Several Problems Press

Several Problems Weekly #6: 31 March–6 April 2024

The City of Los Angeles, where Nancy Valverde lived and died.
Photo by Pedro Marroquin on Unsplash, uploaded 10 December 2018.

Index

  1. Vale Nancy Valverde (1932–2024)
  2. Academic: Rawee et al. pretend trans kids don’t exist
  3. Academic: Murugesh et al. discover that puberty requires puberty
  4. Int.: X Corp. vows to shirtfront Australian eSafety Commissioner
  5. Australia, NSW: Football NSW spil their jice, call mods
  6. Australia, WA: “Blood money” imbroglio around TransFolk of WA
  7. Canada: Tegan and Sara (and Fae) say no to transphobia
  8. Hong Kong: Government introduces new gender policy; it sucks
  9. Slovakia: Government screws over trans people to win; it works
  10. Thailand: Senate debates Marriage Equality Bill
  11. Uganda: Odoi v Attorney General: Court tells queers to go jump
  12. UK: Scottish Hate Crime Act commences, wizard lady furious
  13. US: Trans people steal Easter
  14. US: United States v Utah: Biden finally meets a jail he doesn’t like
  15. US: Gays Against Groomers v Garcia: Incoherent seething
  16. US: Blakeman v James: Court to plaintiff: lol you thought
  17. US, AZ: SB 1182: Accommodation for All Children (tr—ns don’t count)
  18. US, AZ: SB 1628: Women’s Rights Bill removes women’s rights
  19. US, CO: For kids, HB 24-1039 kills deadnames dead
  20. US, CO: HB 24-1071: Tiara’s Law gives trans ex-cons a break
  21. US, IL: X gender marker now available — about fucking time!
  22. US, NE: LB 575: Spaces and sports saved from Sports and Spaces Act
  23. US, NH: SB 375 proves it was never about being fair
  24. US, OH: HB 467 ensures deadname trick only works once
  25. US, WI: AB 377: Evers vetoes sports ban, tries shame on fascists

Vale Nancy Valverde (1932–2024)

I can never say ‘no’ to the community — anything they asked for. If I can do it, I’ll do it. Because I know when I needed help, I had help.

Valverde, in Flay (2023)

Nancy Valverde, a Chicana lesbian and trailblazing LGBTQ+ rights activist, died at home in Los Angeles, California, United States, on 25 March 2024, at the age of 92.

Born 6 March 1932 in Deming, New Mexico (Hernández, 2024), from the age of 9 onward, Valverde grew up in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles (“Nancy Valverde, iconic LGBTQ+ activist,” 2024; Rodas, 2024). As she grew up, she began to face discrimination on the grounds of her ethnicity and sexual orientation; even if it hadn’t been omnipresent, by the time she was 17, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was making sure of it.

At the time, Los Angeles Municipal Ordinance 5022 was still in force. Enacted in 1898 and amended in 1922, the law criminalised men dressing as women — in the sense that those terms were then understood — and vice versa (Dresden, 2023). The LAPD enthusiastically used the statute to suppress queer and trans people, devising the “three-article rule” (Ryan, 2023) which stipulated that perceived crossdressers who were not wearing at least three items of clothing would face arrest (Sears, 2023). This rule seems not to have served any purpose other than to pretend that LAPD were simply neutrally and objectively enforcing the law.

Beginning in 1949, Valverde, a butch who routinely wore what were considered men’s clothes, was repeatedly accosted by the LAPD (Hernández, op. cit.), and jailed over two dozen times (“Nancy Valverde, lesbian activist,” 2024); as of 2016, she was still feeling the back pain with which one particularly brutal arrest had left her (Compton, 2016). Eventually she had enough; after considerable legal research, she discovered a Supreme Court of California precedent which proved that the cops’ treatment of her was illegal. She engaged an attorney, went to court, and won (Compton, op. cit.). While Ordinance 5022 wasn’t immediately struck down, Valverde’s civil action amounted to throwing the first brick (Hernández, op. cit.).

After her court victory, Valverde studied for, and got, her barber’s license at the Moler Barber College in downtown Los Angeles, at 265 South Main Street, coincidentally just a few doors down from Cooper Do-nuts, the reputed scene of the 1959 Cooper Do-nuts queer uprising, at No. 215 (Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council, 2023).1 In the face of the anti-LGBTQ+ laws which remained in effect in Los Angeles at the time, Nancy’s Barber Shop provided a space for queer people to be safe (Rodas, op. cit.).

Valverde’s name is immortalised in the official name of the Cnr 2nd & Main St junction in downtown Los Angeles, “Cooper Do-nuts/Nancy Valverde Square”. I have no detail on survivors; a Los Angeles LGBT Center Senior Services (n.d.) profile published prior to her death indicates she helped raise 4 of her partners’ children. The Center says details of a memorial service will be forthcoming (Los Angeles LGBT Center, 2024).

Academic

Rawee et al. pretend trans kids don’t exist

On 27 February, the Archives of Sexual Behavior — that redoubtable, nominally peer-reviewed cornerstone of the tabloid ecosystem — published an article, “Development of gender non-contendedness during adolescence and early adulthood,” by Pien Rawee et al. (2024).

While the study was published over a month ago, it doesn’t seem to have made much of a splash until it got a sudden, coordinated boost early this month from conservative media and influencers, including, but let’s be real, probably not limited to:

I took a look at the study. It’s being represented in right-wing media as being meaningfully indicative of paediatric “desistance” rates — i.e., indicative of what percentage of kids who “think they are trans” later “stop being trans”.

However, as Erin Reed (2024) notes, what the study actually tracks is not any known close proxy for transness — it doesn’t track, for instance, symptomatology of gender dysphoria as defined in the DSM (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). What it tracks is a novel variable, apparently conceived for this study in particular, which it refers to as “gender non-contentedness”. The data source for this variable is a single multiple-choice question, “I wish I were the opposite sex: never, sometimes, often,” appearing in the ASEBA Youth Self-Report and Adult Self-Report (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001), two standardised psychological testing batteries which apart from that particular perfunctory question have nothing to do with trans people at all, which were used during the Tracking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS), a general study of Dutch youth (Ormel et al., 2012). Respondents are defined as having been “gender non-contented” if they answered either “sometimes” or “often”.

The study is centred around the finding “that gender non-contentedness is most common around the age of 11 and that the prevalence decreases with age”. This seems fairly clearly intended to be read as tracking desistance. However, as Reed (op. cit.) notes, this is not the case. The first clue is that the figure given for the prevalence of “gender non-contentedness” in the sample at the age of 11 is 12% (most of whom, incidentally, answered “sometimes”); it declines to 3% at 25. Compare that to the most generous estimates of the trans population in the United States, which are circa 0.5% (e.g., Crissman et al., 2017).

This is suggestive that what’s actually happening here is the apples and oranges trick, most famously pulled in the 1980s by Archives EIC Ken Zucker, who is also cited several times in this study. The apples and oranges trick consists of the following:

  1. You design a longitudinal study which draws its conclusions from screening for specific psychological phenomena, qualities, or traits.
  2. You pick a phenomenon, quality, or trait which is popularly associated with trans people, but which you know is not actually statistically specific or exclusive to trans people, such as gender nonconformity.
  3. You collect basic data from those recipients at time 1 (t1). You do not screen for actual transness at this time. This is vital.
  4. At a later data collection, tn, you introduce a new instrument to screen them specifically for being trans. Since you didn’t specifically recruit trans people, as you well know, the number of people “positive” for trans at tn will be less than the total size of the sample, probably significantly so.
  5. Immediately claim that the people who weren’t trans at tn weren’t just not trans, but that they’d clearly originally been trans and then stopped, and that rate, the rate of desistance, is what the difference between the cohort size and the rate of positives at tn actually represents. This is flagrant bullshit, but the cishets, up to and including the PhDs, are broadly gullible and transphobic as fuck, so everyone including, statistically speaking, your most likely peer reviewers is going to eat it up.

The fact that, as Reed (op. cit.) notes, the sample for this study is defined in such a way that it includes “[t]omboys, feminine gay teen boys, gender nonconforming individuals, people who experience sexism, and even those with curious minds” suggests to my mind very strongly that this is what’s happened here — or rather, what’s been done.

Of course, a methodology I don’t like is not enough to convict the accused on all charges. Cis researchers unfortunately bumble into that kind of shit depressingly often on their own. Thus, I was still unable to make a concrete determination of malice. However, I think the choice to publish in Arch Sex Behav is indicative — it is clear and it has been clear for a very long time exactly what kind of outfit the Archives is. Articles published in the 6 issues immediately preceding the date this paper was submitted, 28 April 2023, include:

  • Bailey & Hsu (2022), “How autogynephilic are natal females?”
  • Lowrey (2022), “Gender identity ideology conquers the world: Why are anthropologists cheering?”
  • Pfaus (2022), “The cancer of cancel culture: Spreading ‘correct’ scientific ideologies across North American academia”
  • Sullins (2022), “Sexual orientation change efforts do not increase suicide: Correcting a false research narrative”
  • Diaz & Bailey (2023), “RETRACTED ARTICLE: Rapid onset gender dysphoria: Parent reports on 1655 possible cases”

… and so on and so forth. If you want to publish an article on trans kids, there are so many other, better journals: the International Journal of Transgender Health, the Journal of Adolescent Health, Liebert’s Transgender Health, Pediatrics, etc., etc. The Archives is the one nominally academic journal (in this field, anyway) to which it is credible the editor of the Daily Mail has a subscription. It statistically must be true that there are a few people who publish in it don’t know what they’ve gotten into, but it would be very few people indeed.

Among people doing research in trans health, doing this kind of research in trans health, from this basis, knowing the Archives‘ nature and character is fundamental knowledge about it, on the level of knowing it’s a sexology journal in the first place. I simply do not see it as plausible that this was an accident. Is that a vibes-based analysis? Maybe, but it’s one I’ll defend.

(Having said that, if this was a malicious publication I am not convinced that the source of the malice is lead author Rawee, whose bibliography is otherwise both unobjectionable and completely unrelated. I will probably follow this one up but for now I’m going to leave it here.)

Murugesh et al. discover that puberty requires puberty

On 27 March, a preprint, “Puberty blocker and aging impact on testicular cell states and function,” by Varshini Murugesh et al. (2024), was posted on biorXiv and has since received a great deal of attention from conservative media. The attention appears to revolve around two key points, summarised in the abstract as follows:

  1. “we report mild-to-severe sex gland atrophy in PB [puberty blocker] treated children”;
  2. “Applying these models [of the effect of aging on testicular tissue] to a PB-treated patient that [sic] they appeared pre-pubertal across the entire tissue. This combined with the noted gland atrophy and abnormalities from the histology data raise a potential concern regarding the complete ‘reversibility’ and reproductive fitness of SSC.”

I looked at the working for both findings. The testicular atrophy claim is interesting because I can’t actually determine how they reached it. The claim of atrophy suggests that their evidence indicates that in subjects who were on puberty blockers, the testes actually decreased in size over time — which would be expected, and could be proven through e.g. study of ultrasonographic evidence over time — but their actual description of their results seems to suggest that they compared testicular specimens from subjects on puberty blockers to specimens from controls and found that the experimental group had smaller testes.

That and the comparison with their models of aging on testicular tissue seem to both point to one result, but I find that result confusing because it’s trivial. Namely, they appear to have shown that people who are treated with puberty blockers appear to maintain a prepubertal phenotype of the testes, which … ? So what they’re saying is “people who haven’t gone through puberty haven’t gone through puberty”? Yeah, uh … no, shit, I think. But like, how does that intersect with the question of whether puberty blockers are reversible? Like at all?

I don’t at all know what to make of this one. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

General

eSafety Commissioner to be shirtfronted by X

In SP Weekly #5 I mentioned that the Australian eSafety Commissioner had issued an Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth) s 88 notice to X Corp., the company which operates Twitter. The notice was over a Tweet by “Billboard” Chris Elston which the Commissioner assessed, not in so many words, as constituting anti-trans hate speech.

X Corp. has now geoblocked the Tweet in Australia, but, through its Global Government Affairs division, has announced its intent to “file a legal challenge to the order to protect its user’s [sic?] right to free speech” (X Global Government Affairs, 2024). At press time I’m unsure of the venue in which any such filing might take place — anecdotally someone has suggested the Federal Court of Australia, which seems like a sensible place to sue the Australian Government, but I’m not a lawyer so I can’t confirm.

Speaking of which,

Australia

New South Wales

A sleek black soccer ball. Look, it’s topical. Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash.

Football NSW spil their jice, call mods

On 4 April, Football New South Wales (Football NSW), the peak body for association football (“soccer”) in New South Wales, issued a news release announcing it had “sought guidance, support and leadership from” the Australian Government “around gender diversity in sport” (Football NSW, 2024).

The release carefully does not make specific reference to anything concrete, but from context it’s pretty obviously a response to the Beryl Ackroyd Cup brouhaha which I reported on in SP Weekly #5. In the release, Football NSW:

  • spends two paragraphs establishing its credentials, describing itself as “an active and supportive organisation when it comes to equality and inclusion, continually striving towards making football accessible to all who wish to play,” and pleading that it has “received no support from government agencies, notwithstanding [its] adherence to” all applicable rules and regulations providing for the inclusion of trans people in sport;
  • says it “has called upon the Federal Government to review” the rules and regulations in question “with consideration to the growing gender diversity issues faced by sport” “to ensure they remain fit for purpose”;
  • rather alarmingly, characterises “[g]ender diversity” as “an ongoing challenge faced by … the community at large”.

On the whole, it seems difficult to interpret the release as anything other than a suggestion by Football NSW that they believe The Flying Bats FC’s victory may have been unfairly achieved. It’s unclear what grounds they would have had to come to this view as they do not specify in the release and apart from those suggested by scientifically unsupported transmisogyny there is nothing obvious it could be.

Western Australia

“Blood money” imbroglio around TransFolk of WA

On 23 March, Andrea Thompson, a trans community advocate, published an open letter (Thompson, 2024) to the board of TransFolk of WA, a prominent trans advocacy group which she describes as “the only collective voice gender diverse people have to” the Government of Western Australia. The letter comes in the context that the incumbent Cook Labor Government of Western Australia has less than a year left in its term, and has failed to honour its promises to remedy significant deficiencies in the treatment of trans people in Western Australian state law. These include the state’s extremely conservative and medicalised gender recognition regime. (See SP Weekly #4, where I touched on this in somewhat more detail.)

In the letter, which partly reiterates previous criticisms by Thompson and partly advances new ones, she:

  • suggests that TransFolk of WA have “ties to the Labor Party” that facilitate funding for the group, and that, in doing that, create a “conflict of interest”;
  • suggests that “the organisation has been outmanoeuvred by a government that has found the price of [their] silence,” characterising any funding facilitated in such a way as “hush/blood money”;
  • calls for greater transparency on the part of TransFolk of WA;
  • criticises TransFolk of WA’s existing line on gender recognition reform, and says it should “undertake further consultation with its constituents”;
  • for her part, advocates a “fully person-centric” gender recognition regime which removes cis doctors from the process completely.

Canada

Tegan and Sara (and Fae) (and others) say no to transphobia

On 3 April, the Tegan and Sara Foundation published an open letter (Tegan and Sara Foundation Board of Directors & Johnstone, 2024) “against anti-trans legislation,” from “artists living in and/or hailing from Canada”. The letter, prepared with assistance from Fae Johnstone:

  • notes that “Canada is not immune to the global attack on the trans community,” and explicitly condemns anti-trans action by the provincial governments of Alberta, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan;
  • “call[s] on the general public to turn their attention to a growing problem in our country”
  • “call[s] on our communities and local and national policymakers to put a stop to this concerning surge in anti-trans policy”.

Signatories to the letter include:

  • badbadnotgood;
  • the Barenaked Ladies;
  • Mac DeMarco;
  • Dallas Green;
  • Daryl Hannah;
  • Dijah Payne/DijahSB;
  • Carly Rae Jepsen;
  • Avan Jogia;
  • k.d. lang;
  • Colin Mochrie;
  • Alanis Morissette;
  • Elliot Page;
  • Raffi;
  • Buffy Sainte-Marie;
  • Sum 41;
  • Cobie Smulders;
  • Tegan and Sara, naturally;
  • Kai Cheng Thom;
  • Rufus Wainwright;
  • Neil Young.

Hong Kong

Government introduces new gender policy; it sucks

The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. Photo by 📸 IMYT on Unsplash.

On 3 April, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (2024) announced changes to their policy on changes of sex entry on Hong Kong identity cards, implementing the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal’s ruling in Q & Tse Henry Edward v Commissioner of Registration (Q & Tse). The new policy comes after Henry Tse, one of the two plaintiffs in that case, initiated a new action against the Government in late March. In that action, he alleged they were engaging in unlawful discrimination by slow-walking the implementation of Q & Tse, which had been handed down 11 months prior (Leung, 2024).

Under the new policy, trans Hongkongers nominally no longer have to get “full sex reassignment surgery (SRS),” as the Government’s press release puts it — which for transfeminine applicants meant vaginoplasty and for transmasculine applicants meant phalloplasty — in order to be allowed to apply for a change of sex entry. Instead, they must satisfy all of the following criteria:

  • they must have “completed surgical treatment for the purpose of modifying sexual characteristics,” meaning top surgery for transmascs and penectomy and orchiectomy for transfems;
  • must satisfy the Commissioner, and must also make a statutory declaration, that they:
    • “ha[ve] or had gender dysphoria”
    • have lived as “the opposite sex” for at least 2 years;
    • will continue to live as “the opposite sex” for the rest of their life;
    • have been on HRT for all of that 2-year period;
    • will remain on HRT and will be subject to random blood tests to check “hormonal profile”.

Reception of the new policy by Hong Kong’s LGBTQ+ community has been chilly. Commentators whose remarks were reported in media included:

  • Henry Tse, who expressed his concern regarding the new hormonal profile check requirement (Wong & Lin, 2024);
  • Wong Hiu-chong, Tse’s attorney, who noted that the check, among other requirements imposed on applicants, does not apply to Hong Kong ID card holders who are cisgender, and is therefore “potentially discriminatory” as applied (de Guzman, 2024).
  • Dr Zephyrus Tsang, who co-founded Quarks, a trans youth peer network, and who is a trans man, who (Wong & Lin, op. cit.):
    • said he was worried that trans people would still be legally compelled to get gender-related surgical interventions that they didn’t actually want;
    • noted that the new policy was transmisogynistic in its effect, as it requires transmascs to get top surgery, but requires transfems to get bottom surgery, which is riskier;
  • Dr Diana Kwok, associate professor in the Education University of Hong Kong’s Department of Special Education and Counselling, who said the new policy amounted to pathologising trans people and could affect their mental health as a result (Wong & Lin, op. cit.)

Slovakia

Government screws over trans people to win; it works

On 2 April, the Health Ministry of the Slovak Republic withdrew the Standard procedure for the diagnosis and comprehensive management of healthcare for adults with transsexualism (TASR, 2024a). Information available to me as a monolingual English speaker is sparse, but it looks like the overall effect is to limit care access and legal gender recognition for Slovak trans people.

The Slovak Psychiatric Association (Slovenská psychiatrická spoločnosť; SPsS) has issued a strongly-worded press release (Slovak Psychiatric Association, 2024). A machine translation of the release includes the following statements:

  • “A situation where professional clinical practice is subject to decisions on non-clinical grounds sets a dangerous precedent with far-reaching effects”;
  • “With this decision, the Ministry abandons its history of cooperation with professional societies and experts who participated in the development of the Standard Procedure at its request”;
  • “[This] puts us and our colleagues in a situation where we have to reevaluate the nature and meaning of our further bilateral cooperation”;
  • “If our expertise, experience and knowledge are not required or taken into account, we as an [executive committee of the Slovak Psychiatric Association] do not see room for further meaningful cooperation with the Ministry of Health”.

There isn’t a lot of information accessible to me about what motivated this decision. English-language coverage from the News Agency of the Slovak Republic (TASR, 2024b) carried paraphrased remarks from Saplinq, o.z., an LGBTQ+ advocacy group based in Košice, to the effect that “this [is] a gamble with the lives of transsexual people, and a political deal aimed to garner coalition support for one of the candidates in the run-up to the second round of the presidential election”.

More context may be appropriate here. On 6 April, the second round of elections for the Presidency of the Slovak Republic took place; incumbent President Zuzana Čaputová (Ind) opted not to seek a second term. The candidates contesting the office in the second round were:

  • Ivan Korcok (Ind), former minister of foreign and European affairs;
  • Peter Pellegrini (Hlas), former Chairman of the Government and incumbent Speaker of the National Council.

While, as is usual in parliamentary republics, the Slovak President isn’t the day-to-day chief executive, they do have some power independent of the Chairman of the Government (“prime minister”) and some power to check the Government, so the position is worth having

Pellegrini’s party, Hlas – sociálna demokracia (Hlas, Hlas-SD; “Voice — Social Democracy”), is part of the current Fourth Fico Ministry.2 Hlas is a “socially conservative left-wing” political party, a tendency for which I can’t think of many straightforward Anglophone equivalents3 but which for my European Union enjoyers is comparable to, e.g., Germany’s Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW; “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance”). In any event, the incumbent Health minister is Hlas’ Zuzana Dolinková — this may or may not be directly relevant but is probably involved somehow.

What Saplinq seems to be suggesting is that this was a move by either Dolinková or the Fico Government to shore up support for Pellegrini, the Hlas candidate, from the other coalition parties: most likely particularly from the fascist Slovenská národná strana (SNS; “Slovak National Party”), as the other coalition party, Chairman Robert Fico’s own party Smer – sociálna demokracia (Smer, Smer-SD; “Direction — Social Democracy”) is of much the same type as Hlas.

While it’s unlikely that the Health Ministry’s decision had much of an impact either way, it will unfortunately certainly be possible to say that it worked — Pellegrini won (“A close ally,” 2024).

Thailand

Senate debates Marriage Equality Bill

On 2 April, the Senate of Thailand considered the Marriage Equality Bill (Agence France-Presse, 2024), which I previously covered in SP Weekly #5. If adopted, the Bill:

  • will amends the Thai Civil and Commercial Code s 1448, replacing (words translating as) “men and women” with “individuals”, and “husband and wife” with “marriage partners,” which will have the effect of instituting marriage equality (Pearl, 2023);
  • will not, however, give same-gender couples equal parental rights (Opray, 2024).

The incumbent 12th Senate is an appointed body, similar to the Canadian Senate or (most of) the British House of Lords; it was stacked with conservatives under the National Council for Peace and Order, Thailand’s 2014–2019 military junta. As a result, the Senate is considered rather more conservative than the House.

However, the Thai Senate is a weak upper house; it can refer the Bill back to the House for 180 days, but can’t definitively veto it. Coverage from the Thai Enquirer (“Marriage equality in Thailand!,” 2024) suggests that the overwhelming margin by which the House approved the Bill — 399 or 400 to 10, depending on the source — means that there is little chance the Senate will exercise the powers it has.

At present, it’s expected that Senate debate on the Bill will continue through 9 April, the final sitting day of the National Assembly of Thailand’s current session. It will then be referred to a Senate committee for additional scrutiny during the session break, before being returned to the full Senate for final approval (Reuters & Sattaburuth, 2024).

Uganda

Odoi v Attorney General: Court tells queers to go jump

On 3 April, the Constitutional Court of Uganda handed down its ruling in Odoi v Attorney General, a case concerning the constitutionality of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023. The Court struck down 4 sections of the Act, ss 3(2)(c), 9, 11(2)(d), and 14, which between them restricted healthcare access for LGBTQ+ people, criminalised renting premises to LGBTQ+ people, and created a mandatory reporting obligation for all citizens concerning “acts of homosexuality”.

However, the Court upheld the majority of the Act, including provisions creating an offence of “promotion of homosexuality,” punishable with up to 20 years in jail (Human Rights Watch, 2024).

United Kingdom

Scotland

Hate Crime Act commences, wizard lady furious

The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, at dusk. Photo by Ben Marler on Unsplash.

On 1 April the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, an act of the Scottish Parliament, commenced in effect. The Act:

  • revises the Scottish statutory definition of the protected characteristic of transgender identity, in order to distinguish it from variations in sex characteristics;
  • amends existing Scottish hate crime law to more effectively address hate crimes against multiply marginalised people;
  • creates a new offence, “stirring up hatred,” which operates on the same principle as the existing Scottish offence of incitement to racial hatred but is slightly narrower in the protections it offers victims, and applies to all protected classes covered in the Act (Chalmers, 2024).

The Act, and its treatment of trans people as a protected class, has received pushback from:

United States

Federal

Trans people steal Easter

A picture of my readers, as you can tell from the assortment of beautiful eggs.
Photo by Bianca Ackermann on Unsplash

On 29 March, US President Joe Biden (D) issued a Presidential proclamation recognising Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV) on 31 March (Biden, 2024). While this is the usual date of TDoV, this year it was also the date of Easter Sunday, as Easter is calculated according to the Computus, a fairly complex algorithm not based on the Gregorian (and therefore Western civil) calendar.

As a result, while conservatives know perfectly well how all this works, the proclamation attracted rabid pushback from conservatives who were pretending not to, including:

United States v Utah: Biden finally meets a jail he doesn’t like

The Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Photo by Michael Hart on Unsplash.

On 2 April, in the US District Court for the District of Utah, the United States, through the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ), filed suit against the State of Utah. The action follows a DOJ letter of findings from the Division’s Disability Rights Section dated 12 March, concerning a complaint filed by an unnamed trans woman who is currently incarcerated in a facility of the Utah Department of Corrections (UDOC). In the letter of findings, the United States finds that:

  • UDOC has an internal policy, Policy AG37, which compels incarcerated trans people to go through a multi-step evaluation process before they can receive gender-affirming care, and imposes a 1-year waiting period before they can reapply if their care request is denied;
  • Policy AG37 subjects all requests for transition care to a committee which includes both non-medical and medical staff members, and which includes members who are overtly biased against providing care;
  • UDOC did not allow the complainant to receive a clinical evaluation for gender dysphoria until June 2022, more than 9 months after she was incarcerated;
  • after the complainant passed the evaluation, UDOC did not provide her with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) until January 2023, more than 6 months later;
  • it did not do so safely or effectively: it did not do the routine bloodwork necessary to ensure that her HRT did not interfere with other medications she was on, nor did it check that her HRT dose was having the intended effect;
  • the complainant requested adjustments to her living situation constituting reasonable modifications under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which is also the federal law providing for reasonable accommodations for trans people — UDOC rejected the complainant’s ADA requests out of hand;
  • the complainant’s dysphoria was worsened, at least in part by UDOC’s conduct,to the point that in May 2023 she performed an orchiectomy on herself.

The letter of findings closes with a note to the effect that “[DOJ] hope[s] to work together with [UDOC] to resolve this matter cooperatively through a court-enforceable consent degree that brings UDOC into compliance with the ADA. If we are unable to reach such a resolution, the Attorney General may initiate a lawsuit”. Apparently such a resolution was not reached.

In its court filing, the United States contends that UDOC’s conduct is impermissible disability discrimination under the ADA. In its filing, it seeks:

  • declaratory relief (“[a] declar[ation] that Defendant has violated [the ADA]”);
  • injunctive relief:
    • enjoining UDOC and associated entities from engaging in anti-trans discrimination;
    • enjoining UDOC and associated entities to treat trans people equally;
  • compensatory damages to the complainant.

Gays Against Groomers v Garcia: Incoherent seething

On 4 April, in the US District Court for the District of Colorado, two fascist anti-trans advocacy groups, Gays Against Groomers (GAG) and Rocky Mountain Women’s Network (RMWN), filed suit against 5 Democratic members of the Colorado General Assembly. Honestly the filing is pretty circuitous and incoherent even for right-wing litigation so it took me some time to figure out what they were saying had happened and how they were saying it was unlawful. Here’s what I got.

The General Assembly is currently deliberating on HB 24-1071, “Tiara’s Law,” which if adopted will make name changes easier for convicted felons who are trans. The process for the bill requires public hearings. It appears that during those hearings, the defendants formalised and enforced decorum rules prohibiting public witnesses from deadnaming, misgendering, or transphobic commentary in general. Those witnesses happened to include Rich Guggenheim of GAG and Christine Goeke of RMWN, with hilarious consequences.

Throughout the complaint, the plaintiffs seethingly inveigh against this unbearable imposition, taking every opportunity — including repeating themselves several times — to deadname any trans people specifically mentioned. At various times, they characterise:

  • all chosen names as “trans-inspired names”;
  • the fact that the Assembly’s online signup interface lets speakers indicate their pronouns as “suggest[ing] speakers should submit to trans ideology via [a] pronoun ritual”;
  • any voluntary respect for trans people’s identities, by anyone, as “lying”;
  • the defendants as “proponents of transgender ideology”;
  • any decorum rules against transphobia as “compel[ling] citizens to mouth support for,” or even “requiring [them] to express fealty to,” “transgender ideology”;
  • Defendants’ enforcement of such decorum rules as “forc[ing] their ideological beliefs on plaintiffs” and “stealing [the plaintiffs’ speaking] time”;
  • Defendants’ advocacy for HB 24-1071 as “pro-felon statements that sought to normalize criminal convictions as a form of victimization”;
  • Defendants as obviously ideologically biased because they did not expel Tiara Kelley (the law’s unofficial namesake), Bread and Roses, the American Civil Liberties Union, Parasol Patrol, or Black Sex Workers of Colorado (one wonders why that might have been).

Subsequent to this litany of outrages the plaintiffs eventually contend that the Democratic legislators’ prohibition on deadnaming, misgendering, and transphobic commentary is in violation of the plaintiffs’ rights under:

They are seeking:

  • injunctive relief, specifically an order enjoining the defendants or any parties associated with them from imposing or enforcing any decorum rules against deadnaming, misgendering, or transphobic commentary in general;
  • declaratory relief consistent with the injunction;
  • nominal damages of US$17.91;5
  • costs and attorneys’ fees.

Blakeman v James: Court to County Exec: lol you thought

On 4 April, the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York refused the request of Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R) to enjoin state Attorney General Letitia James (D) from pursuing legal action against him. The action contemplated is over Nassau County Executive Order #2-2024, issued by Blakeman in February, which bars trans women and girls from playing sports at county-owned facilities (Associated Press, 2024a). According to Fox News Digital, Nusrat Choudhury, the presiding judge, said she would dismiss Blakeman’s suit entirely later this month (S. Thompson, 2024).

Arizona

SB 1182: Accommodation for All Children (tr—ns don’t count)

On 3 April, the Arizona House of Representatives approved SB 1182, the bravely-named Arizona Accommodation for All Children Act. If adopted, which now appears: certain, SB 1182 will:

  • prohibits Arizona public schools from allowing trans students to use correctly gendered shower rooms, and creates a cause of action to allow aggrieved cis students to sue schools which do so;
  • nominally provides for trans students by allowing schools to offer them access to single-occupancy or employee shower rooms.

Somewhat depressingly, SB 1182 was cut down from an even more extreme form which would have “required the same rules for bathrooms, locker rooms, and sleeping areas” (Gomez, 2024a).

SB 1628: Women’s Rights Bill removes women’s rights

Also on 3 April, the Arizona House approved SB 1628, the Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights. SB 1628 provides that for all purposes of Arizona code, gendered terms (“man,” “boy,” “woman,” “girl,” etc.) are determined based on the approximate type of the reproductive system of the person in question (Gomez, 2024b).

Colorado

The Colorado State Capitol in Denver. Photo by Acton Crawford on Unsplash.

For kids, HB 24-1039 kills deadnames dead

On 1 April, the Colorado State Senate passed HB 24-1039. If adopted, HB 24-1039 will provide that:

  • schools are required to use a student’s chosen name;
  • either actively deadnaming a student, or avoiding the use of a chosen name once it has been specified, is a form of discrimination;
  • students thus discriminated against may file an administrative complaint or a Title IX complaint with the school.

HB 24-1071: Tiara’s Law gives trans ex-cons a break

On 3 April, the Colorado State Senate passed HB 24-1071, unofficially Tiara’s Law. Under current law, Colorado Revised Statutes § 13-15-101(3)(b) provides that if a person who is a convicted felon proposes to change their name to a name other than the name under which they were convicted, a court may allow it “for good cause”. HB 24-1071 adds a paragraph providing that “changing the petitioner’s name to conform with the petitioner’s gender identity” constitutes “good cause” for the purposes of that section.

The proceedings around the passage of Tiara’s Law are the subject of Gays Against Groomers v Garcia, mentioned above.

Illinois

The Illinois State Capitol in Springfield. I picked a picture where it’s cloudy because I’m mad at them.
Photo by Tucker Good on Unsplash.

X gender marker now available — about fucking time

On 1 April, after over four years of delay, the Illinois Secretary of State finally implemented the amendments made to the Illinois Identification Card Act by Public Act 101-0513, which requires that state identification cards must allow petitioners to identify their sex as nonbinary.

The amending Act commenced 1 January 2020, but the Illinois Secretary of State did not then immediately act to implement it. No source has been very clear on why. When the law passed, the Secretary of State informed journalists that changes might be delayed until 2024, saying the Secretary was locked into a contract for the relevant state documents with IDEMIA Identity and Security, LLC. However, IDEMIA released a media statement at that time indicating it would support the changes (Wittich, 2024).

Sources I consider credible have differed on whether the slow rollout was in any way the result of discriminatory intent:

  • In 2023, Avi Rudnick (he/they), an attorney for the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois who is transmasc nonbinary, told the Chicago Tribune the slow rollout was “just another example of structural transphobia” (Gorner, 2023).
  • In 2021, in an email to StateScoop, Anne Petersen (they/them), a user experience (UX) designer for the US Web Design System who is nonbinary, placed the majority of the blame on “how the state buys software … the requirements have to be set up front and then the state islocked into a term” (Johnston, 2021).

Nebraska

The Nebraska State Capitol in Omaha. Surprising Ministry of Truth vibes.
Photo by Pieter van de Sande on Unsplash.

LB 575: Spaces, sports saved from Sports and Spaces Act

On 5 April, the Nebraska Legislature killed LB 575, the Sports and Spaces Act. If adopted, LB 575 would have:

  • compelled schools to observe a binary definition of “biological sex” based on reproductive anatomy and sex chromosomes;
  • compelled schools to segregate “group bathroom[s] and locker room[s]” according to that definition of “biological sex”;
  • prohibited schools from allowing trans kids to use correctly gendered restrooms or locker rooms, and created a civil cause of action allowing aggrieved cis students to sue schools which disobeyed;
  • compelled schools to segregate sports teams as either specifically for one “biological sex,” or co-ed;
  • prohibited schools from allowing transfem kids to play on girls’ teams at all, and from allowing transmasc kids to play on boys’ teams unless there was no girls’ team;
  • prohibited athletic associations, licensing organisations, etc., from taking any action against schools which segregated their teams in this way;
  • created wide-ranging causes of action with long statutes of limitations for students and schools alleging “any direct or indirect harm” as a result of any party bound by the Act not complying with it;
  • commenced immediately upon passage, citing an emergency.

State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh (Ind/D–LD6), who has a record of vocal trans allyship, vowed to filibuster the bill (Dvorak & Caracta, 2024). A cloture motion — i.e., a motion to terminate debate on the bill, and thus any ongoing filibuster — unexpectedly failed, receiving only 31 of the 33 votes it needed to pass. The shortfall was due to abstentions by 2 Republican senators who had previously supported the bill, with one explicitly citing a “change of heart” (Beck, 2024b).

As there were only 4 sitting days left in the Nebraska legislative session, there is no prospect that LB 575 will be reconsidered; instead, the bill will lapse (Beck, 2024a).

New Hampshire

The New Hampshire State House in Concord. Bizarre Yakutsk vibes.
Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash

SB 375 proves it was never about being fair

On 5 April, the New Hampshire State Senate voted 14–10 along party lines to approve SB 375. If adopted, the bill will:

  • require all public educational institutions, i.e., schools and institutions of higher education, to segregate sporting teams into “male,” “female,” or “co-ed,” the first two being based on sex assigned at birth;
  • provide that only people assigned female at birth may participate in events designated for “female” participation;
  • require all public educational institutions to provide separate locker rooms for “male” and “female” athletes;
  • create a broad cause of action allowing athletes to sue public educational institutions for “any direct or indirect harm” caused by those institutions’ noncompliance with the provisions of the bill.

State Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka (D–SD21, Portsmouth) moved an amendment which would have created eligibility requirements which would allow trans girls who satisfied them to play sports on girls’ teams. However, that amendment failed along party lines (Margolis, 2024).

Ohio

HB 467 ensures deadname trick only works once

On 27 March, HB 467 was introduced in the Ohio House of Representatives. The bill deals with Ohio Revised Code § 3513.06, which as it stands provides that anyone who wants to become a candidate for public office in Ohio has to include all of their name changes in the last 5 years, except changes by reason of marriage, on their declaration of candidacy and petition, which are public.

The reason this is a problem for trans people, and the reason it applies unequally to them, is obvious. However, that’s actually not why the issue has come up. The issue has come up because candidate guidance from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office doesn’t mention § 3513.06 anywhere, nor is there any space on the existing paperwork to comply with it. For all practical intents and purposes, nobody knew it existed. As a result, Republican-controlled county electoral authorities were able to pull the statute out of nowhere to attempt, sometimes successfully, to disqualify multiple trans candidates contesting Democratic primaries. State House Democrats are therefore introducing HB 467 to close that loophole.

House Republicans have filed another bill, not yet numbered at press time, sponsored by State Reps. Rodney Creech (R–HD40, West Alexandria) and Angie King (R–HD84, Celina). Current law provides that candidates in primary elections can only be protested by members of their own party. The Creech–King bill would change the law so that anyone can protest a candidate in any party. Coincidentally, at the state legislative elections this November, Creech and King will face Democratic candidates Bobbie Arnold and Arienne Childrey respectively, both of whom are trans but who their local Republicans could not find ways to disqualify (Trau, 2024).

Wisconsin

The Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison. Photo by Alek Olson on Unsplash.

AB 377: Evers vetoes sports ban, tries shame on fascists

On 2 April, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) vetoed Assembly Bill (AB) 377. If adopted, AB 377 would have:

  • required all Wisconsin schools to designate teams and/or sports as either “male,” “female,” or “co-ed,” the first two being based on sex assigned at birth;
  • required schools who intended to change the gender designation of a team and/or sport to provide written notification to all pupils eligible under the previous and current designations, and to their parents and guardians;
  • created a wide-ranging cause of action for aggrieved cis girl students who were “deprived of the opportunity to participate in an athletic sport or on an athletic team”, or “who suffer[ed] any direct or indirect harm as the result” of schools not complying with the law’s provisions, to seek “injunctive relief, damages, and any other relief available under law”;
  • forbidden schools from taking any “adverse action” against cis students who dobbed in their stealth trans classmates to the school, or who dobbed in their schools to the state;
  • created a cause of action for schools who “suffer[ed] any direct or indirect harm … as the result” of their own compliance with the other provisions of the bill.

In his veto message, Governor Evers cited:

  • the bill’s incompatibility with existing Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association policy;
  • the bill’s potential incompatibility with Title IX, whose provisions against discrimination in education on the basis of sex also protect trans people per Bostock v Clayton County;
  • the bill’s “fail[ure] to comport with our Wisconsin values,” including “kindness, respect, empathy, and compassion,” and his own corresponding “object[ion] to codifying discrimination into state statute and the Wisconsin State Legislature’s ongoing efforts to perpetuate hateful and discriminatory rhetoric targeting LGBTQ Wisconsinites, including our transgender and gender nonconforming kids”.

Footnotes

  1. According to the text of Los Angeles City Council File 23-0468, the motion which renamed Cooper Do-nuts/Nancy Valverde Square. ↩︎
  2. i.e., the fourth ministry to be overseen by Government Chairman Robert Fico. The Slovak term translates literally to “fourth cabinet of Robert Fico”. However, this is a linguistically ambiguous construction in English; while in the United States and many European countries “cabinet” means the body of all ministers in the government, in Westminster and Westminster-variant states like the UK and Australia respectively, it means a particular body of senior ministers. As I live in Australia and as the effect is disambiguating in any case, I therefore use the Australionormative construction “Fourth Fico Ministry”. ↩︎
  3. In Australian, UK, and I believe US electoral social-democratic/left-liberal formations, the most socially right-wing members also tend to be the most economically right-wing and least social-democratic. Hlas seems more to be, or at least to pretend to be, in the “luv unions, ‘ate faggots, simple as” area, which most Anglophone parties I know don’t bother with. ↩︎
  4. Specifically, Brown is an adherent of the misleadingly-named Messianic Judaism, a denomination of Protestant Christianity. ↩︎
  5. I have some reason to think this is a dogwhistle but I’m fucked if I know for what. ↩︎

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Isabelle Moreton

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