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Fact-check: About Socialstyrelsen’s Decision and Trans Care in Sweden

By Anonymous

Editor note: This submission is from a Swedish-French comrade who wishes to remain anonymous. In an effort to combat the prolific disinformation circulating about Sweden’s trans health care system and the decisions from Socialstyrelsen, Health Liberation Now! is hosting an English version below. It should be accurate as of 10.15.2022. We will make edits as needed should new information or corrections come up.

Author note: This was translated from a French version and may feature clunky phrasing.

Why does this document exist?

Anti-trans organisations in any given country love to argue that other countries, such as Sweden and Finland, have fully stopped (notably hormonal) transitions for youths (thereafter used to mean “under 18yo”). It’s at best an oversimplification and at worst a plain lie. Even among those who support trans people and transition access for youths, inaccurate information is often repeated and goes viral, with most of the readers unable to fact-check due to not reading Swedish or even English.

As an annoyed French-Swedish trans person tired of repeating myself, I instead wrote this to sum up what was actually decided, with cultural / administrative context and links to all the original documents (generally in Swedish).

Read More »Fact-check: About Socialstyrelsen’s Decision and Trans Care in Sweden

I Was Your Client, Not Your Debate Opponent

By Anonymous

Content notes: discussion of conversion practices targeting trans youth and young adults, childhood sexual abuse, transphobia, gaslighting and manipulation.

The following is an anonymous submission to our Can You Hear Us? project by a former client of James Cantor, the American-Canadian sexologist who has become a prolific anti-trans “expert” in American courts. We offer this story to give people an idea of what it’s really like to experience the “care” of anti-trans clinicians who are currently trying to oppose affirmation models of care.

If you need supports related to conversion practices, you can find information at Born Perfect (1-800-528-6257 (US)). Additional supports for trans and gender diverse people who are distressed or in crisis can be found at the Trevor Project (youth and young adults up to age 24, (866) 488-7386 (US)) or Trans LifeLine (adults, available in English and español, (877) 565-8860 (US) or (877) 330-6366 (CA)).

By the time I decided to go to gender exploratory therapy, I had been questioning my gender for many years. My fear, shame, and confusion had become unbearable after such a long time and I expressed to my parents that I would like professional help. They chose James Cantor as my therapist and I was grateful. I went willingly. I hoped that he would help me understand my own gender and decide whether transitioning was right for me.

Read More »I Was Your Client, Not Your Debate Opponent

Black and light grey sketch drawing of a magnifying glass, turned slightly to the left.

A Brief Commentary on Dr. Littman’s Response to Dr. Restar

By: L

Questions or comments for the author can be directed to Health Liberation Now! here.

There has been much written about Dr. Lisa Littman’s supposed identification of a “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) phenomenon and the subsequent use of the term by anti-trans groups to justify restricting access to gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents. Something which has gotten less attention is the post-correction defense that Littman published in 2020[1] of her original paper,[2] in which she responded to one particular critique made by Dr. Arjee Restar.[3] However, given that the criticisms Littman responded to in this paper overlap some with the concerns I raised in my own recently posed questions to Littman, I felt it would be helpful to highlight some points that she makes here and where they fall short. As in the questions that we sent to Littman, my analysis focuses on Littman’s interpretation and presentation of her work; the debate around its scientific merit is more or less a dead horse.

Read More »A Brief Commentary on Dr. Littman’s Response to Dr. Restar

Some Additional Questions for Dr. Lisa Littman

By: L

Questions or comments for the author can be directed to Health Liberation Now! here.

Lisa Littman is a scientist who achieved notoriety in 2018 for publishing a paper claiming to discover a phenomenon of “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) among youth, a phenomenon in which teens with no history of gender dysphoria would immediately come out as trans in adolescence.  The paper was immediately met with criticism, both within the academic community and from trans advocates.  They specifically took issue with the study’s methodology and the way it purported to identify an entire new phenomenon of adolescent onset dysphoria in spite of the scientific consensus that trans identity can become apparent at any age.[1]  Eventually, Dr. Littman published a modified version of the paper, which was more conservative in drawing conclusions and clarified that ROGD is as of now only a hypothesis.

Despite the criticisms of her work, Dr. Littman has given a number of interviews on it:

  • With Jonathan Kay, of Quillette[2]
  • With Benjamin A. Boyce, alongside Sasha Ayad[3]
  • With Julian Vigo, of Savage Minds[4]
  • With Megyn Kelly[5]
  • With Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad, of Gender: A Wider Lens[6]

Dr. Littman acknowledges the controversy, but typically presents herself as an unsuspecting victim of out-of-control woke activists, hungrily pouncing on any dissent from the One Transactivist NarrativeTM.  She has also denied any affiliation with ideologically motivated anti-trans activists, stating in one interview that “I am not a religious conservative and I am not a radical feminist”.[2]  However, all of these interviews have been uncritical of her work if not outright adulating, and have not gone into detail about the critiques that advocates had of it, nor questioned how it fits into the broader discourse on pediatric trans medical care.  Thus, in the interest of openness and discussion, below are a few additional questions specific to Dr. Littman’s research that I would be interested to hear her answers to.  Note that I will at no point here call Dr. Littman a transphobe, a fraud, or a grifter; I am merely asking questions.

Read More »Some Additional Questions for Dr. Lisa Littman

You Can’t Live Off Other People’s Good Intentions Alone

​By: Eli K., she’s in detransition

After a long and complicated gender journey, Eli started a blog on her detransition experiences in early 2020. Raising her voice as a counternarrative to the anti-trans rhetoric surrounding detransition stories, her criticism is aimed at the pathologization of transition-related healthcare needs as well as the legal situation of transgender people in Germany, where she resides. You can find her on Twitter (@shesindetrans) and Instagram (@eli_kaputniza).

What it actually was that pushed me over the edge and made me think I might go without testosterone “for a while”, “just to try”, I can’t say. The questions would just pop up in my head sometimes – eventually, I was even thinking them while being sober.

“What if? What could go wrong?”

Read More »You Can’t Live Off Other People’s Good Intentions Alone

Team America- Terf Police: a Message to US Organizers from Blood and TERF [Transcript]

Editor notes: Following is a transcript of Episode 13 of the Blood and TERF podcast (audio format) based in the UK. We have graciously received permission to host a copy of the transcript as a warning and breakdown of resistance strategy to US readers. Credit for the podcast goes to M and E, and the labor of the transcript to a third comrade working with them.

This message pairs with Harry Josephine Giles’ Medium article Trans in the UK: What the Hell Are We Going To Do?, which is referenced in the podcast. We also received permission to mirror said article in full. We remain ever grateful to our trans comrades in the UK and their efforts to outreach resisters of organized transphobia stateside. With solidarity comes strength. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

Content notes for QAnon cross-over and all of its transphobic, antisemitic, and pedophilia-obsessed nonsense. This is a connection that we have noticed as well and are in the process of writing about in more detail. There’s also references to Islamophobia. Take care of yourself accordingly as you read.

M  0:25: Britain’s fucked. Every week we get bizarre updates about the latest maneuvers in the culture war. The situation has become so bad that the state is now explicitly anti-trans on a level of policy and totally beholden to fascist reactionaries. For many liberals this was a shock, because we always see ourselves as America’s progressive cousins, where a benign liberal technocracy would legislate the LGBT movement’s ideals into reality. This hasn’t happened. The counter-campaign has totally outmaneuvered us, and the reformist option isn’t really open anymore. Many of us had seen this as a uniquely British phenomenon. The Terf Island was so isolated that it could be considered a distant nightmare.

E  1:15: However, deep down we all knew, you all knew, that it could happen there too. After all, the American right in the age of QAnon, Pizzagate, Trump, Proud Boys, and triumphalist dominionism could always be counted on to pick up any weapon it could find for fighting the class war.

Read More »Team America- Terf Police: a Message to US Organizers from Blood and TERF [Transcript]

Gender Ideology? Up Yours!

By Mallory Moore

Originally posted on Medium. Cross-posted with permission.

Editor notes: this post notes an important date correlation in the UK, namely the increase in propaganda material immediately surrounding the proposal to review the Gender Recognition Act in 2016. This pattern is also important in the US, as it overlaps with the election campaign of Donald Trump that relied heavily on rightwing media support. His campaign and eventual presidency served as a petri-dish for more cross-over between the right and left in following years.

Additionally, some links are in the process of being updated and replaced with archive links. This is due to them being broken, a desire to reduce traffic to transphobic sites, or protection against both. Any dead links that couldn’t be located will be noted.

Author note: updated 31st January 2019. Some amendments and typo fixes were made in response to feedback, where possible these have been annotated as such

I’ve been feeling recently a bit like the popular online discourse around transphobia and trans liberation is living in another world and to the extent that social media is very much still a media world that’s the truth. This was prodded most abruptly by yesterday seeing Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (I’ll call them TERFs from now on) visibly annoyed that prominent Queer Theorist, Judith Butler, had written an article for the New Statesman on Gender Ideology and hadn’t condescended to mention them even once!

This gave me some pause for thought about the last several months worth of campaigning in both legacy and social media and the gap from my experiences offline regarding the wider issue of the fight over what is being billed as “Gender Ideology” in general.

Read More »Gender Ideology? Up Yours!

Trans in the UK: What the Hell Are We Going To Do?

By Harry Josephine Giles

Originally posted on Medium. Cross-posted with permission.

In UK trans social spaces, the emotions I encounter most often are fear, uncertainty and exhaustion. I meet many trans folk stuck stewing over political defeats and obsessive media coverage. I see a physical response: a frantic hand-wave at “everything that’s going on” and a scream. That’s fucked up!

On the one hand, a lot of bad shit has happened and it is right and rational to feel miserable in the face of that, especially in times of pandemic social murder and rising fascism. On the other hand, this doesn’t have to be the only way to react. Trans social spaces and political movements can get trapped in negative reaction to all the bad stuff and then fail to campaign for and celebrate victories. The fixation with every bad thing that’s said about us and that’s done to us is a self-defeating cycle. We’re stuck always reacting, never acting, always miserable and never liberating ourselves. I saw a tweet from an American trans journalist recently that, quoting a news article about Keir Starmer on making Labour “the party of the family”, said only “Trans people in the UK are so fucked.” Believing only that, dwelling on only that, is what fucks us. We’re not fucked, we’re fucked over, and we can fucking fight back, and fight for fucking liberation.

Read More »Trans in the UK: What the Hell Are We Going To Do?