Do No Harm, one of the organizations at the dead center of HB 68, which a court just allowed to go into effect, has launched a new strategy for merging its anti-DEI and anti-trans campaigns. In so doing, they have achieved almost thermonuclear levels of disingenuousness.

But sometimes they just couldn't help themselves.

A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Catholic Charities, challenging Michigan's ban on conversion therapy. Represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the plaintiff reports seeing children "as young as 10 to 12" for therapy related to gender and sexual orientation.

Noteably, while the lawsuit primarily argues that the issue is one of free speech and religious freedom, it predictably cites the Cass Review as a justification for non-affirmation.

Watching MT right now as the constituents who elected @ZoAndBehold are being arrested for demanding their right to representation, and wondering what the GOP thinks history tells us about governments which too readily demonstrate their own illegitimacy? This entire year the GOP has snubbed procedure through secret midnight sessions, suspending public posting laws, refusing to let pro-trans testimony be heard, and silencing opponents. For bills where hundreds spoke against and only dozen for, they voted in favor of the latter.

Really? You got your feelings hurt while you were trying to eliminate an entire group of people because an elected member of that group called you out? You fragile snowflakes, life must be so hard for you. I swear I get whiplash from all the times these pundits pivot from "words can't hurt you" and "cancel culture" to "we need civility". Are we really doing this? Does this mean you're sitting out the rest of the leg session for deliberately misgendering her like schoolyard bullies?

If you don't understand why it's frankly disgusting that people are willing to give Bailey a pass after all these years, consider what it's like to have who you love be a source of such immense confusion and scrutiny that this word vomit passes for science. “researchers and practitioners have begun to investigate nonhomosexual female transsexualism as a valid diagnostic entity” is not a sentence that should be written about actual, real live human beings.

His entire corpus reads like this; we are zoo animals to him.

Been thinking about this a lot. Gender-affirming care did in fact quite literally save my life, but it shouldn't have to be capable of doing so to be worthy on its own merits. It's not a normal threshold in medicine that we only use a treatment if it will save someone's life.

https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1645446699538690051

Is it life-saving? Yes, I know this in the most intimate possible way. But it's also life-changing and life-giving. It improves the quality of that life, and upholds our value as persons, and ultimately our right to a life of our own choosing.

Google News over the last month has increasingly been serving up religious extremist hate websites including "church militant", which claims all trans people are budding terrorists, that people should arm themselves against us, and that trans prople are mentally ill perverts. If this project has taught me anything, it's that @googlenews has absolutely no protections when it comes to trans people. Their TOS is a bald-faced lie.

A new bill would have North Carolina join the 1 in 5 states that have banned gender care under age 18. Like similar bills, it would also ban public funding to facilities that provide gender care, block telehealth and would mandate misinformation in visits.
ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/202… The bill is written in such a way that the blanket ban is not immediately clear, but effectuated through the blocking of funding. Technically, it does not outright ban the procedures, but lays out a ban on public funds for associated facilities, then lays out exhaustive hoops.

Indiana is about to ban gender-affirming surgery for incarcerated adults. Having recently co-written a review article on the legal precedent that made GAC available inside, this likely means they're gearing up for SCOTUS as it so clearly violates 8A. legiscan.com/IN/bill/HB1569… One thing they'll try again is the argument used in Meriwether, in which the prison psychiatrist had evaded an 8A claim under Estelle by asserting that there's not evidence to support the intervention. This is similar to what's being tried with youth care. casemine.com/judgement/us/5…

Published in 2015. Like where do I even start? This is not a serious discipline.

Ditch analysis, and embrace modernity you weirdos. When students ask me to explain psychoanalysis, I just let out a big sigh. Because if I'm being real, I've tried to explain it a hundred different ways and each time at least one student thinks I'm totally kidding. It just sounds insane. Because, and this part is crucial: it is.

Bailey and Diaz just published what might be the worst methodology I've ever seen. This is truly groundbreaking in all the wrong ways. Bravo. 🫡 I would truly love to hear from the person at the Northwestern IRB who was like "eh, it's probably fine"

Newsweek is cranking these out as fast as they can print them, but how they phrase the headlines is part of a long tradition for the newspaper of writing provocative headlines about LGBTQ topics— especially around trans people. It's a critical part of their business model. If you're going to want us to believe this is intended to be informational and not more fuel on the conflagration, don't pose this as a question. The fact is out of the nearly 2,861 in the past 5 years, only 2 are confirmed to be trans. That's 0.1% — we're ~1% of the population.

The inclusion in the second leak of Lisa Marchiano in her endless quest to blame gender-affirming care for youth suicide is one of the most personally nauseating aspects of this entire archive. The exploitative nature of what she proposes aside, one has to marvel at the total lack of scientific literacy in her proposal, which seeks to mine news stories about trans youth suicide as a dataset to test the relationship between affirmation and suicidality.

In one week, governors in 3 states have signed laws banning trans youth from school bathrooms. jessk.org/blog/school-ba… The number of bathroom bills is slightly obscured by the fact that where they were once individual bills, they've now been folded and squeezed into other bills, often with other things they hope will win over any ambivalent voters.

This is truly unspeakable. Before you say "this is an ocean away from me, I can't do anything" as Mallory points out: this was homebrewed here in liberal Massachusetts. What we don't stop locally gets exported globally with deadly consequences. No one can sit this out.

https://twitter.com/Chican3ry/status/1638379578992254977

An excellent article explaining some of the religious ideas driving this in Uganda— just as they're driving the moral panic in the US. Same actors, rhetoric, and goal but different regional strategy allowing for more blatantly genocidal policy abroad.
foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/19/afr…

It's an interesting exercise to read many of these parental rights bills, because they read like a field guide to right-wing paranoia. Tomorrow, Texas will hear SB8, which allows parents to opt their children out of sex ed instruction and any mention of gender or gender identity. Like dozens of these nationally, SB8 also adds other noteable provisions around requiring parental consent before schools can record student's biometric markers, explicitly naming fingerprints, DNA. As if this is a totally common practice that needs to be addressed immediately.

The GOP seeks to create a generation of youth who are afraid to go to school, who stop talking to counselors, share nothing with teachers, and have no one safe to confide in— who learn to relate to the outside world by hiding as much of who they are as possible. Ask yourself why. Remember that this is the party which has routinely opposed restrictions on corporal punishment and child marriage, and resists any statutory attempt to require parents to give their children necessary preventative care. They militantly uphold the rights of adults over children.

Incredible speaker talking about the effect that US anti-trans laws have internationally, and that this environment disproportionately weighs on communities of color— especially immigrant communities of color, and that we have to fight for trans liberation everywhere. Another speaking about the time-honored reactionary tactic of pointing to queer folks to distract from failures of capitalism. Also calls @nytimes for platforming fascist figures like Terry Schilling. NYT also hired David French from the arch-conservative fashy National Review.

Really glad to see that the @MotherJones article outlining how anti-trans bills are being manufactured. If you find yourself thinking "well this is alarming", know that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Groups with enormous pockets are working nonstop to manufacture outrage.

https://twitter.com/MotherJones/status/1633604770807320576

As the House prepares to debate a federal bill banning trans girls from sports, it's important ask how we got here, and the answer is: exactly the same way.

Does it seem like sometimes these campaigns pop up in a dozen areas all at once? The answer is targeted astroturfing.

Hearing THIS Tuesday, New Hampshire, 3/7 @ 10am:

HB619, bill to BAN all gender-affirming care + even referrals under 18, pro-conversion therapy, prohibits certain pronoun use and mention of gender identity through grade 12.

Livestream + gen info 🗓️: gencourt.state.nh.us/house/schedule…

https://twitter.com/jessdkant/status/1627343706566131714

There will ALSO be a sanctuary bill in defense of gender-affirming care the same hearing.

PLEASE support of HB368, in defense of necessary and lifesaving care, and in opposition to HB619.

📢 Sign up or submit testimony:
gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committe…
#ProtectTransYouth 🏳️‍⚧️

An aspect of the current legislative onslaught that doesn't get talked about enough is the extraordinary toll it takes on everyone involved in gender care. From patients & their families to gender care providers— to providers working in adjacent institutions. It is all pervasive. While I am a provider, I am also a patient. And as a patient, the systems we have to navigate can be dehumanizing, and that dehumanization leeches into your bones. And yet no matter how many hoops we have to jump through, they're still not enough. It isn't more gates we need.