Dunleavy's new low
Sorta seems like the cruelty is the point.
Happy Friday, Alaska!
In this edition: The governor’s ongoing mission to make the lives of trans youth more difficult hit a new low on Thursday when his office put out a social media post amplifying the far-right’s latest strategy to drum up fear over trans people: That being trans is made up, and that gender-affirming care is dangerous “pseudoscience.” The post also comes as a federal court upheld a stay on Idaho’s ban on trans girls playing girls’ sports, something the Dunleavy administration is pursuing through the Board of Education and a larger strategy of pure cruelty aimed at some of the state’s most vulnerable individuals. Also, the reading list and some uplifting, Alaska-based weekend watching.
Current mood: 😡
Dunleavy’s new low
If there was any lingering doubt that the rumors Gov. Mike Dunleavy would take a more moderate and less divisive approach in his second term were anything more than fluff, his latest attack on trans youth should put that to rest once and for all. In a post on Thursday, the governor took to social media to amplify the latest turn in conservative fearmongering over trans youth—the cruel claim that their existence is the result of being tricked.
In a post, the governor posed with his arm around activist Chloe Cole, a young woman who detransitioned in her teens and has since become something of an icon with conservatives seeking to outlaw gender-affirming care. In it, the governor called gender-affirming care “pseudoscience” and claimed that it has “lifelong debilitating impacts on children.”
“It was an honor to meet with Chloe Cole. Chloe had surgery performed on her and was given puberty blockers and testosterone when she was a child questioning her identity–the solution her health care professionals advised her parents to choose,” the governor said in a post to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “She came to Alaska to warn others of the dangers of falling prey to this pseudoscience that has lifelong debilitating impacts on children. She’s a brave young woman willing to share her story to help others.”
After drumming up panic over trans athletes participating in women’s sports, the far-right has turned to questioning the underlying science behind gender-affirming care. More than a dozen Republican states have enacted restrictions or outright bans on gender-affirming care, with some states passing such harsh criminal penalties that some families ultimately chose to flee. Cole has played a crucial role in that push, according to a report by The New York Times that examined the role such stories of regret have played in pushing these bans, with testimony to legislatures where “Republican lawmakers listen attentively, sometimes in tears.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who Dunleavy seems to imitate on culture war issues, even highlighted her story during his State of the State address earlier this year.
More: Florida anti-LGBTQ laws prompt families who feel unsafe to flee
But it doesn’t appear her experience represents the broader experience of people going through gender-affirming care. The New York Times story explains how difficult it is to get a precise idea of how common regret around transitioning is, but health care advocates argue that’s reason for improving, not reducing, care support:
As more American teenagers have identified as transgender, it is difficult to say how many will transition medically — many transgender people do not — and precisely how many will later change course. Methodology, demographics and even the definition of detransition vary widely from study to study, which typically show that between 2 percent and 13 percent of people detransition, and not always because of regret.
Leading medical groups in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, say transition care should be available to minors and oppose legislative bans. Many experts say policymakers should ensure access to high-quality care, including thorough individual evaluations to determine which treatments are appropriate and at what age.
…
“Why are we indicting the treatment of trans youth rather than saying: What infrastructure needs to be in place to ensure that trans kids are properly evaluated?” said Dr. Madeline Deutsch, the president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health. “This is like saying: ‘We have unlicensed drivers on the road, so we need to basically get rid of automobiles.’
In other words, gender-affirming care is more complex than what one individual’s experience can tell us and, like so much, should be left to an individual and their health providers to decide in private. Yet, people like Gov. Dunleavy and other anti-trans rights activists would hold up Cole’s story as a dire warning about what by most accounts appears to be a rare outcome in order to enact harsh, blanket bans on gender-affirming care—ignoring the testimony from individuals whose lives have been changed for the better. The New York Times interviewed several other people who have detransitioned, presenting a far more complicated picture of motivations that ranged from difficulties with the side effects of hormone treatment to harassment for presenting as trans in the South to the broad lack of care.
“I feel pretty awful that this has been turned into taking more health care away from people,” 41-year-old Carey Callahan, who detransitioned nine years ago, told the Times. “This has always been an issue of incomplete health care.”
Infringing on privacy
It’s important to note that with few exceptions, those bans on gender-affirming care passed in other states have been blocked from being enacted by the courts, who have found they likely are discriminatory and infringe on privacy in their injunctions. The same has been said about the plans of the Alaska State Board of Education—filled with Dunleavy appointees—to ban trans girls from participating in girls’ sports.
After a bill to enact a ban on trans girls in girls’ sports failed to gain traction in the Legislature, Dunleavy and his supporters turned to pushing their opposition to trans youth through other avenues like the Board of Education, which has proposed creating such a ban through regulations—essentially from thin air.
Many legal observers question whether the Board has that power and go further to say imposing and enforcing such a ban is untenable under Alaska’s constitutional right to privacy, which is one of the strongest in the nation.
And that’s not just educated guesswork.
On Thursday, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—whose jurisdiction includes Alaska—issued a ruling that continues to block Idaho’s ban on trans girls participating in girls’ sports, which is likely a preview of how the Alaska Board of Education’s ban would be handled. While it’s not the final word, the ruling raises familiar privacy and equal protection issues. It also notes that the state couldn’t even find an example of someone being harmed in any way—whether in injury or by missed opportunity—by a trans athlete’s participation.
“Because the Act subjects only women and girls who wish to participate in public school athletic competitions to an intrusive sex verification process and categorically bans transgender girls and women at all levels from competing,” the court said, “and because the State of Idaho failed to adduce any evidence demonstrating that the Act is substantially related to its asserted interests in sex equality and opportunity for women athletes, we affirm the district court’s grant of preliminary injunctive relief.”
The Board of Education tabled the regulation at its July meeting, pledging to bring it up later in the year. While members have already expressed their support for the ban through a resolution passed with no notice earlier in the year, they said they still want to give the public the impression they’re weighing the issues.
The cruelty is the point
Calling gender-affirming care “pseudoscience” falls into a message underlying much of the conservative messaging on trans issues: That being trans is made up. That trans youth are really just a bunch of boys trying to score a competitive advantage or, as many seem to suggest, worse. Much of it carries a Christian Nationalist undertone, framing the recognition of trans rights as an affront to their traditional “family values” and gender roles. In an excellent write-up of Cole’s appearance at Dartmouth, the author gets at this point, noting that Cole doesn’t believe gender dysphoria exists and that she plans to “fight against pornography and for the preservation of the roles of men and women. She explained that, in her view, modern society has conditioned men and women to assume roles for which they are not equipped.”
We’ve heard similar claims at public hearings, including from other elected officials.
These kinds of comments are particularly cold because they deny an individual’s autonomy, imposing far-right notions of what men and women should be onto people just trying to exist. And now we have a governor using his platform to tell trans Alaskans, including kids, that their lived experience is not valid but instead the product of an outlandish plot of quack medicine.
While much of this isn’t likely to go anywhere as long as the courts and the state’s constitutional right to privacy remains in place, it doesn’t erase the considerable toll that all of this has taken on trans Alaskans and their families.
“It is exhausting,” Chandra Poe, the mother of a transgender girl, told the Board of Education at its July meeting, according to the Associated Press. “And it is so, so damaging for our child to hear these persistent attacks on them by people in elected or appointed positions of leadership.”
Such marathon public testimony sessions like the one held by the Board of Education have become familiar in the Alaska Legislature, where conservative lawmakers have held repeated public hearings in hopes of showing support for their conservative agenda. Instead, they’ve been inundated by opponents who call such far-right policies harmful to the most vulnerable among us.
Poe told the Board of Education that it’s been draining and that the amount of time and energy put into “standing up for our transgender child’s basic human rights is substantial.”
That was a point echoed by Mike Garvey, the advocacy director with the ACLU of Alaska, who told the Associated Press at the time, “This is not about fairness in sports to us. This is about a broader social movement to deny the existence of transgender people and to create an environment where it’s hard for transgender people to exist alongside their peers in everyday life.”
Stay tuned.
The reading list
From the ADN opinion section: I decided to give an Alaska cruise a try. Then I got fined.
From The Alaska Current (me): Rep. Eastman attorney, John Eastman, indicted on 9 counts in Georgia election probe
From The Alaska Current (also me): Abortion pill stays legal as Dunleavy-backed lawsuit seeking to take it off the market continues
From Alaska Public: Former Abbott Loop elementary students, staff find new home at Kasuun
From Alaska Public: So far, most of Anchorage’s police technology tax levy has gone to upgrading dispatch service
Weekend watching
Pat Race, my friend and podcast co-conspirator, just finished up this excellent profile of iconic Alaska artist Duke Russell. Known as the “Duke of Spenard,” Russell does just about everything and is a reminder of the good that one dedicated and thoughtful individual can provide to their community.
Have a nice weekend, y’all.
Thank you for your fact based and cruelty free reporting revealing the unjust actions of Dunlevy and others.