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- The Urgency of Being Trans: Quotes from the Crowd Outside U.S. v Skrmetti

- TWIBS: Good News from the Bathroom

- Chris Geidner Doesn’t Think We Should Pretend to Know Where Justice Barrett Stands

- Journal Club: An Investigation into Trans Joy

- Supporters of Trans Rights Rally Despite Conservative Court’s Ominous Leanings

- Long Lines, Cold, and Fears of Kettling at the Supreme Court Wednesday Morning

- Update: Josh Seiter More Horrible Than Previously Believed

- What You Absolutely Need to Know About U.S. v Skrmetti

DEC 6, 2024, 9:00 AM EST | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

The Urgency of Being Trans: Quotes from the Crowd Outside U.S. v Skrmetti

by Valorie Van-Dieman

photography by Piper Bly

They spoke of freedom and pain, of respect and discrimination on this frigid Wednesday outside the U.S. Supreme Court. They talked about the lives that have been saved, the people who have thrived and the individuals who continue to live with uncertainty and apprehension.

And time and again, they spoke of the urgency of the moment.

Hundreds of trans people, relatives and allies gathered outside the courthouse in the nation’s capital while the justices heard oral arguments in U.S. v Skrmetti, a case that will decide the fate of health care for trans youth in Tennessee and beyond. Anti-trans advocates thronged the court as well.

Here is what they had to say:

Jace Woodrum

ACLU South Carolina

“The treatment that we are talking about here – puberty blockers, testosterone, estrogen – these are treatments that are provided to young people who aren’t transgender every day. And in this country when we provide treatment to some groups and not other groups, that’s discrimination.”

Lilly Wachowski

“For me, my hope is that trans people are able to fill up their trans-o-meters and connect in meaningful ways and also leave this place with a sense of urgency to expand those connections as much as possible. The only way that we’re going to keep us safe is if we’re holding each other up, and if we’re taking meaningful action to make sure everyone is protected as much as they can be.”

Frances O’Keefe

“Going through the wrong puberty was an extremely painful experience for me. I nearly died because of it, I’ve had suicidal thoughts because of going through the wrong puberty. Even after it’s all over, there’s all the after-effects. I don’t want anyone else going through the same thing.”

Alleria Stanley

Transgender American Veterans Association

”We are here to support all of our rights as they apply to all of us. We need to make sure that those who are determining our health care decisions are our doctors, not judges, not legislators, but the people who are trained and best know how to do so.”

Ethan Rice

Lambda Legal

“I really hope the outcome is that this court understands what this case is about, that it’s really about the freedom to be yourself and the freedom for youth to access the same medical care that cisgender youth have access to.

Nikita

“I think that I feel confident that equality, justice, love, and civil rights always wins in the end. If you look at history, any time someone asks for basic human rights, there has been a lot of opposition but there has always been winning in the end.”

Thom Rowell

“I’m here to support the trans community, in particular my son Dean who is 15 years old and depends on gender affirming care. It has saved his life. And I firmly believe that it is life-saving for trans kids everywhere. I would like to see the bans in the states that have them overturned even though we’re still safe in Connecticut for now.”

Landon Richie

TransTexas

“As a proud trans person from Texas, with the current law that’s in place in Texas that’s similar to the one Tennessee passed banning this essential life giving care for trans adolescents: It’s important that I’m here today on behalf of Texas and on behalf of myself as a former trans youth, now trans adult. We are in this fight together, Texas Tennessee, all across the country, we need each other now more than ever.”

Regardless of ruling, there is still plenty more of a fight ahead of us, as one anti-trans advocate, who identified herself as Sherry, made clear in an interview outside the court.

Speaking of trans people, she said, “They’ve been told that they’ve been born in the wrong body. That’s just not physically possible. That’s impossible. They’re transing away the gay kids. It’s modern conversion therapy.”

Still, the sight of so many trans people and their allies fighting for the rights of youth was a beautiful thing to see. The unity we saw in front of the Supreme Court will be needed to gain and keep the rights we all so deserve.

Valorie Van-Dieman (she/her) is the editorial assistant at Assigned Media. @valorievandieman.bsky.social

Piper Bly is a professional illustrator and underground cartoonist. When she’s not busy plowing away at her drawing board, singing dirges in the moonlight, or wandering throughout the United States, she can often be found tending to her ivies, frying up some biscuits, spending unreasonable hours in the gym, or floating above the Mississippi River at midnight, waiting for the tide to wrap her in its loving embrace and take her away. Her whereabouts are currently undisclosed. You, however, can find her at piperbly.com.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/skrmetti-gallery-wachowski-aclu at Dec 9, 2024, 6:20 PM EST.

DEC 6, 2024, 6:00 AM EST | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

TWIBS: Good News from the Bathroom

Sorry to harp about bathrooms lately, but we’ve got a win this time!

Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek

This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.

Okay, okay, okay… I know I shouldn’t cover a bathroom-related story for TWIBS two weeks in a row, but considering the current doom and/or gloom climate surrounding legislation against trans people? We need a win. And this one is, believe it or not, a huge dub. As the kids these days say, let’s go! Fortnite! Robux!

Sorry.

So, if you aren’t aware (and you should be, since Zooey and her partner, trans journalist Erin Reed, were part of our Stay With Us special!), Zooey Zephyr is the first openly trans Montanan state legislator, who has represented Missoula in the 100th district in the Montana House of Representatives since January of last year. In April of that year Zephyr was censured by the legislature for speaking out against vile anti-trans legislation, unfairly denying her constituents representation if and until she won re-election for a second term.

Which, of course, she did.

Now, perhaps inspired and emboldened by a similar maneuver in DC, members of Montana’s House of Representatives tried to pass rules that would have banned Zephyr from utilizing the correct bathroom at the State Capitol. As Jo Yurcaba reports for NBC News, the measure was introduced by Republican Representative Jerry Schillinger, and would have required representatives to use bathrooms that aligned with the gender they were falsely assigned at birth.

Shockingly (and, of course, the reason I called this good news), the measure failed to pass a joint House and Senate Rules Committee hearing. To pass it would have had to garner majority support in both chambers, and while a majority of the Senate voted in favor of the measure, Zephyr’s colleagues in the House did not. Even more shockingly, four Republicans voted against the measure!

As reported by Yurcaba and seen in a YouTube video posted by Erin Reed, Republican Representative David Bedey said, “This particular action will have the effect of making people famous in the national news and will not contribute to the effective conduct of our business.” Meanwhile, Republican Representative Brad Barker agreed that the measure was “a distraction.”

Truly, reader, I am just as floored as you are to hear Republican lawmakers conducting themselves in a thoughtful manner on the topic of transgender people and bathrooms. I don’t anticipate seeing much of that over the next four years, so I’m going to soak it all up and appreciate it while I can, and you should too.

Speaking about the failed measure on Twitter (formerly known as X), Zephyr said, “I'm happy to see that this proposed ban failed and am grateful for my colleagues—particularly my republican colleagues—who recognized this as a distraction from the work we were elected to do. I'm ready to represent my constituents & look forward to working on behalf of Montana.”

It’s no surprise to those of us at Assigned Media that Zephyr is a class act, and it’s nice to see a trans woman mark one down in the W column these days. It would be even nicer, moving forward, to see lawmakers with a big R next to their names recognize this kind of crap as the glory seeking distraction that it is.

But again. Don’t hold your breath.

Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/twibs-good-news-from-the-bathroom at Dec 9, 2024, 6:20 PM EST.

DEC 5, 2024, 4:47 PM EST | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Chris Geidner Doesn’t Think We Should Pretend to Know Where Justice Barrett Stands

An interview with Chris Geidner of Law Dork about what he thinks happened at oral arguments in US vs Skrmetti and whether journalists should smooth the way for the high court to uphold bans on gender-affirming care for youth.

photo by Piper Bly

by Assigned Media

Chris Geidner, who writes on Substack as Law Dork, is one of the top legal journalists currently covering the Supreme Court. After oral arguments in the gender-affirming care ban case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, he spoke with Assigned Media about what he went in looking for, what he thinks he heard, and why he doesn’t think reporters should be declaring the case lost for trans youth and their families just yet.

Assigned Media: One of our reporters was present at oral arguments, but it was our very first time. You’re an old SCOTUS hand. So, what were you looking for? What were you listening for? And, did you hear it?

Chris Geidner: The questions going in were, in light of Bostock, where were [Supreme Court Justices] John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch?

AM: Because, in Bostock vs Clayton County, they both voted that anti-trans discrimination was actually a kind of discrimination based on sex, right?

Geidner: Yes. So, going into the day, that’s where I was looking. And, the sort of side question was, how much were [Justices] Kagan and Sotomayor really fighting for this? Because, as you know, Bostock was the sexual orientation case, it wasn’t the gender identity case. The gender identity aspect of that wasn’t a huge part of the discussion. This was a stand-alone trans case, and I was interested in seeing how Sotomayor and Kagan, who are not young, were going to handle this.

I was watching to see if Sotomayor and Kagan were fighting, and if they did, clearly, get it. But we got in there yesterday and Sotomayor was going to the actual harms of the individual plaintiffs, and then certainly Justice Kagan was showing comfort with some of the terminology, talking about trans young people, and cis young people, and that was a very important thing.

And then, we did see the other side too, which was the opposite. And, in some ways it was better than it could have been?

AM: How do you think it could have been worse?

Geidner: Well, I mean, [Justice] Alito got about as bad as it could have gotten. But I don’t think [Justice] Thomas was nearly as bad as it could have gotten. There were very bad legal and substantive things to what we got from [Justice] Kavanaugh and the Chief Justice yesterday, but I do think it’s important that neither were, or certainly Roberts, were not based in anti-trans stereotypes.

AM: It’s… something.

Geidner: Kavanaugh approached it a little bit when he started equating harms in one of his questions towards the end, to Chase [Strangio of the A. C. L. U.] where he basically said if we’re gonna have harms on both sides no matter what we choose, speaking about detransitioners as someone is gonna be harmed, and I think Chase and his response was, well, they’re not equal harms. This one is a very very very small group.

AM: How about Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson? It seemed like a really interesting and powerful moment, when she spoke about the similarities with Loving vs Virginia [which ruled bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional discrimination based on race despite the fact that black and white people were equally banned from marrying each other]?

Geidner: I think, well, bluntly the question when raising a Loving analogy, or any race-based analogy is, well, is it actually similar. And, for me, as the cis white gay guy, am I going to be the one to make a Loving analogy? Probably not. So, I do think it was an example of why it was important that a Justice Jackson is on the bench, that you can have a black woman making a Loving analogy that is going to come across very differently than if Kagan had said the same exact words.

AM: What was going on with Justice Amy Barrett?

Geidner: I think that Barrett was interesting.  I think that she was skeptical, I don’t think that it’s an area that she’s delved into deeply…

AM: She seemed surprised to learn that there were once laws against crossdressing. And that seemed, also, perhaps to be news to the Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar.

Geidner: She didn’t have an answer to that question about de jure discrimination. And that’s why I think it was important that Chase was there. But, I think, in terms of Barrett what I saw was somebody who was taking the case on its terms. And, that’s what I wrote yesterday, that her statements did not look like Alito’s, did not look like Thomas’, did not even look like Kavanaugh and Roberts. She did not have a solid position on anything, she was engaging on all areas, including on the question of parental rights, which wasn’t part of this case.

AM: I want to change gears and ask you about the difference between Prelogar and Strangio, who seemed extremely comfortable and poised and well-prepared, and Matthew Rice [the Solicitor General of Tennessee] who kinda seemed like he almost fell apart under questioning by Kagan and Sotomayor?

Geidner: I mean, Rice did poorly. That’s the beginning, middle, and end. I think the time he was at the podium alone showed that’s where it went.

It’s normally nearly even time, for both sides. One would have expected Rice’s time to go, at a minimum, for an hour. And it was 30 minutes.

But the truth was, there wasn’t much more to argue. Nobody thinks that these laws pass intermediate scrutiny.

AM: OK, so, wait. Backing up a second, there. It did seem as though the justices, especially the conservative justices, were asking Strangio and Prelogar to defend the medical evidence, as if they were trying to decide what they thought on intermediate scrutiny, maybe?

Geidner: Well, they could decide. The justices can do what they want.

They’ve got the case in front of them, they’ve got the sixth circuit opinion, they can affirm it, they can vacate it, they can do the thing that Chase and Prelogar are asking for, to set the level of scrutiny, simply set the level of scrutiny and send it back.

The court has everything. So, they could look at the record and decide intermediate scrutiny applies and then apply it, they can even take things that are out of the record, like Alito was in bringing in things like Sweden and the Cass Review from the Fox News chyron that’s running in his brain.

Or, if it’s rational basis, they could just affirm the Sixth Circuit in saying that it passed rational basis or, as Chase and the A. C. L. U. are arguing, even if it’s rational basis you still have a responsibility not to stop there. You don’t get to get away with saying Jeff Sutton said this at the Sixth Circuit so we affirm, Chase was saying, you’re gonna have to do the work, again.

AM: Last question. It feels like everyone knows, because it’s in most of the biggest newspapers, that this case is not expected to be a win for the trans youth, or for their families, or for the A. C. L. U. So, could you just take me through, uh, why is that what everyone knows?

Geidner: Well, I mean, I’ll take you through why that’s not what I wrote.

There’s two things. First, I don’t think that it’s reporters’ jobs to do the dirty work of the justices. If they’re not willing to say things reporters shouldn’t pave the road for them to have an easier path, and I do think that’s what a lot of people did yesterday.

The bottom line is, for any Supreme Court case, you need to get to five. You need five votes. So what are the five votes, and for what reasoning? Kavanaugh and Roberts said something very different than Alito… and Thomas? So for those reporters who are saying it’s so obvious, I want you to point to what Barrett said yesterday that leads them to that absolute conclusion.

And, I don’t think there is something that leads to that. So I think that the bottom line is that what a lot of people said was that this is a conservative court and they seemed to be very willing to defer to state legislative judgements, I think that Gorsuch’s silence confused people, but equating silence with the idea that he would not be joining the Democratic appointees in an opinion isn’t what a journalist should do.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/geidner-interview-us-vs-skrmetti-trans-youth-care at Dec 9, 2024, 6:20 PM EST.

DEC 5, 2024, 7:00 AM EST | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Journal Club: An Investigation into Trans Joy

A 2022 paper digs into the inherent joy that comes with being transgender.

by Veronica Esposito

Reading social science research isn’t an especially exuberant experience, particularly when that research covers marginalized groups like trans people. The focus tends to be on negative indicators like suicidality, self-harm, anxiety, and depression—or, as researchers Stef Shuster and Laurel Westbrook put it, “most sociologists are killjoys.”

In their paper “Reducing the Joy Deficit in Sociology: A Study of Transgender Joy,” Shuster and Westbrook look to put a little more joy in the world, by researching not the pains and struggles that come with being trans but the reasons to celebrate who we are. This is much bigger than just trying to put a few glimmers in the way of an oppressed group. As they explain, the “joy deficit” “is particularly troubling, as joy is vital to human well-being. . . . As such, joy is sociologically relevant to fully understanding people’s lived experience.”

Shuster and Westbrook argue that because of this joy deficit, the narrative of the “transgender person in misery” has become unfairly centered as the “normal” narrative of trans existence. According to them, it’s become the dominant way that cisgender people view us, and also the dominant way that we see ourselves. Shuster and Westbrook argue that it’s not only unhelpful, but also just plain false, to paint trans people as fundamentally miserable beings. In order to balance the scales and offer a fuller, more complex and accurate view of the community, they conducted in-depth interviews with 40 trans people of all sorts, asking what they found joyful about being trans.

As Shuster and Westbrook made their investigation into trans joy, they discovered that simply asking about joy was a significant intervention.  This simple question opened up a small but crucial space for trans people to see themselves in a new light: “asking about joy created new opportunities to hear about how, . . . as Austin, a 23-year-old white trans man, put it, ‘I love the fact that I’m trans.’ Indeed, about half of the interviewees explicitly stated that there is intense joy in being members of a marginalized group.”

Aaron, a 53-year-old trans man, struck a frequent note when he offered that he prefers being trans in spite of all the challenges it has brought him, because it has offered him unparalleled experiences that cisgender people can never have:

I mean, I think overall my trans experience has been joyful. I wouldn’t trade coming out or coming to terms with gender stuff. I’ve never really thought about like, “Oh, life would be so much easier if I was cis.” Because I think about all the stuff I would miss, all the questions and opportunities and people and experiences it opens up for me. So, while it’s been hard and we could focus on the negative things like the discrimination, the fucked-up situations, all that stuff, there is so much good that comes out of being more actualized around yourself.

All in all, approximately 50% of respondents stated that “there is intense joy in being members of a marginalized group.” For 30-year-old Felix, experiences of marginalization has offered them a life-changing opportunity to develop a deep knowledge of themselves and of the world:

I feel like it has caused me to learn more about myself and the world around me because I’m constantly coming up with answers that have more questions. So, I’m constantly asking more of myself and more of the world; how to understand and how to be in it and how to know myself more. That, to me, is really great. I feel really lucky in that aspect because I don’t feel like as many people are pushed to know themselves.

Shuster and Westbrook pointed out that acquiring a trans identity—that is, having your “egg crack”—leads to acquiring a marginalized identity, and this is widely presumed to be a bad thing. But, in fact, 50% of respondents “explicitly expressed the opposite—that life was better now than it had been before they identified as transgender, even though they now held a more marginalized identity. Notably, none of the respondents said that having their egg crack made their life worse.

For many, coming to a trans identity boosted their self-confidence, in spite of experiencing greater marginalization. For instance, Laura, a trans woman, shared that she now felt more capable of taking care of herself, despite the inherent safety risks for trans women that she had to live with, and that made her much happier

You know, my friend always teased me because I have this glare that I give to everyone. But that’s the thing. I don’t have to glare at people anymore because I don’t feel threatened anymore.

Shuster and Westbrook also found that this increased self-confidence translated into increased success with romantic partnerships. Contrary to the prevalent belief that transitioning makes a trans body undesirable, they found precisely the opposite—that respondents found themselves becoming more desirable after developing their trans identity. Megan, a 32-year-old trans woman, told Shuster and Westbrook that

A joy in my life is being a trans person and finding love and all that stuff. It sounds so cheesy. But I really thought that being a trans woman would mean never having a partner. And certainly not one as hot and thoughtful as mine.

The authors also noted that, contrary to the prevalent idea of the trans body as “monstrous,” many of the trans people they surveyed found that they found more pleasure in their body once they had adopted a trans identity—this held true regardless of whether they sought medical transition. Respondents also challenged popular narratives of the trans experience as moving from a diseased body to a healthy one. Alex, a 23-year-old genderqueer person believed that coming to a trans identity made them more accepting of bodies of all sorts:

I’ve been moving into a space where, yeah, bodies do crazy things and bodies are all kinds of weird ways, and they like have all these fluids that come out in different ways, and like it’s great and it’s really reaching a point where I sincerely feel and believe that on a level that’s never been true before, and just being like super body positive and able to embrace other people and really other people’s bodies, and I don’t know, all the imperfect and weird and gross things that they encompass

Lastly, Shuster and Westbrook found that there was a strong community aspect to trans joy, with many respondents stating that becoming a member of the trans community was itself a transformative and happy experience. This also extended to relationships beyond the community, as many stated that coming to terms with a trans identity deepened their empathy and desire to understand the experiences of others. In the words of Oliver, a 34-year-old trans person, he was “finally having some sense of peace and feeling grounded in a way that I could actually be open to other people and establishing deep connections with people that I don’t know otherwise.”

At a time of profound threats to the trans community, it is crucial to speak open and frankly about the malevolent impacts of state-sanctioned violence against trans people. But this does not mean that we cannot also speak out about the joy in being trans. In fact, one possible conclusion to draw from reading Shuster and Westbrook is that times of great peril to the community are the exact moments when trans joy must be loudly declared—as they state, “crafting pity narratives perpetuates stigma and disempowers people.” They conclude their paper by asking, “What if part of the solution to social problems is also to tell narratives about joy?”

Veronica Esposito (she/her) is a writer and therapist based in the Bay Area. She writes regularly for The Guardian, Xtra Magazine, and KQED, the NPR member station for Northern California, on the arts, mental health, and LGBTQ+ issues.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/journal-club-an-investigation-into-trans-joy at Dec 9, 2024, 6:20 PM EST.

DEC 4, 2024, 6:24 PM EST | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Supporters of Trans Rights Rally Despite Conservative Court’s Ominous Leanings

Outside supporters of trans rights showed their fighting spirit. While inside, questions about detransition signaled court’s openness to gender affirming care bans.

by Valorie Van-Dieman

A historic day. It’s a phrase that can be triumphant, but history is not always kind, and at the rally for trans rights outside of the Supreme Court on December 4th, few members of the crowd expressed confidence that the history being made would be kind to the transgender community.

“I mean, I don’t have a lot of faith in this court. This regime is corrupt to the bones,” director, writer, and producer Lilly Wachowski told Assigned Media, echoing a sentiment that seemed common among the crowd of trans rights supporters which had a mix of trans adults, parents of trans youth, and their allies.

Outside, supporters of trans rights greatly outnumbered the conservatives who gathered to vilify and spread misinformation about the transgender community and their medical treatments, but inside the court what matters are the justices. Appointed by Republican presidents, justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett have shown an appetite for reshaping the American legal landscape with sweeping decisions that have upturned pregnant people’s right to safely end their pregnancies and caused mayhem in federal rulemaking as lower courts have been directed to substitute their judgement for that of experts at federal agencies.

Under tough questioning from the conservative justices, both Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar representing the Biden Administration and Chase Strangio of the ACLU representing trans youth and their families remained poised and on message. They argued that laws which ban treatments for children based on their sex make a sex based classification.

In contrast, Solicitor General Matthew Rice of Tennessee seemed to struggle to explain to the more liberal justices why a law that bans treatments for natal males and not natal females isn’t sex discrimination in his eyes, and at times seemed confused about which treatments would be typically be available to cisgender children for which reasons.

Despite this difference in preparation and composure, the partisanship of the court has led few to predict a decision that protects transgender youth’s health and safety. This conventional wisdom is so entrenched the New York Times’ live updates dispensed with all kayfabe, using the headline. “Supreme Court Appears Inclined to Uphold Tennessee Law on Transgender Care.”

Tennessee’s law includes openly transphobic wording, stating that it furthers the state’s “compelling interest in encouraging minors to appreciate their sex,” something that, apparently, the legislature does not believe transgender youth can appreciate. This view of trans people as “disdainful of their sex” represents an extremist viewpoint, one that was raised repeatedly by Prelogar and Strangio.

The stakes of the case could not be higher, a point highlighted by Thom Rowell of Connecticut, who joined the rally for trans rights to support his son Dean who is transgender.

“My son Dean is 15 years old and depends on gender-affirming care. It has saved his life. And I firmly believe it is lifesaving for trans kids everywhere.”

Asked what he was hoping to see from the court, Rowell echoed a common sentiment among supporters. “I’m hoping to see the Supreme Court make the right decision and overturn the bans.”

The toll on trans youth was also top of mind for representatives of the organizations supporting trans youth and their families.

“The families that are at the center of this case have been faced with an impossible choice,” said Jace Woodrum of ACLU South Carolina. “Their children have lost access to medically necessary, lifesaving care. And they have to decide, are we going to leave our family, our friends, our neighborhoods, our schools, our homes, and uproot our lives to get our child medical care? Or do we stay and watch our child suffer when we know that transgender kids who are denied this healthcare are more likely to drop out of school, more likely to use drugs and alcohol, more likely to experience anxiety and depression, more likely to consider suicide?”

Hopes for the court to value the lives of trans youth seemed slim as conservative justices repeatedly raised the spectre of detransitioners, the 1 percent of youth who access gender-affirming care and regret having done so. “You agree there are some set of people that regret their treatment?” Justice Kavanaugh asked Strangio in one of many exchanges that seemed to indicate that no benefit to trans youth, however overwhelming, would outweigh the risk of occasional detransition in the eyes of conservative justices.

For her part, Wachowski suggested there were reasons for coming out to support trans youth that went beyond convincing the justices to value trans existence.

“I’m here for trans joy and trans love. For me, my hope is that trans people are able to fill up their trans-o-meters and connect in meaningful ways, and also to leave this place with a sense of urgency to expand those connections as much as possible.”

Valorie Van-Dieman (she/her) is the editorial assistant at Assigned Media. @valorievandieman.bsky.social

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/supporters-of-trans-rights-rally-despite-courts-ominous-leanings at Dec 9, 2024, 6:20 PM EST.

DEC 4, 2024, 7:26 AM EST | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Long Lines, Cold, and Fears of Kettling at the Supreme Court Wednesday Morning

Assigned Media’s reporters were on the scene early, reporting on the Supreme Court case that may decide the fate of transgender healthcare.

Image by Piper Bly

by Valorie Van-Dieman

On an unusually cold December morning in Washington, DC, a few advocates and paid line-standers had been on the scene for the long, cold, dark hours of the night, while others trickled in with the daybreak. Many of the people slept in sleeping bags in the freezing cold overnight. Most of the rest sat huddled in blankets to keep warm.

Most Supreme Court cases don’t attract this sort of attention, but United States vs Skrmetti is no ordinary court case. At stake is the medical care of thousands of transgender children, as well as the question of whether discrimination against the transgender community will be given carte blanche by a court dominated by conservative justices with a proven appetite for upending the US legal landscape.

Experts have called the case the most significant one the high court will hear this session.

Transgender legislation watcher Allison Chapman from Philadelphia is one of many members of the trans community in town protesting for transgender rights. Chapman spoke to Assigned Media about what she’d observed on multiple visits to One First Street during the day and into the evening on Tuesday ahead of oral arguments on Wednesday.

Chapman described how some people began joining the public line, which has 50 spaces for general attendance at court hearings, before noon. This was several hours earlier than expected, according to a local line-standing service.

Chapman also said she’d seen members of right wing media on the scene Tuesday, naming the Christian Post and the Daily Wire, as well as a few representatives of activists on both the trans supportive and anti-trans sides beginning to show up later in the evening.

“People show up early to be sure the people on the opposing side don’t flow into our area and disrupt things. It’s not a big space, so you really need to have people here,” explained Chapman. Metal police barriers separated the two sides near the front of the public protest area, and more barriers lined the area for the public line and walled off the sidewalk where protests are expected to spill into. Chapman expressed concern about police “kettling,” a procedure where the movement of protesters trying to leave a space is constrained by officers.

Jessie McGrath, a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County and a member of the Transgender Bar Association, spoke with Assigned Media as she walked towards the court to join the line for Supreme Court Bar members.

“I think there will be around 20 transgender lawyers there today,” McGrath said. “We’ve been admitting members to the Bar daily.”

Asked what she thinks the prospects for transgender rights are under this SCOTUS, McGrath said she hopes the justices do what’s right, which for her and other members of the trans community means supporting the right of trans youth and their families to access necessary healthcare without political interference.

Assigned Media will be on the scene all day, covering the court from both inside and outside.

Valorie Van-Dieman (she/her) is the editorial assistant at Assigned Media. @valorievandieman.bsky.social

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/long-lines-cold-and-fears-of-kettling at Dec 9, 2024, 6:20 PM EST.

DEC 4, 2024, 6:00 AM EST | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

Update: Josh Seiter More Horrible Than Previously Believed

He’s back, and by the time you finish this article, you’ll wish he wasn’t.

What a glow up! (From Alex Novell’s YouTube video “I tricked Josh Seiter into an interview with The Daily Wire”)

Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek

Hey, you guys remember when I wrote about Josh Seiter and his bizarre adventures in gender a few weeks ago? Long story short, Seiter is primarily famous for being a week one Bachelorette contestant several years ago, and nothing else but pitiable drama meant to catapult him into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Most recently, Seiter has been honing his craft as a performer by badly pretending to come out and live as a transgender woman. Like the majority of annoying rank and file goons trying their hardest to join the culture wars as soulless profiteers, he’s both obtuse and mostly unsuccessful.

Until, that is, Josh Seiter landed an interview with The Daily Wire themselves. Yes, Matt Walsh nightmare zone and producers of churlish faux-documentary What is a Woman? and follow up racist mockumentary Am I Racist? recognized Seiter’s latent talents as a “political activist” and “provocateur” (his words) and reached out to interview him.

Or, well… so he thought.

In reality, Seiter was contacted by YouTube funny man and trickster Alex Novell, who released the full interview on his YouTube channel last Saturday. I haven’t watched a ton of Novell’s work myself so I can’t speak to its usual purpose or tone, but I will say that determining Novell’s intentions in emailing for an interview (where he falsely claimed to be producing a documentary hand-in-hand with The Daily Wire) truly could not have been easier, since the second most popular video on his channel by nearly 100,000 views as of this moment is titled “I tricked The Daily Wire into hiring a leftist.”

I guess that JD that Josh allegedly earned failed to instill any critical thinking or research skills in his big ol’ noggin.

Novell’s interview with Seiter is, honestly, kind of difficult to watch. Excluding preamble, some explainer segments and an epilogue, the actual interview is about ten minutes of the most cringe-inducing behavior I’ve seen all year.

Seiter greets Novell and company at the door to his one bedroom apartment where he keeps his cat, jug of whey protein and two or three dozen dresses already dolled up. He’s wearing some light makeup and a very gauche ‘50s hausfrau dress that might even look cute on somebody who wasn’t trying so hard to be obnoxious, and Novell asks him some softball questions that give Seiter the chance to be as ravenously transphobic as possible, ranting about “transing kids” and other gross nonsense you’ve surely come to expect from anybody trying to make a career out of their bigotry.

Seiter shows off his closet, which very suspiciously contains about twice as much feminine clothing than masculine clothing, then leads Novell to his kitchen counter where he has put on display a glut of completely random makeup and beauty products. He introduces Novell to Oliver, his cat who he says has “gender dysphoria by proxy,” a lame joke that unfortunately made me snort. Who says they’ve only got one joke, huh?

The back third of the interview is when things, against all the odds, take a turn for the worse. I haven’t brought it up yet because it’s both jarring and uncomfortable to look at, but around the middle of November, Seiter took a bold step from transphobia towards racism by tweeting a selfie in which he looks spectacularly white asking, “Am I a valid black man?”

Please make it stop. (From Alex Novell’s YouTube video “I tricked Josh Seiter into an interview with The Daily Wire”)

Tough luck for Seiter, though, because Atlanta did a much funnier transracial bit almost a decade ago.

Seiter, while badly pretending to be a black man, suggests that the police don’t overpolice marginalized communities (they do) and declares that fried chicken and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are his favorite foods. When asked if he would have sex with a trans woman, Seiter says “that’s nasty” because “trans women are just trans-identified men who have gender dysphoria and are mentally ill,” which is a somewhat surprising stance from a guy who once dated a trans woman and faked his own death when she dumped him.

Novell then hits Seiter with some very blatant bait by asking, “Since you’re a black man now, should you be allowed to say the N word?” after which the buffoon in question immediately makes the most unforced error of all time by saying the N word four times in thirty seconds. Seiter caps off the interview by saying he has a meeting at “the welfare office,” disappearing into his bedroom with one more N word muttered under his breath.

A few days later, when Seiter realized he had been bamboozled, he began tweeting and editing and deleting various defenses of his behavior, finally culminating in presumably doctored screenshots of inexplicable death threats from Novell. Nobody seems particularly heartbroken for Seiter’s predicament, besides Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing, who tweeted out a dressed up “sucks to suck.”

I don’t know what’s next for this juiced up chump, but frankly, I’m here for it. Unlike the illustrious TikTok user who told Seiter to seek help, I actually want him to get worse and film it.

Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/josh-seiter-more-horrible at Dec 9, 2024, 6:20 PM EST.

DEC 3, 2024, 7:00 AM EST | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

What You Absolutely Need to Know About U.S. v Skrmetti

What you need to know and what the mainstream media may not tell you about the case.

by Valorie Van-Dieman

What is U.S. v Skrmetti?

It’s a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that will decide whether bans on necessary medical treatments for transgender youths, such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers, violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The question before the court is whether the bans discriminate on the basis of sex by making some medications available to natal males unavailable to natal females, and vice versa.

What is happening with the case on Wednesday?

The nine justices will hear oral arguments from the petitioners (who are challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee’s ban on trans youth health care on behalf of families with transgender children), and the respondents (who represent the state of Tennessee, its health care ban and, more broadly, state health care bans in general).

Outside the court, trans youth, their families and representatives, and the larger trans community will rally to support their right to health care that is free of discrimination. Anti-trans protesters, representing conservative groups who believe transgender identities are illegitimate and that trans people represent a danger to traditional gender hierarchies, are also expected.

When are oral arguments happening? How long will they take?

Oral arguments start at 10 a.m. ET, and each side will have 30 minutes. During the presentations, justices typically ask questions of the lawyers for each side.* The questions may give hints about the way the justices are viewing the case, although no decision is expected until May or June 2025.

Because the Justice Department has joined the case, the presentation time for the petitioners’ side will be split, with Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar and the A.C.L.U.’s Chase Strangio each making a 15-minute presentation. Strangio will be the first openly trans person in history to argue a case before the high court.

Who are the parties in U.S. v Skrmetti?

Brian and Samantha Williams, parents of a trans girl identified by the initials L.W., have sued the attorney general of Tennessee, Jonathan Skrmetti, in his official capacity as the enforcer of Tennessee’s health care ban. Two other families of trans youth (who have not been identified to the public) are also parties to the lawsuit. The families are represented by the A.C.L.U. and the LGBTQ+ legal organization Lambda Legal.

Under President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice joined the case on the side of the families in April 2023. The department is widely expected to withdraw once Donald Trump, a harsh opponent of trans rights, returns to the White House.

What is trans youth health care?

Often called “gender-affirming care,” it encompasses a range of potential treatment options for young people struggling with gender dysphoria. The treatments seek to halt the permanent effects of a puberty the transgender person sees as wrong, and they seek to help the trans person achieve an appearance more typical for the gender in which they live.

Medical evidence has clearly shown these treatments are safe and effective, despite an environment of rampant misinformation that has sought to confuse and mislead the public. Recent studies further show that laws targeting trans youth, including care bans, have led to a drastic increase in calls to suicide hotlines from trans youths..

What is gender dysphoria?

Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis given by a doctor, psychologist, or other medical professional when a trans person’s discomfort with their birth-assigned sex or gender role is acute enough to interfere with their daily living.

The only interventions shown to successfully address gender dysphoria – and improve the lives of the trans people who experience it –  involve transitioning. These treatments are supported by every major medical association in America and are considered life-saving by doctors, patients and families who rely on them.

How many states have banned trans youth health care, and what do these bans do in practice?

Twenty-four states have banned doctors from prescribing puberty blocking and hormonal medication to trans youth, or from performing surgery to align a trans young person’s appearance with their gender. Two additional states have banned surgery for transgender minors only. (Such surgeries are rare. In many cases they had never been available in states that banned them.)

Where the bans have gone into effect, some families have been forced to uproot their lives and move to states where medical care is available, while others have been compelled to travel great distances to receive care out of state.

While many politicians and pundits have falsely labeled trans youth care as “experimental,” the banned medications are considered a safe and effective part of mainstream medicine. The legislative bans themselves acknowledge this fact. The bans explicitly single out gender dysphoria as a condition that cannot be treated by these means, but allow the same drugs and surgeries to be performed on minors for all other potential purposes.

The decision will affect every state that has banned this care. You can find out more about which states have bans and the specifics of each state’s ban on the website of the nonpartisan health policy organization KFF.

Who opposes trans youth health care bans?

Bans on gender dysphoria treatment are opposed by the families of trans youth who need such care, by transgender adults, and by every major medical organization.

The bans have been driven by highly partisan politics. Every state that has instituted such a ban is dominated by Republicans. The Biden administration opposes the bans. Many Democratic-led states have sought to protect doctors and patients by crafting legislation shielding providers of trans health care.

Who supports trans youth health care bans?

In recent years, Republicans have tried to turn the very existence of trans people into a political wedge issue. They have sought to exploit the general public’s lack of knowledge about trans people to make false claims about treatments being unsafe or experimental.

The evidence does not in any way support this. Hormone therapy has been used to treat transgender minors since the 1960s, and the current mainline treatment of adding puberty blockers has a 20+ year history. Affirming care in 2024 is safe and effective.

Tennessee’s law includes false statements about the risks of trans youth healthcare and claims that one of the reasons for the ban is the state’s interest in “prohibiting medical procedures that… might encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex.”

The phrase seems to reflect not simply an interest in public health, but also an interest in promoting a negative view of transgender identities.

*UPDATE: The original version of the sentence was unclear about when justices post questions to attorneys during oral arguments. Questions are posed during the lawyers’ presentations, not separately from them.

Valorie Van-Dieman (she/her) is the editorial assistant at Assigned Media. @valorievandieman.bsky.social

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/what-you-absolutely-need-to-know-about-us-v-skrmetti at Dec 9, 2024, 6:20 PM EST.

Table of Contents

Assigned Media: 2024 Dec 6

All articles

The Urgency of Being Trans: Quotes from the Crowd Outside U.S. v Skrmetti

TWIBS: Good News from the Bathroom

Chris Geidner Doesn’t Think We Should Pretend to Know Where Justice Barrett Stands

Journal Club: An Investigation into Trans Joy

Supporters of Trans Rights Rally Despite Conservative Court’s Ominous Leanings

Long Lines, Cold, and Fears of Kettling at the Supreme Court Wednesday Morning

Update: Josh Seiter More Horrible Than Previously Believed

What You Absolutely Need to Know About U.S. v Skrmetti