Right-wing media are whipping up a dangerous anti-trans frenzy in this country, as evidenced quite clearly by the rash of anti-trans laws being passed by GOP-controlled states, and recent violent white nationalist attacks on Pride and drag queen events. But “liberal” media are also culpable for this shift against trans people and their very right to exist.
In the latest example, the New York Times Magazine‘s cover story “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” (6/19/22) wondered if gender-affirming care for trans kids shouldn’t be so easy to access. In doing so, it laundered far-right views for a broader audience, making hostility to trans people’s basic rights more acceptable.
The Times‘ Emily Bazelon wrote that she interviewed “more than two dozen young people and about the same number of parents” for her story. On the magazine’s cover, a young fair-skinned person’s hand, wrist encircled with flowers, rests on a lightly stubbled leg.
But those young people are not at the heart of the story, which opens with a cisgender doctor, Scott Leibowitz, who works with trans youth and is helping to revise international guidelines on care for trans adolescents. After publishing a draft of the revision for public comment, Leibowitz and his co-authors, Bazelon explains, were prepared for backlash from “opponents of gender-related care,” but they
also faced fury from providers and activists within the transgender world. This response hit them harder, as criticism from your colleagues and allies often does.
It’s explicitly framed as a compromise position: the reasonable path between extremes. Later, Bazelon points to another medical professional who “worries that the loud voices on all sides are the extreme ones,” and says:
In our society right now, something is either all good or all bad. Either there should be a vending machine for gender hormones or people who prescribe them to kids should be put in jail.
Limiting transition
But as trans historian Jules Gill-Peterson (Sad Brown Girl, 6/15/22) pointed out, just because doctors offer gender-related care doesn’t mean, as Bazelon suggests, that they are allies to trans people. “Transgender medicine was deliberately intended by its architects to prevent and limit as many trans people as possible from transitioning,” Gill-Peterson explained:
It has primarily done so by establishing the narrowest of eligibility criteria possible. And the great expense of transition has kept it out of reach for most trans people, regardless of whether or not they might be able to qualify under any medical model.
No matter how often trans advocates explain this central issue to journalists, “liberal” media continue to churn out stories taking doctors as the foremost and neutral experts on the matter, and centering “tricky questions”—Bazelon’s words—about potential regret on the part of those transitioning.
In other words, while the right and the medical establishment may see themselves as being on very different sides of this issue—and justifiably so, in many ways—both still seek to control whether or which trans people get to exist. By placing doctors in the center of the story of trans healthcare, acting as the “balance” between trans activists and the right, is to misrepresent the playing field, and to stack the deck against those who should be centered: trans people themselves.
‘Clear claim to being marginalized’
Bazelon quotes several trans activists who are critical of the medical profession. She notes that trans people have “often been failed by healthcare providers.” She also notes that “there is often no gender clinic and sometimes no therapist or doctor to help transgender kids—who often still face bullying and harassment—navigate the process of coming out,” such that “states like Arkansas are banning care where it is already rare.” But none of this changes her basic story and its assumptions.
Nor does her acknowledgment that rates of regret for trans adults are “very low” (as in around 1%) and rates of suicide attempts for trans kids are “terribly high” (35%) stop her from, at the same time, highlighting several stories of regret.
Bazelon describes stories of multiple adolescents who announced they were trans, but later backtracked before starting medical treatment, as what can only read as “dodged a bullet” stories, with references to “the way [internalized] misogyny affected their thinking,” or the supposed allure of the chance to “join a community with a clear claim to being marginalized and deserving of protection.”
She writes of Grace Lidinsky-Smith, who “has written about her regret over taking testosterone and having her breasts removed in her early 20s,” and “wished she’d had the kind of comprehensive assessment the last Standards of Care endorsed for adults.” (Bazelon does not note that Lidinsky-Smith is an activist who leads a group that supports strict limits on transition, arguing that “desistance is common.”)
At the same time, only one story of an attempted suicide is told—in the voice of a parent Bazelon found through an anti-transition online group, and who claims her child, who had previously attempted suicide, became “more volatile” after starting puberty suppressants.
Elevating stories of detransition is very popular in centrist media (see, e.g., FAIR.org, 5/5/22; Them, 5/25/21), but it creates the illusion that the risk of changing one’s mind about transition is much more common than it is, and that the risk of young people not being able to access care is much lower than it is. In a political environment that is putting trans youth in the crosshairs, the New York Times‘ failure to listen to and center trans people in their coverage is criminal.
You can send a message to the New York Times Magazine at magazine@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTMag). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
I think a good starting question isn’t “what do we do about transgender” which really isn’t any of our business. It’s, “how would we talk about transgender people if they had any say in the matter?”
In America, everyone without power is fair game to deride. Did you hear what what this idiot teen said? That homeless man smelled like chicken! The word Mexican is almost a punchline by itself in some circle, as is the prefix ghetto. Maybe your liberal or lefty friends might stop you. But the journalists doing this reporting are going to remember what it was like before anyone cared, and deep down, that’s what they want, that’s why they publish this noise. It’s not that they hate trans people as much as they don’t want to move onto a worldview without any of this cultural gatekeeping against the powerless. And now that we’re not letting them get away with it, they’re ever so politely reminding people to stop it with the discussions of having dignity and respect.
This is an enlightening piece, showing how corporate media in the USA, just as here in the UK, present a particular political stance as if it were unquestionably neutral and moderate, when in fact it is extreme and damaging. The views of doctors, as the piece states, are regarded by the liberal intelligentsia as the voices of reason against the uneducated, stupid public and patients. Yet the history of medicine shows how politically-committed to far-right politics the medical profession has been, such as promoting eugenics and opposing the creation of the NHS. Trans people need the solidarity of the working class.
Call me an Ashkenazi Nazi Julie, I just don’t think that we should be sterilizing kids, eliminating their ability to orgasm, filling them with false promises about neo-vaginas, placing them on life long drug treatments, increasing their risk of osteoporosis and heart problems just because the kids say they transgender without a real good examination of all the issues that might be involved, family, gastroenterology, psychological.
So yeah bae, call me a Nazi for asking for the medical industry to treat this seriously and not just as a life long series of cash flows discounted by the time value of money
Jay, quick question:
Which of the following below supervenes upon the other?
(a) a living human being standing in front of you whose thoughts, emotions, feelings, and sense of being while not identical to your own are analogous to your own.
(b) something you’ve seen, heard, read or watched online that you have no way of empirically verifying or validating?
Is virtual reality more real than empirical reality in your view, or?
Hey Tone Troll, It’s hard enough getting through the teen years without opening the door to teen sterilization, puberty blocker drugs and other non-reversal, lifelong medical treatments etc, just because a KID (under 18 years old) desires a medical transition ASAP. So call me crazy but doctors should treat this – no changing your mind, no going back procedures – damn seriously.
Puberty blockers ARE reversible., unlike puberty.
I think “tone troll” is just doing his job ; not trying to argue, think or have a conversation, just doing his job.
Finally, a reasonable comment on the rush to alter children surgically before they have any real personal knowledge of what gender means.
Low quality post for FAIR. This writer is basically crying that Bazelon interviewed the wrong trans people. No fair interviewing the ones who regret it!
Well, not really. The writer shows clearly that there was little or no attempt to gain the views of the almost complete majority of post-treatment trans people who are happy, even overjoyed, at what the medical profession has given them. Would you be content to read a piece about abortion which featured only those women who regretted it?
Rebecca,
One of the interesting notes in Julie’s piece….is the way she decides not to discuss that one of the doctors involved in the piece is a transwoman, who is in favor “limiting the scope” of who gets transition. A doctor who has been involved with transition services for something like 20 years.
Julie just says “doctors” versus “trans folks”, while ignoring the crossover individual, who unarguably has the MOST experience with situation.
One of the problems with both trans activists and anti-trans bigots on the detransition/desistance issue, is how extremely bad the data BOTH sides are using actually is: on the one hand, “1%” (seriously?), and on the other hand “80%” (where the hell?)
Since when does factual reporting on trans issues depend on “how often trans advocates explain this central issue to journalists”? And which “trans advocates”? Would they include persons who don’t promote the current party line?
Suicide statistics, as presented here, are no justification for performing radical medical procedures on children. And lax as medical standards are, in no other realm would life-altering interventions be undertaken on children and teenagers with so little data on either long-term or short-term outcomes. Blithe assertions that (for example) puberty blockers, which are the among the least radical of these treatments, can do no harm are utterly without foundation.
Ceasing to distinguish between press criticism and trans advocacy, as FAIR routinely does, won’t promote either.
Indeed. Letting young people kill themselves because we don’t want them to have access to medical care is the compassionate, moral approach, isn’t it?
And you are not advocating for anything, right?
You are just granting the world a grounded and fair criticism on a very concerning matter
Trans people are not the only people who matter, they are not the only people who struggle, they are not the only people with feelings. They don’t need to be ‘centered’ at all times.
There is no civil right for a minor to demand a doctor give them drugs that will cause lifelong changes to their body. Doctors have a responsibility to First, Do No Harm, and to use their best judgement.
American medical research is highly unreliable. Some of the ‘studies’ which claim that girls don’t regret elective double mastectomies have 35% of the original patients ‘lost to follow-up.’ Without a universal health care system, the regretters fall thru the cracks and don’t get counted.
Better health care systems overseas, like the Netherlands and Finland and France, have put the brakes on medical transition for youth, including dangerous puberty blockers.
American doctors are navigating a difficult situation, with lots of pressure from all sides. It is not unreasonable that the NYTimes would write about them.
Read Transsexual Empire for an outline of what those trying to eliminate trans people are planning.
Essentially it’s a strategy to make transition as difficult as possible by restricting access to medical transition and life as painful as possible for anyone who decides to transition.
You can see it in action in these comments.
What do contributors here — probably not among society’s most powerful — gain by making life “as painful as possible for anyone who decides to transition,” even if it were in their power to do so (which it plainly isn’t)?
The actual objection (perhaps you should keep reading?) is to the dogma, the demand that humanity accept every assertion of “trans advocates” as factual, including those in plain conflict with reality, with the additional proviso that anyone who doesn’t is a miscreant of the worst order.
That this program, based in the wishful and the fantastic, has gained such wide institutional acceptance, with so little opposition, is what’s remarkable.
Anti-trans contributors here, such as you, Jake, appear to have the goal of remaking the human world so that there are only two genders which are designated at birth. That has never been the case, so it is time you and other anti-trans activists accepted it and turned your ire on more-deserving causes.
Mouahaha
Do you really want an answer Jake? What do you gain, really?
A fucking patriarchy, dude.
Spit your chapter about feminazis now
I am so eager to read how you have nothing to do with “dogmas”
Thanks for that. Over at Open Democracy’s site, which has published some well-written and supportive pieces on transgender issues, you can see the same process in which anti-trans activists pile in. Their goal is clearly not the interests of trans people, young or old, but to ensure such people are not allowed to have their gender identity affirmed in any way.
Oh, please. Crap statistics and unproven medical procedures don’t make for a “compassionate, moral approach”.
Before you grant children the right, based on their reported feelings, to pursue chemically-induced gender transitions and bodily mutilation (I guess gender isn’t just a social construct?), you might want to seek a consensus which is exceeds “trans advocates”.
Like it or not, and no matter how inconsistent, the medical profession still has standards of care, subject to societal consent. If the only way to win that consent is personal attacks, you’re not like to prevail.
You might also want to consider the political consequences of a program found to be repugnant by the public at large. The public square in this country is advertising, and you’ve done a wretched job so far. Just keep trying to cancel JK Rowling and Dave, you’re sure to succeed.
Jake are you a survivor of a trans gender attack or something? Or are you just here to bash on FAIR for even thinking to mention anything about a vulnerable segment of society that you don’t like?
It seems weird how obsessed you are about this topic. What’s so miserable about your life that motivated you to show up here to project?
You probably have a job, a place to call home, and bet you even have money in the bank – which is a lot more than most – and yet here you are shrieking like a kettle.
World’s Smallest Jake,
Yes, anyone who takes exception to trans dogma and untested and irreversible medical procedures performed on children is unduly obsessed! What could possibly be the matter, when these proposals are so very modest and measured? I mean, jeez — an alternate reality couldn’t possibly hurt of impose on anyone, why object….?
And so what if the dogma is getting codified into law, and editors at medical journals find themselves unemployed if they don’t defer to the program.
What’s to see here? Why, nothing at all!
And we haven’t even begun on the political consequences….. You might consider that getting pronouns enforced by the HR Department or your local Taco Bell may be small consolation when everything else is lost.
That FAIR has taken this fantastical byway, rather like the ACLU, is also a rather a shame.
Absolutely.
Your concerns on medical ethics and reason just sum up to asking your rhetorical adversaries to prove a negative.
And how do we call that again in logics?
You are as obsessed as the religious fanatics who call gay people “pederast” or “deviant”, “criticize” their marriages as a threat to the concept of family, and wants them to be eradicated.
Do you know that the medical institution until the early 90’s considered homosexuality as a psychiatric pathology? Do you know trans people are part of our alphabet?
And that an alphabet, or the future of an alphabet, contrary to hunger, absence of healthcare or employment, or workers right, does not have “political consequences” that a reasonable mind would care to mention, in comparison with actual social issue, other than people stopping to commit suicide, and people living their life as they want?
Do you know we are all on earth on the verge of an atomic war?
Eat unicorns Jake, you’ll be closer to reality after than any of your claim to a fair point ever.
Regarding the situation, do you think it’s time to talk about persecution towards trans people?
The tenor of the objections found in all these rebuttals is remarkable in its own right: there’s apparently no disagreeing on the merits. Object to the dogma, and you’re a racist, a homophobe, transphobe, etc.
Tell me, where did trans advocates obtain that state of virtue and wisdom which renders all their views axiomatically correct and morally essential, and the holder of any opposing view a criminal, a nazi or a hater?
And why is it that opposition to the dogma is seen as opposition to the individual? What stops me, or anyone, from accepting trans persons on equal or gloriously welcoming terms, even if I or we don’t accept the assertion that “transwomen are women”?
Granted, those who don’t accept that “trans women are women” won’t let trans women complete against biological women in boxing or swimming events, and may choose not to house trans women prisoners with penises with biological women with naturally occurring vaginas.
Is that the *real* objection? You demand *extraordinary* rights and privileges, based on a claim with no basis in reality as most people understand it, and which can only be “true” tautologically?
Jake,
So let me get this straight (please by all means do correct me if I am not tracking)
The people who are the least powerful are actually the ones with all of the authority.
The majority of folks from that least powerful sector had no presence in the New York Times Magazine article but you insist we do not need to hear from the majority since anecdotes are the sum total of all that is knowable about the group..
A few problems with transgender medicine equals a problem with all trans medicine.
A few transgender people who regret it means that all transgender people regret it.
How someone feels is perfectly fine to mock because the majority of our patriarchal dogmatic society says so.
In fact it isn’t the dogmatic paradigm who is being dogmatic, it’s anyone who tries to challenge the dogma who are the ones being dogmatic.
And it’s everyone else but Jake who is messed up. Jake isn’t weird for his strange extraordinary obsession over being trans, it’s they who are the ones being “illogical” “dogmatic” “wrong” “bad” “messed up” “a hot mess” and on and on…
Jake my man…yeah okay I think I catch your drift now.