When surfing the social media feeds of progressives, finding comparisons of Trump to Hitler, or of our government to Germany in the 1930’s seems inevitable. On the surface, these comparisons might seem apt. There is a highly authoritarian streak to this administration, and the movement behind it is undoubtedly fascist in its outlook. They’re doing…
An Easy Guide to Why Littman’s ROGD Research is Junk
TERFs and the religious right cannot seem to grasp why transgender people, and even other academics, have called out Lisa Littman’s study on “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (ROGD) as junk science that proves nothing. I’d like to illustrate why with a series of ihypothetical conversations that show…
If We Talked About Christians the Way We Do Transgender People
Wealthy conservative Christian activists have taken over our government, and are in the process of tearing down the wall separating church and state. At the same time, Christians in the United States have decided that they should have a blanket exemption to civil rights laws, and shouldn’t even have to share public spaces with people…
The Transgender Question
When I was about 13 in 1988, and starting to get inklings of gender dysphoria, I lacked the right words to express what I was feeling. Instead, I asked my mother what it would mean if my brother or I were gay. “I’d rather you were dead,” she replied curtly with a sense of finality….
The Discredited Brown Study on Trans Youth Isn’t Just Junk Science — It’s Dangerous
The latest tool in the effort to bring back conversion therapy doesn’t come out of the Bible Belt. Instead, it came straight from the Ivy League. Lisa Littman of Brown University published an August 2018 article in the journal PLOS One which purports to show that transgender identities are nothing more than social contagion. In “Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in…
The SCOTUS Event Horizon for the LGBT Movement
Stop for a moment. Imagine how bad it will be with a conservative Supreme Court ruling on a host of issues related to LGBT people in America. The reality is that what’s coming is way worse than anything you just imagined. In fact, the moment Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, we pass through an event horizon,…
‘Feminists’ Who Exclude Trans Women Aren’t Feminists At All
TERFs and their transphobic message have become pawns of American right-wing groups.
Is Research Into the Biology of Gender Identity a Necessary Evil?
Are transgender people “born that way”? At one level this is a simple question, namely: are there biological reasons for gender identity, and can people have a gender identity that doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth? At this point, the general scientific consensus is that yes, humans have an innate gender identity even if the potential myriad…
‘Feminists’ Who Exclude Trans Women Aren’t Feminists At All
TERFs and their transphobic message have become pawns of American right-wing groups.
Real Visibility Is Transgender People Living Openly And Authentically
“The only people who talk about transgender people (more than transgender people themselves) are the ones who would be much happier if there weren’t any transgender people to talk about.”