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Our Attention May Be Elsewhere, But The Transphobes Never Sleep

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In Idaho, two bills attempting to roll back civil rights for the state’s transgender community are headed to the governor’s desk. Advocates urge him to veto both, but with the news consumed by coronavirus, will their pleas be heard?

There’s no denying it: coronavirus has got us all messed up. Whether we’re worried about friends, family, and ourselves coming down with the disease or panicking over the devastating effect social distancing-related closures are having on the economy, it’s hard to shake it from our minds and pay attention to, really, anything else.

But that doesn’t mean that people with anti-LGBTQ agendas are ceasing in their efforts to roll back our rights around the nation. And if you needed proof of that, look no further than what happened in Idaho late last week, as the state’s legislature approved two bills that, if passed, will have a seriously negative effect on transgender people living in that state.

The first bill, the Fairness In Women’s Sports Act, seeks to ensure that high school sports programs for women “shall not be open to students of the male sex.” One would have to assume that this act is intended to bar transgender girls from participating in school sports programs, though this wording is based on a lot of assumptions, if you ask us. However, clearly the legislature knew this, as there is additional language within the bill requiring that any student disputing whether they should be barred from women’s sports activities at the high school level must submit a statement from a doctor that established their sex based on “the student’s internal and external reproductive anatomy; the student’s normal endogenously produced levels of testosterone; and an analysis of the student’s genetic makeup.”

Ah yes, that old “I can misgender you based on your chromosomes” argument so beloved by belligerent conservatives like Ben Shapiro. Of course, gender (and sex) are much more complicated than that, but once such things are written into law, those complications seek to have a legal relevance, regardless of whose rights get taken away.

Boise Senator Cherie Buckner-Webb called the bill “repugnant,” and said, “This bill is rooted in fear and misinformation,” according to East Idaho News, but she ultimately was unable to convince her fellow legislators to vote it down, and the bill passed by significant margins in both houses of the Idaho state legislature.

“Idaho has not seen any issues with trans girls competing in the girls sports,” American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho policy director Kathy Griesmyer told the Washington Blade. “This unconstitutional and mean-spirited bill prevents trans girls from finding community and self-esteem in sports and will certainly result in litigation to defend the civil rights of Idaho’s transgender community.”

Five former Idaho attorneys general actually sent an open letter to Idaho Governor Brad Little urging him to veto the bill, saying that it seems particularly vulnerable to legal challenges. “The Attorney General has opined that the legislation contains a number of legal infirmities, making it subject to invalidation in federal court proceedings,” they wrote in a letter published by the Idaho Statesman. “The more serious concern is apparent conflict with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but other provisions of federal law are implicated.”

Sam Brinton, head of the Trevor Project, called the decision to move forward with the bill “shameful,” especially during a global pandemic. “Our elected officials should be expanding opportunities for trans students, not further marginalizing a group already at high risk for bullying and discrimination,” Brinton told the Washington Blade. “At The Trevor Project, we hear from LGBTQ youth in crisis every day and we know that affirming trans youth in their identities is critical to their health and wellbeing. Denying trans youth the ability to participate in school sports, which have shown to have a positive effect on mental health, will increase the kind of social isolation and stigma that contributes to the risk of suicidality.”

Meanwhile, another more wide-ranging anti-trans piece of legislation is also winging its way to Governor Little’s desk. This one is known as the Idaho Vital Statistics Act, and it prohibits the changing of gender markers on birth certificates for any reason besides “fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact.” This would eliminate the ability of transgender people to change the gender markers on their birth certificates as part of their legal transition. At this time, only Ohio and Tennessee have an outright ban on transgender people changing the gender marker on their birth certificates.

Image by Theshibboleth, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

A variety of other states require proof of a medical procedure (gender confirmation surgery) in order to make this change; Virginia still does at this moment, but a bill currently before Governor Ralph Northam will end that requirement, assuming Northam signs it into law by the action deadline of April 11. Governor, if you’re reading, I trust you to do the right thing for us.

Back in Idaho, Representative Julianne Young, who sponsored the bill, told CNN that “safeguarding the accuracy of our vital records is a vital part of preserving the ability of the state to protect the public health and safety.” One assumes she considers it somehow inaccurate for a birth certificate to reflect a trans person’s actual gender identity.

The legislation follows a 2018 court order requiring Idaho to allow gender marker changes on birth certificates, and seems intended to overrule that order, though it could easily still be found unconstitutional by a future judicial ruling. Lambda Legal counsel Peter Renn, who worked on the 2018 case, was frustrated by the bill’s passage.

“Idaho lawmakers might as well try to tear down the federal courthouse if they have this much contempt for the rule of law,” Renn told the Washington Blade. “They are explicitly defying a court order and exposing Idaho taxpayers to footing the bill for significant financial consequences – all while putting transgender people back in harm’s way for harassment and even violence, and once again making Idaho a national outlier.”

Top Photo: Idaho state Capitol, by Maxbatt at en.wikipedia – Own work, Transferred from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, via Wikimedia

JK Rowling Is On Board The TERF Train

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After months of hints on social media, the Harry Potter author has overtly expressed support for one of the UK’s many transgender-exclusionary radical feminists. Our childhood is officially ruined.

Thousands of LGBTQ teens and young adults are bummed at the news that broke last week about JK Rowling. Through things like social media likes, the beloved author of the Harry Potter stories had already been very subtly indicating support for the trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) movement that has been ascendant in the UK for the past several years. Now she has made a public statement via Twitter in support of Maya Forstater, a British researcher who lost her contract with charitable organization Centre For Global Development (CGD) due to her social media statements to the effect that trans women were not real women.

On December 19, Rowling tweeted, “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill”

In this tweet, Rowling attempts to have it both ways. She begins with a number of statements telling an unidentified person or community to, in essence, live their life as they choose. But then, in her final pre-hashtag question, she frames the situation surrounding Maya Forstater, who the hashtags indicate she is “standing with,” as trans people hounding Forstater out of her job for “stating that sex is real.” Which is exactly the kind of heavily-loaded language that’s become all too common in the United Kingdom, as that country’s TERF movement has gained more and more traction in the mainstream over the past decade.

I honestly don’t feel like rehashing that entire issue, so if you’re not aware of what I’m talking about, I will simply refer you to my 2018 article, “Gender Trouble: Will The UK’s TERF Problem Invade the US?” and move on.

What we do need to talk about is Rowling’s statement that “sex is real.” Which, if you think about it from a certain angle, is a wild thing to say. But she doesn’t mean sex as in sexual intercourse — she’s using the scientific term for the distinction between male and female. And that’s a real distinction, sure… but in the wake of transgender and non-binary acceptance becoming more prevalent in certain areas of mainstream society, scientists are looking deeper and finding that the issue is a good bit more complicated than your high school biology class told you.

Not if you ask the many TERFs with prominent voices in the UK, though. Much like American right-wingers, they rally around declarations that biological sex is immutable, that there are only two genders, that gender is binary. Maya Forstater has made similar statements. Indeed, when a UK judge, James Tayler, ruled against her last week in a discrimination lawsuit she’d filed against the CGD for firing her, she said exactly those sorts of things in her response to the judgment, printed by The Guardian.

“My belief … is that sex is a biological fact, and is immutable,” stated Forstater. “There are two sexes, male and female. Men and boys are male. Women and girls are female. It is impossible to change sex. These were until very recently understood as basic facts of life by almost everyone.”

So there we are — the woman JK Rowling has taken to social media to defend is the textbook definition of a TERF. She believes that trans and non-binary identities are invalid. And based on her statement that “sex is real,” it seems JK Rowling believes the same thing.

What’s more, Rowling’s entire framing of the Forstater situation is misleading and unfair. She implies that trans people hounded Forstater out of her job, when in reality, the CGD made the decision not to renew Forstater’s contract on their own. What’s more, after Forstater sued the CGD claiming discrimination, the aforementioned Judge Tayler ruled against her, stating that “[Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

Maya Forstater speaks at a feminist conference. Photo via Maya Forstater/Facebook

Louise Rea, a lawyer with the firm of Bates Wells, which advised CGD in the case, further explained to the Guardian the reasoning behind Tayler’s legal ruling. “Employment Judge Tayler acknowledged that there is nothing to stop the claimant campaigning against the proposed revisions to the Gender Recognition Act or, expressing her opinion that there should be some spaces that are restricted to women assigned female at birth. However, she can do so without insisting on calling transwomen men. It is the fact that her belief necessarily involves violating the dignity of others which means it is not protected under the Equality Act 2010.”

Therefore, this clearly isn’t just a case of trans people hounding a woman out of a job, as Rowling states. It’s a case of a TERF hounding trans people in public until her bosses didn’t want to employ her anymore, and a judge finding her behavior unacceptable under the law of the UK — which is, as we’ve discussed, not exactly the most enlightened country where trans rights are concerned.

This isn’t the first time Rowling’s come under suspicion of holding trans-exclusionary beliefs; in March 2018, Rowling liked a tweet on social media that referred to trans women as “men in dresses.” When confronted about it, though, her press agent backpedaled, saying that Rowling’s like of the tweet was “a clumsy and middle-aged moment,” and that it didn’t reflect her true beliefs.

So far, there’s been no such backpedal this time. Perhaps we’ll get one in time for Christmas? It seems more likely, though, that Rowling has decided to go along with a prominent sentiment in UK feminism. And with a tweet like this one, I don’t really see how there’s any going back.

Top Photo: JK Rowling, via Facebook

New Trump Rule Would Allow Transgender People To Be Denied Health Care

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The attacks from this administration just do not stop.

On Friday, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a rule that seems calculated to have devastating effects on LGBTQ health care in the United States.

Roger Severino, who is the director of HHS’s Office of Civil Rights — and, probably not coincidentally, a known LGBTQ-rights opponent who has been called a “radical anti-LGBTQ activist” by the Human Rights Campaign — announced that under HHS’s proposed rule, the government would rescind Obama-era guidelines calling for Civil Rights Act protections “on the basis of sex” to be interpreted as applying to gender identity.

“When Congress prohibited sex discrimination, it did so according to the plain meaning of the term, and we are making our regulations conform,” Severino said, according to the Washington Post.

This change mirrors several other changes made by Trump’s cabinet since the 45th President took office, including in the Departments of Education and Justice. It comes only days after a proposed rule by the Department of Housing And Urban Development that would allow homeless shelters to refuse access to transgender people.

US Senator Patty Murray, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Health, Labor, and Pensions Committee called this decision “blatantly harmful, discriminatory and wrong” in a statement.

“Patients don’t need the ideological judgment of President Trump, Vice President Pence, or anyone else for that matter—they need to know that when they seek the health care they need, they won’t be turned away because of who they are,” Murray stated.

Emilie Kao, director of the DeVos Center For Religion and Civil Society for right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, claimed in a statement that this ruling was necessary in order to protect the rights of doctors whose religious beliefs prohibited them from performing gender-reassignment surgeries or abortions.

“The Trump administration is right to revise Obamacare’s unlawful regulation that was blocked from taking effect by a federal court,” Kao stated. “It would have forced physicians to offer sex-reassignment procedures and abortions despite strong ethical and medical concerns.”

However, neither Kao nor the Trump administration has addressed the fact that this change could open the door for doctors to refuse even life-saving health care to a transgender person with critical injuries — as happened in 1995 to Tyra Hunter, a trans woman who’d been injured in a car accident. After discovering Hunter’s transgender status, EMTs and ER staff refused or gave inadequate health care, and Hunter died of her injuries as a result.

“Predicated on little more than prejudice, this proposal will abandon 2 million Americans who already face significant barriers to accessing adequate and life-saving health care,” said Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement.

“This is not about free health care or special treatment. It’s about the right of every American to be treated with dignity when they walk into an emergency room, meet a new doctor, or find the right insurance plan,” Keisling continued. “If permitted, this rule will promote ignorance and hate that no American should have to face while seeking care, and we are ready to fight it with everything we’ve got.”