On Oct. 14, some 1,200 IBM employees signed on remotely to a company website for what was billed as a celebration of the life and career of Lynn Conway, a “tech trailblazer and transgender pioneer,” as the event was titled.

Conway’s record as a computer science pioneer at IBM and subsequently at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, was undoubtedly well known to the attendees, as was the story of her gender transition in 1968.

What was unexpected was that IBM would take the occasion to confess that it had fired Conway in the midst of her transition, after promising to support her — or that it would formally apologize for how it had treated her 52 years earlier.

“I wanted to say to you here today, Lynn, for that experience in our company and all the hardships that followed, I am truly sorry,” said Diane Gherson, an IBM senior vice president of human affairs who was leading the event.

“Thanks to your courage, your example, and all the people who followed in your footsteps, as a society we are now in a better place,” Gherson continued. “But that doesn’t help you, Lynn, probably our very first employee to come out. And for that, we deeply regret what you went through — and know I speak for all of us.”

No one was more surprised at the apology than Conway herself, who long ago had shed any resentment about IBM’s actions in 1968.

“I didn’t know how to react,” Conway told me. “I started to tear up. I didn’t know when it started that Diane was going to apologize on IBM’s behalf.”

The event then continued along the lines Conway, 82, had expected — as a recognition not only of her work but the progress the company had made in supporting transgender employees.

“They are the leading company in this, which is amazing,” she says. She expected the company to merely “admit this happened and they know about my work, and then we would jointly celebrate how far we’ve come.”

To grasp the importance of IBM’s step, it helps to review Conway’s personal and professional journey.

I first met Conway when I was working on my 1999 book about Xerox PARC, “Dealers of Lightning,” for which she was a uniquely valuable source. In 2000, when she decided to come out as transgender, she allowed me to chronicle her life in a cover story for the Los Angeles Times Magazine titled “Through the Gender Labyrinth.”

Growing up male in New York’s strait-laced Westchester County, Conway struggled with an inner turmoil.

A natural engineer, Conway excelled academically and won a place at MIT, but wound up flunking out due to a lack of social or medical support. In 1961, however, Conway enrolled at Columbia University, acquiring bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering in only two years.

Conway also impressed a Columbia instructor who was an executive at IBM. That led to a position on a team secretly designing the world’s fastest supercomputer, a pet project of IBM Chairman Thomas Watson Jr.

Conway moved with the team to Menlo Park, Calif., producing engineering innovations that would remain central to IBM’s most advanced computers for years.

In the meantime Conway had gotten married and began to raise two daughters. Family life only intensified that inner turmoil, and in 1968 Conway decided to undertake gender reassignment surgery.

As I wrote in 2000, Conway had visualized a nearly seamless transition. IBM would change the name on company records and execute a transfer to another lab, marking a fresh start.

It was not to be. IBM corporate management, unable to see how the secret could be kept from co-workers, feared disruption. Although Conway’s immediate superiors had said they would find room for her at another company lab, contrary orders came down from on high and Conway was quietly fired.

“They thought they were doing the right thing,” Conway told me. “I’m sure in his own mind, T.J. Watson Jr. thought so. He was responsible for a corporation.” Gender transition and sex reassignment surgery were alien concepts at the time.

“Christine Jorgensen was the last time anything had come out about stuff like this,” Conway recalls. Jorgensen’s transition, which had made front-page news in 1951, had been reduced to a historical curiosity nearly two decades later. “Watson was thinking there would be endless publicity, and I can understand that.”

In an era when there was no recourse for anyone fired for sex or gender discrimination, Conway’s job loss could not have come at a worse time.

Conway was living as a woman but the gender reassignment surgery was not scheduled to take place for a few months. It would cost about $4,000 — an enormous sum in 1968 — not including several thousand dollars in related costs: electrolysis, counseling, hormone therapy.

The family went on welfare for three months. Conway’s wife barred her from contact with her daughters. She would not see them again for 14 years.

Beyond the financial implications, the stigma of banishment from one of the world’s most respected corporations felt like an excommunication.

She sought jobs in the burgeoning electrical engineering community in what would soon become known as Silicon Valley, working her way up through startups, and eventually received an offer in 1973 from the research lab Xerox had just established in Palo Alto.

PARC has become famous for inventing the personal computer, but Conway’s work was on a different trajectory. In partnership with Caltech engineering professor Carver Mead, she codified the design rules for the new technology of “very large-scale integrated circuits” (or, in computer shorthand, VLSI). The pair laid down the rules in a 1979 textbook that a generation of engineering students knew as “Mead-Conway.”

VLSI fostered a revolution in computer microprocessor design that included the Pentium chip, which would power millions of PCs. Conway spread the VLSI gospel by creating a system in which students taking courses at MIT and other technical institutions could get their sample designs rendered in silicon.

Professional and academic accolades began to accumulate. In 1983, she was recruited to head a supercomputer program at the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA — sailing through her FBI background check so easily that she became convinced that the Pentagon must have already encountered transgender people in its workforce. A figure of undisputed authority in some of the most abstruse corners of computing, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989.

By then she had joined the University of Michigan as a professor and associate dean in the College of Engineering, where she is professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science. In 2002 she married a fellow engineer, Charles Rogers, and with him has nurtured a 24-acre homestead in a rural district not far from Ann Arbor.

She also became a mentor and model for generations following her path to gender transition. She also has written about how women and minorities can get written out of the histories of scientific and technical innovations — drawing from her own experience of fighting to be recognized for her role in developing VLSI technology.

Conway’s record of professional achievement and personal growth, along with her engineer’s clear-eyed contemplation of the world around her, helped her to look back on her experience at IBM without rancor — “I don’t go around holding grudges,” she says. “That’s just bad karma.”

She was aware, moreover, that IBM had become a leader in its support of transgender employees. But there was something missing in her relationship with IBM. The process of filling the vacuum started with Arvind Krishna, who learned the outlines of Conway’s story from a transgender employee shortly after become IBM’s CEO in April. He asked Gherson to look into the background

Her research left her “stunned and heartbroken,” Gherson said at the Oct. 14 event, which incorporated the announcement that Conway had received IBM’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

“While your experience wouldn’t happen today at IBM, there will always be challenges in today’s workplace that we just aren’t prepared for,” Gherson told Conway and the audience.

“One thing 2020 has taught all of us is that we have a lot to learn when it comes to creating an inclusive workplace in society,” Gherson said. “We know there is much work to be done. So we are here today not only to celebrate you as a world renowned innovator and IBM alum, but also to learn from you — and by so doing create a more inclusive workplace in society.”

For Conway, the event points to a way that society can redress historical wrongs without sweeping them under the rug.

As members of the audience related some of their own experiences of coming out, “the whole thing quickly turned away from recrimination and dissing people who did things in the past that by present standards don’t look very good,” Conway recalls.

“For me personally, it brings a lot of closure,” she says. “It ties things up so that all of that is now ancient history. And it shows a path forward for a lot of issues where there are regrets over past actions. People need resolution, but you can’t go back in space and time and judge those by the techno-social standards of today.

“There are ways of not carrying hate and vendettas, but to be able to historically recognize exactly what happened, and then take away the lessons that any one of us can share about how to avoid entrapping oneself in a similar situation that might be judged in the future. It isn’t really about me. I’m just a messenger.”

The post Column: IBM apologizes for firing a transgender pioneer, 52 years late appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

• The teenager is being assisted in his fight for action by The Good Law Project
• It says the NHS has ‘legal obligation’ to provide specialist care within 18 weeks
• But the average waiting time for a first appointment is 18 months, group says
• NHS England insists an independent review into the service is already underway

A transgender teenage boy is launching legal against against NHS England over delays to gender reassignment treatment, having waited more than a year for a referral to the specialist clinic.

The 14-year-old is being assisted in his fight by The Good Law Project, which says the NHS has ‘a legal obligation’ to provide specialist care, or an alternative, within 18 weeks.

However, the average waiting time for a first appointment with the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at London’s Tavistock Centre, is 18 months, the organisation says, with some even waiting up to four years.

This is not even to actually get what the NHS describes as fully reversible puberty blockers, but just to begin the process of being assessed for eligibility.

Some 10,000 more young people have been referred to the already over-subscribed GIDS, according to figures obtained by the BBC.

NHS England says an independent review into the service has been launched, and insists any legal action ‘will only cost taxpayers’ money and not help the actions already under way’.

The service, which is run by the Tavistock and Portland NHS Foundation Trust, provides support to people under the age of 18 who experience difficulties related to their gender identity.

Reece, who came out to friends and family in primary school, told the BBC he would not want to bring such action ideally, but felt he didn’t have a choice as ‘nobody else is sticking up for trans young people’.

He added: ‘I know more than 30 trans people, from school and LGBT groups. Everybody’s been waiting for months, or even years, but nobody’s been able to get in yet.

‘It’s scary because it shows the service isn’t available to the people who need it.’

In a statement he added: ‘The length of the NHS waiting list means the treatments which are essential for my wellbeing are not available to me.

‘By the time I get to the top of the list it will be too late, and in the meantime I suffer the fear and terror that gender dysphoria causes, every day.’ 

Gender dysphoria is when a person feels a sense of unease because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.

The NHS announced in September that an independent review into GIDS would be carried out.

An NHS England spokesman said it would include ‘how and when’ young people are referred to specialist services.

Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project said: ‘Whatever your views about the right treatment regime for young people with gender dysphoria, it can’t be right that they face lengthy waiting lists – on some reports up to four years – for a first appointment.

‘Children are losing the opportunity to be seen within a window in which they can secure effective treatment and so are, in practice, being denied access to that treatment.’

The Good Law Project said the case was not about the treatment GIDS should provide, but the ‘lengthy delays’ in accessing it.

The GIDS’ website says it is aware that young people are having to wait a ‘long’ time for their first appointment. 

An NHS England spokesperson said: ‘There has been more than a 500% rise in the number of children and young people being referred to the Tavistock’s gender identity service since 2013 as more people come forward for support and treatment.

‘The NHS has already asked Dr Hilary Cass to carry out an independent review including how and when children and young people are referred to specialist services, so legal action against the NHS will only cost taxpayers’ money and not help the actions already under way.’

The post Transgender boy, 14, launches legal action against NHS over delays to gender reassignment treatment after waiting more than a year for referral to clinic appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

A way of making a person’s voice better reflect their gender

Voice surgery for transgender individuals may be an option for individuals who experience dysphoria about their voice and have not been helped enough by the practice of voice therapy.

Purpose

Voice therapy can be helpful for people who are learning to speak in a way that is read as more masculine or feminine. It can also help people, to a degree, make their speaking voices sound a certain way. However, it does not adjust the fundamental pitch of the speaking voice.

Transmasculine individuals often experience a deepening of their voice when on testosterone-driven gender affirming hormone therapy.1 This is because testosterone causes lengthening of the vocal cords.2

In contrast, transfeminine people do not experience a shortening of their vocal cords when they take estrogen. Therefore, if they are uncomfortable with the pitch of their voice, or feel as though it is not congruent with their gender, they may seek voice surgery.

Voice surgery is generally not recommended until people have tried voice therapy, which is a less invasive way to address voice dysphoria or discomfort.

Types of Transgender Voice Surgery

Most transgender voice surgery performed is feminizing voice surgery. In order to affect pitch, voice surgery is used to address one of the physical characteristics of the vocal cords that determine pitch. These are vocal fold tension, length, and mass.3 There are a number of different procedures that can be used to adjust these characteristics

Cricothyroid Approximation

Criciothyroid approximation (CTA) increases tension in the vocal cords by tilting the larynx and sewing the lower border of the thyroid to the Adam’s apple cartilage. This has been shown to increase voice pitch.

It also makes the thyroid notch more prominent, which is an undesirable side effect. (Indeed, many individuals combine voice surgery with a reduction in the size of the Adam’s apple.) This surgery is not recommended for individuals under 30 because younger patients do not yet have solid thyroid cartilage.4

Anterior Commissure Advancement

Anterior commissure advancement (ACA) is another tension modifying surgery. It was initially developed to treat medical conditions that affect the tension in the vocal cords. However, it generally does not affect pitch enough to be useful for transgender women.4

Anterior Glottic Web Formation

Anterior glottic web formation describes procedures that are used to shorten the length of the vocal folds. This can be done using a number of different techniques. These include both external procedures, done through the neck, and endoscopic procedures, done from inside the throat.3

Laser Reduction Glottoplasty

Laser reduction glottoplasty uses a laser to vaporize parts of the vocalis muscle and surrounding structures in order to change the density of the vocal folds. Originally used for cases where CTA had failed, it is now sometimes used in combination with CTA to take advantage of both density and tension changes and increase the magnitude of the pitch effects of surgery.4

Who Performs Transgender Voice Surgery

Voice surgery procedures should only be performed by surgeons who are specifically trained in the modification of the voice, ideally the modification of the transgender voice.

When surgery is performed by people who lack appropriate training, outcomes may be undesirable. People may lose range in their voice or experience other undesired vocal effects, including hoarseness.

Voice surgery is most often performed by ear, nose, and throat specialists, otherwise known as otolaryngologists. Such surgeons have advanced training in working with the structures of the throat.

However, not all otolaryngologists have experience with pitch modification. It is reasonable to ask doctors about their experience performing this surgery and if they can share samples of voice changes they have achieved using their work.

Eligibility

Unlike many other gender affirming surgeries, there are no specific eligibility requirements for accessing gender affirming voice surgery. However, most ethical surgeons will encourage patients to work with a voice therapist before undergoing surgery.

Voice therapy can address gendered aspects of the voice, and may affect people’s desire to undergo surgical modification of the vocal folds. Voice therapy may also be required after vocal surgery, in order for individuals to learn to use the changed structures of their throat.

People who are unable or unwilling to engage with voice therapy, and see surgery as a quick fix, may not be appropriate candidates, because where recommended, voice therapy is an important part of surgical recovery.

Association of Voice With Gender

Voices are, quite literally, the first way that most people communicate with the world. Whether talking on the phone or calling out to a friend across the room, our voices are a big part of how we are perceived.

Indeed, many of the assumptions we make about people’s identities reflect our perceptions of the way they speak. These assumptions are not only those related to gender, People often think they can determine other characteristics by hearing someone’s voice—including their race.5

What about a person’s voice is associated with gender? Although we think of women as having higher voices than men, pitch is only the most obviously gendered aspect of the voice. Gender is also associated with volume of speech as well as the ways that people pronounce different vowels.

The fact that perception of vocal gender is multifaceted is why vocal surgery is rarely performed in the absence of therapy for vocal technique—pitch change alone is unlikely to affect whether a person’s voice is heard as male or female.

A Word From Verywell

Having a masculine voice is a predictor of improved well-being for transmasculine people.6 The same is true for transfeminine people, and various aspects of the voice have been found to be associated with quality of life.7 Not every transfeminine person is interested in voice therapy or surgery. However, for some people it can be very important for their well-being.8

This may be particularly true for women who spend a lot of time using their voice—like teachers, or phone support providers—because being repeatedly misgendered can take an emotional toll. Vocal surgery may also have the potential to reduce the risk of other forms of transphobia and discrimination.

The post What Is Voice Surgery for Transgender Individuals? appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

Assam has become the first Indian state to add “transgender” as an identity category for people seeking civil service jobs, allowing 42 trans candidates to apply to sit an entry exam, an official and a campaigner said on Friday.

The application form for the exam, which recruits for state roles such as administrative officials, magistrates, and police officers, now lets applicants tick male, female or transgender, a move welcomed by local trans rights advocates.

“Forty-two (applicants) is not a small number… It is a historic decision. Assam has become the first state in India to have included us,” said Swati Bidhan Baruah of the Assam Transgender Welfare Board, which sought the change.

Calling the decision a “big victory”, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation her group had also urged Assam’s state government to reserve a quota of civil service jobs for trans candidates.

“We are confident our demand will be met soon,” she said.

Pallab Bhattacharya, chairman of the Assam Public Service Commission, which conducts the test, said about 76,000 candidates had applied to sit this year’s examination, which will be held in December.

In April, India’s federal government instructed all ministries and departments to modify forms for recruitment tests to include “transgender” as a separate category to conform with a trans rights law passed last year.

The law set out to improve the lives of about two million trans-Indians, who face discrimination in the largely conservative nation and mostly survive through begging, performing at weddings, or selling sex.

Still, campaigners have expressed concern about the limits on self-determining their gender, with the law stating they must obtain an identity certificate from a district magistrate to be declared transgender.

They also have to give proof of having undergone sex reassignment surgery if they then want to be listed as male or female.

India’s Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that trans people had equal rights but they are still often rejected by their families and denied jobs, education and healthcare.

Assam, which lies in northeast India, has a trans population of about 11,500, according to the last census of 2011.

One trans woman who filled out the state application form said sitting the entry examination could change her life, adding that she hoped to join the local police force.

“It’s a matter of pride and self respect to have a category where we can boldly mention ourselves as transgender,” the 24-year-old said, asking not to give her name.

“I want to change the system and do away with discrimination faced by the transgender community.”

The post ‘Matter of pride’: Indian state lets transgender to register for civil services exam appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

The post Female prisoner suing UK govt after claiming sexual assault by transgender inmate appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

The post Fertility Preservation for Transgender Individuals appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s first transgender soldier plans to file an administrative litigation after the military decided to discharge her from her duties on Wednesday.

Byun Hui-Su, staff sergeant and tank driver, stationed in Gyeonggi Province, north of Seoul, underwent gender reassignment surgery in Thailand last year while on leave.

“She is indeed very brave. I think it is time for change in Korean society to embrace the gender diversity and minority groups as part of our members,” said Jieun Lee, a human rights, finance and art specialty lawyer who helps represent Byun along with the Military Human Rights Korea and Lawyers’ Knowledge Forum pro bono committee, told ABC News.

Byun was waiting for the court to approve her request to change legal gender from male to female. The National Human Rights Commission has recommended that the military wait three months before any discharge decision is made.

But South Korea’s military abruptly discharged Byun on Wednesday based on a related military personnel management act which allows discharge of people with physical or mental disabilities if those problems were not a result of combat or in the line of duty.

“It is very disappointing and annoying that the military medical review committee sees her transgender operation as physical defect based on legal gender as male,” Lee added.

Shortly after the military announcement, Byun, holding back tears, read a statement to the press describing her childhood dreams of becoming a soldier.

She was proud to have made that choice but confessed “symptoms of depression turned worse day by day because of gender dysphoria” throughout her duty.

“(Being a soldier) was my earnest dream but I continuously thought that I could not serve the military in this condition,” she read. “Apart from my gender identity, I want to show everyone that I can also be one of the great soldiers who protect this country.”

This is the first time in South Korea that an active-duty member has been referred to a military panel to determine whether to end his or her service due to a sex reassignment operation.

South Korea prohibits transgender people from joining the military but has no specific laws on what to do with those who have sex reassignment operations during their time in service.

The post South Korea’s first transgender soldier objects to military discharge decision appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

CHENNAI:  A week after Mylapore’s Raga Sudha Hall played host to some highly talented yet very unlikely guests — Tamizh musicians who have taken up the cause of environmental activism on behalf of the oft-ignored north Madras — it set the stage for a host of transgender artists and activists for the first time. A place that has long since been synonymous with Carnatic concerts and Bharatanatyam recitals was witness to poetry readings and record dance performances by transmen and transwomen, offering them a passage to the mainstream. All thanks to Chennai Kalai Theru Vizha’s insistence on extending inclusivity to marginalised arts and people.

Making a shift 
“A platform like this did not exist 15 years ago. We had to organise events ourselves; we’d call 10 people and they would be people of our own. But now, I am starting to see this shift to the mainstream. It is nice to see so many new faces among the audience. For our work spreads only through word of mouth. So long, we had been talking among ourselves; now, with the Kalai Vizha, we have been able to reach more people,” pointed out Sankari of Nirangal, one of the two NGOs that Kalai Vizha had collaborated with for its first Thirunar Vizha. 

Day one of the weekend event had many artistes from the trans community putting up their work on display as not just a celebration of their art but also a quiet declaration of their everyday travails. Between her hard-hitting poetry readings and art installation, The Red Wall Project, the inimitable Kalki Subramaniam — artist, activist, writer and author — called for the need to discard the debilitating stereotypes the world still held on to; she also placed the onus of reparations on the society that had been the cause of strife in the first place. 

Identity struggles
With a solo theatre performance that has had global attention in as long as a decade, the astounding A Revathi, writer and activist, offered a glimpse into the life of ‘your neighbourhood transwoman’ — detailing the identity struggles, need for self-assertion, the born-again journey of adopted ‘mothers’ and ‘daughters’, the value of such trusted kinship. This, alongside the barrage of assault and abuse that’s thrust upon the people just living life on their terms.

Despite the exemplary work of these women — Revathi’s books are prescribed text for Gender Studies in many colleges and universities, Kalki’s Sahodari Foundation continues to offer a platform for the empowerment of the community — a brief interaction they had with the audience showed how much more there is to be achieved in the arena of inclusivity and sensitivity. 

Spectators, most likely well-intentioned, had only to ask them about their sense of fashion (too loud, in his opinion), sex reassignment surgeries and ways of sexual pleasure. While they could have easily been dismissed at any other forum, Kalki and Revathi took the time to provide them with meaningful answers. Even as Kalki thinks it’s a breach of privacy. “As a person, as a woman, as a transwoman, I feel that I shouldn’t answer that. Let him go to Google to find it. But as an activist working for the community, there is a compulsion to answer. If some ignorant person is asking this question, it is also an opportunity for me to answer it to a hundred people for they may have it too,” she explained. 

Perhaps if the society did not have such rigid norms for sex and gender, we wouldn’t need reassignment surgeries, quips Revathi. “Naan Bharathi oda meesai vecha penna irunthuttu poren, (Let me be Bharathi’s ideology of a woman — but one sporting a moustache),” she remarked to a question on surgery options. 

Educational reforms 
It was to address these trappings of the society that the Vizha featured the works of transmen too, a section of people that gets even less attention and care than transwomen. It also offered a platform for the ‘record dance’ — a work that has provided a livelihood for many from the community. Even this came with a heavy dose of reality — a dance crew named after Tara, a transwoman, whose death in a police station in Chennai was quickly forgotten over the disruption that came with demonetisation. 

While most of the society is happy doing the bare minimum for people it marginalises, the Vizha was a means to reassert the need for educational reform. Schoolteacher Mahalakshmi Kannan from Jawadu Hills and assistant professor V Sri Latha both emphasised on the importance of keeping children within the fold of the family and the education system to aid them through the transition, their identity crisis. 
Neelam NGO’s Muththamizh Kalai Vizhi insisted on representation — a means to offer children a different narrative about the transgender community. Kalki, though she is happy to witness the change in certain quarters, thinks there’s much more that has to be done. She didn’t end the night without doing her part in offering an alternative narrative. 

“You call it the third gender but we are the first gender, for we have transitioned from one state to another. Women come second for they are the creators. It is men who are the third gender.” Only then do you realise that it had to be said and it had to be said by her.

The post From margins to mainstream: The rise of Chennai’s trans artists appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

January 14, 2020 (American Thinker) — It is a startling reaction, but LGBT advocates are continuing their campaign to ostracize “transgender” people who want their appearance once again to reflect their sex.

Charlie Evans fits the profile of a “former transgender” who felt shunned by LGBT members and was labeled a “traitor.” She naively set out to help teenagers avoid making the same “horrendous mistakes” she had made when starting to “transition” at age 17. She began living as a boy, binding her chest and shaving her head.

The floodgates to this bizarre phenomenon opened in the aftermath of Evans appearing on a popular cable program, Sky News, in the United Kingdom. Hundreds of “former transsexuals” who (also) “feel like a social contagion,” says Evans, had contacted her wanting to do the same thing. 

Evans further enraged leftists by founding a nonprofit that recognizes the extent of the problem spelled out in its name, “Detransition Advocacy Network,” in England. Transsexuals sought out Evans for support, calling from countries around the world.

Pulling back the curtain on Evans’s regrets, and those of others like her, couldn’t come at a worse time for the LGBT community. They literally can’t afford to have hundreds of “retransitioning” transsexuals come between them and their dream of getting more taxpayers to foot the bill for so-called sex change procedures.

Apparently, “former transsexuals” fail to fit their romanticized narrative on how to achieve “gender inclusivity.” Leftist advocates can’t be bothered with examining the tragic details of devastated health and ruined lives of transsexuals, but rather must stick with their ideology foisted on the public.

Seeking the gold standard of approval, transgender advocates have prominently displayed the ACLU’s statement summing up their economic goal: “A general recognition in America that transition-related care is basic healthcare for transgender people,” reads the ACLU “blog of rights … [and] that no one should be denied coverage.”

Most politicians know which way the ideological argument is going, and they’re jumping on board the gender-activist train — and not without your tax dollars.

Massachusetts’s former governor Deval Patrick successfully forced taxpayers to subsidize sex-obscuring surgery by expanding Medicaid coverage. Why stop there? Gov. Patrick was lauded by leftists for his state’s unprecedented “significant advances” in health care legislation: that translates to mean he has targeted the deepest pockets in the medical insurance industry.

Private health care insurers are now prohibited from denying the claims of members who are suffering from sexual dysphoria and undergoing “sex change” operations, according to the Massachusetts Division of Insurance.

This is the tip of the subsidy iceberg. Oregon and California have led the campaign to offer Medicaid and Medicare (respectively) funds for sex-obscuring procedures.

Now even elderly patients can opt for gender-related health care coverage through Medicare. (Requests are handled on a case-by-case basis, according to the government website.) No doubt, voters can anticipate thousands of pages more of legislation coming down the subsidy pike in 2020.

Taxpayers need to question more than subsidies for sex-obscuring operations; they need to ask whether their politicians are keeping up with serious and lasting risks of transgender procedures.

One physician in Los Angeles addressed the obvious but rarely discussed “dangerous” pre-treatment and surgical regimen. “A patient administered high doses of sex-change [sic] hormones must factor in the potentially catastrophic effects of totally disrupting the body’s normal physiologic function,” he says. The FDA has already received 24,000 reports of adverse reactions to cross-sex hormones, which now include puberty-blockers for children who “identify” as the opposite sex.

One world health organization has admitted that sex-obscuring treatments “can cause permanent bodily impairment and are generally irreversible,” according to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

Mounting clinical evidence reveals the fallacy of the “rainbow dream” to safely “transition.” That means gender ideology cannot save transsexuals who are now suffering from ruined health and experiencing more serious health disorders (including cancer, diabetes, severe osteoporosis, etc.)

It’s rare, but cases of gender regret are surfacing in the media.

Mike Penner, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, returned to the newsroom as Christine Daniels after surgery. Colleagues were very accepting, even after Mike decided to return to presenting himself according to his true sex. Tragically, the reporter became another transgender statistic. He died by suicide in 2009.

The numbers mounted, according to nonprofit websites. Walt Heyer — who had his sex-obscuring surgery reversed — thinks this phenomenon is far more common than what the public has been led to believe. 

“People don’t fare well in life experience after undergoing gender surgery,” Heyer tells National Review. “So it’s always kind of troubling for me why we would pay for something … that is actually [going to] be more harmful than if we left the person alone and dealt with the psychological component.”

His sixth book, Trans Life Survivors, compiles 30 life experiences of transgender regret, capturing the painful experiences of those caught up in today’s “transmania.” The most heartbreaking are “survivors” who felt pressured into gender “transition” by social media, political correctness, and even public school officials.

“Blair,” who holds a Guinness World Record for the most so-called sex change surgeries, underwent a shocking 167 procedures. He, and others, are left feeling as though the transgender movement has become a sickening money-making industry.

None of this can be found on the ACLU “blog of rights.”

A note to taxpayers: Generally, taxpayers remain clueless about the costs attached to gender “reassignment” surgery. Procedures now federally subsidized include: basic “male-to-female” surgery ranges from $25,000 to $50,000, including testicle removal, breast augmentation, and genital surgery; and “female-to-male” ranges from $30,000 to $50,000, covering mastectomy, reconstruction of chest, areolar reduction, and genital surgery, according to the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery.

The post More and more ‘transgender’ people regret surgery, want to return to a normal life appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

Two transgender women are suing Florida government agencies for being denied gender-affirming health care under the state employee health plan’s exclusion for “gender reassignment or modification services or supplies.”

It’s the latest legal challenge to state health plans that deny coverage for gender-affirming procedures.

The Florida lawsuit, filed Monday, argues that the state’s exclusion of gender-affirming care violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause. The plaintiffs, Jami Claire and Kathryn Lane, are state workers who were denied treatment for gender dysphoria. Claire is a scientist who has worked at the University of Florida for over three decades, and Lane is an attorney in the public defender’s office in Tallahassee.

“This was an intentional decision made by the [Florida] Department of Management Services to exclude this type of care, and we know that because there is already an exclusion for non-medically necessary care,” Simone Chriss, attorney at Southern Legal Counsel, told Rewire.News. “If what our plaintiffs were seeking was not medically necessary, it would just be denied for that reason, but it wasn’t. It was denied under the exclusion for gender-affirming care, which means that they recognize it is medically necessary but they choose not to cover it.”

The ACLU of Florida, Southern Legal Counsel, and pro bono attorney Eric Lindstrom filed the lawsuit against the Florida Department of Management Services, the Public Defender of the Second Judicial Circuit of Florida, and the University of Florida.

Claire said Florida’s exclusion of gender-affirming care has affected her financially and emotionally. She has had to pay out of pocket for many of the procedures she needs.

“When I had tried to access the medical care, the exclusion was there and I couldn’t access it and I had three suicide attempts,” she said. “Life wasn’t worth living at that point.”

Claire added, “I’ve spent thousands of dollars already and if this exclusion is not overturned and I get to the point where I retire, I will have to use approximately a third of my retirement money to pay for bottom surgery.”

Hormone replacement therapy, electrolysis, augmentation mammoplasty, orchiectomy, and facial feminization surgery were some of the procedures denied by the plaintiffs’ state plans due to the exclusion of gender-affirming care.

Transgender people face numerous barriers to health care access, including discrimination by health-care providers and economic barriers to accessing affordable care. According to the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality, one-third of respondents who had seen a health-care provider in the past year had at least one negative experience related to being transgender. One in four respondents said they had a problem with their insurance in the past year related to being transgender, such as being denied gender-affirming care. Black, Native American, Latinx, and multiracial trans people were more likely to be uninsured than white trans people, according to the survey.

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have policies that prohibit health-care discrimination based on gender identity, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline. Twenty-one states have no policy for health-care coverage for trans people.

Billy Huff, a transgender man who worked at the University of Florida as the director of LGBTQ Affairs, said he was surprised when he found out about the state’s exclusion. He had only researched Aetna to find out if he had coverage.

“I was heartbroken,” he said. “I was at that point literally marking days off on my calendar until my surgery date and already had my consultation and paid for my down payment on the surgery out-of-pocket.”

There have been other lawsuits against exceptions for gender-affirming care in state plans. In 2018, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against the state of Alaska on behalf of Jennifer Fletcher, a state legislative librarian, because the state prohibited coverage for her transition-related care. The LGBTQ rights-focused organization, which does litigation and public policy work, said the denial of care violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The case is still open.

Lambda Legal and the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) filed a lawsuit in 2019 on behalf of current and former employees of the state of North Carolina who were denied transition-related care under the state employee health plan. In the complaint, Lambda Legal and TLDEF argue this violates the equal protection clause, the nondiscrimination clause of Affordable Care Act, and Title IX, since the defendants include state colleges and universities.

Lambda Legal attorney Taylor Brown told Rewire.News that defense of state plan exclusions vary from arguing that the procedures aren’t medically necessary and qualify as “cosmetic” to claiming that refusing to cover gender dysphoria is not discriminatory.

“We’re doing the research about these exclusions and looking into state plans and looking into public record requests on when these decisions were made and debated, and they often rely on outdated science or just pure speculation and misinformation,” Brown said.

“Every major medical association in the United States recognizes the medical necessity of transition-related care for improving the physical and mental health of transgender people and has called for health insurance coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria,” according to the American Medical Association. The American Medical Association also cites studies showing that health coverage that includes gender-affirming care is cost-effective compared to the costs associated with untreated gender dysphoria.

Brown said the claim that refusing treatment for gender dysphoria isn’t sex discrimination doesn’t hold legal water.

“We argue that it’s sex discrimination because these procedures we call transition-related health care—they’re often procedures available to cisgender people. So they’ll say that this is not sex discrimination. It’s condition discrimination. We’re not treating gender dysphoria. But we understand that the only people who have gender dysphoria are transgender people,” she said.

The post Florida Won’t Cover Transgender Health Care. Two Trans Women Are Suing. appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

A Florida public defender and a University of Florida researcher claim their state employee health insurance plans illegally discriminate against them by denying coverage for gender reassignment surgery.

The federal lawsuit filed Monday in the Northern District of Florida claims the health plan violates the Civil Rights Act and equal protection clause by explicitly excluding coverage for “gender reassignment or modification services or supplies.”

Attorneys with Southern Legal Counsel, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and pro bono attorney Eric Lindstrom combined on the filing against the state Department of Management Services, Leon Circuit Public Defender Andy Thomas and UF trustees.

“This is not about special treatment; this is about equal treatment,” said lead counsel Simone Chriss of Southern Legal Counsel in Gainesville. “Transgender state employees are singled out and explicitly denied coverage for one reason: They are transgender. That is discrimination, and it cannot stand.”

Two transgender women, Assistant Public Defender Kathryn Lane and Jami Claire, a senior scientist at UF’s veterinary medical school, are suing the state agencies.

The state sought health insurance plans with a gender reassignment exclusion, and coverage is restricted by the four approved insurance providers, the complaint said.

Claire, a Navy veteran, sought authorization for surgery as part of her transition in December 2018, was denied and appealed. She filed a sex discrimination complaint last June with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and received a notice of right to sue Oct. 21.

“While I have had access to some gender-affirming care at the VA, many transgender state employees and employee dependents have no access to this coverage whatsoever,” Claire said in a statement.

Lane was denied coverage for gender-affirming surgery a year ago, appealed and was denied on the basis of the state’s exclusion as well as a notation about cosmetic surgery. She also filed an EEOC complaint and received a notice of right to sue.

The complaint maintains surgery is medical necessary for both under the World Professional Association for Transgender Health standards of care.

The American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association recognize gender-affirming care is medically necessary, and it is covered by most Fortune 500 companies and Medicaid plans in more than 20 states, an ACLU statement said.

The lawsuit assigned to U.S. District Chief Judge Mark Walker seeks an injunction to cease enforcement of the exclusion and bar the exclusion in future state insurance contracts.

“If Florida won’t voluntarily join the right side of history, we will gladly facilitate that journey,” Chriss  said.

Attorney Daniel Tilley of the ACLU Foundation of Florida in Miami is co-counsel along with Lindstrom of Egan, Lev, Lindstrom & Siwica in Gainesville.

The state attorney general’s office, which represents state agencies in litigation, had no immediate response to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit.

The post Florida Employees Employees Sex Discrimination for Transgender Surgery Denials appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

Brazil’s Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) on Thursday (Jan. 9) issued a resolution changing the rules governing procedures directed at transgender people.

The new rules reduce the minimum age for gender reassignment surgery from 21 to 18 years old and stipulate that cross-sex hormone therapy must not be administered until the age of 16.

The move is believed to help monitor the health condition of trans people and train health agents whose job is to offer assistance to this segment of the population.

“This subject has been debated for 15 years. This resolution comes as an enhancement, a maturing of concepts. It deals mainly with the inclusion of the needs of these people in health care, encompassing treatments—like hormone treatment. It also bring surgical procedures up to date,” said CFM head Donizetti Giamberardino at a press conference.

“If no rules are made, you can end up causing a lot more harm and taking inappropriate attitudes, often with no scientific criteria,” he added.

Care for transgender individuals must be offered by a multidisciplinary team of doctors including a pediatrician, if the patient is younger than 18, a psychiatrist, an endocrinologist, a gynecologist, a urologist, a plastic surgeon, and more.

The text says that transgender children and adolescents must receive treatment from a medical team, with no hormone or surgical intervention (see below). An individual treatment plan must be adopted for any procedure.

The execution of surgical and hormone procedures in people diagnosed with some severe forms of psychotic disorders, personality disorders, mental retardation, and global developmental delay was banned.

Hormone therapy

The resolution also bans the use of hormone therapy procedures aimed at blocking hormones in transgender children and adolescents that have not yet reached puberty.

The procedure may be conducted following an evaluation by the medical team or when the child is entering puberty—a period that may vary from 8 to 13 years old for children with female biological sex, and 9 to 14 for children with male biological sex.

In such cases, after the assessment, patients may start taking a substance to inhibit the development of secondary sex characteristics associated with the gender the child or adolescent does not identify themselves as, like breasts, menstruation, a beard, or a deep voice.

Also, cross-sex hormone therapy—when blockers are coupled with hormone replacement—may be administered at 16 or above, experimentally.

From the age of 18 and above, the procedure now requires a special prescription by an endocrinologist, gynecologist, or urologist.

Sexual affirmation

In the resolution, CFM also recognizes identity expressions such as “trans man” and “trans woman,” as well as “travesti” and other phrases linked to gender diversity.

Psychiatrist Leonardo Luz, rapporteur for CFM’s resolution, says the move brings the de-pathologization of transsexuality to the center of the debate and introduces world nomenclature to talk about the subject.

Among the terms updated are “gender incongruence”—used to indicate that an individual’s experienced gender does not match the sex assigned at birth—and “sexual affirmation,” for the hormone or surgical procedure, rather than “sexual reassignment.”

“The council adopts the world nomenclature of gender incongruence and is making strides in care from childhood to adult life and attempts to encourage other professional to seek training and promote education through medical residency programs so that we can have more centers for people who need this kind of assistance,” he declared.

The post Brazil Lowers Minimum Age For Sex Change Surgery To 18 appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

Brazil’s Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) yesterday (Jan. 9) issued a resolution changing the rules governing procedures directed at transgender people.

The new rules reduce the minimum age for gender reassignment surgery from 21 to 18 years old and stipulate that cross-sex hormone therapy must not be administered until the age of 16.

The move is believed to help monitor the health condition of trans people and train health agents whose job is to offer assistance to this segment of the population.

“This subject has been debated for 15 years. This resolution comes as an enhancement, a maturing of concepts. It deals mainly with the inclusion of the needs of these people in health care, encompassing treatments-like hormone treatment. It also bring surgical procedures up to date,” said CFM head Donizetti Giamberardino at a press conference.

“If no rules are made, you can end up causing a lot more harm and taking inappropriate attitudes, often with no scientific criteria,” he added.

Care for transgender individuals must be offered by a multidisciplinary team of doctors including a pediatrician, if the patient is younger than 18, a psychiatrist, an endocrinologist, a gynecologist, a urologist, a plastic surgeon, and more.

The text says that transgender children and adolescents must receive treatment from a medical team, with no hormone or surgical intervention (see below). An individual treatment plan must be adopted for any procedure.

The execution of surgical and hormone procedures in people diagnosed with some severe forms of psychotic disorders, personality disorders, mental retardation, and global developmental delay was banned.

Hormone therapy

The resolution also bans the use of hormone therapy procedures aimed at blocking hormones in transgender children and adolescents that have not yet reached puberty.

The procedure may be conducted following an evaluation by the medical team or when the child is entering puberty-a period that may vary from 8 to 13 years old for children with female biological sex, and 9 to 14 for children with male biological sex.

In such cases, after the assessment, patients may start taking a substance to inhibit the development of secondary sex characteristics associated with the gender the child or adolescent does not identify themselves as, like breasts, menstruation, a beard, or a deep voice.

Also, cross-sex hormone therapy-when blockers are coupled with hormone replacement-may be administered at 16 or above, experimentally.

From the age of 18 and above, the procedure now requires a special prescription by an endocrinologist, gynecologist, or urologist.

Sexual affirmation

In the resolution, CFM also recognizes identity expressions such as “trans man” and “trans woman,” as well as “travesti” and other phrases linked to gender diversity.

Psychiatrist Leonardo Luz, rapporteur for CFM’s resolution, says the move brings the de-pathologization of transsexuality to the center of the debate and introduces world nomenclature to talk about the subject.

Among the terms updated are “gender incongruence”-used to indicate that an individual’s experienced gender does not match the sex assigned at birth-and “sexual affirmation,” for the hormone or surgical procedure, rather than “sexual reassignment.”

“The council adopts the world nomenclature of gender incongruence and is making strides in care from childhood to adult life and attempts to encourage other professional to seek training and promote education through medical residency programs so that we can have more centers for people who need this kind of assistance,” he declared.

Compartilhar:

Dê sua opiniao sobre a qualidade do conteúdo que você acessou.

Para registrar sua opiniao, copie o link ou o titulo do conteúdo e clique na barra de manifestacao.

Você sera direcionado para o “Fale com a Ouvidoria” da EBC e podera nos ajudar a melhorar nossos servicos, sugerindo, denunciando, reclamando, solicitando e, tambem, elogiando.

The post Brazil lowers minimum age for sex change surgery to 18 appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

It can’t be easy to be trans anywhere in modern society. So it’s got to be far worse for trans people in Illinois prisons.

But those who fit into that group have found a champion, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Rosenstengel.

The federal judge who presides in the Southern District of Illinois recently ordered the state prison system to revamp its procedures dealing with trans people, established a Jan. 22 deadline for a report on progress and singled out three prison officials for potential sanctions.

Like an angry schoolmarm cracking down on disobedient students, Rosenstengel gave Department of Corrections officials John Baldwin, Steve Meeds and Melvin Hinton an extra homework assignment.

“The court notes that no (corrections) representative attended any portion of the two-day preliminary injunction hearing. Because the court is concerned that IDOC is not taking plaintiffs’ allegations in this lawsuit seriously, the court orders each named defendant shall read the transcript of the evidentiary hearing, held on July 31-Aug. 1, and certify to the court, on or before Jan. 2, 2020, that he has done so.”

It remains to be seen how this legal battle will play out, although Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s corrections department is clearly on the defensive.

State officials have made no public comments on the judge’s order. They also have not responded to basic questions on the extent of the problem.

For example, how many transgender inmates are there among the 43,000-plus in state prisons? The corrections department’s “transgender committee” meets each month to review “approximately 20 cases” and go “over treatment plans and inmate requests.”

But is 20 the extent of the issue? Or are there more?

The gulf between the corrections department and the six plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union is vast.

The lawsuit provides six female names for the plaintiffs. But the department’s inmate locator shows no inmates identified by those names in the suit.

Because five of the six have common last names, it’s impossible to identify their location in the prison system. Only one of them — Sora Kuykendall — is potentially identifiable because there are only two Kuykendalls in the state prison system.

The ACLU is alleging that transgender inmates suffer from a variety of mental and physical disabilities, many of which stem from gender dysphoria. The ACLU is seeking a variety of policy and medical changes, including hormone therapy for transgender inmates not already receiving it, and sex-reassignment surgery.

Short of that, they want transgender inmates held in facilities consistent with their sexual identity, to be searched by guards whose gender matches theirs, access to products and clothing consistent with their gender, and the required use of their preferred pronouns by guards.

The litigation is based on the trans inmates’ constitutional claim that the state’s prison system is “indifferent” to their health concerns and, as a consequence, must be compelled by the court to make changes.

The issue was brought to the fore last year when a transgender inmate, Strawberry Hampton, sought a transfer to a women’s prison where she expected to be treated better.

Hampton, who has since been released, later won her transfer.

Rosenstengel’s opinion, however, indicated that trans women are not “well received” by inmates at women’s prisons.

One of the plaintiffs — Janiah Monroe — has been an inmate at a women’s prison. Authorities said she subsequently refused to take her prescribed hormones and sexually pursued other female inmates.

While the ACLU maintains that gender dysphoria is the problem that must be addressed to resolve the trans inmates’ issues, Dr. Lawrence Jeckel, a Champaign psychiatrist, expressed skepticism of that view.

“That’s not the case if you look at it in depth. These are very complicated, often tortured individuals,” Jeckel said.

He said they “have a belief they’re the wrong sex” and are often convinced that “surgery and changing will make them feel better.”

“That’s the wish, and that’s the hope,” said Jeckel, indicating that it’s not necessarily the result.

The plaintiffs testified to a long list of woes during the two-day hearing, detailing years of mental-health problems, including schizophrenia and depression, suicide attempts and self-mutilation, and frustration about being groped by fellow inmates and sometimes guards.

The judge was clearly sympathetic to their plight, even adopting some of the language invoked by trans advocates. For example, in her opinion, Rosenstengel referred to plaintiffs being “assigned” genders at birth.

The post Transgender inmates find champion in federal judge appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

Earlier this month, a British employment judge ruled that a researcher’s anti-trans views did not constitute what’s called a protected philosophical belief under the nation’s Equality Act, which meant that her employer’s decision not to renew her contract over those views did not constitute discrimination. The woman at the center of the case, Maya Forstater, was employed on a contract basis as a tax policy researcher for the Centre for Global Development. In 2018, she began publicly campaigning, mostly on social media, against reforms to the Gender Recognition Act that would allow trans people in the United Kingdom to self-identify their gender. In response to concern from her colleagues, her employer’s human resources department warned her that others might find her anti-trans tweets “offensive and exclusionary,” and eventually declined to renew her contract. Forstater decided to sue, purporting to seek legal protection for her beliefs.

The subsequent ruling against Forstater set off a series of predictably over-the-top reactions from the self-described “gender critical feminists”—also called trans exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs—who dominate the British feminist discourse. In their framing, the case became the latest example of the so-called death of free speech and thought, the result of lefty madness and groupthink. (The author JK Rowling raised the international profile of the case—and was also heavily criticized—after tweeting support for Forstater.)

But a closer look at the case reveals that it doesn’t have much to do with a belief that “there are only two sexes in human beings… male and female,” as Forstater claims (and growing bodies of science dispute). In practice, Forstater was seeking legal cover to disregard the already established rights of trans people in the U.K. Hers was a familiar argument—one that for too long has dominated mainstream coverage of trans rights.

A passage from employment judge James Tayler’s ruling explained it perfectly: “The claimant 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.” Forstater, in her witness statement, more or less confirmed this: It “may be polite,” she acknowledged, to use a person’s preferred pronouns, “but there is no fundamental right to compel people to be polite or kind in every situation.”

Forstater’s claim about protected belief was just a smokescreen for her underlying bigotry, and Tayler saw through it. “It is also a slight of hand to suggest that the Claimant merely does not hold the belief that transwomen are women,” he wrote in his judgment. “She positively believes that they are men; and will say so whenever she wishes.” The case, then, wasn’t so much about belief as it was about actions.

In the U.K., trans people are protected on the basis of their “gender reassignment,” meaning that they should be treated as their transitioned genders under the law. In her employment case, Forstater wanted her own beliefs to supersede the rights of those trans people. Winning her suit would have meant potentially nullifying protections for trans people and eroding emerging social norms that allow trans people to feel safe and respected in basic social interactions.

Anti-trans activists like Forstater can talk all they want about their simple and humble personal beliefs in the supposed immutability of biological sex, but the truth is, as the judge found, those views are—or should be—irrelevant to how trans people are treated in society and on the job.

Trans people are only all too aware of their own assigned sex. Many, like me, have taken hormones and had surgery to change the sexed traits of the body we are born with. But there are no names or pronouns carved into our chromosomes. It doesn’t matter what Forstater believes about trans people or the body—the court found that it didn’t entitle her to misgender people. That’s why non-discrimination laws exist in the first place.

People like Forstater focus on biological sex because that is precisely the axis upon which trans people are othered, but where is the limit on this proposed legal right? Conservative ideologies around biological sex already hurt people in their places of work. The website Pregnant Then Screwed lists hundreds of individual stories of mostly British women who were fired or marginalized from their job because they gave birth or became pregnant. The law, rightly, now works to protect against this. Trans people are entitled to that same dignity. Had Forstater won, it’s possible that her case could have opened the legal door for all kinds of sinister but “sincerely held” beliefs to reign over workplaces in the U.K.

Judge Tayler rightly anticipated the danger: He explained that under British law, religious beliefs and lack of religious beliefs are protected, so a Catholic’s beliefs would see the same protection as an atheist’s. Philosophical belief works in a similar legal fashion. In determining whether a claimant’s beliefs are worthy of protection under British law, it must pass through the Grainger criteria, named after a case which determined belief in climate change to be a protected belief.

The Grainger criteria consists of several legal tests for philosophical beliefs: “the belief must be genuinely held; it must be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available; it must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behavior; it must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance; and it must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.”

Tayler held that Forstater’s belief about biological sex failed to meet the final requirement—that it not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

Cases like this—which pit the actual lives of trans people against the beliefs of somebody who decided to test her colleagues’ patience by posting over 150 anti-trans tweets in a single week—are a win-win for anti-trans activists. If they prevail, they now have a new legal basis to treat trans people like garbage without reprisal. If they lose, they can bang on about how trans people are spreading a totalitarian belief system that crushes anyone who might disagree.

That’s why it’s frustrating to watch these developments as a trans person. This woman is not trans, the judge is not trans, the media now disseminating information about the case is largely not trans, JK Rowling is not trans. But now it’s trans people taking the blow online and in the media.

Commonly held beliefs don’t develop in a vacuum. Trans people have never had control over their own narrative, in science or in media. That has started to change recently, but by and large cis people still hold the power to frame trans lives for the masses. Maintaining that power to define trans lives is what ultimately drives anti-trans activists, not only in their online presence but in the courts and more broadly.

As the case leads us into a new decade, it’s an example of trans people finally finding a tiny foothold in the story of our own lives and bodies. Tayler’s judgment recognizes that hard-earned, long-fought achievement. So does the backlash.

The post When “Biology” Becomes a Cover for Anti-Trans Bigotry appeared first on MyMedicPlus.