will allow any man enter female restrooms by “faking” trans in order to commit sex crimes. But this would also be true if the bans are upheld: trans men are then forced into female bathrooms, and yet again there will be masculine-looking people walking in freely into female restrooms (you know, like male janitors do all the time).

Thus bathroom bans are correctly fenced off as absurd, self-defeating, and eventually pointless. Advocates are absolutely correct in their analysis, and I agree to all the arguments I cite above.

How are they then wrong?

Advocates fail to realize that what the right really wants is to delegitimize the public existence of people whose appearances are not consistent with their assigned sex at birth. Florida attempted to designate to present oneself as the opposite gender in public as a sex crime. It also sought to pass laws that assert that all artistic impersonations of a sex different than the performers are inherently obscene.

Bathroom ban proposals stipulate a problem about which they fearmonger, without a shred of evidence that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, in stark comparison with the problem of trans women being harassed, and raped in male prisons, or even cis women that are mistaken for trans sometimes. This is a real problem that we could be addressing the past decade if the right did not choose this avenue of trans vilification and demagoguery.

But we have a greater problem here[^2], which is a threat to democracy itself. The bathroom bans, which do not appear in isolation but bundled together with several other measures that prohibit being trans/in public/altogether, do not address any real problem, as they do not address the real problems of children and cisgender women, whose reproductive rights and credibility in case of real sex crimes perpetrated en masse by cisgender men, they want to stripe away.

Here is why I think bathroom bans are entry points to the corrosion of democratic values.

If people are to use exclusively the restrooms that match their assigned at birth sex, then all people must be the sex that they are perceived to be. Trans advocates were not paranoid enough to imagine that the right wants to wipe trans people out of public life to such a degree, that no ambiguity about a person's sex can further be possible, except for those "extremely rare genetic accidents" Ben Shapiro keeps talking about.

Public erasure, however, of transgender and gender-nonconforming people amounts to the enforcement of cisgenderism by a state that defines sex as a natural binary with no exceptions, and no behavioral, nor performative, nor psychological deviations from the norm. This take is inconsistent with modern understanding of sex biology and endocrinology, the psychology and phenomenology of gender expression and gender identity. It wants to perpetuate for trans identities to be medicalized and intersex people be erased. It aims to enforce strict gender roles, identities, and expressions, coded on the appearance of external genitalia at the time of birth. It wants to hinter any progress in the societal issues brought up by professionals and activists surrounding trans and intersex people.

Gender non-conforming expression is a fundamental freedom

The elimination of sex and gender variation and non-conformity is incompatible with fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, and the freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex. In fact, the same actors and organizations do not attack sex and gender minorities alone. They consistently mock and delegitimize a number of other accommodations we have established as a decent society, such as racial equity, reproductive rights, disability measures, and accessibility.

This broader attack to fundamental protections shows it is not only bathroom bans that are embedded into a broader picture of plans of trans genocide, but it is also trans genocide itself that is embedded into a broader picture of a rightwing attack to established democratic freedoms, which entail freedom of speech, reproductive rights, religious freedoms, protection from discrimination.

Advocates fail to reflect on the horrific divide in assumptions: they assume a world order in which trans people can freely move and exist in the public space without the knowledge of cis people. When proposing the bans, the right assumes a world where trans people will not be allowed to exist at all, and they now have the means to implement this world order.

Bathroom bans are a gambit to attack fundamental pillars of constitutional law and human rights protections in western societies and they seem very consistent and well thought out in their conception: No one should be allowed to appear to be a different sex that the "biological reality"[^3], and this should be enforced by the state. But for this to be enforced by the state, fundamental rights and protections should be abandoned, including the rights of children and cisgender women.

Bathroom bans are to be understood as coal mine canaries of the rise of totalitarianism in Western Societies.

[^1]: Female Masculinity (book) [^2]: In fact, Trump's fresh executive order will force trans women (and some cis ones too) into male prisons. [^3]: I literally arrived to this conclusion a couple days before Trump's executive order. I wish I had realized sooner.

geteilt von: https://lemmy.ml/post/25037238

Note: I was writing this text throughout the past week. Yesterday Trump signed an executive order (Erin Reed breaks it down here) which forbids changing one's appearance to conform with the “opposite biological sex”. I spent all my big words in the text. TL;DR Bathroom bans are an entry point to criminalizing being trans, which now must be crystal clear that it was.

Two common comebacks with which trans advocates respond to respond to the scourge of bathroom bans are the following: On one hand, it is not feasible to confirm people’s assigned sex for an act so mundane as visiting a public restroom. On the other, enforcing the bans cause cisgender people to be questioned and harassed if they do not meet expectations of how a member of their assigned sex should look like.

Trans advocate organizations, and some Democrats, during an early 2025 hearing of an anti-trans sports ban, correctly stated that such a ban will open up opportunities to perverts to interact with children to “inspect their gender”.

The legislation has an “intrusive focus on scrutiny of students’ bodies,” according to over 400 human rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and Advocates for Trans Equality. The groups issued an open letter to the legislature in opposition to the laws, which they said “invite scrutiny and harassment of any other student perceived by anyone as not conforming to sex stereotypes.”

According to trans man scholar Jack Halberstam[^1], masculine, androgynous, butch, women, trans men, all face policing a women restrooms as well, despite being assigned female at birth. Bathroom bans enforce gender role stereotypes: rather than biological sex, it is feminine self-presentation that it is enforced. Even expected statistical variation within cisgender women, such as height, can also make a person target to gender policing vigilantes. To bring this point home, many cis-passing trans women are not questioned in women restrooms, whereas butch cis women are. It is not chromosomes or genitals that are beholden in these cases, but perceived femininity.

But if appearance is not a conclusive estimate of a person’s assigned sex at birth, advocates continue, the only way to enforce bathroom bans is to have genital inspectors, public restroom permits and certificates, which are impractical and defeat the very concerns of dignity and safety, which are the very issues supposedly stemming from "allowing" trans women in female bathrooms.

By the same coin, enforcing restroom use according to chromosomes or genitals will mandate that trans men use female restrooms, which itself reverses the problem. The right suggests that self-determination will allow any man enter female restrooms by “faking” trans in order to commit sex crimes. But this would also be true if the bans are upheld: trans men are then forced into female bathrooms, and yet again there will be masculine-looking people walking in freely into female restrooms (you know, like male janitors do all the time).

Thus bathroom bans are correctly fenced off as absurd, self-defeating, and eventually pointless. Advocates are absolutely correct in their analysis, and I agree to all the arguments I cite above.

How are they then wrong?

Advocates fail to realize that what the right really wants is to delegitimize the public existence of people whose appearances are not consistent with their assigned sex at birth. Florida attempted to designate to present oneself as the opposite gender in public as a sex crime. It also sought to pass laws that assert that all artistic impersonations of a sex different than the performers are inherently obscene.

Bathroom ban proposals stipulate a problem about which they fearmonger, without a shred of evidence that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, in stark comparison with the problem of trans women being harassed, and raped in male prisons, or even cis women that are mistaken for trans sometimes. This is a real problem that we could be addressing the past decade if the right did not choose this avenue of trans vilification and demagoguery.

But we have a greater problem here[^2], which is a threat to democracy itself. The bathroom bans, which do not appear in isolation but bundled together with several other measures that prohibit being trans/in public/altogether, do not address any real problem, as they do not address the real problems of children and cisgender women, whose reproductive rights and credibility in case of real sex crimes perpetrated en masse by cisgender men, they want to stripe away.

Here is why I think bathroom bans are entry points to the corrosion of democratic values.

If people are to use exclusively the restrooms that match their assigned at birth sex, then all people must be the sex that they are perceived to be. Trans advocates were not paranoid enough to imagine that the right wants to wipe trans people out of public life to such a degree, that no ambiguity about a person's sex can further be possible, except for those "extremely rare genetic accidents" Ben Shapiro keeps talking about.

Public erasure, however, of transgender and gender-nonconforming people amounts to the enforcement of cisgenderism by a state that defines sex as a natural binary with no exceptions, and no behavioral, nor performative, nor psychological deviations from the norm. This take is inconsistent with modern understanding of sex biology and endocrinology, the psychology and phenomenology of gender expression and gender identity. It wants to perpetuate for trans identities to be medicalized and intersex people be erased. It aims to enforce strict gender roles, identities, and expressions, coded on the appearance of external genitalia at the time of birth. It wants to hinter any progress in the societal issues brought up by professionals and activists surrounding trans and intersex people.

Gender non-conforming expression is a fundamental freedom

The elimination of sex and gender variation and non-conformity is incompatible with fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, and the freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex. In fact, the same actors and organizations do not attack sex and gender minorities alone. They consistently mock and delegitimize a number of other accommodations we have established as a decent society, such as racial equity, reproductive rights, disability measures, and accessibility.

This broader attack to fundamental protections shows it is not only bathroom bans that are embedded into a broader picture of plans of trans genocide, but it is also trans genocide itself that is embedded into a broader picture of a rightwing attack to established democratic freedoms, which entail freedom of speech, reproductive rights, religious freedoms, protection from discrimination.

Advocates fail to reflect on the horrific divide in assumptions: they assume a world order in which trans people can freely move and exist in the public space without the knowledge of cis people. When proposing the bans, the right assumes a world where trans people will not be allowed to exist at all, and they now have the means to implement this world order.

Bathroom bans are a gambit to attack fundamental pillars of constitutional law and human rights protections in western societies and they seem very consistent and well thought out in their conception: No one should be allowed to appear to be a different sex that the "biological reality"[^3], and this should be enforced by the state. But for this to be enforced by the state, fundamental rights and protections should be abandoned, including the rights of children and cisgender women.

Bathroom bans are to be understood as coal mine canaries of the rise of totalitarianism in Western Societies.

[^1]: Female Masculinity (book) [^2]: In fact, Trump's fresh executive order will force trans women (and some cis ones too) into male prisons. [^3]: I literally arrived to this conclusion a couple days before Trump's executive order. I wish I had realized sooner.

geteilt von: https://lemmy.ml/post/25037238

Note: I was writing this text throughout the past week. Yesterday Trump signed an executive order (Erin Reed breaks it down here) which forbids changing one's appearance to conform with the “opposite biological sex”. I spent all my big words in the text. TL;DR Bathroom bans are an entry point to criminalizing being trans, which now must be crystal clear that it was.

Two common comebacks with which trans advocates respond to respond to the scourge of bathroom bans are the following: On one hand, it is not feasible to confirm people’s assigned sex for an act so mundane as visiting a public restroom. On the other, enforcing the bans cause cisgender people to be questioned and harassed if they do not meet expectations of how a member of their assigned sex should look like.

Trans advocate organizations, and some Democrats, during an early 2025 hearing of an anti-trans sports ban, correctly stated that such a ban will open up opportunities to perverts to interact with children to “inspect their gender”.

The legislation has an “intrusive focus on scrutiny of students’ bodies,” according to over 400 human rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and Advocates for Trans Equality. The groups issued an open letter to the legislature in opposition to the laws, which they said “invite scrutiny and harassment of any other student perceived by anyone as not conforming to sex stereotypes.”

According to trans man scholar Jack Halberstam[^1], masculine, androgynous, butch, women, trans men, all face policing a women restrooms as well, despite being assigned female at birth. Bathroom bans enforce gender role stereotypes: rather than biological sex, it is feminine self-presentation that it is enforced. Even expected statistical variation within cisgender women, such as height, can also make a person target to gender policing vigilantes. To bring this point home, many cis-passing trans women are not questioned in women restrooms, whereas butch cis women are. It is not chromosomes or genitals that are beholden in these cases, but perceived femininity.

But if appearance is not a conclusive estimate of a person’s assigned sex at birth, advocates continue, the only way to enforce bathroom bans is to have genital inspectors, public restroom permits and certificates, which are impractical and defeat the very concerns of dignity and safety, which are the very issues supposedly stemming from "allowing" trans women in female bathrooms.

By the same coin, enforcing restroom use according to chromosomes or genitals will mandate that trans men use female restrooms, which itself reverses the problem. The right suggests that self-determination will allow any man enter female restrooms by “faking” trans in order to commit sex crimes. But this would also be true if the bans are upheld: trans men are then forced into female bathrooms, and yet again there will be masculine-looking people walking in freely into female restrooms (you know, like male janitors do all the time).

Thus bathroom bans are correctly fenced off as absurd, self-defeating, and eventually pointless. Advocates are absolutely correct in their analysis, and I agree to all the arguments I cite above.

How are they then wrong?

Advocates fail to realize that what the right really wants is to delegitimize the public existence of people whose appearances are not consistent with their assigned sex at birth. Florida attempted to designate to present oneself as the opposite gender in public as a sex crime. It also sought to pass laws that assert that all artistic impersonations of a sex different than the performers are inherently obscene.

Bathroom ban proposals stipulate a problem about which they fearmonger, without a shred of evidence that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, in stark comparison with the problem of trans women being harassed, and raped in male prisons, or even cis women that are mistaken for trans sometimes. This is a real problem that we could be addressing the past decade if the right did not choose this avenue of trans vilification and demagoguery.

But we have a greater problem here[^2], which is a threat to democracy itself. The bathroom bans, which do not appear in isolation but bundled together with several other measures that prohibit being trans/in public/altogether, do not address any real problem, as they do not address the real problems of children and cisgender women, whose reproductive rights and credibility in case of real sex crimes perpetrated en masse by cisgender men, they want to stripe away.

Here is why I think bathroom bans are entry points to the corrosion of democratic values.

If people are to use exclusively the restrooms that match their assigned at birth sex, then all people must be the sex that they are perceived to be. Trans advocates were not paranoid enough to imagine that the right wants to wipe trans people out of public life to such a degree, that no ambiguity about a person's sex can further be possible, except for those "extremely rare genetic accidents" Ben Shapiro keeps talking about.

Public erasure, however, of transgender and gender-nonconforming people amounts to the enforcement of cisgenderism by a state that defines sex as a natural binary with no exceptions, and no behavioral, nor performative, nor psychological deviations from the norm. This take is inconsistent with modern understanding of sex biology and endocrinology, the psychology and phenomenology of gender expression and gender identity. It wants to perpetuate for trans identities to be medicalized and intersex people be erased. It aims to enforce strict gender roles, identities, and expressions, coded on the appearance of external genitalia at the time of birth. It wants to hinter any progress in the societal issues brought up by professionals and activists surrounding trans and intersex people.

Gender non-conforming expression is a fundamental freedom

The elimination of sex and gender variation and non-conformity is incompatible with fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, and the freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex. In fact, the same actors and organizations do not attack sex and gender minorities alone. They consistently mock and delegitimize a number of other accommodations we have established as a decent society, such as racial equity, reproductive rights, disability measures, and accessibility.

This broader attack to fundamental protections shows it is not only bathroom bans that are embedded into a broader picture of plans of trans genocide, but it is also trans genocide itself that is embedded into a broader picture of a rightwing attack to established democratic freedoms, which entail freedom of speech, reproductive rights, religious freedoms, protection from discrimination.

Advocates fail to reflect on the horrific divide in assumptions: they assume a world order in which trans people can freely move and exist in the public space without the knowledge of cis people. When proposing the bans, the right assumes a world where trans people will not be allowed to exist at all, and they now have the means to implement this world order.

Bathroom bans are a gambit to attack fundamental pillars of constitutional law and human rights protections in western societies and they seem very consistent and well thought out in their conception: No one should be allowed to appear to be a different sex that the "biological reality"[^3], and this should be enforced by the state. But for this to be enforced by the state, fundamental rights and protections should be abandoned, including the rights of children and cisgender women.

Bathroom bans are to be understood as coal mine canaries of the rise of totalitarianism in Western Societies.

[^1]: Female Masculinity (book) [^2]: In fact, Trump's fresh executive order will force trans women (and some cis ones too) into male prisons. [^3]: I literally arrived to this conclusion a couple days before Trump's executive order. I wish I had realized sooner.

Note: I was writing this text throughout the past week. Yesterday Trump signed an executive order (Erin Reed breaks it down here) which forbids changing one's appearance to conform with the “opposite biological sex”. I spent all my big words in the text. TL;DR Bathroom bans are an entry point to criminalizing being trans, which now must be crystal clear that it was.

Two common comebacks with which trans advocates respond to respond to the scourge of bathroom bans are the following: On one hand, it is not feasible to confirm people’s assigned sex for an act so mundane as visiting a public restroom. On the other, enforcing the bans cause cisgender people to be questioned and harassed if they do not meet expectations of how a member of their assigned sex should look like.

Trans advocate organizations, and some Democrats, during an early 2025 hearing of an anti-trans sports ban, correctly stated that such a ban will open up opportunities to perverts to interact with children to “inspect their gender”.

The legislation has an “intrusive focus on scrutiny of students’ bodies,” according to over 400 human rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and Advocates for Trans Equality. The groups issued an open letter to the legislature in opposition to the laws, which they said “invite scrutiny and harassment of any other student perceived by anyone as not conforming to sex stereotypes.”

According to trans man scholar Jack Halberstam[^1], masculine, androgynous, butch, women, trans men, all face policing a women restrooms as well, despite being assigned female at birth. Bathroom bans enforce gender role stereotypes: rather than biological sex, it is feminine self-presentation that it is enforced. Even expected statistical variation within cisgender women, such as height, can also make a person target to gender policing vigilantes. To bring this point home, many cis-passing trans women are not questioned in women restrooms, whereas butch cis women are. It is not chromosomes or genitals that are beholden in these cases, but perceived femininity.

But if appearance is not a conclusive estimate of a person’s assigned sex at birth, advocates continue, the only way to enforce bathroom bans is to have genital inspectors, public restroom permits and certificates, which are impractical and defeat the very concerns of dignity and safety, which are the very issues supposedly stemming from "allowing" trans women in female bathrooms.

By the same coin, enforcing restroom use according to chromosomes or genitals will mandate that trans men use female restrooms, which itself reverses the problem. The right suggests that self-determination will allow any man enter female restrooms by “faking” trans in order to commit sex crimes. But this would also be true if the bans are upheld: trans men are then forced into female bathrooms, and yet again there will be masculine-looking people walking in freely into female restrooms (you know, like male janitors do all the time).

Thus bathroom bans are correctly fenced off as absurd, self-defeating, and eventually pointless. Advocates are absolutely correct in their analysis, and I agree to all the arguments I cite above.

How are they then wrong?

Advocates fail to realize that what the right really wants is to delegitimize the public existence of people whose appearances are not consistent with their assigned sex at birth. Florida attempted to designate to present oneself as the opposite gender in public as a sex crime. It also sought to pass laws that assert that all artistic impersonations of a sex different than the performers are inherently obscene.

Bathroom ban proposals stipulate a problem about which they fearmonger, without a shred of evidence that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, in stark comparison with the problem of trans women being harassed, and raped in male prisons, or even cis women that are mistaken for trans sometimes. This is a real problem that we could be addressing the past decade if the right did not choose this avenue of trans vilification and demagoguery.

But we have a greater problem here[^2], which is a threat to democracy itself. The bathroom bans, which do not appear in isolation but bundled together with several other measures that prohibit being trans/in public/altogether, do not address any real problem, as they do not address the real problems of children and cisgender women, whose reproductive rights and credibility in case of real sex crimes perpetrated en masse by cisgender men, they want to stripe away.

Here is why I think bathroom bans are entry points to the corrosion of democratic values.

If people are to use exclusively the restrooms that match their assigned at birth sex, then all people must be the sex that they are perceived to be. Trans advocates were not paranoid enough to imagine that the right wants to wipe trans people out of public life to such a degree, that no ambiguity about a person's sex can further be possible, except for those "extremely rare genetic accidents" Ben Shapiro keeps talking about.

Public erasure, however, of transgender and gender-nonconforming people amounts to the enforcement of cisgenderism by a state that defines sex as a natural binary with no exceptions, and no behavioral, nor performative, nor psychological deviations from the norm. This take is inconsistent with modern understanding of sex biology and endocrinology, the psychology and phenomenology of gender expression and gender identity. It wants to perpetuate for trans identities to be medicalized and intersex people be erased. It aims to enforce strict gender roles, identities, and expressions, coded on the appearance of external genitalia at the time of birth. It wants to hinter any progress in the societal issues brought up by professionals and activists surrounding trans and intersex people.

Gender non-conforming expression is a fundamental freedom

The elimination of sex and gender variation and non-conformity is incompatible with fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, and the freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex. In fact, the same actors and organizations do not attack sex and gender minorities alone. They consistently mock and delegitimize a number of other accommodations we have established as a decent society, such as racial equity, reproductive rights, disability measures, and accessibility.

This broader attack to fundamental protections shows it is not only bathroom bans that are embedded into a broader picture of plans of trans genocide, but it is also trans genocide itself that is embedded into a broader picture of a rightwing attack to established democratic freedoms, which entail freedom of speech, reproductive rights, religious freedoms, protection from discrimination.

Advocates fail to reflect on the horrific divide in assumptions: they assume a world order in which trans people can freely move and exist in the public space without the knowledge of cis people. When proposing the bans, the right assumes a world where trans people will not be allowed to exist at all, and they now have the means to implement this world order.

Bathroom bans are a gambit to attack fundamental pillars of constitutional law and human rights protections in western societies and they seem very consistent and well thought out in their conception: No one should be allowed to appear to be a different sex that the "biological reality"[^3], and this should be enforced by the state. But for this to be enforced by the state, fundamental rights and protections should be abandoned, including the rights of children and cisgender women.

Bathroom bans are to be understood as coal mine canaries of the rise of totalitarianism in Western Societies.

[^1]: Female Masculinity (book) [^2]: In fact, Trump's fresh executive order will force trans women (and some cis ones too) into male prisons. [^3]: I literally arrived to this conclusion a couple days before Trump's executive order. I wish I had realized sooner.

It was:

• Easy to hide behind the prevailing cisgenderism, the core idea behind transphobia, according to which only cisgender people's gender identities are genuine and valid.
• Easy to hide in an anti-intellectualism, that conceals all nuance, and reinforces the most vulgar and stigmatizing, pathologizing, and demonizing stereotypes for transgender people.
• Easy to embed in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, and link to a broader list of topics in the conservative agenda: political correctness, climate change, vaccine skepticism.

"If these institutions push something so outlandish that men can be hypersexual kitten and shit in special dollhouses, it is because there is Jewish-Marxist conspiracy at play, against the white man, against the Christian family".

Now all the instincts of the authoritarian that felt oppressed all these years are running rampant. They have got the power.

But the reasons we reached a point that trans identities were recognized and protected was nothing of the above. It was the protections on freedom of expression, free speech even religious freedom.

It was the protections resulting from the developments in anti-racist policies, the developments in anti-sexist policies, and the struggle of queer liberation, which itself drew from the labor movement, the feminist and black liberation movements.

The recognition of trans identities was an extension of all we think as pillars of democracy, and decent society for the past 30 or so years. It wasn't even subverting cisgenderism: It was mostly comprised of extensions to the rights and protections that capitalist courts have recognized to women, gay people, and generic freedoms in general, even paralleling freedoms of religious expression.

With the anti-trans rhetoric they have managed to de-legitimize all of these protections, and whoever thinks this is only lead to trans genocide and end there, is deplorably in error.

These people are not only conservative but outright backward, and profoundly undemocratic. They are against constitutional society, and they are against the rule of law.

They are corporate fascists, and they got here with four decades of plotting and agitating. I am sad and angry that we did not do all in our power to fight it, we instead ignored it, we let it happen.

Now we will have to witness the revival of hatred and irrationality, we will have to fight uphill, from a position of weakness and helplessness against their social media, their military, their sick, disgusting lack of reason and empathy.

NO PASSARAN

geteilt von: https://lemmy.ml/post/24679007

Remember it is important to repeat the messaging to the degree it is amplified to population segments that are the least likely to have heard those already.

Make no concessions regarding the basic facts, the stronger the harder the longer it engages the target.

Remember this is an attack to Reason, to Scientific Inquiry, to Democracy, to the Environment, to Women Rights, and to Racialized People. Surrender no inch to the corporatist fascists.

Gender dysphoria: A concept designated in the DSM-5-TR as clinically significant distress or impairment related to gender incongruence, which may include desire to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics. Not all transgender or gender diverse people experience gender dysphoria. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria

DSM-5 aims to avoid stigma and ensure clinical care for individuals who see and feel themselves to be a different gender than their assigned gender. It replaces the diagnostic name “gender identity disorder” with “gender dysphoria,” as well as makes other important clarifications in the criteria. It is important to note that gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition. https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Practice/DSM/APA_DSM-5-Gender-Dysphoria.pdf

Major medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, which, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align. Though the care is highly individualized, some children may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/03/politics/tennessee-gender-affirming-care/index.html

For transgender and gender-diverse youth who have gender dysphoria, delaying puberty might:

• Improve mental well-being.
• Ease depression and anxiety.
• Improve social interactions with others.
• Lower the need for future surgeries.
• Ease thoughts or actions of self-harm. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075

Regardless of the controversy on how and when to administer treatments to trans and nonbinary kids, psychological science is very clear that gender-affirming care helps trans kids, said Singh. “It is unconscionable that politicians would label it as child abuse,” said Edwards-Leeper. A study out of the University of Washington discovered that among 104 trans and nonbinary youths ages 13 to 20, gender-affirming care lowered the odds of moderate to severe depression by 60% and suicidality by 73% (Tordoff, D. M., et al., JAMA Network Open, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2022). Another study, which used data from more than 27,000 people collected by the National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (PDF, 2.22MB), showed that transgender youth who began hormone treatment in adolescence had fewer thoughts of suicide, were less likely to experience major mental health disorders, and had fewer problems with substance misuse than those who started hormones in adulthood (Turban, J. L., et al., PLOS ONE, Vol. 17, No. 1., 2022). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/07/advocating-transgender-nonbinary-youths

Defy Sex Binary

Sex, gender, and sexuality are all distinct from one another (although they are often related), and each exists on its own spectrum. Moreover, sex cannot be depicted as a simple, one-dimensional scale. In the world of DSDs, an individual may shift along the spectrum as development brings new biological factors into play. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-sex-as-a-spectrum/

Misgendering, harassment not protected speech

The court went to great lengths to stress actual discrimination cases will continue to turn on their specific facts and that ‘gender critical’ speech, including but not limited to speech that misgenders trans and/or non-binary people, will continue to be subject to the laws of the land, including the provisions of the Equality Act. In practical terms, the impact of the decision is limited. In particular, the protected right does not extend to speech constituting harassment or discrimination against trans people. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2021/06/29/not-a-nazi-but-forstater-v-cgd-europe/

Detransition myths

The study, conducted by experts from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, examines reported regret rates for dozens of surgeries as well as major life decisions and compares them to the regret rates for transgender surgeries. It finds that "there is lower regret after [gender-affirming surgery], which is less than 1%, than after many other decisions, both surgical and otherwise." It notes that surgeries such as tubal sterilization, assisted prostatectomy, body contouring, facial rejuvenation, and more all have regret rates more than 10 times as high as gender-affirming surgery. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/landmark-systematic-review-of-trans

Trans Athletes

As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/

Misc Videos

For the most part of this video Vaush debunks every argument that puberty blockers are an experimental treatment https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=HhYruaFZEOI

Vaush The best pro-trans arguments https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=sB6YNRn2pQQ

Vaush 2 hours of pro trans arguments https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=HhYruaFZEOI

Jon Stewart destroys ignorant GOP lawmaker for criminalizing youth transition https://iv.datura.network/watch?v=NPmjNYt71fk

geteilt von: https://lemmy.ml/post/24679007

Remember it is important to repeat the messaging to the degree it is amplified to population segments that are the least likely to have heard those already.

Make no concessions regarding the basic facts, the stronger the harder the longer it engages the target.

Remember this is an attack to Reason, to Scientific Inquiry, to Democracy, to the Environment, to Women Rights, and to Racialized People. Surrender no inch to the corporatist fascists.

Gender dysphoria: A concept designated in the DSM-5-TR as clinically significant distress or impairment related to gender incongruence, which may include desire to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics. Not all transgender or gender diverse people experience gender dysphoria. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria

DSM-5 aims to avoid stigma and ensure clinical care for individuals who see and feel themselves to be a different gender than their assigned gender. It replaces the diagnostic name “gender identity disorder” with “gender dysphoria,” as well as makes other important clarifications in the criteria. It is important to note that gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition. https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Practice/DSM/APA_DSM-5-Gender-Dysphoria.pdf

Major medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, which, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align. Though the care is highly individualized, some children may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/03/politics/tennessee-gender-affirming-care/index.html

For transgender and gender-diverse youth who have gender dysphoria, delaying puberty might:

• Improve mental well-being.
• Ease depression and anxiety.
• Improve social interactions with others.
• Lower the need for future surgeries.
• Ease thoughts or actions of self-harm. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075

Regardless of the controversy on how and when to administer treatments to trans and nonbinary kids, psychological science is very clear that gender-affirming care helps trans kids, said Singh. “It is unconscionable that politicians would label it as child abuse,” said Edwards-Leeper. A study out of the University of Washington discovered that among 104 trans and nonbinary youths ages 13 to 20, gender-affirming care lowered the odds of moderate to severe depression by 60% and suicidality by 73% (Tordoff, D. M., et al., JAMA Network Open, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2022). Another study, which used data from more than 27,000 people collected by the National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (PDF, 2.22MB), showed that transgender youth who began hormone treatment in adolescence had fewer thoughts of suicide, were less likely to experience major mental health disorders, and had fewer problems with substance misuse than those who started hormones in adulthood (Turban, J. L., et al., PLOS ONE, Vol. 17, No. 1., 2022). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/07/advocating-transgender-nonbinary-youths

Defy Sex Binary

Sex, gender, and sexuality are all distinct from one another (although they are often related), and each exists on its own spectrum. Moreover, sex cannot be depicted as a simple, one-dimensional scale. In the world of DSDs, an individual may shift along the spectrum as development brings new biological factors into play. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-sex-as-a-spectrum/

Misgendering, harassment not protected speech

The court went to great lengths to stress actual discrimination cases will continue to turn on their specific facts and that ‘gender critical’ speech, including but not limited to speech that misgenders trans and/or non-binary people, will continue to be subject to the laws of the land, including the provisions of the Equality Act. In practical terms, the impact of the decision is limited. In particular, the protected right does not extend to speech constituting harassment or discrimination against trans people. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2021/06/29/not-a-nazi-but-forstater-v-cgd-europe/

Detransition myths

The study, conducted by experts from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, examines reported regret rates for dozens of surgeries as well as major life decisions and compares them to the regret rates for transgender surgeries. It finds that "there is lower regret after [gender-affirming surgery], which is less than 1%, than after many other decisions, both surgical and otherwise." It notes that surgeries such as tubal sterilization, assisted prostatectomy, body contouring, facial rejuvenation, and more all have regret rates more than 10 times as high as gender-affirming surgery. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/landmark-systematic-review-of-trans

Trans Athletes

As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/

Misc Videos

For the most part of this video Vaush debunks every argument that puberty blockers are an experimental treatment https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=HhYruaFZEOI

Vaush The best pro-trans arguments https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=sB6YNRn2pQQ

Vaush 2 hours of pro trans arguments https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=HhYruaFZEOI

Jon Stewart destroys ignorant GOP lawmaker for criminalizing youth transition https://iv.datura.network/watch?v=NPmjNYt71fk

geteilt von: https://lemmy.ml/post/24679007

Remember it is important to repeat the messaging to the degree it is amplified to population segments that are the least likely to have heard those already.

Make no concessions regarding the basic facts, the stronger the harder the longer it engages the target.

Remember this is an attack to Reason, to Scientific Inquiry, to Democracy, to the Environment, to Women Rights, and to Racialized People. Surrender no inch to the corporatist fascists.

Gender dysphoria: A concept designated in the DSM-5-TR as clinically significant distress or impairment related to gender incongruence, which may include desire to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics. Not all transgender or gender diverse people experience gender dysphoria. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria

DSM-5 aims to avoid stigma and ensure clinical care for individuals who see and feel themselves to be a different gender than their assigned gender. It replaces the diagnostic name “gender identity disorder” with “gender dysphoria,” as well as makes other important clarifications in the criteria. It is important to note that gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition. https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Practice/DSM/APA_DSM-5-Gender-Dysphoria.pdf

Major medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, which, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align. Though the care is highly individualized, some children may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/03/politics/tennessee-gender-affirming-care/index.html

For transgender and gender-diverse youth who have gender dysphoria, delaying puberty might:

• Improve mental well-being.
• Ease depression and anxiety.
• Improve social interactions with others.
• Lower the need for future surgeries.
• Ease thoughts or actions of self-harm. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075

Regardless of the controversy on how and when to administer treatments to trans and nonbinary kids, psychological science is very clear that gender-affirming care helps trans kids, said Singh. “It is unconscionable that politicians would label it as child abuse,” said Edwards-Leeper. A study out of the University of Washington discovered that among 104 trans and nonbinary youths ages 13 to 20, gender-affirming care lowered the odds of moderate to severe depression by 60% and suicidality by 73% (Tordoff, D. M., et al., JAMA Network Open, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2022). Another study, which used data from more than 27,000 people collected by the National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (PDF, 2.22MB), showed that transgender youth who began hormone treatment in adolescence had fewer thoughts of suicide, were less likely to experience major mental health disorders, and had fewer problems with substance misuse than those who started hormones in adulthood (Turban, J. L., et al., PLOS ONE, Vol. 17, No. 1., 2022). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/07/advocating-transgender-nonbinary-youths

Defy Sex Binary

Sex, gender, and sexuality are all distinct from one another (although they are often related), and each exists on its own spectrum. Moreover, sex cannot be depicted as a simple, one-dimensional scale. In the world of DSDs, an individual may shift along the spectrum as development brings new biological factors into play. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-sex-as-a-spectrum/

Misgendering, harassment not protected speech

The court went to great lengths to stress actual discrimination cases will continue to turn on their specific facts and that ‘gender critical’ speech, including but not limited to speech that misgenders trans and/or non-binary people, will continue to be subject to the laws of the land, including the provisions of the Equality Act. In practical terms, the impact of the decision is limited. In particular, the protected right does not extend to speech constituting harassment or discrimination against trans people. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2021/06/29/not-a-nazi-but-forstater-v-cgd-europe/

Detransition myths

The study, conducted by experts from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, examines reported regret rates for dozens of surgeries as well as major life decisions and compares them to the regret rates for transgender surgeries. It finds that "there is lower regret after [gender-affirming surgery], which is less than 1%, than after many other decisions, both surgical and otherwise." It notes that surgeries such as tubal sterilization, assisted prostatectomy, body contouring, facial rejuvenation, and more all have regret rates more than 10 times as high as gender-affirming surgery. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/landmark-systematic-review-of-trans

Trans Athletes

As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/

Misc Videos

For the most part of this video Vaush debunks every argument that puberty blockers are an experimental treatment https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=HhYruaFZEOI

Vaush The best pro-trans arguments https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=sB6YNRn2pQQ

Vaush 2 hours of pro trans arguments https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=HhYruaFZEOI

Jon Stewart destroys ignorant GOP lawmaker for criminalizing youth transition https://iv.datura.network/watch?v=NPmjNYt71fk