How J.K. Rowling and transphobes are forcing men into women's bathrooms

Jaxon Feeley, trans man 

One of the clear signs of bigotry is how its proponents do not  understand the unintended consequences of their own irrational hatred. They need their "solutions" to their imaginary problems to be neat and easy to handle.

J. K. Rowling and the TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) celebrated their UK Supreme Court victory this week as a victory for women (i.e. cis women). 

They clearly believe that this means that trans women will  be excluded from women's spaces, including bathrooms, in the future.

What they have not considered is  the fact that they have now opened the doors of women's bathrooms to men. 

Indeed, if the British government follows up on this Supreme Court madness (gender reduced to "biological sex" at birth), trans men will be forced to either use the women's room or break the law.

A trans man in the restroom

Imagine this scenario: A trans man (indistinguishable from a cis man) walks into a woman's restroom to do their thing. Imagine one of the women in there alerting a male friend or the staff about this male incursion into female spaces. This may quickly escalate into something ugly.

The Weight of America: Transgender People Under Siege

American society is like the inside of this monstrous mall, where people move like “sentient corpses". Photo: estherpoon

America has truly lost its soul, Kai McKenzie argues. Trans people find themselves under siege.

Guest article by Kai McKenzie 

As I sit in my Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada rental home, looking out at the quiet and cold snow-covered porch and yard outside, the ice crystals on the window glowing magically in the morning sunlight, and the little flecks of snow drifting upward on the breeze outside and catching the light like fireflies, I feel the weight of America. 

It’s inescapable. It follows and haunts me. I feel a fierce anger at the country where I was born, at the citizens who have thrown me and my children away, who barely bat an eye as our fellow trans citizens are erased from monuments, histories, medical records, and public life. America has truly lost its soul. 

The faces of the US

Born in Boulder, Colorado in 1964, growing up in Berkeley, California during the tumultuous 1960s and 70s, living in Boulder again for three decades before moving to Saskatchewan, Canada in 2018 for school, I’ve seen the many faces of the US: the liberal college town of Berkeley with its diversity and pride, colourful protests and street performers, passionate desire to stand up for human rights and fairness; the sleepy town of 29 Palms, California in the Mojave Desert, near the 29 Palms Marine Corp Base, where being American means being faithful and proud, ready to invade and stand strong at the behest of a Commander in Chief; Nashville, Tennessee, where my parents moved for a distinguished professorship in mathematics, a mix of southern tradition and new immigrants. 

Trump and the transphobes won in the US. But there are still ways trans people can win.

To defeat Trump and right-wing extremists, pro-democracy advocates must help humanize trans people in the eyes of Americans. Photo: Valeria Blanc.

Let us not beat about the bush:  the election of Donald Trump is a disaster, for LGBTQ people, for America, and for those who want to make our societies more open to diversity and inclusion. This is going to be hard. But this "culture war" is not over. There are so many good people fighting for a better world out there, and if we act appropriately, tolerance and compassion may still prevail in the end.

But first, let us see where we are right now:

The Bad

Americans have elected a person who is - at best - an unhinged, aggressive populist, but who also tick off nearly all the boxes of what constitutes a Fascist. 

We will now get a new administration in Washington packed with people who do not respect the basic rules of a democracy. 

In other words: If the anti-fascists of the US do not manage to handle that danger, the worst-case scenario is the end of real American democracy. This is what happened in Germany when parts of the establishment decided that Adolf Hitler was a man they could manage.

Many are exhausted from enduring Donald Trump's toxic mental instability for over eight years. There is no rest where we can have moments in safe spaces of rationality and optimism. Trump is a seriously sick man, a narcissist incapable of genuine human compassion. And he is getting worse. The next four years are going to be bad.

But we are not where the Germans were in 1933 yet. And it is important to keep that in mind. This is not the end of this story. Actually, this may be the start of a better one.

Today's anti-trans activism is about so much more than transgender people

LGBTQ people scare the fearful because they seem to threaten their imagine world order.
Photo: valentin russanov

The extreme anti-trans activism we see today is about much more than gender diversity. The transphobia is driven by a deep and irrational fear of the unknown, a fear political extremists are exploiting in order to gain power.

When I started this blog back in 2008, most of the transgender debate gave the impression of being about "facts", both inside and outside the transgender community. We wrote article after article about science addressing gender variance and the real life experiences of trans people themselves.

Sure, there were transphobic activists around, as well as transphobic pseudo-science. But many believed that it should and could be possible to come to an agreement on what gender variance was, based on sound science and the lived experience of trans people.

Those of us who took part in the debate back then, still have a tendency to appeal to science, facts and the reality of the lived experience of trans people when debating transgender issues, the idea being that  our opponents will actually listen to knowledge-based arguments. It worked before, so why not now?

This is about much more than gender identity

In order to understand this, it is important to understand that the current backlash against transgender people is not really about transgender people in isolation  – or about what it really means to be transgender. 

It may look as if the "debate" continues to be about "facts", given that anti-trans activists often refer to "science" when dismissing transgender identities. But the truth is that this has nothing to do with science or facts. This is all about feelings, and particularly about  the fear of the unknown. They are not debating in order to learn. They are debating in order to win. They seek control.

Moreover, at this point in history the social and economic context makes it so much easier to use transphobia as a political tool.

Against the «common sense» of anti-rights groups (Part 1)

It is very common in anti-rights discourse to appeal to arguments whose authority lies, according to them, in “reality itself.” Thus, religious groups, trans-exclusionary radical feminists, libertarian conservatives, alternative right-wingers, liberals of dubious neutrality, and even orthodox leftists, invoke the apparently innocuous and incontestable mantle of common sense.

By guest writer Amilka González

Every time these groups obtain what they consider a small victory against the LGBTIQ population —that is, a setback in terms of human rights— and especially against the trans population, they cheer: Common sense has won! This is what happened recently in Spain with the reduction of LGBTI laws by the Government of the Community of Madrid —for a detailed approach to this situation, we recommend reading here , here and there .

Throughout the international arena where anti-rights groups strive to impose anti-rights rhetoric, the same script is repeated. The central point of their arguments is that common sense must necessarily be the guideline to follow when it comes to settling social disputes around sex and gender. And, according to them, their only interest here is to defend common sense and truth.

In this article we will try to answer several questions: What do these groups mean by common sense? In what ways can this elusive concept be understood in the context of science? What advantages or disadvantages would using common sense give us to resolve important differences in our societies? 

Let's see.

What is common sense? 

«Common sense is, as its name indicates, the unanimous feeling of the entire human race (...) of all times and all places, wise or ignorant, barbarian or civilized.» 

Amadeo Jacques. «Memory about common sense»

First of all, this is not a simple question and answering it in a non-superficial way is challenging. From a historical point of view, to get an idea of the magnitude of the issue, it is enough to know that common sense has been attempted to be defined many times since ancient times —and maybe, since very distant galaxies. 

Gender variation, normalcy, "autogynephilia" and the culture war

I was talking to the transgender blogger Joanna Santos on WhatsApp the other day and we made some observations regarding generational shifts regarding the role of transphobic theories like "autogymephilia" in the lives of trans and gender variant people.

If we allow ourselves to generalize a bit we may say that the older generations (boomers and those 50+) have had to face several challenges:

1. The oppression and shaming that is associated with such theories, when used in politics and public spaces.
2. The way these theories can be used by family and friends.
3. The way these narratives easily become internalized, leading to shame, suppression of transgender dreams, fear, anger and depression.

The younger generation, and especially Gen Z and the Millenials, more often face only one of these three:

1. The oppression and shaming that is associated with such theories, when used in politics and public spaces.

The right wing and TERF backlash against transgender rights makes this remaining bullet-point painfully visible right now, but as Joanna pointed out to me, young people today get their gender affirmed by those who matter: Friends and family. 

A new culture for the young

Younger cis people may not fully understand what being trans means, but are more likely to have grown up in a cultural setting where you respect and accept the identities of others, and where marginalized groups are to be included and not ostracized.

Why is it so hard for a scientist like Richard Dawkins to understand the difference between sex and gender?

Richard Dawkins find it hard to grasp the difference between gender and biological sex, reducing gender identity to a matter of procreation in the process. No wonder he is loved by transphobic TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).

Richard Dawkins is now actively helping anti-trans activists. How can such a renowned scientist end up in such a bad place?

Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and Ray Blanchard all belong to what I would call a school of traditional gender role thinking masquerading as science based facts. 

If  you go through their arguments it soon becomes clear that the statement "gender is biological sex" is simply a rephrasing of the sentence "biological sex is biological sex and biological sex," which explains nothing. But this is clearly about reproduction. Gender is reduced to sperm and eggs. They cannot grasp reality of the concept of gender as something related to, but still different from, biological sex. 

Dawkins discusses trans people with a gender critical TERF

In the video below, where Dawkins discusses transgender identities with Helen Joyce,  Dawkins find it "distinctly weird that people can simply declare that 'I am a woman, though I have a penis'". He sees this as "a strange distortion of language."

Is America turning completely transphobic? Not really!

The current onslaught on transgender people in the US is extreme and destructive, and it is easy to get the impression that most Americans have become rabid transphobes. That is in no way the case, something trans people and their friends should keep in mind.

Fox News is in not a source of fact based balanced information. The fact that they finally have sacked Tucker Carlson does not change that. But the truth is that as far as opinion polls go, they are pretty reliable. 

On April 26 they published a poll that showed that for the most part the majority of Americans do not support the Republican "culture war."

When asked about  the most important issue facing the country today, only 1% answered "Wokeness/Transgender issues".  The fact that the survey saw wokeness and transgender issues as one and the same thing, says a lot about Fox, but the answer says even more about Americans.  Transgender people are not seen as a threat by most.

So what did Americans see as important? "Economy/Jobs" (24%),  obviously, followed by "Inflation/Cost of living" (16%) and "Gun control/Gun violence" (12%). 

As far as gun violence goes, this is not an answer in support of Republican politics. Far from it. American voters favor gun limits over arming citizens to reduce gun violence. 87% support requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers.

Many observers now argue that the Republican Party's obsession with "culture wars" will cost them dearly in the 2014 election. 

Targeting families with trans kids is seen as a major problem by Americans

60% of the respondents say that school boards banning books is a major problem. There is no call for censorship of LGBTQA books in schools.

What "queer" means and why it is such a useful word

 

"Queer" is a great word that can be used to describe those who not belong to the heterosexual/non-transgender majority.

Sometimes, but just sometimes, the queer debate becomes so neurotic that it does more harm than good. The discussion about the term queer can serve as one example of this. We have become so afraid of offending anyone that we dismiss terms that can serve us well, because they were once used as slurs.

"Queer" originally meant strange or odd. In the US it became a slur used against everyone cisgender/heteronormative people saw as gay. 

Since the early 1990s, however, an increasing number of gender diverse and non-heterosexual people have been using it as an umbrella term for all kinds of variance in the realms of sexuality and gender. 

Is queer a slur?

How can you use a slur to describe a group of people that is constantly bullied, harassed and invalidated? The answer: Because we can. 

Transgender and nonbinary news curation in social media

We provide links to the latest transgender and queer news and resources through our social media channels on twitter, tumblr, Flipboard and Telegram.

Anyone who wants to keep track of the transgender and queer debate – whether this applies to culture, politics, health or models of understanding – is facing a serious challenge as to how to find relevant news and quality content.

Search engines like Google are becoming increasingly irrelevant in this respect, as few of us go beyond the first two pages of search results and because so much of the content delivered is produced by anti-trans and anti-queer activists.

This is why we need curators who can identify and share relevant content with those who want to know more about trans, nonbinary and queer issues.

Here's the problem: There is, to our knowledge, very few who provide such services. Reddit provides some input of this kind, but it is limited to the interests of those active there. Sites like Pink News, The Advocate, LGBTQ Nation, and Washington Blade provide a lot of useful information, but they are – for obvious reasons – focusing on their own content.

This is why we are providing transgender, nonbinary and queer news curation in several channels, the latest of which is our Transgender World Telegram channels.

Here are our our transgender and queer news sites and accounts:

Trans Express on twitter.
This is our most expansive and up to date news source. We post some five to ten links of relevant content every day.

Trans Express on tumblr.
On average we publish one new post presenting relevant transgender and queer content every day.

Transgender News on Flipboard
Here we present much of the same content as on twitter, but in a practical newspaper format.

Transgender World on Telegram
Telegram is our newest offering. We realized that there were no serious transgender news sources on this popular platform and decided to provide our own. This channel will present selected links from the sources mentioned above.

Photo: Alessandro Biascioli

Is it OK for a cis woman to refuse treatment from a transgender gynecologist?

Photo of transgender gynecologist Petra De Sutter from Open Dialogue.

Petra De Sutter is a gynecologist and politician, currently serving as the federal Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium. Would it be OK for a cis woman to ask for another female gynecologist, if Petra was the one assigned to her? 

Sometimes I get questions via tumblr over at my Trans-Express news blog. Some are genuine and well meant, while others are traps set by transphobes who aim at luring me into saying something they can use against trans people in general.

The following question might have been such a trap:

Do you believe that if a woman or girl requests a female gynaecologist, and the gyno is a pre-transition trans woman, the patient is transphobic for being uncomfortable or asking for a cis woman doctor? Genuine question.

There is, in fact, a good chance this questions was written by a British TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). 

However, as I started thinking about the question I realized that this was an opportunity to say something more about the kind of bigotry we find in racism, homophobia and transphobia. So I wrote an answer.

Here it is:

---

Social conditioning

There are many levels of bigotry – being this racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other kind of aversion felt towards minority groups. The phobia can be conscious, deliberate and hateful, or it can be implicit and an indirect effect of cultural prejudices.

One of the ways society keep marginalized groups excluded is by conditioning its citizens to fear or loathe them. This is not only a mental process; it is an emotional form of conditioning.

Kids will, from a very young age, see that their parents and peers express distaste when meeting – or talking about – members of these groups.

The same adults will often use the same kind of expressions as when they talk about something diseased, rotten or corrupt. Kids pick up on these feelings. They develop the same emotional responses.

With Biden We May be Back to the Transgender Tipping Point

In 2014 we had the "transgender tipping point". Then, shortly after, we had the "transgender backlash", as religious extremists, fascists and trans-exclusionary "radical feminists" tried to turn the gender clock back to the 19th century. Like most right wing extremist Trump skillfully played the transphobia card to rally his MAGA-base. With Biden we may now be facing another and much more positive shift.

As I have reported over at my Trans Express blog, the Biden administration has proven itself to be pro-LGBTQA and it is pro-transgender. It does nothing to hide it. Biden has already signed the first executive order on LGBTQA rights, and it reads like a rainbow manifesto:

Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.

Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.

Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes.

People should be able to access healthcare and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination.

All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.

The ban on transgender people in the military will be abolished any day now, and the White House web site has already started asking for pronouns.

The Ultimate Proof of Transgender Identities Being Real

The very existence of transgender people proves that transgender identities are real.

If you belong to those who love fixed gender roles and who get scared when someone question the binary, you have probably made one of the following arguments when addressing transgender people and "strange" gender identities:

• The gender identities of transgender people are not real!
• It is all in their mind!
• Gender identity is the same as biological sex – which  means gonads, genitalia or chromosomes!
• Show me the science!

Truth to be told, most scientists swith expertise in the area of gender variance agree that gender is different from biological sex and that transgender identities are real. Most of them also argue that there is a biological component to such identities, although they also point to the extreme complexity of sex and gender development.

Be that as it may, we do not actually need science to prove that transgender identities are real. The very existence of trans people is proof enough.

Huh? How can the existence of trans people prove that trans people are real?

• If there was a simple and persistent one to one relationship between gonads and gender identity there would be no transgender people. 
• If the XY chromosome was the basis for a male gender identity there would be no transgender women. 
• If ovaries ensured the development of a female gender identity there would be no trans men.

Yet here they are, people who persistently, continuously and intensely experience that they are of another gender than the one they were assigned at birth.

But it is all in their minds!

But that is the point, is it not? Our experience of being a man or a woman or some shade of nonbinary has to be in our minds. Where else could it be? 

A man's sense of being a man is not located in his genitalia, is it? I admit that in some cases this might seem to be the case, given the way some men behave, but in general I think we all can agree that that their sense of self is a matter of the mind.

Sure, our feelings are anchored in our bodies, as expressions of hormones, muscles, blood, nerves and personal histories, but the conscious experience of them is in our minds. It has to be, for all of us.

Understanding the tactics of TERFs

Trans-exclusionary radical feminists are now actively harassing transgender kids in an attempt to erase their identities. (Photo:  Antonio Guillem)

Here's how trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) are trying to hide their transphobic bigotry.

I never recommend that trans people get engaged in online discussions with militant TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). Many of them are Internet trolls, and there will be no constructive debate.

Nevertheless,  a few times a year I do engage with them on twitter, partly to show those who are listening in that there is a different way of looking at transgender people, and partly to find out how the TERFs think. There are not many of them, but they do some serious damage, and in order to limit that damage, we need to understand what drives them.

The two main groups of TERFs

There is no simple answer to that, as the TERFs are not a homogenous group. Still, if we allow for some simplification, we could say that there are at least two groups of women associated with their cause:

1. White, straight, middle or upper class women, who are looking for some kind of excuse to force transgender children back into the closet and restrict transgender women to their homes.
2. Militant "radical feminists".  The latter group consists mainly of real cis lesbians (some of them channeling aggressive  masculine energies), or cis straight women who resent men so much that they "have abandoned heterosexuality" (also known as "political lesbians").

The most vocal trolls belong to the second category.

(Please note that these women represent a very small, but active, minority among feminists. Most feminists, lesbians included, support transgender people.)

Identifying people by their genitals is not science

Dr. Ketil Slagstad, the editor of the leading Norwegian medical journal – The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association – gives a good summary of current research on sex and gender in the latest edition.

“Biologically speaking, we all fall somewhere along a spectrum of sexes, of which male and female represent the extreme ends,” he writes and gives succinct summary of the current research front.

“...an increasing amount of knowledge is available with regard to the biological complexity of sex, and proof that the binary sex model finds no support in biology.”

Old men fighting for an old world order

He strongly criticizes  the current attacks against intersex and transgender people:

"The pattern is one of ageing, authoritarian, heterosexual men discriminating against minorities in a wish to appease their voters. There is no room in their world view for the human complexity that actually characterises the societies they are elected to govern; but the ideas of purity that are partly rooted in national conservatism and partly in religious fundamentalism are not echoed by science.“

Indeed, the current backlash against transgender people is partly caused by cynical politicians and religious leaders who are using people's fear of the unknown to forward their own interests.

On lesbians, transgender people and feminism

Here is another question I got over at tumblr:

What definition of "lesbian" and "feminist" does this blog use? I appreciate that male-inclusionists use the term egalitarian for themselves. Why use feminist for yourselves when you support gender essentialism and refuse to acknowledge sex-based oppression?

Yes, I know, this is most likely a trans-exclusionary "radical feminist" trying to get me to show the world that I am misogynistic anti-feminist. But I cannot let an opportunity like this get wasted.  Here is my reply:

What is a lesbian?

A lesbian is normally defined as a homosexual woman, meaning that she is sexually attracted to people of her own gender. I believe that sexual orientation can often be more fluid than the binary this concept grows out of allows for, but for many this represents a perfect description of their sexuality.

Feminism

A feminist is a person who supports feminism. As I see it, feminism should at least include the following:

1. A clear understanding of how our societies (which are dominated by men and the Patriarchy) stop women from from achieving equals status to men as regards real power and influence, employment and salaries, legal framework, social welfare and services, as well as personal respect and validation. Moreover, feminism will have to include political means by which to change this.

But that is not enough. The oppression of women is so effective, because it is part of our language, the mental maps we use to navigate the world, and our institutions. This explains why women sometimes are as strong supporters of the status quo as men are (as in women voting for Trump and Putin).

Therefore feminism must include:

2. The goal of replacing the Patriarchy with a new understanding of biological sex, sexuality and cultural gender where men, women and non-binary people are understood as equals – politically, socially, and culturally. This is a society where being a man is no longer understood to be the default norm for being human, and where men no longer dominate.

Biological sex should be irrelevant. Sexual orientation should be irrelevant. Gender identity should be irrelevant. Everyone should be seen as human first, anything else second. But we are definitely not there yet. I live in a country where the three most powerful politicians are women, but where women continues to be belittled, ignored, dismissed and harassed because they are women.

Transphobic propaganda and the myths of desistance and regret

The great majority of transitioning trans people do not regret their decision to live as their true gender.

It is interesting to see how transphobic, lesbian,  "radical feminists" (TERFs) use the exact same arguments that were used to invalidate and marginalize lesbians. 

The most common one was that homosexuality was an acquired sexual perversion caused by the propaganda of the homosexual movement. If you could protect children from the gay movement, there would not be any lesbians.

This is obviously the same argument that is used today to stop lesbians from adopting children. Lesbian parenting is unnatural, will hurt the children and make them gay and so on and so forth.

The desitance-argument

The desistance-argument forms the foundation of the TERF argument against the the identity of transgender people. Since so many gender variant people, in the end, do not chose to transition, the TERFs assume that none of them are really of the gender they claim to be.  They have been duped by trans activists.

This is a completely misleading reading of the research available, as it mixes up gender nonconformity with gender identity. 

Variation in gender expression is used as a way of exploring both identity and sexuality among straight, gay and queer people. You will find “butch”, “femme” and “androgynous” people among all of them. 

The majority of these people are not gender dysphoric. They do not experience a severe misalignment between their gender identity and their assigned gender, or between mind and body. They simply express masculinity, femininity or any other aspect of cultural gender in a way that feels right for them.

Post-election Crossdreamer Blues

After a really bad week I am pulling myself together. I am not going to sit still and watch the transphobes ruin the lives of a new generation of gender variant people. Here's what I shared with my friends over at Crossdream Life today:

I normally avoid discussing politics in trans fora, and plan to continue to do so in the future. Being pro-trans or anti-trans is not really a right wing/left wing conflict.

In Europe you will find right wing governments that change laws in order to help trans people (which recently happened in th UK and Norway). In other word: Both liberals, socialists and conservatives are supporting LGBTQA rights.

However, today I feel that I need to speak out.

The backlash against tolerance and diversity is real and it is clearly associated with the recent nationalist upsurge in countries like Russia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Britain and now, the United States. And it seems to be spreading.

I know that quite a few of my crossdreamer friends have had some really, really, bad days since Tuesday, trying hard to cope with the fact that the next US president has allied himself with some of the most homophobic and transphobic people in the world. He might wave the LGBT flag, but when his vice president believes in conversion therapy, we know we are in for a rough patch.

I have already talked about the way this election triggered childhood memories of hazing and bullying in me. The attitude expressed by many Americans right now also remind me of the kind of culture I grew up in: Where any form of femininity or female identification in male assigned people was considered degrading.

What Drives Transphobia?

I got the following question from a blogger over at tumblr who is working on a research paper:

"Who do you see is more susceptible to being transphobic? Like...types of people?" 

Not all transphobes are conservative. The
radical feminist icon Germaine Greer is one
of the most extreme haters today. (Getty  Images)

Here is what I answered:

I would say that insecurity, anxiety and fear are the main drivers for transphobia, in the same way they are for homophobia, racism and sexist attitudes.

Life is not without its risks, and it takes a strong mind to handle all the uncertainty life throws at us.

If you have been raised in a dysfunctional family, or you are taught to fear “the others”, or you live in troubled times, it is easy to fall back on the more primitive sides of our minds.

Scapegoats

We look for someone to blame; we look for a place to vent our fear, and we do so by turning our fear into anger. We then channel that anger towards those that are different, the ones we do not understand.

This may give  us a much wanted emotional release, and for a moment it looks like we have a solution to our problem. For instance: "If we can only get rid of those pesky LGBT people, everything will go back to the way it once was, back in the good old days”.

Another group of people are using the same language and playing on fear without feeling it themselves. These are people who understand such social and psychological processes intimately, and who make use of them to gain power and influence. Many of them are borderline sociopaths or full-fledged psychopaths. Adolf Hitler comes to mind.

US Report Calls for Ban on Conversion Therapies for Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Youth

A short little update here on LGBT policies in the US, as it may help many of us gain some perspective on where the general consensus is right now as regards sexual diversity and gender variance.

The US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) has published a report on so-called "conversion therapies",  based on a thorough review of current research.

The expert panel was set up by SAMHSA and the American Psychological Association (APA) earlier this year, and included prominent American figures in LGBT human rights, policy, research, treatment, and advocacy.

"This groundbreaking report dispels widespread misconceptions about sexual and gender development and definitively concludes that treatments designed to change a child's sexual orientation or gender identity do not work, are devastatingly harmful to 'victims' of this type of therapy, and should not be considered appropriate mental health services," Dr. Celia B. Fisher, who served on the expert consensus panel says.

Conversion therapy does not work

Indeed, the main conclusions in the report are clear:

• "Same-gender sexual orientation (including identity, behavior, and attraction) and variations in gender identity and gender expression are a part of the normal spectrum of human diversity and do not constitute a mental disorder.
• "There is limited research on conversion therapy efforts among children and adolescents; however, none of the existing research supports the premise that mental or behavioral health interventions can alter gender identity or sexual orientation.
• "Interventions aimed at a fixed outcome, such as gender conformity or heterosexual orientation, including those aimed at changing gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation are coercive, can be harmful, and should not be part of behavioral health treatment."

Gender variance is not pathological

The message from the American Psychological Association is also clear: Being a sexual or
gender minority, or identifying as LGBTQ, is not pathological.