Anti-Trans Laws, the UN Genocide Convention and the Legal Calculation of Acceptable Suicide Rates

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Jason Rafferty, Committee on the Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, Committee on Adolescence, Section on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health and Wellness, Michael Yogman, Rebecca Baum, Thresia B. Gambon, Arthur Lavin, Gerri Mattson, Lawrence Sagin Wissow, Cora Breuner, Elizabeth M. Alderman, Laura K. Grubb, Makia E. Powers, Krishna Upadhya, Stephenie B. Wallace, Lynn Hunt, Anne Teresa Gearhart, Christopher Harris, Kathryn Melland Lowe, Chadwick Taylor Rodgers, and Ilana Michelle Sherer, “Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents,” American Academy of Pediatrics 142, no. 4 (2018): e20182162. The Academy reaffirmed this policy statement in August 2023. See also World Professional Association for Transgender Health, “Position Statement on Medical Necessity of Treatment, Sex Reassignment, and Insurance Coverage in the U.S.,” WPATH.org. Last modified December 21, 2016; American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “Statement Responding to Efforts to Ban Evidence-Based Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth,” AACAP.org. Last modified November 8, 2019.

2. Trans Legislation Tracker, 2023 Anti-Trans Bills. https://translegislation.com/. Last accessed October 18, 2023. See also Track Trans Legislation, 2023 Anti-Trans Bills. https://www.tracktranslegislation.com/. Last accessed October 18, 2023.

3. Alejandra Carballo [@Esqueer_], “The bill goes even further to violate interstate comity by authorizing the courts to vacate child custody determinations of other courts only if the child is trans. This is a greenlight to transphobic family members to engage in state sponsored kidnapping,” X, March 3, 2023. https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1631736818873016320?s=20

4. Thalia Beaty, Brendan Farrington, and Hannah Schoenbaum, “Transgender Adults in Florida Are Blindsided That a New Law Also Limits Their Access to Health Care,” AP Last modified June 4, 2023; Erin Reed, “Trans Patients Being Dropped As Florida Law Bans ‘Up to 80%’ of Adult Gender Affirming Care,” Erin in the Morning. Last modified May 11, 2023.

5. Paul J. Weber and Acacia Coronado, “Texas Supreme Court to Allow State to Investigate Trans Youth Parents.” PBS, May 13, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/texas-supreme-court-to-allow-state-to-investigate-trans-youth-parents

6. United Nations, General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ratified December 9, 1948.

7. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, transl. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, transl. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990); Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76, transl. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003).

8. Agamben, Homo Sacer.

9. Grace Kyungwon Hong, “Existentially Surplus: Women of Color Feminism and the New Crises of Capitalism,” GLQ 18, no. 1 (2012): 87–106.

10. The Trevor Project, 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health (West Hollywood, CA: The Trevor Project, 2022), 5. In Georgia, these rates are 55 and 16 percent, respectively; see The Trevor Project, 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health by State (West Hollywood, CA: The Trevor Project, 2022), 57.

11. Shosana Goldberg, Fair Play: The Importance of Sports Participation for Transgender Youth (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2021), 6. A 2015 study in Canada found that 37 percent of transgender youth ages 14 to 18 attempted suicide in the previous year, although this appears to have declined by 2019. Jaimie Veale, Elizabeth M. Saewyc, Hélène Frohard-Dourlent, Sarah Dobson, Beth Clark, and the Canadian Trans Youth Health Survey Research Group, Being Safe, Being Me: Results of the Canadian Trans Youth Health Survey (Vancouver: Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, School of Nursing, University of British Columbia, 2015), 42. Ashley B. Taylor, Ace Chan, Stephanie Hall, Elizabeth M. Saewyc, and the Canadian Trans & Non-binary Youth Health Survey Research Group, Being Safe, Being Me 2019: Results of the Canadian Trans and Non-binary Youth Health Survey (Vancouver: Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, University of British Columbia, 2020), 44.

12. The Trevor Project, 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health by State, 58. The Trevor Project; 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 11.

13. Sandy E. James, Jody L. Herman, Susan Rankin, Mara Keisling, Lisa Mottet, and Ma’ayan Anafi, The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality, 2016), 112. A second study arrived at a similar figure of 42 percent lifetime suicide attempt rate; see Ilan H. Meyer, Bianca D. M. Wilson, and Kathryn K. O’Neill, LGBTQ People in the U.S.: Select Findings from the Generations and TransPop Studies (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA School of Law, Williams Institute, 2021), 31–32.

14. Ashley Austin, Shelly L. Craig, Sandra D/Souza, and Lauren B McInroy, “Suicidality among Transgender Youth: Elucidating the Role of Interpersonal Risk Factors,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37, no. 5–6 (2022): NP2696–NP2718.

15. Jaime M. Grant, Lisa A. Mottet, Justin Tanis, Jack Harrison, Jody L. Herman, and Mara Keisling, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011), 3.

16. Lambda Legal, When Health Care Isn’t Caring: Lambda Legal’s Survey of Discrimination against LGBT People and People with HIV (New York: Lambda Legal, 2010), 10–11. https://legacy.lambdalegal.org/sites/default/files/publications/downloads/whcic-report_when-health-care-isnt-caring_1.pdf

17. Caroline Medina, Thee Santos, Lindsay Mahowald, and Sharita Gruberg, Protecting and Advancing Health Care for Transgender Adult Communities (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2021), 17.

18. Greta R. Bauer, Ayden I. Scheim, Jake Pyne, Robb Travers, and Rebecca Hammond, “Intervenable Factors Associated with Suicide Risk in Transgender Persons: A Respondent Driven Sampling Study in Ontario, Canada,” BMC Public Health 15 (2015): 525; Amy E. Green, Honah P. DeChants, Myeshia N. Price, and Carrie K. Davis, “Association of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy with Depression, Thoughts of Suicide, and Attempted Suicide among Transgender and Nonbinary Youth,” Journal of Adolescent Health 70, no. 4 (2022): 643–649; The Trevor Project, The Trevor Project Research Brief: Gender-Affirming Care for Youth (West Hollywood, CA: The Trevor Project, 2020).

19. Diana M. Tordoff, Jonathon W. Wanta, Arin Collin, Cesalie Stepney, David J. Inwards-Breland, and Kym Ahrens, “Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care,” JAMA Network Open 5, no. 2 (2022): e220978.

20. James et al., The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 101–103.

21. Medina et al., Protecting and Advancing Health Care, 17.

22. Florence Ashley, “The Clinical Irrelevance of ‘Desistance’ Research for Transgender and Gender Creative Youth,” Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 9, no. 4 (2022): 387–397.

23. Ana Wilson, Sean M. Ronnekliev-Kelly, and Timothy M. Pawlik, “Regret in Surgical Decision Making: A Systematic Review of Patient and Physician Perspectives.” World Journal of Surgery 41, no. 6 (2017): 1454–1465.

24. Valeria P. Bustos, Samyd S. Bustos, Andres Mascaro, Gabriel Del Corral, Antonio J. Forte, Pedro Ciudad, Esther A. Kim, Howard N. Langstein, and Oscar J. Manrique, “Regret after Gender-Affirmation Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Prevalence,” Plastic and Reconstruction Surgery Global Open 9, no. 3 (2021): e3477.

25. Jack L. Turban, Stephanie S. Loo, Anthony N. Almazan, and Alex S. Keuroghlian, “Factors Leading to ‘Detransition’ among Transgender and Gender Diverse People in the United States, A Mixed-Methods Analysis,” LGBT Health 8, no. 4 (2021): 273–280.

26. Turban et al., “Factors Leading to ‘Detransition’,” 273.

27. Rowan Hildebrand-Chupp, “More Than; Canaries in the Gender Coal Mine;: A Transfeminist Approach to Research on Detransition,” The Sociological Review 68, no. 4 (2020): 800–816.

28. Jack L. Turban and Alex S. Keuroghlian, “Dynamic Gender Presentations: Understanding Transition and ‘De-Transition’ among Transgender Youth,” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 57, no. 7 (2018): 451–453.

29. In contrast, transgender communities have specialized language for talking about these things. Some people “socially transition,” meaning they start presenting as a different gender in some or all aspects of their lives. However, some transgender people do not socially transition. Some transgender people “medically transition,” meaning they seek medical procedures. But again, many transgender people do not medically transition. After several years of HRT, some people who medically transition undergo surgical procedures. These procedures may not target the genitals or secondary sexual characteristics but the face, hips, legs, etc. Many transgender people never seek out sex reassignment (SRS) or “bottom” surgery, even among those who do undergo surgical procedures such as facial feminization surgery. And even within SRS, there are many different kinds, some of which are not meant to create “binary looking” parts at all. Transition is more of a smorgasbord than a standardized, “one size fits all” process. See James et al., The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 101.

30. Ashley, “The Clinical Irrelevance of ‘Desistance’ Research.”

31. Human Rights Watch and InterACT, “I Want to Be Like Nature Made Me”: Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the U.S. (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2017). https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/lgbtintersex0717_web_0.pdf; Marcus de María Arana, A Human Rights Investigation into the Medical “Normalization” of Intersex People (San Francisco, CA: Human Rights Commission of the City and County of San Francisco, 2005); Juan E. Méndez, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment (Geneva: United Nations Human Rights Council, 2013), 18–19, 23.

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Notes on contributors

L. June Bloch

L. June Bloch is visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia; a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant; and a non-binary, transfeminine multimedia artist. Their doctoral research investigates ancestral Native American landscapes in Southeastern North America through the perspectives of living Indigenous ways of knowing and being in place. A second project investigates environmental justice, abolitionism and Indigenous relationships to land in the Atlanta-based #StopCopCity movement.