Should teenage girls be forced to share locker rooms with males as they undress and shower? Should girls on overnight school trips be forced to share sleeping arrangements with males? Should schools be addressing children by names that are not theirs, and using pronouns that differ from their sex, without their parents’ knowledge or consent?
To all these questions, Arizona’s legislature answered a resounding no, only to have Governor Katie Hobbs respond with a vehement yes.
Earlier this month, Hobbs vetoed bills (S.B. 1001 and S.B. 1040) that would have protected female-only spaces in schools and required schools to get parents’ permission before addressing children experiencing gender dysphoria by different names or pronouns.
In her veto messages, Hobbs called these commonsense measures “harmful legislation directed at transgender youth,” adding, “I will veto every bill that aims to attack and harm children.”
But Hobbs has it exactly backwards. The legislation she vetoed would have protected children. It’s her policies that put them in harm’s way.
Children suffering from gender dysphoria—a feeling of discordance with one’s sexed body—deserve the same protections and dignity as everyone else. But ensuring their safety does not require eliminating female-only spaces or keeping secrets from parents about their children’s mental and emotional health — polices that are much more common than most parents realize.
According to the most recent figures from Parents Defending Education, at least 17,000 public schools nationwide serving more than 10 million students have policies that “openly state that district personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents.” Some of Arizona’s largest school districts, including Tucson Unified School District and Mesa Public Schools, have policies that by default keep parents in the dark if their children are struggling with gender-identity issues unless the child directs the school to inform the parents.
Why are schools doing this?
Activists claim that children suffering from gender dysphoria should be “treated” by altering their surroundings and their bodies to conform to their “internal sense of gender.” The process usually begins with “social transition” (such as changing names, pronouns, and dress) and is often followed by medical interventions, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and eventually surgery to remove breasts or fundamentally alter their genitalia. In the activists’ view, parents who oppose or have concerns about such transitioning would put their children’s mental and emotional health at risk.
But there is no good evidence that social transition is beneficial. A new study from the United Kingdom finds that, relative to the control group, children who suffer from gender dysphoria experience no positive impact on their mental health from socially transitioning.
Indeed, social transition can be harmful. Before it became common to push medical transitions for minors, most cases of youth gender dysphoria resolved after these minors passed through puberty. This is why a growing number of medical professionals advise “watchful waiting.” That approach allows parents and doctors to observe whether the experience of puberty leads to the resolution of any gender confusion.
But socially transitioning children, especially before puberty, can put them on a path to a life-altering drugs, irreversible surgeries, sterilization, and a lifetime of complex medical interventions. As Max Eden of the American Enterprise Institute has explained, “Evidence suggests that treating children as if they are the opposite sex can cause their feelings of gender dysphoria to persist and increase the likelihood that they will seek experimental hormonal intervention.”
This piece originally appeared in the National Review
