Tag: Banning Gender Affirming Care

The UK’s new plan for trans students: bathroom bans, forced outing, & no social transitions

More hate and bigotry enacted against all the medical safety data available.  Guess I am just not being understanding today because these laws are not only not needed but also very harmful.  They cause a lot more problems than the pretended harm they claim to solve.  It is the attempt to regulate and restrict sexual / gender standards into the laws.  It just causes kids and people problems for no reason and promotes anger / bigotry against a small minority of people.   Hugs

 

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/07/the-uks-new-plan-for-trans-students-bathroom-bans-forced-outing-no-social-transitions/

The plan is likely to place trans and gender non-conforming children at greater risk.

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Faefyx Collington (They/Them)July 19, 2026, 11:00 am EDT

The United Kingdom’s Department of Education has published its updated guidance for “Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026” (KCSIE) and it will take effect on September 1. However, the guidance is likely to put trans and gender-non-conforming children at greater risk.

“We criticise numerous aspects of the guidance, especially as to how schools should approach requests related to ‘social transition,’” The Good Law Project wrote in a statement responding to the draft guidance earlier this year. “We also emphasise its failure to properly explain how schools should accommodate the needs of trans pupils in accessing various aspects of school life, such as toilets, changing facilities, and sports.”

Last year, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that, for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act, the legal definition of “woman” is based on “biological sex.” In the aftermath, the Equality and Human Rights Commission released temporary guidance on barring trans people from single-sex spaces. They’ve now released their finalized plan, which says that businesses and institutions should prevent trans people using a single-sex spaces, and that if they allow trans people to use them, they will no longer be considered single-sex spaces.

The aggressive new schools guidance set out in KCSIE is set to comply with the EHRC’s updated policies around single-sex spaces, ruling that trans and gender-questioning children cannot use spaces aligned with their gender identity, even if they have socially transitioned.

“Schools must not allow children into toilets designated for the opposite biological sex,” the guidance reads. “This includes where schools are responding to a request to support any degree of social transition for children who are questioning their gender.”

The same policy is applied to changing rooms for those over 11 years old, nor should the students “share overnight accommodation with a child of the opposite biological sex,” it states.

The guidance allows for single-use restrooms “if a gender-questioning child does not want to use the toilet designated for their biological sex.” However, there is no actual requirement for this, but only the suggestion that “schools and colleges should consider whether they can provide an alternative toilet facility—for example self-contained individual toilets—without compromising the provision of single-sex facilities.”

When it comes to all of these arrangements, the guidance clearly states, “These alternative arrangements should not compromise the safety, comfort, privacy or dignity of the child, or of any other children.”

However, such arrangements in their own right will challenge the safety and dignity of trans children. One plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s bathroom bill died by suicide earlier this year. Before her death she said of similar provisions, “It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender.”

When it comes to social transition at school, the guidance advises against staff and teachers supporting it, citing concerns raised in the controversial Cass Review. The guidance sets out extensive hurdles before any member of staff at a school or colleges can be supportive of a social transition.

The guidance establishes that “parents and carers should be actively involved and their views treated with importance.” That rule alone amounts to a forced outing policy that could put trans children at risk of harm if their family are not supportive. While the guidance goes on to carve out an exception for “rare circumstances” where involving parents and carers could pose a “greater risk,” such a policy would require a lot of trust and a careful hand from school administrators who are inexperienced with such matters.

The possibility of the school deciding not to allow the social transition is not only laid out but encouraged. The guidance notes that “when considering a child’s request for support with social transition will be to consider what is in the best interests of the child and other children, and a decision relating to social transition may not be the same as a child’s wishes.” They also note that, for younger children, support for a social transition should be “agreed very rarely.”

More of the choice is taken away from trans children and their families with the note that for “pre-pubertal children” clinical involvement should be part of the decision-making process and that “should include advising on the risks and benefits of social transition as a planned intervention, referencing best available evidence. This is not a role that can be undertaken by staff without appropriate clinical training.”

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Faefyx Collington is a British American author who writes about LGBTQ+ issues, politics, popular culture, and their intersection. You can find Faefyx Collington on socials and the wider internet by googling their unique name.

Parents speak out after their teen died by suicide: Idaho’s anti-trans extremism took a toll

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/07/parents-speak-out-after-their-teen-died-by-idahos-anti-trans-took-a-toll/

When asked if anyone wanted to harm her daughter, her mother said “The whole f**king country” did.

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John Russell (He/Him)July 20, 2026, 1:00 pm EDT

The parents of a transgender teen who died by suicide earlier this year are speaking out about the toll Idaho’s anti-trans laws and the Trump administration’s anti-trans crusade took on their daughter.

“You worry about that hatred being internalized, and that’s what happened to my kid,” Elyse Thorpe told NBC News in a recent profile. “It got inside.”

Thorpe and ex-husband Joseph Pollard describe their late daughter, May Pollard, as an energetic and curious child who loved sloths, video games, and writing poetry. She just wanted to live her life and experience the same things any teen does. But she was also keenly aware of the wave of anti-trans laws and sentiment that have swept Idaho and much of the U.S. in recent years.

According to NBC News, May, who had also been diagnosed with autism, came out as trans when she was in eighth grade. She began receiving gender-affirming medical care in ninth grade. But due to Idaho’s ban on such care for minors, passed in 2022 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2024, her parents were forced to travel to Portland, Oregon, every six months to get May the care she needed. Following President Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025, Thorpe began making the 13-hour round trip by car to avoid creating a flight record amid the administration’s relentless crackdown on gender-affirming care for young people.

While the treatment improved things for May, the obstacles placed between her and the care she needed by anti-trans legislators continued to weigh on her.

Then, in July 2023, Idaho’s law banning trans students from accessing single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity took effect. Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of Boise High School’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance, and in July 2025, May joined the lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe. In court filings, May described feeling stigmatized by being forced to use her campus’s two single-occupancy restrooms, which came to be referred to as the “trans bathrooms.”

“It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender,” she said. “I don’t want people to know I am transgender without my consent — even students who might be friendly. For me, it is not a part of myself I talk about or that I feel is the most important part of my identity.”

Her parents told NBC News that May would avoid eating and drinking during the school day, hoping to not have to use the school’s bathrooms. “I just want to fit in,” she wrote in her affidavit in the Lambda Legal case. “It is upsetting to think that I may have to go through the rest of high school without access to something as basic as the ability to use the same restroom as everyone else.”

May’s parents say she became more troubled last fall and winter, according to NBC News. She attempted to run away to Oregon, and at least one of her poems seemed to reference self-harm. Then on the morning of January 27, Thorpe woke to find May missing from her bedroom. She later found her daughter’s body in a downstairs bedroom. May was just 16 years old.

When a detective asked her parents whether anyone might have wanted to harm May, Thorpe responded that “A lot of America” did.

“There is a huge amount of animosity, every single day, thrown at trans kids,” an angry and grieving Pollard told the detective. “The whole f**king country. The whole f**king administration, every single f**king day.”

As NBC News notes, over the last few years, Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) has signed 15 anti-LGBTQ+ laws. In April, Little signed a pair of bills, one of which made it a criminal offense for trans people to use the bathroom associated with their gender, while the other banned Pride flags on government buildings.

As for Lambda Legal’s challenge to the state’s school bathroom ban, at the time of May’s death, she was one of just two plaintiffs left in the case, as all the others had graduated high school and no longer held standing. Earlier this spring, Lambda Legal moved to dismiss the case after the final plaintiff graduated.

But Thorpe has continued to protest Idaho’s anti-trans laws. According to NBC News, she stood outside Gov. Little’s office during a March 31 protest holding a photo of her daughter.

“I wanted to support the protesters and remind everyone, including the governor,” Thorpe told the outlet, “that the stakes are real.”

“The parents go and testify, and we say, ‘Children are going to die,’” she said. “We tell the legislators that, and they dismiss it. I guess they think it’s hyperbole, or they think it’s hysteria, or they think it’s an acceptable outcome, probably some mix of those things. So I don’t understand why there is an unwillingness to connect these laws to these outcomes. It was right there from the start.”

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John Russell is a writer and editor based in New York City. In addition to covering politics and entertainment for LGBTQ Nation, he has written for Vanity Fair, Slate, People, Billboard, and Out. He also writes about film, TV, and pop culture in his free newsletter Johnny Writes…

Yet another study proves puberty blockers are life-saving for trans youth

I have never understood the rights hate of LGBTQ+ people just for being different.  I used to think it was they couldn’t understand it because they did feel that way.  If they did not feel that way then it must be wrong or not exist.    The very same things they say about trans people they said about gay people when I was a school kid.  I remember that people were pushing to ban gay guys, and it was always gay guys just like it is always trans women, from teaching because they would molest the kids.  Now it is we can’t let trans people use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity because of some fear they will molest the little girls.  Always to protect the kids but if that was the goal then may I mention religious leaders?  I think also the fear some religious right wingers have is that they find trans women attractive and that terrifies them.  They want to force kids to go through the wrong puberty so it is harder for them to fit in with the stereotypes people have of what is masculine or feminine.   For some they think they are doing the bidding of their deity but I don’t remember reading Jesus saying anything about trans people.  But he did preach love and tolerance a lot.  Maybe the pain and cruelty is the point after all.  Hugs

https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/01/08/puberty-blockers-study-another-one/

Trans youth almost always feel less suicidal while undergoing treatment. (Getty

Trans youth almost always feel less suicidal while undergoing treatment. (Getty)

Yet another study proving that trans youth almost always feel less suicidal on gender-affirming care has been thrown on the pile of evidence that puberty blockers are safe and effective.

Research set to be published in the Journal of Paediatric’s February volume has once again proved that trans adolescents show “meaningful reductions” in depression and anxiety after beginning clinically-endorsed hormone therapy.

Co-written by paediatricians in Nevada, Texas, and Missouri, the study examined the wellbeing of 432 patients before and after undergoing treatment.

The participants, aged 12 to 20, were surveyed on their mental health before and at least 364 days after beginning appropriate medical treatment such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Trans youth regularly come under attack by politicians. (Getty)

Using the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) toolkit – an internationally acknowledged assessment of suicidality in young people and adults – researchers found significant improvements in the mental health of patients across the board.

Suicidality among participants decreased significantly over time, according to the study’s results, with rates continuing to decrease as time went on.

The reductions, clinicians noted, were consistent regardless of gender identity, treatment duration, and, interestingly, the age at the start of therapy.

This not only once again proves that gender-affirming care is remarkably effective in improving the wellbeing of trans patients, but that its effectiveness in reducing suicidal tendencies does not diminish as patients get older.

Clinicians recommended following-up the study with a “larger sample and longer follow-up” to sufficiently prove the consistency of gender-affirming care’s mental health treatments.

Politicians continue to ban puberty blockers despite evidence

Numerous studies across the globe have proven that gender-affirming care is almost always a good thing for trans people, especially trans young people.

One study from October 2024 found that 97 per cent of trans under-18s were “highly satisfied” with the results of gender-affirming treatment, while another from March in the same year found that, out of 548 patients who accessed trans healthcare, just two regretted it.

Regret rates for gender-affirming treatment are very low according to a paper from May 2024, which found that patients are more likely to regret knee surgery, breast augmentation, and even having children than those starting gender-affirming care.

Despite the mountain of evidence proving that gender-affirming care can be, and almost always is, life-saving, anti-trans politicians and political pundits regularly claim trans young people shouldn’t be allowed to access clinically-approved medical treatment.

Wes Streeting, pictured.
Wes Streeting has routinely come under fire for his policies on trans people. (Getty)

At least 27 states in the US ban gender-affirming care in some capacity, preventing over 40 per cent of America’s trans youth population from accessing care. Puberty blockers are also banned for trans youth in the UK, despite being freely available for cisgender youth.

The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ suicide prevention organisation, warned these bans have “detrimental impacts” on the mental health of trans young people, who are already disproportionately likely to feel suicidal.

Research conducted by Dr Natacha Kennedy in the University of London found that Wes Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers for trans young people is “significantly, extensively, and relentlessly harming trans children and young people”.

She spoke to the parents of trans young people who were once “happy, well-adjusted, and little different from most cis children”, but who have now resorted to self-harm because of an inability to access care.

Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact the Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.