I've written a lot about how demeaning and demoralizing it is to have to defend my existence as a trans woman against nazi conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and dehumanizing medicalization arguments in the broader discourse of a public that often doesn't know very much about trans people, but should by now be aware that the "side" in the "trans debate" that's full of nazi abuser fundamentalists does not give a fuck about science or "the children" and they just hate queer people for existing. I'm also leery about the way stories like this one can function to make trans existence merely a pleasant schadenfreude moment for a liberal establishment that has by and large, done little to protect trans people from an active anti-trans pogrom.

With all that noted however, there clearly are still a lot of people swayed by scientific-sounding anti-trans propaganda, so let's take a look at how that worked out when Utah Republicans commissioned an independent study on trans youth care to justify their already ongoing anti-trans legislation.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/utah-transgender-youth-affirming-care-ban/

Utah Study on Trans Youth Care Extremely Inconvenient for Politicians Who Ordered It

"Now, more than two years later, that review is here, and its conclusions unambiguously support gender-affirming medical care for trans youth. “The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data” on gender-affirming pediatric care, the authors wrote. “However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have lead us to the opposite conclusion.”

The medical evidence review, published on Wednesday, was compiled over a two-year period by the Drug Regimen Review Center at the University of Utah. Unlike the federal government’s recent report on the same subject, which was produced in three months and criticized gender-affirming pediatric treatments, the names of the Utah report’s contributors are actually disclosed on the more than thousand-page document."

Look, if libs want to snark about the dripping GOP hypocrisy exposed by this story, who am I to stop them? As a trans woman however, I need folks to *also* understand the broader context this story is occurring in and what it means about the entire anti-trans pogrom being conducted all over the United States and much of the Pig Empire. The study conduced by the Drug Regimen Review Center at the University of Utah was completely unambiguous. There's actually a lot of peer-reviewed scientific literature about youth gender affirming care, the medical outcomes of that care are overwhelmingly positive, and receiving gender affirming care at an earlier age actively reduces mental health issues and risk of suicide among the trans population. So the medically documented truth is quite literally the exact fucking opposite of the arguments Utah Republicans used to block youth gender affirming care, including medically reversible puberty blockers.

Furthermore, this story does not exist in a vacuum. Time and time again the supposed "scientific" or "medical" arguments presented to justify denying gender affirming care for trans people, youth or otherwise, do not survive the barest degree of qualified scrutiny and directly contradicts the actual medical and scientific research about trans people. The studies anti-trans bigots present are doctored, do not survive peer review, must frequently be retracted, or like the UK's Cass Review and America's HHS Review On Trans Care are purely political documents rejected by scientific, medical, and academic authorities broadly. If the people behind the anti-trans pogrom do actually allow an independent study to be commissioned, as in this case, it too invariably rejects the bigoted nonsense and pseudoscientific arguments that buttress anti-trans laws.

Despite this, the broader US establishment continues to accept the arguments of clearly deceptive, openly bigoted anti-trans activists and politicians at face value, as if despite all their previously exposed lies, the bigots might this time have some factual basis for their arguments against trans existence. Just a couple weeks ago the Washington Post editorial board published an op-ed that more or less endorsed crackpot RJK Jr's trans care review even though it's been broadly rejected by virtually every medical body that knows anything about trans people, and the goddamn report advocates for fucking conversion therapy rather than gender affirming care to treat gender dysphoria. All of which is occurring against a backdrop of Democrats blaming trans people for their election loss, refusing to effectively oppose the GOP's anti-trans pogrom, and periodically even lending ideological support to that pogrom.

So by all means, have a chuckle at Utah Republican's expense; but I am begging you not to forget what this report proves about trans youth and trans existence in general, the next time some fundie fascist tells you trans people existing is a danger to children and broader American society.

As more information leaks out about how objectively horrifying the Big Billionaire Bill the GOP is ramming into law and hoping nobody notices it will kill their own voters actually is, it's becoming clear that the Act is also a way to prosecute the Trump regime's eliminationist agenda at the same time. We've already uncovered a GOP plot to defang judicial oversight over Trump's illegal and unconstitutional mass deportation campaign, and now observers have exposed another last minute change that would deny gender affirming care to, and likely cause the forced detransition of, hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans.

https://theintercept.com/2025/05/22/big-beautiful-bill-trans-medicaid-healthcare-minors-adults/

Republicans Launch Midnight Attack on Health Care Access for Trans Americans

"Late Wednesday, Congressional Republicans amended the bill to prohibit the use of Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care, potentially ripping healthcare access away from hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans.

An earlier version of the legislation targeted Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care for minors. In a midnight-hour maneuver, Republicans removed the word “minors” from that provision, prohibiting the use of Medicaid funding for “gender-transition procedures” for children as well as adults.

The legislation broadly defines “gender-transition procedures” as everything from surgery to hormone therapy. It needs only a simple majority to pass the Senate.

Experts on transgender health care said that if this provision advances, it could make an already-dire landscape for transgender care significantly worse. They described devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans who rely on Medicaid that will be further compounded by the roughly $700 billion in cuts to the health program in the GOP bill."

For the past three years, and in response to a dangerous shift in rhetoric and tactics by the fascist Pig Empire right, I've been trying to explain to cis het people that Trump and the GOP's anti-trans policies are unquestionably part of a larger anti-trans pogrom designed to eliminate or otherwise end by any means possible, the existence of trans people in America. The accuracy of that analysis was demonstrated on day 1 of Downmarket Mussolini's second term as President when Der Leader issued an executive order declaring there were only two legally recognized "biological sexes" in America; thereby decreeing that trans people effectively don't exist. This should have been a massive wake up call for cis people who don't want tens of thousands of dead trans people, particularly trans women, on their hands, because historically when a state says that you do not exist, it's because they mean to make it so.

Unfortunately, this warning, which was also supported by multiple leaked GOP and far right strategy sessions in which elected Republican politicians and think tank minions openly admitted their ultimate goal is ending trans care in American entirely, and Donald Trump's repeated public campaign promises to do the same, has largely gone unheeded; particularly by a Democrat establishment much more interested in blaming Harris's 2024 US election loss on her utterly nonexistent defense of trans rights. Well folks, we're here in the exact place I always told you would be arrive at, and my only question is "what now, wise centrists?"

The fact is this article doesn't even come close to properly articulating what a horrifying development this is for both trans people, and anyone who doesn't want to live under a fascist dictatorship where a reality TV show nazi President gets to decide who has a right to merely exist. The Republican Party knows full well that the US Constitution and international human rights law will make it extremely difficult to just round up trans people in concentration camps to force detransition them and start murdering folks, so they've settled on a subtler but no less homicidal strategy. The fascist right is thus working to eliminate gender affirming care for trans people entirely, while threatening anyone who employs or financially supports trans people to drive us out of the work force. These guys know all about the mental health problems and suicide rate increases brought on by untreated gender dysphoria, community isolation, and poverty; in fact, they're counting on it to allow them to wipe out trans people without getting any blood directly on their hands as they let "nature take its course."

Of course, I expect this warning to once again fall on the deaf ears of Very Serious People TM in the American liberal establishment, where transphobia runs almost as rampant as it does inside GOP war rooms. Who cares if labor class trans people die without gender affirming care when the point here is to signal to suburban white crackers who will never vote for you that you're just as anti-trans as the Pork Reich, right?