Transgender

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Let her speak!’: protests after Montana Republicans silence trans lawmaker

      by

      Montana protesters brought the state house to a halt on Monday after Republican legislative leaders prevented a transgender lawmaker from speaking for a third day over her remarks about banning gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.The interruption is the latest development in a three-day fight over Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr’s remarks against lawmakers who support a ban on gender-affirming care. Zephyr, who is trans and a first-term Democrat, hasn’t been allowed to speak on the state house floor since Thursday because she told Republican colleagues last week they would have “blood on their hands” if they banned gender-affirming medical care.Police arrested half a dozen of Zephyr’s supporters. Protesters, some of whom were forcibly removed from the chambers, chanted “Let her speak!” from the gallery before they were escorted out.The Missoula Democrat was silenced and deliberately misgendered by some Republican lawmakers throughout last week. She was silenced for a second day on Friday as her Republican colleagues refused to let her speak on the chamber’s floor about a bill that would prevent minors from seeing pornography online.Republican leaders have insisted Zephyr won’t be allowed to speak until she apologizes. Matt Regier, the house speaker, and his Republican colleagues have indicated they have no plans to back down.“There are 10,000 Montanans whose voice will not be heard because their representative will not be allowed to speak, and that makes me really sad,” said Representative Connie Keogh, another Missoula Democrat, as proceedings opened on Monday afternoon.The standoff is the latest example of emergent discussions around civility, decorum and how to discuss political issues many perceive as life and death. Proponents of the ban on gender-affirming care see Zephyr’s remarks as unprecedented and personal in nature. She and her supporters say they accurately illustrate the stakes of the legislation under discussion, arguing that restricting gender-affirming care endangers trans youth, who many studies suggest suffer disproportionately from depression and suicidal tendency.Katy Spence, a constituent of Zephyr’s who drove to the Capitol from Missoula on Monday, said the standoff was about censoring ideas, not decorum.“She’s been silenced because she spoke the truth about what these anti-trans bills are doing in Montana – to trans youth especially,” she said of Zephyr.Zephyr’s supporters gathered outside the statehouse on Monday, waving pride flags and chanting “Let her speak!”. As proceedings began, they filled the statehouse gallery and supplemental Montana highway patrol officers stood by to monitor developments. Zephyr voted on various measures, but leadership pushed discussion of a bill she requested to speak on to the end of the agenda.Republicans denied Zephyr’s requests to speak on a proposal that would have restricted when children could change the names and pronouns they use in school and required their parents’ consent, prompting her supporters to interrupt proceedings for nearly half an hour. In the initial moments after proceedings were paused Monday afternoon, Zephyr defiantly hoisted a non-functioning microphone into the air.Zephyr’s supporters were escorted from the gallery above the state house floor, several by force. Leaders cut the sound on the video feed and Zephyr remained on the floor holding her microphone. Zephyr did not return after lawmakers reconvened and wrote on Twitter that she would be back after showing “support for those who were arrested defending democracy”.Zephyr told the Associated Press she was headed to the county jail with the half dozen protesters who were arrested.The display followed a promise Zephyr made earlier on Monday, when she told supporters on the statehouse steps that she planned to continue speaking forcefully against legislation that members of the trans community, including herself, consider matters of life and death.“I was sent here to speak on behalf of my constituents and to speak on behalf of my community. It’s the promise I made when I got elected and it’s a promise that I will continue to keep every single day,” Zephyr said before walking into the house chamber.She connected the trans community’s plight against gender-affirming care bans to the political fights animating other marginalized groups throughout the United States.“When those communities who see the repercussions of those bills have the audacity to stand up and say, ‘This legislation gets us killed,’ those in power aren’t content with just passing those hateful harmful bills,” she said. “What they are demanding is silence. We will not be complicit in our eradication.”Last year, Zephyr became the first openly trans woman elected to the Montana legislature – putting her among a record number of trans lawmakers who began serving across the US.The dispute started last Tuesday when the house was debating the Republican governor Greg Gianforte’s proposed amendments to a measure banning gender-affirming care for minors. Zephyr spoke up in reference to the body’s opening prayer.“I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” she said.Sue Vinton, the Republican house majority leader, called Zephyr’s comments inappropriate and disrespectful. That evening, a group of conservative lawmakers known as the Montana Freedom Caucus demanded Zephyr’s censure and deliberately referred to her using male pronouns in their letter and a tweet.The bill banning gender-affirming care for minors is awaiting Gianforte’s signature. He has indicated he will sign it. The bill calls for it to take effect on 1 October, but the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal have said they will challenge it in court. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      House Republicans pass bill banning trans women from certain sports teams

      by

      House Republicans are escalating attacks on transgender athletes under the guise of protecting women’s sports, according to the passage of a new bill.During a Thursday press conference the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and other legislators announced the passage of the so-called “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act” in a party-line vote.Calling the policy an attempt to “protect basic fairness”, the bill would prohibit transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams in schools and universities that receive public funding.“Men shouldn’t be able to compete in women’s sports,” said Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, at a press conference following the vote.House Democrats unanimously voted against the legislation.“You should hang your heads in shame,” said Massachusetts congresswoman Katherine Clark, the House Democratic whip, during an impassioned floor debate on Thursday, warning that the legislation would further “incite fear and discrimination and hatred” against trans youth.“What are we doing here?” she said. “What are we doing here as members of Congress?”Joe Biden has vowed to veto the measure. Republicans called a potential veto a “slap in the face” to “women’s rights, science and common sense”.The Biden administration put forth a proposal earlier this month that would forbid schools and colleges from enacting bans on transgender athletes in sports team.But under Biden’s proposal, teams could put limits on participation under certain circumstances to ensure fairness, though the proposal did not elaborate on such limits.LGBTQ+ advocates and civil rights leaders have called such bills banning transgender athlete participation transphobic and unnecessary.“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” said US education secretary Miguel Cardona in a statement.At least 21 states have passed similar bans or restrictions on the participation of transgender athletes in school sports, according to data from the Movement Advancement Project.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast March, Iowa governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill that bans transgender girls and women from participating in high school or collegiate sports.Earlier this month Kansas’s legislature passed a bill that would ban transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports from kindergarten until college, the Associated Press reported. The bill passed via a veto override, the third veto of Democratic governor Laura Kelly on such a bill.“It breaks my heart and certainly is disappointing,” said Kelly to reporters, adding that she believed legislators would regret voting for “this really awful bill.”Kansas legislators also passed a bill broadly banning transgender people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.Republican lawmakers have also passed or introduced a number of other bills targeting the rights of transgender people and LGBTQ+ community, notably access to gender-affirming care.While House Republicans and state legislatures attempt to push bans on trans people in the name of women’s rights, they’re simultaneously curbing reproductive access – including similar state-level restrictions or total bans on abortions. More

    • 100 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives

      by

      When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage.“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”What has stuck, somewhat unexpectedly, is the issue of transgender identity, particularly among young people. Today, the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum. It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased fund-raising and set the agenda in school boards and state legislatures.The campaign has been both organic and deliberate, and has even gained speed since Donald J. Trump, an ideological ally, left the White House. Since then, at least 20 states, all controlled by Republicans, have enacted laws that reach well beyond the initial debates over access to bathrooms and into medical treatments, participation in sports and policies on discussing gender in schools.“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAbout 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children in the United States identify as transgender. These efforts have thrust them, at a moment of increased visibility and vulnerability, into the center of the nation’s latest battle over cultural issues.“It’s a strange world to live in,” said Ari Drennen, the L.G.B.T.Q. program director for Media Matters, a liberal media monitoring group that tracks the legislation. As a transgender woman, she said, she feels unwelcome in whole swaths of the country where states have attacked her right “just to exist in public.”The effort started with a smattering of Republican lawmakers advancing legislation focused on transgender girls’ participation in school sports. And it was accelerated by a few influential Republican governors who seized on the issue early.But it was also the result of careful planning by national conservative organizations to harness the emotion around gender politics. With gender norms shifting and a sharp rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender, conservative groups spotted an opening in a debate that was gaining attention.“It’s a sense of urgency,” said Matt Sharp, the senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that has provided strategic and legal counsel to state lawmakers as they push through legislation on transgender rights. The issue, he argued, is “what can we do to protect the children?”Mr. Schilling said the issue had driven in thousands of new donors to the American Principles Project, most of them making small contributions.The appeal played on the same resentments and cultural schisms that have animated Mr. Trump’s political movement: invocations against so-called “wokeness,” skepticism about science, parental discontent with public schools after the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns and anti-elitism.Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, a group that fights discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people, said there was a direct line from the right’s focus on transgender children to other issues it has seized on in the name of “parents’ rights” — such as banning books and curriculums that teach about racism.“In many ways, the trans sports ban was the test balloon in terms of how they can frame these things,” she said. “Once they opened that parents’ rights frame, they began to use it everywhere.”For now, the legislation has advanced almost exclusively in Republican-controlled states: Those same policies have drawn strong opposition from Democrats who have applauded the increased visibility of transgender people — in government, corporations and Hollywood — and policies protecting transgender youths.The 2024 presidential election appears poised to provide a national test of the reach of this issue. The two leading Republican presidential contenders, Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not officially declared a bid, have aggressively supported measures curtailing transgender rights.“The trans sports ban was the test balloon in terms of how they can frame these things,” Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, said. “Once they opened that parents’ rights frame, they began to use it everywhere.” Octavio Jones for The New York TimesIt may prove easier for Republicans like Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis to talk about transgender issues than about abortion, an issue that has been a mainstay of the conservative movement. The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion created a backlash among Democrats and independents that has left many Republicans unsure of how — or whether — to address the issue.Polling suggests that the public is less likely to support transgender rights than same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In a poll conducted in 2022, the Public Policy Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that 68 percent of respondents favored allowing same-sex couples to marry, including 49 percent of Republicans.By contrast, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of Americans supported requiring that transgender athletes compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth; 85 percent of Republicans held that view.“For many religious and political conservatives, the same-sex marriage issue has been largely decided — and for the American public, absolutely,” said Kelsy Burke, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. “That’s not true when it comes to these transgender issues. Americans are much more divided, and this is an issue that can gain a lot more traction.”The singer Anita Bryant championed the “Save Our Children” campaign in 1977 to repeal a local ordinance in Dade-Miami County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, a historic setback for the modern gay rights movements.Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe focus on perceived threats to impressionable children has a long history in American sexual politics. It has its roots in the “Save Our Children” campaign championed in 1977 by Anita Bryant, the singer known for her orange juice commercials, to repeal a local ordinance in Dade-Miami County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, a historic setback for the modern gay rights movements.The initial efforts by the conservative movement to deploy transgender issues did not go well. In 2016, North Carolina legislators voted to bar transgender people from using the bathroom of their preference. It created a backlash so harsh — from corporations, sports teams and even Bruce Springsteen — that lawmakers eventually rescinded the bill.As a result, conservatives went looking for a new approach to the issue. Mr. Schilling’s organization, for instance, conducted polling to determine whether curbing transgender rights had resonance with voters — and, if they did, the best way for candidates to talk about it. In 2019, the group’s research found that voters were significantly more likely to support a Republican candidate who favored a ban on transgender girls participating in school sports — particularly when framed as a question of whether “to allow men and boys to compete against women and girls” — than a candidate pushing for a ban on transgender people using a bathroom of their choosing.With that evidence in hand, and transgender athletes gaining attention, particularly in right-wing media, conservatives decided to focus on two main fronts: legislation that addressed participation in sports and laws curtailing the access of minors to medical transition treatments.In March 2020, Idaho became the first state to bar transgender girls from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, with a bill supporters in the Republican-controlled legislature called the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”A burst of state legislation began the next year after Democrats took control of Congress and the White House, ending four years in which social conservatives successfully pushed the Trump administration to enact restrictions through executive orders.In the spring of 2021, the Republican-controlled legislature in Arkansas overrode a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, to enact legislation that made it illegal for minors to receive transition medication or surgery.It was the first such ban in the country — and it was quickly embraced by national groups and circulated to lawmakers in other statehouses as a road map for their own legislation. The effort capitalized on an existing disagreement in the medical profession over when to offer medical transition care to minors. Despite that debate, leading medical groups in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, say the care should be available to minors and oppose legislative bans.Later that spring, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, traveled to a private Christian school in Jacksonville to sign a bill barring transgender girls from playing K-12 sports. With his approval, Florida became the largest state to date to enact such restrictions, and Mr. DeSantis signaled how important this issue was to his political aspirations.“In Florida, girls are going to play girls’ sports and boys are going to play boys’ sports,” he said, winning applause from conservatives he would need to defeat Mr. Trump.To some extent, this surge of legislation was spontaneous. Ms. Drennen, of Media Matters, said state lawmakers appeared to be acting out of a “general animus” toward transgender people, as well as a fear of political reprisals. “They are worried about this coming up in a primary,” she said.But for several years, conservative Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Liberty Counsel have been shifting their resources.For now, the legislation has advanced almost exclusively in Republican-controlled states: Those same policies have drawn strong opposition from Democrats.Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe 2024 presidential election appears poised to provide a national test of Americans’ support for transgender rights.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2018, Kristen Waggoner, then the general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom, was the lead counsel in the Supreme Court defending a Colorado baker who, citing religious beliefs, refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The court ruled narrowly in favor of the baker.The next year, the Alliance took on a case involving a group of high school girls in Connecticut who challenged the state and five school boards for permitting transgender students to participate in women’s sports. Their lawsuit was rejected by a federal appeals court.Mathew D. Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, which was a major force behind a 2008 voter initiative in California that banned same-sex marriage, said the group is now fighting gender policies in the courts. It has challenged laws, often enacted in states controlled by Democrats, that restrict counseling services designed to change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation, often referred to as conversion therapy.“Those counseling bans violate first-amendment speech, because they only allow one point of view on the subject of sexuality,” he said.In March 2021, Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota declined to sign a bill that would have banned transgender girls from sports teams. She later reversed course. Cooper Neill for The New York TimesThough some on the left are still uncertain about how to best navigate the fraught politics of transgender issues, there’s an emerging consensus on the right. The case of what happened to Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a rising star in the Republican Party, is instructive.In March 2021, Ms. Noem declined to sign a bill passed by her state’s Republican-controlled legislature that would have banned transgender girls from sports teams from kindergarten through college. Conservative groups accused her of bowing to “socially left-wing factions.” Tucker Carlson of Fox News, in a tense interview with Ms. Noem, implied she was bowing to “big business” in refusing to sign the bill.“There’s a real political effort now that will extract a punishment from you if you betray the social conservatives,” said Frank Cannon, a founder of the American Principles Project. He said the episode with Ms. Noem “sent a signal to every other governor in the country.”Eleven months later, the governor appeared to have received the message, signing a similar version of the bill in the interest, she said that day, of “fairness.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans Are Forgetting One Crucial Truth About People and Their Bodies

      by

      In the homestretch of the epic Wisconsin Supreme Court race that ended last week with a blowout victory for liberals, voters’ cellphones pinged incessantly with text message ads.“Woke trans activists have their candidate,” one text message said, according to Wisconsin Watch, a local nonprofit news site. “Schools across Wisconsin are stripping away parental rights and trans kids behind parents backs. There’s only one candidate for the Supreme Court who will put an end to this. Vote for Judge Daniel Kelly by April 4 and protect your children from trans madness.”For a judicial race that centered on two big issues the Wisconsin Supreme Court is likely to consider soon, abortion and voting, it might seem odd that these ads in support of the conservative candidate chose to focus on an issue nowhere near the top of the agenda on the court’s upcoming docket.For reasons that are now obvious, conservative groups supporting Kelly largely avoided touting his opposition to abortion. That’s a sure loser, as the G.O.P. is rapidly learning. It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to run on preserving the right-wing gerrymander that gives conservatives a total lock on Wisconsin’s Legislature and congressional delegation either. So some supporters reached for the wedge issue du jour: transphobia.An article of faith has emerged among hard-right conservatives — and has been worried over by some centrist pundits — that parental concerns about health care and social support for transgender children make for a potent wedge issue. After all, it has all the hallmarks of an effective culture war hot button: It involves strange new social and medical practices and unfamiliar ways of life, and children are sometimes concerned. But it’s not working the way conservatives expected.The end of Roe has reversed the tides of the culture war. The right has now lost it by winning the biggest victory of all. State legislatures across the country are enacting draconian abortion bans that are producing predictably tragic outcomes. Americans don’t have to imagine what the right will do with its power over women’s lives because we see it in every headline about women risking death because a doctor is too scared of running afoul of an anti-abortion law to provide a necessary medical procedure. It has become blindingly obvious what happens when Republicans legislate what Americans do with their sex organs. And voters, understandably, don’t like what they see.For years even before the fall of Roe, conservatives have used hard-edge anti-trans messaging in both red and swing state races, only to come up short. They tried it in North Carolina’s 2016 governor’s race, in the aftermath of a controversial bill requiring people to use the bathroom associated with their sex assigned at birth. The Democrat, Roy Cooper, won despite a hail of anti-trans ads. They tried it against Andy Beshear, the Democratic candidate for governor in deep-red Kentucky in 2019, and failed. In 2022, G.O.P. candidates tried to use L.G.B.T. issues as a wedge in races in swing states from the Midwest to the Sunbelt to New England. The data suggest that opposition to trans rights cannot overcome — or possibly even make a dent in — the advantage that comes to Democrats in swing states for supporting abortion rights. It’s not even close.“Transphobia was, and is, the dog that couldn’t hunt,” wrote the anonymous but eerily prescient polling analyst who writes a Substack newsletter under the name Ettingermentum.Wisconsin was the most recent example of this failure. The American Principles Project, a Virginia organization that is a driving force behind the harsh anti-transgender laws sweeping red states, spent almost $800,000 on ads supporting Kelly in the State Supreme Court race, according to Wisconsin Watch. A video paid for by the organization’s PAC accompanied text messages that described his liberal opponent, Judge Janet Protasiewicz, as “endorsed by all the woke activists that are stripping parents of their rights in Wisconsin schools and forcing transgenderism down our throats,” Wisconsin Watch reported.In one mendacious video advertisement the narrator claims that a 12-year-old was medically transitioned without parental consent. The video shows images of surgical scarring and implies that this child underwent surgery at the behest of school officials. This is absolutely false. The child in question merely changed their name and pronouns.But any hopes that this messaging would drive swing voters seems to have fallen flat. Indeed, the margin of victory in Wisconsin exceeded predictions. Joe Biden won the state by just 20,000 votes in 2020. Protasiewicz won by 200,000.The failure of anti-trans messaging as a wedge issue may seem surprising because the Democratic Party really does seem to have a problem when it comes to parents and schools. Resentment over Democrats’ support for school closures during the pandemic has become a liability for the party among educated suburbanites, as the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia demonstrated.But Republicans seem to be making the grave error of assuming that someone angry about school closures in the fall of 2021 is a potential conscript in their war today against drag queens and trans people. So far there appears to be little appetite among swing-state voters for laws that could — if our worst fears are realized — allow school officials to demand inspections of their child’s genitals before soccer matches and swim meets. Besides, there’s a far more urgent issue when it comes to students’ safety: In a country where child shooting deaths went up 50 percent from 2019 to 2021, who would trust their children to the political party that opposes gun regulation?There is no doubt that attitudes about gender are changing quickly, and changing especially quickly among young people. But it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about how Americans really feel about this. In a Pew poll last June, a large majority of respondents said they favor legal protections for trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces. Other findings suggest unease: 43 percent said gender identity norms were changing too quickly. Majorities support requiring athletes to compete as their sex assigned at birth. Depressingly, 46 percent said they supported criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors.But one finding from that same poll stood out to me: 68 percent of respondents aren’t paying close attention to the trans bills popping up across the country, and three-quarters of self-identified moderates said they weren’t following the issue closely. But that doesn’t mean they are interested in restrictive or repressive laws, much less willing to vote on the basis of support for such policies.Of course, this lack of attention can cut both ways. Voters who aren’t paying attention to the issue are unlikely to be drawn to the polls to vote against a transgender care ban, either. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, presumed to be a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has been able to defy post-Roe gravity and increase his support despite prosecuting an aggressive culture war campaign against queer people. It remains to be seen how this would play out in a presidential election, which would run smack into swing states that have recently rejected in statewide elections both anti-abortion and anti-trans candidates.Democrats — and all Americans — should support the rights of all queer people, not just for electoral advantage but as a matter of principle. There is a clear line from the fight over bodily autonomy in reproductive rights to the fight for access to medical care for trans people. It’s a matter of dignity, too. Trans rights, much like abortion, present a profound challenge to the gender binary, which upholds the world’s oldest and most persistent hierarchy. People who don’t want to or cannot fit within their traditionally prescribed roles — mother, father, woman, man, boy, girl — increasingly have the freedom to live their lives beyond those circumscribed identities.The right has responded to this flowering of freedom with a barrage of repression. In states where Republicans have an ironclad grip on power, they have been incredibly successful. There are hundreds of bills passed or pending that vary in their intrusion on personal liberty but share the goal of giving right-wing politicians the power to control the bodies of citizens through law. On Thursday, this frenzy reached cruel new heights when the attorney general of Missouri issued new emergency rules that put up steep barriers to transgender care, not just for children but also for adults. These barriers could amount to a virtual ban on gender-affirming care for most transgender people in the state.In the face of this onslaught, some centrists seem determined to keep flirting with trans skepticism. It is easy to see why trans issues have become the place for certain centrists to try to perform their moderation — queer people have served this purpose for decades. While other forms of open bigotry became taboo, homophobia and the view that queer people’s rights were a marginal concern has persisted. It has happened before. Bill Clinton heavily courted the gay vote to win the presidency in 1992, only to turn around and sign into law two odious policies: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. Clinton has since rent his garments over his regrets, but the fact remains that he enshrined discrimination against queer people into federal law.Republicans like to say they are the party of common sense. But what they seem to have forgotten is the commonest sense of all: Most people do not want the government making personal decisions for them. People want to control their own bodies. People want the freedom to decide when and how to form families. Suddenly, after years of pointing fingers at the left for so-called cultural totalitarianism, Republicans have now decisively revealed themselves to be the “jackbooted thugs” wanting details on your teenage daughter’s menstrual cycle. It’s hard to imagine a less appealing message to swing voters than that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden proposal forbids US schools from outright bans on transgender athletes

      by

      The Biden administration has released a proposal that would forbid schools and colleges across the US from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes. But teams could create some limits in certain cases – for example, to ensure fairness.If finalized, the proposal would become enshrined as a provision of Title IX. It must undergo a lengthy approval process, however, and it’s almost certain to face challenges from opponents.“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” said Miguel Cardona, Biden’s education secretary, in a statement.The Biden administration used “fairness of competition” as criteria, which has been part of the debate in the US and globally.The move is an effort to counteract a wave of Republican-backed measures targeting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly the participation of trans athletes in school sports. The proposal must undergo a lengthy approval process, however, and it’s almost certain to face challenges. While opponents sharply criticized the proposal, some advocates for transgender athletes were concerned that it did not go far enough.The proposal came on the same day that the US supreme court refused to let West Virginia enforce a state law banning trans athletes from female sports teams at public schools, one of many similar measures across the country.The justices denied West Virginia’s request to lift an injunction against the law that a lower court had imposed while litigation continues over its legality in a challenge brought by a 12-year-old transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson.Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented from the decision.The law, passed in 2021, designates sports teams at public schools including universities according to “biological sex” and bars male students from female athletic teams “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth”.In the lawsuit, Pepper-Jackson and her mother Heather argued that the law discriminates based on sex and transgender status in violation of the US constitution’s 14th amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education.West Virginia said in a court filing that it can lawfully assign athletic teams by sex rather than gender identity “where biological differences between males and females are the very reason those separate teams exist”.Pepper-Jackson, who attends a middle school in the West Virginia city of Bridgeport, sued after being prohibited from trying out for the girls’ cross-country and track teams.Critics argue trans athletes have an advantage over cisgender women in competition. Last year, Lia Thomas became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title. College sports’ governing body, however, adopted a sport-by-sport approach to transgender athletes in January 2022, which was to bring the organization in line with the US and International Olympic committees, though recently the NCAA’s board decided it won’t be fully implemented until 2023-24.At the same time, international sports-governing bodies are instituting policies that ban all trans athletes from competing in track and field and effectively ban trans women from swimming events. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Wellesley College students vote to admit trans men and non-binary people

      by

      Students at the famed Wellesley College for women voted this week to extend admission to trans men and non-binary students, though campus administrators have said there is “no plan” to immediately change school policy.In a non-binding election on Tuesday, students at the liberal arts college in Massachusetts voted to open admission to all non-binary and transgender students, including trans men, reported Wellesley News, the college’s student newspaper.Wellesley’s alumni include former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, ex-US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, and other public figures.The proposed resolution, which will be presented to Wellesley’s board of trustees, would allow trans men to be admitted to the university. Non-binary applicants, regardless of their sex at birth, would also be considered for admission, according to the resolution approved by students.The ballot measure would also call for the university to replace gender-specific language with gender neutral language in reference to its student body, including using they/them pronouns in place of she/her pronouns, according to CNN.The admissions policy which students have voted in favor of modifying notes that anyone who identifies as a woman is eligible for admission, the college’s website says.Non-binary students “who were assigned female at birth” are currently considered eligible for admission. But trans men are not considered for admission.Students have argued that the resolution came in part because of students who transitioned in college and felt excluded by the university’s use of descriptors including “women” and “alumnae”, the Boston Globe reported.Despite the student support, Wellesley administrators have said they will not consider the ballot measure ratified by students.“Although there is no plan to revisit its mission as a women’s college or its admissions policy, the college will continue to engage all students, including transgender male and non-binary students, in the important work of building an inclusive academic community where everyone feels they belong,” Wellesley’s media relations director, Stacey Schmeidel, said.Wellesley’s president, Paula Johnson, spoke about the proposed question last week in an open message entitled: “Affirming our mission and embracing our community.”Johnson’s message said: “Wellesley is a women’s college that admits cis, trans, and non-binary students – all who consistently identify as women.” Johnson added that Wellesley’s being both a “women’s college and a diverse community” was not a mutually exclusive proposition.Several students were critical of Johnson’s open message, with the Wellesley News’s editorial board calling out Johnson for intervening in student discourse and neglecting to mention legislative attacks on transgender people in her broader statement.“The Wellesley News editorial board is once again stating that transgender and non-binary students have always belonged and will continue to belong at Wellesley, a historically women’s college,” the editorial board wrote in a letter.Students have previously criticized the university’s lack of inclusive language for transgender and non-binary students.Students also have urged Wellesley’s board of trustees to keep a mural featuring the transgender flag which was powerwashed in 2021.School administrators have said that they support students who transition after being admitted, noting on their website that “[once] accepted to Wellesley, every student receives the full support and mentorship of college faculty, staff, and administrators through graduation”.Wellesley currently has no data on how many transgender and non-binary students attend the college, according to the New York Times. More

    • 238 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      My daughter is trans. She was nearly taken away from me because I let her transition | Carolyn Hays

      by

      My daughter is trans. She was nearly taken away from me because I let her transitionCarolyn HaysA child welfare investigation drove us from our conservative state. Little did we know that rightwing governors across America would soon be embracing this kind of persecution One autumn day in 2011, an investigator from our state’s department of children and families knocked on our door. At the time we lived in a conservative state in the American south. Someone had made an anonymous complaint accusing us of child abuse for allowing our child to have a girlhood. A lawyer told us that, in this state with decades of Republican-appointed judges, we were at risk of losing custody of our transgender daughter.The investigator’s visit felt like a bizarre clerical error; our four kids were thriving and we were well-liked in our community. The investigator ultimately found us to be good parents doing what was best for our child. However, it had become urgently clear that we would have to leave the deep south and move to a place where our youngest daughter, who had recently transitioned to she/her pronouns and a nickname, would have basic rights to equal education, housing, healthcare and, as she grew up, employment.Our map of the United States included about 13 states where there were laws likely to pass or already in place that would allow us to live as a family fully protected by law. It was a shock to have our country suddenly shrink, almost overnight. My husband and I are white, able-bodied, cis-gender, and straight; we’d taken for granted that each and every part of the United States was available to us. That was over. We were still Americans, but the terms of our supposed agreement with our own country had changed.We couldn’t have predicted that what happened to us would has now become an explicit rightwing political strategy. Earlier this year, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, issued an executive order directing the state’s department of family and protective services to investigate parents who support their transgender children, threatening to wrench apart families like ours, in a state that is home to almost 29 million people.After our own brush with losing custody of our child, we moved to New England. Over the next few years, to our surprise, the list of states with anti-discrimination laws grew. In New Jersey, a Republican governor signed laws to protect trans students. Even below the Mason-Dixon line, some Republican officials signed laws protecting transgender students in public education. Eventually there were 17 states, then 21, where children’s rights to gender self-expression were protected. It seemed possible that our daughter might get to be an American anywhere in America.That hope ended with the Trump administration. His administration waged a lockstep attack against transgender people – banning trans soldiers from military service, revoking civil rights guidelines that had protected trans students, rescinding protections for trans people who are incarcerated and for those living in homeless shelters and allowing discrimination based on gender identity in healthcare. It was ugly, swift and terrifying.After Trump lost in 2020, states took up the charge. Republican-led state governments pushed slates of anti-trans laws, many of which targeted kids. Being openly anti-trans seemed to become a point of pride among certain Republican politicians. It felt like whiplash. While our transgender daughter was flourishing, the country taking shape around her was hostile to her existence.We worry about what the map of the United States will look like in 2024 or 2025. If Republicans are in the White House with an uber-conservative majority in the supreme court and a Republican-dominated Congress, will individual states retain the right to protect families like ours? Or will the map of the United States be one solid anti-trans bloc?This issue has been clarified by the supreme court’s decision to repeal Roe v Wade. No longer allowed to make choices, with privacy and dignity, about their own bodies, people of reproductive age are being pushed to the edge of the same cliff as trans people. Every woman, queer or trans person – as individuals and as members of families and communities – faces threats to their bodily autonomy and basic privacy.It has become abundantly clear that we need to protect that autonomy and privacy for every American. The right to privacy includes our right to birth control, to marry the person we love, and to seek the healthcare we need in conversation with our doctors and not our politicians. As the country gets carved away from us, we must draw closer, putting aside differences and rising up as one. We need the power of working in solidarity to reclaim America – not in bits and pieces, but in the entirety of these United States.
      Carolyn Hays is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author. She is the author of A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter, which she has written under a pseudonym
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionGenderTransgendercommentReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      The Debate On Transgender Athletes Is Fundamentally About Fairness

      by

      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More