#The consequences of trans surgeries

[coochiequeens]

I would rather be a TERF than be someone who ignores that this can happen just to be an ally. True friends and allies would want anyone especially minors to be informed of what they were getting into concerning any medical procedure.

The tragic story of Griffin Sivret, and why it matters for every MA family.

Massachusetts Informed Parents Aug 19, 2024

Over the weekend we learned of the tragic death of 24-year-old Griffin Sivret, a “trans man” and MA native. For the sake of clarity, we will refer to Griffin by her natal sex. According to multiple sources, at the time of her death Griffin lived in RI but grew up in Worcester and attended Worcester Public Schools. She then went on to Becker College in Leicester. You can read her obituary HERE.

Before we go any further, we would like to extend our condolences to Griffin’s friends and family, especially her parents. Our hearts go out to you in your time of profound and unfathomable loss.

As a parent, the first thing that often comes to your mind when you hear that a young person has died, is the question: “What happened?” The answer to that question is why we feel that Griffin’s story must be told.

While an official cause of death has not been released, it has been reported that Griffin’s death was related to the long-term complications of “gender-affirming” surgery. Specifically, in Griffin’s case, the surgery that degraded her health and may have led to her death is phalloplasty. Phalloplasty, for those of you who have not yet been baptized into the hellscape that is “gender-affirming” surgery, is when a surgeon creates a neophallus (essentially, a fake penis) out of a flap of skin taken from either the forearm or the thigh of a natal female and sews it onto her groin area. This might sound like something straight out of a horror movie, but it’s very real. Phalloplasty surgery carries a high rate of complications, and the neophallus never functions like an actual penis, and often causes a multitude of other physical problems. For a firsthand account of what it is like to go through this surgery and to live with the complications, see this article from “trans man” and activist Scott Newgent. Newgent underwent phalloplasty while in her 40’s, and now works to sound the alarm about how dangerous this procedure is, and how it has destroyed her life.

Or you could listen to Griffin herself. Because as it turns out, Griffin was quite an avid TikTok-er. Over the course of a few years, she posted regularly on the app, where she talked about her surgery. As time went on, her posts became more and more about the complications of her surgery. In her last post, she looked quite ill. Two months later, she was gone. Her TikTok profiles are still up, and they can be viewed HERE and HERE. Griffin chose to share these parts of her life publicly, so we encourage everyone who wants to understand her perspective to listen to her share her experiences in her own words.

Here is one from just a little over three years ago, where she highlights the surgeries and “gender affirming” medical interventions she has had. Notice she started testosterone in 2014, which would have been when she was around 14 years old.

In this video Griffin can be seen driving to the hospital for yet another phalloplasty revision surgery, just six months later:

And just two months later she shares her grand total of phalloplasty-related surgeries to date: 8. She had eight surgeries on her genitals, and her neophallus still didn’t work the way she wanted it to.

Her TikTok doesn’t give much additional information on her health after that, other than her last post, where she sadly looks rather ill.

Now, heartbreakingly, she is gone.

We don’t pretend to know Griffin, or to understand all of her motivations or everything she went through. For the perspective of someone who has followed Griffin much more closely and had engaged her online while she was alive, go over to Twitter/X and check out user Exulansic’s profile, @TTExulansic. But even with our limited perspective there are many important things that can be learned from this tragedy, and to prevent future suffering for other people like Griffin, they must be explored.

“Gender affirming care” harms. Sometimes, it kills. Based on the evidence we saw, Griffin’s medical issues all seem to be traceable back to the surgical and medical interventions provided by “gender affirming” doctors. She spoke openly about the physical suffering that came along with the surgeries. While she maintained a public facade of being glad that she had a “penis,” she warned other people about the devastating physical impacts of her surgeries (see below). For almost half her life, she was a medical patient, all in the name of affirming her trans identity. While we don’t know the exact cause of her death, it is fair to say that at the very least, her “gender affirming care” left her physically weak and fragile. At worst, it killed her. (And if it did, it wouldn’t be the first time this happened. Here’s an article about another young person who lost their life due to “gender affirming” surgery.)

Losing a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. But affirming your gender-confused child’s trans identity won’t keep them safe. Parents of children who express a trans identity are often told by professionals that they must go along with the child’s new identity because otherwise, their child will kill themselves. “Would you rather have a living son, or a dead daughter?” counselors, social workers, and pediatricians ask traumatized parents. Manipulated and distressed by this question, many parents affirm their child’s trans identity because they feel they have no other choice. From what we can tell, Griffin’s parents were supportive of her trans identity. They used her preferred pronouns. At the age that most kids are entering high school, Griffin was already allowed to take cross-sex hormones. Her parents seemingly did what counselors advise parents in their situation to do - they affirmed her self-professed male identity, and they allowed her to transition. But tragically, their daughter is gone. The “gender affirming” treatment didn’t ultimately save her.

Hurting people hurt people. We don’t know what led Griffin to adopt a trans identity at 13 years old. But we do know that it is not uncommon for young people to seek solace in a trans identity after some sort of sexual assault, or simply because they feel so uncomfortable in their own developing body that they think it would be easier if they were a man instead. Regardless of her reasons, it is clear from Griffin’s TikToks that she was hurting emotionally as well as physically. And yet, it’s also possible that she hurt other impressionable young people by using her platform to promote gender surgery. In the TikTok below, she is answering a question from a 14-year-old “trans guy” about the ins and outs of phalloplasty. In it, she says that phalloplasty “surgically creates a penis.” This is simply not true. A neophallus created by phalloplasty is not the same thing as a penis. But the young person asking the question views Griffin as an expert, and they are left with no reason to question her answer. It makes you wonder: were confused young people enticed into a dangerous medical pathway by watching Griffin’s videos? Is there unintentional collateral damage from Griffin’s influencer persona? We may never know the answer to this question, but we do know it’s one more reason why parents need to keep their kids off of social media.

“Gender affirming care” is big business - for surgeons. In the TikToks below, Griffin gives two different figures for how much her doctors billed insurance for her phalloplasty and related surgeries. In a third video you will see later in this post, she gives yet another figure. The amounts don’t add up, but they are all astronomical. If anyone was still wondering if a perverse incentive exists for surgeons to do these dangerous, radical surgeries… well, now you have your answer.

Griffin received her “gender affirming care” in MA, and the doctor who performed her phalloplasty is still performing this surgery on other young people. Griffin identifies her surgeon in the TikTok below. His name is Dr. Oren Ganor, and he is the co-director/co-founder of the Center for Gender Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital. Gender surgery at Boston Children’s has a complicated and controversial history, and they have (unconvincingly) denied performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors. According to this article, Dr. Ganor has argued that the capacity for gender surgeries for minors needs to be increased. What does Dr. Ganor think about what happened to Griffin? Was Griffin’s surgery deemed a success? We hope a medical authority looks into this. Regardless, it’s important to know that Griffin didn’t get her surgery done by some hack in a back alley. She didn’t fly to a third-world country to get bargain-basement surgery. She went to the co-director of the most prominent gender surgery clinic in the state, and still faced this disastrous result.

In this post Griffin accuses Safe Homes of allowing adult predators access to vulnerable minors (in this case, under the guise of a drag show - ironically, the very thing we are always told doesn’t happen), of looking the other way when sexual assaults occurred, and of employing a “literal child groomer'“ who was continued to be allowed to work with minors even after they were reported.

Safe Homes encourages minors to join their Discord community. Discord is a website known for being infiltrated by predators. It allows for private chatrooms with little accountability, and most parents don’t know it exists.

Now, we can’t speak to Griffin’s accusations specifically. But common sense tells us that if an adult wanted to gain access to kids for nefarious sexual purposes, one of the best places to go would be an organization that attracts impressionable kids based on their perceived sexual identity and wraps its actions in the seemingly impenetrable rainbow-colored cloak of “Love is Love.” We imagine that it must have taken a LOT of courage for Griffin to publicly criticize an organization like Safe Homes, especially as a member of the “LGBTQ community.” While we have not yet been able to verify Griffin’s accusations against Safe Homes, we were able to verify her involvement there. In 2016, she was awarded an award at their annual gala. See her name in the photo below, which you can also view HERE.

Safe Homes is clearly a powerful and influential organization. What did Griffin see/hear/experience that pushed her away from the very organization that gave her an award? Do the politicians in these pictures know of her accusations against Safe Homes?

On her personal Facebook page, Griffin checked in to Safe Homes multiple times.

Griffin was also active on the Safe Homes Facebook page. In the post below, you can see that Safe Homes was very excited that “gender affirming” surgeries were coming to Boston. Chillingly, you can also see that Griffin “liked” that post. Is this how she first learned of the very surgery that would destroy her health, and possibly lead to her death?

It seems she was unsafe at “Safe Homes,” in more ways than one.

We checked out what Safe Homes has been up to lately, and we didn’t like what we saw. First of all, we saw multiple posts in memory of Nex Benedict, the “nonbinary” young woman from Oklahoma who tragically died of suicide but was falsely hailed in the media as a martyr after it was incorrectly reported that she was killed in a hate crime. Yet there was not a single post honoring Griffin, a past recipient of their “People of Courage” award, who was actually part of their organization and whose funeral was several weeks ago.

But their apparent ignoring of Griffin’s tragic death wasn’t the only terrible thing we saw. Safe Homes, which services kids as young as 14 (and focuses on ages 14-23), is leading more young people down the same path that harmed Griffin. They are ushering more confused, hurting young people into the gender medicalization pipeline by offering easy access to “short-term counseling for individuals seeking letters for HRT or gender-affirming surgeries” at their “Safe Homes Transgender Resource Center.”

They bring in special speakers, like this woman from Planned Parenthood, to talk to minors about hormone treatment:

They teach minors how to legally change their names:

And despite Griffin’s publicly expressed concern about how a Grindr-loving groomer drag queen had gained access to minors via Safe Homes in the past, they still seem to be bent on bringing drag queens around kids. Here is one recent example, where they were involved with/promoted a screening of the Barbie movie for “Youth Pride Night,” where a drag queen Diva D was set to perform:

And here’s drag queen Diva D, who you might remember from dancing on a table at Sutton’s Connections Conference. He’s not the only drag queen that Safe Homes has brought around minors, but he’s the most recent. (And for the record, we think it’s odd that he just can’t seem to get enough of performing for minors. You would think that the amount of negative feedback he received from his performance in Sutton would have inspired him to stick to performing for adults, but apparently it didn’t.)

A month before that event, Safe Homes hosted a drag show at The Rose Room Cafe in Webster. There was no minimum age noted to attend this event. One of the drag queens who performed, Lana Backwards (aka Rhys Stuller, née female), was a high school friend of Griffin. According to a tribute written on Rhys’s Facebook page, Rhys and Griffin attended Safe Homes together as teens - a fact that, given everything we now know about Griffin’s concerns about Safe Homes as well as the trajectory of these two girls’ lives, feels like it needs more investigation.

Safe Homes’ parent organization is Open Sky Community Services, a massive organization that provides community services to all of central MA. They openly support Safe Homes’ mission, including publicizing the Transgender Resource Center that provides easy access to hormones and surgeries for gender-confused youth.

Does Open Sky care about what happened to Griffin? Do they know that their support of “gender affirming care,” the combination of bad science and medical malpractice that has devastated the bodies and minds of so many impressionable young people, very well could have led to Griffin’s untimely demise? We think someone should ask them.

A quick google search provided evidence that Safe Homes has a foothold in many MA public schools. Fitchburg High School lists them on their guidance website as a mental health resource. Worcester Public Schools shared Safe Homes as a resource as well. Burncoat and Worcester Technical High School have invited Safe Homes to speak to their classes, as have Northboro Middle and High School. And we know that Safe Homes works with Pride Worcester and SWAGLY, both of which have been known to network with MA public schools.

To the Sivret family, we again extend our sincere condolences for the loss of Griffin. Our earnest prayers for comfort will be with you during this time of profound grief.

To parents everywhere, this sad loss brings to light many important things that we must all know in order to protect our own kids, and the kids in our communities. We can’t trust social media influencers to give our kids good advice, especially if they are in the middle of fighting their own battles. We can’t trust the medical establishment to keep our kids safe, not even highly regarded doctors who work for prestigious hospitals. We can’t trust our schools to protect them from outside organizations that, according to Griffin, allowed bad actors to prey on vulnerable minors. And we certainly can’t trust those same outside organizations to place our child’s health and well-being over their commitment to radical ideology - even if they have the glitter of prestige and host galas attended by high-ranking politicians. We must be aware that all of these systems, and all of these institutions, can fail our children. We have to know this story so that we can protect them. Because while what happened to Griffin is happening to kids and young adults all over the country, this time it happened in our own backyard.

May those who loved Griffin remember her fondly. And may the rest of us remember that no family is immune from this form of heartache. It is up to all of us to be eyes-wide-open, so that if it is our child who believes the lie of gender ideology, and they think gender surgeries will make them happy and whole, we can tell them the truth. And we can tell them this story. #equippingparents #protectingkids

[a-flaming-triple-a]

Doing this as a poll so I can actually make a decision. Keep in mind that I am not out to my parents as trans and they are very transphobic (there is a high chance they will be so disrespectful that I will be forced to cut them off if they find out). I am an adult and I have my own place, but they pay for all my insurance since I can't get it from my job, and they pay for me to go to grad school.

Also keep in mind that I have enough money saved up that it shouldn't be an issue no matter what I choose, but it might be an issue if I had to pay for grad school and insurance on top of it if my parents found out. They would definitely find out if I went on hrt.

It's getting really uncomfortable living in this body knowing that everyone sees me as a girl even if they use my pronouns. However, my dysphoria is not so bad that I can't wait another year or so until grad school is over. But I think it would be nice to start my career as myself.

[mynqzo]

hi if ur unaware georgia 🇬🇪 (where i live) has officially banned gay marriage, gay ‘propaganda’, gender reassignment surgery and anything ’promoting’ it. a trans model, kesaria abramidze, has been murdered as a direct consequence of this legislation. if you have a queer georgian in your life pls let them know they are loved and let this solidify why we Need pride and hope cause jesus fuck man

[wickedjr89]

WOKE Trans TIKTOK Crazy! " I transitioned multiple times"

[iscratchdoors]

i know this is the trans website and im preaching to the choir here but there is something to be said about the medical gatekeeping around transition being largely based on the idea that transitioning medically is the risky, dangerous option, while denying that transition to people actively seeking it is safe and harmless. all the medical professionals i've dealt with so far seem to understand the harm that comes to a cis person who mistakenly transitions and makes irreversible changes to their body, but the idea that that same suffering is also experienced by trans people who have not yet been allowed to transition, to a greater degree even, seems basically non existent. a cis person's ideal gendered appearance is treated as a thing inherently worth protecting and maintaining, while that of a trans person is treated as something they deliberately chose to pursue and don't actually need. the harm that comes to a trans person through putting off any sort of medical (and as a consequence, legal) transition is a thing that does not exist to these people. only the harm that comes to people who regret it is deemed worth considering. that's been my experience anyway

[hamletteprinceofdenmark]

One day in 2019, I had pain so bad I went to the ER.

My gut felt like there were red hot needles and knifes being stabbed into it. I felt nauseous. I felt faint. I very nearly threw up.

It was not the first time I felt this way but it was the worst I’d ever felt. I’d been getting increasingly bad pain for over a year and I had gone to countless doctors trying to determine what it was.

The doctors at the ER — thankfully — took me seriously. They determined I had a severely infected gallbladder and the only way to save my life was to have surgery to remove it.

I still had to give consent before the surgery.

I remember being terrified. I was alone. There was no one to help me. And somehow, even though the only course of action I could take was to consent to the surgery the fact that I had to before they could take action made it all the more terrifying. The consequences of the surgery would mean I would live, but I’d never quite be the same. I felt cheated by my own body. Why was it this way? Why couldn’t I be healthy? Functional? Why wasn’t my body working with me?

The nurses, doctors, and surgeons there were all incredibly kind to me.

One surgeon in particular — the one who ended up operating on me — said something that will stick with me for the rest of my life. “Your body is there to help you. Sometimes, when part of the body is no longer helping you, the best thing to do is cut it away. You’ll be so much happier after the surgery. You won’t be in pain anymore.”

I think about that a lot.

I think about it a lot when I see trans men begging for help to get top surgery and are met with resistance or well meaning but ignorant messages begging back to not “mutilate” their body.

I think about my surgeon, who was so kind to me and knew what to say when I was scared and crying and alone in my hospital bed.

Your body is there to help you.

Sometimes, when part of the body is no longer helping you, the best thing to do is cut it away.

You’ll be so much happier after the surgery.

You won’t be in pain anymore.

I hope you get your top surgery.

I hope you will be so much happier.

And I hope the pain will end.

[maleexecutioner]

I think I’d do plastic surgery. It seems like it’s so easy to drop difficult patients. Can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about botched surgeries and the patient can’t get in contact with the surgeon. Just give me the money, I’ll give you the surgery, and gtfo. ❤️

[genderkoolaid]

Post on r/ftm caught my eye: a trans man worried that getting a hysterectomy made him unkind/aggressive bc he'd had multiple friends including his (cis) partner tell him he'd been way more aggressive since it. His partner had the audacity to tell him it made sense bc he now lacks ALL estrogen, but he'd need to be more careful with how he acts now. A friend claimed that bc of the histo he was swearing more and "not [his] happy chipper chill sweet self." This all happened on *the third day after his surgery.* None of them were mentioned even considering that could have to do with the irritability. Sometimes the idea that trans men don't face any ostricisation or negative consequences for transitioning makes me want to Yell.

Honestly this shit is so disgusting. You hear all kinds of trans men&mascs experience this: folks who get surgery, get on T, or even just come out & suddenly their friends/family/coworkers are telling them how mean and cruel and angry and violent they are now! It doesn't matter if you can't see it because everyone else can so you need to constantly be self-policing and checking with them to make sure you are behaving Correctly! And if you ever get angry or annoyed or just mildly upset with them for this, or anything else, they'll tell you how mean and abusive you are for not being perfectly mild and agreeable all the time!

[versegm]

Reminders:

"Intersex" means "someone born with sexual characteristics that don't fit quite well in the male/female sex binary."

"Intersex" is not synonymous to "non-binary". In fact, being intersex has nothing to do with gender at all. Intersex and trans people have many struggles in common, but if you're talking about trans-specific issues you really don't need to say "intersex and trans people".

Intersex people can be trans. Intersex people can also be cis. Intersex people, in the majority of countries, are assigned a gender at birth just like everyone else.

"Intersex" doesn't necessarily relate to genitals. When I say "sexual characteristics" it can also mean secondary sexual characteristics, hormone levels, chromosomes, and probably a bunch of other shit I forgot about. Please stop reducing intersex people to their genitals.

(On that note, having both working sets of genitals is at best extremely rare and at worst physically impossible. Sorry, intersex people can't fulfill your futa fantasies. Please stop tagging futa shit as intersex. The two are unrelated.)

Please. This pride month remember that intersex people like. Exist. Intersex folks are not hypotheticals they're not "that one letter we gotta tack at the end of every queer post and never think about any further" they're. People. Remember that they exist. Every year I have to make a post like this one where I explain the very basic things you can learn by reading the intersex wikipedia page because people see "intersex" and make assumptions as to what the word means without actually reading the dictionary definition. Please remember that intersex people exist, I looked up "intersex pride" on tumblr and half the posts I saw were a variation of "happy pride to people of all genders and sexualities!" when being intersex has nothing to do with either gender or sexuality. Please. I understand that you guys don't mean any ill, but I am very tired of making basic posts over and over.

And inb4 someone tries to strike dumb discourse on this post: I live in a country where it is legal and encouraged to perform surgery on intersex infants. Looking up "intersex athlete controversy" returned to me like three different cases of athletes who were coerced into surgery without being informed of all the risks and having to lead with lifelong consequences for it. When I say "remember intersex people" I don't mean "uwu intersex people are valid" I mean they're a demographic whose literal human rights are constantly spit upon. I don't give a shit if you think intersex people belong or not under the queer umbrella or what you think are the proper qualifications to identify as intersex literally everytime I talk to an intersex person I hear a variation of "my doctor straight-up lied to me to get me to undergo medical procedures to make me normal without my consent or input" I think people should be aware of that actually I think it's more important than arguing over labels.

[metalgearsolid3pussy-eater]

if surgeries are being performed electively and "for-profit" they're no longer experimental, that's just straight up not how that works my dude

Sorry I’ll ask my relatives whose lives were saved by organ transplants to take those thangs out because they’re not Mr potato heads

Imagine comparing the elective removal of healthy organs to life-saving organ transplants. I can't fathom misunderstanding a point this hard.

[drdemonprince]

A thing that a lot of people miss in conversations about transition is that like, lots of nonbinary people absolutely have strong gender dysphoria, lots of agender people have dysphoria, lots of gender fluid people have dysphoria, etc, and it's not always a type of dysphoria that transition with hormones or surgery can solve but that doesn't make it any less real. Medical transition is worth trying for many! I will never stop extolling the virtues of T and the numerous positives that it brought to me and so many others. At the same time, if you don't feel comfortable in your embodiment or your assigned gender role but would also feel deeply uncomfortable in the embodiment and role that hormones or surgery would generally get you, you have a kind of dysphoria that cannot easily be cured! you might be kinda low-grade miserable with either option and still exhibit all the same negative consequences that any other dysphoric trans people do when they are not able to transition, and that suffering merits consideration. it's not less serious a form of dysphoria just because it doesn't have a "solution".

of course, this isn't an exclusively nonbinary thing, and of course it is possible for a person to seek gender-affirming care that is very boundary-breaking and gender-fucky and unique (and many """"binary""" trans people use those methods too), and those options are all great. but there is a sincere dysphoria felt by those of us who just... aren't at home in a human gendered embodiment at all. and sometimes becoming a different type of human just doesn't nip that in the bud and never can. it's still dysphoria.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lil Kalish at HuffPost:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments for the most important transgender rights case it has ever reviewed — one that could have significant consequences on the future of lifesaving gender-affirming care for youth in the country. At the heart of the case, United States v. Skrmetti, is the question of whether a Tennessee ban on such care violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex. The Tennessee law, Senate Bill 1, encourages minors to “appreciate their sex” by prohibiting puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy for the purposes of allowing young people to live as an “identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”

The Department of Justice, Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union, who petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, have argued that Tennessee’s law amounts to sex discrimination because it specifically bars transgender youth from these medications while allowing cisgender youth to undergo the same treatments for other conditions, such as early puberty. “This case contains some of the worst leaning into sex stereotypes that I’ve ever seen in a statute,” said Sasha Buchert, the director of the nonbinary and transgender rights project at Lambda Legal, the oldest LGBTQ+ law firm in the U.S. “It’s clearly a sex-based consideration because this is the same care that [they’re] just banning for trans people. But even further, there is this gender conformity aspect to the statute, which I think is implicit in all of these bans that we’ve seen. It’s just that Tennessee didn’t want to hide it.”

Tennessee has argued that the law does not specifically target trans people, although the state acknowledges that the ban sets “age- and use-based limits” on puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for the “purpose of gender transition.” (Gender-affirming surgeries are not an issue in the Supreme Court case, however, as a district court threw out a challenge to those procedures.) The law has faced legal challenges since the Tennessee legislature first passed it in March 2023. One month later, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a trans teen identified as L.W., two other families of trans youth, and a Memphis-based doctor. The DOJ then joined the suit.

That summer, a district court found that the ban likely violated the U.S. Constitution and issued a preliminary injunction on parts of the law regarding puberty blockers and hormones. Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which overturned that ruling. The Biden administration then asked the Supreme Court to review this case, arguing that any ban on trans health constitutes sex discrimination.

Since the Supreme Court only took up the Biden administration’s appeal, the court will not be weighing in on the question of whether the state law violates the “fundamental right of parents” to make medical decisions for their children, which is a central question in a separate lawsuit, L.W. v. Skrmetti.

The outcome of United States v. Skrmetti will provide much-needed legal clarity for trans youth and their families amidst an increasingly anti-trans political climate. Twenty-six states have passed laws restricting health care providers from prescribing puberty blockers and hormones, as well as performing surgeries on transgender youth. Lower courts across the country have handed down conflicting rulings when these laws have been challenged. By and large, district court judges have attempted to block these bans, finding them unconstitutional after applying “heightened scrutiny” — a high legal standard used in civil rights cases that forces the government to prove a vested interest in the application of the law. Appeals court judges, on the other hand, have typically used “rational basis,” a lower form of review, when overturning previous injunctions of these bans.

Chase Strangio, the co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project, said on a press call Monday that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Tennessee, it could “erode protections when it comes to sex-based discrimination,” especially in the context of medical care, long term. Strangio, the first trans lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court, is set to deliver a 15-minute oral argument on behalf of the three families of trans youth and the Memphis-based doctor on Wednesday. However, if the Supreme Court rules as the district courts have by applying “heightened scrutiny,” then it will determine that bans on trans health care constitute sex discrimination, similar to how the high court determined in the Bostock v. Clayton County case that discrimination against trans employees is also sex discrimination.

[...]

Science Versus Skeptics

There is a body of scientific evidence to show that puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy substantially reduce gender dysphoria in adolescent patients, dozens of medical associations argued in briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in September. Doctors, medical groups, LGBTQ+ advocates, Democrats, Republicans and trans individuals have submitted briefs on the efficacy of gender-affirming care to alleviate dysphoria and prevent suicide. However, Tennessee’s brief to the court is skeptical of gender-affirming care. It argues that these medical interventions are “experimental” and claims that at one point a Tennessee hospital, Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center, began providing trans health care in order to “make a lot of money.” The brief discusses at length how certain “media reports” about Vanderbilt providing gender-affirming care to minors exposed the hospital’s true intentions.

[...] United States v. Skrmetti comes at a pivotal time for trans rights in the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “stop” gender-affirming care for minors nationwide, which he has equated to “child abuse” and “sexual mutilation.” The incoming president has also appointed Russell Vought, the co-author of Project 2025, as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump term, includes dozens of policies that erase federal protections for LGBTQ+ people, including allowing Medicare and Medicaid to deny coverage for gender-affirming care and removing trans-inclusive protections from Title IV.

Tomorrow at SCOTUS: a very big case on gender-affirming care will be heard for oral arguments, and it is United States v. Skrmetti. The Skrmetti case is a crucial case to determine the fate of gender-affirming care for trans and gender-expansive youths (and adults).

#LGBTQPeopleAreNotGoingBack

See Also:

The Advocate: What to expect in this week’s landmark gender-affirming care U.S. Supreme Court case

[mynqzo]

reposting this information to it's own post because asker was a racist.

What's going on right now in the Republic of Georgia / Sakartvelo? A new legislation just passed that official bans - human rights essentially, gay-marriage, gender-firming care and surgery, any 'promotion' of queer identity. Soon after this legislation passed, trans model Kesaria Abramidze was murdered as a direct consequence of this.

Why is this super extra bad? Besides the several many lives at stake, the safety of queer families and the lethality of hate crimes, Georgia's wish to enter the EU is falling to a complete simmer due to this, soon to be extinguished completely. Here is an article about the international reaction to this legislation:

What can you do to help? The biggest thing we currently rely on is international push back especially from the EU members and the possible overturn of this in the upcoming election. It does not help that this law is implemented due to greedy fucks and Russian puppets in Georgia who benefit from this. source:

You might hear many refer to this as 'Russian law' which is due to the fact that Georgia, under this puppet-leadership mimics Russian laws like the 'Foreign Agents Law' that was put into work only a few months prior the law assumes 'only receiving foreign funds makes an organization a foreign agent.' and I don't think I have to explain how horrendous that is.

We also rely on our president to veto the legislation before it goes into 'full effect' (though the consequences and effect have already begun) but even with this the political party which instated this legislation argue to over-ride her veto in parliament. source:

The most important thing right now is vocal pushback, and public support of the queer community. with what happened to Kesaria (may she rest in peace) a lot of trans people are fearing for their lives, and queer families no longer can remain in their own country if they want to continue to be themselves in any way.

Spread love, a lot of it like as much as you can offer to queer Georgians everywhere.

[feral-radfem]

Actually, if we want to be real, the reason this woman shot up in elementary school is cuz she was radicalized in an online group that promotes violence towards people who disagree with them especially the vague category of conservatives. Then, in addition to glorifying violence they condition their members to believe they have nothing to lose could their life span is so short. That there is a genocide. She fell for propaganda, for a chosen identity, that ended up radicalizing her. She's targeted a Christian elementary School to make Christians (assumed conservative) and other conservatives scared to pass more legislation that limits the medical malpractice that can be inflicted on children that have chosen to identify as trans.

Also, what sympathy do you think you're garnering for trans children when you're killing other children? This was a poor political move in the first place (which apparently was her motive). She's not a martyr, she's a terrorist. You can't gain martyr status by murdering children in an act of planned terrorism against who you perceive as your ideological rivals. That's literally just domestic terrorism, babes.

jesus fucking christ

by shooting up an elementary school???

[fozmeadows]

TERFism really is just white beauty politics in a pseudo-feminist hat, because there's simply no escaping the fact that every concern-trolling argument TERFs make against transition, and particularly towards trans men, boils down to the worst thing you can be is an ugly woman, where "ugly" is code for "insufficiently young, white and/or traditionally feminine."

The ridiculing of trans women, for instance, centers disgust at the idea of anyone with traditionally "masculine" features attempting to pass as female, which - as has been well-documented by this point - frequently sees butch women, women of colour, older women, tall women, strong women, and any other woman who doesn't fit this dogwhistle standard of prettiness caught in the crossfire. Masculinity is incompatible with beauty, this logic goes, and all women must be beautiful. Ergo, the more masculine you appear, the less female you are. TERFs, of course, will try to deny their active participation in anything so ragingly unfeminist as policing women's bodies in pursuit of a narrow physical ideal, and yet, as the recent furor over Imane Khalif has roundly shown, this is exactly what they end up doing: an endless reinvention of new and shittier forms of phrenology to explain why this woman or that is not, in fact, really a woman.

Accepting trans women who don't, by conventional standards, pass, means accepting the femininity of women - both cis and trans - who diverge from these beauty standards: who have facial hair or receding hairlines, deep voices or big hands and feet, who are muscular or tall or strong-jawed, who are either incapable or undesirous of pregnancy, or one of a thousand other things we're told (despite the fact that humans are not a strongly dimorphic species) are exclusively masculine traits. But trans women who do pass engender a different terror: the fear that beauty is not an exclusively "feminine" inheritance, such that someone deemed a man might natively posses it and thereby render "real" feminine beauty somehow less special.

And then we have the scaremongering around trans men, which frequently presents as "concern" over, specifically, impressionable girls and young women being tricked into harming their healthy bodies by the nefarious Trans Cabal. That this same concern is never extended to adult women is the giveaway, because adult women are, by this reckoning, inherently less valuable, being neither as pretty nor as fertile as their younger counterparts. It's already too late to prevent their inevitable descent into the ugliness of ageing, and either they're parents already (in which case, their biological purpose has been served, thus rendering their identities past that point moot) or else have been written off as too old for childbearing anyway (which adds to their irrelevance).

Which makes it all the more ironic how many of the stated negatives of transition for trans men dovetails with things the cis female body normally does as it ages and/or postpartum. Long-term binding is decried for the way it causes the breasts to sag or deform and the nipples to enlarge, for instance, when this is exactly what happens as a consequence of pregnancy and breastfeeding. An increase in facial and body hair is common for post-menopausal women, let alone those with PCOS. Plenty of women naturally have deep voices, with many growing raspier regardless with age, while both ageing and childbirth inevitably alter the appearance of genitalia, sometimes radically. Even top surgery, the procedure most maligned as "butchery," has its cis analogues: not only for survivors of breast cancer or those who, due to genetic predisposition towards aggressive forms of it, opt for preventative mastectomies, but those who undergo breast reduction surgery, whether for cosmetic or health reasons - while some women, on yet a third hand, are natively flat-chested.

Taken together, then, what unifies the demonizing fear of trans women and the infantilizing dismissal of trans men by TERFs is an obsession with a specific, youth-and-Eurocentric-based notion of female beauty, where being deemed too masculine in either direction is the disqualifying factor. In TERFlandia, masculinity therefore becomes a synonym for ugliness: trans women can't shed it sufficiently to be counted at any age (unless they pass, which is a prospect too terrifying to countenance), while trans men must be stopped at all costs from embracing it (unless they're already old, in which case they no longer matter). Which is not to say that transphobia more broadly lacks for other avenues of attack; it's just that concern around trans bodies and the necessity of controlling them inevitably circles back to beauty, youth and fertility as the abiding hallmarks of womanhood, and as soon as you point this out, all the other arguments start to unravel.

[jenny-in-a-jar]

🐸 3 days until my surgery 🐸

(Picture taken March 17, 2024)

I'm very very excited for my surgery (it's my second gender affirming surgery but this one is more significant to me since it'll be top and bottom surgery) and I'm obviously counting the days until it and I thought some people might be interested in my trans journey 🏳️‍⚧️ So see part 8 below the cut.

Part 1 here

Yesterday we ended off right before my Facial Feminization Surgery.

I have pictures of the first few weeks of recovery after FFS but they are not pretty!! But I'll show you all just so you can see the recovery process. So cw for swelling and visible scarring

(Pictures taken between February 20 through March 4th of 2024)

Yeah one eye was swollen shut and I'm trying to smile in all the pictures but couldn't 😅 Recovery was pretty tried so I slept most of the time and just watched TV for the first week or so lol.

Honestly there wasn't a big difference. Like when I went back to work, I'm sure that most people didn't even realize I had work done to my face. But I didn't do it for them. Before the surgery I had a really hard time not obsessing over certain dysphoric traits so it's quite a relief to get rid of them 🥰

(Picture taken March 17, 2024)

The one big long term side effect my eyes point in different directions when I look in a certain angle 😬 The surgeon and other doctors I've seen about it were surprised so my big takeaway and unforeseen consequences is a cost of surgery. And despite that, I don't regret it 😤

(Picture taken April 28, 2024)

The other big update for this era was I joined the board for the queer nonprofit I mentioned before! One of our big new projects I'm helping with is taking an empty lot and abandoned home and turn them into a community garden and transitional home 🌱

(Picture taken May 12, 2024)

And now we're up to date!! I do have some small ideas for my last two countdown posts so don't worry I'll be back tomorrow with some pictures 😁

Next part here