- All articles

All articles

- HHS Report Author Wrote a Book Claiming Gender Identity is Fiction

- TWIBS: DoE Says CA Must Get Discriminatory in 10 Days or Else

- NYT Publishes Andrew Sullivan’s Incoherent Mishmash of Anti-Trans Politics

- Blumenthal’s KOSA

- Promoting Solidarity and Trans Power in San Francisco

- New York Times Cited 29 Times to Justify Case Limiting Trans Healthcare

- Bay Area Clinics Abandon Trans Youth Despite Shield Laws

- ‘Radicalized’ Rowling Calls for Bathroom Vigilantism

JUN 27, 2025, 9:01 AM EDT | EVAN URQUHART | SOURCE

HHS Report Author Wrote a Book Claiming Gender Identity is Fiction

Alex Byrne’s ideological commitments were clear long before he was tapped by Trump to claim gender-affirming care is bad medicine.

Opinion, by Evan Urquhart

The Amazon summary for Alex Byrne’s 2023 book, “Trouble With Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions,” is not coy about the author’s intentions. “Revolutions devour their own children, and the gender revolution is no exception,” it reads. “Trouble with Gender joins the forefront of the counter-revolution, restoring sex to its rightful place, at the centre of what it means to be human.”

This clarity is notably absent from the author’s recent opinion piece for the Washington Post, in which the MIT philosopher publicly acknowledged being among the authors of an HHS report on gender-affirming care. In it, Byrne defends the report, complaining it has been unfairly maligned by the medical community. The report itself was created in response to Executive Order 14187 titled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” that declares gender-affirming care is based on junk science.

The language of the EO suggests a report commissioned with a single predetermined result in mind, but Byrne pushes back against this, describing himself as a liberal and saying the report was conducted without political interference. However, he neglects to mention his prior history with this topic, including the fact that he authored a book taking the position that sex is real and immutable and gender identity is a harmful ideological fiction. If Byrne is representative of those tapped for the review it suggests the outcome was never in any danger of deviating from the administrations expectations.

Perhaps due to their shared authorship, both the opinion piece and the HHS review are superficially well argued, and both go to great lengths to omit or distort any information that might be inconvenient to the argument proceeding smoothly.

For example, in the WaPo piece Byrne writes, “Puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones compromise fertility.” This is not accurate. What researchers have said is that we don’t know what the impacts of blockers followed by cross-sex hormones are on fertility may be. There’s even reason to believe they may be fully or partially reversible.

We know that puberty blockers have no long term impact on fertility when used to treat precocious puberty. And, evidence has been mounting that both trans men and trans women on cross sex hormones regain fertility if they cease taking hormonal treatments. What we don’t know is whether the same is true of trans people who began by blocking puberty. That’s because trans youth who start on blockers are a very small group of patients, a minority of all trans youth who receive medical interventions, and because regaining fertility would mean going through all the changes associated with their natal puberty, so most trans people who blocked puberty in the first place aren’t willing to try it.

We do know that at least two prominent detransitioners have gone on to carry a successful pregnancy, Daisy Strongin and Prisha Mosley. Although both women began transitioning to male as teenagers, neither was ever on blockers.  As the number of youth treated with blockers and cross sex hormones increases, eventually we’ll know whether fertility returns for those who cease hormonal treatments after blockers the way it does for those who never went on blockers.

Misleading WaPo readers about the impact of gender-affirming care on fertility is only one example of a place where Byrne misrepresents reality to supplement his argument. Another example is Byrne’s treatment of European countries’ approaches to youth gender medicine. As frequently happens in ideologically slanted pieces on this topic, Byrne presents a list of countries that have supposedly limited access to medical transition for minors. On his list are countries who have unambiguously done so such as the UK, and countries whose history is more mixed such. For example, Byrne names Finland, where care has long been all but unobtainable for youth and no cases of trans patients treated with puberty blockers have ever surfaced.

Left entirely off of Byrnes’ list are European countries who have warned against limiting access to youth care in recent years or reviewed the evidence and found it to be sufficient to continue providing treatment.

In both this opinion piece and the HHS report itself, the evident goal is a shallow rhetorical victory, using language games and disinformation to obscure the reality of young people seeking treatment for gender dysphoria. It’s easier to argue that puberty blockers followed by cross sex hormones carry risks to fertility than that cross sex hormones carry those risks alone, so just pretend most trans youth start on blockers and assume the audience won’t know it’s a minority. It’s easier to defend sweeping bans on care if many countries are imposing similar measures, so pretend that that is happening and ignore countries that have moved in the opposite direction. Byrne is a philosopher, not a scientist, but it’s an approach to arguing a case that would embarrass anyone but the most shameless rhetorician. But in America today, the conventional wisdom has shifted against gender affirming care for youth, and that’s all that really matters. Byrne knows no one in the mainstream will read a fact check, because the passions of the day are with him.

Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/alex-byrne-gender-mit-author-trans-disinformation at Jun 28, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

JUN 27, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

TWIBS: DoE Says CA Must Get Discriminatory in 10 Days or Else

Another moment in the unfolding saga of California vs. Trump, in which the Department of Education wrongly says California violated Title IX and must start discriminating against trans girls soon or face their wrath.

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.

Yet another shot has been fired in the ongoing war between California and the Trump administration, as the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) declared on Wednesday that the California Department of Education and California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) have violated Title IX by allowing transgender girls to compete in school sports.

If you haven’t been keeping up with this saga, allow me to bring you up to speed: earlier this month, CIF (who oversee high school sports in the state of California) adjusted their rules for participation as Donald Trump began threatening to punish them for allowing transgender girls to compete in sports. The new rules allowed trans girls to compete, but stated that any cisgender girl who lost to a trans girl would be counted one place higher in the competition’s final results, tacitly invalidating trans competitors’. Despite this change, when trans teen and student-athlete AB Hernandez shared the podium with her supportive peers, Trump and his cronies had a full social media meltdown. Immediately afterwards, California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta preemptively sued the government in an attempt to head off reprisal from Trump

The law that the Department of Education suggests California has violated, Title IX, is intended to protect student-athletes across America from discrimination on the basis of sex and gender. Title IX has long been used as a miserable political football between liberals and conservatives, but we should keep in mind that the DoE’s ruling here is flatly wrong. The current interpretation of Title IX is somewhat up in the air because of multiple attempts at revision and subsequent rollbacks, but ultimately it’s up to the courts to determine whether or not transgender students are protected from discrimination by that law, and the Ninth Circuit (whose jurisdiction includes the entire west coast) has already determined that they are.

Because the Executive Branch doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally interpret Title IX protections, it’s unlikely that any punitive measures they bring against the state of California will stick. The Trump administration already tried to leverage federal funding against Maine through the Department of Agriculture (because Governor Janet Mills publicly embarrassed Trump), and failed miserably in the attempt. It’s reasonable to assume that they’ll achieve similar results in their petty war with California over a handful of trans athletes, though it’s hard to say what the short-term collateral damage might be as these political institutions duke it out.

It’s worth noting that the OCR has had its own struggles lately. Layoffs in March to the tune of 55% of the OCR’s investigative force were rolled back on Tuesday because the reduction in manpower left the department virtually incapable of functioning, which has also delayed key statistics reports that the department was meant to release at the start of this month.

What we’re looking at here is obviously not the evenhanded, reasonable judgment of a federal department. This is a hollowed out, barely working office being puppeted by Trump and his ilk for the purpose of waging their ideologically motivated culture war, no matter how many innocent children they harm in the process. The OCR has given California 10 days to “change these unlawful practices … or risk imminent enforcement action, including referral to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for proceedings.” Considering the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has lost 70% of its manpower in the last few months, it’s unclear how effective any action on their part might be.

Regardless, let’s all congregate around our energy crystals and send California’s Attorney General’s Office as much healing power as we can, so that they may defeat these evil jerks in court as quickly as possible.

Alyssa Steinsiek is a trans woman journalist who reports on news relevant to the queer community and occasionally posts on BlueSky.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/twibs-doe-says-ca-must-get-discriminatory-in-10-days-or-else at Jun 28, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

JUN 26, 2025, 1:00 PM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

NYT Publishes Andrew Sullivan’s Incoherent Mishmash of Anti-Trans Politics

Former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan published an opinion piece blaming trans people for attacks on the trans community.

Opinion, by Evan Urquhart

Once again proving its commitment to anti-trans bias, the New York Times today featured a fearful, incoherent opinion piece by gay conservative Andrew Sullivan. In it, Sullivan echoes a spate of other recent NYT pieces blaming trans and LGBTQ+ activists for conservative attacks on the trans community, and takes them a step further still.

For those familiar with Sullivan’s work, none of this is a surprise. The former editor of the New Republic is known for two things: Championing same sex marriage as a conservative answer to calls for gay and lesbian equal rights and promoting discredited race science. However, the piece is useful as a way to talk about two of the most widely held ideas about the trans rights movement and how fundamentally incompatible with each other they are. First, there’s the belief that modern LGBTQ+ activists have sought to destabilize the gender binary. Then, there’s the belief that LGBTQ+ activists are unnecessarily medicalizing kids. The problem? The second idea cannot be true if you believe the first.

For an aging gay man whose brain is soaked in prejudice and fear, it’s very easy to be afraid of nonbinary people existing and kids transitioning at the same time. This fear presents them as new and strange, even though Sullivan must know that nonbinary identities aren’t new – Sullivan’s assimilationist gay politics followed on the heels of more radical activism such as that of Leslie Feinburg, a nonbinary transmasculine lesbian whose defiant Marxist politics have aged incredibly well. It’s perhaps more forgivable to think young people transitioning is new, as most recent accounts erroneously date the phenomenon to the Netherlands in the 1990s. (This is inaccurate as Jules Gill Peterson’s History of the Transgender Child showed, unearthing examples of young people being helped to transition with hormone therapy in the 1960s and 70s in the U. S.)

However, anyone who honestly investigates this topic will find that over-medicalizing gender-nonconforming people has been a concern among the LGBTQ+ movement much longer than it’s been a concern of Sullivan’s, and the push for more acceptance and understanding of nonbinary identities is part of the solution activists propose, along with the request to see trans people as their genders whether they medically transition or not.

One fact that has been habitually highlighted by anti-trans activists is the rise in young people who identify as trans. However, they typically leave out the fact that the big increases have come in young people identifying as nonbinary, or that the number of youth who also transition medically has remained well below the percentage of trans adults.

Andrew Sullivan is right that loosening stereotypes about maleness and femaleness, allowing young people to explore different modes of expression in adolescence, and responding with affirmation to the words they use to label themselves is a major social shift. It’s one that makes people uncomfortable. He grew up in a world where sex was the single organizing principle on which every social situation was built. In that world, people were taught that a near total segregation of the sexes outside of dating and marriage was natural and right and even biologically based. The fact that young people of both sexes are increasingly rejecting the rigidness of this system and looking for alternatives is destabilizing for anyone who bought into this worldview.

This new openness to crossing gender barriers, however, provides an answer to the concerns about overmedicalizing transgender youth. In his essay, Sullivan describes being a young boy of 10 who didn’t like sports being asked if he was “really a girl.” He now fears that if he’d ever been told he could be a girl it might have led him to identify that way.

It’s a fear that’s already decades out of date – today many girls like sports, many boys don’t. In some places the rules around gender have relaxed even further, to the point where a child can be free to explore hobbies, styles of dress, different names and pronouns, all without being told what that should mean. It’s the kind of change that could ensure that no one’s gender exploration would ever be medicalized again, and that only those who consistently feel the need for medical options like hormones or surgery will have any reason to consider them. It’s also the kind of change Andrew Sullivan decries as too destabilizing, too extreme, too against conservative common sense.

By putting gender-affirming care alongside efforts to weaken gender stereotypes, conservatives like Sullivan are seeking a return to having as few gender-nonconforming people as possible, with the medicalization of such people as a way to prop up the larger system of gender norms. It’s a dismal vision for anyone who loves freedom and free expression, one that represses the individual in the name of stability and tradition as conservatism always has.

Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/new-york-times-andrew-sullivan-incoherant-anti-trans-politics at Jun 28, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

JUN 25, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

Blumenthal’s KOSA

Senator Richard Blumenthal presents himself as a strong LGTBQ+ ally in his support for The Equality Act… but when it comes to online spaces for young queer kids, is he walking the walk, or just talking the talk?

by Alyssa Steinsiek

Congressional Democrats are proposing that discrimination against somebody for their sexual orientation or gender identity should be a violation of federal law. The Equality Act, a potential amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that’s been put forward to national lawmakers six times since 2015 and never gone the distance, would expand the civil liberties of LGBTQ+ Americans by ensuring that they cannot be discriminated against in matters of housing, public accommodations, education, federally funded programs, credit, and jury service, among other things.

Though he is not the sponsor of this current iteration of the Equality Act, I’ve heard one senator’s name come up a few times in recent conversation and seen his public remarks about the act reported on by a few outlets. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, has publicly endorsed the Equality Act for all the right reasons.

“I will be fighting for the Equality Act no matter how difficult the road. No matter what the odds. Because I know that, ultimately, we will prevail. Just like we did with the Marriage Equality Act,” Blumenthal said, speaking in West Hartford before the town’s Pride celebrations. “All people are equal under the law. No matter who they love, who they are, or where they live. That's why we need the Equality Act. That’s why I’m fighting for it.”

Senator Blumenthal is certainly talking the talk, reassuring advocates with all the right words… but is he walking the walk? Do his actions reflect an understanding of our community’s needs and wants? Can we trust him to listen to and hear us? I’m not so sure.

Blumenthal is a co-sponsor of the Kids Online Safety Act, a proposed bipartisan bill that would define rules for social media and video game companies about how children can be treated when accessing their platforms. The bill stipulates that, should a platform be aware of the fact that a user is underage (it suggests that the primary method of identifying underage users will be user self-reporting), the platform will bear responsibility for ensuring that those kids aren’t exposed to sensitive topics like “suicidal behaviors, eating disorders, and substance use disorders … addictive use, illicit drugs, and federally-defined child sexual exploitation crimes.”

In theory, I agree with measures like this. The internet can be a dangerous place for kids, given how difficult it can be to effectively monitor your child’s online behavior, as well as the prevalence in certain online spaces of predators actively seeking young people to exploit. Unfortunately, these bills often provide conservative lawmakers and litigators with the ammunition they need to antagonize queer adults on the internet.

Blumenthal’s own website explicitly states that KOSA provides no provision allowing lawsuits against online platforms, and makes no changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that would hold companies responsible for content kids are exposed to. That’s a good start, to be sure, but will it truly protect us? If the online kids of today are anything like I was at their age, they’re simply lying about how old they are everywhere they go on the internet, and their parents are often none the wiser. Is it possible that, exercising an overabundance of caution, the people in charge of these online spaces might institute blanket bans on certain topics or content to avoid risking the ire of lawmakers? Will it not only deny queer kids access to safe internet spaces and helpful educational resources, but also impact LGBTQ+ content creators and journalists?

Ultimately, KOSA demands that social media companies and similar platforms must have bear a duty of care to protect kids from the content on their platform, and while Blumenthal and others have made efforts to narrow the scope of the bill, many people still worry that it may result in online censorship and harm done to the young people it’s designed to protect.

It certainly doesn’t help that Blumenthal wants to deride critics of KOSA as “pawns … of big business interests.” He claims to be in regular contact with LGBTQ+ leaders (whoever that might be) to ensure that our concerns are heard, but that sort of flippant dismissal of people who seem to have legitimate concerns isn’t reassuring.

Genuinely, I hope that some version of this bill that protects kids without explicitly harming their right to privacy or taking valuable spaces and resources from them (or adults’ rights to exist freely on the net), but we have to be wary of any proposal to rein in online content to “protect the kids.”

Alyssa Steinsiek is a trans woman journalist who reports on news relevant to the queer community and occasionally posts on BlueSky.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/blumenthals-kosa at Jun 28, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

JUN 24, 2025, 10:00 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Promoting Solidarity and Trans Power in San Francisco

Breonna McCree, a leader of the world’s first Transgender District, describes painful setbacks and the path to defeating bigotry.

Photo credit: Breonna McCree

by Pax Ahimsa Gethen

Pride is not a mere party. It’s a bigger celebration of LGBTQ resistance and resilience in the face of hostility and discrimination. After a flood of anti-trans and anti-DEI decrees from the Trump administration leading up to this Pride Month, June has seen the withdrawal of corporate support for Pride events, the Supreme Court’s anti-trans youth ruling in US v. Skrmetti, and the shuttering of an LGBTQ youth suicide hotline.

Despite these setbacks, our community persists.

In San Francisco, one of the leaders in this resistance is Breonna McCree, co-executive director of the world’s first legally recognized Transgender District. When Assigned Media last spoke with McCree earlier this year, she talked about the services the District offers, including self-defense classes and name- and gender-change clinics. We checked in with McCree to see how she and her colleagues are faring in the face of escalating attacks.

“During this current administration, we’ve witnessed a sharp decline in funding, the rollback of DEI initiatives, and a troubling rise in transphobia, panic and fear,” McCree said. Diminished funding this year “has had a real impact on our ability to scale our programming and provide direct support to community members.”

Still, McCree said, she has worked closely with local leaders to “strengthen community safety and resilience.” In addition to rolling out self-defense classes, she has consulted with the Lavender Rights Project and the Transgender Law Center on legal issues, and strategized with grant-makers at the Funding Forward Conference.

McCree also contributed to a conference that preceded the biennial National Transgender Health Summit, held in San Francisco on May 30. “We focused on building a national trans agenda, collecting stories, and sharing the strategies communities are using to defend gender-affirming care and trans rights in a time of growing political hostility.”

Yet the funding losses experienced by the District and other trans groups have had a direct, real-world impact. The District had raised $50,000 to support summit attendance for Black and Brown trans folks from the South, for example, but funding disruptions forced it to reallocate the money to basic operations like meeting payroll.

McCree noted a markedly lower attendance at the summit this year. “In my opinion,” she said, “the absence of the vibrancy of Black and Brown trans community-led initiatives in the space left it feeling clinical and disconnected from the grassroots energy that gives these gatherings life.”

In common with the three co-founders of the Trans District, including previous executive director Aria Sa’id (who spoke with Assigned Media earlier this year), McCree is a Black trans woman. I asked her thoughts on the risks and rewards of visibility for trans folks.

“Black trans women have always been visible, from Lucy Hicks Anderson to Mary Jones to Marsha P. Johnson,” McCree said. “We have put our bodies, souls, and spirits on the frontlines of trans liberation. Time and again, we’ve carried this movement, risked everything for it.”

“And yet,” she continued, “when the movement gains momentum, we are often the ones left behind. Left to pick up the pieces of a community that continues to be disappointed and discarded. Still, we rebuild. We create. We rise again.

“But at what cost? Liberation—for whom?”

McCree worries about the loss and abandonment of Black and Brown voices in the trans rights movement, and what it can result in. “It is a version of us—flattened, polished, detached—shouting ‘protect Black and Brown trans women,’ while we quietly exit the movement, burned out, broken, or gone. Gone because of stress, violence and death. In the name of liberation.”

Despite the challenges, McCree said that the District remains “deeply committed to celebrating and protecting trans joy!” Current and upcoming activities include a weekly drag show supporting trans-led organizations, and a “Brunch with the Dolls” party to watch the San Francisco Pride Parade.

McCree urged allies to support the trans community not simply during Pride Month, but year-round. “Support us when no one’s watching. Solidarity means putting something on the line, too,” she said. “Show up by supporting trans-led and trans-centered organizations, volunteer your time at our programs and events, stand on the frontlines with us to show your support for our work in a meaningful and intentional way.”

“When we fight for trans liberation, we build a better world for us all,” she said. “Trans survival is not enough; we are building toward trans thriving and trans power.”

Pax Ahimsa Gethen (they/them) is a queer agender writer, editor, and curator. They live in San Francisco with their spouse Ziggy.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/promoting-solidarity-trans-power-san-francisco at Jun 28, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

JUN 23, 2025, 4:08 PM EDT | EVAN URQUHART | SOURCE

New York Times Cited 29 Times to Justify Case Limiting Trans Healthcare

Meanwhile, other mainstream media newsrooms treated the U.S. v. Skrmetti case as an opportunity to center coverage around the expected result.

demonstrators in front of the Supreme Court during oral arguments in US v Skrmetti / photo by Piper Bly

Opinion, by Evan Urquhart

This story was copublished with the Objective.

New York Times stories were cited 29 times in amicus briefs supporting Tennessee’s ban on youth gender-affirming care — a ban upheld in the U.S. v. Skrmetti decision on June 18.

The decision leaves in place bans that have forced families of some trans kids to leave their homes to maintain access to the necessary treatments. The precedent could open the door to bans on adult care, upend protections against sex discrimination, and may even leave courts helpless to intervene if an increasingly anti-science GOP moves on from bans on trans healthcare to bans on vaccines.

The Times, which has pushed back against allegations of bias in its trans coverage, was referenced frequently in briefs that sought to portray the treatments as mired in questions and controversy despite gender-affirming care being backed by every major medical organization in the U.S. Reporter Azeen Ghorayshi was by far the most frequently cited by amici defending bans, with 14 citations referencing 7 separate articles, followed by former Times opinion columnist Pamela Paul, with 7 citations referencing 3 columns.

In contrast, briefs submitted in opposition to healthcare bans cited the Times only four times.

The day after the decision,  the Times celebrated with a victory lap of sorts: It published six separate stories about the case, many of which framed the decision as the consequence of overreach by the trans rights movement. Erin Reed, a trans journalist and advocate, described it in a scathing opinion column as “dancing on the graves of the transgender youth it has repeatedly thrown to the wolves.”

Even many of the Times’ own contributors have joined organizers and others in criticizing the U.S. paper for biased and misleading coverage of trans youth healthcare and warning that its reporting was fueling the increasing extremism on the right. But even taking into consideration this recent history of animus towards trans people and their healthcare, engaging in an orgy of victim-blaming the day after the decision was untoward given how often Times stories were cited in briefs supporting the ban.

However, the Times is not the only news outlet to have exercised dubious judgement in its coverage of the case. Several major news outlets centered their coverage around the expected result.

“Supreme Court Appears Inclined to Uphold Tennessee Law on Transgender Care,” The New York Times’ story headline Dec. 4 read. “SCOTUS conservative majority appears ready to endorse Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors,” reads CNN’s. Stories in the Guardian and the Nation, as well as some independent outlets such as SCOTUSblog and the 19th, similarly focused on this lens.

Not every outlet framed the story around this narrative of Tennessee’s inevitable win. The Associated Press and ABC wrote down-the-middle stories that avoided speculating or quoting others speculating about what the decision would bring. Another notable holdout was Chris Geidner of Law Dork, who told Assigned Media in a Dec. 5 interview that he thought the speculation from other journalists was irresponsible.

“I don’t think that it’s reporters’ jobs to do the dirty work of the justices,” Geidner said then. “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.”

While it’s probably too much to expect balance from the Times, as the paper most responsible for the moral panic over trans youth care, the case’s coverage offers insight for journalists who do want to carefully cover the Trump administration: Avoid giving tacit permission for conservatives’ ongoing roll-back of civil rights by treating major opinions as a foregone conclusion before they’re announced.

Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/amicus-briefs-cited-nyt-29-times at Jun 28, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

JUN 23, 2025, 10:33 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Bay Area Clinics Abandon Trans Youth Despite Shield Laws

At least three major providers have ceased to offer surgery for patients under 19. Youth and adults alike fear for the future under Trump.

by Veronica Esposito

Clinics in the Bay Area who provide healthcare to transgender youth have quietly been reducing services. The moves have come even though no federal laws have been passed forbidding the provision of this care, and in spite of shield laws protecting providers of gender-affirming services, Assigned Media has learned that at least three major providers of surgeries to youth have ceased such operations, and providers of puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy have added barriers and pulled back.

In an email dated June 1 and sent to other providers of care to transgender clients, the Gender Confirmation Center, which opened in 2013 as the project of Dr. Scott Mosser, declared that it would “pause all adolescent care services beginning July 31.” The email indicated that the pause was brought on by “escalating federal actions”. Assigned Media spoke to multiple individuals while reporting on this story who voiced their belief that the abrupt change in practice was a direct consequence of the potential threat of investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, as the Trump Administration has increasingly weaponized the Bureau against perceived enemies. (The Gender Confirmation Center did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Jean, a pseudonym for a local provider who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from the federal government, told Assigned Media she believes, “What changed was the FBI investigation threat. The FBI can investigate, and it can really ruin your entire practice because you have to spend so much money, it can ruin you, even if you’ve done nothing illegal.”

The abrupt change in tone of the Gender Confirmation Center was a shock to the community of gender-affirming providers in the Bay Area, as the GCC is widely seen as practicing culturally competent, empathetic healthcare in support of the trans community. It was not expected that such an institution would cave under threats from the Trump Administration.

The Gender Confirmation Center is not the only Bay Area organization to make a statement regarding care for trans adolescents. In a statement released earlier this spring, Stanford Medicine, a major provider of gender-affirming services to the region, stated that it would “pause on providing gender-related surgical procedures . . . for LBGTQ+ patients under the age of 19, effective June 2, 2025.” Reports from parents of trans minors seeking gender affirmation surgery have also indicated that Align Surgical Associates, providing gender-affirming surgeries in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, has also stopped accepting new adolescents for surgeries. Sources also report that Stanford Health has stopped issuing implanted puberty blockers for new adolescent clients.

Neither Align Surgical Associates nor Stanford Medicine responded to Assigned Media’s requests for comment.

Maya, the mother of a 15-year-old trans boy in the Bay Area, and her husband, Amir, reported that after working with the Gender Confirmation Center regularly for months to move forward the process of top surgery for her child, the clinic abruptly ceased communication with her toward the end of May. “The lack of transparency was unsettling,” she told Assigned. (Maya and her husband requested anonymity and have been given pseudonyms.)

Shocked and dismayed at suddenly losing her child’s surgery, Maya called four more providers in the Bay Area, yet was not able to find any taking new trans minors for surgery. She then called another handful of providers in Southern California, as well as around ten places in Canada, none of whom were willing to give her son the needed surgery. She finally located a clinic in Washington that agreed to take on her son but now lives in fear that the rug will be pulled out again. “Every time my phone rings my heart just stops, because I fear that they’re going to call me and say I can’t get surgery,” she said.

Maya and Amir’s son came out as trangender during the COVID pandemic in 2020, when he was 10 years old, and he has been on puberty blockers for the past four years. The family has been discussing surgery for about a year and is in full agreement that it is the right choice for them.

“This is a decision that should be between parents, their child, and healthcare providers,” said Maya, “this is not a decision that the government should be involved in. I’m a medical provider, and I just don’t think this should be involved in it. It’s so traumatic for our son to be binding and not be able to breathe. This top surgery is absolutely necessary, and it will be devastating for him if he doesn’t get it.”

Beyond introducing great stress into the lives of Maya, Amir, and their son, the family’s attempts to find a surgical option have left them with a feeling of precarity, and a sense of being failed by institutions that the family once trusted. These feelings will likely remain long after any potential surgery happens. “Previously, there was no uncertainty about it, it was just a necessary step in the process of transition,” said Amir. “That was the mental model until six weeks ago. Now in my mind, and probably [my son’s] mind as well, between now and the actual surgery, there is complete uncertainty as to if it will happen.”

A Changing Environment for Gender-Affirming Care

The cutbacks in surgical services are the latest in an already deteriorating environment for adolescent gender-affirming healthcare in the Bay Area. According to Iain Jasko, an associate marriage and family therapist working in private practice, even before services were curtailed at the GCC, barriers to entry had increased. He shared stories of needing as many as five separate letters to proceed with care (currently WPATH guidelines specify just one letter as necessary), and requiring extra strong advocacy and commitment to push through bureaucracy. “It seems like there was much less red tape before the Trump admin,” Jasko told me.

Beyond stories of lost access to necessary surgeries and increased bureaucracy, therapists specializing in the care of trans youth shared an overall glum picture of increased panic and anxiety on the part of trans youth and their families. In some cases, they even noted the return of self-harm and suicidal behaviors, which they indicated are directly due to the threat of losing access to affirming healthcare.

Sarah Burdge, a licensed psychologist specializing in gender therapy, described parents she works with feverishly working to figure out next steps in the event that their trans child cannot access surgeries or hormonal therapy. According to Burdge and other therapists we spoke with, many parents have already begun investigating options that include receiving healthcare via foreign nations, including Canada, Mexico, and Germany. Additionally, Bay Area doctors have quietly begun suggesting that their young patients should switch from injections to implantable hormone blockers in the case that access is cut off. But, as Burdge noted, not everyone has the resources to take such steps for their child. “Many families have access to the means to do this on their kids’ behalf, but obviously not all kids are that lucky. So many parents are currently highly anxious or borderline panicking.”

Clinicians widely voiced the belief that turmoil over access to medical care is depriving adolescents of normal, developmentally appropriate childhoods. As with Maya and Amir’s son, such adolescents have patiently waited for years while they and their families have worked through their own fears about transition, and then while navigating the process of seeking medical care. To have all that work now potentially undermined is devastating. “I have clients where it’s like, ‘I’ve been patient, I’ve been patient, and now that I’m finally ready to start, we have this new concern,’” Burdge said. “It brings on depressive symptoms, feelings of hopelessness, frustration.”

Jasko believes a person’s transition should be a period of self-discovery and joy. Now, he says, the possibility for that kind of a transition is being sharply curtailed by threats around medical care and wider forms of oppression. “This should be such a joyous process for people, especially youth,” Jasko said. “You can take your time and walk through and figure out what you do and don’t want. People are maybe being forced into a place where they’re making decisions that they’re not ready to make. It just reinforces this narrative that we’re pressuring people.”

Threats to Transition More Broadly

Beyond directly denying trans people needed medical care, cutbacks in service are also making many trans people question their decision to even move forward with transitions. According to Jasko, many of his clients are now questioning if it’s worth it to begin a transition and then be forced into a position down the line where gender-affirming care will be taken away. “One of the main concerns I hear is, can I move forward with care knowing it might be ripped from me? Is it worth it if it’s going to be short-lived? This is a big theme in my work, primarily with my emerging adult clients who are early in transition, or are out and contemplating medical transition. It’s almost like, would I feel better never knowing what my authentic self is, versus being myself and getting it ripped away from me?”

Providers also shared stories of adult clients rushing through surgeries—planning as many as three in one year—out of fears that they will not be able to access them down the line. “It’s concerning how fast my adult clients are having their surgeries,” said Jean, the provider who asked to remain anonymous. “People are doing like 3 surgeries in a year. It’s often helpful for people to take time between surgeries, to integrate their new bodies and experience the reduction in dysphoria. Adults have usually taken time, sometimes 2 to 3 years to have their surgeries. It’s very unusual to have so many surgeries in one year, and it’s unclear what the effect will be.”

Potential threats from the the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which if signed into law in its current form would strip funding for gender-affirming care from Medicare and Medicaid programs, are also being felt among Bay Area trans people of all ages.

Lisa Melton, who is known for having initiated the Safari web browser project at Apple, transitioned later in life—after navigating ups and downs with her overall health, she is now, at 68 years of age, on the verge of having bottom surgery in November. What should be a period of victory for Melton has instead become an excruciating test of her nerves as she waits to see if gender-affirming care will be stripped from Medicare as part of the the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “As if dysphoria and dysmorphia weren’t bad enough, now you’ve got this stupid existential dread,” she told Assigned in an interview.

Melton noted that she is in the fortunate position of being able to pay out of pocket, if necessary, but that it would cost her in the range of $60-75,000, money she would have to strip from her retirement fund. “The thing is, I can afford that, it’s not pleasant but I have the savings for that,” she said. “I’m one of the lucky ones, everyone else I’ve talked to on Medicare or Medicaid, they’re just screwed.”

It’s also possible that her medical provider, UCSF, may cease providing gender-affirming care before she can have surgery. According to Melton, this warning was issued by her surgeon, who worries that even the adult program may eventually be threatened. “There’s a damn good chance that UCSF is going to get something held over their head,” she said. “My surgeon said, I’m just going to keep going until the hammer comes down.”

Other providers shared stories of panic among clients on Medi-Cal who are afraid of losing access to HRT if the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is passed in its current form. “I have seen clients on Medi-Cal [California’s Medicaid program] who were terrified the moment the reconciliation bill came out,” one provider told me. “They’re asking me, will I be able to get my hormones?”

Providers also warned of potentially difficult years to come. Jean voiced the belief that the impacts of increased gender dysphoria to the community will be felt more and more strongly as the years of the Trump Administration wear on. “I think we’re going to see a lot more effects of gender dysphoria over time. It still feels early.” She shared that virtually all of her clients are currently under-dosing as a way of stockpiling hormones and voiced concern at what impacts to gender dysphoria that might have on a longer time-scale.

Jean has worked with the trans community since the 1990s, and after witnessing a wide expansion of access to medical treatment roughly during the period 2005 - 2020, now believes the world of trans medicine to be moving backwards. “It feels like we’re taking a major step back. I think everybody’s holding their breath and wondering if this prescription will be the last one they get covered. We’re all on pins and needles waiting to see the next step the Trump administration will take.”

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/bay-area-clinics-pull-back at Jun 28, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

JUN 23, 2025, 10:00 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

‘Radicalized’ Rowling Calls for Bathroom Vigilantism

Leading Off: A reckless exhortation. A former friend dismayed. And an activist newspaper aligned with a right-wing group. The week’s top story lines.

by Billie Jean Sweeney

JK Rowling, the UK transphobe, urged her 14.3 million followers on X this weekend to photograph and disseminate images online of people they believe to be transgender who are in public restrooms.

The behavior Rowling encouraged appears to violate a UK harassment law that prohibits the watching, following or spying on individuals, and the publishing of material that purports to be about them. Violations are a criminal offense, subject to a up to year in prison.

Rowling expressed certainty that all of her millions followers would always be able to discern trans from cis, invoking the wearing of “wigs” as a surefire method. She derided one critic who questioned her certainty, calling him “crazier than a box of meth-addled frogs.”

But cis women, many of them lesbians, are frequent victims of the bathroom vigilantism that Rowling called for. A lesbian was viciously attacked by a man and a boy waiting outside a woman’s restroom in Illinois in May. The woman suffered a fractured nose and eye hemorrhaging, “just because I walked into the woman's bathroom, and I looked the way I look.”

In Boston, a male hotel security guard entered a women’s restroom in May, banged on a stall, demanded IDs and eventually ordered a cis lesbian couple out of the bathroom because they did not look right in his eyes.

In January two loudly transphobic members of Congress, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert, followed a cis woman into a public restroom at the Capitol and confronted her based on their erroneous belief she was a trans lawmaker.

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found no evidence that safety or privacy had been compromised by trans people using the bathrooms that align with their gender. Conversely, its February report found growing levels of harassment of trans people in restrooms — in both the restrooms that align with their gender and the ones that align with their gender assigned at birth.

Stephen Fry, the British actor and comedian who had narrated Harry Potter audiobooks, said in an interview last week that Rowling had become “radicalized” online. Though he once considered her a friend who he had stood by, Fry denounced her current online commentary as “cruel.”

“She says things that are inflammatory, contemptuous and mocking,” Fry said.

The New York Times has closely aligned itself with Rowling’s harsh anti-trans views for years, notably publishing a lengthy “defense” of her by an opinion columnist in 2023.

The Times rolled out an assembly line of stories advancing its anti-trans agenda in the aftermath of last week’s Supreme Court ruling in US v Skrmetti, but the harshest criticism of its coverage centered on its 11,000-word magazine story.

Among its many flaws, my own review found, the piece appeared to mimic the legal arguments and talking points of the right-wing anti-trans group Alliance Defending Freedom. One passage, asserting that “the gender of a gender-fluid person might shift from hour to hour” hews closely to the claims in an ADF piece last year complaining of “new words like genderqueer and non-binary.”

More insidious, though, was the medical science disinformation it slipped into the piece, falsely asserting that trans health care raised “novel issues” because it could “require lifelong treatment.” The ADF has used this same loaded framing in its court filings.

Gender affirming care is not “novel;” it’s been accepted practice for decades. Numerous conditions — from high blood pressure to asthma, thyroid disorders to  glaucoma — require lifelong medication.

Despite the Times’s insistence that trans rights are “lost,” elected officials and courts across the country still very much have a say in the matter.

In Delaware, Gov. Matt Meyer signed an executive order on Friday guarding the personal information of providers and trans patients, and protecting providers from retaliatory actions.

State Rep. DeShanna Neal, whose daughter is trans, praised the order as “fulfilling a promise I made to my daughter and to all trans people who deserve dignity, respect, and care.”

Billie Jean Sweeney is a news editor, press freedom advocate and trans woman.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/redicalized-rowling-bathroom-vigilantism at Jun 28, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Assigned Media: 2025 Jun 27

All articles

HHS Report Author Wrote a Book Claiming Gender Identity is Fiction

TWIBS: DoE Says CA Must Get Discriminatory in 10 Days or Else

NYT Publishes Andrew Sullivan’s Incoherent Mishmash of Anti-Trans Politics

Blumenthal’s KOSA

Promoting Solidarity and Trans Power in San Francisco

New York Times Cited 29 Times to Justify Case Limiting Trans Healthcare

Bay Area Clinics Abandon Trans Youth Despite Shield Laws

‘Radicalized’ Rowling Calls for Bathroom Vigilantism