The article is filled with double standards and inaccuracies on transgender care, and is the latest hint that the paper's coverage is shifting right when it comes to transgender people.
I don't read as much mainstream media as I used to, so maybe I've missed this if it's happened. But I would really love to see the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, or the World Professional Association for Transgender Healt publish full page ads in the New York times, the Washington Post, the LA times, and every other newspaper of note and express their full-throated support for trans care for minors as well as adults.
Believe it or not, these orgs are not dripping with money. It's why lawsuit attacks on them from AGs and a future POTUS will potentially flip them against trans people. Republicans weaponizing the state are trying to make it too risky to support us.
Just really scary stuff to see the mask fall, in real time here, on all veneers of support. I'd like to believe, given their limited resources, that medical orgs throw everything at blocking the Hyde Amendmennt for our care and defining us out of legal recognition. To say, every issue is important, but maybe they're saving any remaining political capital they have (which I guess may be zilche when the truth is up for debate these days) for these fights.
Honestly, I'm not hopeful. The feds wield the financing and federal gov't, our judiciary, DoJ, Congress, etc. and partnerships with HHS and the government will be threatened further if they don't comply.
Seeing Republicans write the WHO and threaten to withdraw all US support unless they scrapped all of their trans affirming guidance and equality support programs is foreboding.
Mutual aid and community support seems to be the way forward, with protests where we can, and survival the main goal (and getting diy to people whose care is restricted for those in the position to do so).
Thank you for this detailed analysis. Articles like this are not unbiased to begin with - they have an opinion and look for evidence in support of that opinion. They don't address the primary issue - can someone, including a child, be transgender? In other words, are they willing to believe that a child/teen is in fact transgender? The need to be honest about this upfront.
If they don't believe (or "aren't sure) that a child can be transgender, then their answer will naturally be how to prevent parents and doctors from damaging children who are not transgender, but just "confused," and they look for evidence to support this conclusion.
They should state upfront that they don't believe doctors, parents, and transgender children.
If you start with the reality that a child can be, and in fact is, transgender, then the answer is to support that child and their parents with the best care possible. And as a parent I know what the best decision is for my child because I listened to him, and I worked with the medical professionals to ensure we (he, my wife, and I) were making informed decisions and following accepted protocols. This is the same as any parent making medical decisions for a child.
The difference is that when a parent seeks care for their child with cancer and has to make decisions about the risks of certain treatments, no one disputes that a child can have cancer. Here, they don't believe my son is transgender. Their bias is clear.
I showed all the signs of being transgender when I was a young child. I would ask my mother to dress me in girl's clothes before I knew that wasn't ok and I would dress up in her clothes in the middle of the night. And when in Kindergarten I would play with the girls in their doll house and I had no interest in playing with boys with their trucks and their violent games. But this was in the 1970's so I was socialized to be a boy and I hated every minute of it. And the boys were RELENTLESS in their mockery and bullying until I learned to hide my feminine nature.
So when people with an anti-trans axe to grind write this kind of crap and pass it off as "common sense" I want to absolutely rage. Gender affirming care saved my life. Took me 40 years to transition and I wish I had these options when I was younger.
When I came out to a friend, a friend who I would label a progressive, he proceeded to explain to me why being transgender wasn't a real thing and that I had a choice in how I lived my life. This was sixteen years ago and his thinking may have changed by now but his thinking didn't change that day. He'd still be my friend today if he had just asked me questions and listened. I'd like to know who the Washington Post talked to about what it is like to be a person who is transgender. It wasn't me.
With you there. A very close friend has been noticeably absent since I came out, yes it’s confusing when you have no experience, but I’ll explain as well as I can.
It is unfortunately just what was to be (and was) predicted when the WP management was taken over by ex-Wall Street Journal (William Lewis, publisher and chief executive officer), Daily Telegraph (Robert Winnett, executive editor), and Matt Murray (Wall Street Journal, editor in chief) transplants. They are doing Jeff Bezos' bidding, to cozy up to the new emperor.
The U.S. news media is simply another arm of the lowest ethical rung of capitalism. Country Joe MacDonald might well recycle his lyrics for Wall Street with a new target:
There's plenty good money to be made
by supplin' the MAGATs with the lies of the trade
We can only fight back with all the weapons we have; together they can overcome their biggest guns. In modern times the Ukrainians have shown us the way. Thanks, Erin (and Mira), for yours! I'm writing as fast as I can.
That's a very cogent question! Unfortunately (a word that unfortunately crops up way too often these days), our English-speaking "cousins" in the UK are not among them. But besides Canada: Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other European countries (even including France, as the post notes) are in fact doing much of the right thing. Each has its own ultraright wing, but they are predominantly on our side. So cultivation of connections in each one is really valuable. (I speak German, and that's my field; others will have to work on the other languages!)
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this mass movement by formerly respected news organizations to being purveyors of mis/disinformation is that people aren’t buying it. Based on polls conducted around the time of the November 5th catastrophe, most Americans want to let patients, parents and medical professionals sort out the needs of individual patients.
This despite the reported $230 million spent on anti-trans propaganda by the far right, who clearly have no actual ideas and have long since stopped even pretending they do. (My use of the term “propaganda” here is not heightened rhetoric, just an accurate description).
And just in case anyone at WaPo or the bi-coastal Timeseses are reading, here’s a litmus test for your news coverage of medical issues. If you are leaving out the countervailing policies and positions of by far the largest and most respected medical organizations in the Western world, there’s no explanation other than you are doing it intentionally and doing it in order to give false credence to false arguments. And you are doing so even though the anti-gender affirming health care bans and policies you are misleading your readers about are medically unsupportable. They are also not being put forward by medical professionals but, rather, by far right provocateurs who are still panicked that they can no longer safely attack people of color or gay and lesbian people.
Bottom line: such work is clearly the product of a “opinion leader” who’s simply lying and who knows it.
If anyone spots any whiff of actual journalism behind these attacks by major newspapers, pause. You might have accidentally stumbled upon the sports page.
Unfortunately, even if they may want to let doctors parents and patients figure it out individually, not enough of them care enough to not vote in the hateful politicians who decide to butt their noses in anyways. If most folks who want trans people to be left alone still vote for the bigots who oppress us, it doesn't really matter what they want as far as what laws are passed and what's banned. It's not worth enough to them to make a change and by the time that it is it will be too late
Very sadly true. Thanks for this note. I certainly don’t believe that politicians will change any hateful but successful positions because of their constituents feelings on the subject, especially, as you point out, those cretans will vote for them regardless.
I know this is just screaming into the void... but if Tr*mp can get a $16million payout and an apology from ABC for saying "liable for rape" instead of "liable for sexual assault", why can't we trans people (or SOMEONE) sue the WaPo editorial board for similar, larger/grosser inaccuracy?
I canceled my WaPo subscription months ago, so thankfully, I wasn’t subjected to their ludicrous opinion.
Ask trans people if they knew they were trans at an early age. They will tell You! They wish they could have gotten gender affirming care earlier. I had 800 trans patients (evenly divided AFAB/AMAB) and all of them wished they could have transitioned before puberty. I know this is “anecdotal,” but I think it’s significant to listen to the patients.
What a dreadful editorial. I swear that NYT editor Pamela Paul is now ghostwriting for the Post, (if you have had the misfortune to read any of her hate-filled op-eds), or maybe Helen Joyce, (the invisible hand of transphobia at The Economist). I commented that the editorial board decided to stay out of presidential endorsements and instead has decided to go into endocrinology business instead -- because the are sooo qualified /s.
One of the most brazen lies of the transphobic crowd is that they claim that "powerful trans-activists" are demanding and dominating the discussion on civil rights. In fact, some "journalists" and media and political bottomfeeders have made transphobia into a cottage industry. Some anti-trans scree makes it to Fox every day, and to the Times and the Post about once a week. And the same fringe characters get shuffled around from state house to state house, and grifters, like Riley Gaines and pure-bred brutish villians like Matt Walsh are getting rich by spreading hate. It is only relatively recently that such miscreants have made their way into mainstream media and now both the NYTs and the Washington Post are cozying up to the hate-mongers. We had a voice in that wilderness when Jenny Boylan was at the Times, but no more.
What to do? The bad news is that this campaign of misinformation and hate is having an impact. Most of the public is ignorant on trans issues and bad actors are filling the void. How to counter it? I have two thoughts; medical professionals who serve the community need to step forward. They have the knowledge and experience that people with open minds will respect. Secondly, allies need to step forward -- fearlessly. Many trans-folk have stepped up to make their case -- children some times -- but in this current atmosphere to do so is to put yourself at risk. It is not fair to ask those most likely to be harmed to take on all the burden. No minority has ever achieved civil rights and equality without allies and it is time for community leaders -- churches, politicans, sports figures, businesses and journalists worthy of their profession -- to step forward. And, as always, we need to support one another. If you have non-binary or trans friends or co-workers, just let them know that you have their back. If you are part of the community, reach out to folks and organizations to garner support. Finally, I was at an LGBTQ support group formed by my faith community on Sunday. People were frightened, the entire community is fearful. There were tears in the eyes of many, young and old alike. We need to hold our ground but we need allies to stand against the rising wave of hate. Allies, where are you?
Republicans have claimed they will eradicate us by Xmas of 2025. This is how they do it, by eliminating gender affirming care, legal recognition, banning affirming mental health care and making reparative and conversion therapy mandatory, and by using anti-drag and child sex abuse charges to criminalize social transition and incarcerating Trans people and forcibly detransitioning them in prison.
Project 2025 think it could take as long as 2026 to eliminate all of us.
@Jamie Hileman, It's scary. And it's disheartening. And every day I wonder will my "groups" suddenly not be allowed in the spaces we are and if we'll get in trouble, and are we even "safe" in them. But I'm strengthened by the numbers of us who are continuing to show up and to occupy space. I'm tired of fighting but I'll keep going. We have to be creative. We ARE creative. If there is anything going on withing 3-400 miles of me where people are standing together, I go. I did a crazy thing a couple of weeks ago and just got on the fastest thing I could get on and showed up outside SCOTUS, it was amazing! There are amazing leaders and we all belong in OUR country. Please keep showing up. I'm showing up for my kid, and I'll show up for you.
I'm on the board of directors of several LGBTQ focused nonprofits and leadership groups; we're urging other LGBTQ Americans to seek out and patronize or create MORE LGBTQ focused social and community space. We know that the risk of terrorist and mass shooter attacks are increasing but we as a group of communities NEED our queer social spaces now more than EVER, to fend off GOPMAGA and other sources of stochastic terrorism.
And we're going to have to do it by ourselves as Democrats are suddenly getting icebound feet over their allyship as they increasingly buy into GOP taunts that the reason Dems lost everything in the '24 election is because of their support of transgender and LGBTQ Americans... ironically, in all manufactured controversies ginned up by conspiracy theory America-hating democracy-hating fascists who see us as a convenient target for distractive scapegoat facilitating genocide.
Yet nowhere exist any empiricals that supporting Trans kids was a factor in the efficacy of the hodgepodge of vile propaganda, often boosted by the Kremlin, that targeted the swing states.
Seth Moulton had better be collecting a Turning Point USA or Musk PAC paycheck for his work against Trans inclusion in Democratic priorities, ditto Colin Allred and now Andy Beshear. Otherwise they're idiots. Better to be a corrupt and cynical asshat than someone so stupid and such a dupe as to hork down the crudest transphobic hatemonger speech from morons too stupid to see how they're utterly duplicating the work of Göebbels and Streicher and to the same end... genocide.
I’m in on every word. If we’re staying here we need to occupy space in a big way. Oh, and I apologize for misspelling your first name. I’m pretty picky about getting name spellings correct. ☹️ I appreciated your reply!
Love you, friend. In a get-together tonight we were told "MAGA is letting representatives know they are watching." We can't sit back and not make calls because "our" senator is on "our" side. We have to let them know we have their backs. We have to let them know that WE'RE watching. We have to chisel away at what remains not protected in our states, including the "safe" ones and support and back our Governors, Senators, Congresspeople, and local elected and appointed representatives. And we need to call and thank them when they make protective moves. I know you know. Locking arms with you.
Hi Carol, I just wanted to better understand your comment; "the states should have some control though"? Are you meaning some states should be able to take some actions on behalf of Trans and LGBTQ citizens?
I agree, but only 23 states have HRAs (Human Rights Act) with SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) inclusive language. Fewer still have explicit shield laws protecting transgender citizens, especially kiddos. I don't think that number is going to change.
Republicans have made it politically very expensive for anyone to stand with us. Look at what they did to Bud Light, Disney, and DEI supporting corporate allies, look at $220,000,000.00 spent on just national anti-Trans messaging, another $50,000,000.00 in state level comms. That's not counting another $150,000,000.000 in anti-LGBTQ messaging. Republicans spent $420,000,000.00 on anti-Trans anti-LGBTQ advertising in this election cycle. That's not counting Elon Musk using Twitter as his own propaganda hub. The monetary value of X support of anti-Trans anti-LGBTQ propaganda on Musk's platform would be, if you had to pay cash-on-the-barrelhead, somewhere around $100,000,000.00.
That's 2/3 of A BILLION DOLLARS the GOPMAGAs have spent JUST THIS ELECTION on demonizing us.
So when people tell me that the GOP doesn't mean to use the banning of legal recognition, affirming care bans, bathroom bans, civil rights erasure, and drag bans to genocide and disappear first transgender Americans, then all other LGBTQ Americans, I. Don't. Believe. Them.
NOBODY SPENDS THAT KIND OF MONEY for *nothing*.
Banning us from sports, bathrooms, certain jobs, from the military, from schools, that's just the BEGINNING. The Republicans are following Mein Kampf (832 pages) and Project 2025 (920 pages) like they had been ordered to do so by their god.
They mean to incarcerate and forcibly detransition us, force us to emigrate, force us to detransition and re-closet ourselves, to force us to suicide, and if they must, kill us directly. Their actions have no other use, no other purpose EXCEPT erasure, eradication, and extermination. They started with transgender children because as fascists keenly know, children make the softest and easiest of targets. They always have.
We are rapidly running out of time and sadly, our only allies with any remnant of political power, the Democrats, are running AWAY from us even faster.
"Has the GOP actually said out loud they intend to eradicate transgenderism by 2026"?
Well, it's a goal in Project 2025. It's also been said by multiple attendees speaking at the last three CPAC conferences. It's also part of the public record in debate during committee and floor sessions in 26 US states passing laws 2023-2024 criminalizing various aspects of Trans lives. It's an important component of their ongoing strategy to eliminate the Democratic party and create a single party fascist theocratic state, and they're succeeding. Dems are openly questioning supporting our community and I guarantee no Dem is going to throw themselves on a grenade aimed at us during the 119th Congress. I expect all GOPMAGA anti-Trans bills to pass, and pass with Dem votes.
How ironic because Dem support for transgender and LGBTQ Americans has been one of the few ways we could discern any substantial difference between the Democratic party and the pre-MAGA GOP.
This means we will lose legal recognition at the federal level; our SSA account gender marker changes, our updated passports, and coverage of ANY gender affirming care under CMS models for ANY Trans people of ANY age.
By destroying access to medical and legal transition at the federal level it will become easier for states to do so at the state level, and add social transition and psychotherapeutic transition to the pyre, too. They will use anti-drag bills with jail time enforcement in combination with the for-profit incarceral industrial complex to eliminate social transition. By reversing the four components of gender transition, just using existing systems and legislation models, Republicans can *easily* genocide us by Xmas 2026.
No retro mass arrests required! No concentration camps, Zyklon-B showers, or industrial crematoria are needed to commit micro targeted 21st century genocide in the Republic of MAGAstan!
To answer your question; have any GOP national elected or the RNC said this exact phrase "the GOP will eradicate transgenderism by Xmas 2926"?
Not that I'm aware of.
BUT, they've committed to doing it and are well on their way.
For a sneak peak at the legislative models the GOP will use to detransition, re-closet, incarcerate, force us to emigrate, and force us to suicide, I suggest reading the text summary of two proposed 2025 Missouri bills, HB156 and HB157.
The latter is the most vicious because it bans all birth certificate and ID updates, and what is novel is it ALSO calls for the immediate revocation of ALL birth certificates and state IDs issued before now, EVER, for the purpose of gender marker update re gender transition.
Despite being a lifelong Illinois citizen with Illinois court ordered name and gender marker mandates, I was born in Missouri and am therefore made subject to this coming bill.
Americans like myself will not have a valid birth certificate; I'll be unable to prove I'm a US citizen because my name, marker, and biology do not match the re-issued "original" birth certificate. I could be caught up in the coming deportation mass arrests and gitmoed.
Plus, polling on Trump's transition, trust in polls and Thanksgiving plans.
If I use a women's bathroom that matches my appearance, gender expression, and gender identity, I could be arrested. If I use a men's room, I could be beaten, raped, THEN arrested. Red states are now banning new construction of single stall multi gender/"family" bathrooms so those aren't going to ever be plentiful enough for safe use.
If furthering these processes that equate to the elimination of all visibly Trans Americans from public life AREN'T imminent genocide, then not a single god-damned thing is or can be.
Between state and federal legislation, executive orders, police action, and emergency declarations, I'll be shocked if anyone Trans remains public and visible by Xmas 2026. We will be driven underground and relegated to gathering in safehouses, as we were in the 18th century, finding community only in illicit "molly houses" subject to police raid, mass arrests, and public execution.
I’m so glad you wrote this piece. I am so angry with Wapo for publishing absolute garbage. Ive had a wapo subscription since the 1990s when I lived there and this article was the nail in the coffin. I was so mad and then you wrote this great response. Thank you. You now get my subscription money that Bezos used to get.
All the better to cancel my WaPo subscription. They refused to print several important op-eds I wrote over the summer, joining the NYT in failing to maintain objectivity in their slide to the right
Dr. B, you tried though. Both are now good for lining the kitty litter box...maybe. Lots of arms locking together. There have been trans and non-binary people since the dirt. I'm proud, proud to have birthed one. But I'll have a small sadness until I no longer inhabit the Earth that I did not understand that sooner. This trans family is doing ok. We'll work hard to keep it that way. Community helps. You are so loved.
Tammye, our cats deserve better, but I'm 100% with you on your analysis of quisling journalism like the NYT and WaPo that just can't seem to hawktua the fascist ejaculate fast enough. As I've said in other writing and at other times, the current fascist GOPMAGA movement to eradicate and exterminate all transgender and gender expansive Americans is doomed to failure because they just don't understand and continue to REFUSE understanding who we ARE.
We aren't people who "chose a lifestyle".
We're an integral component of the human experience, we are rooted in a mosaic origin comprised of genetic, epigenetic, in vivo, and endocrinological composition. We have existed throughout all of recorded history and DNA research seems to indicate we've existed at least as long as modern humans have existed, 200,000-300,000 years depending upon which numbers you find most empirically convincing. We have existed on every continent and within every society throughout all our species' journeys, all of civilization, from the first humans to jet around the Indian Ocean rim to colonize Australia to Trans scientists serving in Antarctica.
We have always been here and we will always be.
The fascists and scapegoaters requiring flesh sacrifices to their blood god can kill us ALL, kill our history, our culture, our families , our love, and they can destroy all our works, writings, art, knowledge, they can destroy our very bodies, sending us to beyond as no more than the smoke of our ashes ascending into the skies.
But that's ALL they can do.
We'll be back.
Another generation of us will be born.
The generation after that will fight for recognition, for their humanity, to be seen, fight for justice.
The following generation will have won that fight, and will have recreated all our wonders and so much more. After all, the very essence of our culture is freedom and self-actualization, qualities prized by every human who's ever humanned.
And so, in a microblink of geological time, we're back.
They can kill us all but they can never truly erase, eradicate, or exterminate us, as we are THEM, an intrinsic thread in the great tapestry of human potentiality, and they have no lasting power over our inevitability.
Cold comfort this may seem indeed on January 22nd, 2025, in a savage America drunkenly celebrating inhumanity and cruelty, but it is STILL a comfort and a promise of hope, one that cannot be taken from us as easily as so much else can be.
First, I want to wish the best possible life with your wife. I have downloaded the full transcript of the french study by the Academy of pediatrics, endocrinology. Would it be worth sending to our weak representatives. It is in english.
It IS worth it. Let them hear from you. Let them know that if any harm comes to you or those you love because of them or their party that you will hold them personally responsible. Let them hear from 500 of you!
Thanks, Mira, for substituting and for your excellent, if depressing, reporting. This, after 81 House Dems just voted to ban GAC for children of military members. It is getting very dark. Keep fighting, everyone!
I don't read as much mainstream media as I used to, so maybe I've missed this if it's happened. But I would really love to see the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, or the World Professional Association for Transgender Healt publish full page ads in the New York times, the Washington Post, the LA times, and every other newspaper of note and express their full-throated support for trans care for minors as well as adults.
Believe it or not, these orgs are not dripping with money. It's why lawsuit attacks on them from AGs and a future POTUS will potentially flip them against trans people. Republicans weaponizing the state are trying to make it too risky to support us.
Just really scary stuff to see the mask fall, in real time here, on all veneers of support. I'd like to believe, given their limited resources, that medical orgs throw everything at blocking the Hyde Amendmennt for our care and defining us out of legal recognition. To say, every issue is important, but maybe they're saving any remaining political capital they have (which I guess may be zilche when the truth is up for debate these days) for these fights.
Honestly, I'm not hopeful. The feds wield the financing and federal gov't, our judiciary, DoJ, Congress, etc. and partnerships with HHS and the government will be threatened further if they don't comply.
Seeing Republicans write the WHO and threaten to withdraw all US support unless they scrapped all of their trans affirming guidance and equality support programs is foreboding.
Mutual aid and community support seems to be the way forward, with protests where we can, and survival the main goal (and getting diy to people whose care is restricted for those in the position to do so).
Btw Erin, congratulations to you and Zooey
I'm so happy for you icons 🎊 💜
Thank you for this detailed analysis. Articles like this are not unbiased to begin with - they have an opinion and look for evidence in support of that opinion. They don't address the primary issue - can someone, including a child, be transgender? In other words, are they willing to believe that a child/teen is in fact transgender? The need to be honest about this upfront.
If they don't believe (or "aren't sure) that a child can be transgender, then their answer will naturally be how to prevent parents and doctors from damaging children who are not transgender, but just "confused," and they look for evidence to support this conclusion.
They should state upfront that they don't believe doctors, parents, and transgender children.
If you start with the reality that a child can be, and in fact is, transgender, then the answer is to support that child and their parents with the best care possible. And as a parent I know what the best decision is for my child because I listened to him, and I worked with the medical professionals to ensure we (he, my wife, and I) were making informed decisions and following accepted protocols. This is the same as any parent making medical decisions for a child.
The difference is that when a parent seeks care for their child with cancer and has to make decisions about the risks of certain treatments, no one disputes that a child can have cancer. Here, they don't believe my son is transgender. Their bias is clear.
I showed all the signs of being transgender when I was a young child. I would ask my mother to dress me in girl's clothes before I knew that wasn't ok and I would dress up in her clothes in the middle of the night. And when in Kindergarten I would play with the girls in their doll house and I had no interest in playing with boys with their trucks and their violent games. But this was in the 1970's so I was socialized to be a boy and I hated every minute of it. And the boys were RELENTLESS in their mockery and bullying until I learned to hide my feminine nature.
So when people with an anti-trans axe to grind write this kind of crap and pass it off as "common sense" I want to absolutely rage. Gender affirming care saved my life. Took me 40 years to transition and I wish I had these options when I was younger.
Sadly WaPo is a goner. It has gone to the dark side, as has LA Times, MSNBC, and NBC, CNN. Scary times for journalists.
An even scarier time for truth.
When I came out to a friend, a friend who I would label a progressive, he proceeded to explain to me why being transgender wasn't a real thing and that I had a choice in how I lived my life. This was sixteen years ago and his thinking may have changed by now but his thinking didn't change that day. He'd still be my friend today if he had just asked me questions and listened. I'd like to know who the Washington Post talked to about what it is like to be a person who is transgender. It wasn't me.
TALK TO US PEOPLE!
With you there. A very close friend has been noticeably absent since I came out, yes it’s confusing when you have no experience, but I’ll explain as well as I can.
It is unfortunately just what was to be (and was) predicted when the WP management was taken over by ex-Wall Street Journal (William Lewis, publisher and chief executive officer), Daily Telegraph (Robert Winnett, executive editor), and Matt Murray (Wall Street Journal, editor in chief) transplants. They are doing Jeff Bezos' bidding, to cozy up to the new emperor.
The U.S. news media is simply another arm of the lowest ethical rung of capitalism. Country Joe MacDonald might well recycle his lyrics for Wall Street with a new target:
There's plenty good money to be made
by supplin' the MAGATs with the lies of the trade
We can only fight back with all the weapons we have; together they can overcome their biggest guns. In modern times the Ukrainians have shown us the way. Thanks, Erin (and Mira), for yours! I'm writing as fast as I can.
The Ukrainians are being aided and supported by other Western nations, however. Who will aid and support us as our rights are summarily stripped away?
That's a very cogent question! Unfortunately (a word that unfortunately crops up way too often these days), our English-speaking "cousins" in the UK are not among them. But besides Canada: Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other European countries (even including France, as the post notes) are in fact doing much of the right thing. Each has its own ultraright wing, but they are predominantly on our side. So cultivation of connections in each one is really valuable. (I speak German, and that's my field; others will have to work on the other languages!)
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this mass movement by formerly respected news organizations to being purveyors of mis/disinformation is that people aren’t buying it. Based on polls conducted around the time of the November 5th catastrophe, most Americans want to let patients, parents and medical professionals sort out the needs of individual patients.
This despite the reported $230 million spent on anti-trans propaganda by the far right, who clearly have no actual ideas and have long since stopped even pretending they do. (My use of the term “propaganda” here is not heightened rhetoric, just an accurate description).
And just in case anyone at WaPo or the bi-coastal Timeseses are reading, here’s a litmus test for your news coverage of medical issues. If you are leaving out the countervailing policies and positions of by far the largest and most respected medical organizations in the Western world, there’s no explanation other than you are doing it intentionally and doing it in order to give false credence to false arguments. And you are doing so even though the anti-gender affirming health care bans and policies you are misleading your readers about are medically unsupportable. They are also not being put forward by medical professionals but, rather, by far right provocateurs who are still panicked that they can no longer safely attack people of color or gay and lesbian people.
Bottom line: such work is clearly the product of a “opinion leader” who’s simply lying and who knows it.
If anyone spots any whiff of actual journalism behind these attacks by major newspapers, pause. You might have accidentally stumbled upon the sports page.
Unfortunately, even if they may want to let doctors parents and patients figure it out individually, not enough of them care enough to not vote in the hateful politicians who decide to butt their noses in anyways. If most folks who want trans people to be left alone still vote for the bigots who oppress us, it doesn't really matter what they want as far as what laws are passed and what's banned. It's not worth enough to them to make a change and by the time that it is it will be too late
Very sadly true. Thanks for this note. I certainly don’t believe that politicians will change any hateful but successful positions because of their constituents feelings on the subject, especially, as you point out, those cretans will vote for them regardless.
I know this is just screaming into the void... but if Tr*mp can get a $16million payout and an apology from ABC for saying "liable for rape" instead of "liable for sexual assault", why can't we trans people (or SOMEONE) sue the WaPo editorial board for similar, larger/grosser inaccuracy?
Because we can't afford the endless lawyers who throw handful after handful of spaghetti law at the judges to wait for any to eventually stick
The Washington Post: Democracy died in plain site due to Bezos sucking up to Trump.
I canceled my WaPo subscription months ago, so thankfully, I wasn’t subjected to their ludicrous opinion.
Ask trans people if they knew they were trans at an early age. They will tell You! They wish they could have gotten gender affirming care earlier. I had 800 trans patients (evenly divided AFAB/AMAB) and all of them wished they could have transitioned before puberty. I know this is “anecdotal,” but I think it’s significant to listen to the patients.
Absolutely! Thank you for being there for them!
What a dreadful editorial. I swear that NYT editor Pamela Paul is now ghostwriting for the Post, (if you have had the misfortune to read any of her hate-filled op-eds), or maybe Helen Joyce, (the invisible hand of transphobia at The Economist). I commented that the editorial board decided to stay out of presidential endorsements and instead has decided to go into endocrinology business instead -- because the are sooo qualified /s.
One of the most brazen lies of the transphobic crowd is that they claim that "powerful trans-activists" are demanding and dominating the discussion on civil rights. In fact, some "journalists" and media and political bottomfeeders have made transphobia into a cottage industry. Some anti-trans scree makes it to Fox every day, and to the Times and the Post about once a week. And the same fringe characters get shuffled around from state house to state house, and grifters, like Riley Gaines and pure-bred brutish villians like Matt Walsh are getting rich by spreading hate. It is only relatively recently that such miscreants have made their way into mainstream media and now both the NYTs and the Washington Post are cozying up to the hate-mongers. We had a voice in that wilderness when Jenny Boylan was at the Times, but no more.
What to do? The bad news is that this campaign of misinformation and hate is having an impact. Most of the public is ignorant on trans issues and bad actors are filling the void. How to counter it? I have two thoughts; medical professionals who serve the community need to step forward. They have the knowledge and experience that people with open minds will respect. Secondly, allies need to step forward -- fearlessly. Many trans-folk have stepped up to make their case -- children some times -- but in this current atmosphere to do so is to put yourself at risk. It is not fair to ask those most likely to be harmed to take on all the burden. No minority has ever achieved civil rights and equality without allies and it is time for community leaders -- churches, politicans, sports figures, businesses and journalists worthy of their profession -- to step forward. And, as always, we need to support one another. If you have non-binary or trans friends or co-workers, just let them know that you have their back. If you are part of the community, reach out to folks and organizations to garner support. Finally, I was at an LGBTQ support group formed by my faith community on Sunday. People were frightened, the entire community is fearful. There were tears in the eyes of many, young and old alike. We need to hold our ground but we need allies to stand against the rising wave of hate. Allies, where are you?
Republicans have claimed they will eradicate us by Xmas of 2025. This is how they do it, by eliminating gender affirming care, legal recognition, banning affirming mental health care and making reparative and conversion therapy mandatory, and by using anti-drag and child sex abuse charges to criminalize social transition and incarcerating Trans people and forcibly detransitioning them in prison.
Project 2025 think it could take as long as 2026 to eliminate all of us.
@Jamie Hileman, It's scary. And it's disheartening. And every day I wonder will my "groups" suddenly not be allowed in the spaces we are and if we'll get in trouble, and are we even "safe" in them. But I'm strengthened by the numbers of us who are continuing to show up and to occupy space. I'm tired of fighting but I'll keep going. We have to be creative. We ARE creative. If there is anything going on withing 3-400 miles of me where people are standing together, I go. I did a crazy thing a couple of weeks ago and just got on the fastest thing I could get on and showed up outside SCOTUS, it was amazing! There are amazing leaders and we all belong in OUR country. Please keep showing up. I'm showing up for my kid, and I'll show up for you.
Tammy, agreed all around.
I'm on the board of directors of several LGBTQ focused nonprofits and leadership groups; we're urging other LGBTQ Americans to seek out and patronize or create MORE LGBTQ focused social and community space. We know that the risk of terrorist and mass shooter attacks are increasing but we as a group of communities NEED our queer social spaces now more than EVER, to fend off GOPMAGA and other sources of stochastic terrorism.
And we're going to have to do it by ourselves as Democrats are suddenly getting icebound feet over their allyship as they increasingly buy into GOP taunts that the reason Dems lost everything in the '24 election is because of their support of transgender and LGBTQ Americans... ironically, in all manufactured controversies ginned up by conspiracy theory America-hating democracy-hating fascists who see us as a convenient target for distractive scapegoat facilitating genocide.
Yet nowhere exist any empiricals that supporting Trans kids was a factor in the efficacy of the hodgepodge of vile propaganda, often boosted by the Kremlin, that targeted the swing states.
Seth Moulton had better be collecting a Turning Point USA or Musk PAC paycheck for his work against Trans inclusion in Democratic priorities, ditto Colin Allred and now Andy Beshear. Otherwise they're idiots. Better to be a corrupt and cynical asshat than someone so stupid and such a dupe as to hork down the crudest transphobic hatemonger speech from morons too stupid to see how they're utterly duplicating the work of Göebbels and Streicher and to the same end... genocide.
I’m in on every word. If we’re staying here we need to occupy space in a big way. Oh, and I apologize for misspelling your first name. I’m pretty picky about getting name spellings correct. ☹️ I appreciated your reply!
The States should have some control though.
Love you, friend. In a get-together tonight we were told "MAGA is letting representatives know they are watching." We can't sit back and not make calls because "our" senator is on "our" side. We have to let them know we have their backs. We have to let them know that WE'RE watching. We have to chisel away at what remains not protected in our states, including the "safe" ones and support and back our Governors, Senators, Congresspeople, and local elected and appointed representatives. And we need to call and thank them when they make protective moves. I know you know. Locking arms with you.
Hi Carol, I just wanted to better understand your comment; "the states should have some control though"? Are you meaning some states should be able to take some actions on behalf of Trans and LGBTQ citizens?
I agree, but only 23 states have HRAs (Human Rights Act) with SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) inclusive language. Fewer still have explicit shield laws protecting transgender citizens, especially kiddos. I don't think that number is going to change.
Republicans have made it politically very expensive for anyone to stand with us. Look at what they did to Bud Light, Disney, and DEI supporting corporate allies, look at $220,000,000.00 spent on just national anti-Trans messaging, another $50,000,000.00 in state level comms. That's not counting another $150,000,000.000 in anti-LGBTQ messaging. Republicans spent $420,000,000.00 on anti-Trans anti-LGBTQ advertising in this election cycle. That's not counting Elon Musk using Twitter as his own propaganda hub. The monetary value of X support of anti-Trans anti-LGBTQ propaganda on Musk's platform would be, if you had to pay cash-on-the-barrelhead, somewhere around $100,000,000.00.
That's 2/3 of A BILLION DOLLARS the GOPMAGAs have spent JUST THIS ELECTION on demonizing us.
So when people tell me that the GOP doesn't mean to use the banning of legal recognition, affirming care bans, bathroom bans, civil rights erasure, and drag bans to genocide and disappear first transgender Americans, then all other LGBTQ Americans, I. Don't. Believe. Them.
NOBODY SPENDS THAT KIND OF MONEY for *nothing*.
Banning us from sports, bathrooms, certain jobs, from the military, from schools, that's just the BEGINNING. The Republicans are following Mein Kampf (832 pages) and Project 2025 (920 pages) like they had been ordered to do so by their god.
They mean to incarcerate and forcibly detransition us, force us to emigrate, force us to detransition and re-closet ourselves, to force us to suicide, and if they must, kill us directly. Their actions have no other use, no other purpose EXCEPT erasure, eradication, and extermination. They started with transgender children because as fascists keenly know, children make the softest and easiest of targets. They always have.
We are rapidly running out of time and sadly, our only allies with any remnant of political power, the Democrats, are running AWAY from us even faster.
Well now I’m more depressed.
Don't be. There's still room for hope.
"Republicans have claimed they will eradicate us by Xmas of 2025."
They really said that openly?
"Has the GOP actually said out loud they intend to eradicate transgenderism by 2026"?
Well, it's a goal in Project 2025. It's also been said by multiple attendees speaking at the last three CPAC conferences. It's also part of the public record in debate during committee and floor sessions in 26 US states passing laws 2023-2024 criminalizing various aspects of Trans lives. It's an important component of their ongoing strategy to eliminate the Democratic party and create a single party fascist theocratic state, and they're succeeding. Dems are openly questioning supporting our community and I guarantee no Dem is going to throw themselves on a grenade aimed at us during the 119th Congress. I expect all GOPMAGA anti-Trans bills to pass, and pass with Dem votes.
How ironic because Dem support for transgender and LGBTQ Americans has been one of the few ways we could discern any substantial difference between the Democratic party and the pre-MAGA GOP.
This means we will lose legal recognition at the federal level; our SSA account gender marker changes, our updated passports, and coverage of ANY gender affirming care under CMS models for ANY Trans people of ANY age.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/13/democrats-moderates-transgender-issues-strategy-00189123
By destroying access to medical and legal transition at the federal level it will become easier for states to do so at the state level, and add social transition and psychotherapeutic transition to the pyre, too. They will use anti-drag bills with jail time enforcement in combination with the for-profit incarceral industrial complex to eliminate social transition. By reversing the four components of gender transition, just using existing systems and legislation models, Republicans can *easily* genocide us by Xmas 2026.
No retro mass arrests required! No concentration camps, Zyklon-B showers, or industrial crematoria are needed to commit micro targeted 21st century genocide in the Republic of MAGAstan!
To answer your question; have any GOP national elected or the RNC said this exact phrase "the GOP will eradicate transgenderism by Xmas 2926"?
Not that I'm aware of.
BUT, they've committed to doing it and are well on their way.
For a sneak peak at the legislative models the GOP will use to detransition, re-closet, incarcerate, force us to emigrate, and force us to suicide, I suggest reading the text summary of two proposed 2025 Missouri bills, HB156 and HB157.
https://house.mo.gov/BillsMobile.aspx?year=2025&code=R&bill=HB157
The latter is the most vicious because it bans all birth certificate and ID updates, and what is novel is it ALSO calls for the immediate revocation of ALL birth certificates and state IDs issued before now, EVER, for the purpose of gender marker update re gender transition.
Despite being a lifelong Illinois citizen with Illinois court ordered name and gender marker mandates, I was born in Missouri and am therefore made subject to this coming bill.
Americans like myself will not have a valid birth certificate; I'll be unable to prove I'm a US citizen because my name, marker, and biology do not match the re-issued "original" birth certificate. I could be caught up in the coming deportation mass arrests and gitmoed.
Plus, polling on Trump's transition, trust in polls and Thanksgiving plans.
https://abcnews.go.com/538/congressional-bathroom-ban-latest-transgender-policy-battle/story?id=116205618
via ABC News App
If I use a women's bathroom that matches my appearance, gender expression, and gender identity, I could be arrested. If I use a men's room, I could be beaten, raped, THEN arrested. Red states are now banning new construction of single stall multi gender/"family" bathrooms so those aren't going to ever be plentiful enough for safe use.
https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/nondiscrimination/bathroom_bans
If furthering these processes that equate to the elimination of all visibly Trans Americans from public life AREN'T imminent genocide, then not a single god-damned thing is or can be.
https://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/building-code-as-battleground-activism-amendments-and-coauthorship/
Between state and federal legislation, executive orders, police action, and emergency declarations, I'll be shocked if anyone Trans remains public and visible by Xmas 2026. We will be driven underground and relegated to gathering in safehouses, as we were in the 18th century, finding community only in illicit "molly houses" subject to police raid, mass arrests, and public execution.
I for one am NOT nostalgic for that era.
I’m so glad you wrote this piece. I am so angry with Wapo for publishing absolute garbage. Ive had a wapo subscription since the 1990s when I lived there and this article was the nail in the coffin. I was so mad and then you wrote this great response. Thank you. You now get my subscription money that Bezos used to get.
All the better to cancel my WaPo subscription. They refused to print several important op-eds I wrote over the summer, joining the NYT in failing to maintain objectivity in their slide to the right
Dr. B, you tried though. Both are now good for lining the kitty litter box...maybe. Lots of arms locking together. There have been trans and non-binary people since the dirt. I'm proud, proud to have birthed one. But I'll have a small sadness until I no longer inhabit the Earth that I did not understand that sooner. This trans family is doing ok. We'll work hard to keep it that way. Community helps. You are so loved.
Tammye, our cats deserve better, but I'm 100% with you on your analysis of quisling journalism like the NYT and WaPo that just can't seem to hawktua the fascist ejaculate fast enough. As I've said in other writing and at other times, the current fascist GOPMAGA movement to eradicate and exterminate all transgender and gender expansive Americans is doomed to failure because they just don't understand and continue to REFUSE understanding who we ARE.
We aren't people who "chose a lifestyle".
We're an integral component of the human experience, we are rooted in a mosaic origin comprised of genetic, epigenetic, in vivo, and endocrinological composition. We have existed throughout all of recorded history and DNA research seems to indicate we've existed at least as long as modern humans have existed, 200,000-300,000 years depending upon which numbers you find most empirically convincing. We have existed on every continent and within every society throughout all our species' journeys, all of civilization, from the first humans to jet around the Indian Ocean rim to colonize Australia to Trans scientists serving in Antarctica.
We have always been here and we will always be.
The fascists and scapegoaters requiring flesh sacrifices to their blood god can kill us ALL, kill our history, our culture, our families , our love, and they can destroy all our works, writings, art, knowledge, they can destroy our very bodies, sending us to beyond as no more than the smoke of our ashes ascending into the skies.
But that's ALL they can do.
We'll be back.
Another generation of us will be born.
The generation after that will fight for recognition, for their humanity, to be seen, fight for justice.
The following generation will have won that fight, and will have recreated all our wonders and so much more. After all, the very essence of our culture is freedom and self-actualization, qualities prized by every human who's ever humanned.
And so, in a microblink of geological time, we're back.
They can kill us all but they can never truly erase, eradicate, or exterminate us, as we are THEM, an intrinsic thread in the great tapestry of human potentiality, and they have no lasting power over our inevitability.
Cold comfort this may seem indeed on January 22nd, 2025, in a savage America drunkenly celebrating inhumanity and cruelty, but it is STILL a comfort and a promise of hope, one that cannot be taken from us as easily as so much else can be.
This shouldn’t be categorized as an opinion. Everything you said is true.
First, I want to wish the best possible life with your wife. I have downloaded the full transcript of the french study by the Academy of pediatrics, endocrinology. Would it be worth sending to our weak representatives. It is in english.
It IS worth it. Let them hear from you. Let them know that if any harm comes to you or those you love because of them or their party that you will hold them personally responsible. Let them hear from 500 of you!
That is the way to do, holding them personally responsible for their deeds.
Thanks, Mira, for substituting and for your excellent, if depressing, reporting. This, after 81 House Dems just voted to ban GAC for children of military members. It is getting very dark. Keep fighting, everyone!