A must watch even if you don’t like his comedy. He breaks down the US health care and shows which nations we fall in with on it. Not something we would want to brag about. Hugs
“A parent in Tallahassee, Florida cost a charter school principal her job after complaining that one of the world’s most beloved artistic masterpieces was pornographic.
Hope Carrasquilla, who had just stepped into her role at Tallahassee Classical School less than a year prior, announced her resignation on Monday during an emergency board meeting, according to the Tallahassee Democrat’s reporting.
She spoke with the Tallahassee Democrat about the incident and the end to her time at the school. Ms Carrasquilla told the paper that the school board’s chair, Barney Bishop, informed her that she would either need to quit or she would be fired.
Though it appears he did not specify why the principal was asked to leave, she believes it was related to a lesson on Renaissance art.”
Montana Republican Admits Detransition Is Rare, Witness States “0 Of My Patients Regret Transition”
A Montana hearing for Senate Bill 99, a gender affirming care ban for trans youth, featured incredible moments. A therapist, when asked, said “none of my patients regret.” A Republican conceded that.
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Montana’s House Judiciary Committee met today to hear a bill that would ban gender affirming care for trans youth. Senate bill 99, which passed the Montana Senate previously, bans gender affirming care, explicitly legalizes nonconsensual intersex surgeries on intersex youth, and attacks Medicaid coverage for institutions providing such care. One of the ways that the bill is supported by proponents is through the use of detransitioners, including multiple political detransitioners. The House hearing was filled with expert witnesses, including people like Dr. Anna Peterson, who has treated transgender people for over two decades. When asked how many people she has cared for have regretted their transition, she stated that of the hundreds of patients she has seen, none have expressed regret. Ultimately, this led to Representative Jennifer Carlson (R) admitting that detransition is indeed rare, undercutting a major justification for the bill.
Montana’s bill would ban gender affirming care entirely for trans youth. It states that no person may provide gender affirming surgeries, hormone therapy, or puberty blockers to anyone under 18, in violation with widely accepted standards of care and medical evidence. It removes doctors licenses and even removes their ability to indemnify themselves using malpractice insurance for youth gender affirming care. A severability clause at the end ensures that if parts are found unconstitutional, other parts will remain in effect, indicating proponents of the bill know that it is likely the bill will indeed be found to be unconstitutional:
Severability clause in SB99
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In order to argue for this bill, people often point to and raise the fear that those who are transitioning will later come to regret it. We often hear this with respect to outlandishly high detransition rates that are often claimed by proponents of bills like this. In this hearing, they brought forward one detransitioner to make this case – he did so using religious justifications for his detransition, not that unlike the old ex-gay movement.
We know from modern studies that detransition is very rare. In the hearing, multiple witnesses in favor of the bill brought up the much-debunked “80% detransition rate.” This rate is based on decades old data and standards. Much of the data comes from a noted conversion therapist, Ken Zucker, who advised the parents of trans kids to do things such as avoiding “wrongly-gendered toys.” We know from modern studies that the actual detransition rate among trans youth is only 2.5% – and many of these who do detransition do so because of lack of acceptance rather than because they are “not trans.”
It is upon these facts that Representative Zooey Zephyr (D) asked Dr. Anna Peterson, a therapist who has worked with transgender youth for two decades, how many people she has seen who have regretted their transition. Dr. Peterson responded, “I’ve worked for many years with this population. Of the hundreds of people over many years… the incidence of regret in my practice, simply put, is zero. And I work with these kids over time, into adulthood.”
See the exchange:
The exchange was enlightening, and it seemed to throw Republican questioners off, who may have intended to rely on high detransition rates to get their point across. Later in the same hearing, Representative Jennifer Carlson (R) brought up detransitioners, but clearly had to adjust her questioning. She stated, “With respect to those who reverse course… go back… which we know is a small number…” and proceeded to ask about the reversibility of the procedures. The moment was significant as it was the first time in the hundreds of hours of legislation I have witnessed where a Republican conceded that point.
It is also notable that in this hearing, there was only a single detransitioner. Many trans people spoke against the bill. If there was an “explosion of detransitioners” as some proponents tried to claim before this exchange, where are they? You might expect that they would out in droves to testify in these hearings, especially if the number is as high as what is commonly cited and the procedures are so damaging. There continues to be no evidence that this is the case.
There were other remarkable moments of questioning, such as when Representative Durham questioned multiple doctors about the use of blood tests to determine someone’s biological sex. When both a psychiatrist and an emergency department doctor both stated that you cannot use blood tests to conclusively determine someone’s biological sex by measuring hormone levels, the Representative seemed to grow dubious, stating that he disagreed. When the crowd shouted, “you’re not a doctor!” he responded, “But I’m married…”
SB99 will come up for executive action in the coming days, and if it is voted out of the committee, it will go to the full Montana House. Should it pass, Montana will become the 10th state to ban gender affirming care fully for trans youth. It is an extreme bill that will harm trans kids in Montana and will usurp parental rights over healthcare decisions. The representatives who are on the fence on this bill should use these lines of questioning and the answers they received to help them realize that this bill does not base itself on scientific fact or any material good for the patient population they seek to legislate.
Disclosure: Representative Zooey Zephyr is the author if this article’s partner.
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Now House Speaker McCarthy admitted that there were members of the republican party that were on the pay roll of Russia. Now there seems to be a lot more of them. How is it patriotic to be on the payroll of an enemy foreign government who has attempted for years to subvert our democracy to support their dictatorship? Hugs
The Kremlin is deploying new tactics by drawing on favorite themes and conspiracy theories of rightwing Republicans
A report found Russia-linked accounts on Twitter have shifted toward stressing energy and economic impacts of the war. Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
As Russia’s ruthless war against Ukraine has faced major setbacks since it began a year ago, the Kremlin has deployed new disinformation themes and tactics to weaken US support for Kyiv with help from conservative media stars and some Republicans in Congress, according to new studies and experts.
Moscow’s disinformation messages have included widely debunked conspiracy theories about US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, and pet themes on the American right that portray the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as an ally in backing traditional values, religion and family in the fight against “woke” ideas.
Further, new studies from thinktanks that track disinformation have noted that alternative social media platforms such as Parler, Rumble, Gab and Odysee have increasingly been used to spread Russian falsehoods since Facebook and Twitter have imposed more curbs on Moscow’s propaganda.
Other pro-Russian messages focused on the economic costs of the war for the US have been echoed by Republicans in the powerful far-right House Freedom Caucus such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Scott Perry and Paul Gosar, who to varying degrees have questioned giving Ukraine more military aid and demanded tougher oversight.
Since Russia launched its invasion last February, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Trump ally – turned influential far-right podcaster – Steve Bannon have promoted some of the most baseless claims that help bolster the Kremlin’s aggression.
For instance, Bannon’s War Room podcast in February 2022 featured an interview with Erik Prince, the wealthy US founder of Blackwater, where they both enthused that Putin’s policies were “anti-woke” and praised Putin’s homophobia and transphobia.
Last month too on the anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, Carlson revved up his attacks on US support for Ukraine claiming falsely that Biden’s goal had become “overthrowing Putin and putting American tanks in Red Square because, sure, we could manage Russia once we overthrow the dictator”.
Analysts who track Russia’s disinformation see synergies between the Kremlin and parts of the US right that have helped spread some of the biggest falsehoods since the start of the invasion.
“Russia doesn’t pull even its most outlandish narratives out of thin air – it builds on existing resentments and political fissures,” Jessica Brandt, a policy director at the Brookings Institution who tracks disinformation and foreign interference, told the Guardian.
She added: “So you often have a sort of harmony – both Kremlin messengers and key media figures, each for their own reasons, have an interest in dinging the administration for its handling of the Ukraine crisis, in amplifying distrust of authoritative media, in playing on skepticism about the origins of Covid and frustration with government mitigation measures.”
“That was the case with the biolabs conspiracy theory, for example, which posits that the Pentagon has been supporting the development of biological weapons in Ukraine. The Charlie Kirk Show and Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, among others, devoted multiple segments to the claim. It’s not so much that we’re witnessing any sort of coordination, but rather an alignment of interests.”
Brandt also noted that Russia had an “interest in promoting authentic American voices expressing views that align with the Kremlin’s foreign policy goals. And that’s why you often see them retweet Americans that make these arguments.”
Likewise, two reports issued separately last month by the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the Atlantic Council, reveal how Russian state media have shifted some messaging themes and adopted new tactics with an eye to undercutting US backing for Ukraine.
The Alliance report documented a shift in messaging in the US and Europe from directly defending Russia’s invasion to stressing the energy and economic impacts that it was having, themes that seem to be resonating with some Republican politicians.
In the first six months of the war, Alliance data revealed that Russia-linked accounts on Twitter mentioned “Nazi” in more than 5,800tweets.
But in the following six months from August 2022 through January 2023, “the number of ‘Nazi’ tweets dropped to 3,373 – a 42% decline”. Likewise, mentions of Nato by Russian-linked accounts on Twitter dropped by roughly 30% in the second six-month period.
By contrast, in the most recent six-month period the report said that “tweets mentioning both ‘energy’ and ‘Ukraine’ increased by 267%, while tweets mentioning ‘cost of living’ increased 66%” compared to the first six months of the war.
In another twist, Bret Schafer, who leads the Alliance’s information manipulation team, told the Guardian: “In response to restrictions and crackdowns by major tech platforms, accounts and channels affiliated with Russian state media outlet RT, which has been banned entirely on YouTube, have fanned out across alternative social media and video sharing platforms like Rumble and Odysee that have less restrictive content moderation policies and that allow RT to operate without labels or restrictions.
“Those platforms also tend to cater to audiences who are not necessarily pro-Russian, but are certainly more apt, based on the other videos found on those platforms, to oppose continued support for Ukraine.”
Despite Moscow’s disinformation offensive and the $100bn plus in military and financial assistance that has flowed to Ukraine in one year, the ex-Republican House member Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said that “most GOP members still support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression”.
But Dent stressed that “the hardest edge of the Bannon-Carlson wing of the Maga movement in Congress is more sympathetic to Russian arguments and has an isolationist view of American foreign policy. There are some members who are less willing to push back against autocrats. There are others too who find common cause with Russia’s professed socially conservative orientation.”
Those voices are especially loud in the Freedom Caucus which is wielding growing influence with the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who has said he will not support a “blank check” for Ukraine and this week declined the invitation of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to visit Kyiv.
Freedom Caucus member Greene from Georgia at the recent CPAC conference said flatly: “We’ve done enough.”
Democrats are especially worried about the embrace of pro-Kremlin disinformation by the American right.
The Democratic senator Chris Murphy blasted US conservatives for echoing Kremlin propaganda and traced its roots back to ex-president Donald Trump, who at the start of Russia’s invasion lauded Putin as “savvy” and a “genius”. Murphy said Trump’s “admiration for Putin” has “turned into a collective rightwing obsession”.
How big a threat does the hard right pose to US support for Ukraine?
Read more
Murphy noted that among the obsessed on the right are Donald Trump Jr, whom he follows on social media, and who is “relentlessly making fun of Zelenskiy online”.
Meanwhile, Putin’s own words and propaganda have lately shifted as he has tried to influence opinion in the US and the west, and blunt Russian dissent.
“Millions of people in the west understand they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe,” Putin railed last month in a wildly hyperbolic speech that homed in on “the destruction of families”, and related themes.
Russia experts warn that Putin’s rhetoric and Kremlin messaging on these themes is far removed from the reality in Russia.
“One of the glaring mistakes of far-right propagandists is to view Vladimir Putin as some kind of defender of Christendom, of family values and as a protector of the white race,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “They repeat the Kremlin talking points and get excited about the Russian ‘gay propaganda’ law. Nothing could be further from reality.
“Today Russia is the leader in Europe of high divorce rates, HIV infections, and low church attendance and practice.”
Senator Murphy expects Putin to count “on the [American] right wing to advance Russian propaganda and exploit our internal divisions.”
So are the LGBTQ+ adults. DeathSantis and his maga sycophants have painted target signs on each of us and his violent gang thug enforcers along with the recharged up fundamentalist religious people who feel they have the right to oppress everyone into forcing them to live by the dictates of their religion are making the lives of queer people in Florida miserable. They keep pushing harder and harder to make their way the only way to live. What is acceptable to them is the only acceptable public expression. This is about not allowing any other social public expression than what their church allows them according to their outdated 1950s strict gender role model based on the idea that white Christian men are automatically in charge and women are subservient to them while minorities know their place and stay there. All according to the white males in charge who like it that way. And they use a set of mistranslated writings from 2,500 years ago to back up their demands. I want you to pay attention to what the student says is happening on high school campuses, where conserative right wing teachers / administrators design polices and punishments for queer kids while using those polices to protect themselves from repremand. The student says she has seen teachers mock and out gay kids to parents and laugh about it. Also kids who try to stand up for the queer kids have their own futures placed in jepardy as their transcripts get lost, documents they need lost, and even collage applications no longer approved, or loss recommendations made by the school if they don’t stop speaking out in support of queer kids. Think of that, the change from the days when kids were encouraged to be active in cuases, in socail movements. Hugs
Students who speak out for LGBTQ+ rights say they face retaliation from hostile school administrations determined to silence them.
By Jorge Martinez
Photo: Shutterstock
Under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Florida has become a closely-watched epicenter for anti-LGBTQ+ laws – and advocates say queer youth are feeling the impact.
With the passage of sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, such as the Don’t Say Gay law, gender-affirming care bans, and bathroom restrictions, Florida has become a battleground for queer rights. DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has continued to exacerbate the issue, leading to concerns among LGBTQ+ advocates that the state is becoming increasingly unwelcoming to queer youth.
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RELATED STORIES
GOP wants to expand Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law to target teens & transgender kids
The bill would ban LGBTQ+ education up to 8th grade, ban students from changing their pronouns, and that’s not all…
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“We’re terrified,” Christina Guiriba, a transgender youth advocate, told LGBTQ Nation. “As advocates for the community, we’re very torn. We want to continue this fight.”
Guiriba is the founder of Transcending Adolescence, a Jacksonville-based nonprofit aimed at empowering trans youth.
A trans woman and Florida native who has experienced bullying and physical violence during her childhood, she leads a summer camp called Resilience Retreat for around a dozen trans youth to build their courage and resilience. She wants every participant to leave camp having defined success on their own terms, whether that be finally finding a safe space for the first time or going through with top surgery.
“Seeing a staff full of gender-diverse people that are successful and still alive gave them hope,” she said. Through the power of the outdoors and physical recreation, she hopes to continue to be a voice for “those who are afraid.”
But Guiriba said that many advocates are afraid to continue their work as they find themselves the target of right-wing hate. Transcending Adolescence, in fact, was recently the victim of a doxing attack.
As a result, the organization was forced to adopt stricter security measures such as planning escape routes and installing surveillance cameras and panic buttons. They even hired a private security officer, unable to turn to the Jacksonville police due to their transphobic reputation, such as using deadnames in official police investigations, among other reasons.
But Guiriba isn’t stopping. Her work is becoming increasingly relevant as new research shows how ongoing anti-LGBTQ+ attacks are starting to impact queer youth.
“The consequences are really more dire than even most people would imagine,” Caitlin Viccora, programs manager for healthy & supportive schools at Advocates for Youth, told LGBTQ Nation.
A recent CDC report on youth behavior over the past decade shows record-high levels of depression and suicide risk among teenagers in recent years. The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey reveals that more than half of LGBTQ+ students have recently experienced declining mental health and more than one in five had a suicide attempt within the past year. Queer female adolescents fared worse compared to males.
In Florida especially, Viccora said the priority for advocates is to set the record straight and clear the air of false information. Parents have a right to know what’s really happening in their child’s classroom without having to rely on the right-wing’s “targeted disinformation campaigns,” Viccora said.
“It’s not just Republicans who are failing to protect LGBTQ+ students,” she added, “A lot of folks are staying silent.”
She urged community members to speak publicly at local school board meetings and fight proposed regulations that impact queer youth. Submitting public comments, organizing to call local officials such as superintendents, or just showing up to the polls to vote are effective ways to protect queer youth.
Queer youth are learning to “shut up and keep their head low”
“Ron DeSantis is a terrifying man,” Iris, a high school senior in Clay County, Florida, who requested to use a different name out of fear of retaliation, told LGBTQ Nation. “[DeSantis] claims to be a Christian but at the basis of Christianity is acceptance and love. Yet he chooses violence and overall bigotry.”
Iris does not identify as queer, but her queer friends would not speak with LGBTQ Nation, citing safety concerns even if they remained anonymous. Instead, they spoke through Iris.
In her previous attempts to speak out, Iris said her school officials claimed to “lose” her documents, opening the possibility of preventing her from graduating high school. She said speaking out would even “jeopardize my college [applications].”
Iris said Gov. DeSantis has created a “hostile environment” for Florida students that enables hatred and punishes those who try speaking out. She recounts an instance where a close male friend dressed as a PowerPuff Girl for Halloween and was viciously bullied during school hours. The bully received no penalty while Iris’ friend was reprimanded for several infractions, one of them being a dress code violation.
In a second instance, she reports that her school principal outed numerous queer kids to their parents. She said the principal was even spotted laughing and mocking the list of students she outed with one of those students’ parents.
This practice is becoming increasingly common across Florida schools, with school administrators developing formal policies to punish or out queer kids to their families.
“Teachers are able to say and do things without consequence,” said Iris, noting that these types of policies serve to primarily protect conservative and right-wing educators.
She added that queer kids are learning that they need to “shut up and keep their head low” in order to survive.
Both Guiriba and Viccora emphasize the importance of remaining positive, continuing their fight to ensure a brighter future for queer youth across the country.
“It’s important for queer people to know they’re not alone,” said Guiriba, also stressing that advocates take the appropriate time to rest. “It’s not easy to find strength.”
“Living as a queer person in America is really scary when you’re looking at headlines,” Viccora said, especially when queer Americans face discrimination and violence at every corner. Despite this, Viccora urges queer youth to remember the “beauty and resiliency” in the simple fact of our existence.
I really enjoy this author / sub stack writer. I leave in all her requests for support because she deserves it for her work and I am simply borrowing her voice to spread the information she writes about. If you want to know the true that the republican leglisatures are trying to hide to push their agenda on their states, read the article. Hugs
This is one of the most common arguments brought up in anti-trans hearings. The idea that 80% of trans people “will desist” is a complete lie that is easy to debunk.
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One of the most common myths heard in anti-trans hearings is that most trans kids will desist if they are allowed to go through puberty. Sometimes specific numbers are given, such as 80% of trans kids desist. This statistic has been cited as low as 60% and as high as 99% in various legislatures. In Montana, a representative used this statistic to justify passing a medical ban. The Heritage Foundation has also pushed this myth. Nearly every hearing on this topic includes this myth. The desistance myth is one of the most persistent falsehoods and has been used against the trans community for decades. It is misleading and inaccurate as it comes from outdated DSM-4 criteria and decades-old data. Newer studies show that 97.5% of transgender youth are persistent in their gender identities. Let’s examine how this falsehood originated, how it is misused, and what current research reveals about the rarity of desistence and detransition.
See an example of this claim being used on Fox News:
Conservative lawyer Harmeet Dhillon just said trans teens who transition "desist from transition at an 80-90% rate." This is false. pic.twitter.com/0jfiq0b7r9
The DSM-IV, released in 1994, spelled out how to diagnose mental health conditions including “Gender Identity Disorder” (no longer a disorder). In this manual, clinicians made their first attempt to diagnose transgender youth. These first diagnostic criteria were an admiral early attempt, but contained a fatal flaw in how transgender youth were diagnosed: the diagnosis bafflingly did not require a youth to identify as another gender. Instead, it focused on factors such as “preference for cross-sex games and activities” and “preference for friends of the other sex.”
Problems with this diagnostic criteria should be immediately recognizable today: a cisgender tomboy with absolutely no identification as a boy would be diagnosed with gender identity disorder under these definitions. A cisgender boy who likes to put on an Elsa costume and play with girls could be diagnosed with gender identity disorder under these definitions. They were woefully inadequate for judging if youth were transgender. They also came during a time when youth transition did not exist as a medical practice, and so there were no real clinical guidelines on their treatment – thus, little effort was made to change the criteria which were primarily used for discussion in therapist offices and not to support or deny medical transition care.
In 2013, the DSM-V was published and in it, many corrections were made on how gender dysphoric youth are diagnosed. The most important correction was the requirement that a transgender youth demonstrate an insistent, persistent, and consistent desire or identification as the gender that the patient believes they are. The individual factors were also changed and adjusted. These diagnostic criteria were much more stringent, and are the diagnostic criteria used today.
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There is one problem though: until recently, all of the studies that came out used the old criteria. They included several people with no identification with another gender as meeting the criteria for “gender identity disorder,” which is itself no longer a disorder. These studies have a ton of other other problems as well, such as tiny sample sizes, very high dropout rates, old data from a time when youth transition was impossible, and even issues around conversion therapy practiced on trans patients. There are two pieces that are commonly cited. The first is numerous pieces of research by Ken Zucker, including a famous book published in 1995 that serves as the genesis of most “80% detransition” myths. The second is a series of studies from Thomas Steensma, usually centering around his 2011 or 2013 studies. Both of these studies contain the same core methodological flaw above, and both contain their own unique flaws that make them even more inaccurate.
Ken Zucker’s research on transgender youth was performed in 1995, a time when youth could not legally or medically transition. In fact, trans youth in that time likely all “desisted” for some time because of bullying, lack of access to care, and severe repression. I myself grew up as a transgender youth in that time period and I “desisted,” one of the many reasons I am writing this article.
Zucker is the genesis of the number that is most often cited, “80% desist from being trans.” Upon review of Ken Zucker’s research, half of Zucker’s patients did not even meet the definition of diagnostic criteria for transgender youth. His main research consisted of only 45 youth utilizing the old diagnostic criteria. A review of his clinic yielded much darker results, however: Zucker was engaging in conversion therapy practices that sought to push trans youth to identify as cisgender. His clinic was promptly shut down in 2015 as a result of a Canadian anti-conversion therapy law. Although Zucker denies the allegations that he engaged in conversion therapy, his practices and history paint a different picture. In the 1990s, he stated support for gay conversion therapy with the rationale, “a homosexual lifestyle in a basically unaccepting culture simply creates unnecessary social difficulties.”
In shutting down his clinic, a Canadian GIC review was conduced and a report was produced. From the report:
Parents state they were encouraged “not to give into” allowing their youth to wear clothes not of their assigned sex at birth.
Parents state they were told to avoid wrongly-gendered toys.
Parents state they were told to ensure their children would play with children of their assigned sex at birth.
Patients state they were asked intrusive questions about their sexual orientations as early as 9 years old.
Transgender youth were pathologized and correlational mental health issues were interpreted as causative.
Some patients reported pictures of them taken without their consent using cell-phones.
Parental lack of acceptance and desire for the child to identify as cisgender guided treatment.
Because of a tiny sample size, outdated data, the impossibility of youth transition, and Zucker’s clear ideological motivations, his 80% detransition rate clearly should be viewed as false and useless in current research on gender affirming care, especially considering modern data, criteria, and research exists.
Steensma’s 2011 and 2013 studies had similar issues in his research, which in some ways had even worse methodological flaws. Steensma used the old criteria, which is not the way that gender dysphoria is diagnosed today. Worse, the two studies classified every youth who did not return to the clinic as having “desisted” or “detransitioned” with no long term follow-up. Half of the participants in the studies did not return and all were classified as having “desisted.” The sample sizes were tiny at the getgo – only 53 people were in the first study and 127 in the second study. Given the fact that a large portion if not the majority of Steensma’s patients were classified under decades old criteria and assumed permanently detransitioned simply for refusing to follow up, these studies cannot be used to make any reasonable claim of desistance rates.
Furthermore, transgender youth could not meaningfully transition until recently. Medical care for trans youth was highly gatekept if not barred entirely. Transgender youth were rarely, if ever, afforded any form of treatment. Many such youth lost hope in ever being able to transition as puberty took its toll and they were forced to repress over bullying and a dangerous public environment.
Modern studies show a much higher persistence rate as well as important factors behind detransition. In 2015, a study was done on thousands of transgender people, including detransitioners. Only 8% of people reported ever detransitioning – ten times lower than the 80% often cited. Of these 2,000 detransitioners, the largest sample size of any study, 62% of them reported that they only detransitioned temporarily. Among the remaining detransitioners, the most common reason for detransitioning given was parental pressure and discrimination. Only 0.4% of people reported detransitioning because they were no longer trans.
Among trans youth, desistance and detransition rates are incredibly low. The most recent study in the prestigious journal Pediatrics, one of the only studies that use modern criteria, showed that 97.5% of trans youth continue to identify as trans on a 5 year follow-up. The sample size was also larger than all previous sample sizes of this population: 317 youth.
Anti-trans gender affirming care bans often start off with a list of “legislative findings” that seek to “state the science” around gender affirming care. In this list of findings, you might be surprised to see that the later studies are nowhere to be found, but the claims from the former studies pop up and are presented as factual when they are over a decade old, are dramatically outdated, and use standards that are not even in use anymore.
See Georgia’s “legislative findings” section of HB653, which would ban gender affirming care for trans youth
This statistic will continue to be misused to justify anti-trans bans all over the United States. Legislators will state that “80% of people detransition,” even when detransitioning is a statistical rarity. The same dozen detransitioners, like the “ex gays” of the 1990s, will be flown from state to state to justify bans, raising the question as to why they seem to only be able to find a small handful to testify. Meanwhile, actual trans kids who will grow up to still identify as trans, if they can make it to adulthood following these legislative onslaughts, are left to bear the damage of this misinformation.
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This is a web site I really enjoy. Especially when I don’t feel well as it gives the facts and clear information in easy to digest segments. Randy introduced me to it years ago. Here is a sample of the author’s work. Hugs
A report found Russia-linked accounts on Twitter have shifted toward stressing energy and economic impacts of the war. Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
Photo: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 