Our editor-in-chief, Isabelle, sent this letter today to her local Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. We are republishing it for visibility.
Dear [redacted],
I hope you are well. I had the pleasure earlier today of speaking to one of your office staff, [redacted], who was very polite and helpful.
You may be aware that the Full Court of the Federal Court recently decided a case with the memorable name of Giggle v Tickle [2026] FCAFC 64. The judges in that case unanimously reaffirmed that the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) protects transgender women from being discriminated against for being trans.
As reported by the Star Observer, on 19 May, Chris Minns, Premier of New South Wales, responded to that case by suggesting that the law needs to reflect “biological differences between people who are born male and people who were born female”. Mr Minns disagreed with Angus Taylor rewriting the Act but suggested in-principle support for doing so regardless. He further stated his support for his existing positions of excluding transgender people from playing sport with members of the same gender, and for placing trans women in men’s prisons.
Mr Minns’ positions are ethically abhorrent and, to the extent that they rely on claims about reality, they have no basis in fact. I am also aware that they are enabled partly by an increasing tendency for centrist and liberal parties worldwide to abandon trans people or actively discriminate against them, justifying doing so on the basis either of pragmatism or of the popular will (invariably not one whose existence is backed by any kind of evidence). Giggle seems to have been a particular flashpoint in that regard.
I am a left-wing swing voter. Sometimes I vote 1 Labor. Sometimes I vote 1 Greens, 2 Labor. I moved here after the most recent state election, but people I’ve spoken to seem to like you as a state MP. For my part, I started caring about trans rights fairly late in the Palaszczuk Government, but was satisfied with what I saw, particularly the 2020 conversion therapy ban and the 2023 reforms making it easier for trans people to change their legal gender. I have no particular antipathy toward you and very little toward the Party. But I also know that the Minns Government enacted similar birth certificate reforms less than a year ago, and here we are anyway.
If I detect even a hint that Queensland Labor is moving in the same direction as Chris Minns, then I will have no choice but to make Labor my enemy. I haven’t canvassed at an election for several years, but, if Labor sells out trans people, it will have successfully mobilised me. In the event that Labor adopts a position of political transphobia — tactical or otherwise — I will canvass for the Greens, or, if I’m not satisfied with the Greens option, I will canvass for any other party which chooses to preserve trans people’s civil rights. I will also preference Labor below the LNP, and I will encourage everyone else I know to do so as well. I will do so because at that point the only value I will be able to extract from the electoral process is making it more difficult for a party to win by throwing minorities under the bus.
I’m not sending this to make you read a long letter, or out of hatred for you as a human being. I’m sending this because I see every reason to like you, and I would prefer to continue doing so. I hope you take that into consideration, and I hope any action you might take on transgender rights will be ethically sound and well-informed.
Sincerely yours, Isabelle Moreton [further personal details redacted]
Technically Several Problems Press’ scope is specifically news relating to trans people. However, we feel this fits into a wider mission of documenting patriarchy and its consequences, and we’ve recently become aware of an unfolding series of events taking place in Japan. We have termed it “the Shogakukan affair” and we believe it qualifies. Here is what we’ve been able to find out about it so far.
Headnotes
Content warning
This article extensively discusses child sexual abuse. During the body of the article, there is a factual description of a series of abusive acts downthread. Those acts have already been published in Japanese news sources; I (the author, Isabelle Moreton) debated whether to repeat them when I wrote the original thread, but ultimately decided that I would be failing to convey the seriousness of the situation if I didn’t.
Sourcing
I’m using mostly English-language sources. However, a lot of English-language coverage coming out of Japan on this issue was relatively sparing on details I felt I needed. My understanding is that this is partly because the media is doing what the media does where cases of sexual abuse are concerned. It is also partly because, as I understand it, Japanese defamation law has all the bad parts of British defamation law, but worse (and any Japanese organisation well-resourced enough to regularly be translating its content into English likely has enough resources to have lawyers constantly reminding them of that).
As a result, some of this article is based on my understanding of Japanese-language sources that have been machine-translated into English. I take responsibility for any factual errors I may have made as a result.
Some Japanese words which are used in this piece primarily in transliterated form (e.g., “Shogakukan”) or translated form (e.g., “Weekly Shonen Jump“) are, within their first few appearances, preceded at least once by the relevant written Japanese in order to facilitate searching for them in Japanese-language sources.
Background
The primary corporate participant in the affair is 株式会社小学館 Shogakukan, Inc.
小学館 Shogakukan is part of the 一ツ橋グループ Hitotsubashi Group, a vertically-integrated publishing and media business alliance based in Chiyoda, Tokyo. There are a couple of Hitotsubashi Group companies you may have heard of, either by name or because of what they do:
Shogakukan itself, which is primarily noted for publishing magazines across several genres, including manga, educational, fashion, and news.
株式会社集英社 Shueisha, Inc., which is the biggest publishing company in Japan and is also a publisher of magazines. In particular, 集英社 Shueisha publishes the ジャンプ Jump family of magazines, of which 週刊少年ジャンプ Weekly Shonen Jump is the best-known. Whether or not you’ve heard of Jump you’ve almost certainly heard of its output: series to have debuted in Jump magazines include Bleach, Chainsaw Man, Death Note, Dragon Ball, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Jujutsu Kaisen, Naruto (and Boruto), One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin, and Yu-Gi-Oh!.
株式会社小学館集英社プロダクション Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd. (“ShoPro”), a subsidiary of Shueisha. You may or may not have heard of ShoPro or its work, but you’ve almost certainly heard of, or heard of the work of, its North American subsidiary, Viz Media, LLC. Viz is, at present, a (or the) licensee for anime and manga in various franchises including Black Lagoon, Death Note, D.Gray-man, Fist of the North Star, My Hero Academia, Neon Genesis Evangelion, One-Punch Man, Ouran High School Host Club, Pokémon, RWBY, Splatoon, Star Wars: The Mandalorian, and Transformers.
(I include all this information because an appreciation of the sheer scale and reach of the companies involved might do more to convey why we felt this story should be getting more attention in English.)
Another property that isn’t a company is also relevant here: Shogakukan operates マンガワン Manga One, an official web distribution platform, through which a number of its series are distributed. I mention this because Manga One played a significant role in the events this article covers.
What happened?
There are now known to have been at least two (2) cases in which the following series of events happened:
An author engaged by Shogakukan was convicted of one or more sexual offences against one or more children.
Shogakukan subsequently rehired those authors, furnishing them with new pen names and helping them to build new careers.
While the amount of culpability attributed to Shogakukan — by itself, and by other parties in each case — has varied, those two facts remain the same.
The two authors with whom this is so far known to have happened were Kazuaki Kurita and Tatsuya Matsuki. The current wave of media coverage began when Kurita’s ongoing relationship with Shogakukan became public in late February; as an unplanned aftereffect, Matsuki’s ongoing relationship with Shogakukan then also became public.
栗田和明 Kazuaki Kurita
Shogakukan originally engaged Kazuaki Kurita’s services more than a decade ago. 堕天作戦 Daten Sakusen (“Operation Fallen Angel“), a manga written by Kurita under the pen name 山本章一 Shouichi Yamamoto,1 was serialised through Manga One starting in February 2015.2
At around that time, Kurita was also a visual art instructor at Hokkaido High School of Arts in Sapporo, Hokkaido Prefecture. In April 2016, a female student, referred to in court documents with the Latin-script letter A,3 enrolled at that school. Kurita began grooming her shortly thereafter, and eventually proceeded to physical sexual abuse.4 Specifically, Kurita:
raped A, including outdoors and in public contexts;
recorded at least part of his abuse of her, creating child sexual exploitation material (CSEM).6
In March 2019, A graduated from the school. Kurita continued to coerce her into sending indecent images to him. This continued until approximately July 2019.7
In February 2020, Kurita was arrested and criminal charges were laid against him. Eno (op cit) notes that based on what Kurita is known or alleged to have done, he could have been charged with the equivalent of rape, extortion, assault, grievous bodily harm, and false imprisonment, and would ultimately have faced a sentence of up to thirty (30) years in prison.
Ultimately, the Public Prosecutors Office opted to proceed only with charges of producing and possessing CSEM. Kurita was convicted, but the sentence consisted solely of a financial penalty of ¥300,000 (at the time of publication approximately US$1,900 or AU$2,700).8
Shogakukan suspended publication of Daten Sakusen after Kurita’s criminal conviction,9 but did not immediately take further action. It appears, in fact, that they intended to immediately resume publication of Daten Sakusen. A, understandably, strenuously objected.10
Shortly thereafter, negotiations commenced between A and Kurita with a view toward a possible out-of-court settlement. I’m not clear on how much agency A had in these negotiations — in suits like this, victims are often facing a choice of “take the money or be destroyed”. All that is clear is that something occurred which could be, or at any rate was, described as a negotiation.
The negotiation took place in a group chat on Line.11 In April 2021 or so, a Manga One editor, identified in multiple sources12 as 成田卓哉 Takuya Narita, joined the group. Narita proposed a settlement agreement between A and Kurita which included the following terms:13
Kurita would pay ¥1.5 million (US$9,500, AU $13,500) to A;
A would withdraw her objection to the resumption of Daten Sakusen;
A would accept a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) preventing her from discussing Kurita’s abuse of her in public.
A did not accept the terms proposed by Narita,14 and proceeded to file suit against Kurita in Sapporo District Court in July 2022.15
In September or October 2022, Shogakukan placed Daten Sakusen on indefinite hiatus, citing unspecified “personal troubles” — which it vaguely implied were health-related — on the part of the author.16
Also in 2022, seemingly shortly thereafter, Shogakukan (through Manga One) engaged Kurita to write a new series, 常人仮面 Jojin Kamen (“Ordinary-Person Mask“), under a different pen name, 一路 一 Hajime Ichiro.17
The editor responsible for “Ichiro” was Takuya Narita.18 Narita seems to have exerted a great deal of influence over Narita’s re-engagement, and Shogakukan’s communications with press after Kurita’s case became public suggested that the corporation, as an entity, had no awareness that “Ichiro” was Kurita. However, Eno (op cit) notes that 和田裕樹 Hiroki Wada, who was then editor-in-chief of Manga One, would have had the personal information of all staff, and thus reasonably ought to have been aware.
A’s suit against Kurita continued, in the background, as it were. Kurita appears to have been largely remorseless during the proceedings, characterising his relationship with A as “consensual,” and suggesting that there was no truth to the diagnosis of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that A developed as a consequence.
On 20 February 2026, Sapporo District Court found in A’s favour,19 ordering Kurita to pay her ¥11 million (~US$70,000; AU$100,000).20
The fact that “Yamamoto” and “Ichiro” were both Kurita became public at some point in the following week. On 27 February, Manga One released a statement confirming the key facts concerning the relationship between Jojin Kamen, Ichiro, and Kurita. There has been some suggestion that they were trying to get ahead of the story; however, I’m not clear on the particulars.
By 28 February, Shogakukan had removed Jojin Kamen from Manga ONE and stopped shipments of hardcopy books.21
The same day, the 日本漫画家協会 Japan Cartoonists Association issued an official statement calling for a transparent investigation of the events surrounding Kurita.22 Shogakukan, for their part, issued a press release stating they would “establish an investigative committee to clarify the facts”.23
This marks an opportune point at which to segue to the other author who was exposed.
マツキタツヤ Tatsuya Matsuki
From January 2018 to August 2020, Shueisha published アクタージュ act-age, written by Matsuki and illustrated by Shiro Usazaki, in Weekly Shonen Jump.
On the night of 18 June 2020, in Nakano, Tokyo, Matsuki approached and inappropriately touched two (2) female middle-school students in separate incidents about an hour apart.24 CCTV footage captured both offences; on 8 August, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department placed Matsuki under arrest. Shueisha cancelled act-age two days later.25
Matsuki was indicted on 16 September,26 and convicted and sentenced in Tokyo District Court on 23 December. The Court sentenced Matsuki to 18 months’ imprisonment, fully suspended, conditional on 3 years of probation: that is, Matsuki would no longer be required to serve the 18-month prison sentence if he complied with good behaviour restrictions for 3 years. 27 Matsuki does not appear to have gone to prison; presumably, he completed his probation period around December 2023.
On 29 August 2024, another Manga One editor, not identified, contacted Matsuki with the apparent intention of soliciting work.28 On 30 August, he advised them he’d been working on a draft, 勇者一行の心理カウンセラーYusha Ikko no Shinri Counselor (“The Heroes’ Psychological Counselor“).
On 6 September, the Manga One Editorial Department commissioned Matsuki to expand Yusha Ikko no Shinri Counselor into a full manga, 星霜の心理士 Seiso no Shinrishi (“Psychologist of the Stars“).29 They allowed him to do so under a pseudonym, which outlets have reported as Itsuki30 or Miki31 Yatsunami. I haven’t been able to determine which is correct (one reason why is that, immediately after Matsuki was unmasked, most manga trackers changed their entries for Seiso no Shinrishi to reflect who the author actually was).
Unlike with Kurita — who Shogakukan have asserted was employed more or less entirely through Narita, who they say conspired to pull the wool over their eyes — there is no dispute that both the editorial team and Seiso no Shinrishi‘s artist, 薫雪平 Kaoru Yukihira, knew who “Yatsunami” actually was.32
The editorial team, for their part, have asserted that they and Matsuki agreed he would operate under a pseudonym to avoid triggering his victims’ trauma, and that they believed it was safe for him to do so, since his probation period had been completed, and he had undergone extensive psychotherapy and been “rehabilitated” as a result.33
Shogakukan have also said they did not disclose who Matsuki was because disclosing someone’s personal information without their consent is a serious human rights violation, even if that personal information is a criminal record.34 As it happens, Matsuki apparently consented to have his personal information released as part of the investigation that Kurita had triggered,35 so the question became moot.
Fallout
Today is 6 March. Since the news broke, a number of authors have either temporarily suspended or outright terminated their relationships with Shogakukan and Manga One, including:
Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata (Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead)36
Tsukasa Abe and Kanehito Yamada (Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End)37
Over the past decade or so, the anime and manga industries have been repeatedly rocked by acrimony among the Japanese and global public relating to their lenient treatment of authors, artists, and other labourers who have been convicted of or otherwise proved to have committed acts of sexual abuse. Whether this will spark any meaningful reform, at Shogakukan or in the wider industry, remains to be seen.
Line is a freeware instant messaging and networking app. It does not have a separate name in written Japanese; in Japanese contexts, its name is rendered using the Latin-script characters LINE. ↩︎
Exactly two years ago, at this time on this day in 2024, Lilly Bushnell, an anarchist, self-immolated outside the Embassy of Israel to the United States in Washington, D.C., in protest of the Zionist colonisation and genocide in Palestine. She broadcast the act online. Before setting herself alight, she delivered the following statement:
I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers — it’s not extreme at all.
This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
It took sixty-one seconds for first responders to render aid. Bushnell was immediately transported to a local hospital, where she died of her injuries at 20:06 Eastern Standard Time. She was 24.
Media memory-holed the story within a month. I promised to always remember. This is one way I choose to do so.
If you are seeing this post, Palestine is not yet free.
Exactly one year ago, at this time on this day in 2024, Lilly Bushnell, an anarchist, self-immolated outside the Embassy of Israel to the United States in Washington, D.C., in protest of the Zionist colonisation and genocide in Palestine. She broadcast the act online. Before setting herself alight, she delivered the following statement:
I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers — it’s not extreme at all.
This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
It took sixty-one seconds for first responders to render aid. Bushnell was immediately transported to a local hospital, where she died of her injuries at 20:06 Eastern Standard Time. She was 24.
Media memory-holed the story within a month. I promised to always remember. This is one way I choose to do so.
If you are seeing this post, Palestine is not yet free.
On 5 November, the United States held its 2024 elections. The election for the office of US Representative for the state of Delaware’s at-large Congressional district was won by Democratic candidate Sarah McBride, who is a trans woman (McBride, 2012).
On 16 November, Nancy Mace, the Republican US Representative from South Carolina’s 1st Congressional district, introduced House Resolution 1579. If adopted, HR Res 1579 would:
bar trans people from using restrooms that do not correspond to their assigned sex in either the United States Capitol, where Congress meets, or the adjacent House Office Buildings;
require the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives to enforce the ban.
Mace has confirmed that HR Res 1579 is aimed specifically at McBride (Alfaro & Sotomayor, 2024). It ought to be noted that McBride is as yet only a Representative-elect; for the provisions contained in the resolution to affect McBride, the text will need to be reintroduced and passed after the new, 119th Congress, to which McBride has been elected, is sworn in (Alfaro & Sotomayor, op cit) on 3 January 2025. As the Republican Party won control of the Presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives at the 2024 elections, there will be no impediment to this occurring; it will simply not be this resolution itself which effects it.
HR Res 1579 represents a significant shift right from Mace’s previous position, which was still anti-trans but to a less absurd degree. In Mace’s state, South Carolina, redistricting is carried out on an openly partisan basis by the state legislature. The Guardian notes (Levine, 2024) that between the 2022 midterms and the 2024 general elections, a redistricting took effect which redrew Mace’s district to remove a large number of Black voters and make it a significantly safer Republican seat. This was effected by the Supreme Court of the United States’ ruling in Alexander v South Carolina NAACP, issued 23 May of this year.
So far, those who have made comments in support of HR Res 1579 include:
the American Principles Project, a fascist pressure group (Devlin, 2024);
US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican, GA–14) (Garcia, 2024);
US Rep Hakeem Jeffries (Democratic, NY–08), House Democratic Leader (Quinn, op cit);
US Rep Dean Phillips (Democratic, MN–03) (Pandolfo, 2024).
Those who have refused to comment on HR Res 1579 when asked include:
US Rep Mike Johnson (Republican, LA–04), Speaker of the House (Quinn, 2024). However, Rep Greene (above) indicated Speaker Johnson had previously committed to her and the House Republican Conference that McBride would not be allowed to use the women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill (Beavers, 2024), suggesting Johnson supports the bill and is simply dissembling about it.
Footnotes
This should, unfortunately, not be construed to mean they will actually vote against it (including McBride herself). We are, after all, talking about the Democratic Party. ↩︎
The Madras High Court building in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, which in late April ruled in two trans rights cases, Sivakumar v State of Tamil Nadu and Sivakumar v Union of India. Photo by Yoga Balaji on Wikimedia Commons.
Special thanks to Orinam (ஓரினம்), an LGBTQIA+ advocacy group based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, for providing additional detailed information relating to Sivakumar v State of Tamil Nadu and Sivakumar v Union of India (story #7 in this issue). Orinam is a volunteer collective of LGBTQIA+ people and allies who provide a support, cultural and activist space for the queer and trans community.
Vale Andrea Dos Passos (c. 1987–2024)
A lambent red sunset at Miami Beach, near the site of Andrea Dos Passos’ murder. Photo by Andre Tan on Unsplash.
On 23 April, Andrea Doria Dos Passos,1 a 37-year-old trans woman (Neammannee, 2024), was found dead outside the Miami City Ballet building at 2200 Liberty Avenue, Miami, Florida, United States. CCTV footage showed that Dos Passos, who was unhoused and, according to her family, mentally ill, had laid down there to sleep around 12 AM. She remained asleep until she was murdered by a passing attacker later in the morning. The primary cause of death appears to have been blunt force trauma to the skull inflicted with a piece of metal piping; her body also had puncture wounds at the time of recovery.
Dos Passos’ assailant was located, arrested and charged with second-degree murder on the same day as the killing. At present, his motive for killing Dosspassos is unclear (Batchelor & Morejon, 2024).
International
Academic
Biggs (2024) continues to grind axe about the Census
On 19 April 2024, Sociology, the journal of the British Sociological Association, published a research article, “Gender identity in the 2021 Census of England and Wales: How a flawed question created spurious data,” by Michael Biggs (2024). Naturally, neither Sociology nor any mass media coverage of the article known to me (Ward, 2024; etc.) mention that Biggs is an advisor to the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (2024).
The 2021 Census of England and Wales included a question on transness: “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”. Biggs’ article attempts to advance a critique of this question sufficient to invalidate its findings. However, the article is, as you would probably expect at this point, absolutely riddled with errors, inaccuracies, and plainly intentional misrepresentations and lies to the point that I think I will probably need to do a follow-up Special on it. Stay tuned.
Dangaran (2024): For trans plaintiffs, ADA OK
The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University, the institution where the Harvard Law Review is based. Photo by Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash.
On 21 April 2024, the Harvard Law Review published an essay, “Bending gender: Disability justice, abolitionist queer theory, and ADA claims for gender dysphoria,” by D Dangaran (2024).
The article is a response to the question of whether trans people who have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria should bring claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is a major avenue for trans people to seek legal relief from materially harmful anti-trans discrimination. The reason for this is that “gender dysphoria” is acknowledged as a medical condition by relevant diagnostic authorities, and is defined in such a way as to entail “clinically significant … impairment”; per Williams v Kincaid (2022), it can be considered a disability under the ADA. Therefore, anti-trans harm can be addressed by constructing it as ableism and/or denial of reasonable accommodations. This is particularly relevant for trans plaintiffs who are incarcerated and seeking to compel prison systems to provide them with the care to which they are entitled.
Dangaran examines an intervention by another prison litigator suggesting that lawyers should not bring anti-trans discrimination claims under the ADA. That litigator argues that: pursuing trans litigation through a disability framework places trans rights at the mercy of the cis medical authorities who define the GD diagnosis and issue diagnoses; that it puts trans people in the position of needing to construct themselves as people with an illness; that it creates systems which result in denial of care; and that the courts do not have the capacity to properly deal with the problem of institutional discrimination against trans people. Dangaran does a pretty capable job of steelmanning the argument, in my opinion, but ultimately takes the view that the ADA is preferable to the alternative.
As a disabled trans woman, I don’t know which side I’m on but it’s certainly an interesting read.
United Nations
Alsalem uses her platform to boost Cass Review
The Palais des Nations in Geneva, Swiss Confederation, home of the UN Human Rights Council and therefore the theoretical base of operations of Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem. Photo by Mathias Reding on Unsplash.
On 25 April, the United Nations (UN) News Centre published a release, “Gender therapy review reveals devastating impacts on teens” (2024), which appears to have originated from the office of Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. The release endeavours at length to legitimise several falsehoods and fascist canards circulated in the Final Report of the Cass Review, and in the popular media in the wake of its publication. These include:
treating the statistically predictable increase in trans kids presenting to NHS England’s Gender Identity Development Service, England’s paediatric gender service, as a crisis in need of intervention;
presenting the claim by “transgender rights groups” that “there are long waiting lists for treatment,” which is objectively true, as questionable;
lying that “health authorities” are “rapidly initiating permanent gender transition pathways”;
presenting the unevidenced claim that “puberty blockers … could cause temporary or permanent disruption to brain maturation” as true;
lying that the majority of people who detransition are transmasculine when in fact the majority, by a factor of greater than 2 to 1, are transfeminine (Turban et al., 2021).
Alsalem’s mandate, which she took up in August 2021, does not require her to be impartial, a fact on which she has extensively capitalised. Her tenure as special rapporteur has been characterised primarily by virulent anti-trans activism under colour of the execution of her office (see, e.g., “UN chief backs,” 2022; Barnes, 2024), to the point of provoking an outcry from several international organisations not specifically or traditionally concerned with the status of trans women (Morrison, 2022; Association for Women’s Rights in Development, 2023; Theilen, 2023; etc.).
For that matter, Alsalem herself is not supposed to be concerned with the status of trans people; trans affairs properly fall within the remit of the UN Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, currently Victor Madrigal-Borloz, whose views are significantly at odds with Alsalem’s (“UN chief backs,” 2022).
Aotearoa New Zealand
Paid-for poll gives result paid for
A long view of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, where Curia Market Research is based. Photo by Sulthan Auliya on Unsplash.
The poll surveyed 1,000 Kiwi adults, 750 by landline or mobile phone, 250 by online panel. It asked the following questions, reproduced here verbatim:
Do you believe that primary age children should be taught that they can choose their “gender” and that it can be changed through hormone treatment and surgery if they want it to be?
Would you support or oppose a law that prohibits primary schools from teaching any sexual issues, such as gender identity or sexual orientation, in the classroom as part of the curriculum in primary schools — that’s ages 5 up to 10 or 11 unless parents specifically opt their children into these classes.
The UK health service (the NHS) has stopped the use of puberty blockers, which begin the gender transition, for children under 16 as it deemed they are too young to consent. Do you support or oppose a similar ban in New Zealand on the use of puberty blockers for young people 16 or younger?
Some people have proposed banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and physical sex-change surgeries for children under the age of 18 who identify as transgender. Would you support or oppose this kind of ban?
If a young person says they want to change their gender, should the treatment be primarily based on providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, or should the treatment primarily focus on dealing with the gender dysphoria and any other underlying mental health issues.
Do you think the taxpayers should fund surgery or hormone treatments for adults who wish to change their gender?
Every question returned strong majorities in the sample and among all subgroups for the anti-trans option. However, I’m not really putting much stock in it because it’s a comically obvious push poll — with that many leading questions and that much priming, the point of it is plainly less to provide accurate data about what Kiwis believe, and more to give Family First NZ a pretext to claim that their views are normal.
Australia
Western Australia
WA Liberals jump on the hate train
The City of Perth, where the Parliament of Western Australia is located. Photo by Fadzai Saungweme on Unsplash.
On 22 April, Libby Mettam MLA (LPA–Vasse), Leader of the Liberal Party Western Australia,2 announced that if elected, a Liberal Government of Western Australia would “ban the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments and surgical intervention for children under the age of 16 for the purpose of gender transition” (Mettam, 2024). The Party press release carrying the announcement cited the Final Report of the Cass Review (2024) as well as Ruuska et al. (2024), both of which have been the subject of previous SP Weekly coverage.
The WA Liberals’ new policy has, of course, already been endorsed by Binary Australia, Family First, Family Voice Australia, the Institute of Public Affairs, and Women’s Forum Australia (Watson, 2024).
On 23 April, The Spectator Australia published an article by Maryka Groenewald of the Australian Christians, another WA political party, reflecting, unsurprisingly, a similar position to the Liberal Party (Groenewald, 2024).
India
Federal
Madras HC tells governments to stop breaking the law
During April, the Madras High Court ruled on, among others, two actions relevant to SP Weekly, Sivakumar v State of Tamil Nadu and Sivakumar v Union of India, referred to here as State of Tamil Nadu and Union of India respectively. Both were writ petitions, a type of judicial complaint which seeks a prerogative writ (a court order against the government). Both were brought by the same petitioner, Sivakumar TD, an activist affiliated with Nirangal, a Chennai-based advocacy group with a focus on queer and trans rights (Nirangal, 2015).
For context, the prevailing legal gender recognition regime in India operates according to, among other things, the Supreme Court of India’s 2014 decision in National Legal Services Authority v Union of India (hereafter referred to as NALSA). The Supreme Court’s ruling in NALSA provides that it is illegal for Indian governments, federal or state, to impose a basis for legal gender recognition other than self-determination.
On 4 April, the Court ruled in State of Tamil Nadu. That case related to the publication of name and gender changes in the official gazette of the Tamil Nadu state government. State officials had been requiring trans people who wanted their name and gender changes gazetted to produce either proof of having undergone sex reassignment surgery (SRS), or a state Social Welfare Department third-gender identity card.
Sivakumar contended that this requirement was unlawful given the NALSA ruling and the federal Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules, 2020. They therefore sought a writ of mandamus compelling the State of Tamil Nadu to gazette name and gender changes without requiring the documents in question. The Court made the requested order.
On 29 April, the Court ruled in Union of India. That case related to changes of gender marker in passports. Officials of the Indian federal justice and foreign ministries had not been requiring trans people to produce proof of SRS if they wanted to change their passport gender marker to T (transgender, i.e., third gender), but had been requiring it if they wanted to change it to either male or female, based on certain provisions of the Passport Rules, 1980.
Sivakumar contended that this requirement was unlawful given the NALSA ruling. They therefore asked the Court to enjoin the operation of the affected provisions of the Rules, declare them unconstitutional, and direct the respondents to process gender changes without them. Ultimately, the respondents opted to update the Rules to be NALSA-compliant, and the Court dismissed the case for mootness.
Iraq
Federal
Queer relationships, gender transition punishable by law
A city street in Baghdad, the city where the Iraqi Council of Representatives sits. Photo by gheath bader on Unsplash.
On 27 April, the Council of Representatives of Iraq, the country’s de facto unicameral legislature,3 passed the Act amending Act No. 8 (Anti-Prostitution) of 1988. The Bill for the Act was moved in August 2023 by Raed Maliki4 (Ind–Maysan 1).
At date, no Arabic source text is available through the Council’s website and I am therefore unable to independently analyse the provisions. According to various Western media, the Act, on the text passed, provides that:
same-sex relationships are punishable by imprisonment for 10 to 15 years (Armstrong, 2024;
“promoting homosexuality” is punishable by imprisonment for up to 7 years (Mando & Kourdi, 2024) — this is possibly also true of promoting “sexual deviancy” (Zeyad & Abdul-Zahra, 2024);
“biological sex changes based on personal desires and inclination” are punishable by imprisonment for 1 to 3 years, and the relevant provisions include both gender-affirming care providers and trans people (Armstrong, op. cit.; Mando & Kourdi, op. cit.);
“intentionally” acting like a woman while being (regarded by the law as) a man is punishable by imprisonment, although none of my sources indicate for what term (Armstrong, op. cit.).
According to ADF International (2024), in the week of 14–20 April inclusive, the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF; “Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary5“) declared Gabriel Quadri de la Torre, the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN)-affiliated deputy for Mexico City’s 23rd district, eligible to seek re-election.
Quadri’s eligibility had been challenged by the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (MORENA; “National Regeneration Movement”), the populist progressive party which leads the government bloc in the Congress of the Union. The basis for the challenge was a 2022 finding by the TEPJF’s Specialised Chamber that a number of transphobic actions and written statements on Quadri’s part targeting others including Lia Thomas and transfem fellow deputy Salma Luévano Luna amounted to violencia política contra las mujeres en razòn de género (“gender-based political violence against women”) (Sala Regional Especializada, 2022).
The finding of electoral eligibility does not vacate Quadri’s original conviction of political violence. The Christian Post reports Quadri is working with ADF International to have that conviction examined by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, one of the human rights organs of the Organisation of American States (OAS) (Foley, 2024).
Russia
Tver Oblast
Oblast Administration bans trans people from poetry prize (unfair advantage?)
Tver, Tver Oblast, Russian Federation, in winter. Photo by Tarun Goswami on Unsplash.
On 16 April, Reuters reported that the Tver Oblast Administration has banned trans people from entering the 2024 Andrei Dementyev All-Russian Poetry Prize (Papachristou, 2024). This is not a requirement which the Prize has previously imposed (Russell, 2024).
В целях сохранения традиционных для российского общества и разделяемых всеми традиционными религиозными конфессиями представлений о браке, семье, материнстве, отцовстве, детстве к участию в Конкурсе не допускаются граждане, сменившие пол
V tselyakh sokraheneniya traditsionnykh dlya rossiyskogo obshchestva i razdelyayemykh vesemi raditsionnymi religioznymi konfessiyami predstavleniy o brake, sem’ye, materinstve, ottsovstve, detstve k uchastiyu v Konkurse ne dopuskayutsya grazhdane, smenivshiye pol.
In order to preserve the ideas about marriage, family, motherhood, paternity, and childhood which are traditional to Russian society and shared by all traditional religious confessions, citizens who have changed their gender are not allowed to participate in the Competition.
Nef Cellarius, Germany-based programme coordinator for Vykhod (“Coming Out”), a Russian LGBTQ+ advocacy group, told Reuters (Papachristou, 2024) that the Oblast Administration’s action was likely a show of loyalty to the administration of President Vladimir Putin (ONF). The federal government, controlled by United Russia under Putin’s leadership, has in recent years been pursuing an increasingly radicalised anti-queer and anti-trans line, finally escalating to the point of banning gender-affirming care in Russia altogether in 2023 (Papachristou, 2023).
Slovakia
Hlas trans healthcare debacle drags on
Bratislava, capital of the Slovak Republic, seat of the National Council and the Slovak Executive. Photo by Martin Katler on Unsplash.
On 22 April, the Health Ministry of the Slovak Republic told the Human Rights Committee of the National Council of the Slovak Republic that it intended to hold a roundtable discussion with representatives of the Interior and Justice Ministries, as well as “representatives of experts and” Slovak trans people (TASR, 2024).
The decision comes in the wake of the Health Ministry’s abrupt withdrawal last month of the Standard procedure for the diagnosis and comprehensive management of adults with transsexualism, the state-issued standard of care for trans healthcare. Slovak trans advocates identified that decision as likely a political decision made by or on behalf of the poltiical party Hlas–SD, which is a member of the government coalition in the National Council, is represented in the current Fico IV coalition executive, and controls the Health Ministry. Commentators linked Hlas’ motive for the action with the at-that-time pending Slovak presidential election, which was contested and ultimately won by Hlas candidate Peter Pellegrini.
United Kingdom
England and Wales
“Intricately woven by the Lord”: same shit, different diocese
A 2006 photo of Westminster Cathedral, as of 2024 the seat of Vincent Nichols, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. Photo by Velela on Wikimedia Commons.
On 24 April, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) published a statement, Intricately woven by the Lord: A pastoral reflection on gender by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, 2024). The statement places itself in the context of Amoris laetitia and Dignitas infinita and is theologically basically of a piece with them. Elements of the statement which stood out to me include that:
it raises a grievance about “holders of traditional theories being cancelled or even losing their jobs” (p. 2);
it makes reference to “gender ideology” (pp. 4, 10), which has been relatively unusual for the documents issued under Francis’ pontificate that I’m familiar with, likely because it tends to highlight the Church’s role in fabricating that concept itself;
it seems to echo TERF projective rhetoric about “reducing people to genitals,” saying specifically “A person cannot be reduced to one element of his or her being, such as his or her body or sex/gender” (p. 6);
it explicitly says “We are to honour our body resisting medical interventions, intended to ‘reassign gender where these destroy the body’s fertility or sexual function … all and especially ‘the young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created’” (p. 7);
it seems to refer obliquely and positively to the current British political trans-eliminationist status quo, saying, “Whilst mindful of the legal constraints within which many of our institutions operate, we are aware that currently the law is generous to and supportive of Catholic life and mission in this particular area” (p. 9);
it further says that “we cannot encourage or give support to reconstructive or drug based medical intervention that harms the body” (although “This does not apply to medical interventions aiming at resolving genital ambiguity,” apparently), “[n]or can we legitimise or uphold a way of living that is not respectful of the truth and vocation of each man and each woman, called to live according to the divine plan” (pp. 9–10);
it further says that “Medical intervention for children should not be supported. It should also be recognised that social ‘transition’ (living in the opposite gender role) can have a formative impact on a child’s development and can set a child on a path towards later medical interventions. Care should be taken to avoid this especially with young children” (p. 10).
The Tablet of London reports that Vincent Cardinal Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, says the document “was a pastoral reflection, not a doctrinal statement” (Gledhill, 2024), but all that tells me is that the bishops are cowards.
Scotland
Bute House Agreement collapses, implications unclear
A 2007 photo of Bute House, the official residence of the First Minister of Scotland, where the Bute House Agreement would be concluded in 2021 between the SNP Government of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Greens. Photo by the Scottish Government on Flickr.
I understand the primary cause of the collapse is that the SNP has decided to abandon the Scottish Government target of a 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (“Scottish government scraps climate change targets,” 2024).
However, BBC coverage suggests (Bonar & Cook, 2024) at least some Greens are motivated by the decision of the Gender Service at Sandyford to voluntarily stop referring trans kids to access puberty blockers. That decision was made by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, a board of NHS Scotland, itself an agency of the Scottish Government, and thus a number of Scottish Greens consider the Yousaf Government to be responsible. Jen Bell, the co-convenor of the Rainbow Greens, said the Sandyford decision violated a Bute House Agreement promise to “put trans patients at the heart of decisions on their own healthcare” (ibid.).
The Scottish Greens’ statement announcing the collapse certainly seems to bear out a social policy cause — the statement does not make specific factual claims but is scathing in tone, accusing the SNP of “selling out future generations to appease the most reactionary forces in the country,” fomenting “chaos, culture wars, and division,” and characterising Yousaf as not having “the fortitude or the bravery” to be anything other than a puppet of “the most reactionary and backward-looking forces within [the SNP]” (Scottish Greens, 2024).
The Scottish Conservatives announced they would move no confidence. During the drafting of this article it seemed that Yousaf would have to negotiate with Ash Regan MSP (Alba–Edinburgh Eastern) to survive. Given that Regan quit the MSP as a protest specifically against liberalisation of trans rights law this seemed like an almost absurdly unlucky turn of affairs. However, ultimately, while Yousaf has resigned, the SNP Government itself survived the vote of no confidence 70 votes to 58 (Smout, 2024).
United States
Federal
Red states “will not comply” with trans human rights
The elephant symbol of the Republican Party of the United States. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.
Multiple states have reacted to the Biden administration’s new regulations around Title IX and the Affordable Care Act § 1557 by asserting that they will not comply with them, or words to that effect. States which have so far joined this effort include:
Brockman v Kaiser Foundation Hospitals: Judge gives go-ahead
On 22 April, the California state Superior Court for the County of San Joaquin issued an order in Brockman v Kaiser Foundation Hospitals allowing the case to proceed rather than being diverted to compulsory arbitration.
Plaintiff Chloe E. Brockman (she/her) is an ideologically motivated detransitioned activist known professionally as Chloe Cole. Lead defendant Kaiser Foundation Hospitals is the healthcare system which provided her with gender-affirming care.
I personally dislike Cole, think she’s dishonest and unethical, and think the political ends that she and her sponsors intend to advance by litigating this case are destructive. However, I also think corporations’ ability to force healthcare consumers into compulsory pre-trial arbitration is a disease. Consequently, I think this was a fair enough reason for Judge Robert Waters to issue this order and it’s hard for me to feel any particular way about this.
New rule bans surgery which wasn’t happening anyway
A building in Columbus, Ohio, the seat of the Ohio General Assembly. Photo by Joe Deptowicz on Unsplash.
On 15 April, the Ohio General Assembly “cleared the way” for an administrative rule to be issued providing that gender reassignment surgery (GRS) may not be provided to trans people under 18 in Ohio (BeMiller, 2024). Based on the information provided, the rule in question was likely two rules, Ohio Admin Code §§ 3701-59-06 & 3701-83-60.
However, as Ohio gender-affirming care providers say they don’t provide GRS to under-18s anyway (BeMiller, op. cit.), it’s unclear what effect either rule has beyond sound and fury.
Moe v Yost: AG appeals block on care ban, says court’s reach exceeded grasp
On 22 April, Dave Yost, the Republican state Attorney General of Ohio filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio, seeking to overturn an order of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas preventing Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans kids, HB 68 of 2024, from commencing in effect. Yost argues that the order, issued by Judge Michael Holbrook in the case of Moe v Yost, is illegal because it is overbroad in scope; he contends that it should only prevent enforcement of the parts of HB 68 specifically challenged by the plaintiffs in that case, and only against those plaintiffs (Henry, 2024).
Tennessee
Hammond v Nashville: Covenant School shooter’s manifesto inching closer to release
On 22 April, the Tennessee Chancery Court for Davidson County made orders in Hammond v Nashville. Per SP Weekly‘s previous coverage of the case, plaintiffs James Hammond et al., through counsel from right-wing activist litigant group Judicial Watch, seek to compel defendants the Metropolitan Government of Nashville to turn over documents held by the Metro Nashville Police Department which were written by the Covenant School shooter of 27 March 2023.
While Judge l’Ashea Myles did not order that the documents be released, she did order the Metropolitan Government and Metro Nashville PD to provide her with additional information on when they could be released, according to The Daily Wire (LeMahieu, 2024).
On 26 April, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R), in remarks to the Young Conservatives of Texas convention in Dallas, suggested his administration might ban teachers who are trans from presenting as their correct gender. When publicised, the idea received immediate and emphatic support from state GOP figures, including
State Rep. Briscoe Cain (R–HD128);
Brent Money, Republican candidate for House District 2;
Matt Rinaldi, chair of the Texas Republican Party (Scherer, 2024).
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Footnotes
Sources gave Dos Passos’ name variously as “Andrea Dosspassos” and “Andrea Dos Passos”. I judged that the latter seemed more likely. ↩︎
The Iraqi situation is somewhat unusual. The authority for the Council of Representatives is provided by the Iraqi Constitution of 15 October 2005. According to article 48 of that Constitution, Iraq has a bicameral legislature of which the Council of Representatives is the lower chamber; the upper chamber is the Federation Council. However, article 65 of the same Constitution also stipulates that the task of providing for and establishing the Federation Council belongs to the Council of Representatives. As the Council of Representatives has taken no meaningful action to establish the Federation Council, the Federation Council therefore does not “yet” exist and the Council of Representatives de facto functions as the single chamber of a unicameral legislature. ↩︎
Strictly, the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation. However, when it appears in the name of an organisation, the Spanish phrase “poder judicial” (literally, “judicial power”) is typically rendered in English as “judiciary”. ↩︎
Brumley, C. (2024, April 22). Response to new federal Title IX rules [Letter]. Louisiana Department of Education (State of Louisiana); Wayback Machine (Internet Archive). Retrieved 29 April 2024.
Farrar, D. (2024, April 22). ‘Gender affirming treatment’ poll — April 2024. Curia Market Research; Family First New Zealand; Wayback Machine (Internet Archive). Retrieved 29 April 2024.
The statue of Sigmund Freud in front of the Tavistock Clinic, the now-former home of the NHS Gender Identity Development Service. Photo by Mike Peel, 2010.
We’re back! I went off to go and write an article for another outlet. One could argue that this isn’t a Weekly because I’m not consistently publishing it every week, to which I say: shut up.
On 12 March, eClinicalMedicine published an article, “Experiences of mpox illness and case management among cis and trans gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in England: A qualitative study,” by T. Charles Witzel et al. (2024). I’m not going into a great deal of depth about it here because the total number of transmascs in the sample was 1 but trans men and transmascs in my readership might still find it worth reading.
Christensen et al.: transfem veterans’ thyroid cancer rate tends to norm
On 27 March, the Journal of the Endocrine Society published an article, “Thyroid cancer prevalence, risk exposure, and clinical features among transgender female veterans,” by John David Christensen et al. (2024). The study’s key finding was that among trans women veterans, the prevalence of thyroid cancer is nearly 2× as high as in cis men veterans, consistent with the elevated rate of thyroid cancer among cis women in general (Kurek, 2024).
Shaw et al.: Tommy and Emma at it again
Wembley Stadium, symbolising Britain (therefore transphobia) and sports. Photo by Mitch Rosen on Unsplash.
On 16 April, the Journal of Sports Sciences published an article, “The perspective of current and retired world class, elite and national athletes on the inclusion and eligibility of transgender athletes in elite sport,” by A.L. Shaw et al. (2024). The article’s key finding appears to be that the elite athletes it surveyed, on the whole, favour transmasculine inclusion but not transfeminine inclusion.
I was curious about the motivation behind this because the research topic and the concept behind the study design seemed strange to me — this is essentially a peer-reviewed opinion poll. I had a look at the methodology. It’s blatant junk. I don’t know if they assume their audience are completely naïve to this kind of scientific fraud but none of it is new junk. I would characterise it as Littmanesque — most of these tricks are signatures of another anti-trans disinfo promoter, Lisa Littman. In particular:
The study was conducted by anonymous online survey.
The study had a year-long response window, raising concerns about data integrity.
The study used snowball sampling “via personal networks and social media platforms”. As has previously been noted (Leveille, 2021), snowball sampling is problematic when dealing with politically contested issues because it selects for people with the same politics as the study’s authors.
The authors were only listed by surname and initials, which seemed odd to me, so I went digging. To the best of my ability to determine given the available information (initials, surnames, affiliations), they are:
Alexandra L. Shaw;
Alun G. Williams;
Georgina K. Stebbings;
Marie Chollier;
Andrew Harvey;
Shane M. Heffernan.
Shaw and Harvey I know little about. Chollier appears to have no experience in any relevant field perhaps save sexology, the nature of whose relevance to trans affairs is, of course, rather grim.
Heffernan, Stebbings, and Williams have form in legitimising transphobic pseudoacademic work. Stebbings was lead author, and Heffernan and Williams were co-authors, on the British Association of Sports and Exercise Sciences’ summer 2021 position statements on trans (Stebbings et al., 2021b) and intersex (“DSD”) athletes (Stebbings et al., 2021a); the relationship of those statements to reality is, at best, contested. Heffernan and Williams were signatories to an anti-transfeminine open letter led by Tommy Lundberg earlier this year attacking the IOC Fairness Framework (Lundberg et al., 2024), which was also signed by such luminaries as Emma Hilton and Jon Pike.
In short, I’m assessing this as basically just more nominally peer-reviewed quotemaking by the Hilton–Lundberg clique at one degree of remove.
Catholic Church
Dignitas infinita: Red meat for the faith
St Peter’s Square. Why do they call it square when it’s round? Photo by Caleb Miller on Unsplash
On 8 April, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic Church’s executive department for doctrine and discipline, published a statement, Dignitas infinita (“Infinite dignity“). The document is signed by the DDF’s prefect, Victor Manuel Cardinal Fernández, and the secretary of its doctrinal section, Monsignor Armando Matteo; it is noted as having been approved by Pope Francis on 25 March.
Dignitas infinita‘s central theme is the Church’s conception of “human dignity”. On the basis of that conception, Dignitas infinita concerns itself extensively with transness. It proclaims:
that “Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God”
that “gender theory … intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference”
that transness “envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family,” and therefore that “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected”.
that “the body … is endowed with personal meanings, particularly in its sexed condition,” and that “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception”.
While there are obvious limits on how liberal the head of the literal Catholic Church can be, Francis has been perceived during his pontificate as relatively progressive on LGBTQ+ affairs. Catholic media, both within (Keenan, 2024) and outside (McNulty, 2024) LGBTQ+ formations within the Church, certainly seem to have seen Dignitas infinita as a sharp move in the other direction.
Other
Elston v eSafety Commissioner: Billboard Chris can’t take the L-ston
On 17 April, “Billboard” Chris Elston filed an appeal with the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal concerning a notice issued in the name of the Australian eSafety Commissioner under the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth) s 88. The s 88 notice ultimately compelled X Corp to take down a Tweet by Elston that was smearing and attempting to humiliate an Australian citizen, a trans community advocate who I am choosing not to name. I’m also not linking Elston’s complaint because it republishes some of the material covered by the s 88 notice; entirely apart from the fact that I don’t want to harm Elston’s target further, given that I’m also Australian I don’t know if it would be legally wise.
Summarising the complaint and its context: Australia has fairly limited speech protections; for instance, there is no explicit protection in the Constitution of Australia for freedom of expression. However, since at least Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills (1992), Australian courts have held that there exists an implied freedom of political communication, and sought to define it. Elston’s complaint, prepared with the help of the Free Speech Union of Australia (McKenzie, 2024), appears to be framed around the argument that removing the Tweet unlawfully constrains that freedom. Offhand it looks like a bit of a reach to me but I’m not a lawyer. We’ll see how it plays out.
Aotearoa New Zealand
Late: Psychology board reviewing its LGBTQ+ guideline
Ngā whare Paremata/the New Zealand Parliament Buildings, in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Photo by Koon Chakhatrakan on Unsplash
I became aware this week — courtesy of alarmist coverage in The Spectator Australia (Stanley, 2024) — that te Poari Kaimātai Hinengaro o Aotearoa/the New Zealand Psychologists Board, the state regulator of psychologists in Aotearoa, has been revising its Best practice guidelines for working with clients with diverse sex, sexuality and gender since sometime before 18 September 2023 (Te Poari Kaimātai Hinengaro o Aotearoa, 2023).
I initially had no idea whether this was good or bad, seeing as The Spectator seemed to think it was a valuable opportunity for te Poari to pull an RANZCP. However, I understand from a source with knowledge of the matter that there’s no cause for concern.
On 21 April, a scheduled North West Sydney Football (NWSF) Women’s Premier League First Grade association football match between Macquarie Dragons FC and The Flying Bats FC was pre-empted by a forfeit from the Dragons (Dribl, n.d.).
Vigilant readers will recall that the Dragons and the Bats’ last matchup, in the NWSF Beryl Ackroyd Cup grand final in late March, became the subject of international attention because the Bats, who won, fielded a squad including 5 transfem players, and copped an international firehose of hate as a result.
Binary Australia have noticed the cancellation and are running with it, asserting that the Macquarie Dragons are pointedly forfeiting out of principle because they refuse to play against trans women (Smith, 2024). The tactic is not unheard of and is being used by right-wing activists in the United States. However, I’m unconvinced.
At press time, neither the Dragons nor the Bats had responded to a request for comment, but that’s to be expected as I sent it over the weekend. Any comments I do receive will be printed in SP Weekly #8.
Western Australia
Cook Government finally pulls its finger out on GRA reform
abolish the Gender Reassignment Board and establish a new process for people born in Western Australia to change their legal sex and gender through the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
establish a new process for WA residents born outside Australia to apply for a document acknowledging their sex or gender.
The explanatory memorandum (Government of Western Australia, 2024) suggests the new process will be able to be launched approximately six months after the Bill receives the Royal Assent.
Certain groups of people who have been convicted of crimes will need the approval of various relevant government officers to change their registered sex or gender. In particular, while promoting the Bill, Quigley referred to how it prevented people convicted of violent offences from accessing women-only spaces. This was, in my opinion justifiably, heard as a transmisogynistic dogwhistle by LGBTQ+ advocates (Watson, 2024a).
Germany
Self-determination Act passed; true self-determination yet to come
The Reichstag Plenary Building, at Platz der Republik 1, in the Tiergarten, Berlin. The Reichstag has been the seat of the Bundestag since 1999. Photo by Moritz Lüdtke on Unsplash
Under the SBGG, trans people 14 years of age or older (Associated Press, 2024) can change their registered first name and gender by giving 3 months’ notice to a registry office (“Gender identity law passes,” 2024). This replaces the TSG regime, which required the approval of 2 psychiatrists and a court order.
§§ 13–14 also provide that after a change of name or gender registration is made, neither the person’s assigned gender nor their deadname may be published without their consent, subject to a fine of up to €10,000 (approx. AU$49,600, US$32,000 at press time).
However, the SBGG also has several caveats:
Per § 5(1), name and gender changes are followed by a cooling-off period of one year before additional changes can be made.
Per § 6(3), gender recognised under the SBGG explicitly does not necessarily apply to the recognition of sporting achievements.
Per § 9, trans women in particular will not be allowed to change their legal gender during a state of tension under Article 80a of the Basic Law, or during compulsory military service should it be reintroduced.
Per § 10(2), a trans person is only entitled to have updated documents issued “soweit ein berechtiges Interesse glaubhaft gemacht werden kann” (“provided that a legitimate interest can be credibly demonstrated”) in the judgment of state authorities.
For reasons including some of these and some others, one German trans political content creator, UnrulyJuli, described the SBGG as “das reaktionärste selbsterklärungsbasierte Gesetz zur Änderung von registriertem Geschlecht weltweit” (“the most reactionary self-ID-based gender recognition law in the world”) (UnrulyJuli, 2024).
The SBGG was passed with 372 votes in favour, 251 votes against, and 11 abstentions, with 100 absences. The bill was supported by (Bundestagsverwaltung, 2024):
the current Government parties, who are an Ampelkoalition (“traffic-light coalition”):
the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD; “Social-Democratic Party of Germany”);
the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP; “Free Democratic Party”);
On 10 April, Amitesh Kumar, Commissioner of Police for Pune City, issued an order under the federal Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, s 144, banning trans people from begging at traffic signals, private residences, and public spaces including hospitals (Bhatt, 2024).
Sweden
SoU22:2023/24: Gender recognition law now slightly better
A photograph taken inside the Riksdaghuset (“Parliament House”) complex on Helgeandsholm islet in Stockholm. Photo by Oscar Nord on Unsplash
trans people 16 years or older in Sweden can now change their legal gender if they receive approval from a guardian, a doctor, and Socialstyrelsen (“the National Board of Health and Welfare”) (Rai, 2024);
a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria is no longer required (Rai, op. cit.).
According to the Snabbsprotokoll — the Riksdag’s equivalent of Hansard dailies — the bill was passed with 234 votes in favour and 94 votes against, with 21 absences. The bill was supported by:
Socialdemokraterna (S; “the Social Democrats”);
Moderaterna (M; “the Moderates”);
Centerpartiet (C; “the Centre Party”);
Vänsterpartiet (V; “the Left Party”)
Miljöpartiet de gröna (MP; “Environmental Party the Greens”);
Liberalerna (L; “the Liberals”).
The bill was opposed by:
Kristdemokraterna (KD; “the Christian Democrats”)
Sverigedemokraterna (SD; “the Sweden Democrats”).
Votes other than party line include:
Patrik Björck (S–Västra Götalands läns västra), who voted against;
Ellen Juntti (M–Västra Götalands läns västra), who voted against;
Elsa Widding (Ind–Stockholms kommun), who voted against;
Jamal El-Haj (Ind–Malmö kommun), who voted in favour.
United Kingdom
National
Physios make no bones about trans allyship
On 11 April, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP), the professional peak body for British physiotherapists, issued a position statement on transphobia (Chartered Society of Physiotherapy Council, 2024). I find the language satisfyingly resolute, to the point of occasionally being borderline provocative.
England
Cass Report drops
On 10 April, NHS England’s Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People released its Final Report (The Cass Review, 2024). I’ve written a long-form piece for another outlet detailing the problems with the Cass Review and will hopefully publish more coverage here over time. The summary is as follows.
The Cass Report recommends, in effect, preventing people under 18 from accessing virtually any meaningful gender-affirming intervention whatsoever. It stipulates that:
NHS England should provide HRT on an extremely limited and case-by-case basis, and only where a “clear clinical rationale” exists, which seems to mean “beyond simply being trans”;
NHS England should provide puberty blockers on an extremely limited case-by-case basis to some trans girls, and to trans boys not at all;
trans kids should not be allowed to change their name or pronouns before the NHS says they can;
measures should be taken to prevent trans kids from accessing gender-affirming care on a private basis outside the NHS.
The Report is heavily flawed. Here is why:
The Cass Review was known to be heavily compromised well before the publication of the Report. Its advisory group includes a narrow slice of professionals ranging from clinicians on the extremely conservative borderline-crank edge of nominal legitimacy to open, unashamed advocates of conversion therapy. It explicitly excluded trans people. In addition, the groundwork for the Cass Review, such as the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence’s “literature review” on puberty blockers, was similarly compromised.
The Report draws heavily on several systematic reviews carried out by the University of York at the request of the Cass Review. The methodology for all of the reviews was designed by Dr Trilby Langton, who has previously provided NHS staff with training materials recommending Genspect, an organisation which promotes conversion therapy. The methodology appears to have been designed to exclude as much evidence in favour of gender-affirming care as possible, while including as much evidence as possible to the contrary, in both cases regardless of the practical quality of the evidence.
A number of materials auxiliary to the review have also been published, including a 9 April editorial by Cass in The BMJ (Cass, 2024), and a 17 April Q&A session with Cass held by The Kite Trust, an LGBTQ+ support and advocacy group (The Kite Trust, 2024). The latter has attracted significant interest because Cass’ characterisation of the Cass Report seems to be pretty significantly at odds with what’s in it, to the point that you begin to wonder if she’s actually read what is nominally her own work.
Scotland
Holyrood declines Tory invitation to hate
The façade of the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood, Edinburgh. Photo by Chris Flexen on Unsplash.
On 17 April, the Scottish Parliament considered a motion, Repealing the Hate Crime Act (S6M-12855), moved by Russell Findlay MSP (CUP–West Scotland), which would if adopted have expressed the Scottish Parliament’s belief that the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 ought to be repealed. The motion would not actually have repealed the Act; a Bill is required to do that.
While the Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 11 March 2021, it did not commence until 1 April 2024. The Act extends hate crime protections under Scottish law to trans people, a prospect which attracts significantly more political hostility in 2024 than it did in 2021. Right-wing organisers including Elon Musk and JK Rowling have been mounting a furious hate campaign against the Bill since immediately before its commencement. The Act was also opposed by ADF UK, the British arm of US fascist legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, who published a media release in support of Findlay’s motion (ADF UK, 2024).
Ultimately, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Scottish Greens successfully amended Findlay’s motion to reverse its meaning, then put it to a vote and carried it. The Tories opposed it. Labour, the Lib Dems, and lone Alba Party MSP Ash Regan abstained.
NHS Scotland decides it’s easier to collude
On 18 April, it became public (Trans Safety Network, 2024; NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 2024) that the Gender Service at Sandyford, which provides gender-affirming care to people under 18 in Scotland, had stopped referring trans youth to endocrinology in mid-March. Endocrinology referral is a prerequisite to receive puberty blockers. As a consequence, while young trans people already on blockers though Sandyford will be able to stay on them, no further trans youth will be able to access them through the Gender Service.
The decision appears to have been made by Sandyford’s supervising health board, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, in response to the Cass Report. It’s unclear why; the Cass Review was authorised by, and its scope was in relation to, NHS England, an agency of the UK Government operating within England. NHS Scotland is an entirely separate service administered by the Scottish Government. My understanding is that NHS Scotland has therefore not actually been compelled to take this action, but is taking it nonetheless.
United States
Federal
NAIA bans transfems for fairness (actually Christianity again)
On 8 April, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Council of Presidents unanimously approved a new Transgender Participation Policy which functionally bans trans women from NAIA competitions (it also restricts trans men, but does not ban them).
While some media coverage (some included here, some not) has tried to play this off as an apolitical move based entirely on concerns of fairness, it isn’t, of course, because it never is. NAIA, a considerably smaller alternative to the mainstream National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), consists overwhelmingly of private institutions, and 17 of the 20 Council of Presidents members who endorsed the policy were from the 65% of NAIA member institutions which are explicitly faith-based (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, n.d.) — which is incidentally quite the apportionment; I wonder how that happened.
Media coverage has noted that the new NAIA Policy may be in violation of Title IX (Van Cleave, 2024). More immediately and practically, the policy is still compelled to rely on self-reporting by trans athletes. At least one NAIA-affiliated institution has chosen not to enforce the self-reporting requirement, and, thus, to functionally ignore the policy. Beyond NAIA institutions, the policy is opposed by the Transgender Network of Texas (Kennedy, 2024) and the National Women’s Law Center (Olson, 2024).
The NAIA Transgender Participation Policy will commence 1 August 2024.
American Immigration Council: Abolishing ICE is trans business
On 9 April, the American Immigration Council, the National Lawyers Guild’s National Immigration Project, and the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network filed a complaint (American Immigration Council et al., 2024) with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on behalf of 5 trans and nonbinary (TNB) people detained at an ICE facility in Aurora, Colorado.
The complaint asserts that
ICE has subjected the individuals detained to “needless delays in access to care, lack of communication regarding diagnoses and appropriate treatment options, and gaslighting from medical staff within the facility to fail to take their complaints seriously”;
“Gender affirming care is not categorically available within ICE detention, meaning people cannot access the treatment they require to manage their symptoms”
“in practice the Aurora facility systematically fails to adhere to its responsibilities, with potentially deadly consequences for TNB people detained at the facility”;
“TNB persons imprisoned at the Aurora facility who have disabilities are often punished for having a disability … Complainants’ experiences illuminate a pattern within the Aurora facility of placing persons with disabilities at risk of self-harm in solitary confinement”
in addition, complainants have variously been subjected to:
refusal under false pretences to house them appropriately;
threats under false pretences of placing them in solitary confinement for reasons related to their gender or gender expression;
interference with the HRT prescribed to them;
delays or outright lack of action on required supportive care such as serology labs;
physical assault;
sexual assault by guards;
facilitation by guards of sexual assault;
sexual harassment;
sexually violent humiliation;
forcible outing;
deadnaming;
misgendering;
destruction of personal property and personal hygiene items;
The complaint requests that ICE take a number of measures to address the conduct at issue, including that ICE investigate the specific incidents detailed in the complaint, stop appealing immigration judge decisions granting relief to TNB people, implement new liability mechanisms for contractors who mistreat trans people, place TNB people in “community-based and not-for-profit alternatives for detention”, and ideally put an “immediate and permanent end to [its] practice of detaining TNB people in immigration custody”.
Labrador v Poe: SCOTUS to Idaho trans kids: Drop dead
The façade of 1 First Street, Washington, D.C., the seat of the Supreme Court of the United States. Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash
On 15 April, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a plurality decision, stayed the US District Court for the District of Idaho’s 26 December 2023 order in Poe v Labrador enjoining enforcement of the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, Idaho Code Ann § 18-1506C, passed as HB 71 of 2023, which bans gender-affirming care for people under 18 in Idaho. The application to stay was made by the State of Idaho’s counsel, the Alliance Defending Freedom (Talukder, 2024). The Act will immediately take effect for everyone in Idaho except the plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court’s pretext for the stay was that the District Court’s injunction was overbroad in scope. Of the justices of the court, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas supported the stay; Gorsuch wrote the plurality opinion, which expressed concerns about overbreadth, while Kavanaugh wrote a separate concurrence with Barrett which focused instead on the State’s likelihood of success on the merits. The stay was opposed by Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. Chief justice John Roberts did not write or join an opinion (Brown, 2024).
This has implications for similar cases going forward. If it can be assumed that SCOTUS will intervene to narrow the applicability of any injunction to the plaintiffs alone, future healthcare bans will be very difficult to hold off through the courts.
BPJ v Board: You can’t hide, but you can run (for now)
On 18 April, The Washington Post published an opinion article, “A new report roils the debate on youth gender care,” by Paul Garcia-Ryan (2024). While I won’t dissect the article here, its publication is, in my opinion, independently newsworthy for SP Press readers. This is because of what it reflects.
Garcia-Ryan is an ideologically motivated detransfem activist who heads up Therapy First, formerly known as the Gender Exploratory Therapy Association (GETA). Therapy First is part of what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the “pseudoscience network” (Lamore et al., 2023) the unacknowledged anti-trans hydra whose currently most prominent heads include Genspect and the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine. Like its sisters, Therapy First promotes gender exploratory therapy, which, as Canadian jurist and expert Florence Ashley has pointed out, is literally just anti-trans conversion therapy (Ashley, 2022).
If I recall correctly, last time WaPo published a major anti-trans op-ed, they had to filter it through Laura Edwards-Leeper and Erica Anderson, who have frankly always been at least ideologically SEGM-adjacent but had the credibility of being part of the WPATH establishment. The fact that WaPo are now openly running a conversion therapist — even advertising the group he’s affiliated with at the top of the article — seems like a deeply concerning development.
California
Calexico recalls its whipping girl
The Hotel de Anza, in Calexico, California, United States, in December 2007. Photo by Omar Bárcena on Flickr.
On 16 April, the City of Calexico, Imperial County, held a recall election. Mayor Raúl Ureña and Councilmember Gilberto Manzanarez were recalled. Turnout for the recall was 23%.
Ureña, who came out as transfeminine after she was sworn in as mayor, told the Los Angeles Times she believed the recall was motivated by transphobia. Manzanarez said he thought Calexico’s political establishment scapegoated him and Ureña for existing systematic problems Recall organisers told the LA Times that the recall was primarily sparked by what the Times described as “concerns about rising homeless numbers and lagging economic development” (Branson-Potts, 2024).
Based on the Times‘ coverage and Equality California’s strident response (Equality California, 2024), I’m inclined to think Ureña and Manzanarez’s analyses are closer to the truth. This is not necessarily a judgment on the people of Calexico; with 23% turnout, it’s hard to treat the recall as representative. However, Ureña had already won one election a month after the publication of the audit which revealed the issues for which she was nominally recalled. She subsequently came out as trans and was served with recall papers two months later. Until I receive new information to the contrary, the causality here seems to me to be pretty clear.
Idaho
HB 421, 538: The machine demands blood
On 9 April, Idaho Governor Brad Little (R) signed 2 bills into law, HB 421 and HB 538.
HB 421 defines “sex” as being determined for all purposes of Idaho code exclusively by the type of gamete that is, was, will be, or “but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident, would” be produced by an individual’s reproductive system.
HB 538 inserts a new section into Idaho Code, § 67-5909B, which provides that:
employees of the state of Idaho, including employees working in public educational institutions, as well as students in those institutions, may not be compelled by any means to refer to trans people, including trans kids where applicable, by the correct name or pronouns;
state employees may not refer to trans kids who are school students by the correct name or pronouns without written permission from a parent or guardian;
any person who is “harmed” for “violating the provisions of this section” will have a private cause of action, with a statute of limitations of 2 years.
Both measures commence 1 July 2024.
Kansas
Kelly delays FACT Act, lets state KOSA through to keeper
any recipient of state funds may not use such funds to provide gender-affirming care, including social transition, for people under 18, or to “promote or advocate” the provision of such care, nor shall any “state property, facility or building” be used for such provision, promotion, or advocacy of care;
healthcare providers may not knowingly provide gender-affirming care to people under 18 in Kansas except to the extent required to withdraw care completely by 31 December 2024, on penalty of revocation of licensure;
if a provider administers gender-affirming care to a child who later experiences “any physical, psychological, emotional or physiological harm” as a result, that child can sue up to the day they turn 28;
professional liability insurers for healthcare providers shall not cover damages related to the provision of gender-affirming care;
the Kansas Program of Medical Assistance (“Kansas Medicaid”) shall not cover gender-affirming care for people under 18.
However, the bill has a notional veto-proof majority. Its failure to pass by a veto-proof majority on this occasion is because 2 Republican legislators who had previously voted in favour of the bill were absent.
In addition, Kelly did not veto SB 394, which provides that websites which serve content “harmful to minors” must require Kansas residents to provide ID verification. The definition of “harmful to minors” is as provided for in Kan Stat Ann § 21-6402, which includes “acts of … homosexuality”.
Maine
LD 227: Maine passes trans shield law, Republicans predictably object
On 12 April, the Maine State Legislature approved Legislative Document (LD) 227, which is a shield law for gender-affirming care and abortion: it bars Maine law enforcement agencies from co-operating in investigations of gender-affirming care or abortion services provided legally in Maine carried out by states where those healthcare services are not legal.
The bill has already been opposed by the Republican attorneys general of Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. In a letter (Skrmetti et al., 2024) to Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) and several other officers of the Maine executive, they claim LD 227:
“seeks to contravene the lawful policy choices of our States’ citizens by imposing on the rest of the country” — ! — “Maine’s views on hotly-debated issues”;
is a “novel effort at state-sanctioned culture war litigation tourism” and an “ill-considered attempt to influence and intimidate officials in other States”;
“could … trigger a rapid tit-for-tat escalation that tears apart our Republic”.
The letter ends with a promise to “vigorously avail ourselves of every recourse our Constitution provides,” which is facially a threat to pursue litigation, but, given the place of “constitutional rights” in American right-wing discourse (Franke, 2023), likely also a plausibly deniable threat of violence.
On 17 April, the Montgomery County Department of Police arrested and charged an 18-year-old with threats of mass violence (Montgomery County Department of Police, 2024). The arrestee appears to be transmasc, so this may or may not snowball into a larger story.
Montana
Kalarchik v Montana: Stop breaking the Constitution, assholes
The Montana State Capitol in Helena. The First Judicial District Court is also located in Helena, but that’s way harder to find pictures of so you get this instead. Photo by eric diaz on Unsplash.
On 18 April, in the Montana state First Judicial District Court, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Montana filed suit (Kalarchik v Montana) on behalf of 2 plaintiffs, both trans women, against the State of Montana.
The filing is concerned with 2 particulars of Montana law:
Mont Code Ann § 50-15-224, enacted by SB 458 of 2023, which commenced notionally 19 May 2023, which defines sex as being determined by sex chromosomes and unspecified “biological … indication” for all purposes of Montana code;
The plaintiffs, Jessica Kalarchik and “Jane Doe,” attest having faced harassment and discrimination as a result of the direct and indirect effects of SB 458 and the 2022 Rule. They claim that the two together constitute unlawful discrimination in violation of the Constitution of the State of Montana, in particular the following sections of Article II:
§ 4, the equal protection clause;
§ 7, the free expression clause, which must also be interpreted to bar compelled speech per SCOTUS’ ruling in Wooley v Maynard (1977);
§ 10, the constitutional right to privacy.
They are seeking:
declaratory relief utilising Montana Administrative Procedure Act powers to invalidate MAR 37.3.811(5) and invalidate the use of SB 458 as described in the filing;
injunctive relief preventing the State from enforcing any of the invalidated particulars, or any new superficially different particulars intended to get around them;
class action certification.
Ohio
Moe v Yost: SAFE Act enjoined, too unsafe
A flag reading “Ohio Against the World” flying at an unkonwn large crowd event. Photo by Dana Lewin on Unsplash.
Per previous coverage, the action is being brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio on behalf of two young trans girls, “Madeline Moe” and “Grace Goe”. While the point of the action is obviously to get rid of the law, the specific argument in this case is that HB 68, the Saving Adolescents From Experimentation Act and Save Women’s Sports Act, violates the Constitution of the State of Ohio, specifically the single-subject rule, which stipulates that laws must concern themselves only with a single subject.
Oklahoma
OSAC feels threatened by trans boxers
In undated news reported 18 April by KOKH, the Oklahoma State Athletic Commission has warned All Elite Wrestling not to hold measures between cis and trans competitors of the same gender in the state again. The warning is based on OSAC’s rule against intergender matches, which is intentionally drafted to falsely classify matches between a cis and a trans athlete of the same gender as “intergender” (Wilson & Chasanov, 2024).
Tennessee
Hammond v Nashville: Judicial Watch says “fuck them kids”
On 16 April, the Tennessee state Chancery Court for Davidson County heard Hammond v Nashville. The action was filed by Judicial Watch, a right-wing activist litigant group, against the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. Judicial Watch seeks to compel the Metropolitan Government to release documentation, allegedly including a manifesto, seized from the estate of the 2023 Covenant School shooter. The shooting is of interest to fascists because the culprit was a trans man.
While the Metropolitan Government’s own attitude to defending the case seems fairly ambivalent, intervenors the Covenant School and the Covenant Presbyterian Church argue the documents should not be released because they have the potential to “trigger more hatred and violence toward children and Christians,” as The Daily Wire put it (Lindquist & LeMahieu, 2024).
Virginia
Powhatan School District adopts 2023 Model Policies
Ashley, F. (2022, September 6). Interrogating gender-exploratory therapy. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(2), 472–481. doi: 10.1177/17456916221102325. Retrieved 20 April 2024.
Chartered Society of Physiotherapists Council (2024, April 11). Position statement on transphobia. Chartered Society of Physiotherapists; Archive Today. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
Te Poari Kaimātai Hinengaro o Aotearoa (2023, September 18). Call for volunteers [Update]. Te Poari Kaimātai Hinengaro o Aotearoa; Archive Today. Retrieved 21 April 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:
You design a longitudinal study which draws its conclusions from screening for specific psychological phenomena, qualities, or traits.
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.
You collect basic data from those recipients at time 1 (t1). You do not screen for actual transness at this time. This is vital.
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.
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:
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:
“we report mild-to-severe sex gland atrophy in PB [puberty blocker] treated children”;
“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.
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).
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.
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:
Joanna Cherry MP (SNP–Edinburgh South West, Scotland) (Lawless, 2024), an MP from the governing Scottish National Party (SNP) who has previously suggested anti-trans conversion therapy should be legal (Wakefield, 2021);
Roddy Dunlop, the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (Cook, 2024);
Joanne Rowling (2024), anti-trans activist also known for creating the Harry Potter series, who went on a tear so vicious it attracted its own little media bubble;
Jim Sillars, former SNP deputy leader (Koenig, 2024), who has a record of white-anting the current SNP leadership on trans affairs (Sanderson, 2023).
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:
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:
42 USC § 1983, which provides that individuals have the right to sue state governments for civil rights violations committed “under colour of law”.
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;
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)
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).
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 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
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”.
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”. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
Specifically, Brown is an adherent of the misleadingly-named Messianic Judaism, a denomination of Protestant Christianity. ↩︎
I have some reason to think this is a dogwhistle but I’m fucked if I know for what. ↩︎
Bailey, J.M., & Hsu, K.J. (2022, June 27). How autogynephilic are natal females?. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 51, 3311–3318. doi: 10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
Dresden, H. (2023, April 14). L.A. has its own history of anti-drag laws. The Hollywood Reporter (Eldridge Industries, LLC; Penske Media Corporation); Archive Today. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
Opray, M. (2024, March 28). Post: Thailand on track to become first South-East Asian country to legalise gay marriage. The Saturday Paper (Schwartz Media).
Reuters & Sattaburuth, A. (2024, March 28). House passes landmark Marriage Equality Bill. Bangkok Post (Bangkok Post Public Company Ltd); Thomson Reuters Corporation; Archive Today. Retrieved 4 April 2024.
A road in the Gaza Strip, devastated by the Israeli occupation forces’ indiscriminate bombardment. The original metadata suggest this photo was taken circa 1 December 2023 near cnr Omar al-Mukhtar & al-Jalaa St, Zeitoun, Gaza. Photo by Emad El Byed on Unsplash.
Redemptio memoriae: New collection published
On 25 February, an anarchist protester with the surname Bushnell self-immolated outside the Embassy of Israel to the United States in Washington, D.C., in protest of the Zionist entity’s colonisation and genocide in Palestine, making international news. It quickly became apparent that there was more to the story than initially met the eye and that the “more” might fall within SP Press’ scope, and I put SP Weekly on hiatus to investigate. I’ve assembled what I found as a newly-created SP Press Collection, Redemptio memoriae.
For broader coverage of Bushnell’s legacy, outside the aspects which fall within SP Press’ scope, I strongly recommend only the 2 articles published by CrimethInc ex-Workers’ Collective (2024a & 2024b).
Technical: Email works now
It turns out that for most of the time since I migrated to my new email provider, my SP Press address, isabelle@severalproblems.press, has been unable to receive email. The reason is that I set it up wrong, because my degree is in music performance and so cute little question marks appear over my head when people say things like “SMTP authentication” or “MX record”. It should work now. Any and all hate mail is welcome.
International
Academic
Baxendale: Just asking questions
On 9 February, Acta Paediatrica published an article, “The impact of suppressing puberty on neuropsychological function: A review,” by Sallie Baxendale (2024). The study concludes that “Critical questions remain unanswered regarding the nature, extent and permanence of any arrested development of cognitive function associated with puberty blockers”.
Andrea James (2024c), writing for Transgender Map, characterises Baxendale as a “psychologist and anti-transgender activist,” noting she is affiliated with at least two anti-trans pressure groups, the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) and the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender (CAN-SG), and is a contributor to UnHerd, a British publication with an anti-trans editorial line. Of all things, a Quillette article promoting the study (Lane, 2024) notes that it was rejected by 3 other journals before Acta Paediatrica decided to pick it up.
Kalman-Rome et al.: Transmascs crave those minerals, says study
On 11 February, the Journal of Dietary Supplements published “Dietary supplement use in transmasculine people: Results of an online survey of volunteer adults,” by Eli Kalman-Rome et al. (2024). The study concluded that “[t]ransmasculine people in our [cohort] reported a high use of dietary supplements”.
Landén: Puberty blockers are dangerous, say vibes
On 3 March, Acta Paediatrica published an article, “Puberty suppression of children with gender dysphoria: Urgent call for research,” an editorial by Mikael Landén (2024). The article:
promotes the notion that “GnRHa [gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist; i.e., puberty blocker] treatment … serves as an initial step in the transition to the opposite sex,” which in this context is a coded way of suggesting that puberty blockers make cis kids trans;
contends, based on one study on which Landén was one of the corresponding authors, that “the evidence supporting the use of GnRHa to mitigate gender dysphoria and improve psychosocial functioning is insufficient”;
contends that “treatment with GnRH agonists impacts bone health by delaying the natural increase in bone mineral density that typically occurs during puberty,” citing the 2020 review conducted by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which Trans Safety Network’s Mallory Moore notes was run by anti-trans conversion therapists and shot through with undisclosed conflicts of interest and methodological issues (Moore, 2024) to the point that I would consider it functionally nullified;
does not disclose that the author has a conflict of interest, namely that he, like Baxendale, is associated with SEGM, having previously spoken at a SEGM-organised 2023 anti-trans conference (James, 2024b).
Lundberg et al.: Tommy and Emma are at it again
On 21 March, the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports published a commentary, “The International Olympic Committee framework on fairness, inclusion and nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations does not protect fairness for female athletes,” by Tommy R. Lundberg et al. (2024).
Lead author Lundberg and the two authors credited as having “contributed equally,” Ross Tucker and Dr Emma Hilton, are well-known anti-trans activists (A. James, 2023a; Rook, 2023). None have any background in trans healthcare or any related fields of research, such as endocrinology; Lundberg and Tucker are exercise physiologists, while Hilton is a biologist whose work on human subjects appears to be concentrated in clinical genetics and immunology.
The commentary is also co-authored by Jon Pike, who is a British academic philosopher specialising in the philosophy of sport and an anti-trans activist, notably the convenor of the Open University’s Gender Critical Research Network (A. James, 2023b; S. Richards, 2023).
Kidd et al.: You like Tuck Everlasting? Haha, but seriously, folks,
On 25 March, the Annals of Family Medicine, the journal of the American Association of Family Physicians, published a research brief, “Genital tucking practices in transgender and gender diverse patients,” by Nicholas Kidd et al. (2024). The article concludes that”On 25 March, the Annals of Family Medicine, the journal of the American Association of Family Physicians, published a research brief, “Genital tucking practices in transgender and gender diverse patients,” by Nicholas Kidd et al. (2024). The article concludes that:
[t]he risk of side effects increased with the length of tucking sessions … with many patients avoiding medical care despite experiencing side effects. Health care providers should empathetically discuss tucking and its potential risks and benefits with transgender and gender diverse patients.
McDeavitt: Psychiatrist has hot take, film at eleven
On 28 March, Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, published a letter to the editor, “Prohibition of gender-affirming care as a form of child maltreatment: Reframing the discussion,” by Kathleen McDeavitt (2024). In the letter, McDeavitt expresses a stance opposing the scientific and professional consensus on paediatric trans healthcare. There are no substantially novel elements to her argumentation and the letter is noted here primarily for the record.
General
Australia/United States: In shocking twist, eSafety Commissioner helpful for once
On 22 March, the Australian eSafety Commissioner1 served X Corp., operator of Twitter (“X”), with a removal notice under the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth) s 88.
The content addressed by the notice is a Tweet by Chris Elston, a Canadian activist better known as “Billboard Chris,” promoting a Daily Mail smear piece/revenge porn attack against the complainant, an Australian trans community advocate who, to avoid compounding the harm, I am electing not to name. Elston added further commentary which the Commissioner assessed as cause to intervene, on the grounds that Elston’s contribution deliberately misgendered the complainant and pathologised trans people as a whole. If X Corp. fails to remove the Tweet, the Commissioner may initiate civil action to fine it up to AU$782,500 (Elston, 2024), which is circa CA$689,000 or US$510,000 at press time.
United States/global: Exciting new extremely normal activewear brand
On 25 March, Jennifer Sey (2024) announced the launch of XX–XY Athletics, a new activewear brand. Sey is the former global brand president at Levi Strauss & Co. She was removed from the role in January 2022 by Chip Bergh, Levi’s chief executive officer, because she failed a due diligence check due to being vocally anti-vax, anti-lockdown and COVID denialist on Twitter and then on Fox News, ignoring all attempts by corporate to get her to stop (Suddath, 2022).
XX–XY Athletics’ primary value proposition seems to be letting consumers vice-signal being transphobic. The launch attracted puff pieces in Forbes (Danziger, 2024) and Women’s Wear Daily (Feitelberg, 2024).
World Wide Web: Meta proves Wilhoit’s maxim a universal law
On 27 March (M. James, 2024), GLAAD, a US-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group, published a social media safety report, “Unsafe: Meta fails to moderate extreme anti-trans hate across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads” (GLAAD, 2024). In the report, GLAAD found that Meta Platforms, Inc., which operates and moderates those three platforms, consistently either did not take any action on anti-trans hate content, or actively falsely classified the content as not in violation of its rules (GLAAD, op. cit.; Villarreal, 2024).
Argentina
Tribunal Federal: Pozo de Banfield torturers sentenced
On 26 March, in La Plata, Buenos Aires, the Tribunal Federal № 1 (“Federal Court No. 1”) announced the conviction and sentencing of 10 former officers of the Argentine government who served during the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (PRN; “National Reorganisation Process”), the military junta which ruled Argentina from 1976 through 1983. The charges on which they were convicted included offences relating to sexual violence targeting trans women in particular (Voice of America, 2024), which took place at the Pozo de Banfield (“Banfield Pit”), a junta black site in Banfield, Buenos Aires Province. The violence in question was related to the Process’ political and cultural program of Catholic-inflected clerical fascism, under which queer and trans people were regarded as inherently subversive.
The full text of the decision is scheduled for release on 6 July (Tian, 2024).
Australia
Federal
The Australian House of Representatives chamber, Parliament House, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, seen on 26 April 2021 while vacant. Photo by Andy Wang on Unsplash
ALRC religious schools discrimination report tabled
On 21 March, in the Australian House of Representatives, Mark Dreyfus MP (ALP–Isaacs, VIC), Attorney-General for Australia, tabled (Ludwig, 2024) Australian Law Reform Commission Report 142, Maximising the realisation of human rights: Religious educational institutions and anti-discrimination laws (Australian Law Reform Commission, 2023). The recommendations of the report include that:
in respect of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), which is also the centrepiece of Australian federal queer and trans anti-discrimination law, the Government should:
terminate the current legal regime under which religious schools are functionally exempt from complying with broad portions of the Act by amending ss 23, 37, and 38 (Recommendation 1);
extend the protection which the Act offers to employees and “contract workers” at religious schools to “all persons, employed, engaged, or otherwise utilised by a religious educational institution who fall within the definition of ‘worker’ as provided in s 4 of [the] Act” (Recommendation 3);
extend the protection which the Act offers to protected persons to people who “associate[…] with (whether as[…] relative[s] or otherwise); or, [are] believed to associate with” protected persons, so that, for instance, a religious school cannot lawfully deny enrolment to a child merely because that child’s parents are of the same gender (Recommendation 4);
the Government should legislate so that religious schools cannot impose terms in awards and enterprise agreements that “impose[…] a requirement that an employee abide by, or comply with, a code of practice or other condition dealing with the personal beliefs or private life of the employee” (Recommendation 6).
Federal Court: Pesutto to suffer one almighty SLAPP
In the week of 24 March, Justice Michael Wheelahan of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia ordered that Deeming v Pesutto, Jones v Pesutto and Keen v Pesutto be heard together (Cosoleto, 2024). Deeming, Jones, and Keen are the defamation actions brought against John Pesutto MLA (LPA–Hawthorn), Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia in the Parliament of Victoria, by Moira Deeming MLC (Ind/LPA–Western Metropolitan Region) and two anti-trans activists, Angela “Angie” Jones and Kellie-Jay Keen.
The actions are related to remarks made and actions taken by Pesutto regarding Deeming, then one of his MPs, and to a lesser extent Jones and Keen, in particular characterising them as Nazi sympathisers (Kolovos, 2024; Silva & Willingham, 2024), after Keen’s March 2023 Let Women Speak rally, which members of the National Socialist Network (NSN) attended in full-throated support of Deeming’s, Jones’, and Keen’s anti-trans beliefs.
A trial date has been set for 16 September 2024.
Conflict of interest (COI) disclosure: I’m not involved in Deeming, Jones, or Keen, and don’t have any stake in the outcome. However it is my understanding that at least one plaintiff’s legal strategy relies, in part, on a negative characterisation of me personally. I’m still reporting this because it’s newsworthy, and I don’t expect to have any issues self-managing this COI, but under the circumstances I figured a COI disclosure was appropriate. A similar disclosure will go on any future coverage of this story that I write.
City of Ryde: Flying Bats FC brings A-game, suffers the consequences
A girl moving with intention to spear kick the absolute shit out of a soccer ball at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., United States, on or around 26 November 2018. It’s thematically related, it’s fine. Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash.
On 24 March, at Christie Park ground in Macquarie Park, the grand final of the Beryl Ackroyd Cup, a women’s pre-season association football competition organised by North West Sydney Football, was played between The Flying Bats FC and Macquarie Dragons FC. The Flying Bats, who have performed solidly through the season (Reilly, 2024; Smith, 2024d) won 4–0 (Bye, 2024).
As The Flying Bats are sponsored by Pride Football Australia and fielded 5 trans players in the grand final, they are predictably now receiving an onslaught of national and international hate, stoked by, among others:
In response to my request for comment, Flying Bats FC provided the following statement from Jennifer Peden, president of the club:
As a club, the Flying Bats FC stand strongly for inclusion, and pride ourselves on safe, respectful and fair play, the promotion of a supportive community for LGBTQIA+ players, officials and supporters, and the significant physical, social and mental health benefits that participation in sport brings, especially to marginalised members of the LGBTQIA+ community. We are a club that values our cisgender and transgender players equally.
We strongly support the Australian Human Rights Commission’s guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport. These guidelines, along with the Sex Discrimination Act, inform the gender inclusion policies of Football Australia, Football NSW, and the North West Sydney Football Association at the community, grassroots level at which we play. Trans women belong in the women’s competition because that is the gender with which they identify. Trans women have played with the club for at least 20 years, at levels ranging from beginner to skilled, just like our cis women players. Our players are graded on ability, and placed in the team that is most appropriate for their skill and experience level, and we look forward to a respectful, competitive season across our 8 teams in 2024.
J. Peden (personal communication, 31 March 2024)
City of Sydney: Committee approves transfem housing (bæddels’ fault)
On 25 March, the Housing for All Committee of the Sydney City Council unanimously approved a motion, “Sale of surplus residential property — Affordable and diverse housing,” including a recommendation, Recommendation (C)(iii), that a property at Darlinghurst be sold to Common Equity NSW Ltd (“Common Equity”) for $2.5 million. The project will now need to be signed off by the full Council, which will consider a motion to that effect at its 9 April meeting.
If approved, Common Equity will partner with All Nations Housing Co-operative to use the property to provide affordable housing for trans women, totalling 11 beds (Johnson, 2024).
France
Sénat Républicains transphobic (it’s in the name)
The Court of Honour entrance to the Palais Bourbon, seat of the National Assembly of France, 6 November 2020. Photo by Eddie Junior on Unsplash.
On 18 March, the group of Les Républicains (LR; “The Republicans”) in the French Senate published a report, Rapport sur la transidentification des mineurs (Report on the trans-identification of minors) (Groupe Les Républicains au Sénat, 2024). LR, the party of Nicolas Sarkozy, former President of France, was France’s conservative major party until it was supplanted around 2017 by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN; “National Rally”). It remains the largest party in the Senate.
The working group heard 67 witnesses, including 4 anonymous parents and 1 anonymous detransitioner. Of the remainder, some were from trans community advocacy and health promotion groups, or were clinicians who supported the scientific consensus.
A considerable number, however, were anti-trans activists with whom I was already familiar because they are primarily or incidentally active in Anglophone spaces, mostly members of SEGM and/or Genspect —Zhenya Abbruzzese (#6), Stephen Levine (#9), David Bell (#11), Michael Biggs (#13), Patrick Hunter (#34), Riittakerttu Kaltiala (#35), Lisa Littman (#42), Lori Regenstreif (#52), Kathleen Stock (#60), and Ken Zucker (#67); in my view, Annelou de Vries (#65) could defensibly be included in this category as well. I don’t go into a great deal of detail about these people here because this is a regular bulletin and their careers have been explored more thoroughly and capably elsewhere.
However, there were also a number of European anti-trans clinicians and activists with whom I was not previously familiar because they are not regularly or significantly active in Anglophone media. These included the following:
Nicole Athéa, gynaecologist and endocrinologist, who:
co-signed an open letter in L’Express promoting the “social contagion” and “gender ideology” canards (Masson et al., 2021);
co-authored a paper promoting the “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) canard (Masson et al., 2023);
Sophie Audugé, spokesperson for extreme-right pressure group SOS Éducation, who has a record of promoting the “gender ideology” and “social contagion” canards (ADHEOS, 2022; Périer, 2022);
Maurice Berger, paediatric psychiatrist, who co-signed an open letter in The Wall Street Journal attacking the Endocrine Society for its role in facilitating trans healthcare (Kaltiala et al., 2023);
Jean-François Braunstein, professor of contemporary philosophy at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (“Panthéon-Sorbonne University”), who:
has published anti-trans work of a conspiratorial-impressionist type not dissimilar to, e.g., Jennifer Bilek (see, e.g., Braunstein, 2021b);
is a broadly Intellectual Dark Web-esque right-wing activist with a record of inveighing against things like “islamogauchisme” (“Islamo-leftism,” a racially charged snarl word used by French fascists) and “wokisme” (“wokeness”) in general (see, e.g., Braunstein, 2022).
Silvia Carrasco Pons, professor of social anthropology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, who:
is a member (Lowrey, 2023) of Docentes Feministas por la Coeducación (DoFemCo; “Feminist Teachers for Co-education”), a Spanish TERF pressure group;
has a history of using her professional and pedagogical authority to, e.g., promote an anti-trans, interphobic conception of “biological sex” (see, e.g., Carrasco, 2023);
José Errasti, professor of clinical psychology at the Universidad de Oviedo, and co-author of Nadie nace un cuerpo equivocado (No one is born in the wrong body) (Errasti & Pérez, 2022a), a book characterised, in a piece by the authors promoting it in right-wing daily El Mundo, as a “manifesto against the ‘trans’ obsession” (Errasti & Pérez, 2022b);
Christian Flavigny, paediatric psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who:
was, as of 30 June 2020, an affiliate of the Institut Thomas More, a Paris-based Catholic right-wing think tank (Lesueur & Flavigny, 2020);
has described transness and gender-affirming care as a disease of “American culture” and the “Americanisation” of France (Flavigny, 2021a);
has a record of general anti-trans advocacy in the press (Masson et al., 2021, etc.);
Angélique Gozlan, clinical psychologist, who has a record of promoting the “social contagion” canard (Gozlan & Masson, 2023), with which her remarks to the LR working group seem to have been of a piece (Sugy, 2024);
Magali Pignard, “autism mom” activist, who has promoted the “transing away the gay” canard (Pignard, 2023);
Olivia Sarton, attorney, who:
is affiliated with Juristes pour l’Enfance (“Lawyers for Children”), a right-wing legal advocacy group, in which capacity she has promoted the “social contagion” canard (Lamy, 2022);
in that capacity, is affiliated with Radio Espérance, a traditionalist Catholic radio network, where she has used her platform as co-host of Et le droit dans tout ça ?2 to promote a version of the “parental rights” line popular among anti-trans US conservatives (Mirkovic & Sarton, 2022);
Dr Samuel Veissière, clinician-researcher at CIUSSS of Montréal, who has promoted the “ROGD” and “social contagion” canards (Veissière, 2018a & 2018b; Serano, 2018);
is co-founder and president of Regards de Femmes (“Women’s Views”), an Islamophobic and trans-exclusionary feminist group (Lamy, 2022b);
is noted for her racist and Islamophobic views and her collaboration with the fascist website Riposte laïque (Secular Response) (Le Planning Familial, 2021);
Dr Catherine Zittoun, a child psychiatrist who has previously made remarks to FSSPX Attualità (“FSSPX News“) — the organ of the Society of St Pius X, a traditionalist Catholic group — suggesting that transmasculine youth are overly “hasty” in seeking transition (FSSPX Attualità, 2024).
The report makes 17 préconisations (“recommendations”), including that:
trans kids with “troubles psychopathologiques et/ou neurodéveloppementaux” (“psychopathologies and/or neurodevelopmental disorders”) should be diverted into psychotherapy as a first-line intervention (Préconisation 2);
trans kids should not be allowed to access trans healthcare services at all unless “détresse liée au genre perdure depuis la petite enfance” (“gender-related distress has persisted since early childhood”) (Préconisation 3);
no new prescriptions for puberty blockers should be issued, and referrals of trans kids for hormone replacement therapy or gender-affirming surgery should be prohibited outright — the report also implies that when practical these restrictions should be extended to apply to people up to the age of 25 (Préconisation 5);
the circulaire Blanquer (“Blanquer circular”) of 29 September 2021, which provides a modicum of gender recognition for trans students in French schools, should be withdrawn; instead, in accordance with “le principe de neutralité de l’Education nationale” (“the principle of neutrality in public education”), teachers should be directed to regard trans students as merely “enfants en questionnement de genre” (“gender-questioning children”) and address them according to their “état civil” (“civil status,” i.e., legal identity, in this case particularly meaning legal given name and assigned gender) (Préconisations 9, 10 & 11);
“associations qui ne respectant pas le principe de neutralité” (“organisations which do not respect the principle of neutrality”) — i.e., organisations who object to this approach — should be prevented from working with students (Préconisation 13);
measures should be taken to “[p]rotéger les espaces non mixtes” (“[p]rotect single-sex spaces”) in schools, including toilets, showers, and changing rooms (Préconisation 12);
administrative forms, acts, questionnaires, documents, and so on, which are distributed by a public authority or by a private entity exercising delegated public service authority, may only refer to “male” or “female” sex (Préconisation 15).
The Netherlands
Trans woman has biological advantage at … darts, apparently?
On 24 March, two members of the Dutch national women’s darts team, Anca Zijlstra (2024) and Aileen de Graaf, both cis women, quit in protest against the inclusion on the team of Noa-Lynn van Leuven, a trans woman (Zijlstra, op. cit.). Zijlstra also resigned her post with the Nederlands Darts Bond (NDB; “Dutch Darts Federation”), which oversees competitive darts in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Smit, 2024).
Van Leuven has also come under international attack, including from Tory MP Nick Fletcher and from Martina Navratilova (D. Burke, 2024).
Pakistan
Sindh
Mayor of Larkana receives trans delegation
On 25 March, Anwar Ali Nawaz Luhar, the mayor of Larkana, Sindh, met with a delegation of trans members of the Larkana Municipal Corporation. The delegation expressed their concerns regarding (“Complaint of LMC’s transgender members,” 2024):
barriers preventing trans people from acquiring a Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC);
the lack of provision for trans people in the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), which provides financial assistance to marginalised groups;
police attitudes toward trans people.
Thailand
Marriage Equality Act passes House
On 27 March, the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the National Assembly of Thailand, passed the Marriage Equality Act,3 which would make legal provision for same-gender marriage in Thailand. The Act passed with 400 MPs in favour, 10 against, 2 abstentions, and 3 members not voting (Human Rights Watch, 2024).
The Act must now be approved by the Senate of Thailand and must receive royal assent. While the monarch of the Commonwealth realms — who is the most familiar example of monarchy for me and, I suspect, many of SP Press’ readers — functionally cannot unilaterally refuse the assent (Allard-Tremblay, 2013), the Thai monarch functionally can do so, and the reigning King, Vajiralongkorn, has exercised that power with unusual frequency since his accession (Mérieau, 2017). However, there is no expectation that he will do so in this case. The Act is thus expected to become law by the end of 2024 (Head & Ng, 2024).
United Kingdom
BBC Sport: Just asking questions (2)
On 25 March, the BBC published the results of the BBC Elite British Sportswomen’s Study 2024 (BBC Sport, 2024). This year’s edition marks the fourth iteration of this poll, after 3 previous editions (Fordyce, 2013; BBC Sport, 2015 & 2020).
For the 2024 iteration, the BBC contacted 615 respondents in 28 different sports and received 143 responses. The 2024 Study contained the following 2 new questions relating to trans people, with the following results:
How comfortable do you feel about transgender athletes competing in female categories in your sport?
Very comfortable: 6 [4.2%];
Comfortable: 5 [3.5%];
Neutral: 21 [14.7%];
Uncomfortable: 45 [31.5%];
Very uncomfortable: 59 [41.3%];
Not applicable/don’t wish to answer: 5 [3.5%];
Did not answer: 2 [1.4%].
How comfortable would you feel speaking publicly on the topic of transgender athletes competing in female categories in your sport?
Very comfortable: 6 [4.2%];
Comfortable: 13 [9.1%]
Neutral: 21 [14.7%];
Uncomfortable: 50 [~35.0%];
Very uncomfortable: 46 [32.2%];
Not applicable/don’t wish to answer: 6 [4.2%];
Did not answer: 1 [0.7%].
Notably, this year’s instrument is the first to be titled a Study, despite no apparent changes in methodology; previous instruments referred to themselves as Surveys, connoting a more relaxed standard of rigour.
Paediatrics peak body makes fatal mistake of being normal in Britain
On 26 March, the response by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) to the Department for Education (DfE) consultation (HM Department for Education, 2023) on its draft Guidance for schools and colleges: gender questioning children became public. The response, written by Professor Andrew Rowland (2024), RCPCH Officer for Child Protection:
expresses that the RCPCH is “deeply concerned that the proposed guidance poses a risk to children and young people in that, if enacted, many of the measures set out are likely to cause distress for those who may be gender questioning or with gender incongruence, and their peers, and foster a negative school environment where children are not supported to be themselves” (p. 1);
expresses that the RCPCH is “concerned to see that the guidance states that parents should be involved other than in the ‘exceptionally rare circumstances where involving parents would constitute a significant risk of harm to the child’ … without citing evidence to demonstrate that this risk is, in fact, exceptionally rare” (pp. 1–2)
“invite[s] the Department to consider whether ‘significant risk of harm’ is the appropriate threshold for making decisions about excluding parents from such decisions”, given that “There is no statutory definition of ‘significant’” (p. 2)
expresses that the RCPCH is “particularly concerned by the provisions set out for primary school age children,” noting that not letting trans primary school students use their correct pronouns “removes an opportunity for primary schools to manage distress in young children who are gender questioning or with gender incongruence” (p. 3);
expresses the RCPCH’s belief that, “as currently worded, … it is more likely than not that education practitioners will be dissuaded from acting in a child’s best interests” (p. 2);
“urge[s] the Department to consider the responses to this consultation … in the context of their duty as outlined in the Children Act 1989 to ensure that the welfare of the child is the paramount consideration in all matters concerning them” (p. 1);
“ask[s] that the Department addresses how they meet this requirement specifically in their response to this consultation” (p. 1);
“recommend[s] that the Department commissions a full literature review in order to fully and wholly explore the potential consequences of informing parents that a child is gender questioning without their consent” (p. 2);
asserts “it is essential that the Department must … seek independent, objective advice on whether this guidance would be lawful under the Equality Act 2010, and whether it complies with all required Human Rights Conventions” (p. 3);
indicates that “The Department may find it helpful to look to” Gillickcompetency and the Fraser guidelines “as precedent for providing autonomy to children and young people” (p. 2).
The RCPCH response has attracted significant criticism, invariably from anti-trans groups and actors, including:
the Family Education Trust, a right-wing Christian advocacy group;
Nick Fletcher MP (CUP–Don Valley, England), a Tory MP with a consistent track record of anti-trans commentary (Baska, 2022; Stone, 2022a & 2022b);
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy for Sex Matters, an anti-trans advocacy group.
United States
Federal
In re Vague/Boe v Marshall: Judge-shopping case opened by case-shopping judge
A fountain playing outside the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama, United States, 13 December 2022. Huntsville is also US District Judge Liles C. Burke’s duty station. Photo by Megan Lee on Unsplash.
On 19 March, in the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, District Judge Liles C. Burke unsealed two documents:
The In re Vague inquiry was convened at Judge Burke’s request on the pretext that he believed “certain actions taken by counsel for the plaintiffs” in two cases, Walker v Marshall and Ladinsky v Ivey, “may have evidenced judge shopping”. The Panel decided on its own initiative to examine the conduct of plaintiffs’ counsel in an additional case, Eknes-Tucker v Ivey.
The plaintiffs in all three cases were trans and had filed suit on state actions or points of state law that were anti-trans in their effect in such a way that plaintiffs asserted they were unlawful. My view is that this is very likely to be material to Burke’s motivation. Burke, appointed to the District Court bench in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump (R), has collaborated with the Federalist Society (2016), a right-wing legal advocacy group renowned (Scherer & Miller, 2009) for the uncanny consistency with which judges who are its alumni consistently rule on constitutional questions in ways that entrench and advance conservative and fascist political ends seemingly regardless of irrelevances such as, for example, the “text,” per se, of the law in question (Ward, 2023).
Burke’s political views, to the extent that they are on record, could be characterised broadly as far-right, given that, for instance, as of 2017 he openly hung a portrait of Confederate president Jefferson Davis in his office (Gray, 2017). Burke has also displayed hostility to LGBTQ+ people in particular, pointedly refusing during his confirmation process to answer questions for the record concerning whether he thought that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States required states to treat queer couples equally to straight couples, or trans people equally to cis people (L.C. Burke, 2017).4
Given that Burke could credibly be described as a fascist it will perhaps not be altogether surprising that this appears to a case of “every fascist accusation is a confession”. The In re Vague report tries to give the impression that the attorneys under scrutiny intentionally subverted a process that those attorneys knew to be a fair random draw by leaning on instances where testimony indicated the attorneys described Burke as a “bad draw”. However, it is as a matter of fact not a “draw” at all if there’s only one ticket in the hat — as Harvard Law School’s Alejandra Caraballo (2022) has pointed out, there appear to be arrangements in place to ensure that a case touching on trans rights filed in either the Middle or Northern Districts of Alabama will be immediately procedurally redirected to Burke, arrangements egregious enough that Caraballo describes them as “rigging of court procedure to determine [the] outcome”. It therefore seems credible that Judge Burke may have been motivated by knowledge of his own conduct in deciding to go on the attack.
Given all the above it will also perhaps not come as a shock that the panel of inquiry — composed of 2 Bush appointees and a Trump appointee selected by a Bush appointee and a Trump appointee — found “without hesitation that” 11 of the 39 total attorneys for the plaintiffs across the 3 cases “purposefully attempted to circumvent the random case assignment procedures of the … District Courts”. The 21 February 2024 show cause order is issued pursuant to that report. The 11 attorneys are, in the sequence named in the show cause order:
Melody Eagan, of Lightfoot, Franklin & White, LLC;
Jeffrey Doss, of Lightfoot, Franklin & White, LLC;
Scott McCoy, of the Southern Poverty Law Center;
Jennifer Levi, of GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders;
Shannon Minter, of the National Center for Lesbian Rights;
James Esseks, of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU);
Kathleen Hartnett, of Cooley LLP;
Michael Shortnacy, of King & Spalding LLP.
LaTisha Faulks, of the ACLU of Alabama;
Asaf Orr, of the National Center for Lesbian Rights;
Carl Charles, of Lambda Legal.
The show cause hearing will take place on 22–23 May. If respondents fail in the Court’s opinion to show cause why they should not be sanctioned, then “the Court may consider one or more of … suspension from practice in the Northern and Middle Districts of Alabama; censure; public or private reprimand; disqualification; ineligibility for appointment as court-appointed counsel; ineligibility to appear pro hac vice or on behalf of the United States in the Northern and Middle Districts of Alabama; and monetary sanctions,” per the show cause order.
DeGross v Hunter: How dare you make us respect trans kids
On 22 March, in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a fascist legal advocacy group, filed suit against officials of the Washington Department of Children, Youth, and Families, on behalf of two plaintiffs, Jennifer and Shane DeGross.
Beginning in 2015, the DeGrosses were licensed by the Department to provide foster care. In 2022, the Department declined the DeGrosses’ request to renew their foster care license (Richardson, 2024) due to the DeGrosses’ active refusal to comply with Washington Administrative Code § 110-148-1520, which requires foster carers to “provide and arrange for care that is appropriate for the child’s … SOGIE [sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression]”. The plaintiffs allege religiously motivated discrimination amounting to:
declaratory relief (“A declaration that the Department’s policy violated and continues to violate Plaintiffs’ constitutionally protected rights to free speech, free association, religious exercise, and equal protection of the law”);
a permanent injunction forbidding the Department from taking similar action in future;
costs and expenses;
in relation specifically to the claims against lead defendant Ross Hunter, the Department’s secretary, nominal and punitive damages.
Data for Progress: New report confirms everything going to hell
On 28 March, Data for Progress published a report, “Anti-LGBTQ+ policies and rhetoric are harming LGBTQ+ lives,” by Kirby Phares et al. (2024). The report’s findings “emphasize the negative impacts of recent anti-LGBTQ+ policies and rhetoric on LGBTQ+ people’s lives, including a worse quality of life and mental health, experiences of discrimination and harassment, and difficulties accessing health care. Additionally, the findings point to the importance of having access to LGBTQ+ representation in media and LGBTQ+-affirming online spaces and resources, particularly for young people”.
Education Department: Curse your inevitable and not at all sudden betrayal
On 28 March, The Washington Post reported that anonymous sources in the US Department of Education have advised that the Biden administration will likely take no action prior to the general elections of November 2024 to finalise its proposed regulation of 6 April 2023 which would have formally instituted some protections for student athletes who are trans. This is not really news; the Biden administration has been finding excuses not to take any action in this area since 2022 (Heckler, 2024).
Disney: Are you a man or a Mouse?
The eastern façade of the Team Disney — Michael D. Eisner Building, the executive building at Disney’s headquarters complex in Burbank. The façade has caryatids of each of the eponymous dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) holding it up. Photo by Kristen Colada Adams on Unsplash.
If adopted, the NLPC resolution will request that Disney’s board of directors issue a report by 31 December 2024 detailing “how they address dysphoria and detransitioning care across gender classifications, including associated reputational, competitive, operational and litigative risks, and risks related to recruiting and retaining diverse talent” (National Legal and Policy Center, 2023).
California
Restrict Trans Youth Rights Initiative trudges on
On 16 March, at Glory Church in downtown Los Angeles, the Time to Stand Rally took place. The Rally was organised by a number of religious and “parental rights” organisations. Its goal was to collect signatures to place a ballot initiative before California voters at the November elections. If adopted, the ballot initiative — referred to by conservatives as the Protect Kids of California Act of 2024, but legally designated the Restricts Rights of Transgender Youthinitiative by Rob Bonta, California’s Democratic state attorney general — will (Kalish, 2024; Protect Kids California, 2023)
ban gender-affirming care for trans people under 18 in California (§ 11).
require schools to notify parents if a child comes out as trans (§ 5);
ban trans girls who are students in California schools from participating in sports or using facilities which are specified for their correct gender (§§ 6, 8 & 10).
City of Sacramento: Council resolves to be nice to trans people
On 26 March, the Sacramento City Council unanimously approved a “Resolution declaring the City of Sacramento a Sanctuary City for Transgender People,” moved by outgoing councilmember Katie Valenzuela (D–District 4). In adopting the resolution, the City Council resolved that:
“the City of Sacramento … declares itself a sanctuary city and a place of safety for transgender people” — s 1(A);
“the City … recognizes the importance of gender-affirming healthcare as a matter of health, privacy, and equality; and will ensure … that those rights are upheld for all people living, working, or seeking services within the City of Sacramento” — s 1(B);
“No city resources … shall be utilized for detaining persons for seeking or providing gender-affirming care” — s 2(A);
“No city resources shall be utilized for cooperating with or providing any information to any individual or out-of-state agency regarding the provision of lawful gender-affirming healthcare” — s 2(B).
Reception of the resolution has been mixed. Associate Professor Eric Stanley, the Haas Distinguished Chair in LGBT Equity at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Los Angeles Times (Deng, 2024) that the resolution is “more or less a political stunt,” noting that while it is very effective in signalling trans allyship on the part of the City Council, it contains no substantial provisions actually addressing the basic needs of trans people, an economically marginalised group, in California, one of the most expensive states in the country. Other than Stanley, the resolution was:
Title Board to decide whether fascists bound by law or just protected
On 3 April, the Colorado Title Board will hold a rehearing on Initiative 2023–2024 #175, unofficially designated “Prohibit Certain Medical Procedures for Minors” by legislative staff. If adopted, Initiative 2023–2024 #175 will ban gender-affirming care for trans people under 18 in Colorado. The Board approved the initiative on 6 March, but LGBTQ+ advocacy group One Colorado and other trans advocacy organisations have secured a rehearing on the grounds that the measure appears to violate the single-subject rule, which requires that ballot initiatives concern themselves with a single subject (Irizarry, 2024).
Georgia
HB 1104: Anti-trans “frankenbill” disappointingly fails to kill creators
On 26 March, the Georgia Senate passed HB 1104. In the form passed, HB 1104 bans trans youth from playing on sports teams and using sports facilities that are designated for their correct gender.
The bill has been described as a “frankenbill”; it is a previously innocuous bill onto which Republican Senators suddenly amended anti-trans language which had previously been killed when presented as its own bill (D. Richards, 2024).
Idaho
HB 668: The machine demands blood
On 27 March, Idaho Governor Brad Little (R) signed HB 668 into law. HB 668 prohibits Medicaid and state insurance programs from covering puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or gender-affirming surgical intervention. It will commence in effect 1 July (Maldonado, 2024).
Kansas
SB 233: The machine demands blood (2)
On 27 March, both chambers of the Kansas Legislature passed SB 233, which will ban gender-affirming care for trans people under 18 in Kansas. SB 233 now goes to Governor Laura Kelly (D) for her signature. It may or may not have a veto-proof majority; it was 2 votes short in the House due to absences, but both absent Representatives were Republicans who had previously voted in favour of the bill.
New York
A view along Seventh Avenue, Manhattan, New York City, New York. NYCPS CEC 2’s physical offices are located at an address on Seventh Ave. Photo by Tom Winckels on Unsplash.
Reaction to the resolution has been consistently chilly:
David Banks, Chancellor of New York City Schools, said the resolution is based on “unfounded and misleading” information, and described it as “excluding our trans students” (Russo, 2024);
the New York City Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus released a furious statement through its chair, Rita Joseph, expressing that the Caucus was “enraged and appalled” by the “disgraceful” resolution (Bottcher, 2024);
State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D–SD47) said “The anti-transgender resolution passed by CEC 2 … will not stand” (Hoylman-Sigal, 2024);
City Journal — the organ of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a right-wing think tank which has consistently advocated in opposition to trans rights — ran an article by Maron (2024), defending and promoting the resolution.
Ohio
Moe v Yost: Moe and Goe tell Ohio “no”
On 26 March, in the state Court of Common Pleas for Franklin County, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio filed suit against Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) and other Ohio state officers to bar implementation of HB 68, on behalf of two pseudonymous plaintiffs, “Madeline Moe” and “Grace Goe”. HB 68, which will take effect on 24 April unless stayed, will:
ban trans people under 18 from accessing gender-affirming care;
ban trans girls from competing on correctly-gendered school sports teams (Migdon, 2024a).
Moe and Goe are two trans girls, both 12 years old, who are both currently receiving medical transition care and will be forcibly medically detransitioned if HB 68’s health care ban provisions are allowed to commence.
§ 16, the Due Course of Law provision, which provides that “every person, for an injury done him … shall have remedy by due course of law”;
§ 21, which establishes that no authority may “prohibit the purchase or sale of Health Care or health insurance in the state of Ohio”;
art II § 15(D), the single-subject rule.
Plaintiffs are seeking:
a declaration by the Court that HB 68, both as a whole, and to the extent that it unconstitutionally restrains plaintiffs’ rights to healthcare, is void and without legal effect;
injunctions restraining the Attorney General and the State Medical Board of Ohio from enforcing HB 68 or disciplining violations thereof;
costs, expenses, and reasonable attorneys’ fees.
Texas
Doe and PFLAG: Court delivers third W in Texas history
On 29 March, at Austin, the Texas Court of Appeals, Third District, issued orders in Abbott v Doe and Muth v PFLAG affirming temporary injunctions issued by the 201st and 459th District Courts in Doe v Abbott and PFLAG v Abbott respectively.
According to OutSmart magazine of Houston, “[u]nder the upheld injunctions, [the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services] is prohibited from initiating investigations or taking any further actions against families solely based on allegations of providing gender-affirming care to their adolescents” (“Texas court upholds injunctions,” 2024).
Wisconsin
Doe v Elkhorn Area School District: The restroom gazes also into you
On 21 March, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Wardenski PC, a New York-based civil rights law firm, filed suit on behalf of a pseudonymous plaintiff, “Jane Doe,” against the Elkhorn Area School District and two of its officers.
Doe, a 13-year-old trans girl who is a seventh-grade student at Elkhorn Area Middle School, alleges that when she came out in November 2022, the District compelled her to use faculty restrooms in lieu of allowing her to use the correct student facilities and locker rooms for her gender, singling her out for unwanted attention and forcing her to miss class time. Doe asserts that this conduct is unlawful and that defendants have known it to be so since no later than 2017. Doe contends that defendants’ actions have caused her “emotional distress, embarrassment, social isolation, stigma, and heightened symptoms of gender dysphoria,” and that they amount to unlawful restraint of her rights under:
Title IX, which prohibits federally funded education programs from discriminating on the basis of sex;
1 — Formally, the Australian eSafety Commissioner is a single natural person, currently Julie Inman Grant. However, the Commissioner’s powers can be exercised by a delegate, as they were in this case; when the powers are exercised as such they are still exercised by the Commissioner, even though they are exercised by a different person. In an attempt to represent this as simply and as accurately as possible, the notice is referred to in the body of this piece simply as having been served “by the Commissioner,” without reference to a personal name.
2 — Literally, And the Law in All This?. However, the phrase is a snowclone, “Et le foo dans tout ça ?”, for which the customary English equivalent seems to be “What’s foo got to do with it?” — for instance, the 2022 English-language Netflix original What’s Love Got to Do With It? was released in Francophone countries as Et l’amour dans tout ça ?. Therefore, a more idiomatic translation of the title of Sarton’s show might be, appropriately enough, What’s the Law Got to Do With It?
3 — I was unfortunately unable to locate a copy of the Act in either English or Thai.
4 — In isolation, Burke’s response to the relevant questions simply says he “believe[s] it would be inappropriate to opine,” which might appear unobjectionable on its face. However, when asked other questions of case law which he is clearly affirming under duress, Burke uses a different response, of the form “I acknowledge that a higher court has decided this question; the precedent thus set would bind me, therefore I would rule accordingly”. On questions of treatment of LGBTQ+ people, by contrast, he refuses to provide a substantial answer at all.
5 — For SP Weekly, I generally prioritise stories based on the minimum absolute number of trans readers I think they will affect. To that end, while I cover government actions, such as legislation, as well as litigation that might establish binding precedent, I try to stay away from corporate affairs. Smith & Jones Widgets Pty Ltd might have just been rated a Platinum Employer on ACON’s Australian Workplace Equality Index but I doubt my readers are going to care enough to justify me putting in the energy to cover it.
However, The Walt Disney Company is a special case. Since 1967, Disney has governed a small territory in Florida as a de facto autonomous county, overlapping the de jure Orange and Osceola Counties. The Disney territory’s previous incarnation, the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID), had significantly more autonomy, but was abolished at the behest of Governor Ron DeSantis (R) through a legislative and judicial process which began with the passage of HB 9B of 2023. However, Disney still retains administrative responsibility for and power over the successor Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD), comparable to the power exercised by British or Australian local governments.
Consequently, for SP Weekly purposes, I treat The Walt Disney Company as a subnational government in the United States, and consider that the business of deliberative assemblies which are constituent parts of Disney or are convened on its authorities is legislative business and within scope. As Disney’s corporate operations extend throughout the United States and worldwide, the section in which news relating to Disney will be included is determined case-by-case depending on the area of relevance of the news in question.
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For Women Scotland Sport [@FWSSport] (2024, March 26). There are 5, that’s right 5, males who identify as women in this team. How long until there are no … [Tweet]. Twitter (X Corp.); Archive Today. Retrieved 28 March 2024. https://twitter.com/FWSSport/status/1772533581132308829
Kaltiala, R., Takala, L., Byng, R., Hutchinson, A., Spiliadis, A., … & Hunter, P.K. (2023, July 13). Youth gender transition is pushed without evidence. The Wall Street Journal (News Corporation); Archive Today. Retrieved 31 March 2024.
My SP Press email address, isabelle@severalproblems.press, has not worked since I migrated over from WordPress hosting, because I’m a music performance major and I get cute little question marks over my head when someone says the words “SMTP authentication” or “MX record”.
