The Economist, no fan of Trump, thought his ad about how Kamala is for they/them Trump is for you was one of the best political ads in a long time
My experience is that most people have had minimal, if any, meaningful interactions with people that they know are trans. And likewise most people know very little about what trans people and their experiences are actually like. Iâve seen people who believe that all trans women get bottom surgery or need implants to have breasts, when breasts actually result from hormones and most trans women donât get any surgeries at all. I just came across a reddit thread with a bunch of cis people arguing that men who date trans women cannot be straight and must be either bi or gay, and telling the trans people in the thread that their actual, lived dating experiences are wrong.
When something is a virtual unknown, it is much easier to shape opinion around potentially scary things about it, and the Republicans are actively working on doing so. I fairly seriously believe that one of the biggest drivers of public opinion about gay people in the US was Ellen DeGeneres having a daily TV show in which she appeared to be a basically likable, benign figure. A lot of homophobia at the time was driven by fear and extreme caricatures, and simply by being there she dispelled those beliefs. Maybe if Hunter Schafer becomes a true breakout star people will get over some of their fears.
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Exactly. Iâd toss in Will and Grace. The culture can change. It will undoubtedly require patience and will be frustrating. Ponder how long it took Blacks to become human in the public perception. Gay marriage was accomplished at warp speed comparatively.
But the key is exposure and letting folks see trans as likable.
The path forward today is a bit more puzzling. Both Ellen D and Will and Grace enjoyed large audiences. Network TV set the pace. These were award winning shows. Iâm not sure what the equivalent is today. The entertainment medium is so fragmented.
You canât use reason with people who are irrational. Hand puppets are the route. And it shouldnât be aimed at generating sympathy, itâs better to have them be relatable and âsomeone you could have a beer withâ.
Just my 2 coppers.
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I know, right? They asked like zero cis people.
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LA Childrenâs Hospital capitulates to federal pressure.
They have, or I guess I should say had, patients up to age 25, so many adults are losing care as a result of this. Thatâs part of a recurring pattern with trans healthcare: people make a big deal out of the very rare surgeries that some trans boys receive as minors, drastically exaggerate the frequency of those, and adults end up losing care.
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I learned last week that in 1974, the then all male SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that discrimination against pregnant women did not violate equal protection of the 14th amendment because it wasnât discrimination against all women, just women with a specific medical condition.
You might think that that is batshit crazy. If so, Sonia Sotomayor would agree with you:
Geduldig was âegregiously wrongâ when it was decided, both â[b]ecause pregnancy discrimination is inevitably sex discriminationâ and because discrimination against women is so âtightly interwoven with societyâs beliefs about pregnancy and motherhood.â Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Md., 566 U. S. 30, 56â57 (2012) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). That the majority must resuscitate so unpersuasive a source, widely rejected as indefensible even 40 years ago, is itself a telling sign of the weakness of its position
Congress responded to Geduldig by passing legislation the same year to ban discrimination against pregnant women.
The reason why I learned this recently is because I didnât read the Dobbs decision. Geduldig was a key basis for Dobbs, and is now the basis for Skrmetti. Banning trans healthcare isnât discrimination against trans people as it only affects people with gender dysphoria, and not every trans person has gender dysphoria. They are only two circles that almost entirely overlap in a Venn diagram, rather than the identical set. (And 4 of the justices â the usual 3 plus ACB â think that being trans isnât an immutable class because detransitioners exist)
A better rant:
The horrors of high school kids learning that trans kids exist.
The Trump administration has given California 60 days to strip all references to gender identity from a federally funded sex education program or risk losing its funding.
In a letter sent Friday to the California Department of Public Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Servicesâ Administration for Children and Families called the stateâs Personal Responsibility Education Program ânoncompliantâ with federal law.
The agency cited âdisturbing gender ideology content,â including passages explaining that gender identity can differ from biological sex and that some individuals identify as transgender or nonbinary.
Earlier this year, HHS issued a report attacking trans gender care. It was put together so rapidly and is so bad that it was published anonymously. One of the authors came forward with an opinion piece defending the report in the WaPo yesterday. As was previously known from the meta data, he is a philosophy professor with no medical degree and a track record of publishing anti trans books. The report itself still sucks.
The 400-page document, whose authors are not named, asserts that the evidence does not support providing gender-affirming medical interventions for children and adolescents. It adds that such treatmentsâincluding puberty-blocking medications and hormonesâare associated with significant risks. That claim challenges the guidance of multiple major medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which was quick to issue a response reaffirming its stance. âThis report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care,â an AAP statement read.
âThe finger was already on the scale when this report was commissioned,â says Kellan Baker, a health services researcher who serves as executive director of the Whitman-Walker Institute for Health Research and Policy. In recent years, more than half of all states, including Florida and Tennessee, have implemented policies restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors. Soon after taking office in January, Trump gave HHS a 90-day deadline to publish the review in an executive order titled âProtecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,â which claimed without evidence that medical professionals in the United States âare maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable childrenâ and threatened to revoke federal funding from hospital clinics that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
A mere 90 days is not enough time to conduct a thorough review, Baker argues. By contrast, the most recent standards for the treatment of gender dysphoria in youth issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)âan organization that determines the clinical protocols used by the majority of professionals who work with trans peopleâtook more than a decade to compile with numerous systematic reviews, and âreflect the consensus of hundreds of experts in transgender health from around the world,â Baker says. (In its report, HHS dismisses WPATH as an ideologically motivated organization.)
Baker and others say the report misrepresents existing scientific evidence and promotes misinformation. In several places, for example, it references âsocial contagionâ and ârapid-onset gender dysphoriaâ as reasons why more youth are identifying as transgenderâa theory popularized by a 2018 study that has been criticized as having methodological flaws and dismissed by major medical associations. It also suggests autism is a cause of gender dysphoria, an implication that the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, a nonprofit organization run by and for autistic people, condemned in a statement.
https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-slam-hhs-report-gender-affirming-care-youth
In what way does the report âsuckâ? I grant the report has a finger on the scale. But that alone doesnât mean the topic is resolved science. A lot of controversy, even among experts.
https://segm.org/Denmark-sharply-restricts-youth-gender-transitions
Summary
In the course of less than a decade, like every other Western country, Denmark experienced an exponential increase in the number of young people presenting with gender dysphoria. In 2014, there were only 4 documented pediatric cases who requested gender reassignment. By 2022, the number of referrals grew by 8700% to 352, similar to the several-thousand-percent increase in less than a decade witnessed by a number of Western countries. As the number of young people wishing to undergo gender reassignment increased, so did the rates at which Danish gender clinicians transitioned them. By 2018, Denmarkâs centralized gender service was medically transitioning 65% of referred youth. This was similar to the proportion of referred children who got transitioned reported by other pediatric gender clinics. For purposes of comparison, the Netherlandâs Amsterdam gender clinic reports transitioning 73% of late-onset referrals and 85% of early-onset referrals and in the US, researchers analyzing data from Seattle Childrenâs Hospital gender clinic reported that over 60% of the referrals underwent medical transition with puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones within one year of intake.
However, following systematic reviews of evidence conducted in Europe and the subsequent reversal of the âgender-affirmationâ paradigm in favor of a cautious, developmentally-informed approach that prioritizes psychosocial support and noninvasive resolution of gender distress in Sweden and Finland, Denmark appears to have made a quiet but resolute shift to treat most youth presenting with gender dysphoria with supportive counseling rather than puberty blockers, hormones, or surgery. In 2022, only 6% of those referred to Denmarkâs centralized gender clinic were prescribed endocrine interventions (puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones).*
And at the risk of TMI, Andrew Sullivanâs recent op-ed post in the NYT is well written and persuasive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html
This excerpt relates his own struggle growing up as a gay man, questioning why he was so isolated. The angst being along the lines of " Iâd do anything to stop being gay".
Summary
And then most radical of all: gender-affirming care for minors, which can lead to irreversible sex changes for children. The âcareâ included off-label âblockersâ to arrest puberty, almost always followed with cross-sex hormones. To begin with, gays and lesbians, including me, empathized with kids with gender dysphoria, and trusted the medical profession with the rest. If this helped kids or even saved their lives, as was often emphasized, what business was it of mine? If transitioning this young in life helped some pass better as adults, good for them.
Still, questions lingered, drawn from my own life. As a child, uninterested in playing team sports but very interested in the boys who played team sports, I was once asked by a girl when I was just 10 years old, âAre you sure youâre not really a girl?â Of course not, I replied. But I wonder how I might have responded if someone in authority â a parent or a teacher or a doctor â had suggested that my difference and occasional anxiety was because I was, in fact, a girl. That my body was irrelevant, and that I could choose to be the opposite sex before puberty and all my confusions would disappear. I just donât know what I would have said or done, to be honest.
And how do todayâs parents, teachers and doctors know for sure that a 10-year-old child isnât, well, like me, and really is trans? How can they know for sure that the gender dysphoria isnât instead a manifestation of being gay or lesbian and wanting to change it? How do they know for sure there isnât another complicating personal or psychological factor? I was told not to worry. A child had to demonstrate a âpersistent, consistent and insistentâ trans identity for years even to be considered for medical intervention.
So itâs not a clear scientific fact just yet. Itâs an evolving understanding. We should be prepared to absorb a lot more knowledge on the topic before claiming the scientific high ground. And, yeah, both sides. Itâs a medical question turned into a politic weapon.
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Great turnout here in Seattle for the parade. Real solidarity as evidenced by all the affinity groups that joined in. The transit workers union, the symphony, the kings county superior court among others.
The organizers apparently invited all motorcyclist to come down and make noise. Who knew 40 of them could be so annoyingly loud.
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I had hints that this could be the case. 
Lovely story about Canadian professional football player who transitioned at age 44. As I read the story I couldnât help wondering how the NFL would have handled this situation if she had been honoured at a commemorative Super Bowl ceremony with her team. Good story to share on Canada Day. Excerpt and link below:
âShe lived quietly and privately until last summer, when she was invited to Vancouver to celebrate the BC Lions 2000 Grey Cup team being inducted into the BC Place Wall of Fame. About half her old teammates would be in attendance.
They would be honoured during a televised game, and Maven tried to imagine how it would go. How would she be announced? What would the other players think? How would fans and the media respond?
She booked a plane ticket the day before the event.
She was standing in the middle of the field with men all around her. Her hair was long and straight, and she wore a BC Lions bomber jacket over a silky orange shirt, her fingernails painted to match. She lit up when she heard her name, âMaven Maurer.â Her Grey Cup ring glinted as she waved to the cheering crowd.
âMy teammates welcomed me with open arms, and it turned out even better than I could have imagined,â she says. âThem embracing me as Maven healed parts of me I didnât even know needed healing. Hearing my name being announced, my real name, while out on the field in front of the fans with my team present, was pure euphoria.â**
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Well, they blackballed Colin Kaepernik for kneeling during the Star Spangled BannerâŚso, ya know. Fox sports would probably hire a team of lawyers to get out of their TV contract.
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Bad news today for trans rights. Two cases are headed to SC next term.
Summary
The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it would hear two cases testing the constitutionality of state laws that bar transgender athletes from girlsâ and womenâs sports teams.
This is incredibly optimistic. While I do not doubt the passion of the plaintiffs or their lawyers, I question their judgement and timing. Letâs see if we agree on the situation.
The SC has a 6-3 conservative majority.
The general population is against having trans athletes compete against cis women. Those on the right, are particularly against it.
The case will have overtones of âStateâs Rightsâ
The chances of seeing a favorable decision here are remote. And losing this case will mean making it okay for any and all states to write state laws on the issue. A quick glance at a map of what party controls a state legislature is, shall we say striking.
Asking this SC to push forward cultural issues, hoping they will be like the Warren or Burger courts is madness. It may be a long,long time before you get another bite at the apple. The risks are great, and the odds are not in your favor. The expression discretion is the better part of valor springs to mind.