June is Pride Month, when we celebrate people in the LGBTQIA+ community and their freedom to express their true selves. However, the rights and lives of many in this community are under a very real and existential threat.
According to translegislation.com, 556 bills* have been introduced in state legislatures so far this year, with 71 becoming law, that seek to “block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition, and the right to publicly exist (emphasis mine).”
These bills are used to galvanize politicians’ constituents through fear. Impacts on individuals’ lives are ignored. Compassion is nonexistent. Truth is disregarded. With this blog post, I hope to dispel the disinformation and harmful myths so that love and truth will prevail.
But first, some definitions are in order (see additional definitions below).
Nineteen states’ legislatures have passed laws that restrict or ban gender-affirming care to minors. It is only a matter of time before these laws will be expanded to all trans people, regardless of age. Some current bills, if passed, would indeed ban transition care up to age 21 and in at least one state, up to age 26.
Some proponents of these bills use the cover of “protecting our children,” calling this issue a “political winner.” They use fear to create an imaginary enemy from which to save the world and to be seen as the hero. However, using fear-mongering tactics to achieve political purposes does a disservice to all people, including children, and harms trans children, teens, and adults exponentially.
Let us look at several myths regarding transgender, especially regarding transgender children and teens.
Myth #1 – Gender-affirming care “mutilates” children’s bodies.
Referring to gender-affirming care and surgeries as “mutilation” feeds into a narrative driven by fear. Moreover, it perpetuates the idea that cisgender bodies are more valuable than transgender bodies, and that transgender bodies are somehow “ruined” or “defective.” Both cisgender and transgender bodies are valid.
In any case, current medical protocol prohibits genital surgery on a minor as part of gender-affirming care.
Myth #2 – Trans children are receiving life-altering surgeries.
As noted above, genital surgeries are not performed on minors. Often, puberty blockers or hormone therapy are prescribed to trans adolescents, not trans prepubertal children.
Puberty blockers stop the onset of puberty and give a trans adolescent an option to delay changes their bodies will undergo at puberty so they can decide how they want to present. If puberty blockers are stopped, puberty begins. Note that puberty blockers have been used for decades in children with abnormally early puberty.
Hormone therapy (hormones of the gender they identify with) helps trans people develop the body that is congruent with their gender identity. Because of new anti-trans laws, some states already make it difficult for trans adults to continue hormone therapy which can have devastating consequences, particularly psychologically, if hormone therapy is stopped. Like puberty blockers, hormone therapy is also used in cisgender people. For example, estrogen and progesterone are often used in menopausal cisgender women.
Note that parental permission is needed for top surgery for 16-17-year-olds. Top surgery refers to either the removal or augmentation of breasts. Interestingly, cisgender female teens make up 1.5% of all breast augmentation surgeries.
Myth #3 – Trans children will grow up to regret their gender-affirming care decisions.
The regrets expressed by trans adults are not that they transitioned, but that they did not transition sooner. Transitioning earlier would have saved them the pain and agony of living with gender dysphoria.
For those trans adults who have surgery, the regret rate is 1%. The most common reason given for regret is the difficulty of being accepted by family and society after surgery. Interestingly, of all surgeries performed on anyone for any reason in the US, there is a 14% regret rate.
Myth #4 – Trans children (and trans teens and adults) are mentally ill.
The myth that being trans causes mental illness is false. What is real, though, is the devastating emotional toll on a trans person due to the lack of support from family, friends, and employers, as well as the taunts, discrimination, and physical and sexual violence they suffer for being trans.
Anti-trans laws help create an atmosphere of hatred and fear that encourages hate crimes and violence against transgender people. One in two will experience sexual assault and abuse sometime in their life. Trans children are also subject to violence and sexual assault, even at school. This trauma greatly impacts their mental health. For trans children, the bullying, violence, and teasing disrupts their education.***
Myth #5 – The government should control the medical care trans children receive.
Banning or restricting health care flies in the face of established medical protocol. The American Academy of Pediatricians “recommends taking a ‘gender-affirming’, nonjudgmental approach that helps children feel safe in a society that too often marginalizes or stigmatizes those seen as different. The gender-affirming model strengthens family resiliency and takes the emphasis off heightened concerns over gender while allowing children the freedom to focus on academics, relationship-building and other typical developmental tasks.” Likewise, the American Medical Association strongly opposes restrictions to gender-affirming care. Some physicians believe that withholding gender-affirming care is unethical. Like other medical decisions, gender-affirming care is best left up to the patient and their physician, not the state.
Myth #6 – By controlling what is taught in schools, we can keep a child from identifying as trans.
According to a Washington Post-KFF poll in 2022, one in three trans adults knew before they were ten-years-old that their gender identity was different from the sex assigned to them at birth. Even young children can experience gender dysphoria but they may not have the language to describe it. Not talking about it at school or home will not keep someone from identifying as trans: it will only prolong their suffering until they can access gender-affirming care.
Myth #7 – By controlling gender-affirming care and restricting teaching about it, we are protecting children.
A great disservice is done not only to trans children but also to cisgender children when gender-affirming care is banned, restricted, and not discussed in schools and homes. Cisgender children will not learn to accept their peers and will feel validated in bullying and teasing their trans classmates.
As noted above, these laws are not just aimed at children. They are designed to eliminate all gender-affirming care and eradicate trans people themselves while garnering votes for the politicians who create and support these laws.
It is important to understand that gender identity is a human construct, like race. Society ascribes certain characteristics onto different genders (or races) and determines which gender (or race) is more valued. While our gender and race impact who we are, our truest selves are much more than how we present.
The existence of trans people is threatening to some cisgender people. The blurring of genders into nonbinary and transgender upsets the existing patriarchal power structure where cisgender men are at the top. When some feel threatened, they will do whatever it takes to keep themselves in power – by passing laws against trans people ostensibly to eradicate them.
Jesus came to promote a new power structure, one not based on who is at the top, but one based on who is at the bottom. The currency is this new world order is not hate, greed, and fear, but love, justice, and mercy. Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me (from Matthew 25:40).
When we operate from a basis of fear and hate, we are not following the God who is love. When we refuse to love all our neighbors, we violate God’s commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). When we scapegoat a group of people to either maintain our power or to make ourselves feel superior, we are crushing the image of God in people He loves.
Following Jesus’ example, we are to love the marginalized, to care for the oppressed, and to help set them free from the oppressors. Feeling love and compassion is not enough: we must put faith into action by educating ourselves on the oppression in our midst, by fighting disinformation through truth telling, by calling or writing our legislators to denounce anti-trans laws, by voting out politicians who power-grab through oppression, and by partnering with organizations who are working for justice.
When we see feet on the necks of trans children, may those feet not be ours. Instead, may we lend a hand to help them up and use our feet to carry them out of oppression, to live their lives as image-bearers of a loving God. May we indeed be the hands and feet of Jesus in an old-world order obsessed with hate, greed, and fear.
*Some of these laws ban trans girls from playing on girls’ sport teams, ban drag performances, or allow public bathrooms to be used only by people presenting as the sex assigned at birth. (As an aside, I know of one young cisgender woman in a state with a bathroom ban who was kicked out of a concert for using the men’s bathroom when the line at the women’s bathroom was very long. Truly these laws have unintended consequences.) For purposes of this blog post, we focus on the anti-trans laws aimed at banning gender-affirming care.
**Counseling to help them understand gender dysphoria, to help them communicate their identity to family and friends, and to help them deal with the often cruel and hateful actions of others.
*** Discrimination and violence directed at trans teens and adults have a direct impact on their housing. For trans teens, 20-40% of homeless youth are trans; they are often turned out of their homes by their parents. One in five trans adults experience homelessness, one in five experience discrimination in housing, and one in ten are evicted because of their gender identity.
Additional definitions:
For more information on anti-trans laws by state, see the American Civil Liberties Union’s website here.
To support vulnerable trans youth, consider giving to a suicide-prevention organization that focuses on LGBTQ+ youth called The Trevor Project.
Text and photograph copyright © 2023 by Dawn Dailey. All rights reserved. Photo of a rainbow over the mountains on Maui, Hawaii.
NOTE: As mentioned above, the month of June is Pride Month. Here are some resources: PBS, History.com, and the Smithsonian Institute.
Not a subscriber to the monthly blog posts? Click here to subscribe.
A NOTE ON SOCIAL JUSTICE:
Jesus says the greatest commandments are to love God and to love people (Matthew 22:37-40). The Christian faith boils down to these two precepts.
Social justice puts that love into action by helping individuals who are oppressed, mistreated, or suffering, and by pursuing ways to dismantle systems of oppression. How we treat others, particularly those less powerful in society than ourselves, matters (Matthew 25:31-46).
Racial justice is one aspect of social justice. Check out my web page on “Justice Matters” to find resources and to connect with organizations engaging in the cause of racial justice. Click here to learn more.
According to translegislation.com, 556 bills* have been introduced in state legislatures so far this year, with 71 becoming law, that seek to “block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition, and the right to publicly exist (emphasis mine).”
These bills are used to galvanize politicians’ constituents through fear. Impacts on individuals’ lives are ignored. Compassion is nonexistent. Truth is disregarded. With this blog post, I hope to dispel the disinformation and harmful myths so that love and truth will prevail.
But first, some definitions are in order (see additional definitions below).
- Gender identity is a person’s innate sense of their gender; it is not sexual preference or orientation.
- Gender presentation is how someone looks or dresses and does not necessarily indicate their gender identity.
- Gender dysphoria is, according to the NIH’s National Library of Medicine, a "marked incongruence between their experienced or expressed gender and the one they were assigned at birth." Gender dysphoria, if left untreated, can have devastating consequences because of this incongruence. Anxiety, depression, substance abuse, self-harm, and sometimes suicide result when a person does not feel at home in their own body.
- Gender-affirming care, according to the World Health Organization, is the medical, psychological, and behavioral care “designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” when that identity does not match the assigned sex at birth. For children and teens, this can include puberty blockers, hormone therapy, counseling**, speech therapy, breast binding, genital tucking, hair styling, and makeup lessons.
Nineteen states’ legislatures have passed laws that restrict or ban gender-affirming care to minors. It is only a matter of time before these laws will be expanded to all trans people, regardless of age. Some current bills, if passed, would indeed ban transition care up to age 21 and in at least one state, up to age 26.
Some proponents of these bills use the cover of “protecting our children,” calling this issue a “political winner.” They use fear to create an imaginary enemy from which to save the world and to be seen as the hero. However, using fear-mongering tactics to achieve political purposes does a disservice to all people, including children, and harms trans children, teens, and adults exponentially.
Let us look at several myths regarding transgender, especially regarding transgender children and teens.
Myth #1 – Gender-affirming care “mutilates” children’s bodies.
Referring to gender-affirming care and surgeries as “mutilation” feeds into a narrative driven by fear. Moreover, it perpetuates the idea that cisgender bodies are more valuable than transgender bodies, and that transgender bodies are somehow “ruined” or “defective.” Both cisgender and transgender bodies are valid.
In any case, current medical protocol prohibits genital surgery on a minor as part of gender-affirming care.
Myth #2 – Trans children are receiving life-altering surgeries.
As noted above, genital surgeries are not performed on minors. Often, puberty blockers or hormone therapy are prescribed to trans adolescents, not trans prepubertal children.
Puberty blockers stop the onset of puberty and give a trans adolescent an option to delay changes their bodies will undergo at puberty so they can decide how they want to present. If puberty blockers are stopped, puberty begins. Note that puberty blockers have been used for decades in children with abnormally early puberty.
Hormone therapy (hormones of the gender they identify with) helps trans people develop the body that is congruent with their gender identity. Because of new anti-trans laws, some states already make it difficult for trans adults to continue hormone therapy which can have devastating consequences, particularly psychologically, if hormone therapy is stopped. Like puberty blockers, hormone therapy is also used in cisgender people. For example, estrogen and progesterone are often used in menopausal cisgender women.
Note that parental permission is needed for top surgery for 16-17-year-olds. Top surgery refers to either the removal or augmentation of breasts. Interestingly, cisgender female teens make up 1.5% of all breast augmentation surgeries.
Myth #3 – Trans children will grow up to regret their gender-affirming care decisions.
The regrets expressed by trans adults are not that they transitioned, but that they did not transition sooner. Transitioning earlier would have saved them the pain and agony of living with gender dysphoria.
For those trans adults who have surgery, the regret rate is 1%. The most common reason given for regret is the difficulty of being accepted by family and society after surgery. Interestingly, of all surgeries performed on anyone for any reason in the US, there is a 14% regret rate.
Myth #4 – Trans children (and trans teens and adults) are mentally ill.
The myth that being trans causes mental illness is false. What is real, though, is the devastating emotional toll on a trans person due to the lack of support from family, friends, and employers, as well as the taunts, discrimination, and physical and sexual violence they suffer for being trans.
Anti-trans laws help create an atmosphere of hatred and fear that encourages hate crimes and violence against transgender people. One in two will experience sexual assault and abuse sometime in their life. Trans children are also subject to violence and sexual assault, even at school. This trauma greatly impacts their mental health. For trans children, the bullying, violence, and teasing disrupts their education.***
Myth #5 – The government should control the medical care trans children receive.
Banning or restricting health care flies in the face of established medical protocol. The American Academy of Pediatricians “recommends taking a ‘gender-affirming’, nonjudgmental approach that helps children feel safe in a society that too often marginalizes or stigmatizes those seen as different. The gender-affirming model strengthens family resiliency and takes the emphasis off heightened concerns over gender while allowing children the freedom to focus on academics, relationship-building and other typical developmental tasks.” Likewise, the American Medical Association strongly opposes restrictions to gender-affirming care. Some physicians believe that withholding gender-affirming care is unethical. Like other medical decisions, gender-affirming care is best left up to the patient and their physician, not the state.
Myth #6 – By controlling what is taught in schools, we can keep a child from identifying as trans.
According to a Washington Post-KFF poll in 2022, one in three trans adults knew before they were ten-years-old that their gender identity was different from the sex assigned to them at birth. Even young children can experience gender dysphoria but they may not have the language to describe it. Not talking about it at school or home will not keep someone from identifying as trans: it will only prolong their suffering until they can access gender-affirming care.
Myth #7 – By controlling gender-affirming care and restricting teaching about it, we are protecting children.
A great disservice is done not only to trans children but also to cisgender children when gender-affirming care is banned, restricted, and not discussed in schools and homes. Cisgender children will not learn to accept their peers and will feel validated in bullying and teasing their trans classmates.
As noted above, these laws are not just aimed at children. They are designed to eliminate all gender-affirming care and eradicate trans people themselves while garnering votes for the politicians who create and support these laws.
It is important to understand that gender identity is a human construct, like race. Society ascribes certain characteristics onto different genders (or races) and determines which gender (or race) is more valued. While our gender and race impact who we are, our truest selves are much more than how we present.
The existence of trans people is threatening to some cisgender people. The blurring of genders into nonbinary and transgender upsets the existing patriarchal power structure where cisgender men are at the top. When some feel threatened, they will do whatever it takes to keep themselves in power – by passing laws against trans people ostensibly to eradicate them.
Jesus came to promote a new power structure, one not based on who is at the top, but one based on who is at the bottom. The currency is this new world order is not hate, greed, and fear, but love, justice, and mercy. Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me (from Matthew 25:40).
When we operate from a basis of fear and hate, we are not following the God who is love. When we refuse to love all our neighbors, we violate God’s commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). When we scapegoat a group of people to either maintain our power or to make ourselves feel superior, we are crushing the image of God in people He loves.
Following Jesus’ example, we are to love the marginalized, to care for the oppressed, and to help set them free from the oppressors. Feeling love and compassion is not enough: we must put faith into action by educating ourselves on the oppression in our midst, by fighting disinformation through truth telling, by calling or writing our legislators to denounce anti-trans laws, by voting out politicians who power-grab through oppression, and by partnering with organizations who are working for justice.
When we see feet on the necks of trans children, may those feet not be ours. Instead, may we lend a hand to help them up and use our feet to carry them out of oppression, to live their lives as image-bearers of a loving God. May we indeed be the hands and feet of Jesus in an old-world order obsessed with hate, greed, and fear.
*Some of these laws ban trans girls from playing on girls’ sport teams, ban drag performances, or allow public bathrooms to be used only by people presenting as the sex assigned at birth. (As an aside, I know of one young cisgender woman in a state with a bathroom ban who was kicked out of a concert for using the men’s bathroom when the line at the women’s bathroom was very long. Truly these laws have unintended consequences.) For purposes of this blog post, we focus on the anti-trans laws aimed at banning gender-affirming care.
**Counseling to help them understand gender dysphoria, to help them communicate their identity to family and friends, and to help them deal with the often cruel and hateful actions of others.
*** Discrimination and violence directed at trans teens and adults have a direct impact on their housing. For trans teens, 20-40% of homeless youth are trans; they are often turned out of their homes by their parents. One in five trans adults experience homelessness, one in five experience discrimination in housing, and one in ten are evicted because of their gender identity.
Additional definitions:
- Cisgender (or “cis”) is a person whose gender identity corresponds to their biological sex assigned to them at birth.
- Transgender (or “trans“) is a person whose gender identity does not correspond to their biological sex assigned at birth. A person assigned female at birth but who identifies as a man is called a transgender man or trans man. A person assigned male at birth but who identifies as a woman is called a transgender woman or trans woman.
- Nonbinary is the gender identity of a person who does not identify exclusively as a man or a woman. Some nonbinary people also identify under the larger umbrella of transgender.
For more information on anti-trans laws by state, see the American Civil Liberties Union’s website here.
To support vulnerable trans youth, consider giving to a suicide-prevention organization that focuses on LGBTQ+ youth called The Trevor Project.
Text and photograph copyright © 2023 by Dawn Dailey. All rights reserved. Photo of a rainbow over the mountains on Maui, Hawaii.
NOTE: As mentioned above, the month of June is Pride Month. Here are some resources: PBS, History.com, and the Smithsonian Institute.
Not a subscriber to the monthly blog posts? Click here to subscribe.
A NOTE ON SOCIAL JUSTICE:
Jesus says the greatest commandments are to love God and to love people (Matthew 22:37-40). The Christian faith boils down to these two precepts.
Social justice puts that love into action by helping individuals who are oppressed, mistreated, or suffering, and by pursuing ways to dismantle systems of oppression. How we treat others, particularly those less powerful in society than ourselves, matters (Matthew 25:31-46).
Racial justice is one aspect of social justice. Check out my web page on “Justice Matters” to find resources and to connect with organizations engaging in the cause of racial justice. Click here to learn more.
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