Top Ten Myths About Trans People-Debunked!

Part one of this journey into anti-LGBTQ+ myths is complete. Now, let’s home in on the T because that’s the group that seems to be catching the most flack nowadays, primarily thanks to conservatives and radical feminists who have refused to educate themselves on new concepts involving the transgender experience and have decided to make that everyone else’s problem. Indeed, at the time I’m writing this, we’re coming upon the first anniversary of Michael Knowles’ infamous speech at the Conservative Political Action Committee, where he argued that “for the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely. The whole preposterous ideology!”

And Republican politicians are listening. According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, there are currently 533 bills under consideration in 41 states that seek to erase trans people from public life and restrict their access to healthcare, legal recognition, sports, bathrooms, education, etc., with 16 being passed. And that’s just this year. In the past three years, 1,450 anti-trans bills have been introduced, with 147 passing. I don’t know about you guys, but I find that much more preposterous than the so-called “ideology” of “transgenderism,” whatever the fuck that is. To demonstrate why, let us debunk several common myths about transgender people, starting with…

One: There’s nothing wrong with referring to a trans person by their birth name.

For the uninitiated, deadnaming is the practice of referring to trans or nonbinary people by the name they used before transitioning, usually the name on their birth certificate. While it may seem harmless to the average cisgender person, it can make trans or nonbinary people feel annoyed and disrespected at best and downright traumatize them at worst. Deadnames often remind the victim of the time before they transitioned, which is usually an anxiety-ridden and depressing time for someone with gender dysphoria, and they don’t like to be reminded of that period of their lives.

Of course, to paraphrase the famous quote from the James Bond novel Goldfinger, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” It’s perfectly understandable to deadname or misgender someone by accident if you’re a friend or family member who is more used to referring to the person by the name you’ve known them by for years. It’s less understandable if you insist on using deadnames even if the person in question has told you more than once to stop. If you insist on using their birth name, then don’t be surprised if the person wants nothing more to do with you.

Two: Trans people in public restrooms are a threat to cis people.

So-called “bathroom bills” have been a significant feature of conservative anti-trans legislation since North Carolina’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, signed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act in March 2016 (although McCrory’s Democratic successor, Roy Cooper, forced the state legislature to roll back some of its provisions the following year). Proponents of such bills argue that restricting a person’s access to public restrooms to the gender listed on their birth certificate is necessary to protect cisgender people’s sense of comfort and modesty and to prevent sexual predators from gaining access to women’s spaces by claiming they are trans.

There are many, many problems with these kinds of laws, however. For one thing, as Lindsey King-Miller points out, they’re unenforceable and can affect otherwise cis people who present in gender-nonconforming ways (women with short hair, for instance, or men with long hair). She also humorously argues from experience that women never see each other’s genitals in public restrooms because “we have stalls, you see, with these fancy mechanisms called ‘doors.’”

The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), meanwhile, points out how such laws can hurt trans people’s mental state, especially students. Indeed, according to GLSEN’s 2024 National School Climate Survey, 60% of trans students reported being prohibited from entering bathrooms or locker rooms corresponding with their current gender identity. Such stigmatization can lead to academic underachievement, depression, self-esteem issues, and a higher likelihood of drug abuse. In addition, GLSEN points out that methods of actually policing these bathrooms, like Alabama posting attendants in gender-neutral bathrooms, are a massive invasion of student’s privacy.

Finally, and most importantly, there has been no solid evidence that the levels of sexual assault in public restrooms have changed because of anti-trans bathroom bills. Indeed, many studies have found that it is trans people who are in more danger than cis people in public restrooms, in large part thanks to this “anti-trans blood libel,” as gay activist Dan Savage puts it. Indeed, as Savage points out, cis men are far more likely to assault women in public restrooms, yet no Republican politician seems interested in banning cis men from women’s restrooms. Fascinating.

Three: Trans athletes have an inherent advantage over their cis counterparts.

In a lot of ways, trans-athlete bills have become the new bathroom bills. They have become popular in 20 red states, and the House of Representatives even approved a nationwide ban last year, although that fortunately died in the Senate. The argument in favor of such bans is that trans women who were AMAB (assigned male at birth) have an inherent advantage over AFAB athletes thanks to higher testosterone and muscle mass, among other physical differences.

Several scientists say it’s not so simple, however. For example, Dr. Eric Vilain, a pediatrician and geneticist who has advised the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee, points out that “every sport requires different talents and anatomies for success…For example, the body of a marathon runner is extremely different from the body of a shot put champion, and a transwoman athlete may have some advantage on the basketball field because of her height but would be at a disadvantage in gymnastics. So it’s complicated.” He further argues that bans at the high school level are unjust because “sports in schools are supposed to be primarily about inclusivity, setting individual goals, collective goals, and well-being,” not “crushing the competition.”

Another reason this myth is bunk is that hormone replacement therapy often wipes out the AMAB’s muscle mass and strength. Indeed, Lia Thomas, the swimmer who has in many ways become the face of the trans-athlete debate, lost 15 seconds from her personal best after her transition (indeed, she even admits to putting off HRT for several months in this Sports Illustrated profile because she was afraid something like this would happen).

Anti-trans bans also have the risk of affecting cis women who present in otherwise gender-nonconformist ways, like having shorter hair or more muscle mass than the average woman. One could also argue that the entire premise of women’s sports needing protection from male invaders is in itself inherently misogynist, as it assumes that women are always weaker and in need of protection (and is not all that different from the arguments made in favor of bathroom bills, as we discussed earlier). Indeed, it’s hard to argue otherwise when Lia Thomas’ self-proclaimed arch-nemesis Riley Gaines has even argued that trans women should be banned from playing chess. Yes, really!

Four: Children cannot be trusted to know their true gender identity.

Conservatives often argue that children do not have enough experience in the world to know their true gender identity and that if they do show signs of gender dysphoria, it’s because some irresponsible adult must have planted the idea in their head.

However, according to various studies of gender-nonconforming children, including this one, the children have demonstrated that they know their true gender identity by the time they are 3-5 years old. They often find this out through play, with girls sometimes discovering they like playing with trucks and hate wearing dresses and boys sometimes finding that they like playing with dolls and wearing dresses.

Contrary to conservative scaremongering that this means that five-year-olds are being immediately rushed into gender confirmation surgery the second they show any gender expression inconsistent with their birth certificate (as portrayed in Matt Walsh’s ridiculous children’s book Johnny the Walrus), experts repeatedly point out that a child needs to show a persistent and insistent pattern of gender nonconformity for them to be considered trans. A boy who wears a dress once or twice when they are four and never touches it again is likely not trans. A boy who wears dresses constantly and insists for months or years on end that they are a girl probably is. And even then, this is not grounds for immediate confirmation surgery (more on that myth in a bit).

Above all, experts stress that it is essential that a child’s gender nonconformity be met with open arms and parental support. Various studies have shown that gender-nonconforming children who are rejected by their families are at a greater risk of homelessness, incarceration, and attempted suicide. This is on top of their higher susceptibility to hate crimes and murder. Trans people already have it rough in this society. Why make it worse by rejecting your own child?

Five: People only become trans because of peer pressure.

Guys, for the last time, a sex-change operation is not a good idea for an April Fools Day prank!

I think this quote from the University of Washington Medicine’s “Right as Rain” newsletter best sums up how off-base this myth is: “Given the harassment, threats, denial of rights, inaccessibility of healthcare and more that gender-diverse people face, the likelihood of someone saying they are trans or nonbinary due to social pressure or because they think it’s “trendy” is extremely low.”

Indeed, from my layman’s perspective, as well as that of experts like Dr. Mariebeth Velasquez (clinical assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the UW School of Medicine and a faculty advisor for the Qmedicine student organization), it seems there is much more pressure to remain straight and cisgender than be honest about one’s gender identity or sexual orientation. “Understanding that you’re trans, nonbinary or queer,” says Dr. Velasquez, “often involves needing to unlearn what we’ve been socialized to learn with Western civilization, where we have all these labels and binaries.”

Once again, it is best to empathize with your child or student and support them on their journey to find their true self because trying to tell them that they’re too young to know for sure, that they’re just giving in to peer pressure, or that they’re just playing dress up isn’t going to end well.

Six: Doctors are regularly performing gender confirmation surgery on children.

I’ve already mentioned in the entry for Myth Five that children are not being immediately rushed into gender confirmation surgery en masse the minute they express any gender expression incongruous with what is listed on their birth certificate. Indeed, it is far more common for younger trans people to be prescribed puberty blockers (so they don’t have to go through puberty while they’re the wrong gender) or HRT. If surgery does happen in young patients, it’s usually in the chest region, with genital surgeries (like the ones portrayed in the diagram above) being held off until the child is older and is still in favor of the procedure.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped right-wing stochastic terrorists like Matt Walsh and Chaya Raichik from accusing places like Boston Children’s Hospital and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health of regularly performing hysterectomies and “genital mutilation” on minors, which led to numerous death threats and even a bomb threat in the former’s case. This is despite the fact that BCH has stated multiple times that it does not give hysterectomies to patients under 18 and that Vanderbilt only provided medical services to five transgender minors per year in the five years between its founding and the harassment campaign, none of them receiving genital surgery. But hey, why let the facts get in the way of your heteronormative crusades?

Seven: Trans people always have gender confirmation surgery.

It ain’t necessarily so for two main reasons: a) because the person simply doesn’t want it or even need it to relieve their gender dysphoria, and b) because of the barriers society keeps throwing up in their way.

According to the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, about 33% of trans people said they had no intention of surgically transitioning, with 14% of trans women and 72% of trans men saying they’re fine without a complete genital reconstruction surgery.

This isn’t to say that discrimination isn’t a significant deciding factor in whether or not trans people decide to forgo reassignment surgery. This 2010 survey, published by the National LGBTQ Task Force, found that 28% of trans people experienced harassment from medical professionals, with 2% claiming they experienced violence. This all added up to 28% of trans people saying they postponed any kind of medical care, including for sickness and injury, for fear of discriminatory treatment. While Obamacare has since made anti-transgender discrimination illegal, that hasn’t stopped out-of-touch Republican politicians and pundits from trying to relitigate this issue in favor of their heteronormative ideals.

Also, this is one of those myths that really betrays the conservatives’ obsession with trans people’s genitals, especially those of trans kids. Not only is that degrading and intrusive, but it also makes one wonder if these people are telling on themselves a little bit.

Eight: Puberty blockers are dangerous.

Puberty blockers have been around since at least the 80s and have been used for a variety of purposes, from stopping precocious puberty (when puberty starts earlier than usual, anywhere from 6-10 years of age) to treating prostate cancer and endometriosis to weakening sex offenders’ libido to, of course, halting puberty in trans kids to buy them time to figure out their true gender identity. The most common puberty-blocking medication is gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists, or GnRHa, which sends signals to the pituitary gland to stop producing sex hormones.

Several conservative sources, including this article from the conservative Christian magazine WORLD, have made a big stink about the potential side effects of puberty blockers that have been discovered over the years, most notably adverse effects on bone density and neurocognitive development. It’s unsurprising that bone density would be a concern since sex hormones are needed to develop strong, healthy bones. However, exercise, calcium, and vitamin D can help reduce this problem.

Dealing with potential effects on the brain like stress, anxiety, and depression is trickier to deal with, as Missouri-based endocrinologist Dr. Angela Turpin has pointed out. However, Turpin also notes that untreated gender dysphoria can also cause similar symptoms, with self-harm and suicidal ideation also often included in the mix. Ironically enough, puberty blockers can also cause issues for trans-femme people who may seek a vaginoplasty in the future, as suppressing hormones can lead to underdevelopment of the penis and scrotum, thus leaving plastic surgeons less tissue to work with.

The bottom line is that puberty blockers can have serious side effects, just as with any other drug. However, forcing your child to go through puberty in a body they already feel uncomfortable in can be just as bad, if not worse.

Nine: Detransitioning is common.

It is true that, on occasion, a person may regret their transition. This can be for several reasons, like realizing they don’t want a complete transition or that they found they were nonbinary rather than trans, but the most common is outside pressure from family, friends, employers, or society. When conservative opponents of gender transition use the term “detransitioner,” however, they are often talking about people who think their transition was a complete mistake and want to go back to the gender they were assigned at birth.

However, if we look at the statistics around detransitioners, we find that people who entirely regret their transition are vanishingly rare. The National Library of Medicine survey linked above found a rate of just 1% regret among the individuals surveyed (77 out of a group of 7,928). Other studies, like this one from The Journal of Sexual Medicine, found an even smaller percentage, totaling 0.6% of trans women and 0.3% of trans men. By contrast, another National Library of Medicine survey found that 20% of patients who underwent knee replacement surgery regretted the procedure. Yet, we don’t see conservative activists rallying against that. On top of all that, some surveys have even shown that patients who start HRT before the age of 18 are less likely to stop using them than patients who start HRT as adults.

That hasn’t stopped conservative news sources from publishing story after story of people who transitioned as teenagers only to realize they were “duped” by “trans-rights activists” and “gender ideologues” into believing that a sex change was the answer to all of their problems. Even good faith articles on this topic, like the recent Atlantic article “Take Detransitioners Seriously,” have fallen prey to bad faith misinformation, as demonstrated by articles from Slate and the Science-Based Medicine blog. As the latter notes, the Atlantic article’s authors are correct that we should listen to detransitioners’ stories to improve outcomes for everyone. But we mustn’t delude ourselves into thinking that just because gender confirmation doesn’t have a 100% success rate, just like with any medical procedure, it’s, therefore, wrong and should be done away with entirely.

Ten: Suicide is comorbid with being trans.

Conservatives love to bring up the “40% of trans people commit suicide” statistic to attempt to discredit the idea that gender transition will solve all a person’s problems, often in conjunction with the common detransitioner narrative that HRT and confirmation surgery not only did not solve their underlying mental issues but in some cases increased them.

Take this Tweet (since deleted) by conservative “comedian” (and proven domestic abuser) Steven Crowder on March 28, 2023: “Transgender people have a 42% attempted suicide rate. American slaves and Jews in concentration camps didn’t commit suicide at 19x more than the general population.” As a Newsweek article commenting on the Tweet notes, Steven is right. Jewish people locked away in Nazi concentration camps didn’t commit suicide at 19x the general population. According to a 2004 study, they committed suicide at a rate 1,854 times higher (25,000 per 100,000 people per year compared to a rate of around 13 per 100,000 in the US in 2020).

The 42% figure appears to come from a 2016 survey by the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which found that 41 percent of their respondents said that they had attempted suicide sometime in the past, compared to just 0.36% of the total US population. A 2018 survey by the Trevor Project found similar rates of attempted suicide among nonbinary adolescents. However, at the time the Newsweek article was published (March 30, 2023), a newer survey by the group had found a 45% rate of suicidal ideation among LGBTQ+ youth and a 14% rate of attempted suicide.

Contrary to conservative claims that this is the result of transgender people trying and failing to cure their underlying mental issues with HRT and gender confirmation surgery, Ilan H. Meyer, Distinguished Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute and author of this July 2023 study of suicide rates among transgender adults, had this to say: “A lack of societal recognition and acceptance of gender identities outside of the binary of cisgender man or woman and increasing politically motivated attacks on transgender individuals increase stigma and prejudice and related exposure to minority stress, which contributes to the high rates of substance use and suicidality we see among transgender people.”

By now, I hope it should be clear that transgenderism is not some social trend or a cynical ideological ploy to corrupt the American youth. This is something that children are born with, and no amount of bans on books, healthcare, teachers’ free speech, or athletes is going to change that. And if there’s one message I want you to take away from this article, it’s this:

And with that, my miserable trek through the dismal swamp of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination has come to an end. Fortunately, I have much more fun ideas for the immediate future, including the next entry in “Cryptids of North America,” a new episode of “P.J.’s Ultimate Playlist,” and a new birthday retrospective on a franchise 65 million years in the making. I’ll have more details in an update post that should be coming this weekend. Until then, have a lovely rest of the week, and remember: Trans rights are human rights!