[…]
According to Acker’s Facebook page, She was born in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in both Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Boise. Acker had previously served in the U.S. Army as a forward observer.

Acker was one of the victims of a tragic shooting at Boise Towne Square mall, which also resulted in five people injured. She was working security at the mall at the time of the shooting, according to her friend Dominique Cairistiona. Her family said Acker ran toward the suspect to stop him, likely saving many lives. The other individual who was fatally injured in the shooting was 49-year-old Roberto Padilla Arguelles.

In a statement, the Boise Police Department said the following: “Evidence indicates the suspect was contacted by a security officer on the first floor of the building near a department store on the west side of the building. The suspect shot the security officer who died at the scene.”

Acker’s family told the media that she was “a hero” and “the type of person that always wanted to help people.” They added that she “will be greatly missed.” Another one of Acker’s friends, Shiloh Ren, told the media that Acker will be remembered as “a radiantly sweet person.” In a statement provided to a local news outlet, Acker’s older sister, Tiffany Luna, said “Confronting someone whom she viewed to be a threat to others or a bully was entirely within her character even prior to enlisting.”
[…]

‘It is hurting us’: Trans kids and parents in Missouri speak out, and brace for bans
By Danny Wicentowski
Published March 23, 2023 at 5:47 PM CDT

As their health care is being debated in Missouri’s legislature, the lives of three young trans boys growing up in St. Louis County are, for now, largely unchanged.

Speaking to St. Louis on the Air’s Elaine Cha, they described attending school, playing in sports leagues and looking forward to summer camp — typical for a group of young friends between the ages of 9 and 11. With the consent of their parents, the three boys spoke to St. Louis Public Radio on the condition that they not be named.

“My coming out was very spontaneous,” said an 11-year-old trans boy. Accepted by his parents and friends after coming out, he has lived as a boy for more than five years, a substantial proportion of his young life.

“At some point, it was summer,” he continued, retelling his coming out story, “and I came back with a new haircut and a new set of clothes. I was just like a different person. And no one questioned that.”

It’s not always that simple. For a 9-year-old trans boy, his first day attending school under a new name took a turn when he realized that, due to an apparent miscommunication, his teachers and administrators had no idea of the change.

“I didn't think kids would believe me,” he said, recalling his worries from that day. “But I just told them my name and they were fine with it.”
[...]

Tory government rejects calls for ‘dignity in death’ for trans people after Brianna Ghey killing

Mar 16
Written by Joe Ali

?resize=1584,832
The government has rejected a campaign for Brianna Ghey to be registered by the correct gender following her death. (Credit: Getty Images)

A petition calling for posthumous changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), launched following the death of Brianna Ghey and to respect trans people after they die, has been rejected by the government.

Campaigners wanted Brianna Ghey to be given a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) so her death certificate reflects her true gender.

Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old trans girl, was stabbed to death in a park in Warrington on Saturday (11 February). Two teenagers, both aged 15, have been charged with murder.

Under UK law, only those aged 18 and over are able to obtain a GRC, which allows a trans person’s gender to be recorded on birth, death, marriage and civil partnership certificates.

A campaign with the hashtag #DignityForBrianna was started, with the goal of obtaining Ghey a posthumous GRC.

Debunked: No, 80% Of Trans Youth Do Not Detransition
This is one of the most common arguments brought up in anti-trans hearings. The idea that 80% of trans people "will desist" is a complete lie that is easy to debunk.

Erin Reed
3 hr ago

One of the most common myths heard in anti-trans hearings is that most trans kids will desist if they are allowed to go through puberty. Sometimes specific numbers are given, such as 80% of trans kids desist. This statistic has been cited as low as 60% and as high as 99% in various legislatures. In Montana, a representative used this statistic to justify passing a medical ban. The Heritage Foundation has also pushed this myth. Nearly every hearing on this topic includes this myth. The desistance myth is one of the most persistent falsehoods and has been used against the trans community for decades. It is misleading and inaccurate as it comes from outdated DSM-4 criteria and decades-old data. Newer studies show that 97.5% of transgender youth are persistent in their gender identities. Let's examine how this falsehood originated, how it is misused, and what current research reveals about the rarity of desistence and detransition.

See an example of this claim being used on Fox News:
https://twitter.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1636558345208307716?s=20

The DSM-IV, released in 1994, spelled out how to diagnose mental health conditions including “Gender Identity Disorder” (no longer a disorder). In this manual, clinicians made their first attempt to diagnose transgender youth. These first diagnostic criteria were an admiral early attempt, but contained a fatal flaw in how transgender youth were diagnosed: the diagnosis bafflingly did not require a youth to identify as another gender. Instead, it focused on factors such as “preference for cross-sex games and activities” and “preference for friends of the other sex.”

Problems with this diagnostic criteria should be immediately recognizable today: a cisgender tomboy with absolutely no identification as a boy would be diagnosed with gender identity disorder under these definitions. A cisgender boy who likes to put on an Elsa costume and play with girls could be diagnosed with gender identity disorder under these definitions. They were woefully inadequate for judging if youth were transgender. They also came during a time when youth transition did not exist as a medical practice, and so there were no real clinical guidelines on their treatment - thus, little effort was made to change the criteria which were primarily used for discussion in therapist offices and not to support or deny medical transition care.

In 2013, the DSM-V was published and in it, many corrections were made on how gender dysphoric youth are diagnosed. The most important correction was the requirement that a transgender youth demonstrate an insistent, persistent, and consistent desire or identification as the gender that the patient believes they are. The individual factors were also changed and adjusted. These diagnostic criteria were much more stringent, and are the diagnostic criteria used today.

See the changes:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F91dbcb97-95d9-46a9-8b4b-3c835f15f4bf_1096x1188.png

Mics Off, 6 Minutes Notice - Anti-Trans Kentucky Forced Detransition Bill Passes After Shameful Secret Meeting
On the final day in which such legislation could pass, Kentucky passed a gender affirming care ban for trans youth. They used dirty tactics to pass HB150, a bill which detransitions transgender teens.

By Erin Reed

Today in the Kentucky House of Representatives, a new anti-trans bill emerged. HB150, originally a “parents rights in education” bill, was secretly amended and a hearing was announced with the microphone off during the House lunch hour. Democrats only found out about the meeting when somebody tipped them off. The meeting was held within 6 minutes of announcing it and people physically had to run to hear the new bill, which was not given to the general public or announced online. Thanks to local reporter Olivia Krauth’s reporting, we know we know what is in the bill - she took pictures with her phone and posted them onto twitter. The bill, which combines Don’t Say Gay policies, forced outing, pronoun bans, and a gender affirming care ban for trans youth has one last cruel wrinkle: it tells doctors exactly how they are to medically detransition the trans teens under their care. It passed the House and was immediately rushed to the Senate for final passage, where it passed 30-7 on a nearly party line vote.

The bill itself contains several provisions and combines many anti-trans bills into a single, all-encompassing piece of legislation that targets many aspects of the lives of trans youth. One provision states that schools cannot adopt policies that “keep information confidential from parents,” a policy which will be used to forcibly out transgender students. Another states that school districts can’t require students to use any pronouns for trans students that do not conform to that student’s “biological sex.” The bill contains teaching bans on LGBTQ+ topics similar to Don’t Say Gay bills, would force schools to turn over student’s answers to private questionnaires and surveys, bans students from bathrooms not matching their gender identities, calls trans students in locker rooms “unsafe,” and bans gender affirming care for trans youth. Borrowing from South Dakota, one provision in particular is incredibly troubling: a forced detransition clause that tells doctors how to detransition teens in their care by “systematically reducing their hormones.”

See this clause here:

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F31ce0aa9-ba19-4ba8-96fa-809c108d43b7_736x412.png

The only reason we know what the provisions in this bill are is because of local reporter Olivia Krauth, the first to report that a secret hearing was about to commence on this anti-trans bill. SB150 was given absolutely no public notice and there was no time for the general public to organize against the bill. It was announced during the House lunch hour with the microphone off. Rep Herron, the state’s only LGBTQ+ elected lawmaker, stated that it was vey clear Republicans tried to do this with no Democrats present. Even with the secretive meeting, three people in the capitol who have testified against other anti-LGBTQ+ bills were able to show up. They spoke against a bill that wasn’t even made available to them or the general public with enough time to even scan it over. The committee then passed it 16-5 30 seconds after the witness testimony was over with no debate.

It moved to the House floor, where Democrats condemned the bill and the process that led to it. Representative Raymond called out the idea that the bill protected kids, saying that these kids “will not thank you” when they grow up. She looked down at the end of her speech, lip quivering and in tears, simply spoke, “I vote no.”

[…]

The making of a detransitioner
Elisa Rae Shupe was a weapon in the hands of TERFs and Christian conservatives. Now, over 2,600 pages of leaked emails help tell her story

By Jude Ellison S. Doyle • March 15, 2023 2:13 pm EDT

On Wednesday, March 8, Mother Jones broke the news of a secret working group that had collaborated to craft anti-trans legislation targeting youth healthcare and spread it to multiple states. The existence of that group—which included numerous elected officials, members of Christian conservative policy groups such as the Family Policy Alliance and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and representatives from anti-trans “feminist” group Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), among others—proved that the current onslaught of anti-trans legislation was the result of a coordinated campaign. Within hours of the Mother Jones story publishing, a 2,600-page PDF archive of the leaks was posted online.

That archive is substantial, and it is damning. But the public leaks are not the whole story. When the archive was posted, I had already been reading through the leaked emails for several days. The leaker, a trans woman and former “detransition” activist named Elisa Rae Shupe, had reached out to me to offer access, and I had come away with a whole other story.

The full archive—sent to me, and other journalists—contains every email Shupe sent or received, from both of her two email accounts, between 2017 and 2023, the years when she was most active as a member of the organized anti-trans movement. There are years of media, legislative and tactical strategy outlined in those emails; there are conversations in which some of the most well-known TERFs in the movement coordinate strategy and brainstorm talking points. It is a playbook for how anti-trans organizations operate and a compressed history of how the TERF movement joined forces with the Christian right to create the current moment.

Most important, it is a record of how Elisa Rae Shupe was crafted into a weapon; how her narrative was established, edited and eventually taken out of her control, even as her name appeared on testimonies, Supreme Court briefings and highly circulated op-eds. This is the making of a “detransitioner.” More like her are being made every day.

Amateur: Transitioning Is Not as Simple as "Before" and "After" Photos Show
Why narratives that frame transition as a linear process with a “beginning” and “end” are failing us.

BY THOMAS PAGE MCBEE

A secret: Sometimes, I look in the mirror — still — and see a stranger.

I’m not supposed to feel anything but joy when I look at my reflection. I mean, I’ve been on testosterone for seven years. For the 30 years before I started hormones, that same dissonant feeling — perhaps best soundtracked by the famous Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime” (And you may ask yourself, well / How did I get here?) — dogged me daily, the volume increasing until I finally made the decision to transition. My “before” body melded into this “after” one. Don’t get me wrong — when I catch the bearded guy in the mirror now, I mostly feel clearer, calmer, more familiar. But sometimes, especially after a hard day — a misunderstanding with my wife, maybe, or jangled tension with some guy on the subway platform — I see myself and think, “Who the fuck is this dude staring back at me?” That wondering used to scare me. It doesn’t anymore.

I share this because I’ve begun to question where I first thought to frame my trans body in these neat terms of “before” and “after” in the first place. It’s not that I catch myself looking back and expect or want to see the “before.” It’s just that thinking of myself in terms of “after” sometimes obscures the whole story. This passing — as a cis man, a man who had a boyhood, a man others can stereotype and make snap judgements about — hasn’t ever felt quite right, either. Despite my hard-won muscle definition and lower voice, the best way for me to quiet my own clanging dissonance has always been to see myself as a sum of the lives I’ve lived, not a man divorced from my past. I’ve never been good about fitting into boxes; not when I was a masculine teen slinking around in backwards baseball caps, and not now either.

The notion that there even is an “after” to my transition — that I’ve completed some great journey in the years since I began injecting testosterone — feels like someone else’s narrative. I’ve come to see it as a shortcut, a story about my body to make other people feel more comfortable with it, and sometimes maybe myself, too. How nice to think that transitions have a definitive ending and not face the scarier truth, regardless of gender: that life is nothing if not a series of transitions — births and deaths and breakups and new loves and new jobs and cross-country moves — with new parts of ourselves illuminated and integrated along the way. If anything, those small moments of calm between transitions are the exceptions. They’re certainly not the destination.

We know this in other contexts, of course. Mothers who give birth do not leave motherhood when their children arrive; they enter a new, messier phase of it. Voting does not make one an adult, sadly. When people who are well over the age of 18 claim to be “adulting,” they are slyly acknowledging that adulthood is a state one occupies gradually, and in a way that sometimes takes us by surprise.

[…]

Arkansas GOP Is Making Headway Toward Criminalizing Trans People Just Trying To Use a Bathroom

By Cammy PedrojaMar 10th, 2023, 1:55 pm

Arkansas GOP state senators, I have a question for you: who hurt you to make you this hateful? Republican-led states all across the U.S. have been joining together in a concerted effort to make life harder for transgender people. These bills have attacked trans people’s access to things like medical care, sports teams, and simply going to work and school. There have been lots of efforts at every level to try to prevent trans people from going to the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity. But Arkansas’ latest anti-trans bill, which passed its first round of voting in the state senate this week, goes so far as to actually criminalize going to the bathroom for trans people.

The evil twist of this so-called bathroom bill is that its sponsors have framed it as an amendment to existing laws regarding “the criminal offense of sexual indecency with a child.” So what the bill would do is make a trans person guilty of sexual indecency with a child if the trans person simply goes in their chosen public bathroom or locker room, and a person under 18 is in there too. The trans person doesn’t need to actually do anything indecent to be charged. They just need to exist in a bathroom with a minor and bam! They’re guilty of sexual indecency with a child. WTF.

“It’s not going to stop transgender people from going to the bathroom,” GOP State Senator John Payton argued before the vote, adding he was “just asking that they don’t expose my kids and grandkids and your kids and grandkids to it because we’re trying to teach them a different standard.” First of all, I don’t see any evidence it’s not going to stop trans people from going to the bathroom because every time they do, they’ll either be dangerously close to being accused of a crime or possibly dangerously close to being the victim of one if they go in the bathroom opposite their gender identity.

[…]

But I think that there’s also something more going on here. As I mentioned in my companion essay, members of dominant/majority groups (in this case, cisgender people) tend to view stigmatized minorities as “contaminated” and capable of “corrupting” supposedly “pure” ingroup members. This unconscious “contamination” mindset drives fears that marginalized groups may be contagious (e.g., “turning people gay,” “transgender social contagion”) as well as sexually corrupting (e.g., “sexual deceivers,” “restroom predators,” “groomers”). [I discuss this mindset in more depth in this essay and in Chapters 7 & 8 of my book Sexed Up.]

The greater the disparity one can create between the supposedly “contaminated, corrupting, dangerous outgroup” and the “pure, innocent, vulnerable ingroup,” the more atrocious the imagined threat will seem. This is why moral panics (including this latest anti-trans rendition) are almost always centered on “protecting women and children,” especially those who are white, middle-class, and otherwise unmarked (read: “uncontaminated” and therefore “pure”).

Anti-trans campaigners have increasingly played into this mindset by portraying trans activists as “adult males” who supposedly “prey” (whether ideologically or sexually) on innocent and vulnerable “young girls.” Depicting said “girls” as mentally incompetent (due to supposed feminine fragility, neurodivergence, mental health issues, etc.) serves to further amplify their imagined innocence and vulnerability.

Perhaps the best illustration of this mindset can be found in Abigail Shrier’s recent book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The book focuses almost exclusively on how “social contagion” is ravaging “our girls,” with a brief diversion (via interviews with Ray Blanchard and J. Michael Bailey) to depict trans adults as “sexually deviant men.” While the book doesn’t explicitly discuss “grooming,” it’s suggested in the subtitle (“seducing our daughters”) along with the phrase “transgender craze” (implying that these kids’ trans identities are caused or enabled by mental illness). Oh, did I mention that the cover image is a cartoon of a young girl with a hole cut out where her reproductive parts would be (read: she has been “defiled”).

[…]