State Rep. Cyndy Jacobsen’s House Bill 1038 to ban gender-affirming care for kids and House Bill 1027 to keep trans inmates convicted of a sex offenses out of gender-affirming housing, will die on the vine, just like they did last year.
As I wrote in this grave-dancing report in February, a “Don’t Say Gay” copycat from State Sen. Phil Fortunato and State Sen. Mike Padden’s bill to force deadnaming in schools—inspired by the lovely folks at the anti-LGBTQ Heritage Foundation—didn’t even get Senate hearings. Neither did three House bills, including “The Protecting Children’s Bodies Act,” banning gender-affirming procedures and punishing doctors who performed them, and two Jacobsen-sponsored bills (HB 2241 and HB 1233) that were identical to the two she pre-filed this Tuesday and Wednesday.
Third time’s the charmless? With that flawless record, it’s likely that every lawmaker in the Legislature knows that these bills will not become law. But they will rile up the conservative base, and keep the conversation alive and draw new converts.
House Bill 1038
HB 1038 prohibits puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries for minors, while still allowing doctors to perform the same treatments on intersex children with “medically verifiable disorders of sex development” born with bodies that are not conventionally male or female.
For the umpteenth time—the requisite paragraph—this evidence-based care is not fringe or experimental medicine. It’s supported by every major medical organization in the United States for its documented benefits for a child’s overall health and well-being and doctors who know more than you and me.
Moreover, it may seem counterintuitive, but banning gender-affirming care for trans kids and allowing doctors to perform the same procedures on intersex children to “fix” a person’s gender serves the same goals of restricting bodily autonomy, and normalizing gender as much as possible, regardless of a person’s feelings on the matter or the consequences. Even the meaning of “irreversible changes” depends on how or why a drug or a knife alters the human body. So do the rights of parents, apparently, as gender-affirming care for youth generally does not exist in Washington without the consent of a legal parent or guardian.
Like gender, sex lies on a biological spectrum, and while intersex people are common as redheads, making up about 1.7% of the population, many conditions are invisible even to people born with them. Someone can go a whole life without themselves or anyone else knowing that chromosomally, they are not strictly male or female, or that an intersexual difference explains that persistent hormonal imbalance. It’s not uncommon for intersex people to identify as trans or nonbinary if they don’t identify with the gender they were raised as, but it’s not a given. They’re distinct identities and experiences.
A smaller number are born with genitalia that aren’t conventionally male or female, either. Historically, doctors have convinced parents that to dodge a life of stigma, they should surgically “correct” children so young they couldn’t possibly know or consent to what’s being done to them. Doctors have also lied to teens and young adults about the medical necessity of these treatments. In 2017, Human Rights Watch published a report on the irreversible damage and trauma from intersex surgeries in the US. “The results are often catastrophic, the supposed benefits are largely unproven, and there are generally no urgent health considerations at stake.”
In the past decade or so, intersex activists have successfully pushed doctors and hospitals to leave these decisions to intersex people themselves, and to stop performing unnecessary procedures. In 2017, the American Academy of Family Physicians condemned such procedures, and in 2020, Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago became the first to publicly apologize for harming intersex people.
Doctors can responsibly, and consensually, provide hormones and perform surgery on intersex people, sometimes for medically necessary reasons. Jacobsen’s bill does not make that distinction, and that’s common in bans on gender-affirming care for youth.
House Bill 1027
HB 1027 bans the Washington Department of Corrections from placing trans inmates in gender-affirming housing if they’ve been convicted of a sex offense against someone of the same gender. So trans women who’ve sexually assaulted cis women would be kept in men’s prisons, and trans men who’ve sexually assaulted cis men would be put into women’s prisons.
Last year, Rep. Jacobsen told conservative radio host Jason Rantz that her bill protects women and people who’ve committed sex crimes, and doesn’t “reference anyone, transgender anything,” but the law couldn’t apply to anyone else.
People who’ve committed sex crimes sometimes go to state prison. But states don’t assign women into men’s prisons, and men in women’s prisons, if they’ve sexually assaulted someone of the same gender as a preventative measure. That would be ridiculous. Then the only way to interpret the bill is it views trans women as men and trans men as women, and puts them right where they belong by applying a new standard to trans people over “reasonable safety concerns,” which everyone knows is shorthand for penis and a record. Obviously, trans women can have vaginas, but they too would be sent to a men’s prison if they’d been convicted of a sex crime. Sex crimes are just what this bill would likely facilitate, rather than prevent.
Outside of prison, trans people are four times more likely to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault and aggravated assault, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. That trend is worse inside. The 2015 National Inmate Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics found trans inmates were nine times more likely to be sexually harassed and assaulted within a year of their arrival. Thirty-five percent of trans people in prison and 34 percent in jails were sexually assaulted by staff or inmates. The 2015 US Trans Survey, the largest dataset on trans people in the US currently available, found trans inmates were five times more likely to be assaulted by facility staff than the average prisoner and over nine times more likely to be sexually assaulted by other inmates. While the US Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that failing to protect trans people in custody is unconstitutional, it’s still common practice to jail trans women with men and trans men with women.
Americans value the innocents. We don’t care much for the rights of criminals. If we did, I don’t think we’d lock up a fourth of the world’s incarcerated people, or feel content disenfranchising them or exploiting their labor in prison. But guilt is not an excuse to make someone suffer.
Working the Base
Rep. Jacobsen likely knows her bills aren’t going anywhere. She did not respond to a request for comment, but when she introduced her gender-affirming last year, she said in a press release that her bill would start a conversation, hearing or no hearing.
It usually does. Any bill to restrict the rights of trans people generates buzz on local conservative media about out of control wokeness, and the lack of common sense from Democrats running Washington State like an insane asylum. Or something like that. It’s a great distraction from the issues that affect people in this state at the expense of a tiny minority.
It seems that many governments around the world are starting to address the concerns regarding using puberty blockers on children. It’s good that Washington state is also having that conversation–as opposed to making political like The Stranger does to everything. These children need the best care possible–not political divisiveness from The Stranger
The Labor government in the UK banned puberty blockers for children as part of a series of decisions stemming from concerns over the use of these medications in treating gender dysphoria among minors. Their decision was influenced by several factors, one being safety.
Safety Concerns: There have been growing concerns about the long-term health effects of puberty blockers, especially regarding their impact on bone density, fertility, and overall development.
The ban and restrictions on puberty blockers for children in the UK stem from concerns about the safety, long-term consequences, and the capacity of minors to fully understand the risks of such treatments. These actions have been part of a broader reassessment of how best to treat gender dysphoria in minors.
Please consider the children over pushing political doctrine.
@1: Points well taken
Also laws to protect populations within prisons from people convicted of assault seems reasonable.
On the other hand, a gay male prisoner convicted of assaulting men and boy is put in a men’s prison. So segregating based on the gender of the assaulter’s desire seems futile in the prison system.
Christmas presents are always appreciated, however wouldn’t it be more appropriate to call it a “holiday” present, just to be inclusive?