人兽性交

A gender-affirmative care model, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), offers 鈥渄evelopmentally appropriate care that is oriented toward understanding and appreciating the youth鈥檚 gender experience.鈥� According to AAP, this model of care offers a strong, nonjudgmental partnership with youth and their families to facilitate exploration of complicated emotions and gender-diverse expressions while also allowing room for questions and concerns in a supportive environment.

鈥淭ypical gender-affirming care consists of listening carefully to children and families to create safe spaces to talk about gender identity and explore this and other aspects of adolescent development,鈥� Dr. Michelle Forcier, director of Gender, Sexual Health, and Reproductive Justice at Open Door Health in Providence, Rhode Island, told Hatewatch via email. 鈥淸It] offers mental health supports to families to have guidance and resources to learn more about how to help children and adolescents stay safe, healthy and move forward in successful ways at home, school and in the community.鈥�

Protesters block the street in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., as it hears arguments on whether gay and transgender people are covered by a federal law barring employment discrimination on the basis of sex in October 2019. (Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc., via Getty Images)

According to Forcier, typical gender-affirming care 鈥渋s based on many completely reversible options for support, including using an asserted name and pronoun and affirming clothing, make-up or hairstyles.鈥� Adolescents who continue to suffer gender dysphoria, along with parents who want their child to be healthy, may be informed or offered an option for , which, according to Forcier, are 鈥渧ery safe, very effective, and even life-saving for our most dysphoric youth.鈥�

Anti-trans sports bans have also passed this year in , and while the Arkansas Senate passed a bill banning gender-affirming care for trans youth. Chase Strangio, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, that this bill, H.B. 1570, is the 鈥渟ingle most extreme anti-trans law to ever pass through a state legislature.鈥�

Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who signed the state鈥檚 anti-trans sports ban into law in March, actually vetoed H.B. 1570 on April 5, that the bill would create 鈥渘ew standards of legislative interference with physicians and parents as they deal with some of the most complex and sensitive matters involving young people.鈥�

Hutchinson also said that he believed an override of his veto was likely. The Arkansas legislature requires a simple majority in the state house and Senate to do so, and in fact the legislature overwhelmingly overrode his veto the next day. In so doing, Arkansas became the for trans youth.

The trans youth to stop treatment they have already begun and prevents new patients from seeking treatment. The bill also penalizes medical professionals for providing such care, denies federal funding for it, and encourages private insurers to deny coverage.

鈥淭his legislation would deny [trans kids] life-saving, appropriate and affirming health care or the ability to participate in school sports,鈥� Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), told Hatewatch. 鈥淓very leading medical institution says that transition-related care is necessary medical care, and many local schools have been successfully supporting both trans and non-trans student-athletes for years. At best, these bans are a solution in search of a problem. At worst, they are an abuse of power by politicians who want to motivate their base through fear.鈥�

The is full of right-wing misinformation and disinformation regarding gender dysphoria, repeating a myth that the majority of gender dysphoric youth will 鈥済row out of their dysphoria鈥� and linking gender dysphoria to 鈥減sychopathology.鈥�

Alabama and Tennessee are also considering bills that criminalize gender-affirming care. Alabama鈥檚 would make violations felonies. It also requires teachers to inform parents if a child tells them they鈥檙e transgender. That bill has passed the Alabama Senate. Tennessee鈥檚 bill (HB 0578) transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming care.

Professional medical organizations have released statements condemning the latest wave of anti-trans bills, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, that the bills have the 鈥渟ole purpose of threatening the health and well-being of transgender youth.鈥� The American Medical Association that every major medical association in the U.S. 鈥渞ecognizes the necessity of transition-related care for improving the physical and mental health of transgender people鈥� and noted that enacting anti-trans healthcare bans 鈥渃ould have tragic consequences.鈥� The organizations have also spoken out against the anti-trans sports bans.

Origins of the latest anti-trans legislation

The bills represent working in tandem to deny and erase the existence of trans people 鈥� this time by targeting trans youth. Earlier anti-trans legislation , which attempted to ban trans people from using public restrooms and other public facilities as the gender with which they identify.

The current attacks on trans youth are the latest tactic the anti-人兽性交 movement is using to legalize discrimination against 人兽性交 people 鈥� specifically targeting trans youth now and using a trope it has always used to sow fear about 人兽性交 people: Protect children, because 人兽性交 people are dangerous to them.

The anti-trans emphasis in the current focus of the anti-人兽性交 movement was , which enacted numerous anti-trans policies like banning trans people from the military and writing 鈥渞eligious freedom鈥� exemptions into Health and Human Services that would allow medical personnel to deny treatment to trans people.

The current wave of anti-trans disinformation and interest in forcing trans youth to be cisgender launched with the 2020 legislative session, which saw 79 anti-trans bills introduced.

One of those 鈥� Idaho鈥檚 sports ban 鈥� was signed into law, but it is . The 2020 wave was in response to a in which a jury awarded the mother of a 7-year-old trans girl custody. Luna Younger鈥檚 mother supports her daughter鈥檚 transition; her father does not. The case spurred an avalanche of anti-trans sentiment and misinformation on social media. Two days after the jury decision, the judge vacated it and awarded joint custody of Luna to both parents, though Luna鈥檚 father also engaged in spreading anti-trans mis- and disinformation on social media.

Disinformation and misinformation about gender-affirming care is also rampant on social media, and includes right-wing falsehoods such as that children are being 鈥渃hemically castrated鈥� or are undergoing transition surgeries. (They are not.) Other false claims gender dysphoria as long as parents don鈥檛 allow them to transition. Another right-wing claim is that gender-affirming care is 鈥渃hild abuse鈥� when in fact the opposite is true. Trans and nonbinary kids who do not get gender-affirming care are at much greater risk for trauma and suicide.

鈥淭here is no massive rush to surgeries and there are no 鈥榚xperiments鈥� being done on children,鈥� Forcier told Hatewatch. 鈥淭he interventions that are presented as options to gender-diverse children are evidence-based and safe, despite the demonization they receive in the lay press,鈥� Forcier continued. For example, she noted, 鈥淧uberty blockers have been safely prescribed to both transgender youth and [cisgender] youth with precocious puberty for many, many years, now.鈥� Forcier further noted that puberty blockers are completely reversible and give patients and parents time 鈥渢o learn more about gender, gender identity and development, without making any permanent or lifelong decisions or changes.鈥�

Anti-trans tactics and strategies

In the case of anti-trans legislation, a few national anti-人兽性交 groups are involved in crafting legislation, advising lawmakers and developing and promoting anti-trans disinformation through social media and right-wing news outlets.

Representatives and supporters of national and state-level anti-人兽性交 groups and specifically anti-trans groups are also tapped to testify at hearings related to these bills. These anti-trans medical professionals and other anti-trans 鈥渆xperts鈥� provide testimony that repeats false claims that puberty blockers and hormone treatments are dangerous and irreversible. In other cases, people who claim to be 鈥渄e-transitioners鈥� testify to lambast legitimate gender-affirming care as 鈥渉armful.鈥�

Idaho鈥檚 2020 anti-trans sports bill provides a window into how legislators coordinate with anti-人兽性交 groups on legislation like this.

Idaho state Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, sponsored the bill, which trans girls from competing in girls鈥� sports. In case of a dispute over a student鈥檚 sex, the bill requires that a student provide a health examination or a statement from a medical provider.

Ehardt is a former Idaho State University basketball player who later coached at other universities. She the bill is designed to protect women and girls from having to compete against 鈥渂iological boys and men鈥� 鈥� trans women.

Anti-trans messaging around these bills is important in spreading ideas about the legislation to drum up support. The messaging around sports bans denies the existence of trans women in particular, and consistently and deliberately misgenders them. Such bans imply that as 鈥渂iological men,鈥� trans women are a 鈥渢hreat鈥� to cisgender women. Anti-trans movements have thus adopted rhetoric generally associated with progressive women鈥檚 movements as a way to frame the disenfranchisement of trans people.

This messaging has been effective at not only galvanizing right-wing support for the bills, but also anti-trans feminists and lesbian, gay and bisexual people who adopt right-wing talking points to denigrate and dehumanize trans people. This, too, has been a strategy of the anti-人兽性交 movement 鈥� to use animosity against trans people to drive a wedge into 人兽性交 rights movements.

Heron Greenesmith, senior research analyst and expert in anti-trans networks at Political Research Associates, told Hatewatch, 鈥淎nti-trans feminist groups like the Women鈥檚 Liberation Front and associations of anti-trans medical professionals like the Society for Ethical Gender Medicine, and groups of anti-trans parents like the Kelsey Coalition give Christian Right mis- and disinformation a veneer of legitimacy that contradicts the global medical consensus.鈥�

Ehardt has claimed that Alliance Defending Freedom (an anti-人兽性交 hate group) helped her. Ehardt claims that ADF鈥檚 legal counsel looked over her bill and assisted in crafting stronger legislation.

According to IdEdNews.org, Ehardt with helping spread the anti-trans sports bill they worked on together from state to state via model legislation. ADF attorneys are to defend the bill in court.

Idaho鈥檚 anti-trans sports bill is serving as a model for other states 鈥� some 30 others, according to IdEdNews. The legislation spread initially to Montana, where Ehardt in support of that state鈥檚 sports ban bill. The Montana bill鈥檚 language is very similar to Idaho鈥檚 bill.

More bills in other states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Kansas and Arizona) include elements common to all, such as an excerpt from a by tennis great Martina Navratilova, NBC sports analyst Sanya Richards-Ross and Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a law professor at Duke University.

This is not the first time ADF has been involved in creating anti-trans model policy. ADF is also . In 2017, 15 states introduced bathroom bills that resembled each other and included language similar to model legislation drafted by ADF for schools to force trans students out of the bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender with which they identified. The policy, known as 鈥�,鈥� called for the segregation of trans students from facilities of students of the 鈥渙pposite sex鈥� 鈥� that is, students of the gender with which the trans student identified.

ADF has continued working against trans youth, and has shown up to testify in state legislatures. Matt Sharp, an ADF attorney, , where he deliberately misgendered trans people 鈥� a tactic ADF consistently employs to demean trans people. Such testimony also promotes disinformation that trans people don鈥檛 exist, by referring to trans women not as women, but as 鈥渂iological males鈥� and trans men as 鈥渂iological females.鈥�

Other groups are also engaged in anti-trans propaganda and support for anti-trans legislation.

The anti-人兽性交 Heritage Foundation and Family Policy Alliance traffic in anti-trans rhetoric, and, like ADF, and anti-trans lesbian, gay and bisexual people into the fold who parrot their anti-trans arguments. These include the false claims that trans women are a threat to cisgender women, and allowing these 鈥渂iological males鈥� to compete with cisgender women in sports will somehow end women鈥檚 sports and 鈥渆rase women.鈥�

Anti-人兽性交 hate group Family Research Council (FRC) is also involved in the coordinated efforts to demonize trans people and support anti-trans legislation. Anti-人兽性交 and anti-choice activist Joseph Backholm, a senior fellow at FRC, in support of the criminalization bill. FRC released a policy brief on the Arkansas bill, and instructed people to claim that gender transition is an 鈥渆xperiment鈥� that government should not force taxpayers to pay for and that young people are harmed by it.

The anti-人兽性交 right is also dominating social media. A 2020 Media Matters report that right-wing sources on Facebook garnered 66% of engagement with content about transgender people and issues.

As further demonstration of the coordinated efforts behind anti-trans legislation, ADF partnered with the Heritage Foundation and Family Policy Alliance recently in an effort to 鈥渟ave鈥� America鈥檚 children from 鈥渉arm鈥� which includes contact with anything related to sexual orientation and gender identity. The 鈥淧romise to America鈥檚 Children鈥� includes statements that female children should not be forced to compete in sports against 鈥渂iological males鈥� and that gender-affirming care is harmful. The coalition was launched in February and includes a page for legislators and policymakers to sign up for model legislation.

鈥淚n the past few years, we've seen the Christian right ramp up their platforming of seemingly opposing communities, like feminists, physicians and the parents of trans kids,鈥� PRA鈥檚 Greenesmith told Hatewatch. 鈥淚n reality, the groups and individuals being effectively platformed by the Christian Right represent a tiny handful of anti-trans advocates that get large platforms to give anti-trans advocacy the appearance of a broad base of support.鈥�

Nevertheless, the effective promotion and passage of anti-trans legislation will continue, pushed by both right-wing and feminist/LGB groups that use the same messaging and push the same right-wing pseudoscience. Like the coordinated efforts behind so many anti-abortion bills, anti-trans legislation seeks to criminalize medical care, enacting penalties not only on vulnerable youth and their families, but also on medical professionals. Criminalization of care forces people to go without, to go elsewhere, or to try to access care through black market means.

The cruelty of this legislation also seeks to deny the existence of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming youth, and encourages forms of conversion therapy to force them not to be trans. Further, it puts the state in control of parents by forcing a specific worldview on them and discouraging them from working with medical professionals and with their children to determine the best options going forward.

鈥淓very child deserves the love and support of family and community,鈥� Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen of NCTE told Hatewatch. 鈥淒angerous proposals around the country are putting transgender young people at risk. The harm is real and is felt very personally by trans kids just trying to live their lives as who they really are.鈥�

Editor's note: This story has been updated with information about puberty blockers from the Endocrine Society.