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Thoughts and notes on genAI in ed: risks, ethics, pedagogy

link to original document with leftnavbar for headings is here

What the science says about trans kids and medical care

In 2022, I wrote this piece [Wayback link here] about what the science says about gender-affirming care for children. It also covered why the attack on trans people is a red flag for fascism. 

Since then, a UK report was published that elided some of these facts. A particular US outlet known for devoting an enormous amount of eyeball real estate to "just asking questions" about gender-affirming care, breathlessly and gullibly covered this report and published seemingly countless ignorant opinion columns on the subject, some of them so egregiously slanted that they were lying both figuratively and literally.

In 2023, Utah's GOP banned pediatric gender-affirming care (for trans children only, of course, not other children) and commissioned a sweeping investigation of outcomes of this care in the pediatric transgender population. Here in 2025 is what the study authors found after their detailed analyses of every available study (which you can read in their 1000-page report posted here): 

"Based on the reviewed evidence included in this report, it is our expert opinion that policies to prevent access to and use of GAHT for treatment of GD in pediatric patients cannot be justified based on the quantity or quality of medical science findings or concerns about potential regret in the future, and that high-quality guidelines are available to guide qualified providers in treating pediatric patients who meet diagnostic criteria." 

Of course, the very people who commissioned it, Utah's GOP electeds, are trying to reject its findings. 

These findings, by the way, are not new. They are in consensus with every major medical specialty organization in this country, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society. I knew this already, as well, having gone through the evidence and written in-depth about it. 

The evidence, whether back in 2022 or today, clearly shows that post-transition regret is extremely rare and usually attributable to social factors (bullying for being trans, etc.) and not the transition experience itself, that harms are by far greater if gender-affirming care is withheld, and that no one is "mutilating genitalia" in the pediatric population (or any population, as these surgeries are not "mutilations" but extremely careful, delicate, specialist-requiring reconstructions; however, specifically, such reconstructive "bottom" surgeries are not performed in the pediatric transgender population for affirmation reasons). Gender affirmation, whether a child is cis or trans or nonbinary, overwhelmingly yields benefits and saves lives.

And here's what I wrote in 2022 about how fascists leverage attacks on trans people to stress test how far their countrypeople will let them go:

These patterns, along with the loud anti-trans drumbeats in countries like Hungary and in the U.K., exemplify a “loose alignment in the rise of far-right governments with the rise of these policies,” said [attorney Chase] Strangio [then deputy director for trans justice with the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ and HIV Project]. “There are different strains of far-right government, but all of them have this orientation toward an anti-trans discourse and rhetoric.” The purpose, said Strangio, is to use scapegoating and narratives of fear to consolidate the power of their base.

These red flags are flying all over our country now. Standing up for trans people is standing up for all of us and against these deliberate lies about the evidence.