GLAAD Fact Checks Popular Anti-Trans Tropes
Leading Off: GLAAD releases a fact check overview of anti-trans ideas, Texas continues its efforts to ban trans people from the correct bathrooms, and youth gender clinics close across the nation. Our top story lines to start the week.
by Assigned Media
Last week, in an effort to combat misinformation inundating the conversation around transgender people, GLAAD released an overview, fact checking the common ways anti-trans folks demonize us. Covering topics like transvestigations, trans people in sports, and grooming allegations; this piece gives good overviews and links further reading for each topic.
A statement on the release said in part, “As the White House, conservative political leaders, and others continue to generate intentional malicious mischaracterizations of transgender people and their lives and issues, it's vitally important to understand how such rhetoric deliberately misleads and perpetuates inaccurate and dehumanizing perceptions.”
For people broadly supportive of queer and transgender people but not necessarily well informed on the breadth of falsehoods used to attack us, this resource can be invaluable, offering a concise landing page to explore these various concepts. It also provides an easy place for journalists covering these topics to inform themselves of the facts rather than falling for right-wing narratives.
Media Matters LGBTQ Program Director Ari Drennen praised the piece in a statement, saying, “Right now, we’re witnessing an all‑out assault on the right of trans people to live openly in our society. This fact‑check lays out the full range of inflammatory, misleading tropes that fuel that assault, and it’s an essential tool for any journalist committed to covering our community fairly and truthfully.”
Two newly filed bills restricting access to restrooms for transgender people have been introduced to the Texas legislature for an ongoing special session. Senate Bill 7 and House Bill 32 are two identical bills introduced to the Texas Senate and House respectively.
These bills would restrict transgender peoples’ access to gender divided spaces such as bathrooms in government buildings, schools, and universities,with access determined solely by the gender listed on a person’s birth certificate. The same restrictions would apply to women’s violence shelters as well as jails and prisons.
Efforts to ban trans people from bathrooms in Texas has been an ongoing crusade of conservative Texas leaders and lawmakers that they have tried and failed to implement since 2017.
Youth gender clinics across the country are ending or limiting services as a result of the Trump administration’s continued misuse of the law to harass those providing treatments that do not accord with conservative ideology.
The trend of clinic closures in blue states was covered by the New York Times last week. Many in the trans community consider NYT, which has been repeatedly cited by conservative activists and pressure groups, responsible for the misinformation that has enabled the loss of appropriate medical care for so many children.
Journalists for Assigned Media have been investigating clinic closures and reductions in services in Connecticut and California, and the response of providers and patients. Check back tomorrow for a pair of stories detailing closures on opposite coasts of the nation.
Assigned Media is your transgender news source.