Erin Reed, author of the Erin In The Morning newsletter on SubStack, discusses the state of anti-trans legislation moving its way around the country in 2024.
Erin Reed then joins, diving right into the busy 2024 in state-level anti-trans legislation in the US, first parsing through the media’s insistence on emphasizing bigoted and misinformed perspectives – as seen in the New York Times’s recent piece by Pamela Paul – and how the arguments seen in those texts are perfectly reflected in the statehouse hearings in red states.
Please notice the legislators use their religious beliefs to force their religion on all people in the state. My god doesn’t make mistakes so you have to put your body at risk having your rapists baby even if you are a little child yourself, and you have a different faith than mine. My god, my god, my god, they scream as they stamp their feet. Worship my god the way I do they yell at people.Women are nothing but vessels for a man’s use, pleasure, and birthing his off spring. She should be happy to be property. I know it is so because I believe it is what a mythical being told me that I follow. They don’t get that not everyone goes to their church and wants to live by their idea of god’s laws / church doctrine. I can not decide if it is pure ego that thinks they have a right to force their religious views on everyone, if it is ego that makes them ignore all science in favor of belief, or if it is a desperate need to please their god and show it that they are worthy of him. Like a child desperate to please an abusive parent. Hugs. Scottie
Missouri was the first state in the nation to ban abortion and seemingly remains determined to be as cruel as possible.
Missouri state Sen. Rick Brattin said forced pregnancy and birth could be “the greatest healing agent” for rape victims in his arguments against adding a rape exception to the state’s abortion ban.
Photo: Rick Brattin/Facebook
In 2022, Missouri was the first state to ban abortion when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and anti-abortion lawmakers in the state are continuing their streak of cruelty. On Wednesday, across party lines, Republicans rejected an amendment that would have added rape and incest exceptions to the state’s total ban. Democratic state Sen. Tracy McCreery proposed the amendment by pleading with her colleagues to “show an ounce of compassion” for victims. As it currently exists, McCreery said the ban tells victims, “We’re going to force you to give birth, even if that pregnancy resulted from forcible rape by a family member, a date, an ex-husband or a stranger.”
As if voting to reject McCreery’s amendment weren’t insulting enough to victims, state Sen. Rick Brattin (R) explained his vote by arguing that being forced to carry their rapist’s baby could be “healing” for victims. “If you want to go after the rapist, let’s give him the death penalty. Absolutely, let’s do it,” Brattin said. “But not the innocent person caught in-between that, by God’s grace, may even be the greatest healing agent you need in which to recover from such an atrocity.” Seemingly trying to make his comments as horrific as possible, Brattin also managed to compare abortion to slavery.
Another Republican, state Sen. Sandy Crawford, argued against rape exceptions because “God doesn’t make mistakes”: “Even in some of these very horrific cases, there was a reason that God allowed there to be a child out of this situation,” Crawford elaborated. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Bill Eigel—who’s running for governor—inexplicably claimed McCreery’s proposed amendment would “bring back the institution of abortion so that kids can get abortions in the state of Missouri,” stating, “A one-year-old could get an abortion under this.” To this, a Democratic senator returned, “I don’t know that a one-year-old could get pregnant, Senator.” I really don’t know what to say to any of this, except that Republican lawmakers clearly have no good arguments in support of their heinous laws and the violence they’re inflicting on survivors and pregnant people—and that becomes clearer every day when they start inexplicably invoking pregnant one-year-olds.
Missouri legislators’ rejection of a rape exception comes after, last month, new research estimates that in states that have banned abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022, there have been an estimated 64,565 rape-induced pregnancies. Of these 64,565 pregnancies, 91% were in states with bans that lacked rape exceptions.
Missouri Republicans’ arguments against a rape exception are the latest contribution to anti-abortion politicians’ hall-of-shame hits on the topic of rape and abortion. Over a decade ago, failed Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin gave us “legitimate rape” (his claim that there’s no need for rape exceptions because “legitimate rape” won’t result in pregnancy). And ever since—certainly, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe—it feels like every other month there’s a new outlandish, wildly offensive comment from anti-abortion officials about abortion and rape. Shortly after Roe fell, a Utah Republican said she “[trusts] women enough to control when they allow a man to ejaculate inside of them and to control that intake of semen,” therefore negating the need for abortion for rape victims.
Also in 2022, a Michigan Republican candidate said he told his daughters “If rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.” A Republican state lawmaker in Ohio called pregnancy from rape “an opportunity.” Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) acknowledged the abortion ban in his state could force child rape survivors to carry their rapist’s babies, but shrugged off the idea of personally doing anything about it: “I would prefer a different outcome than that, but that’s not the debate today in Arkansas. It might be in the future, but for now, the law triggered with only one exception … in the case of the life of the mother,” he said in June 2022. In other cases, Republican lawmakers have refused to even address rape victims speaking out against their laws altogether.
McCreery introduced the proposed rape exception as an amendment to a Republican-sponsored bill that would continue Missouri’s ban on taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood. Democratic lawmakers in other states have also run into problems trying to add exceptions—including rape exceptions—to their state abortion bans, and rape victims and advocates have argued that the processes to access rape exceptions are too cumbersome for victims. “It may not be today or tomorrow, but down the line, this could happen to someone you love,” Hadley Duvall, a rape survivor who’s helping to lead an effort to add a rape exception to Kentucky’s ban, told Jezebel in January about the prevalence of sexual violence. “And if you can look them in the eye and tell them ‘You don’t deserve this medical procedure, even though your innocence was taken from you, your health is in danger’—I don’t know how they live with themselves.”
Per Jezebel, Brattin went on to compare abortion to slavery. Brattin first appeared here in 2017 when he declared that there’s a “distinction” between human beings and LGBTQ people. That earned him a scathing rebuke from the editorial board of the Kansas City Star. In December 2023, Brattin appeared here when he authored or co-sponsored nearly two dozen anti-LGBTQ bills. One of his bills would make it a felony to perform drag in the view of children, another would institute a K-6 “Don’t Say Gay” law.
In 2014, Brattin introduced a bill that would require women seeking abortion to get written permission from the father of the fetus. In 2022, Brattin ran for the US House, finishing second in the GOP primary.
My aunt had a former student who was a result of a rape. He is now in prison as a result of several acts of violence against different people due to anger issues. Anger issues brought on in large part by his mother who made no secret of the fact he wasn’t wanted and how much she resented him. This fucker has no clue what he is talking about. P.S. Even in ones with “happy endings” the woman in each story made clear it was HER choice and no one else should get to make that for them.
State-level legislation and executive orders this year shifted from censoring racial issues in classrooms and instead focused on censoring LGBTQ+ issues, according to a new report from PEN America. At the same time, this significant shift also created an increased resistance to these unpopular laws and policies.
The free-expression nonprofit PEN America has been tracking what it describes as “educational gag orders” since 2021. While such bills introduced in 2021 and 2022 focused on limiting how issues of race and racism could be taught in classrooms, in 2023, conservative lawmakers and advocates turned their attention to banning discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in K–12 classrooms.
The anti-LGBTQ+ group’s candidates lost big in at least four states.
“It appears that America’s would-be censors now see proposals to restrict conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity as more of a winning political issue than efforts to restrict discussions of race and racism,” the report stated. “Leveraging that presumed support, [conservatives] have attempted to enact sweeping restrictions on what school-age children can read and learn.”
PEN America documented 110 state-level bills introduced during the 2023 legislative sessions that it defined as educational gag orders. Only 10 became law, while four other restrictions on education were imposed via executive orders or state or system regulations. Of those 110 bills, 39 specifically targeted how public school teachers could discuss LGBTQ+ issues (five of those also applied to private schools).
According to the report, about three-quarters of those anti-LGBTQ+ bills were modeled on Florida’s infamous “Parental Rights in Education Act,” commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
These restrictions resulted not only in the marginalization of LGBTQ+ students and students with LGBTQ+ family members, they have also had a devastating impact on public education more broadly, forcing teachers to self-censor and contributing to teacher shortages across the country, the report added.
“If teachers are afraid to make any mention of race or LGBTQ+ identities in the classroom, if they are afraid to answer student questions, if quality educators are leaving and cannot be replaced, students are the ones who suffer most,” PEN America’s report stated.
While efforts to impose educational censorship are expected to continue into 2024, the report also offers reason for hope in the form of increased resistance to such legislation. According to PEN America, at least 13 different lawsuits challenging educational gag orders are currently pending, and political resistance has also grown.
“Over the last three years — and especially in the past twelve months — an increasing number of national groups have begun dedicating significant resources to combat educational censorship,” according to the report. “Simultaneously, a network of state-centric groups — many of them founded by parents, community members, and educators themselves — has emerged to take the fight directly to the local school board or state legislature.”
As PEN America notes, growing public opposition to educational censorship targeting issues of race and LGBTQ+ identity could ultimately make such legislation less attractive to conservative lawmakers.
Notice this is in the news section, not in the opinion writer section. I went to the link. It is the supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics. I read the report, looked at how the study was done. The findings seem solid. This is the short version, easy to read version. That the totally discredited / debunked ROGD (rapid onset gender dysphoria) is used and pushed even though proven wrong is true. It has been pushed on my own Play Time by Tildeb and Nan. It just makes sense they said. Nope, only does if you are anti-trans looking for a reason not to agree with gender affirming care. The same thing happened when kids and adults felt safe coming out as gay, the number of people reporting to be gay increased dramatically, then remained steady. It is called the left handed syndrome, the idea that when people stopped being punished for being left handed, when the stigma was gone, the numbers of left handed people increased. Below are a couple quotes. Hugs. Scottie
The ROGD theory posits that trans identification is exploding specifically among AFAB youth, who are being preyed upon by “gender ideology” — but this analysis of nearly 200,000 adolescents disproves that hypothesis.
Of course, these findings are not the first to indicate that ROGD is junk science. The theory was first floated in 2018, and problems with the study that justified it were obvious from the start. Dr. Lisa Littman, a board member of the “gender critical” group Genspect, published a survey of less than 300 parents of trans youth recruited from openly anti-trans communities like the UK-based TERF-y site Mumsnet who provided testimonials supporting Littman’s hypothesis. That the paper was immediately retracted or that Littman herself has misrepresented her own data haven’t prevented these “findings” from becoming enmeshed on the right, though, in part because anti-trans dogma isn’t just about gender.
Scientists said any claims that people are becoming trans just to fit in “does not hold up to scrutiny.”
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – 2021/08/06: Protesters wrapped in pride and trans pride flags sit on a wall during the trans rights demonstration.Protesters gathered outside Downing Street demanding an end to discrimination against the trans community, better support from the government against hate, and improvements to trans healthcare waiting times. (Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)SOPA Images/Getty Images
Over the past four years, opponents of transgender rights and protections have pushed a theory called “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” or ROGD, asserting that more young people are publicly identifiying as trans due to “social contagion.” “Trans people have long known this theory to be completely false, but now, a new study has finally proven it for good.”
A study published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics is the latest to demonstrate how the numbers just don’t line up in ROGD’s favor. Scientists analyzed data from the CDC’s 2017 and 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 16 states, looking particularly at the ratio of trans and gender-diverse youth who were assigned female at birth as opposed to those assigned male. The ROGD theory posits that trans identification is exploding specifically among AFAB youth, who are being preyed upon by “gender ideology” — but this analysis of nearly 200,000 adolescents disproves that hypothesis.
Far from rising, the number of trans and gender diverse youth identified in the survey actually dropped significantly between 2017 and 2019, falling from 2.4% to 1.6%. And while the ratio of assigned-male to assigned-female trans youth did shrink, going from 1.5:1 to 1.2:1 over the two years analyzed, researchers found the numbers actually changed because there were fewer transfeminine youth in the latter survey, not more transmascs.
Proponents of ROGD, including J.K. Rowling and Joe Rogan, have also claimed that transness is a “social contagion” because young people are using trans identification as a way to escape homophobic bullying. There’s a lot of misconceptions to unpack in that one sentence, but the Pediatrics study addresses the most vital one: once again, it was found, bullying and suicidal ideation rates were both higher among trans youth than their cis-identified peers, making the ROGD claim nonsensical.
“The hypothesis that transgender and gender diverse youth assigned female at birth identify as transgender due to social contagion does not hold up to scrutiny and should not be used to argue against the provision of gender-affirming medical care for adolescents,” Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, one of the study’s senior authors, said in a statement. Lead author Dr. Jack Turban concurred, calling the idea that trans youth transition to escape social stigma “absurd.”
“The damaging effects of these unfounded hypotheses in further stigmatizing transgender and gender diverse youth cannot be understated,” Turban stressed. “We hope that clinicians, policymakers, journalists, and anyone else who contributes to health policy will review these findings.”
Researchers say it points to the growing scientific conclusion that “gender affirming care is life saving care.”
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Of course, these findings are not the first to indicate that ROGD is junk science. The theory was first floated in 2018, and problems with the study that justified it were obvious from the start. Dr. Lisa Littman, a board member of the “gender critical” group Genspect, published a survey of less than 300 parents of trans youth recruited from openly anti-trans communities like the UK-based TERF-y site Mumsnet who provided testimonials supporting Littman’s hypothesis. That the paper was immediately retracted or that Littman herself has misrepresented her own data haven’t prevented these “findings” from becoming enmeshed on the right, though, in part because anti-trans dogma isn’t just about gender.
We’d like to believe that this will finally put Littman’s harmful falsehoods to rest, but sadly, truth-telling is not a hallmark of the reactionary right. Hopefully this can at least reassure some trans youth that they’re not monsters or dupes, and that their identities deserve respect — even if some insist on screaming otherwise.
This is the result and fear of the minority when they try to rule over the majority. Think of it. The majority of the voting public, the people, want this right. So republicans being a minority based on misogynistic religious ideals want to deny the majority the right to have a say. That is the republican right wing maga in its entirety. That is the mom’s of liberty, the mom’s of TikTok, it is the idea that a racist bigoted repressive regressive oppressive religious minority trying desperately to force their ideas on the rest of society. I am so sick of these anti-democracy theocratic republican minority trying to force the rest of the country to live by what their preacher says. Hugs. Scottie
Photo: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 
