Search

The Spanish Trans Law has sparked great public debate, generating opposing and confrontational discourses on Twitter. As the debate can be influenced by contextual and individual factors, this study aimed to analyze the tweets posted on the day the preliminary draft of the law was presented and the day it was approved, exploring the prevailing attitudes toward the Trans Law in Spain, both supportive and opposing. Through deductive content analysis of 531 tweets, it was observed that the content tended to vary on both days, although the main differences were found between the pro and anti‐law stances. While supportive messages tended to advocate for rights and highlight transphobia, tweets opposing the Trans Law tended to claim that its approval could cause harm to others, especially cisgender women and children. Moreover, we examined the use of feminism, gender essentialism beliefs, and gender self‐determination measures as arguments to support each stance. The findings reflect the importance of contextual and attitudinal dynamics in the narratives posted on Twitter (now rebranded as X) regarding transgender rights. This qualitative research contributes to understanding attitudes toward transgender individuals as expressed on social media, integrating insights from Social Psychology within the current Spanish context. Public significance statement: When analyzing the content of the tweets commenting on the Spanish Trans Law, two different positions are identified. One supports the law, advocating for rights and taking a stand against transphobia. The other opposes the law, considering it a threat to cisgender women and children. By exploring the reasoning behind the two positions, this study helps to understand attitudes toward trans people online and emphasizes the need to combat misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past several years have brought about a steep increase in hostile legislation targeting queer and trans people, specifically policies that threaten the ability of trans people to receive gender-affirming care. Social workers provide more services related to addressing psychosocial needs than any other group of mental health professionals, and as the number of trans people continues to rise, so will the need for providers who are competent in working with them. Transness is currently an identity culturally and clinically defined by suffering, but that does not need to be the case, and in an ideal future it will not be. In considering how to reconceptualize social work praxis to decenter cis-heteronormativity, the field can look to theories of disability, sexuality, gender, race, and abolition for models of how practitioners can work with trans clients from an asset-based perspective, at once more effectively supporting them and creating a less oppressive and repressive society for everyone. Social workers who identify as allies to, or a part of, the queer and trans community must move away from a posture of performativity, which often perpetuates notions of normativity, and instead work toward substantive social change by subverting the "default settings" we are all socialized into. Achieving this end requires meaningful engagement with trans people and their varied lived experiences, internal, interpersonal, and in their interfacing with institutions, as well as a commitment to challenging our society's rigid values surrounding gender, to reconceptualize social work praxis with trans people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the representation of Black transgender (trans) women in the U.S. radio program "The Breakfast Club." Topics include a statement from Black trans woman Laverne Cox, who became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of "TIME" magazine, about the proliferation of Black trans women in the media, the surge of anti-trans legislation in the U.S. in 2020, and the significance of the presence of Black trans women guests such as Janet Mock and Cox in the radio show.

The author comments on banning puberty-pausing medications and how such endangers transgender adolescents. Topics covered include the prescribed treatment of gender-dysphoria in adolescents, how such types of medications are also used in a variety of other medical contexts and implication of legislation attacking the provision of puberty-pausing medications.

In the last few years, state legislatures have advanced a record number of bills aimed at restricting the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people. In the 2023 legislative session alone, 510 bills were introduced across the nation that would ban gender-affirming healthcare, weaken protection from discrimination in employment, public accommodations, and hospitals, censor drag shows, limit access to books about LGBTQ people, and exclude trans people from bathrooms and locker rooms, among other things. To many, these proposed bills are efforts to exclude transgender people from public life and effectively legislate them out of existence. Such attacks are likely to fall hardest on the most marginalized and vulnerable LGBTQ people who must exist in staterun spaces such as schools, prisons, hospitals, group homes, and homeless shelters. This Article argues that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has the potential to be a particularly effective tool for transgender people in fighting to be treated fairly in such places. Until recently, transgender people marginalized on account of their gender identity had no recourse under the ADA because Congress excluded “gender identity disorders” from the qualifying disabilities under the Act. But recently, some courts have found that Gender Dysphoria, a condition that many transgender people experience, is a covered disability under the ADA. This may allow transgender people to seek redress under the ADA when they face violent mistreatment in institutional settings. Not only does the ADA apply to many areas of life, the definition of discrimination used by the law—namely, that facially neutral policies with a disparate impact on disabled people as well as failure to provide reasonable accommodations both constitute discrimination—is also a particularly appropriate tool for addressing the barriers that many trans people face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A network of healthcare professionals specializing in transgender care was established in Croatia in 2011, and legal advancements were subsequently made in 2014. Both achievements made gender transition more transparent and thus more attainable in Croatia. This observational study was conducted to assess the number of transgender individuals initiating gender-affirming hormone treatment (GAHT) in Croatia and describes trends in age and sex assigned at birth. Between 2011 and 2022, a total of 111 transgender individuals initiated GAHT. Within the cohort, 52 were assigned male at birth (AMAB) and 59 were assigned female at birth (AFAB). The overall annual incidence rate of transgender individuals initiating GAHT was 0.52 per 100,000 age-adjusted individuals. There was a statistically significant increase (p < 0.01) in transgender individuals commencing GAHT before the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, a rising trend toward masculinizing rather than feminizing treatment was identified (p < 0.05), particularly among younger transgender individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted these trends in 2020, except for the trend of initiating therapy at a younger age (p < 0.01). The annual incidence and age distribution trends of transgender individuals initiating GAHT in Croatia closely mirrored those in other European countries, with a higher prevalence of individuals assigned female at birth. The study underscores a significant rise in the number of individuals initiating gender-affirming hormone treatment, emphasizing the need for proper legal regulation and healthcare system response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A deluge of state "anti-equity" legislative bills seek to reverse prevailing trends in diversity, equity, and inclusion; withdraw protections of LGBTQ+ communities; and deny access to gender-based care for trans minors and adults. While the political and constitutional fate of these acts is undetermined, profound impacts on patients and their providers are already affecting the delivery of health care and public health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elderly transgender mental health has been a neglected facet of mental health for many years. The current article reviews the global and local challenges faced when catering to elderly transgender mental health. These include trauma and stigma that may be faced when seeking mental health services, in addition to the stigma of belonging to the transgender community. There are many barriers in access to health-care services that have been highlighted, and there are factors such as social discrimination, victimization, hate crime, and domestic violence that add to the barriers. Lack of proper clinics that cater to their needs, improper coverage in health-care insurance, and lack of coverage of sex-change operations also add to the existing burden. Workplace issues and their impact on mental health along with stigma and workplace discrimination are also discussed. The review tries to give an overview of the issues faced, so that clinicians treating these populations are appraised of the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal sex in the United States is undergoing a dramatic transformation. By “legal sex” this Article refers to various instances in which legal authorities engage in defining an individual’s sex, either directly or indirectly. This Article begins by charting this transformation and then draws on this history to rethink the current political moment. Until around the mid-twentieth century, legal sex was mostly understood as immutable sexual difference between males and females that is biologically determined prior to birth. Groundbreaking scientific and medical theories in the 1950s introduced gender identity as a new way to describe an internal sense of being male or female. Since then, in slow steps, this concept has been integrated into various areas of law and policy. Today, the trend in U.S. law is toward viewing gender identity, defined as “an individual’s own internal sense of whether they are a man, a woman, or nonbinary,” as a central characteristic of legal sex. While there is not one coherent definition of sex across all areas of law, this Article observes that the trend across legal domains, including sex reclassification laws, antidiscrimination laws, and family laws, is clear: the legal system is shifting towards gender identity as the primary indicator of legal sex. This Article demonstrates why it is urgent to name and evaluate this transformation. As of 2023, lawmakers have introduced and passed hundreds of bills and policies that target transgender people by undermining the incorporation of gender identity into legal sex. They call instead for narrow notions of immutable “biological sex” that is fixed at birth. This Article situates the current backlash against transgender people as an attempt to roll back laws, policies, and societal norms that view gender identity as the primary indicator of legal sex. The Article proposes that advocates on behalf of transgender people engage current debates about gender identity by insisting on the moral desirability of future generations of transgender people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal institutions worldwide construct theories about gender's ontology—i.e., theories about what gender is—and use those constructions to govern. In this article, I analyse how the Family Court of Australia constructed ontologies of gender to govern young people's gender-affirming hormone use. By analysing the 'reasons for judgment' published about cases where minors applied for the Court's authorisation to use hormones, I show that the Court constructed two theories about the ontology of gender concurrently—one essentialist and the other performative—which it leveraged to arbitrate the legitimacy of hormone use. By critically examining the Court's ontological assertions, I argue that both theories advanced anti-queer directives that tethered the legitimacy of hormone use to its promise to produce normatively gendered subjects. This analysis highlights that legal regimes concerned with controlling gender-affirming practices have much more at stake than access to those practices alone. By governing mechanisms of gender's production, these regimes do not merely shape how gender can be expressed but also the possible forms of gender itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to reclassify legal sex as male (M), female (F), and even X, is a core issue of trans and non-binary legal engagements. A wave of legal reform and debate has recently swept across the United States, resulting in a spectrum of laws and policies, from a complete ban on reclassification to the innovative framework of self-identification. This Article provides a comprehensive study of American sex reclassification law, exploring a paradigmatic shift in legal preconditions for recognition: from demanding proof of medically authorized "sex reassignment" toward protecting the individual right to "gender identity." Investigating these shifts, this Article argues that even the most expansive reclassification framework fails to address the pervasive harm caused by the initial act of assigning sex at birth. The Article argues that the incongruence experienced by trans legal subjects is not between their body and identity but between their birth assigned sex and the gender expectations associated with it. Instead of merely seeking improved reclassification frameworks, the Article asks how sex classification impacts both trans and non-trans (cisgender) legal subjects. Linking the needs of trans and non-binary people to broader questions of sex in law, the Article lays the groundwork for envisioning the potential end of assigning sex at birth and the separation of the differentiated status M/F from the natal body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that religious mythologies and cultural narratives about the timelessness of gender diversity in South Asia frame the formation of the transgender subject of rights in India. The authors interrogate a verdict issued by the Supreme Court of India in 2014 and the Transgender Person Bill of Rights (2018) to ascertain the frames of recognition accorded diverse transgender communities in India. This is followed by an analysis of the category of eunuch created and criminalized by British colonizers and the present‐day category of transgender based on self‐affirmation of gender. The conflating of religious mythologies into deliberations about transgender constitutional rights reveals how the supposedly secular rights – based claims of and for transgender communities are mediated through a predominantly Hindu Brahmanical imagination of the rights‐bearing transgender subject. The authors examine autobiographical narratives by three prominent transgender rights activists in India: Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, Living Smile Vidya, and A. Revathi, who provide conflicting visions about the role of religion and state recognition of transgender identities. The authors argue the need for theorizing transgender subjectivities from non‐Brahman, Dalit, transmasculine, and non – North Indian perspectives. Such theorizations reveal the potential of coalitional transgender activisms that seek to disrupt Hindu‐nationalist hailing of the transgender subject of rights in contemporary India. The authors offer new directions in transgender studies by showing how religious narratives, ritual and performance lie at the heart of transgender subject formation while gesturing toward how such formation risks subsuming transgender identities within (Hindu) nationalist projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law has slowly recognised the concept of a transgender person. After initially fixating on someone's physical birth gender, it has now accepted the concept of gender identity. It has been challenged by young people experiencing gender dysphoria seeking medical treatment. Though in recent years it has increasingly accepted the right of such a person to access appropriate treatment, this article suggests further improvements in this area of the law are desirable, including no longer making the distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic treatment, reforming the extent of judicial power in this context, and according greater autonomy to mature young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the spread of misinformation about transgender issues, focusing on the controversial rapid-onset gender dysphoria article published in 2018. It highlights how this misinformation has been weaponized to oppose transgender rights, particularly by a transatlantic movement comprising gender-critical feminists and the U.S. Christian Right.

As of this writing, twenty‐one states have passed laws barring transgender youth‐athletes from competing on public‐school sports teams in accordance with their gender identity. Proponents of these regulations claim that transgender females in particular have inherent physiological advantages that threaten a "level playing field" for their cisgender competitors. Existing evidence is limited but does not support these restrictions. Gathering more robust data will require allowing transgender youth to compete (rather than preemptively barring them), but even if trans females are shown to retain some advantage, this would not have greater moral significance than the many other "fair" physical and economic advantages found across sports. These regulations deprive transgender youth, an exceptionally vulnerable population, from the vast physical, mental, and social benefits of sports. While we advocate for transgender inclusion under our current, gender‐segregated model of sport, we propose changes to the overarching structure that would promote a more inclusive and fairer athletic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become common to oppose the equal citizenship of transgender persons by appealing to the welfare of cisgender women and girls. Such Cis-Woman-Protective (CWP) arguments have driven exclusionary efforts in an array of contexts, including restrooms, sports, college admissions, and antidiscrimination law coverage. Remarkably, however, this unique brand of anti-trans contentions has largely escaped being historicized, linked together, or subjected to extended analytical scrutiny as a group. This Essay provides those missing pieces. First, it situates CWP arguments within the longer history of woman-protective justifications in American law. Taking their wellknown harms to women, alongside their use in lending legitimacy to discrimination against racial and religious minorities, forcefully demonstrates that the rationales' current use against transgender persons warrants closer inspection. Second, the Essay canvasses recent CWP arguments to document the line of thought. Reading the heretofore-uncollected allegations reveals a far-reaching cluster of contentions, whose members bear striking family resemblances to, and inherit the disfigurements of, their historical priors. Third, casting unsparing light on the claims, the Essay demonstrates that CWP arguments overwhelmingly fail to deliver. Structurally, the arguments' moves are questionable, at best. Substantively, most fall wide of their mark. And, instrumentally, the arguments backfire completely, since their operationalization harms the very persons they supposedly protect. Tallied up, these problems make a strong case that, strategically, CWP arguments are ineffective and deeply flawed--even counterproductive--assuming that protecting cis women and girls is truly the goal. Building on that assessment, the Essay concludes with reasons for healthy skepticism that it actually is. Stripping away the veneer of protectionism begins to expose some less-palatable intentions and effects possibly driving the use of CWP arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For as long as the United States has issued drivers' licenses, licenses have indicated the holder's gender in one form or another. Because drivers' licenses are issued at the state level, states retain the authority to regulate the procedures for amending them. In some states, regulations include requirements that a transgender person undergo gender confirmation surgery before they can amend the gender marker on their driver's license. Because many transgender people neither desire nor can afford gender confirmation surgery, these laws effectively preclude such people from obtaining gender-accurate identification. In doing so, these laws implicate multiple constitutional rights. Lower courts evaluating surgical prerequisites to gender marker alteration have overturned such policies, holding that they violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection or Due Process Clauses. This Note discusses the lower courts' approaches to analyzing gender-marker alteration surgical requirements, it demonstrates these frameworks' vulnerabilities for evaluating such policies and, moreover, it argues that they overlook these policies' speech implications. This Note then suggests that courts should evaluate gender marker alteration policies under First Amendment jurisprudence--specifically the compelled speech doctrine--and should apply strict scrutiny to determine their constitutionality. Ultimately, this Note concludes that surgical requirements for gender marker alteration and resultant inaccurate gender markers on drivers' licenses violate the right to be free of compelled speech and, therefore, are unconstitutional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article calls for protection and medical care for military-affiliated transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) youths. Topics discussed are health care system barriers to gender-affirming treatment including discrimination, poor access and fear of mistreatment, legislative efforts to restrict gender-affirming care for TGD youths, impact of restrictive laws on TGD youths, threats to military readiness, and measures to overcome barriers to the provision of and access to gender-affirming care.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (Taylor & Francis Ltd) is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A large body of research finds that sexual and gender minorities experience disparities in health equity that stem from structural discrimination. In particular, transgender and gender diverse (TGD) patients face barriers in access to gender-affirming care (GAC). As of December 2021, 35 state legislatures have introduced >100 bills that categorically deny TGD individuals' human rights and outlaw medically necessary GAC. Importantly, the economic consequences of discriminatory legislation and denial of health care for TGD individuals are void in the literature. This perspective outlines the economic impact of antitransgender policy and calls for federal intervention to protect TGD rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the legal implications of the SAME Act, a legislative measure that restricts gender-affirming medical treatments specifically for transgender minors while allowing similar treatments for cisgender minors. It examines the case of Jess Mariano, a transgender minor diagnosed with gender dysphoria, to illustrate the critical medical necessity and benefits of gender-affirming care in such cases.

The article focuses on the legal controversy surrounding state laws that ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. It explores whether these laws violate constitutional rights, including parents' Due Process rights and minors' Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. It centers on the standards for granting injunctive relief, and the legal arguments regarding parental autonomy versus state regulation of medical treatments.

The article argues that targeted prohibition of misgendering and deadnaming in the workplace and educational and healthcare settings do not violate recognized First Amendment free speech rights. Topics discussed include social and political context surrounding transgender rights in the U.S., scope and limitations of First Amendment freedom of speech rights, and emerging jurisprudence involving the misgendering and deadnaming of transgender people.

Civil rights attorneys challenging laws restricting transgender rights and access to healthcare often encounter anti-transgender medical experts in litigation at various stages. The experts often maintain dubious credentials in the relevant area of medical or scientific expertise which presents a challenge that undermines equitable access to justice by introducing pseudo-science into court proceedings. This commentary will discuss the phenomenon and propose a normative path forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Nikita Simonne Dupuis-Vargas Latorre, Candidate for a Master's Degree in Research in Contemporary Social Problems at the Central University , exploring her views about trans men's rights in Colombia. It mentions her views on the intersection of anti-miltarization and trans rights. It reports her upcoming book "Queering Women, Peace and Security."

The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, while addressing the United Nations General Assembly on 26 September 2020, stated that India had introduced legal reforms to accord rights to transgender citizens. Even though there is not much material basis to these rights, transgender communities have been protesting against the state and at times negotiating with it to get laws that are more in alignment with their rights. In the wake of serialised deaths and precarity intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic, transgender communities also stage other negotiations in the everyday with activists, transnationally funded NGOs and academics researching their communities, encounters that are not as spectacular as the protests against the state, but that which ensures their daily sustenance. This paper investigates how they inhabit these systemically violent institutions. Deploying ethnographic field notes from eastern India, this paper argues that they inhabit them subjunctively, which is not about refusing engagement with what is oppressive but about the ceaseless conjuring of improvisatory and contingent gestures that are marked by hope as well as uncertainty. The simultaneity of protests, rage, hopelessness, hope, negotiations, supplications and scepticism allow them to not only endure the violence of institutions but also to rupture them and imagine them otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State legislatures across the nation are continually targeting the rights of transgender individuals with a variety of laws affecting everything from bathrooms to medical care. One particularly invasive type of legislation, the gender-affirming healthcare ban, seeks to prohibit all forms of healthcare that align a person's physical traits with their gender identity for individuals under eighteen. Bans like this severely impede the treatment necessary for transgender youth suffering from gender dysphoria, which carries serious physical consequences and sometimes fatal psychological repercussions. As legislative sessions pass, more and more states are introducing and actually enacting these bans. Striking down these bans as constitutionally impermissible is vital to ensuring that transgender individuals have equal access to healthcare. As litigators bring important and crucial lawsuits to challenge these bans under the federal Constitution, this Note proposes and explores options under the lesser-known but highly valuable state constitution. Although often ignored, many state constitutions contain enforceable rights that could protect the existence of gender-affirming healthcare, especially if federal constitutional protection is denied at the Supreme Court. This Note specifically dives into the state constitutional right to health as an avenue for greater protection, and argues that the general principles of judicial federalism should protect the rights of transgender individuals in this context. As the federal landscape changes, this Note urges litigators to use all the resources available to prevent unwarranted state interference, including previously unenforced state constitutional provisions. State legislators cannot be allowed to violate their own constitutions in the campaign against transgender individuals, and litigators have the ability and obligation to hold them accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Queer and transgender Americans have secured substantial federal protections in the past decade, from United States v. Windsor's takedown of the Defense of Marriage Act to Obergefell v. Hodges's guarantee of marriage equality to Bostock v. Clayton's affirmation of the inclusion of queer and transgender identity in Title VII protections. Other recent developments, including new state-level laws protecting the rights of trans/nonbinary individuals, as well as a federal embrace of third gender markers on United States passports, have expanded foundational protections. Although mainstream acceptance of queer and trans identities has grown substantially in the past several decades, the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision highlights the precarity of these protections. Yet queer and trans people continue to confront regressive homophobic and transphobic laws and policies as well as an epidemic of private and public violence and discrimination throughout the United States. Despite these protections, queer and trans noncitizens confront a very different regime than the one their United States citizen counterparts face. Recent developments have opened doors to queer and transgender noncitizens, such as access to marriage-based immigration; yet these avenues primarily benefit gay cisgender individuals, who can align with the mandates of a cisheterosexist immigration regime, while continuing to exclude those who are less able--or less willing--to assimilate into the cisheteronormative American ideal. This Article examines how the expansion of cisheteronormatively anchored rights leaves out queer and trans noncitizens along two axes: access to immigration benefits and access to identity. After reviewing these two axes along which queer and trans noncitizens experience disparate treatment, the Article concludes that assimilationist advocacy strategies for rights of queer and trans persons have led to disparities between queer and trans noncitizens and citizens. This Article further posits that reimagining systems to center the needs of queer and trans noncitizens reveals the liberatory possibilities of the abolition of state regulation of gender and sexuality, leading to a safer and more equitable landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a recent wave in global recognition of the rights of transgender and gender-diverse populations, referred to in this text by the umbrella label of trans*, international law continues to presume a cisgender binary definition of gender — dismissing the lived realities of trans* individuals throughout the world. This gap in international legal recognition and protection has fundamental implications for health, where trans* persons have been and continue to be subjected to widespread discrimination in health care, longstanding neglect of health needs, and significant violations of bodily autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of jurisdictions now facilitate transitions for trans and non-binary youth (TNBY), allowing them to legally change their name and gender marker and providing medical gender-affirming care to support transition needs. The literature demonstrates the benefits of such measures in reducing adverse mental health outcomes. Strong parental support is also identified as key to TNBY thriving. But studies also show that parents may struggle to accept their child's identity during transition and beyond, rendering this life stage particularly challenging for both parents and TNBY. This qualitative project traces the experiences of TNBY and their parents as they evolve from the discovery of diverse gender identity to affirmation. Participants were recruited through three Canadian specialty clinics offering gender-affirming care and interviews were conducted separately with 36 dyads of trans youth and one of their parents, for a total of 72 interviews. Data reveal notable differences between the experiences of TNBY and that of their parents. Many TNBY began questioning their gender secretly, waiting to be sure of it before disclosing it to parents. While coming out was often a relief for TNBY, it was experienced differently for their parents, who often struggled to accept their child's identity even while outwardly showing support. However, we found that TNBY and their parents were able to bridge this gap by engaging in the transition process together. Because TNBY's experiences of realization and affirmation differ from those of their parents, we reiterate the importance of centering TNBY voices when attempting to understand their experience. Highlights: We compare trans youth's evolving experience of gender realization, affirmation, and transition with that of their parents. Parents' experiences often do not reflect the realities of their trans child. There is a temporal gap between parents and their child in the acceptance journey. The synchronizing of parent and youth's narratives and experiences brings deeper family connection. The parental report only does not provide sufficiently complete information to understand their child's experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current medical constructions of trans identities reflect hetero- sexist understandings of gender expression--understandings that deny access to gender-affirming healthcare to those who fail to perform normative binary genders. As medical providers establish norms for how to "properly" be trans, the state codifies these norms, basing trans existence on rigidly defined and harshly enforced understandings of binary gender. When this construction of transness is codified on an institutional level such as with gender reclassification rules for government identification, it forces trans people to conform their bodies to cisgender norms, and dangerously disrupts trans people's bodily autonomy and diminishes their control over their reproductive choices. This Article contends that the gender conformity that the state requires of trans people parallels the violence that the state has inflicted on low-income non-trans women of color. As welfare policies have sought to constrain indigent Black women's reproductive and sexual autonomy, courts use legal gender determination to force trans people to conform to heterosexist sexual and family structures--a project that works to constrain their reproductive freedoms. This Article connects the decades-long struggle of non-trans women of color for reproductive justice with that of trans people's right to self-identify without medical intervention. In doing so, this Article calls for legal trans advocates to coalition build with existing reproductive justice movements to nurture a trans jurisprudence that rejects heterosexist notions of trans identity and instead embraces the multiplicity of trans embodiment and queer family structures that we, as trans people, can create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editor implores for groupthink in counselor education and intervention on the heterosexism of the academy. He shares his experience and witnessing of aggressions and marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) people to raise awareness of their civil rights struggle. He stresses the need to recognize the impact of conscience clause laws on LGBTQ+ and calls for counselor educators to share information about LGBTQ+ communities in academics and scholarly journals.

The article discusses the increasing violence targeting transgender communities in the U.S., as of February 2023. Topics covered include the epidemic of antitransgender violence declared by the American Medical Association in 2019, the state-level antitrans bills introduced by October 2022 and the need for structural change to address the problem. It also cites that federal legislation is needed to protect the rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination.

Informed by structural stigma theory, this article presents the results of two studies that explored mental health experiences of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse (TNG) individuals and cisgender lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) individuals (N = 523) prior to and following a state referendum to remove gender-based protections. In the Preelection Study, a path model explored relationships among individual factors (i.e., TNG identity, history of gender-based victimization), interpersonal variables (i.e., Referendum familiarity, exposure to Referendum-related messages, sexual orientation, and gender identity-specific social support), and mental health factors (i.e., Referendum-related anxiety and depressive symptomatology). Referendum-related anxiety mediated the relationships between TNG identity, gender-based victimization, sexual orientation and gender identity social support, and depressive symptomatology, explaining 40% of the variance in depressive symptomatology. Postelection, a subsample of participants (N = 117) was used to test amodel of differences from pre- to postelection. Neither TNG identity nor victimization predicted Postelection mental health, however, Referendum-related anxiety and depressive symptomatology were significantly lower following the ballot vote that retained gender-based rights. Clinical implications suggest sexual and genderminoritiesmay report increased anxiety in the face of anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) legislation, which may be associated with heightened symptoms of depression. TNG people and LGBTQ people with histories of genderbased victimization may be more at risk for mental health concerns related to anti-TNG legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bans on gender-affirming care (GAC) for transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) people are grounded in scientific disinformation and have been challenged in American courts. Five legal filings by state officials in defense of GAC restriction from initial litigation were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Themes and subthemes of disinformation were identified after review and analysis of these filings. Five themes of disinformation emerged: False and misleading claims about (1) gender dysphoria and gender identity, (2) the evidence regarding GAC, (3) standard practice of GAC, (4) the safety of GAC, and finally, (5) rejection of medical authority. These themes were well represented across the analyzed documents. The five disinformation themes and subthemes have been noted in lower courts, but have seen some purchase in appellate courts, suggesting that medical disinformation in law may have far-reaching consequences for medical policy. • Scientific disinformation in the law is a new threat to public health. • Scientific disinformation is used by policymakers to justify youth bans on gender-affirming care. • Themes of scientific disinformation are identified and discussed. • Thematic categorization of disinformation may help stakeholders combat it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]