In a letter published online today, 56 of America's largest corporations tell Donald Trump not roll back legal protections for transgender people, as he is threatening to do with the midterm U.S. elections one week away. What he appears to be trying to do, of course, is far more than that. Donald Trump says he wants to be the one who determines your gender. Read the rest

Brown University researcher Lisa Littman has become the latest cause célèbre for academic freedom grifters after publishing an irresponsible article promoting "rapid-onset gender dysphoria," yet another disease model of gender identity and expression. Imagine a disease called "rapid-onset homosexuality" to understand the problem with "ROGD." Now all the usual suspects are defending her biased garbage. Read the rest

Two new laws that allow California residents to officially change their gender identification went into effect this past Labor Day weekend. Read the rest

When news that Scarlett Johansson was planning to play trans man Dante ‘Tex’ Gill in the biopic Rub & Tug, her rep's tone-deaf response launched the casting controversy into overdrive. She's now announced she exited the project. Read the rest

The slow eroding of autonomy for trans youth continues apace in Ohio, where a judge denied a legal name change to a trans teen who has taken all available social and medical steps required to do so. Read the rest

Donna Minkowitz wrote one of the most important pieces about the murder of Brandon Teena, the transgender man depicted in the film Boys Don't Cry. A quarter century later, she does what few journalists have the courage to do: she acknowledged the botched the story with biased reporting. Read the rest

How did Twitter addict Jesse Singal become the anti-transgender spokesgoblin of his generation? When a Child Says She's Trans continues his creepy fixation on gender-nonconforming minors. The "ex-trans" movement, similar to the discredited "ex-gay" movement, can always count on axe-grinding coverage that vastly over-represents their numbers and POV. Read the rest

Natalie Wynn, creator of the Contrapoints YouTube channel, is a lapsed academic well-versed in the lingo of both 4chan and Tumblr, making her the perfect person to construct an entertaining takedown of Jordan Peterson. Read the rest

Transgender model and activist Munroe Bergdorf hosts the new Channel 4 documentary What Makes a Woman? Science and society are grappling with the complex and contentious topics of sex, sexuality, and gender. New research and evidence demonstrate that simplistic binaries are more complicated than previously believed. Read the rest

Hey, remember few weeks back when The Trump Administration, with its dickery engines revved up to 126%, declared that transgendered personnel would no longer be in welcome in the United States military? One of their bullshit excuses for why this should be the case was that, apparently, transgendered individuals were bad for unit cohesion and terrible for morale. Well, the heads of all four branches of the American military have all gone out of their way, on the record, to say that this simply is not the case.

From the Military Times:

Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., as she had with the top military leaders of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps when they appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee for their budget hearings, used the opportunity to question Goldfein as to whether he was aware of any “issues of unit cohesion, disciplinary problems or issues of morale resulting from open transgender service.”

“In the last two weeks Gen. [Mark] Milley, Gen. [Robert] Neller, and Adm. [John] Richardson have told me that they have seen zero reports of issues of cohesion, discipline, morale as a result of open transgender service in their respective service branches,” Gillibrand said, referring to the chiefs of staff of the Army, Marine Corps and Navy, respectively.

Bravo Zulu.

The Military Times goes on to say that on Tuesday, the Air Force's top officer, Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein, told Congress that he hadn't heard any reports of issues in the ranks surrounding transgender personnel and, of those he spoke with, he noted a “commitment to serve by each of them.” This is a hell of a thing: four career officers at the pinnacle of their careers all going to bat for the men and women that serve under them. Read the rest

Reactionaries of every stripe have latched onto "academic freedom" for self-promotion as speakers on college campuses, but Wellesley College's Koch-funded Freedom Project came under scrutiny thanks to student activists and journalists. Now the program's head is taking a year off to teach "elsewhere." Read the rest

Because of course they do. The Republican National Committee supports Donald Trump's yet-unexecuted order to ban transgender people from military service, because the RNC says being transgender is “a disqualifying psychological and physical” condition. Read the rest

Following the move by Cindy Sherman (previously), iconic photographer Nan Goldin now has an Instagram account for her studio. Read the rest

UCLA released a study that found 796,000 California adolescents, or over one in four, self-report that peers consider them gender nonconforming. Our recruitment drive is working! Read the rest

Bob Marshall, the anti-trans bigot who just lost his delegate seat to transgender delegate-elect Danica Roem, wrote an angry letter to the Washington Post, misgendering his successor. WaPo corrected his insults, which did not sit well with him. Read the rest

Diana Tourjée spent election day with Danica Roem, the first-time politician who unseated one of the most notoriously transphobic politicians in Virginia. Watch her uplifting report. Read the rest

A federal judge in Washington D.C. blocked parts of Trump's ban on transgender military service today. This means that "openly trans troops may be able to join the military starting in 2018," according to Vox.

The decision comes after trans service members filed a lawsuit against the ban, arguing that it has “already resulted in immediate, concrete injury to Plaintiffs by unsettling and destabilizing plaintiffs’ reasonable expectation of continued service.” US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly argued that the trans service members are likely to win and stopped parts of Trump’s ban from taking effect, according to the Associated Press...

In July, Trump tweeted that he would ban trans military service. He argued, “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming … victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” (The research, based on the experiences of other countries, shows that the costs associated with trans service members are actually very small.)

Then in August, the White House put out the actual policy behind those tweets. According to the administration, Trump would effectively return to the pre-2016 era in which trans troops could not serve openly. The policy also banned the military from paying for gender-affirming surgery, with some exceptions to “protect the health” of someone who had already begun transitioning.

But today's decision doesn't undo Trump's ban on the military paying for gender-related surgery.

Image: Gage Skidmore Read the rest